BECOMING the CROSSROADS: FEMALE CULTURAL CREATORS of the MEXICAN AMERICAN GENERATION in the TEXAS BORDERLANDS a Dissertation By
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BECOMING THE CROSSROADS: FEMALE CULTURAL CREATORS OF THE MEXICAN AMERICAN GENERATION IN THE TEXAS BORDERLANDS A Dissertation by MARY LEE GRANT Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Julia Kirk Blackwelder Committee Members, Carlos Blanton Henry Schmidt Thomas Green Head of Department, David Vaught December 2015 Major Subject: History Copyright 2015 Mary Lee Grant ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the cultural accomplishments of Mexican American women in 20th century Texas, looking at how women in the arts paved the way for a new Mexican American hybrid identity. I examine how Mexican American women in the borderlands, as Gloria Anzaldúa so aptly put it, “became the crossroads” in their bodies, minds and spirits. By examining the lives and work of the four women Jovita González, Rosita Fernández, Alicia Dickerson Montemayor, and Consuelo “Chelo” González Amezcua, I have demonstrated that Mexican American women broke boundaries of their own culture and of Anglo Texas culture in order to create their art. In the process of becoming American, they flouted the conventional gender roles and paved the way for a generation of Chicana artists, musicians, and authors. My research was conducted in archives throughout Texas, by examining and analyzing letters, manuscripts, newspapers, recordings, films, TV and video clips, magazines, and art work. As artists of the borderlands, the women I researched participated in laying the groundwork for a hybrid Mexican American identity, developing Mexican American art that paved the way for the development of a distinctive Mexican American culture by the hybridization and use of common Mexican forms and references in their art, through which they reinforced and redefined Mexican American culture while telling stories that had not been told before. ii DEDICATION To the memory of my mother, Katherine Lee Grant, and to Lucy Kruse, with thanks and gratitude for your support. Thank you, Lucy Kruse, for instilling in me from an early age a love and respect for the culture of the borderlands. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION .................................................................................................................. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 Literature and Background ......................................................................................... 1 The Women .............................................................................................................. 12 Theoretical Constructs .............................................................................................. 17 CHAPTER II CREATING A LITERARY BORDERLAND .......................................... 23 Creating a Distinctive Borderlands Literature .......................................................... 35 Patriarchy, the Class System, and the Idealization of Whiteness ............................. 52 Transgressing Boundaries, Creating a Hybrid Identity ............................................ 66 CHAPTER III ROSITA FERNÁNDEZ: LA ROSA DE SAN ANTONIO ..................... 75 CHAPTER IV ALICIA DICKERSON MONTEMAYOR: ARTIST AND ACTIVIST ON THE BORDER ..................................................................................... 107 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 107 A Female LULAC Leader ...................................................................................... 111 Creating a Folk Art for the Borderlands ................................................................. 125 Creating her Own Paradigm and Forging a Hybrid Identity .................................. 138 CHAPTER V CHELO GONZÁLEZ AMEZCUA: SELF-TAUGHT ARTIST OF THE BORDERLANDS .................................................................................................. 145 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 145 Border Themes and Resistance in González Amezcua’s Art and Poetry ............... 148 Art Nouveau ........................................................................................................... 156 Folk Art Influence .................................................................................................. 160 Two-Sided Format .................................................................................................. 162 iv Birds ....................................................................................................................... 164 Gardens ................................................................................................................... 168 Mudéjar Influence .................................................................................................. 173 Self-taught, Naïve, and Spiritual ............................................................................ 178 CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION ...................................................................................... 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 195 Primary Sources ..................................................................................................... 195 Secondary Sources ................................................................................................. 197 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Literature and Background This dissertation examines the lives of four Mexican American Mexican American female cultural creators in Texas between 1920 and 1975—women who transgressed the boundaries of their own culture and of the dominant Anglo culture in both their lives and their art. In the process of becoming American they flouted the conventional gender roles of their own culture, and sometimes of Anglo culture as well. In this dissertation, I look at how Mexican American women in the borderlands, as Gloria Anzaldúa so aptly put it, “became the crossroads,”1 in their bodies, minds and spirits. During the revolutionary period and thereafter, Texas Mexican women worked as journalists for radical newspapers sponsored by the Partido Laborista Mexicano (PLM), Mexico’s labor party, e.g., La Mujer Moderna.2 They formed associations of nurses to cross the border to treat injured revolutionary soldiers3 and published feminist magazines based on revolutionary principles. Some women became labor activists, like San 1Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 3. 2Teresa Palomo Acosta, “La Mujer Moderna,” in Handbook of Texas Online (Texas State Historical Association, 1999), accessed March 17, 2011, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eel09. La Mujer Moderna was a feminist San Antonio paper founded by Andrea and Teresa Villarreal, sisters associated with the PLM and with a group of female intellectuals in the period, including Laredo poet and activist Sara Estela Ramírez, who worked for revolution in both Texas and Mexico. 3Nancy Baker Jones, “Leonor Villegas de Magnon,” in Handbook of Texas Online (Texas State Historical Association, 1999), accessed March 16, 2011, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fvi19. 1 Antonio communist and labor leader Emma Tenayuca, who organized Mexican women working as pecan shellers.4 A few women, like those I examine in this dissertation, were creators—artists, musicians, scholars, and novelists. Working in the creative arts involved the flouting of convention in many ways. As I will demonstrate, Mexican American women generally were expected to stay close to home and family and remain subservient to men, instead of pursuing their own craft or performing in public, where they would make themselves open to the masculine gaze. For women in Mexican American culture at this time, performing in public was seen as scandalous, especially if they were not accompanied by family members. Simply creating their art was a transgression of gender norms. Choosing not to marry and have children—or refusing to put family at the center of their lives—was also seen as a transgression. For Mexican American women during this period, attending college and earning a master’s degree, as Jovita González did, was unusual. González’s novels and scholarship, which went against the grain of current Anglo triumphalist views of history, were certainly a radical departure from the traditional narrative. Working as an artist was a particularly difficult choice for working class women like Del Rio artist Consuelo “Chelo” González González Amezcua, who could not pay for art lessons and sometimes had only scraps of paper to draw on after a full day’s work at Kress Department Store. 4Richard Croxdale, “Pecan Shellers Strike,” in Handbook of Texas Online (Texas State Historical Association, 1999), accessed March 16, 2011, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/oep01. 2 In this dissertation, I will argue that these four women broke boundaries of convention to work as artists against difficult odds, building a foundational art, music