Multiple Histories and Narratives in Contemporary Novels and Film from 1989 to 2002

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Mexicanidad Reloaded: Multiple Histories and Narratives in Contemporary Novels and Film from 1989 to 2002

Magdaleno-Yntema, Ariana Heydi https://scholarship.miami.edu/discovery/delivery/01UOML_INST:ResearchRepository/12355348870002976?l#13355528280002976

Magdaleno-Yntema, A. H. (2019). Mexicanidad Reloaded: Multiple Histories and Narratives in Contemporary Novels and Film from 1989 to 2002 [University of Miami]. https://scholarship.miami.edu/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991031447418302976/01UOML_INST:ResearchR epository

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UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

MEXICANIDAD RELOADED: MULTIPLE HISTORIES AND NARRATIVES IN CONTEMPORARY NOVELS AND FILM FROM 1989 TO 2002

Ariana Heydi Magdaleno-Yntema

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Miami in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Coral Gables, Florida

August 2019

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

MEXICANIDAD RELOADED: MULTIPLE HISTORIES AND NARRATIVES IN CONTEMPORARY NOVELS AND FILM FROM 1989 TO 2002

Ariana Heydi Magdaleno-Yntema

Approved:

______Elena Grau-Lleveria, Ph.D. B. Christine Arce, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Latin Associate Professor of Latin American Literature American Literature and Cultural Studies

______Steven F. Butterman, Ph.D. Guillermo Prado, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Modern Dean of the Graduate School Languages and Literatures

______Christina Lane, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Cinema and Interactive Media

MAGDALENO-YNTEMA, ARIANA HEYDI (Ph.D., Romance Studies) Mexicanidad Reloaded: Multiple Histories (August 2019) and Narratives in Contemporary Novels and Film from 1989-2002

Abstract of a dissertation at the University of Miami.

Dissertation supervised by Professors Elena Grau-Lleveria and B. Christine Arce. No. of pages in text. (229)

This dissertation examines Brianda Domecq’s new historical novel La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (1990), Carmen Boullosa’s origin novel Duerme (1994), and Carlos Reygadas’s auteur film Japón (2002), and studies the way these texts rearticulate Mexican history and Mexicanidad. These works reload Mexico’s history and understanding of what is to be Mexican by intersecting fiction with the historical and literary archive and by positioning marginal figures in leading roles.

I define the term reload as an intentional postmodern objective in which historical constructions of the past are continually updated; to reload does not mean to deconstruct or to reconstruct but to expose the gaps and silences and to include the paradoxical and

the simultaneous multiplicities of marginal individuals (women, mestizo and indigenous

people) that have defined Mexico’s historical and literary trajectory. It is through the

disarticulation of hegemonic representations of marginal beings that the texts studied in

this dissertation challenge the twentieth century project of imposing a very specific type

of Mexicanidad. The novels and film emphasize and make visible, that is, bring to the

forefront the manifold juxtapositions that inform Mexico’s history from the colonial

period, the pre-Revolutionary era, the Post-Boom literary decades, to the 21st century.

T.J.

I share this accomplishment with you.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my co-directors Dr. Elena Grau-Lleveria and Dr. B. Christine

Arce and committee members Dr. Steven F. Butterman and Dr. Christina Lane for their dedication and unwavering support throughout the many facets of my academic journey.

To Dr. Grau-Lleveria and Dr. Arce, thank you for encouraging me to hone my ideas into a document I could confidently share with you and my academic community. I also would like to thank the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Florida Education Fund for the support I have received throughout the different stages of my graduate program. In particular, I want to thank MDF-FEF President and CEO Dr. Lawrence Morehouse and program manager Mr. Charles Jackson for offering guidance throughout my graduate studies. Thank you to the Graduate School, Dean Dr. Guillermo Prado, Associate Dean

Dr. Tatiana Perrino, and Director Dr. Tiffany B. Plantan, for developing a mentorship program that connected me to Dr. Sara Mijares St. George. To Dr. Mijares St. George, thank you for your advice and your direction through one of the most challenging moments of my life. To my UM peers: Catalina Ramírez, thank you for your friendship and the many honest conversations we’ve had throughout this journey; Melyssa Haffaf, thank you for being my dissertation writing partner during those long weekends at the library; María Gracia Pardo, thank you for sharing your experience in juggling motherhood with academic life and for finding the time in our busy schedules to read early versions of my work. Thank you to my mother María Imelda García who has taught me to never give up on my goals and dreams and who selflessly adjusted her schedule several times to watch Alastair so I could write. To my parents-in-law Ted and Susan

Yntema, thank you for stepping up to the plate when needed. In closing: to my son

Alastair, though you are too young to read and understand this, your hugs, your smiles,

and the way your eyes reflect wonder when you encounter something new kept me moving forward; to my husband T.J., I especially thank you for your love, your support,

for cheering me on, and for always being there for me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION Reloading History and Mexicanidad in Literature and Film ……...... … 1

CHAPTER 1 Duerme: Postmodern Gender Multiplicities and Narrative Intertextualities…...... 27

CHAPTER 2 La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora: Histories and Mexicanidades Reloaded…. 81

CHAPTER 3 Japón: Visual Reloadings of Mexicanidad at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.... 146

CONCLUSION A Retrospective Self-Reflection on Turn-of-the-Century Mexican Texts …………… 204

WORKS CONSULTED …………… ...... 211

INTRODUCTION

Reloading History and Mexicanidad in Literature and Film

“Perdonad, Señora mía, la digresión que me arrebató la fuerza de la verdad; y si la he de confesar toda, también es buscar efugios para huir la dificultad de responder, y casi me he determinado a dejarlo al silencio; pero como éste es cosa negativa, aunque explica mucho con el énfasis de no explicar, es necesario ponerle algún breve rótulo para que se entienda lo que se pretende que el silencio diga; y si no, dirá nada el silencio, porque ése es su propio oficio: decir nada.” (4)

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Carta a Sor Filotea”

“La mestiza constantly has to shift out of habitual formation; from convergent thinking, analytical reasoning that tends to use rationality to move toward a single goal (a Western mode), to divergent thinking, characterized by movement away from set patterns and goals and toward a more whole perspective, once that includes rather than excludes.” (101)

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

Representations of History and Mexicanidad Reloaded

Mexico’s literature in the 20th century contains a canonical set of texts that portray and interpret Mexico with narratives that structure a magnificent historical genealogy; however, these canonical texts, whether historical texts, fiction, essays, or films, in many instances, disregard the narratives of peoples that also make up the core of Mexican history. And when these texts do include frequently ignored narratives, they are often utilized as secondary enhancements to promote and establish a genealogy of Mexican

history and Mexicanidad/Mexicanness.1 Consequently, when these local and non- hegemonic narratives are incorporated into an official totalizing story, many times, in the process of appropriation, they are diluted and/or rendered invisible. As a result, the representation of local and non-hegemonic narratives into a master narrative minimizes the multiple agents that construct Mexican History and Mexicanidad.2 Unlike many of its predecessors, though not all, the novels and the film that I analyze in this project demonstrate that the fragmentation, multiplicity in perspective, a subject/agent who is self-connected to the other (that is, an ‘I’ linked to a community as well as a larger society), and the performative role of the ethnic and/or gendered agents cannot be reduced to a singular official history, that is, to a history: that has constructed a narrow idea of Mexicanidad and that subsequently, has controlled the representation of the many individuals that make up Mexico and construct Mexicanidad(es). My purpose in this

1 For example, José Vasconcelos (1882-1959) in La raza cósmica (1925), Octavio Paz (1914-1998) in El laberinto de la soledad (1950), and Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) in several of his novels are three different historical and ideological canonical authors of the 20th century that have successfully imprinted their views in the cultural hegemonic concept of Mexicanidad with their respective literary productions. In Vasconcelos’s work, his utopian concept of a cosmic race produces a hierarchal understanding of Mexico and its people that results in the invisibilization of Mexico’s ethnic heterogeneity. In a similar manner, Paz through his psychoanalytical concept of el chingón/el chingado postulates a hierarchal understanding of the real and symbolic violence that is present in Mexico. This real and symbolic violence provides an understanding of how to define el/lo mexicano or la mexicanidad. His postulations become problematic because as he exposes a postcolonial logic he affirms it by identifying individuals and groups (the indigenous and mestizo populations, the campesino, and women) under either the headings of el chingón or el chingado/la chingada. And although Fuentes provides a revision of Mexican masculinities and femininities in his novels, his revisions, even as they belong to the projects of the new historical novel, continue to be stereotypes based on previous discourses of Mexicanidad. 2 Throughout the text I strategically capitalize the term Mexicanidad instead of utilizing a lowercase spelling. The use of the uppercase is an intentional way of inserting the ways in which Domecq, Boullosa, and Reygadas portray the multiplicity of Mexicanidad with the different historical canonical constructions that have defined lo mexicano. Specifically, the use of the uppercase is a deliberate way to reference a reloaded Mexicanidad. Even when I am referencing the ways the literary canon has imagined and defined Mexicanidad I still purposely make use of the uppercase letter to draw attention to the ways this historical- canonical Mexicanidad is being reloaded at the turn of the century. Furthermore, I deploy both the singular and plural forms of Mexicanidad(es) when analyzing the different artistic texts throughout this work. Important to note, when I use the singular form of Mexicanidad in uppercase it is a reloaded form that includes the multiple identities that inform it, in other words, the term is meant to be read as the plurality of identities that it encompasses.

research project is to demonstrate that the two novels and the film I’ve chosen to study

here, Duerme (1994) by Carmen Boullosa, La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora

(1990) by Brianda Domecq, and Japón (2002) by Carlos Reygadas, reload not only representations of marginal historical figures but by extension, Mexico’s history and

Mexicanidad at the turn-of-the-twenty-first century. These artistic works simultaneously close the twentieth century and open the twenty-first century. Most significantly, these artistic productions through the disarticulation of hegemonic representations of marginal beings challenge the twentieth century project of imposing a very specific type of

Mexicanidad by emphasizing and making visible, that is, bringing to the forefront the juxtapositions and multiplicities that inform Mexico’s history from the colonial period to today. As a corpus these texts reload ideological truths by illustrating that there are other figures, historically marginalized, that are imperatively crucial in the construction of

Mexico’s history.

The two novels and the film explore how abject-gendered-ethnic individuals, relegated to the margins of history and society, are integral to the historical processes that construct Mexico and Mexicanidad. These texts offer new ways of understanding

Mexicanidad by either parodying or reloading traditional history. They highlight and examine specific historical periods, from the colonial period, to pre-Revolutionary

Mexico to the 21st century as a way to reinterpret the manner in which these moments are

not only historically but culturally considered in the present. For that reason, the study

and interpretation of the novels and film in this project must be connected with the

cultural and historical context of their respective time periods. Though this is a large

archive to access it is explicitly alluded to in the works I analyze. I strategically order my

chapters based on the historical content of each work to better emphasize the ideological propositions that these texts present. In Duerme, Carmen Boullosa traces the colonial period in Mexico and re-frames it through the fictional cross-dressing pícara Claire.

Boullosa specifically dialogues with the literary genres of the colonial period, such as the diaries, the crónicas, the picaresque novel, baroque drama, comedy and poetry. However, the narrative dialogue is a parodic reinterpretation of the aforementioned genres in the colonial period. The parody in this case alters the colonial genres, gives authority to marginal agent-bodies, and indicates that constructions of Mexicanidad already existed in the baroque literary tradition. Specifically, in regard to the latter, Boullosa places these literary genres in a Mexican (geopolitical) context. In La insólita historia de la Santa de

Cabora, Brianda Domecq illustrates the political and social landscape of pre-

Revolutionary Mexico at the turn of the century and most importantly she purposely inserts a forgotten but central female historical figure – like Teresa Urrea, la Santa de

Cabora – into 20th century history. Domecq dialogues not only with official history but also with the historical novels of the nineteenth century, specifically with the novel

Tomóchic (1893) written by Mexican federal soldier Heriberto Frías. Frías in his text inscribes Teresa Urrea, Santa de Cabora into literary history by acknowledging her historical presence in the battle of Tomóchic. Whereas Domecq’s and Boullosa’s respective novels take place in a very specific historical moment and dialogue with the specific literary productions of that period, as well as the implications of that past for our present, Carlos Reygadas’s film Japón takes place in rural and present-day Mexico. In

Japón, Reygadas cinematically captures the journey of an urban and unnamed artist who plans to commit suicide in a rural town but is instead faced with a quotidian reality that

makes him and the viewer question our subjective views of rural Mexico. Reygadas illustrates not only a present-day rural Mexico but also explores the idea of encountering the familiar and unfamiliar in this rural space. These works as a corpus revisit important historical moments and spaces and illustrate the nuances that assist in constructing a different type of Mexicanidad. The texts accomplish this by showing protagonists that do not conform to the dominant historical notions of Mexico and Mexicanidad. As a result, they bring attention to alternative narratives that do not fit into specific ‘ordered’ categories. Together they create a dialogue with hegemonic literary productions, hegemonic constructions of Mexican history, and hegemonic cultural imaginaries in order to produce individual and collective identities that give voice to what has been silenced or brushed aside by official history and canonic literary production. Yet, important to emphasize is the fact that these works are not attempting to dismantle lineal

Mexican history as it is known, instead they are intentionally reloading the perception of national history and Mexicanidad/Mexicanness.

A Definition for “Reloading”

In the opening paragraphs above I have strategically made use of the term reload as a way to capture the complicated play that the aforementioned texts have with the hegemonic views of Mexico’s history and Mexicanidad. Before I continue, I must first explain how I came to this term, particularly after following the analytical proposition established by B. Christine Arce in her celebrated book Mexico’s Nobodies in which she traces the fact that Mexico’s anonymous figures have intentionally been left in the margins by official history and memory and yet have continued to flood the national

imaginary through various culturally artistic productions (2-3). Arce explicitly states that

the “people who abound as nameless figures in diverse forms of Mexican cultural

production—from novels, film, music, photography, murals, theatre to popular

balladry—elucidate how the aesthetic realm, in all of its forms and manifestations,

exercises a singularly decisive role in creating history and imagining selfhood, both

individual and communal” (3). Arce implicitly cautions us to not forget that even as

marginal and/or peripheral bodies have been recognized as agents (in their varied cultural

artistic manifestations) their historical roles have nevertheless been minimalized and/or

invisibilized by being grouped into a single entity. In her study, Arce identifies these

“nobodies” as the many women as well as the indigenous, mestizo, black, and mulato

figures of Mexico in all their different social and cultural capacities. These individuals

become “nobodies” because as “marginal subjects [they persistently, especially in the

arts] are figured and disfigured by the tropological forms [that] their representations have

taken by means of metonym, mythification, or caricature” (2).

For example, this is true when looking at the way Octavio Paz closes his second

chapter, “Máscaras mexicanas,” in his seminal book El laberinto de la soledad (1950).

Part of Paz’s objective is to provide an overall definition of lo mexicano/Mexicanidad by

exploring different cultural topics that to him are fundamentally Mexican.3 One of these topics is how individuals become “nobodies,” which he defines in the following manner:

“No sólo nos disimulamos a nosotros mismos y nos hacemos transparentes y fantasmales:

también disimulamos la existencia de nuestros semejantes. No quiero decir que los

ignoremos o los hagamos menos, actos deliberados y soberbios. Los disimulamos de

3 See footnote 1 that references the topic of el chingón and el chingado/la chingada.

manera más definitiva y radical: los ninguneamos” (Paz 180). Yet, even as Paz includes

himself, by rhetorically employing the pronoun ‘we,’ to describe the process of

‘ningunear’ (making others into “nobodies” or making oneself a “nobody”) as a fundamental Mexican cultural experience, he nevertheless bases his definition on a very specific urban experience, in which he equates his “hermetic” and what he understands as a universal background to that of a maid (possibly indigenous or mestiza) from rural

Mexico: “La disimulación mimética, en fin, es una de tantas manifestaciones de nuestro hermetisimo. […] Recuerdo que una tarde, como oyera un leve ruido en el cuarto vecino al mío, pregunté en voz alta: ‘¿Quién anda por ahí?’ Y la voz de una criada recién llegada de su pueblo contestó: ‘No es nadie, señor, soy yo’” (180). All this to say, that as Paz recognizes the process of ‘ningunear’ and the silences that it creates in Mexican culture and History (181), the example that informs his chapter’s closing definition indicates how he too participates in the silences that ‘ningunear’ produces by using his preconceived understandings of a working-class woman from rural Mexico. His example is based on a woman with no name and no face. The only information we are privy to is the fact that she is a maid and that she recently arrived from her pueblo.4 In short, the above example

illustrates what Arce points out, that authors like Paz strategically reference marginal

figures through metonym, mythification and caricature to construct and define

Mexicanidad. However, Arce also indicates that even when Mexico’s anonymous figures

are celebrated (whether positively, negatively, or a combination of both, the latter being

the case in Paz’s text) by Mexico’s popular imagination and simultaneously denigrated

by official history’s erasures, they nevertheless are “in different ways, [able] to slip

4 It is important to keep in mind the socio-linguistic aspect of this example, especially because one must consider the context in which the question and the answer are being produced as well as who is asking and who is answering.

through” (3). This is an important observation where Arce makes it clear that

collectively, this paradoxical process and ‘slipping through’ lead to the historical tensions

that define 20th century Mexicanidad (2). And it is this paradoxical state and ‘slipping

through’ of Mexicanidad that kept resurfacing throughout my readings of Boullosa’s

novel Duerme, Domecq’s narrative La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora, and

Reygada’s film Japón. These authors and director not only demonstrate the complexity of

Mexico’s history and Mexicanidad but, instead of creating an ‘objective’ historical truth

that satisfies official circles, use it to establish an ideological truth that reloads Mexico’s

history and the multiple constructions of Mexicanidad. As such, my project dialogues

with Arce’s proposition, however, whereas Arce specifically traces the ways in which

Mexico’s anonymous figures or, its “nobodies” resist erasure (culturally and historically)

in their repeated and circulatory aesthetic representations, I look at how turn-of-century narratives intentionally reload these same figures into official Mexican history, literary history, and memory. That is, these texts not only illustrate how these “nobodies” resist historical erasure but how they purposely reload (by strategically showing and using the multiplicity and paradoxes of history) these figures into history and Mexicanidad.

What do I mean when I use the term reload/reloading? I came about this term unexpectedly. At the time I only had this floating idea that these turn-of-century cultural productions were intentionally making use of the contradictory aspects of Mexicanidad in their respective narratives. Additionally, these artists were centering their respective works on Mexico’s “nobodies” and the question was to what purpose? In the early stages of my research, specifically when I was compiling material to better understand my primary texts, this idea of how to explain the way that Boullosa, Domecq, and Reygadas

were not only exploring the conceptualizations of Mexicanidad but cementing them as

integral to Mexicanidad and history became the unitary thread that led me to the term

“reloading.” These artists were purposely demonstrating the importance of reloading our contemporary perceptions of Mexico’s history and Mexicanidad. However, it was not until my computer prompted me to restart it because there were program updates that I found a way to concretely express the ways in which these turn-of-century texts redefine

Mexicanidad and history. Although this is an anecdotal experience, it is one that many of us are familiar with because we often find ourselves updating our computers and smart phones in order to make sure that programs run smoothly. In order for computer updates to work the computer must restart and reload the information. As a result, the prompt made me think that when we update historical information for example, we are also reloading that information. Though I abstractly understood the meaning of the computer term “load” I was curious to find a definition. A quick search online gave me a few starting descriptions. The following definition provided a preliminary explanation that helped inform the conceptualization of the term for broader use:

Load refers to the beginning or executing a program by moving (loading) the necessary information from a drive, such as a hard drive, into a computer’s memory. Depending on how much information is required to load, the speed of the hardware and how other programs are running determines the load time. If a program or command gives you a load average, the average is on average how long it takes to load or execute a process. (Computer Hope par. 1)5

I continued down the rabbit hole of searching for a more detailed explanation of the term.

I came across the term “reboot” and in its definition the term “reload” began to make

sense as an integral component that makes a computer run. To reboot means “to switch a

5 The definition was updated on the website on May 4, 2019. https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/l/load.htm

computer off and on again, allowing its operation system and programs to be reloaded.

Note that this is not the same as placing a computer into standby/hibernate and then

resuming. A reboot requires that all software is completely reloaded” (Kewin par. 9). 6 In the first definition, it is the first sentence describing how information is loaded from a hard drive into a computer’s memory that caught my attention because it made me think of the way historical events from the past can resurface in the present as referents. The second definition on “reboot” explains that a computer can only run once all information has been reloaded. I draw a similarity to what the novels and film studied are accomplishing. These texts first load, that is, reference official history explicitly in order to reload collective memory. In keeping with computer terminology, the term “‘memory’ generally refers to the temporary storage used by a computer” when “it is switched on”

(Kewin par. 6). Yet it is important to note that “a computer loads programs and data into its memory in order to carry out tasks. This is accurately called RAM or ‘random-access memory’. Disk space (or ‘hard disk space’), on the other hand, is a more permanent store that holds files even when the computer is switched off. It’s from here that the computer loads things into its memory” (Kewin par. 6). According to the definition provided in

Merriam-Webster, to load also means “to copy or transfer (something, such as a program or data) into the memory of a digital device (such as a computer) especially from an external source (such as a disk drive or the Internet)” (definition 2).7 I include the above

definitions in order to create a literary emphasis whereby loading, specifically, reloading,

suggests a process where stored information can be included not just in a hard drive

(hegemonic history and the literary canon) but also in our memory (what we culturally

6 Access date: May 20, 2019. https://www.dailywritingtips.com/20-computer-terms-you-should-know/ 7 Access date: May 20, 2019. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/load

remember and access in the present). In particular though, I want to emphasize that these

two spaces (a computer’s hard drive and memory respectively interpreted as official

history and our collective historical memory) can be periodically reloaded. In other

words, to reload implies to actively update our contemporary knowledge (what it tells and

how it is created) of history, and not just once but continually. This however is only an

explanation of how I first came to the term and the types of meanings that arise from

computer terminology.8

The term has other nuanced definitions that further help conceptualize the way in

which I purposely utilize it in this project. The word “load” is both a noun and a verb. For

example, as a noun it can either mean “whatever is put on a person or pack animal to be

carried” or “whatever is put in a ship or vehicle or airplane for conveyance” (Merriam

Webster).9 As a transitive verb, it means “to put a load in or on” or “to increase the weight by adding something heavy” (Merriam Webster). It also means to “to charge with multiple meanings (such as emotional associations or hidden implications)” or “to put a load or charge in (a device or piece of equipment)” such as a shotgun (Merriam Webster).

These last two definitions are important because they indicate how the two novels and film not only add to history and load it with multiple meanings but also how important it is to actively revisit history. I want to make clear that I specifically use the term “reload” and not “load” in my project. The term “reload” means “to load again” (Merriam-

Webster). This is important to the postmodern manner in which I am conceptualizing

8 I am conscious of the fact that that I am using metaphorical language. I use a metaphor that references new technologies. It is an intellectual gesture that follows our cultural history; that is, our dominant cultural technology (computers and smartphones and how they work) becomes both a conduit and model that metaphorically assists in generating critical thought. 9 The list of definitions where accessed online on May 20, 2019. https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/load

reloading. The notion of reloading can be better understood if one considers Linda

Hutcheon’s theoretical offerings on postmodernism. Hutcheon explains, in her article

“Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History,” that

“postmodernism in literature today is usually characterized by intense self-reflexivity and overtly parodic intertextuality” (3). She writes that “in the postmodern novel the conventions of both fiction and historiography are simultaneously used and abused, installed and subverted, asserted and denied. And the double (literary/historical) nature of its intertextual parody is one of the major means by which this paradoxical (and defining) nature of postmodernism is textually inscribed” (5). In her article “The Politics of

Postmodernism: Parody and History,” she explains that parody should not be seen as “the ridiculing imitation of the standard theories and definitions that are rooted in eighteenth- century theories of wit” but that instead it should be seen as a “parodic practice [that] suggests a redefinition of parody as repetition with critical distance that allows ironic signaling of difference at the very heart of similarity” (185). In a similar vein, Rocío

Jiménez Ortiz in her article “De la modernidad a la postmodernidad: el tránsito necesario,” explains that even though postmodernism guarantees constant change it shouldn’t be seen as a rupture but as a process that illustrates different interpretative needs (218-19). Indeed, the fact that postmodernism is in a constant flux as well as favoring multiple meanings, paradoxical meanings, and simultaneous meanings, makes the construction of multiple perspectives possible. Because postmodernism practices parodic repetition and welcomes paradoxical questioning it makes clear that seeing and being is not fixed. Additionally, postmodernism also accepts the grouping of theoretical perspectives and as such creates a working framework that allows and acknowledges the

multiplicity of histories and narratives that destabilize, for example, the hegemonic

concepts of Mexico and Mexicanidad. Therefore, when I use the term reload I am

thinking of the postmodern logic that each of the texts studied here illustrates. These texts

are self-reflective and as they re-construct and revise the historical past they are also

taking from it in order to reload the historical present with multiple ways of seeing.

In the act of reloading, the two novels and film studied here make obvious that the

silences that history keeps are in fact paradoxically revealing history’s silences on

important historical figures and groups either relegated to the margins or forgotten. These

works reveal Mexico’s complex historical trajectory and intentionally include the

excluded as a contra discourse to official historiography’s celebratory promotion of

specific figures and events. Each work, however, reloads different aspects of Mexican

history and Mexicanidad. For example, Boullosa in Duerme reloads the historical construction of history and Mexicanidad by demonstrating the important cultural role of women, mestizos, and indigenous groups during the colonial period. Specifically, the novel through Claire, a fictional cross-dressing female character, illustrates that our contemporary understandings of Mexican history spring from the complex fluidity of identities during Mexico’s colonial epoch. That is, Boullosa implicitly indicates that contemporary genealogical constructions of Mexican history and Mexicanidad start before the Independence (1810) and the Revolutionary (1910) movements, and especially when considering the fact that these latter two historical moments in their historical and intellectual reinvention reference both the colonial and pre-Hispanic past. Domecq in La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora in a similar fashion reloads our historical understanding of figures and events leading to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Domecq

re-interprets the role of the revolutionary leader by highlighting the complex role that

historical figure, Teresa Urrea, Santa de Cabora navigated culturally, socially, and

politically as a young mestiza woman who was also simultaneously experiencing her own

coming of age, independence, and motherhood. Additionally, Domecq indicates that

Teresa Urrea’s participation and influence in the groundwork that led to the Revolution

was not only consigned to footnotes and to disparaging commentary about her

community activism but also intentionally minimized because of her background as a

young woman in her late teens and twenties and later, as a mother in her late twenties

before her passing at age 33. Following the end of the Mexican Revolution, the figure of

Teresa Urrea, Santa de Cabora did not fit the mold of the masculine heroes that were

employed in the construction of twentieth century Mexicanidad. In closing, Reygadas in

Japón reloads our perceptions of rural Mexico through the fictional character of an

unnamed artist who presumes to understand the dynamics of a rural town.10 The artist’s arrival in a hard to reach pueblo illustrates a reversal of roles. That is, instead of seeing, as Paz describes, “una criada recién llegada de su pueblo” to the city and to the home of an artist, we see an urban artist arriving to the pueblo and to the home of an elderly, widowed, and mestiza-indigenous woman. Reygadas illustrates the social complexities that exist not only in the rural town depicted but also between the artist and the elderly widow Ascen. Ultimately, it is Ascen’s presence that underscores the artist’s lack of knowledge regarding rural society. Ironically and aptly, as one of the paradoxes of

10 Also to consider, that unlike the intellectual nineteenth century flânuer that Charles Baudelaire describes and which Walter Benjamin would later use as a symbol for 20th century modernity, the unnamed artist is also seen as “the symbol of the postmodern spectatorial gaze” (Shaya 47). See Gregory Shaya’s article “The Flaneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860-1910.”

postmodernism, it is Ascen’s silences about family issues and her strategic refusal to speak about them with the artist that reveals his status as a foreigner.

How Postmodernism and Other Theoretical Perspectives Inform the Term “Reloading”

John Beverly and José Oviedo in their introduction to The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America explain that postmodernism is not just “another imported grand récit … that does not fit Latin America” (2) but, as they assert José Joaquín Brunner’s statement,

“postmodernism is, in effect, the specific form modernity takes in Latin America” (5).

The ideological advantage point of this perspective is that postmodernity can be conceptualized as a world view (ideology) that allows cultural critics, from different fields, to approach the study and conceptualization of different Latin American cultural phenomena in its multiplicity instead of seeing Latin America as an unfinished project of modernity. Recognizing these multiplicities as postmodern in turn assists in recognizing the manifold manifestations that the histories and narratives articulated by non- hegemonic individuals and communities reveal.

A chronological official Mexican history tends to simplify histories and consequently fails at revealing the real objectives and needs of individuals and their communities. The narratives illustrated in both novels, La insólita historia de la Santa de

Cabora and Duerme as well as the film Japón present a multi-layered and fluid concept of history from multiple spaces that dislocate the concept of a center. These kinds of narratives rely on strategies of fragmentation, multiple points of view, paradoxical perspectives and open-endings that aim to propose a change in how Western cultures have defined themselves. The convergence of these multiple strategies is part of a

postmodern view that interprets cultural phenomena by creating a need where the center

is relative and unfixed and this is so because the center is relocated by each individual- community. Postmodernism allows the circulation of manifold perspectives that as an

infinite multiple units destabilizes the concept of a “center.” Postmodernity creates

multiple and diverse centers that are understood as a web of connections, a network if

you will, in which from its perspective each individual/community is the center yet each

individual/community is aware that it is only a perspective because it recognizes itself as

center and periphery connected to other individuals/communities. To this point, Arce

suggests that using a polycentric epistemological approach allows not only us the

researchers “to occupy multiple epistemological positions to interpret diverse cultural

forms” but that it also allows us to understand the “cultural production generated by

communities that are both of and not of, the ‘West’” (10).

In her book Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed, Mary Klages explains

that postmodernism rejects the boundaries and distinctions, for example, between literary

genres and “between high and low forms of art” while it also emphasizes self-reflexivity,

fragmentation, and ambiguity (165). For Klages, more than anything, postmodernism is

an attitude in comparison to modernism. Whereas modernism interprets fragmentation,

discontinuity, ambiguity, and so forth “as something tragic; something to be lamented

and mourned as a loss” (165), postmodernism rejects this lamentation by instead

celebrating and intentionally utilizing fragmentation, ambiguity, and even incoherence in

narratives (Klages 166). It is this attitude in postmodernism that is compelling for my

project, specifically because the fragmentations and multiplicities in the texts studied here

are intentionally celebrating Mexico’s cultural and social heterogeneity.

Postmodernism does not necessarily depend on the grand narratives that

modernism attempts to postulate as the “primary form[s] of knowledge,” however

postmodernism does critique these grand narratives by illustrating how “such narratives

serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social

organization or practice” (Klages 169). The novels and the film studied here destabilize

the master narratives by combining different discourses that illustrate the different forms

and types of knowledge, such as the legendary, the mythical, and the historical. The

incorporation of these forms of knowledge emphasizes the important role historical

agents (like Teresa Urrea, Santa de Cabora) play in the reloading of Mexico and

Mexicanidad as well as the role of rural and/or marginalized communities (like the multiple individuals that Claire embodies in Duerme and like Ascen and Catzintla in

Japón) misrepresented in hegemonic Mexican history.

The fact that postmodernism allows for the use of multiple perspectives as a way to study and conceptualize the heterogeneity of Latin America also allows me not only to

consider but to include other theoretical perspectives from New Historicism, to Cultural

Studies, to Feminist Literary Criticism, and to Gender Studies, to better interpret the

novels and the film I present here. For example, Hayden White’s discourse on history in

Metahistory is important when looking at La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora. For

White, literary texts that recount a historical moment by blurring the lines between fact, fiction, and myth provide a more comprehensive understanding of history. Michel de

Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life, explores the ordinary behavior of individuals through their daily routines. His work suggests that the individuals who walk through urban spaces are constantly negotiating with different networks and identifying different

rules (Richter 1333). Most importantly, for De Certeau, the practice of walking is “a

space of enunciation” (1347). This idea helps understand how the different trajectories of

the protagonists, in Duerme, La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora, and Japón, challenge rules and traditional representations that dominate in their respective historical environments. In addition, theorists such as Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Judith

Butler in the second half of the twentieth century re-evaluate concepts and social

practices that have structured contemporary society. Michel Foucault in The History of

Sexuality and in Society Must Be Defended delineates the role of the sovereign and his power in regards to life, death, and the gendered body. He suggests that individuals have the ability to contest such power when they begin to speak of life and death, and also the body and sexuality. Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror demonstrates that an abject body

exhibits power by making others look upon it. For Kristeva, the abject body does not

need to speak but it does need to exist in a filthy or unclean state. It is only in this manner

that power can then be exercised because it disgusts the observer. Judith Butler in her two

books Bodies that Matter and Gender Trouble proposes that bodies are not to be

categorized as male or female, masculine or feminine because these classifications are

social constructions. She analyzes these categories by exploring her concept of gender

performativity. The conceptual approaches offered by Foucault, Kristeva and Butler

provide a way to closely study the ways in which the different protagonists, because of

their marginality, reload the meaning of Mexican history and Mexicanidad. These

individuals, traditionally secondary characters in hegemonic historical discourse

strategically use their identities to either contest and expose the dynamics of power

relations or to challenge the perceptions of those who are in positions of power.

Additionally, the theoretical offerings of Foucault, Kristeva, and Butler are contemporary to the feminist movements (literary and non-literary) of the period, 1970s-

1990s. This is important to keep in mind because Boullosa and Domecq are part of the feminist Post-Boom literary period; they are part of a group of authors that define the literary aesthetic of texts published between the 1970s and 1990s. Texts written during this time are known not only for referencing the historical past but for using extensive

research on the past to create new historical narratives. In the case of Domecq and

Boullosa, they compose novels that intentionally combine the historical past with heroic

female and marginal characters as protagonists. Their feminist narrative techniques demonstrate the archival proof that female historical figures, even if they only appear to be part of the background in official historiography, were and are integral to the construction of Mexican history and Mexicanidad. When Arce writes about the famous

photograph illustrating the soldaderas in Elena Poniatowska’s bookcover for Las soladeras, she indicates that this image captures the multiple gazes (who gazes, how and where one gazes) that reveal the “fundamental ambiguity” of the soldaderas not just

during the Mexican Revolution but also afterwards, when this historical event was being

cemented as a defining moment for twentieth century Mexico (39). And even as this

image reveals the fact that the “[s]oldaderas constituted the ‘anonymous multitude’ and

‘blurry shapes’ that helped make the Mexican Revolution” it nevertheless also preserved

the fact that the soldaderas in their multifaceted roles were crucial protagonists during

the Revolution (Arce 39, 57). Because of photography’s visual archival possibilities,

these women were able to “slip through” historiography’s denigration of them (Arce 39).

However, it is the feminist reading of these images that makes us aware of the

soldadera’s historical legacy as well as making it obvious that history has made these figures into “nobodies” (Arce 39). Domecq and Boullosa similarly use the “blurry”

references to historical and marginal anonymous figures in archival records (newspapers,

journals, novels, historical texts, and also oral tradition) to reload Mexico’s history, and

they do this through a feminist perspective. And although Reygadas neither uses archival

documents nor employs a feminist perspective, he does however examine the role of who

gazes and who is gazed upon. Yet, one must note that in his film the female figure of

Ascen is “ninguneada.” However, because he does expose the multiple gazes that create

meanings he also exposes how he as the director and even us viewers also participate in

this process of “ningunear.” And as such and even though it might appear unintentional,

the film’s postmodern self-reflective aesthetic makes it possible for traditionally marginal

characters to “slip through.” Particularly because Reygadas demonstrates that the unnamed artist’s gaze is incomplete, that is, the artist’s gaze and also presumptions alone

cannot and do not capture the totality of rural life. Although the character of Ascen isn’t

the dominant voice at the start of film, it is her presence throughout the film that

dominates the unnamed artist’s journey. Therefore, when we equate the unnamed artist’s

journey to history’s journey and realize that their respective trajectories are only possible

because of the presence of Ascen and other historical and anonymous marginal figures,

we then become aware that these individuals are protagonists and subsequently, crucial to

history.

Reloading Mexicanidad

The construction of Mexicanidad, especially after the Mexican Revolution, by the

intellectual class and the new “revolutionary” state was an attempt to uniformly nationalize not only the ideologies that inspired the revolutionary movement but also the marginal figures (the campesino, the indigenous, the mestizo) that participated in it.

Debra Cohn in her article “The Mexican Intelligentsia, 1950-1968: Cosmopolitanism,

National Identity, and the State” writes that the “generación de medio siglo” that followed the revolutionary period and which included writers like Fernando Benítez,

Jaime García Terrés, Alfonso Reyes, and Octavio Paz “advocated internationalism, [and] set the standards for literary canonization, and in effect, determined the course of

Mexican culture by deciding who and what was ‘in’ or ‘out.’” (143). She explains that as these authors constructed lo mexicano by determining who was “in” or “out,” they also did it using gender stereotypes. Specifically, authors like Samuel Ramos in his essay El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (1934) and Octavio Paz in El laberinto de la soledad (1950) used masculinity to construct national Mexican identity (Cohn 145). This is especially important because after the Mexican Revolution it was the goal of these intellectuals and new state leaders to create a national culture that didn’t imitate European models (Cohn 147). Arce, referencing Robert Irwin, asserts that the construction of 20th

century Mexicanidad was based on the virile man of action as a response to the

“nineteenth century Porfirian penchant for Europeanizing, effete art and dandyism” (5).

Unlike Cohn, Rosana Blanco Cano in her book Cuerpos disidentes del México imaginado

places the start of lo mexicano or mexicanidad not only after the Mexican Revolution but

also before it (12). Nevertheless, along a similar vein as Cohn’s, Blanco Cano explains

that the discourse produced before and after the Mexican Revolution was only concerned

in legitimizing Mexican nationhood by using what she states is, “una comunidad

imaginada estable y uniforme a partir de la producción y regulación de subjetividades

femininas e indígenas que cumplieran la función de matrices de mexicanidad” (12). She

stresses the irony that although female bodies and indigenous people were used as

cultural referents they however were never recognized for their historical agency (Blanco

Cano 12). Arce, on the other hand, suggests that even though these bodies weren’t

officially recognized in their historical moment and even afterwards, they nevertheless

existed and continue to exist in cultural aesthetic productions (both high and low,

portrayed both favorably and unfavorably) in which they “slip in and out of static

representations and disfigured social identities” (27). This is important to note because

even though these figures are erased in hegemonic history they nonetheless existed in all

artistic narrative forms (music, art, paints, photography, novels, films, etc.) and as such

subversively challenge hegemonic constructions of Mexicanidad. Although I too look at

the role of marginal beings in narrative productions I am specifically analyzing their

historical roles in turn-of-the-century texts that not only recover and revisit but reload,

from a present moment, the foundational narratives that constructed Mexicanidad

throughout Mexico’s colonial period, post-independence movement, and Revolution.

Starting in the late 1960s women writers like Rosario Castellanos, Elena Garro, and Elena Poniatowska, among others begin to gain literary recognition. Cohn explains that “the political radicalism of the late 60s—and, in particular, the student movement [in

1968] and the blacklash against it—was crucial” in empowering women writers in

Mexico’s male-dominated literary, cultural, and political systems (146). Blanco Cano

explains that the self-reflective attitude that these female writers employed in their texts

functioned as a counterpoint to the national discourse of Mexicanidad that the state was

promoting (as a way to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution).

The fact that these writers witnessed the state’s violence towards its people allowed them

to become the leading figures that would redefine Mexican identity in the final decades of

the millennium (Blanco Cano 21). Blanco Cano implies that these female writers are the

new foundational precursors for turn-of-the-century authors: “Las propuestas desmitificadoras de la gran voz de la historia nacional introducidas por Castellanos y

Poniatowska, así como de los mitos sustentadores de lo mexicano, han servido de base para la producción artística durante las últimas tres décadas del siglo XX y comienzo del

XXI” (21). However, the writers that close the millennium and open the next one (like

Carmen Boullosa), participate in what Blanco Cano describes as

las movilizaciones culturales dirigidas a crear espacios de negociación que respondan a las diversas problemáticas que afectan, sobre todo, a los grupos mayoritarios y a los indígenas. Al mismo tiempo, estas artistas revisan y reconfiguran significados de nación, género y etnia proponiendo intervenciones artísticas que proponen maneras alternativas y democratizadoras de ejercer la ciudadanía. (23)

Elisabeth Guerrero in her book Confronting History and Modernity in Mexican Narrative

emphasizes that these end of millennium novelists, who are directly or indirectly

“influenced by the deliberations of Hayden White and Michel de Certeau” for the most

part “accept the idea that historiography, while based on real events, is a literary creation

subject to question” (4). Although Guerrero’s following three-point outline specifically references the texts that she studies in her book, her outline is also helpful in understanding the texts that I study. Guerrero explains that writers at the turn of the century demonstrate three general trends that identify their work: first, their narratives are

“humanizing canonized heroes and making them accessible;” secondly, the texts are not

only “refraining from villainizing or monumentalizing historical figures” but are also

demonumentalizing “the European legacy, renegotiating Europe’s 500-year bequest of

conquest and colonialism in the Americas;” and thirdly, these novels are recuperating

“secondary figures previously lost to history, particularly women and people of color,

moving them from the margins to the center of the story” (6). It is this latter trend that

Arce also emphasizes; however, she not only makes evident the presence of these

marginal individuals in official History but suggests that they are also participants in the

creation of “unofficial Knowledge” (28).

The first chapter, “Duerme: Postmodern Gender Multiplicities and Narrative

Intertextualities,” examines the way in which a postmodern pícara and gendered

protagonist, Claire, reloads colonial history and the foundational colonial referents that

nineteenth and twentieth century authors utilized to create nation and Mexicanidad.

Specifically, the chapter explores how Claire’s different embodiments question and

reveal the social, political, and ethnic colonial constructions that individuals experienced

daily because of their gender, racial, and social identity. Furthermore, the chapter shows

the ways that Boullosa parodies Golden Age literary genres (the picaresque novel and the

comedia, for example) to not just reload the historical complexities of Mexico’s

foundational colonial history but to inform our historical present.

Chapter two, “La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora: Histories and

Mexicanidades Reloaded,” addresses the erasure in hegemonic history of a marginal but

yet historical individual – Teresa Urrea, Santa de Cabora – who was a central figure in the pre-Revolutionary efforts in Mexico’s northwestern states. Not only does Domecq

recover Teresa Urrea’s history for a new generation but she also reveals the way people

in positions of power underestimated her as a leader and champion of the mestizo and indigenous communities. Furthermore, this chapter explores the manner the novel interconnects histories, fiction, myth, and legend as a way to reload not just the historical presence of Teresa Urrea in our collective memories but also the historical events she inspired. The chapter also looks at the way Domecq employs many of the characteristics that identify Latin America’s New Historical Novel. Additionally, the chapter considers a fictional researcher’s commitment to reload the historical archive. This unnamed researcher represents all those individuals that not only formally study history but who also write literary texts to better articulate the historical past.

Chapter three, “Japón: Visual Reloadings of Mexicanidad at the Turn of the

Twenty-First Century,” looks at the way defamiliarization is created when looking at the familiar through an unnamed artist’s journey from the urban space to the countryside.

Reygadas accomplishes this defamiliarization by purposely contrasting an intellectual artist’s self-centered needs with the everyday realities of a marginal and indigenous/mestiza woman like the character of Ascen. Additionally, the interactions between the artist and Ascen visually reload Mexicanidad because it shows, through awkward conversations and moments, if not a complete at least a more convincing

Mexican reality. Reygadas creates a cinematic quotidian reality by employing non- professional and marginal actors who in turn capture the multiple layers that create meanings of Mexicanidad. More than anything, this chapter shows how secondary figures, such as Ascen and the community of her rural town, are no longer lost to history because their particularly realities are integral to twenty-first century Mexicanidades.

Especially because even though they have historically been rendered invisible, as Arce reminds us, these figures nevertheless are claimed and as such become visible in

Mexico’s artistic productions, as is the case in Reygadas’s film (2). Reygadas uses film to present an alternative aesthetic and cinematic possibility that is intentionally centered in the quotidian realities of the present and not in the romanticized representations of the countryside that were produced, for example, by Mexico’s state sponsored film industry in post-Revolutionary Mexico.

CHAPTER ONE

Duerme: Postmodern Gender Multiplicities and Narrative Intertextualities

“Antes, dígame, ¿a qué vino a este pueblo?” (Japón, 2002, dir. Carlos Reygadas)

Parodic and Picaresque Cross-Dressing in Colonial Mexico

Carmen Boullosa’s novel Duerme (1994) is the story of Claire, a cross-dressing

pirate Frenchwoman in early colonial Mexico. When Claire arrives to the New World she

expects to start anew (a life where she can be who she chooses to be) but instead finds

herself kidnapped and taking the place of a Spaniard nobleman who is sentenced to die in

the gallows. Her first days in the New World lead her to an unexpected journey where

she encounters and experiences what it is to be both an important individual and a

marginal being in a short span of time. These identities, experienced because of her cross-

dressings, question and reveal the social, political, and ethnic colonial constructions that

individuals lived daily, for example, the way in which an indigenous woman was treated

differently (because of gender, racial, and social class) than a nobleman or even a soldier

or, how a French Lutheran pirate (a foreigner from a different European country) was

treated differently than a Catholic Spaniard. The story appears to take place sometime in

the middle of Phillip II’s reign between 1556 and 1598, at least 50 years after the arrival

of Hernán Cortés to the Valley of Mexico in 1519.11 Narrative references to historical

figures, such as King Phillip II (1527-1598) and English pirate John Hawkins (1532-

11 The expedition that Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) led to Mexico in 1519 culminated in 1521 with the defeat of the Aztec empire. The defeat was due in part to the different indigenous ethnic groups that allied themselves with the Spaniards. At the time, the Aztec empire was composed of three allied city-states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco (also written Texcoco), and Tlacopan. As a side note, the Mexicas, customarily referred to as the Aztecs in historical texts, is the name that described the Nahuatl speaking people of the Valley of Mexico. 27

1595), as well as references to ongoing confrontations between the Spanish viceroyalty and rebel indigenous ethnic groups establish the historical background of the novel.12 The novel’s historical background, furthermore, is established with references to and the use of literary genres common to Spain’s Golden Age period, a flourishing literary moment between the early 16th and late 17th centuries.13 The direct and indirect reference to historical figures, the intertextuality with Golden Age literary genres, and the leading presence of a fictional cross-dressing character like Claire contextualize the complex social and political changes in a region that would be forever changed with the arrival of the Spaniards to the New World. These narrative strategies, furthermore, make visible the hierarchal ethnic, racial, and social structures constructed during this historical period.

Structures that, following major events like the Mexican War of Independence (1810-

1821) and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), would historically inform the construction of a constantly evolving Mexican nation and Mexicanidad.14

In the novel, Claire represents the different marginal people that make colonial society; specifically, she represents the different ethnic, racial, gendered, and social

12 Anne J. Cruz notes in her article, “Figuring Gender in the Picaresque Novel: From Lazarillo to Zayas,” that by the late 16th and 17th centuries Spain begins its decline and that “the soldiers whose earlier heroic exploits had been celebrated in literature were excoriated by arbitristas for taking on effeminate characteristics” (12). 13 Some of the literary genres during this period include but are not limited to comedias, crónicas, poesía, novelas picarescas, and novelas cortesanas. The Golden Age period is divided into two artistic stages, the Renaissance (16th century) and the Baroque (17th century), that extended from the early 16th century to the late 17th century. 14 It is also important to note that after Mexico’s independence from Spain the use and the inclusion of the name ‘Mexico’ in the official name is integral to the creation of nationhood and Mexicanidad. After the Independence Movements in the early 1800s the Mexican region would be renamed officially as the Imperio Mexicano (in 1821, Mexico was briefly identified as a Constitutional Monarchy) and eventually as the Estados Unidos Mexicanos (in 1824, with the drafting and signing of the 1824 Constitution, Mexico was identified as a Federal Republic). The name República Mexicana was also used in the 1857 Constitution. Briefly during Maximilian of Habsburg’s rule, between 1863 and 1867, Mexico would again become a Constitutional Monarchy and be named Imperio Mexicano. However, following the Mexican Revolution, the newly drafted 1917 Constitution would use the official name created in 1824, Estados Unidos Mexicanos. These official name changes correlate with Mexico’s political-ruling transitions in a 100 year period.

identities of New Spain.15 Claire encapsulates the multiple performativities found in early

Colonial Mexico. As a marginal individual, Claire’s character contests the new Spanish

forms of authority and violence by presenting, in a first-person narration, her different

performativities through a journey of cross-dressing. In this cross-dressing journey she

gets to choose her own attire and yet, is also forced to dress in the attire of others. She

simultaneously experiences her own agency and subjection. Yet, it is this that questions

the social and cultural hierarchies created during this historical period. Similar to Golden

Age comedias, where crossing-dressing was a recurring literary and visual strategy,

Boullosa appropriates this literary visual mechanism to illustrate both the hybridity and

the plurality of Mexicanidad. In this chapter, I examine the ways in which Boullosa’s

parodic and intertextual use of Golden Age literary genres, like the picaresque novel and

the comedia, in combination with Claire’s cross-dressing, reloads the historical

complexities (the social, cultural, artistic, ethnic, and gendered hierarchies) of Mexico’s

foundational colonial history, a history that informs our understanding of the

contemporary moment. I also examine how Duerme, as a postmodern text with a

postmodern pícara character, subversively undermines the traditional racial and gender roles accepted in historiography by looking at the “third space” (in both history and identity) that is often hidden or silenced but that is continuously adapting and disrupting society’s binary boundaries. Here, the term “third space” is informed by Marjorie

Garber’s definition of a “third entity” in her book, Vested Interests, when defining cross-

dressing as an alternative to binary definitions of gender, and what Erna Pfeiffer calls the

15 Spain created the viceroyalty of New Spain in 1535 after the conquest of the Aztec Empire and other surrounding regions. A viceroy, appointed by the King of Spain, would rule the territory as a monarch.

“tercera dimensión” in her article, “Las novelas históricas de Carmen Boullosa,” in

reference to the role of the reader in constructing an historical image.

In this novel, cross-dressing and intertextuality strategically create a narrative that

forces the reader to recreate Mexico’s colonial period. According to Gabriella de Beer, in

her book Contemporary Mexican Women Writers, Boullosa’s representation of this

period is important because it “requires the concentration and participation of her readers

when the writer speaks to them directly, when she uses her texts to rewrite or recreate

history, and when, in a subtle way, she asks them to piece together fragments to capture

and image” (159). The symbolic inscription of colonial Mexico in Duerme is illustrated

through the complex images that Claire narrates while she assumes multiple identities.

Claire simultaneously embodies a pirate Frenchman, a Spaniard nobleman, and an

indigenous woman that shows the reader the complexity of “appearing” and “being” in

this society.16 Claire’s cross-dressing simultaneously occurs with the different literary

techniques that are used and referenced in the novel. Claire’s identity changes reference

the cross-dressing characters that are found in a comedia de capa y espada or comedia de

enredo (where characters of a lower class take center stage and where a female character

will wear men’s clothing) and even in a picaresque novel (where a pícaro’s adventure

will see him serving different masters, performing different trades, and/or wearing

clothing that doesn’t belong to his social class). However, unlike the cross-dressing in

Golden Age literary works, Claire’s cross-dressing is different. It’s a cross-dressing that illustrates an evolving historical period that has informed and continues to define our

16 These simultaneous identities that Claire embodies highlight the ethnic and class stratums present in the Peninsula and in the Americas during the colonial period. Many of the literary texts of the period would narratively emphasize the importance of appearances by illustrating a character’s social standing through his or her attire.

contemporary historical moment. Furthermore, Claire’s cross-dressing emphasizes the

novel’s intertextuality, which can be seen as a type of “literary cross-dressing” that makes

use of different Golden Age narrative techniques (different clothing) to illustrate not only

Mexican colonial identities but also the ways in which colonial history was recorded.

Laura Pirott-Quintero, in her article “El cuerpo en la narrativa de Carmen

Boullosa,” similarly writes that Claire’s cross-dressing not only questions and disrupts

the generic racial and social binaries in colonial Mexico and in present-day Mexico but

also illustrates the hybrid plurality of Mexicanidad (273). Though Pirott-Quintero doesn’t

specifically use the phrase “hybrid plurality” as such, she does use both terms to explain

the multiplicity that is embodied in a character like Claire, who disrupts not only

representations of traditional womanhood but also representations of ethnic, racial, and

social identity. Claire’s character provides alternatives in how to think and imagine

Mexican identity. Claire’s cross-dressing illustrates not only the hybridity of her body

(those initial binary images such as male-female) but also the plurality of her body and identity (the multiple and simultaneous images of her body and identity, such as being male-female-indigenous-mestiza-servant-pirate-pícara-etc.). Claire’s female body and cross-dressing, explains Pirott-Quintero, subverts patriarchal order and functions as a way to: “re-pensar y re-escribir ciertos truismos de la identidad mexicana” (273). In a similar vein, Luzelena Gutiérrez de Velasco, in “Vertiente histórica y procesos intertextuales en

Duerme de Carmen Boullosa,” explains that the novel’s intertextual multiplicity is a way to: “reconfigurar la comprehensión […] ficcional-histórica” and “establecer una vinculación entre ese pasado colonial mexicano y el presente que tiende […] hacia un proceso de descolonización” (22). In this chapter I explore the ways in which Boullosa’s

text reloads Mexico’s colonial history and by extension, understandings of Mexico’s history as it nears the twenty-first century. In the first section, “Duerme: An Intertextual

Parody of the Picaresque Novel, the Crónica, the Novela Cortesana, and the Comedia de enredo,” I examine the way the intertextual structure of the novel creates a parodic narrative that allows the character Claire to reveal the gender, ethnic, and socio-political realities of the period. Specifically, I look at how parody reveals the construction of identity in the colonial period and how the vestiges of colonial identities survive in present-day Mexican society. In the second section, “Claire’s Simultaneous and

Postmodern Embodiments,” I explore the different cultural and socio-ethnic meanings that are produced when Claire assumes different identities through cross-dressing. I specifically analyze the way in which clothing identified an individual in colonial society and how Claire contests these meanings by “being” and “appearing” her multiple cross- dressings. In the third and final section, “Conclusion: Reloading Historical

Representations,” I briefly discuss how Claire’s character, through her multiple embodiments, not only contests official history through her multiple embodiments but because of them, is able to offer different historical perspectives that would otherwise be silenced. However, before I delve into the listed sections, it is important to consider how

1) postmodernism and parody, 2) the picaresque narrative genre, and 3) crossing-dressing as well as performativity help inform the historical reloading project of Boullosa’s novel

Duerme.

Linda Hutcheon’s analysis, in The Politics of Postmodernism, leads to three important aspects of postmodernism that help understand the project of Duerme; the first component is postmodernism’s revision of the historical past, the second component is

the ways postmodernism interprets the relationship between the past and the present, and

the final component is the use of parody to understand the past and the present.

According to Hutcheon, it is the contradictory aspect of postmodernism, where it

“manages to install and reinforce as much as undermine and subvert the conventions and presuppositions it appears to challenge,” that allows “to de-naturalize some of the dominant features of our way of life; to point out that those entities that we unthinkingly experience as ‘natural’ (they might even include capitalism, patriarchy, liberal humanism) are in fact cultural; made by us, not given to us” (2-3). Another entity that we can add to Hutcheon’s parenthetical list is our general understanding of the historical past. Postmodernism challenges these suppositions, it challenges what we take as a historical truth by underscoring how historical knowledge is constructed through continued representations of the past (Hutcheon 90).17 Yet, even as postmodernism

attempts “to analyze and maybe even undermine” the use of “power and domination,” it

is unable to escape it because it is also complicit with it (Hutcheon 4). And although this

might appear to be at odds, it is an important aspect of postmodernism because as it

“purveys and challenges ideology” it does it in a self-conscious manner (Hutcheon 4). It

is this self-conscious and self-reflective aspect in postmodernism that the author deploys

in a text like Duerme, a text that illustrates and questions Mexico’s early colonial period

through Claire’s self-reflective representations of different marginal beings.

17 B. Christine Arce, in Méxicos Nobodies, writes “that knowledge is produced through the creation and consumption of the aesthetic, and that this invokes a generative space of multiple possibilities” (23). She also explains that although “traditional historical writing relies on empirical fact, an archival document that proves someone or something existed, said something or did something” (27), it is the cultural aesthetic productions of “novels, plays, short stories, corridos, photographs, murals, communiqués, festivities, poems, films, litographs, performances, chores, music, activities, and occupations” that make visible the “‘invisible’” (27-28). These aesthetic productions, “these aural, visual and linguistic movements constitute an intervention in their own right, twisting the corpus of official History and turning it toward the realm of unofficial Knowledge” (28).

Hutcheon explains that postmodern novels are characteristically analytical and are

self-reflexive. As such, they are “untraditional ‘political’ novels” that purposely

reexamine the past through its parodic structure (Hutcheon 4). Important to note is the

“political” aspect of these novels because while they appear as not political they

nevertheless do have a political objective. In that sense, Boullosa’s text initially appears

as a picaresque adventure of a female pirate but it is a text that purposefully mixes fiction

and history to question traditional historical understandings of early colonial Mexico.

There is a literary genre instability that Boullosa creates with Duerme. The same literary

genres that inform the structure of Duerme are also the same ones that are questioned as

providers of historical and cultural truths. For that reason, the novel does not subscribe to

one literary genre but instead mixes different literary genres (like the picaresque novel

and the novels of pirate adventures). And even though it might appear a futile exercise,

Hutcheon explains, this is what makes postmodern novels “political – at least in the sense

that its representations – its images and stories – are anything but neutral, however

‘aestheticized’ they may appear to be in their parodic self-reflexivity” (Hutcheon 3). But

what does this “parodic self-reflexivity” mean? According to Hutcheon, it is the critical

study of the relationship between the historical past with the present, specifically, it is a

critical questioning of how representations of history inform and shape historical

knowledge in the present. Boullosa’s text accomplishes this by underscoring how

“difference and ex-centricity replace homogeneity and centrality” while simultaneously

questioning this same marginality (Hutcheon 5). Duerme as a postmodern parody

destabilizes historical “truths” through Claire’s cross-dressing and through the intertextuality between a picaresque novel and a crónica, for instance. When Claire cross-

dresses as Conde Urquiza, for example, she expresses the power she feels and illustrates

the way others react to her power through their show of deference. Her dress determines

her social position in this colonial society. When Claire battles an indigenous rebel leader

(who is a threat to the viceregal regional control and expansion), her perspective along

with Mariano Baso’s (a soldier who participated and witnessed the battle) illustrates the

different ways that an event can be recounted. This soldier is different because he

provides a divergent perspective of an important battle. Though the novel doesn’t make

reference to Bernal Díaz del Castillo or his historic canonical text Historia verdadera de

la conquista de la Nueva España (1576), Mariano Baso represents this historic military figure.18 Both the historical figure Bernal Díaz del Castillo and the fictional character

Mariano Baso provide a different perspective of a military expedition, albeit still from the

perspective of the victors. Who records this event and what is recorded determines the

historical archive that survives and that will inform future constructions of Mexican

nationhood and Mexicanidad. Throughout the novel multiple perspectives regarding

identity and history are consistently outlined, even when they are at odds, in order to

illustrate the hybrid and plural aspect of history and Mexicanidad.

In order to understand what parodic self-reflexivity is, it is important to define the

use of parody in postmodern texts. Parody is crucial in postmodernism because it

critically illustrates how “present representations come from past ones and what

ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference” (Hutcheon 89).

Postmodern parody, explains, Hutcheon, “is a kind of contesting revision or rereading of

the past that both confirms and subverts the power of the representations of history” (91).

18 Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1496-1584) was a conquistador soldier in Hernán Cortés’s military expedition and conquest of the Valley of Mexico.

The use of parody to question the past isn’t to disregard the past but to both recognize the

continuum, but also vital, the differences that exist between the historical past and

present, even when these two historical moments and the representations of history in

each (whether it be through texts or images) create a separation with the historical past

(Hutcheon 90). The self-reflexivity that Claire demonstrates in Duerme, for example, is a

continuous revision of historical narratives as well as a review of how these historical

narratives are ultimately used and even transformed. Furthermore, the use of irony and

intertextuality in postmodern texts, like Duerme, reload these myriad representations of

the past (Hutcheon 94). The objective is to simultaneously reflect on and revise the

historical representations and constructions in order to better understand the realities and

discontinuities of the present. This reflection, for example, begins with the two epigraphs

that open the novel. The epigraphs are used to strategically combine literary and

historical genres and to reload official history.

Duerme is predominantly a novel that parodies the classic Iberian picaresque

novel as well as the crónicas de indias. According to J. A. Garrido Ardila, in “Origins and Definition of the Picaresque Genre,” there are general characteristics that identify the picaresque novel and are integral to the narrative:

(1) its formal realism and hence structure; (2) it is the fictitious autobiography of the main character, commonly narrated in the first person; (3) the text is addressed to either a narratee or an implicit reader; (4) the protagonist tells his or her life in order to explain how they came to find themselves in a particular situation; (5) it is highly satirical and often comical, and serves the author to express his own political views; (6) the narrator’s discourse is often ironic and so is the general message of the text; (7) its protagonist is a picaro [sic]. (14-15)

These are the conventional aspects of the genre that Boullosa includes and distorts in her

narrative. The distortion of those characteristics are evident in Duerme because Claire’s

(mis)adventures in the New World illustrate a complex story that is not realistic, has no

unified narrative voice, nor provides an explanation for why the narrator explanation is

writing. Also, the narration seems to be more of a diary than a testimonio of life: “¿Para

qué narrarme a mí misma lo que va sucediendo? (Boullosa 21). This strategy of self-

questioning, on behalf of the pícara-protagonist, demonstrates the self-reflexivity present in postmodern novels like Duerme.

Claire’s role as the pícara, and to reiterate, as the narrator-protagonist of Duerme,

is key in understanding the connection between marginal individuals and the historical

changes (social, cultural, political, economic) occurring in this early colonial Mexican

landscape. The pícaro as the protagonist, or the pícara in this case, is integral to the

picaresque genre because it is through his or her autobiographical narrative that social

and political commentary is presented. The pícaro has its own identifiers, in general he or

she

(i) is born to a family of the underclass, normally new Christians, a condition that determines his [or her] future, (ii) undergoes a progressive psychological change, (iii) is a social outsider who tries his hand at several professions by his or her wits, (iv) normally engages in unlawful activities, and (v) is a cunning trickster who deceives others. (Garrido Ardila 14-15)

These identifiers, as laid out by Garrido Ardila, inform the experiences that shape the pícaro’s perspective of the society in which he or she lives. The picaresque novel in general, explains Anne J. Cruz in “Figuring Gender in the Picaresque Novel: From

Lazarillo to Zayas,” tended to favor male protagonists as well as provide social commentary on the maternal origins of the protagonist or any female figure close to the protagonist. In her article, Cruz traces the various representations of female characters in the picaresque novels of the Golden Age, whether they were secondary figures (such as a

mother, wife, or love interest) in the narrative or the main character, as a pícara. Cruz

explains that although the plots in novels such as Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) by an anonymous author and Guzmán de Alfarache (1599) by Mateo Alemán are male- centered, the representation of women in these novels is important, even when it is a negative one, because it provides a view on the treatment of women during that period.19

Though cross-dressing isn’t a typical characteristic of picaresque novels it is a

feature found in Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo’s novel La sabia Flora

malsabidilla (1621). Salas Barbadillo makes use of the three act structure common in

comedias to tell the story of Flora, a pícara who is a gypsy and a prostitute, and who

throughout the narrative cross-dresses as a form of revenge. Flora, the pícara-prostitute,

in the end gains a favorable social standing when she marries don Teodoro, a result that

was only made possible because of her cross-dressing (Cruz 16).20 However, Cruz

explains that it is not Flora’s marriage to don Teodoro but “cross-dressing with

transgendered acting and cross-racial passing” that allows her to not just to regain but to

defend her own honor (16).21 In short, even though Flora’s marriage propagates the

period’s social expectations, it is her cross-dressing that demonstrates how an individual

can transgress societal rules.

Although both cross-dressing in Golden Age literature and in the 20th century

challenge societal norms, the difference is that individuals who cross-dress in the 20th

19 Garrido Ardila writes that the publication of the Lazarillo de Tormes is earlier, sometime between the years 1550-1552. 20 To read a study of the use of marriage as revenge, punishment, or virtuous reward see María Soledad Arredondo’s article “De La gitanilla a La sabia Flora malsabidilla.” Flora, in Salas Barbadillo’s La sabia Flora malsabidilla, pursues a marriage with her first lover as a form of revenge. 21 To read more on the meaning of honor/honra see Claude Chauchadis’s article “Honor y honra o cómo se comete un error en lexicología.” Chauchadis traces the meaning of the two terms and in their interchangeability in Golden Age texts.

century are carving a space that does not specifically subscribe to gender binaries. Cross- dressers in Golden Age literary texts illustrate and subscribe to an either-or of gender binaries, whereas the act of cross-dressing in the 20th century, according to Marjorie

Garber in Vested Interests (1992), functions as a “third” entity because cross-dressing is

neither binary nor static. In other words, an individual who cross-dresses is a “third”

entity that can simultaneously be either male or female or both. Garber explains that a

transvestite in his or her cross-dressing demonstrates “a mode of articulation, a way of

describing a space of possibility” (11). As a “third” entity, the act of cross-dressing

emphasizes three characteristics of self: “identity, self-sufficiency, self-knowledge”

(Garber 11). Garber further explains that the history of cross-dressing illustrates “the ways in which clothing constructs (and deconstructs) gender and gender differences; transvestism and racism; and the role of cross-dressing in popular culture, high (and low) fashion, and the arts—as well as in the construction of culture itself” (Garber 3). It is this

latter part, the way in which cross-dressing informs the construction of culture that is important when analyzing Claire’s cross-dressing in Duerme. Especially because Claire’s cross-dressing illustrates not only gender identity but also ethnic, class, and cultural identity in colonial Mexico. Her cross-dressing is a postmodern intertextual reference to the transvestism present in Golden Age comedias and picaresque novels as well as to the

New World laws during the colonial period that organized the socio-ethnic dress of

indigenous, mestizo, mulato, and African peoples.22 Claire’s post-modern cross-dressing

22 Rebecca Earle, in “Luxury, Clothing and Race in Colonial Spanish America,” explains that “sumptuary laws – legislation designed to control excessive display, particularly through the regulation of clothing – are employed only in cultures which consider it possible to disguise one’s status via clothing” (223). Especially when clothing could visually change the racial group of an individual (222-23). For further reading on Sumptuary Laws during the colonial period, see Barbara L. Voss’s chapter “Fashioning the Colonial Subject: Clothing” in her book The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis.

is not only a revision of Mexico’s history but also a different view of Mexico’s history

superimposed on the hegemonic definitions of Mexicanidad. Claire specifically illustrates

not only the hybridity or that “third” entity of cross-dressing, which includes but is not

limited to gender, ethnic, and class identities, but also the constant changes and fluidity of

identity.

Judith Butler’s concept of performativity also helps understand how cross- dressing questions the cultural constructions of gender and identity. According to Butler, in her book Gender Trouble (1990), performativity is the daily reiteration of norms that culturally define an individual. In her preface to the 1999 reprinting of Gender Trouble,

Butler explains that the limitations of feminism’s traditionally binary conceptualizations

on masculinity and femininity “idealize certain expressions of gender that [. . .] produce

new forms of hierarchy and exclusion” (viii). Butler’s objective is to examine how gender

is performative, that is, how gender is a reiteration of acts that eventually produce a type

of gender identity as well as how it can also alter gender norms. For Butler, it is important that we recognize “that what we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the body” (xv). Specifically, we must recognize that gender performativity are those bodily acts that “we take to be an ‘internal’ feature of ourselves” but are in fact gestures that “we anticipate and produce” (Butler xv). In her following book, Bodies that Matter

(1993), Butler clarifies that gender performativity is “a reformulation of the materiality of

bodies” (2). She does this by looking at “the question of identification” through Julia

Kristeva’s concept of the abject (Bodies that Matter 3). For Kristeva, in Powers of

Horror (1982), the abject “disturbs identity, system, [and] order” (4). The abject body is

able to confront the taboos and the prohibitions that are set by a community, a larger

society, or a social order. Furthermore, the abject body not only confronts society’s

prohibitions but does so in an ambiguous manner “because it neither gives up nor

assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but [instead] turns them aside, misleads, [and]

corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them” (Kristeva 15).

Butler explains that gendered individuals, due to heterosexual imperatives, are

abject beings because they are forced into exclusion and abjection (Bodies that Matter 3).

If the abject body can confront then gender performativity, the reiteration of a subject’s identification, can be disruptive and subversive (Bodies that Matter 9). Butler states that

“there is no power that acts, but only a reiterated acting that is power in its persistence and instability” (Bodies that Matter 9). To be explicit, there is power when an individual displays constant persistence and instability. Instability, understood not as a negative action, implies an individual’s rejection of fixed categories, which can possibly constrain the use of power. Claire’s abject character illustrates this fluidity through the multiple and simultaneous identities that she embodies. These embodiments allow her to confront, reflect, and comment on society’s prohibitions, rules, laws, and gender categories. Claire as an abject postmodern character both has and doesn’t have a specific identity because her fluctuating and/or instable identity in the New World is the representation of many— the pirate, the nobleman, the prostitute, the mestizo, the indigenous woman, the solider, the rebel, and so forth.

Furthermore, Claire’s multiple cross-dressing is the performativity of both gender

and race. Performativity, asserts Butler, is “not a singular ‘act,’ for it is always a

reiteration of a norm or set of norms, and to the extent that it acquires an act-like status in

the present, it conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repetition” (Bodies

that Matter 12). Performativity is the repetition of norms that an individual enacts but

which also veil and/or reveal the conventions that a society upholds and expects.

Nevertheless, repetition alters the norm and this is the disrupting potential in performativity, especially when an individual becomes and is conscious of it. The protagonist Claire consciously performs the identities she embodies at any given time. In that sense, when Claire reflects on her cross-dressing, she recognizes gender’s performativity and as such, can be able to transgress and challenge the social norms of her environment, but this is possible only because she is a white European woman who experiences an internal cultural cross-dressing. Her cross-dressing performativity illustrates the varying power relations that occur in society. These multiple embodiments also erase the social “boundaries” encountered in colonial Mexico. Nevertheless, it is the performativity of the character that allows her to confront, reflect, and recognize how social norms and boundaries affect marginal beings. Claire as a gendered body, as a cross-dresser, as a representative of multiple identities, as a “third entity” not only contests the use of power and social boundaries but also takes ownership of them. Claire does this by questioning, embodying, reinterpreting, and reloading the historical knowledge of colonial Mexico through her picaresque adventure.

Duerme: An Intertextual Parody of the Picaresque Novel, the Crónica, the Novela Cortesana, and the Comedia de Enredo

Even though the Spanish Monarchy considered Mexico an extension of the

Spanish Empire the relationship between the two regions was a complex one. Not just because of the extensive separation the Atlantic Ocean created between the two regions

but also because of the new cultural and power dynamics that emerged during the

colonial period. Manuel Fernández Álvarez, in Casadas, Monjas, Rameras y Brujas,

explains the new reality of the Spanish Monarchy at the turn of the 15th century in the

following manner: “al no seguir el camino de la unificación interna, se verían obligados

los Reyes a montar un Sistema Nuevo, y ese sería el de la asociación, por lo el cual ellos

gobernarían directamente el núcleo castellano y por delegación—los Virreinatos— las piezas asociadas de la Corona aragonesa” (32). Fernández Álvarez implicitly suggests that the territorial discontinuity in the Spanish Empire after the New World conquests was due to and exacerbated by the center’s paternalistic governing of its associated territories, that is, its virreinatos:

[l]a Monarquía Católica se perfila en los tiempos modernos como un Estado supranacional, abarcando pueblos distintos, en lengua e incluso en raza, y lo que es más notable, con discontinuidad territorial. En ese Estado supranacional, el poder real aspira al absolutismo dentro del ámbito que considera como núcleo por excelencia, esto es, el reino de Castilla, y se limita a una acción paternalista sobre las piezas asociadas, a las que solo les exige fidelidad a la Corona, mantenimiento de la ortodoxia católica y desentendimiento de la política exterior. […] La periferia asociada no goza ni del poder ni de la gloria […]. (32)

Yet, though the Spanish Empire found itself with a complex governing system that complicated territorial unification, texts produced in Mexico by authors like Francisco

Cervantes de Salazar (1514?-1575) and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651?-1695) are considered part of Spain’s Golden Age literary tradition.23 Although these two authors

are physically distanced from the specific day-to-day socio-political realities of the

Spanish Monarchy’s governing center and royal court, they aren’t unaware of the center’s dynamics and the extent of its influence in the Court of the Mexican viceroyalty.

23 Although Francisco Cervantes de Salazar is Spaniard by birth, he spends the second part of his life in New Spain. He was a professor and rector of the first university founded in 1551: Real y Pontificia Universidad de México. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, on the other hand, is born and raised in Mexico.

Therefore, as important historical and literary figures to Mexico’s literary tradition,

Boullosa opens the novel by strategically quoting texts (in epigraphs) by Francisco

Cervantes de Salazar and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to lay out the thematic material that

will explain Mexico’s colonial identity, history, as well as the intertextual composition of

the novel.

Even though Cervantes de Salazar and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz belong to two

different historical centuries and their cited works differ in topic, their epigraphs

nevertheless strategically complement each other because of what they reveal—the

historical and cultural importance of water in the Valley of Mexico and the social

condition of women in the colonial period (Ulloa and Álvarez Ulloa 110). The literary

thematic connection between the two authors and their respective texts is a strategically

complex one. Gabriella de Beer explains that it is the purpose of Boullosa’s literary texts

to create “a complex and difficult reality” that will “challenge the reader to grasp its true

meaning” (160). Especially because “part of the challenge [for the reader] is following

the structure of the novel and the narrative techniques she employs to reflect the world

she has created” (de Beer 160). The opening epigraphs of the novel, according to Justo C.

Ulloa and Leonor Álvarez Ulloa, in their article “Redes textuales: los epígrafes en

Duerme de Carmen Boullosa,” generates important metaphorical images for the reader:

“la historia, los sueños, lo fantástico y hasta el cuento de hadas [que] se funden para elaborar un final suspendido que establece connotaciones diferidas e hipotéticas” (110).

The two epigraphs create the postmodern historical hypotheticals that the reader has to acutely detect, outline, and then reload; especially because the authors of the epigraphs

belong to a literary and historical archive that, as Boullosa demonstrates, reveal the

multiple and complex perspectives that construct Mexico’s colonial history.

Along with the epigraphs, which follow the title and precede Boullosa’s

dedication page, the title strategically frames the novel’s thematic material. The reader

learns from the first few chapters that the title, Duerme, alludes not only to the slumber-

like condition that Claire experiences in the beginning through poisoning and soon after

through the magical waters of Mexico, but that it also alludes to the silences and

omissions of history. Although the title initially appears to function as a metaphor of history, it is in itself a postmodern reference to history’s dormant state. Specifically, it indicates that though history might appear dormant (hidden, veiled, erased) it is in fact present through the many cultural and textual manifestations that are present during the making of history or simply, in the acts and routines that make everyday life. As a postmodern text, the title reloads the understanding of history by recognizing that hidden, dormant, and/or omitted histories can surface at any given time, particularly from indigenous and gendered perspectives. These reloaded histories become a visible alternative to hegemonic history because they put forth indigenous perspectives as postmodern counterparts to Western historical perspectives. In other words, not only does the title frame the importance of indigenous worldviews but it also allows for a reloading and a revisiting of hegemonic historical narratives as well as the hegemonic conceptual understandings of Mexicanidad. Similarly, Claire’s slumber represents the silences of history and knowledge that are voluntarily and strategically hidden or put into play. The multiple historical interpretations that the novel’s title implies and that Claire’s first-

person pícara narrative illustrates show the reader that history is ordered by hegemonic

powers. However, part of the novel’s project is not only to demonstrate the various historical perspectives (through Claire’s multiple embodiments) but to also show the ways which history is genealogically ordered.24 Claire’s story unfolds the irony of the title, that even though there are instances when Claire is trapped in a slumbering condition, these are also the same moments that remind the reader that she is never truly asleep.25 In short, even when history appears to be “asleep” (like Claire) there is always the possibility for it to awaken in order to reload historical knowledge when new and existing actors acquire the capacity to narrate from their perspective.

Claire’s journey in colonial Mexico as well as her multiple embodiments are an uncovering and an awakening of silenced history. As the protagonist-narrator of the majority of the novel, Claire becomes an embodied historical text of this early colonial

Mexican period. Claire wakes and reloads history by revealing the historical nuances through her embodied experiences and intertextual narration. Collectively, Claire’s embodiments, picaresque journey, and intertextual references create a postmodern

24 Michel Foucault in his introduction to L’archéologie du savoir explores the complexities that order our understandings of history and knowledge: “recurrent redistributions bring to light several pasts and many different chains of events, a number of different scales of importances, networks of determining factors and many teleologies for one and the same sciences as the present undergoes various changes. Historical descriptions are thus inevitably governed by current knowledge and proliferate as that knowledge changes, while at the same time they ceaselessly part from each other” (176-77). Furthermore, discontinuity “has become one of the basic elements of historical analysis” and which in itself “is a paradoxical concept, being at once the tool and the object of research, marking the boundaries of the field of which it is the result, allowing the individualization of spheres though it cannot be established without comparing these spheres amongst themselves” (180). For further reading, see Foucault’s translated introduction. 25 The title also brings to mind important canonical Golden Age texts that explore the meaning of abstract topics of sleep, slumber, and dreams, for example, Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play La vida es sueño (1635) and Sor Juana Inés’s poem Primero sueño (1692). Important to note is that the terms “sueño” and “duerme” are not synonyms. In the case of the two aforementioned works, the titular use of the term “sueño” alludes to an alternate state of being that is based on an illusion, fantasy, or even a dreamlike state, for example. These two works, respectively, explore the meaning of life and mankind’s intellectual potential, amongst other themes. In the case of Boullosa’s novel, the titular use of the term “duerme” is a reference not to an alternate history but to a dormant history.

exploration of the various historical literary texts (in particular from the Golden Age) that

we have access to.

The conjunction of topics that the opening epigraphs address creates a starting

structural outline for Claire’s story as well as Mexico’s other history, that is, Mexico’s

non-hegemonic history. The reader who is familiar with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, will

recognize her name in the first epigraph and will be aware of the fact that Sor Juana

Inés’s literary work disrupted literary conventions during her time not just because of the topics she wrote about but because she was a renowned female author during her life who with her literary intellect surpassed some of her contemporaries and religious superiors.

The first epigraph, extracted from Sor Juana Inés’s famous letter Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (1691), defines the complexity of “self” as well as the way in which an individual can be and can become his or her own enemy: “Pensé yo que huía de mí misma, pero ¡miserable de mí! Trájeme a mí conmigo y traje mi mayor enemigo”

(Duerme 7). In that sense, despite that the voice in the epigraph questions the idea of self and concludes that she is her own enemy, what is important is the fact that this voice alludes to how an individual can be critically aware of his or her own identity. The voice suggests that being critical of oneself, or, being one’s own enemy, is a crucial process of self-reflexivity. Ulloa and Álvarez Ulloa write that although Sor Juana Inés belongs to the

Baroque period (17th century) of the Golden Age (nearly a century after the historical

context illustrated in Duerme) her words nevertheless reveal the difficulties that a

character like Claire encounters, as a female and a natural daughter of a prostitute, in 16th

century Spanish society (105). Oswaldo Estrada, in his article “Metamorfosis del

lenguaje novelístico en Duerme de Carmen Boullosa,” recognizes that Claire as a

protagonist-narrator self-consciously attempts to understand and explain to herself what

she is experiencing in her historical moment: “[Claire es] una narradora que […] trata de

explicarse a sí misma sus conflictos de identidad con una voz autodiegética” (147).

Though Estrada doesn’t connect Claire’s narrative voice to that of the voice in Sor Juana

Inés’s cited letter, both voices are self-consciously reflecting on the social class and

gender roles that are set by Spanish society. In summary, the voice in the epigraph

introduces the postmodern idea of self-narration and self-reflexivity, one that is further developed with Claire’s self-conscious narration.

Important to also note is that the first epigraph is part of a larger argument in which Sor Juana Inés discusses and defends the right of women to an education. The epigraph is only an excerpt of Sor Juana Inés’s critical and academic response to the

Bishop of Puebla’s letter, in which he (writing under the pseudonym Sor Filotea) criticizes and censures Sor Juana Inés for her lack of obedience as a nun, as a woman and also, for her inclination to write about non-religious material. Melveena McKendrick, in

Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age, explains that the topic of

woman’s education during the Golden Age period was of great concern for many, not

only in Spain but Europe in general, and was always “a subject for debate and reform”

(6). Sor Juana Inés’s response to “Sor Filotea” is a reference to the larger debate of

women’s roles and access in colonial Mexican and Spanish society. The epigraph’s

greater subject matter functions as a type of recurring background music to Claire’s

narrative—women and their social roles in Spanish society. Sor Juana Inés’s broader

argument as well as her social position in society (as an erudite nun) in conjunction with

Claire’s social position (as a cross-dressing marginal individual) both illustrate the

gendered and societal roles imposed during Mexico’s colonial period. And more importantly, both Sor Juana Inés and Claire show that these social impositions could be challenged and were challenged during this historical moment:

Tanto Claire como el personaje femenino del epígrafe son mujeres víctimas de su condición femenina. Son prisioneras de las reglas impuestas por la sociedad y aunque son producto del momento histórico en que viven atrapadas tratan de traspasar las barreras que las contienen disimulando su condición femenina bajo el hábito religioso o la ropa de varón. (Ulloa and Álvarez Ulloa 105)

Although Ulloa and Álvarez Ulloa indicate that Claire and the voice in the epigraph are victims of their social period, the second part of their statement offers an alternate reading, though probably not intentionally, by implicitly suggesting (with the use of the word “disimulando”) that these individuals are not necessarily victims of their society, because through their dress that they can consciously perform and question their expected gendered roles. Throughout the narrative, just like the voice in the epigraph, Claire further subverts the marker of victim by continuously self-reflecting.

In addition, Sor Juana Inés’s greater argument, as Stephanie Merrim explains, in

“Still Ringing True: Sor Juana’s Early/Postmodernity,” continues to be relevant because it speaks to the “issues of marginality” in any historical period, whether it be colonial

Mexico or today (40). This becomes so because Sor Juana Inés’s work is representative of the period’s social environment, which in many ways parallels our “present postmodern climate” (Merrim 40). In an interview with Emily Hind, Boullosa states that she, like Sor Juana Inés, has inadvertently practiced feminism by exploring the gender roles in her literary production:

[h]e practicado un feminismo involuntario a la manera de Juana Inés, que todo el tiempo juega a ponerse en voz de hombre y hablar de hombre y luego brincar al lado de mujer e ir y venir entre los dos géneros con la

misma fluidez, demostrando que no entiende por qué demonios si hombres y mujeres tienen las mismas posibilidades intelectuales y el mismo derecho de entendimiento, ellas no tienen derecho a todo lo demás. (54)

By quoting Sor Juana Inés and expanding her arguments with Claire’s picaresque journey, Boullosa shows that these are important social as well as cultural topics that continue to matter not just when looking at Mexico’s historical and literary past but when discussing and thinking of present-day Mexico from a gender politics perspective.

Whereas Sor Juana Inés historically challenged societal norms with the written word, Claire challenges them by using the weapons available to her, clothing and swords.

The use of these weapons, for example, are demonstrated when she dons different identities through cross-dressing and when she physically wields a sword as a pirate and later as an indigenous woman. According to María Dolores Bolívar, in her article

“Historia, ficción: La construcción alternativa de la subjetividad-mujer en Duerme de

Carmen Boullosa,” Claire is able to challenge and triumph because she has learned to survive amongst soldiers (as a child) and pirates (as a young woman) by listening, by observing, and by being able to physically fight with a sword (48). For example, Claire uses her skills to challenge gender roles when she encounters and is accosted by a group of inebriated soldiers in the city’s streets. In fact, she physically confronts them when words don’t work by surreptitiously snatching a sword from one of the men:

—¡Miren! —¡Ah! ¡Qué primor! Se detienen a mirarme a mí. La de las manos tibias [doña Inés] me jala del brazo y apresura el paso. No damos más que un paso, y ahí están, rodeándonos. Uno de ellos me tira del otro brazo: —Tú, vieja, corre si quieres —le dicen a la de las manos tibias. […] —¿De quién son? —Del Conde Urquiza —contesto.

—¡Ése ya murió! —grita uno de los más achispados, sujetándome del brazo y tirando para abrazarme—. Tú, vieja, vete, nos das asco. Yo estoy totalmente presa en sus brazos. Hago gesto de abrazarlo a mi vez, empuño su espada con mi mano izquierda y la levanto para detener su hoja con mi derecha y gritar: —Si se mueven, lo mato. (Boullosa 59-60)

As an aside, this scene references both the picaresque genre and the capa y espada

situations present in many 17th century Spanish comedias.26 The scene, like the

epigraphs, is part of the strategic intertextuality used in the novel to draw attention to

marginal spaces (the backally streets) and the individuals who inhabit these spaces (the

poor, the indigenous, the soldier). The scene also exposes, in a visually tangible manner,

the day-to-day realities that are central to the composition of colonial society. In the scene, Claire is the cross-dressing hero defending her honor. Unlike the character of Flora in Salas Barbadillo’s La sabia Flora malsabidilla or as would be the case for a heroine in a comedia, Claire is not dressed in men’s clothing, but dressed as an indigenous woman.

This scene not only inverts the traditional Golden Age cross-dressing trope but also emphasizes the fact that Claire is a pícara who overcomes a physically dangerous situation by using her wits and her knowledge of physical combat. Here, it is Claire’s indigenous dress that also shows us how clothing was an important colonial component of ethnic identification, especially as she begins to wear the clothing attributed to specific indigenous women soon after she performs Conde Urquiza’s death. In her encounter with the soldiers in Mexico City’s backstreets, the soldiers consider Claire as an indigenous woman precisely because of her attire. In the above scene Claire is not alone; she is accompanied by doña Inés, who is the novel’s indigenous female figure that saved

26 Dramatists Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina are known for including capa y espada situations in their works.

Claire’s life early in the narrative. The treatment of Claire and doña Inés by the Spaniard

soldiers illustrates how these military men view indigenous women, as beings that can be

degraded and abused for their own pleasure and entertainment. This is made obvious

when one of the soldiers expresses repugnance with doña Inés’s presence: “Tú, vieja,

vete, nos das asco” (Boullosa 60). Important to underscore is also the fact that the

soldiers ask who they belong to. Claire and doña Inés are seen as property and as such,

are sexually available for the taking since their owner Conde Urquiza is allegedly dead.

The soldiers take advantage of Claire’s social-ethnic class and presumed physical

inferiority. Nevertheless, it is exactly these presumed marginalities that allow Claire to

defend herself through her wits and also by physically countering their attack. In this

scene, Claire, the pícara, demonstrates that her marginalities as well as her skill with a

sword are subversive tools that challenge a society’s pre-conceived notions of social-

class and gender roles, especially when, as stated by Bolívar: “la misión [es] de desafiar a

la sociedad que solo ve lo que le dé la gana” (48).

The second epigraph that opens Duerme is from Cervantes de Salazar’s collection

of seven Latin dialogues or Diálogos (1554), in which he dedicates three to the

description of Mexico City and its surrounding areas.27 The complete collection of

Diálogos can be found in Edmundo O’Gorman’s 1963 edition of Méjico en 1554 y

Túmulo imperial.28 To note, the compilation of Cervantes de Salazar’s works by Mexican

27 Diálogos were a literary genre that resurfaced during the Spanish Renaissance, from the Classic Greek literary tradition. The aim of diálogos was to explore a topic through intellectual rhetoric between two or more interlocutors. For a detailed study on the different types of diálogos and their components, see Jesús Gómez’s book El diálogo en el Renacimiento español (1988). 28 The edition of Mexico en 1554 y Túmulo imperial (1963) by Edmundo O’Gorman is a collection of two distinct works. The first text published in 1554, México en 1554, is a compilation of the translated and seven Diálogos (originally written in Latin) that Cervantes de Salazar wrote to describe Spanish games as well as the region and culture of Mexico. O’Gorman explains that in 1875, Joaquín García Icazbalceta translated and published the three Diálogos that focused on Mexico and omitted the dialogues that focused

intellectuals and academics in the 19th century and 20th century reveals how these same intellectuals and academics (whether knowingly or not) were vested in creating an hegemonic history of Mexico. Boullosa’s epigraph of Cervantes de Salazar is used to strategically establish a genealogical beginning to both Mexico’s history and Claire’s story and to call attention to the representations of Mexico that were being created early on (in the colonial period, after Mexico’s independence from Spain, and even after the

Mexican Revolution). The epigraph in itself, however, only provides the thematic information about Mexico’s water and it does so from the perspective of a Spaniard. The epigraph does not address the important connection the Aztecs had with water. Ulloa and

Álvarez Ulloa argue that Boullosa’s use of Cervantes de Salazar’s Diálogos/Méjico en

1554, as well as his other text that is narratively referenced but not cited in the novel,

Crónica de la Nueva España (1967), function as an important historical and cultural

backdrop to Claire’s story (106-107). 29 Just like the epigraph by Sor Juana Inés,

Cervantes de Salazar’s epigraph introduces the topics that Claire will reflect upon in her

narration. The epigraph establishes the themes that the narrative explores, such as, the

politics of gender, of an indigenous worldview, and of historical inscription. Claire’s

narrative shows the archival irony of individuals like Cervantes de Salazar who when

on Spanish games; García Icazbalceta titled his compilation Diálogos de Cervantes de Salazar. O’Gorman explains that Cervantes de Salazar’s original publication included four Diálogos preceding the three dialogues that García Icazbalceta published. Important to note is the fact that Cervantes de Salazar wrote the first four Diálogos before he travelled to Mexico. In O’Gorman’s edition, the second text published originally published in 1560, Túmulo imperial, describes the funeral rites celebrated for Carlos V in Mexico City (175). As an additional side note, the 1554 publication of Cervantes de Salazar’s Diálogos is also the same year that Lazarillo de Tormes is published. 29 In 1567, several years after the publication of the 1554 Diálogos or México en 1554 (O’Gorman’s title for Cervantes de Salazar’s collection), Cervantes de Salazar petitions to be a cronista in order to officially publish a different text, his Crónica de la Nueva España. In his petition, Cervantes de Salazar explained that he had already started writing his Crónica in 1560. For a detailed outline and discussion of Cervantes de Salazar’s Crónica see the prologue in the 1914 edition of Crónica de la Nueva España que escribió el Dr. D. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar: https://archive.org/stream/cronicadelanueva00cervuoft#page/n5/mode/2up.

writing about Mexico exalt it but at the same time denigrate its indigenous population

(that continued to exist as a social group after the Conquest): “Aún cuando Cervantes de

Salazar reconoce en su Crónica de la Nueva España que hay indios de ‘buen entendimiento’, también los ve como seres ‘pusilánimes’, ‘medrosos’ y ‘vindicativos’, como individuos que no hacen ‘cosa bien sino por miedo” (Ulloa and Álvarez Ulloa 109-

110). Claire’s postmodern self-conscious narrative is meant to simultaneously draw attention not only to the archival details recorded about Aztec culture during the colonial period but to also expose the prejudices written in historical texts by authors like

Cervantes de Salazar.

The narrative reference to Cervantes de Salazar’s Crónica is important because crónicas historically were a crucial literary genre that documented key historical events during the Golden Age period.30 Valeria Añón and Clementina Battcock, in their article

“Las crónicas coloniales desde América: aproximaciones y nuevos enfoques,” define the historical and literary importance of crónicas in the following manner:

[u]na narración que fija y preserva en papel los hechos históricos que la memoria humana no podría guardar. Su objetivo es permitir, mediante su lectura, que quienes no han atestiguado lo que en ella se describe —sean éstos coetáneos o generaciones futuras— logren enterarse de los sucesos acaecidos en el pasado. (153)

30 As an important historical side note, in his prologue to the 1914 Crónica de la Nueva España edition, Manuel Magallón reveals that Cervantes de Salazar was a personal acquaintance of Hernán Cortés (ix). Agustín Millares Carlo, in his introduction to Manuel Magallon’s 1971 edition of Crónica de la Nueva España, writes that Cervantes de Salazar possibly met Hernán Cortés in 1546: “conoció en la corte de Carlos V a Hernán Cortés, al que, según cuenta en su Crónica, oyó personalmente referir un episodio de la Conquista de México” (12). Using Joaquín García Icazbalceta’s research on Cervantes de Salazar, Millares Carlo explains that Cervantes de Salazar travelled for the first time to Mexico three years after the death of Cortés, in 1550 (13). Hernán Cortés died in Spain. Even though there is a 30 year age difference between Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) and Cervantes de Salazar (1514?-1575) and if they were indeed acquainted, these are details that indicate the role and historical interest that both men had in the construction of Mexico’s hegemonic history, whether it be in the reconstruction of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán-Mexico City after its conquest (Cortés) or whether it be in the historical literary description and exaltation of the conquest and of Mexico City (Cervantes de Salazar).

As such, the strategic use of Cervantes de Salazar’s texts in Duerme indicate how historical texts created specific representations of Mexico and its people; furthermore, it also shows how these texts also established a precedent for these types of representations.

It was the victors producing Mexico’s official archival history (not only in colonial

Mexico but also in the 19th century as well as after the Mexican Revolution). These types

of texts are important when looking at historical representations because oftentimes it

was the authors of these texts that held administrative and academic positions of power,

as was the case with Cervantes de Salazar.31 Similar to Cervantes de Salazar, Claire’s

narrative exalts Mexico and its pre-colonial culture but, unlike Cervantes de Salazar, she contests the negative representations of the marginalized in the New World: “Claire, como relatora o narradora de la mayor parte de Duerme, socavará por su parte con sus acciones cualquier relación que pueda establecerse entre los textos de Cervantes de

Salazar y las injusticias del virreinato” (Ulloa and Álvarez Ulloa 110). The aim of

Claire’s postmodern picaresque narrative is to illustrate the part of Mexico that is ignored and/or glossed over in colonial texts. However, before Claire can contest the injustices she sees and experiences she must first experience the cultural importance of Mexico’s water. Claire’s picaresque adventure leads her to a conscious and physical cultural transformation when her body comes into contact with Mexico’s water.

The cultural significance of Mexico’s water is laid out with Cervantes de

Salazar’s epigraph. From the start, the rhetorical purpose of the epigraph is to exalt

Mexico’s water and describe it as unparalleled to any other:

31 Cervantes de Salazar was rector of the first university of Mexico: Real y Pontificia Universidad de México. See footnote 23.

Si, como parecen pensarlo Avicena e Hipócrates, la mejor agua es la que más se asemeja al aire; la que más presto [pronto] se calienta y se enfría; la que cocida no deja costras en las vasijas; la que cuece en menos tiempo las legumbres, y en fin, la más ligera, entonces no hay ninguna preferible a la nuestra. (Duerme 7)32

And even though the epigraph doesn’t provide the archival historical connection between water, Mexico City, and the city’s indigenous inhabitants, it nevertheless implicitly evokes the water’s symbolic and mythical significance. These symbolic and mythical

aspects are illustrated in the first chapter when Claire narrates her experience with

Mexico’s water on and in her body. Abelina Landín Vargas, in her article “Simbología

del agua en el espacio textual en la novela Duerme de Carmen Boullosa,” explains that

water’s symbolic and mythical importance to the Aztec empire was due partly to its

medicinal properties (44, 47). In the novel, the medicinal and mythical properties are

illustrated when doña Inés uses Mexico’s water to heal the same wound she inflicted on

Claire’s chest:

En la herida abierta [la india de las manos tibias/doña Inés] deja caer el agua del cántaro. Al abrirme con la piedra [anteriormente], mi sangre roja se deslizó abundante por la piel, sin premura, a tibia velocidad. Ahora con los dedos abre la herida, jalando cada uno de sus bordes a extremos opuestos, vuelca agua en ella, y a pesar de forzar los bordes de la profunda herida a una posición que debería hacer sangrar más, la sangre deja de brotar. […]. El agua sigue cayendo del cántaro, pero no cae sobre mi piel, es absorbida por la herida. Veo cómo una vena, en un gesto excepcional, bebe del agua a tragos, como si fuera la garganta sedienta de un polluelo. Ahora cierro los ojos. Trato de explicármelo. Los vuelvo a abrir. (Boullosa 20)

Although the beginning of the scene is important because it alludes to Aztec sacrificial

rituals, it is Claire’s careful description of the ritual and her self-reflexivity of the water

that draws our attention. Claire’s description accentuates the way in which her body

32 The epigraph can be found in the third diálogo (seventh in Cervantes de Salazar’s original edition) of O’Gorman’s México en 1554 edition (O’Gorman 64).

absorbs the magical water. The experience is visually and physically violent, but Claire’s

narrative indicates that this is an exceptional moment, a magical-fantastical event. Her

narrative description is also a reference to the water that Cervantes de Salazar describes

in his epigraph. And even though the water isn’t described as magical in the epigraph, it

is described as unmatched.

The contact between Mexico’s unmatched magical water and Claire’s body is

crucial to the overall narrative because it depicts the merging of the cultural topics that

the two epigraphs present. Whereas Claire’s body intricately links the two unrelated

topics, it is Mexico’s water that transforms Claire into a cross-cultural individual.

Furthermore, the magical transfusion of this mythical water into Claire’s body, according

to Estrada, highlights Lévi-Strauss’s explanation of myth and history: “‘myth alone is

true for all time, and the truth of history lies with myth’” (Estrada 150). The magical and

unmatched water that runs through Claire’s veins allows her to become part of this New

World, that is, to belong to the land and its people. Additionally, the water transfusion

also parodies Spain’s laws on the purity of blood, laws that post-1492 targeted converted

Jewish people and their descendants and which would eventually also target anyone who

did not fit into the accepted racial and social categories of the period. Individuals who

had questionable family backgrounds (i.e. natural daughter/son, race, or religion) were

not deemed pure regardless if said individuals followed societal rules. Claire, as the

receptor of this mythical-historical water, becomes the vessel of indigenous historical

knowledge (Bolívar 49). Her purity is based on her access to the historical knowledge of a long ago past as well as a recent history. Additionally, Claire’s cross-cultural transformation is described when doña Inés explains to Claire the significance of the

Mexican water. Dona Inés’s explanation is also another reference to Cervantes de

Salazar’s epigraph, but, it is an explanation from a mediated (through Claire’s first person

narration) indigenous perspective:

Señor. Caballero francés. Usted que es hombre vestido y mujer sin ropas no merece la muerte. No va a morir hoy en la horca, délo por seguro. Permita sólo que vacíe un poco más de agua en su herida. Es agua de los lagos de los tiempos antiguos. Era una agua tan limpia que estancada en ollas de barro desde hace dieces de años no da muestra de pudrición o estancamiento. El agua tiene de cada lago, dulce o salado, de cada canal, aquí revueltas. Es curación de nuestros padres y nuestros abuelos, y nunca ha sido puesta en un español. […] Dos cántaros enteros protegerán tu sangre de la muerte. Éstas son aguas purísimas, no tocadas por las costumbres de los españoles […]. Usted que no eres hombre ni mujer, que no eres nahua ni español, ni Conde ni Enconmendado, no mereces la muerte. Dicen que vienes del mar, que has estado con los que arrebatan a los españoles lo que se llevan de aquí. No mereces morir. (Boullosa 27-28)

Doña Inés gives this explanation to Claire before Claire performs Conde Urquiza’s death

in the public square.33 Furthermore, the ritual that doña Inés practices on Claire attests, as is stated in the article “‘Disfruto disfrutar’: Corporeality, Cross-Dressing, and Jouissance in Carmen Boullosa’s Duerme” by Sara A. Potter, “that it is better to have such pure waters in the veins of a French pirate whore than in even the most noble or high-ranking

Spaniard” (31). Yes, Claire is a white European woman and, as we discover in the novel’s narrative, a former prostitute, but she is not a Spaniard. This detail matters to doña Inés. Claire also makes evident that even though doña Inés discovers her biological

33 The reader must recognize that this indigenous perspective is limited and created based on the historical archive that we have access to in the present. Nonetheless, doña Inés is the character that gives us a window to an important indigenous colonial worldview. Claire gains access to this window because of her body’s transformation. The reader is then able to hear a narrative that registers and reloads this complex colonial past. Gutiérrez de Velasco expresses that even though it is difficult to capture the indigenous knowledge of Mexico’s pre-colonial and colonial past there is still the possibility of recording it: “Carmen Boullosa decide incorporar algunas frases en náhuatl para introducir las sonoridades de la lengua de los vencidos en su texto, pero toma los términos desde la frialdad del diccionario en el siglo XX y pierde el espíritu de esa lengua tras la Conquista. No hablo náhuatl, Carmen Boullosa tampoco: hemos perdido ese registro para entender el sometimiento de la cultura mexica. Muchos mexicanos, en cambio, conservan su lengua y la emplean para el diario trajín; nosotros solo la rescatamos desde los diccionarios, desde la escritura” (28).

identity, it is also doña Inés who recognizes the implications of her cross-dressing identity. Doña Inés informs Claire that the reason she helps her is because of both her ambiguous and pirate identity. In addition to this, there are three other important points outlined in doña Inés’s explanation: first, the ancient curative aspect of the water, second, the multiple sources that make this mixed water, and third, the implicit reference to the untainted canal and the lake systems of Tenochtitlán, that is, pre-colonial Mexico.

The first point, creates and informs the reader of the ancient, magical, and curative properties of Mexican water that, according to doña Inés, can only be used by and on Aztec-Mexica peoples and on an individual like Claire who defies binary definitions. The second point establishes and explains the possibility of combining different waters into a single curative source. These first two points are key to understanding the multiple identities that Claire performs throughout her narrative. For doña Inés, Claire in a way is magical just like the water due to Claire’s liquidity and/or her fluidity in gender. In other words, just like this magical water is a combination of both fresh water and saltwater, Claire is a combination of both genders. The mixed water that gives Claire immortality also gives her the ability to culturally embody multiple identities and the respective historical narratives to these identities.34 Furthermore, this magical water in combination with Claire’s cross-dressing blurs not just gender and identity but also the historical ethnic and socio-political hierarchal realities that hegemonic law imposed in colonial Mexico. Especially because as a postmodern pícara,

Claire exposes how sumptuary laws were unable to completely control identity. The third

34 Richard F. Townsend, in The Aztecs, explains that, in Aztec religion, Tlaloc was identified as a storm god connected to earth, ground water, rain, and fertility (114). Chalchiuhtilicue, referred to as Tlaloc’s sister, was also “connected with the worship of ground water,” and many of her shrines where located near “springs, streams, irrigation ditches, or aqueducts” (114). Similar to Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtilicue was associated with “fertility and regeneration” (114).

point extrapolated from doña Inés’s explanation is the historical reference to the complex

lake system that existed before and upon the arrival of Hernán Cortés to Tenochtitlan: “El

agua tiene de cada lago, dulce o salado, de cada canal, aquí revueltas” (Boullosa 28).

Water in pre-colonial Mexico City (Tenochtitlan) had a utilitarian as well as a governing

purpose. Moreover, water was an important geographical and political characteristic of

the city’s social and cultural environment. Ivonne Del Valle points, in her article “On

Shaky Ground: Hydraulics, State Formation, and Colonialism in Sixteenth-Century

Mexico,” that the founding of Tenochtitlan was due to the fact that it is was chosen

strategically because of its location—it was an island in Lake Texcoco naturally

surrounded by water (211). The water that surrounded the city of Tenochtitlan served two

functions: it was both a boundary and a weapon that protected its inhabitants from its

enemies (Del Valle 211).

The epigraph by Cervantes de Salazar and doña Inés’s explanation to Claire

underscore the continued importance of water in this new colonial society, even decades

after the conquest of Tenochtitlan. Although the descendants of the city no longer have

full control of the water and water systems, doña Inés’s explanation hints that neither do

the new governing bodies. Del Valle explains that after the fall of Tenochtitlan the goal

of the new colonial administrators was to “transition from a state of pure violence to the

establishment of hegemony with the reconstruction of […] Mexico City, which would serve as the seat of the colonial state” (199). One way of establishing hegemony over the city was to control the water system (not unlike the Aztecs during their rule). However, the new administrators executed control and change without considering the importance of the socio-cultural dynamics that had made Tenochtitlan a great and undefeated city.

The new administrative Spaniards, in their attempts to rebuild a new Mexican utopian

city over a destroyed Tenochtitlan (an island already expanded through artificial means),

failed to take into account the value of the technological and historical knowledge of the

hydraulic system that was already available with its native inhabitants (Del Valle 202).

Barbara Mundy explains, in The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City,

that the Aztec rulers “manipulated the surrounding salty lakes and springs to provide

freshwater to the city residents” (193). In short, access to water was extremely important to residents in pre-Hispanic society. After the conquest, however, one of the objectives of the new rulers was to rebuild a utopian Mexico City that resembled the dry geographical landscapes and homes of the Iberian Peninsula (Mundy 194).35 The goal was to create a new and “improved” Mexico City not only with peninsular architecture but also by redirecting water flows. According to Del Valle, Cervantes de Salazar’s Diálogos

indicates this utopian goal when he selectively describes the Mexican streets and

causeways that weren’t plagued by dirt or mud. The esthetically pleasing spaces that

Cervantes de Salazar does illustrate “are treated not as forms of technology, but as part of

the natural landscape” (Del Valle 211). Cervantes de Salazar fails and/or chooses to

ignore, just like the city’s new administrators, “the indigenous technology that had made

the city a labyrinth of water and land” (Del Valle 211). The irony with Cervantes de

Salazar’s Diálogos is that a few months after he published his text a major “flood forced the Spaniards to recognize that the canals, aqueducts, irrigation ditches, and causeways

35 Making the city dry was an important endeavor to the new Spaniard rulers. During the conquest, the lakes and the canals caused the death of many Spaniard soldiers. Consequently, in the following decades, “the Spanish government’s concerns about water were loosely linked to its worries about indigenous insurrection” (Mundy 194). For that reason, part of reconstruction process included replacing the Aztec temples with Catholic temples and draining and filling the city’s canals and lakes, the latter coming to fruition after many centuries.

were not ‘nature’ but rather products of a knowledge alien to them” (Del Valle 213). And even though the Spaniards attempted to rebuild the city’s complex water system in its pre-colonial form they were unable to do so because the water system was part of a complex Aztec community-city effort that “involved a pact between technology and religion” which was purposely dismantled by the new Catholic and Spaniard rulers following the conquest (Del Valle 216). Consequently, without recorded access to the technological knowledge of the Aztecs, “water became […] as serious a problem as it was during the conquest” (Del Valle 215).

The colonial state was unable to access the technological knowledge from

Mexico’s first university (where Cervantes de Salazar was a professor and rector) because although the information did exist, it couldn’t be found within the walls of the university (Del Valle 213-14). The new administrators were also unable to access the cultural and technological knowledge from the city’s indigenous inhabitants because they

“did not respond” to the call for assistance (Del Valle 213-14). In the novel, doña Inés’s access and knowledge to the region’s magical waters reveals, as Del Valle expresses, “the existence of an indigenous will that ran contrary to those in power” (214). Though doña

Inés doesn’t have the technological knowledge of the water system, she does have the medicinal and mythical knowledge of water. She uses her knowledge of the water’s medicinal and mythical properties to preemptively save Claire’s life. Claire gains the knowledge that the Spaniards lack when her body absorbs the magical water. Claire, like the water, becomes a weapon the Spaniards are unable to control. Just like the water protected Tenochtitlan and its inhabitants from its enemies, the water running through

Claire’s body also protects her. By extension, Claire protects the marginal individuals

that she embodies.

The magical water Claire’s body now carries represents an indigenous past that is

gradually disappearing in this new colonial world order. Claire, as the recipient-

receptacle of this magical water, appropriates and encompasses the indigenous identities

as well as the indigenous knowledge that is being endangered in this new colonial

society. And even though Claire initially appears to have difficulty explaining her body’s

reaction to the water, it is the difficulty in explaining her body’s transformation that in

itself emphasizes the magical qualities of the water. The curative and magical water is the

element that makes possible the liquidity-fluidity of Claire’s multiple identities as well as the “liquidity” of Mexican history. This is demonstrated when Claire, after being hung, implicitly references how historical knowledge and the classification of identity are more than binary definitions and explanations:

Digo que el mundo está dividido en riguroso dos, y aunque es verdad, la verdad me hace mentir. Si acaso mi atuendo de india es verosímil, lo es por un solo motivo, por el tres. Ven mi porte de blanca, mi cuerpo de blanca, mi ropa de india, y dicen «es mestiza». No miento, respondo a las cuentas que han aprendido a hacer en esta tierra los españoles. Para ellos tres es dos, no les cabe duda. Por este error, yo digo «nuestras calles», digo «nosotros», atrapada en un tres que no debería existir. El mundo se divide en dos… (Boullosa 58)

The above quote also indicates how Claire consciously acknowledges and attempts to

work through the idea of a “third space” in a society where everything is categorically

divided into twos. Her narration indicates that her previous understanding of the world

(before becoming the recipient-receptacle of the magical water) didn’t intellectually

allow for alternative perspectives. Through Claire, the magical water demonstrates both

historical continuity and the difficulty in maintaining one type of historical continuity;

especially, because Mexico’s official colonial history is a series of representations

produced from a Western-Hispanic perspective and not an indigenous one, as is indicated

in the novel’s reference to Cervantes de Salazar’s work and doña Inés’s worldview. For

that reason, the magical water transfusion that Claire receives allows Claire to narrate the

indigenous historical continuity that colonial texts often neglect or chose to ignore.

Furthermore, Claire’s name—Clara-clear-Claire—helps to further emphasize the physical and cultural link with the water. In short, Claire’s physical link with the water makes the historical, symbolic, and mythical continuity possible.

Moreover, the water descriptions of doña Inés and Cervantes de Salazar (doña

Inés’s “una agua tan limpia” and Cervantes de Salazar’s “la que más se asemeja al aire”)

imply a type of historical transparency that Claire demonstrates with her postmodern self- reflexivity. When Claire’s body absorbs the water, she becomes a trans-cultural vessel of pre-Hispanic historical knowledge. Claire illustrates the knowledge gained when performing Conde Urquiza’s death. And although Claire feels her death, it nevertheless allows her to see Mexico City before the arrival of the Spaniards:

Todos alzan sus caras para mirar mi muerte […]. El único que cambia soy yo, cuando desaparecen las tablas que piso. […] No tengo miedo. He vuelto al tamaño de mi cuerpo. Las aguas de los lagos me han salvado. […] Veo en mis ojos cerrados la ciudad antigua, con templos blancos cubiertos de frescos, relieves y esculturas. Observo el mercado opulento, el juez de plaza, ataviado con exótica elegancia. (Boullosa 33)

The images that the reader sees flashing through Claire’s historical memory are limited,

yet, they illustrate the historical reloading that her body experiences as a result of the

magical water transfusion. The rest of her narrative is a postmodern exploration of her

experiences in combination with the knowledge she gained and witnessed. Her hanging

also allows the reader to see the only images that address Claire’s past. The flashes of

Claire’s past show that cross-dressing was also an important aspect to her survival when

she was a child:

El agua suena viajando por mis venas […]. Su suave paso reviste mi cuerpo y mi memoria, agrupando todo de manera distinta, las cosas, los sentimientos, las partes de mí misma. Me veo de otra manera. Recuerdo a mi mamá. La veo haciéndome ropa de varón desde muy niña para que yo pueda acompañarla de un lado al otro, en su largo peregrinar de prostituta, viajando al lado de ejércitos; veo a los soldados entrenándome en el uso de armas, pero aunque mucho veo, no puedo recordar el nombre de mamá ni los míos (el de varón, el de niña). […] Lo último que alcanzo a distinguir es la manera en que él abusa de mí, cuando, por un descuido de niña, mi ropa manchada de menstruo, él descubre que soy mujer, y veo que lo abandono y que ejerzo el mismo oficio de mamá […]. […] Me veo con mi último cliente, me veo emborrachándolo, robándole su ropa […]. Veo cuándo comprendí que me convenía arriesgarme y llegar a México, y veo que acá me llevan a la fuerza, ataviada de otro, a la horca y a la muerte. ¿Cuál muerte? Estoy más viva que un niño. (Boullosa 34-35)

Cross-dressing allowed Claire to survive as a child. However, once her identity was discovered by the Colonel who raped her, her options were limited. She was a poor female orphan that could no longer serve as the Colonel’s page. The only other

profession available to her was prostitution. Nevertheless, as a prostitute Claire still takes a risk by stealing the clothes from her last client and begins her voyage and adventure to

the New World. Her experience in cross-dressing as a child and being discovered as a

cross-dresser is integral to the trans-cultural transformation she will experience in the

New World, which in turn, allows her to reflect on the continuity and discontinuities of history.

As discussed throughout this section, the epigraphs and the title provide the narrative topics of Duerme. However, it is the index that informs the ways in which identity and history will be explored. The index is not only a brief synopsis of Claire’s

story but also an outline of topics that can be found throughout Mexico’s history and that

have been used to represent Mexicanidad: “1. La ropa; 2. Muerte ajena; 3. De cómo le

fue de india a la francesa; 4. La fiesta y la representación; 5. Vida doméstica; 6. Afrodita

y el monstruo; 7. Regreso de Urquiza; 8. Pedro de Ocejo; 9. ‘El desenlace de Claire que

duerme bella en el bosque cercano al Potosí’” (Boullosa 11).36 Furthermore, the index is an intertextual reference to the “content guides” found in Golden Age period novelas. As

a guide, the index provides the narrative clues about Claire’s cross-dressing, clues which

aren’t just limited to clothing (first chapter) but also to how cross-dressing includes acquiring someone else’s death (second chapter) and even ethnic identity (third chapter).

Additionally, the index outlines the historical and cultural details of the period that Claire will narrate (chapters four and five) and the social and political perspectives of the era

(chapters six and seven). However, it is only the first seven chapters where Claire, the pícara-protagonist, narrates her story. The last two chapters are narrated by Pedro de

Ocejo, a secondary character in the novel. These last two chapters are different in content yet they are also a parody of the period’s memoirs (chapter eight) and the novela cortesana (chapter 9).37 The first chapter is constructed as a first-person narrative

whereas the last chapter is a mix of a third person narrative with parenthetical first-person commentary. These last two chapters are important because they function as a parodic juxtaposition to Claire’s narration. And even though these last two chapters might leave

36 For example, the topics presented in chapter 2, Muerte ajena and in chapter 4, La fiesta y la representación bring to mind the canonical essay-book El laberinto de la soledad by Octavio Paz. 37 The novela cortesana was a genre of short stories exploring secular, non-religious, topics such as love, greed, eroticism, pastoral life, urban life, and/or the royal court. Though some texts did have a didactic component, in general, the objective of the novela cortesana was to offer its readers entertainment and a literary escape. Authors of this genre include Miguel de Cervantes, Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and María de Zayas. For a structural study of the novela cortesana, see La novela cortesana: forma y estructura by María del Pilar Palomo. For a study on identifying, defining, and including the novela cortesana as part of the Golden Age literary canon, see “Novela cortesana, novela barroca, novela corta: de la incertidumbre al canon” by Evangelina Rodríguez Cuadros.

the reader questioning the ownership of Claire’s narration, that is, questioning whether

Claire’s narration is just another version written by Pedro de Ocejo (since the last two

chapters in a way function as an epilogue), they nevertheless assert Claire’s narrative

commentary on who gets to write and/or silence history.

As mentioned at the start of this section, Duerme is a postmodern parody of the

picaresque novel. The novel, however, also creates a greater intertextual parody with the

period’s Renaissance-Baroque literary archive by referencing the narrative situations and

techniques found in the crónica, the novela cortesana, and the comedia y drama de

enredo.38 In the case of the crónica, as one example, the novel undermines the genre’s

historic veracity by using indigenous forms of knowledge, from a mythical-historical

worldview, to explain Claire’s embodiments.39 This postmodern historic take is demonstrated when Claire receives the magical water transfusion and when doña Inés

explains the water’s cultural and medicinal significance. The results of the transfusion

and doña Inés’s explanation are further accentuated when Claire sees images of pre-

colonial Mexico City and her childhood flash through her memory. In the case of the

picaresque novel, the novela cortesana, and the comedia y drama de enredo, the general

characteristics that help identify a picaresque character and a picaresque narrative are

introduced in the opening paragraph of the novel:

38The general aspects that identify a pícaro and/or a picaresque adventure are similar to those in the novela cortesana and the comedia de enredo. These latter two genres flourished during the 17th century Baroque period. The topics and situations found in a comedia y drama de enredo and also in a comedia de capa y espada are the on-stage equivalent of the topics and situations in a novela cortesana. However, in the comedia de enredo female characters are generally the central protagonists. Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina are dramatists associated with the comedia de enredo. 39 It can be argued that Claire’s embodiments are a result of fantastic-magical situations. However, her embodiments are a result of experiencing a different and indigenous historical worldview. This experience in turn underscores the novel’s intertextuality with Golden Age literary works and also subverts hegemonic concepts of Mexicanidad.

Ya oigo: «por aquí», «por aquí». «Tlamayauhca», «Nite, uica». «Es aquí.» Nuestro alrededor sigue totalmente oscuro. Me sorprendo vociferando. Mis palabras mudas, no puedo abrir la boca, son un torrente gritando «¡suéltenme!», «¡déjenme ir, déjenme!». Gritan desesperadas e inútiles, no se escuchan. A pesar de su revuelo, alcanzo a oír atrás de ellas «nite, uica». Ya oigo, pero no puedo moverme. Ni los párpados puedo abrir. Me estoy helando. Debieran cubrirme. Como cargan conmigo como un saco inerte al hombro, mi pecho, mi vientre y un lado de la cara sienten la tibieza del hombre que me lleva, pero en el otro lado de mi cuerpo siento un frío casi de muerte. (Boullosa 15)

This opening paragraph begins to lay out the literary archival intertextuality that the

reader will encounter throughout the narrative. The paragraph sets the tone to Claire’s

picaresque and parodic (mis)adventure. The first (mis)adventure that Claire experiences

is her drugging and kidnapping, which results in her inability to physically act or speak.

The reader learns in the following paragraph that Claire was drugged: “Yo bebí una copa

que llevó a mi habitación solícito un criado, caí en la inconsciencia, y ahora voy aquí,

trotando a cuestas de un hombre” (Boullosa 15). This involuntary physical silencing that

Claire experiences is the start to her postmodern reflexivity. The fact that this is also the

first (mis)adventure that Claire faces upon arriving to Mexico City and that it differs from

those she experienced before (as a youth in France and as the pirate Monsieur Fleurcy voyaging the Atlantic) is important because it allows her to reflect on the new society and culture that she encounters. Furthermore, Claire’s (mis)adventure and marginality situate her in a Mexico where she becomes a witness to the meeting of two cultures, which is presented in the opening paragraph with the voice that speaks in both Spanish and

Nahuatl.

The opening paragraph also presents the differences between a postmodern pícara-protagonist like Claire and an early modern pícaro-protagonist like Lázaro, in

Lazarillo de Tormes. Unlike Lázaro and other pícaros/pícaras who are attempting to

survive by bettering their social conditions, Claire is not attempting but reloading hegemonic history by strategically directing the social roles her different embodiments represent. For example, as an indigenous woman she becomes the defender of her honor and as a soldier, she eventually becomes a rebel, who defends her indigenous supporters not just from individuals in positions of authority but also the colonial social order.

Furthermore, it’s also her self-reflexivity (while performing different roles) that makes her first-person narrative postmodern and that veers her from other picaresque protagonists. These differences, for example, are illustrated in the narrative purpose of each pícaro protagonist. Whereas a character like Lázaro narrates events from his past to an anonymous reader, Claire, as indicated by the opening paragraph, narrates events as she experiences them and narrates them to herself. This is an important distinction because it speaks to the presence and the absence of a reader. And although Claire narrates to herself, she is also narrating to the multiple selves that she embodies. Each embodiment informs her next embodiment and disrupts the way in which history is told and read. She narrates to herself her (mis)adventures but she also narrates them to the many that she represents. Towards the end of the novel, doña Inés indicates that Claire, an immortal transcultural cross-dresser, will never stay silent and because of this fact,

Claire will be able to share the details of her different experiences. She will share her truths. In his most recent edition of Lazarillo de Tormes, Francisco Rico explains that

Lázaro’s narration, on the other hand, is a set of careful explanations that avoid telling the truth to its intended anonymous reader:

Lázaro de Tormes se resuelve a consignar la relación de todas sus pasadas «fortunas, peligros y adversidades», para dar así contestación a la pregunta de un corresponsal anónimo (a quien trata de «Vuestra Merced») acerca de cierto episodio que en los primeros párrafos queda sin precisar. […] Pero

en las últimas páginas se descubre que el episodio en cuestión son los rumores […]. (“Presentación” ix)

Lázaro censors his past because he wants to minimize the validity of the rumors

regarding his marriage. Claire, on the other hand, explores her experiences in the New

World without censoring her thoughts. Unlike Lázaro and other Golden Age picaresque

protagonists who are trying to keep up appearances and/or trying to trick others, Claire is

trying to understand her immediate reality. Furthermore, although Claire’s past is

important to her trans-cultural transformation, it is the present that matters in Claire’s

narrative because it is the postmodern historical observation of the colonial environment

in which she now lives. In addition, as a cross-dressing pícara, Claire’s embodiments represent the narrative of multiple marginal individuals. In other words, Claire transcends her own identity as an individual subject and instead represents the voice of multiple marginal and abject beings. Her cross-cultural-dressing allows her to defend the different individuals she represents.

Throughout Claire’s narrative, her observations reveal the complex and abject reality that marginal beings experience in Mexico. Claire creates an important contrast with the Spaniards by illustrating with detail the abuse of the most vulnerable, in the following quote for example, an unknown elderly and indigenous woman:

Pasa un carro jalado con seis mulas, con gente de propiedad. Para indicar a los indios que han de hacerse a un lado, azotan su látigo de un lado al otro, sin cuidarse de golpearnos como a reses. […] Consigo esquivar un latigazo, tropiezo por hacerlo con otra india, una mujer vieja, que camina con dificultad, y a la que detengo para que no caiga por mi peso. La mantilla de sus hombres se cae. Miro en su brazo marcado un nombre con hierro ardiendo. Como reses. (Boullosa 56)

However, it is Claire’s own experience as an indigenous-mestiza woman in this colonial society that makes her conscious of other abject beings. Through her multiple

embodiments Claire becomes a more discerning witness of the gendered, class, and ethnic hierarchal social norms that dominate every day interactions. Claire indicates that in this society being male and white (here to be understood as Spaniard) guarantees power: “Verme vestida de mujer india la hace [a la de las manos tibias-doña Inés] creerme un ser sin ninguna importancia. Si volviera a mi traje de varón blanco me hablaría con respeto, sería mi fiel criada, daría por mí su vida” (Boullosa 76).

Nevertheless, in contrast to this social power dynamic, Claire also observes and implicitly suggests that the high number of indigenous people in the population also denotes power:

“Somos muchos más los indios que los blancos” (Boullosa 57). This is a self-conscious reflection that subtly suggests a different future for the indigenous and mestizo people of

Mexico. Furthermore, it is also an important observation because Claire includes herself as part of this indigenous ethnic group. Claire continues to explore the power dynamics

(in chapter six) when she consciously compares the different metaphorical monsters that exist in this colonial period. In her comparison she chooses the side of the oppressed. It is in Pedro de Ocejo’s last chapter where Claire is narratively portrayed as a revolutionary leader. Pedro de Ocejo’s chapter reads as a parody of the novela cortesana especially because in this chapter Pedro de Ocejo attempts to portray himself as a heroic knight that saves Claire from her eternal slumber. Pedro de Ocejo, however, fails in his quest of knightly heroism because Claire’s embodiments and autonomy demand an ending in which she can be a leader for the oppressed (the same people she embodies).

Claire’s Simultaneous and Postmodern Embodiments

Claire’s experiences, and especially the experiences she faces when embodying marginal beings, help Claire not only become the revolutionary leader that Pedro de

Ocejo narrates in his last chapter but also become an historical agent. As already mentioned, Claire is a postmodern pícara whose multiple embodiments subject her to the experiences of different abject identities. Oftentimes, however, her embodiments overlap with two or more identities. As it is the case, when Claire is a female cross-dressing

French pirate she becomes Conde Urquiza upon donning the Spaniard’s clothing.

However, before she becomes Conde Urquiza, doña Inés verbally identifies her as a cross-dressing trans-cultural person after she has received the magical water transfusion, as I have analyzed in the previous section. But the revelance of Claire’s multiple embodiments is underlined by herself when she exclaims: “Me visto de india, me visto encima de Conde, me acuesto y me hago el muerto. Al rato entran por mí. Me llevan envuelto en una sábana, me acomodan en el atáud” (Boullosa 41). Narratively, this is the clearest moment where the reader sees how Claire’s identities overlap. This overlapping illustrates the experiences of the historically disenfranchised as well as the experience of individuals that lose their positions of authority. Her overlapping embodiments also function as a narrative parallel to the novel’s Golden Age literary references. Hutcheon writes, in her article “Postcolonial Witnessing – and Beyond,” that when a postmodern text, as is the case with Duerme, begins to dismantle official historical ideology it will often employ the same teleological strategies of historical texts (like the crónica, the novela picaresca, and the novela cortesana) to create a new foundational literary text and a new history (14). In Duerme, Boullosa uses the interconnectedness of these literary

genres to reload the history of Mexico. Though Hutcheon doesn’t specifically write about

Duerme or Boullosa’s literary production, she explains that “marginalized groups may be

driven to use the familiar forms of literary history not by reactionary nostalgia as much as

by need — and political pragmatism” (14). Important to note, however, is that Boullosa’s

text itself is a literary production that is only accessible to an elite group of readers. It is a

text that uses and references specific literary genres (i.e. crónicas) that even in their historical period were not widely popular to the everyday individual, with the exception of the theater. These same texts, even today, are not widely circulated unless in an academic type setting. Keeping this in mind, Boullosa asserts that her literary objective is to dialogue with the different literary genres that she has at her disposal: “Yo reclamo una tradición en que el rigor no se aplica a no poder cambiar de género, sino a dialogar continuamente con las formas, las convenciones, los temas y la lengua literaria de nuestros ancestros” (Hind 50). She positions herself as a knowledgeable postmodern writer that wants to play with the Golden Age literary tradition: “Para mí saltar de género es espontáneo […]. Me cuesta trabajo pensar en una forma decimonónica, en algo más estricto o académico. He querido hacerlo, pero no para respetar los géneros, sino para trasgredirlos o traspasar sus fronteras” (Hind 50). For that reason, the postmodern political pragmatism that appears in postmodern texts like Duerme are “less nostalgic than utopian: they discuss the past, but they aim toward both future progress (from exclusion to inclusion) and a transformative impact on the general cultural narrative into which they move” (Hutcheon 14). In other words, understanding how a postmodern novel such as Duerme addresses history helps the reader understand that each of Claire’s

embodiments not only illustrate Mexico’s foundational and colonial past but also reload

our present historical knowledge of this past.

Moreover, Boullosa states that her historical novels deal with the contemporary realities of Mexico: “Mis escenarios históricos tienen que ver directamente con México, incluso en las novelas de piratas. Me inquieta, y me parece completamente fantástico el panorama de la realidad mexicana contemporánea. No tiene explicación en su propio presente; solamente la tiene en el pasado” (Hind 51). Boullosa also states the historical present should be subjected to revisions just like the historical past: “cuando uno trabaja el presente, como autor, o como autor mexicano, no debe tomarlo como una situación consolidada y sagrada sino como una situación sujeta a revisión y como si fuera el pasado que, aunque esté muy documentado, también está sujeto a revisión” (Hind 51). This is what Claire, the postmodern pícara pirate, does. She makes visible the different experiences that make colonial Mexico and inform contemporary Mexico by revising and reloading history. Claire shows that her multiple identities are not one but many and that each cross-dressing identity she performs aims to include the excluded and marginalized into the historical narratives of the nation. Claire’s fluid and complex identities also show that her embodiments can include both the powerless and the powerful. Claire’s multiple identities are not coherent but contradictory, in the sense that each embodiment can subvert another and that by extension, each narrative can also subvert another narrative. It is this subversion, and not the erasure of it, that reloads history. In her conclusion to

Gender Trouble, Butler writes that it is important “to locate strategies of subversive

repetition enabled by those constructions [of identity], to affirm the local possibilities of

intervention through participating in precisely those practices of repetition that constitute

identity and, therefore, present the immanent possibility of contesting them” (201).

Though Butler’s statement speaks about how identity is created and that it is important to contest its pre-supposed meanings, her statement can also be extended to how Claire’s different cross-dressing performativities contest the “pre-supposed” history that is known in the present.

In her different embodiments Claire never embodies a married woman, a widow, or a nun. This is an important observation because Claire transgresses society’s rules without becoming either of those three identities in the narrative, even though these identities do have the capability of transgressing, as the historical figures Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Catalina de Erauso, la monja alférez demonstrate.40 Furthermore, Claire’s cross-dressing blurs not just gender and identity but also the historical ethnic and social- political hierarchal realities that hegemonic law imposed in colonial Mexico. Yet, as a postmodern pícara, Claire also exposes how sumptuary laws were unable to completely control identity. Claire is a threat to royal authorities because she challenges the laws that attempt to control colonial society. Doña Inés’s explanation to Claire is also the answer to Ascen’s question to my chapter’s epigraph: “Antes, dígame, ¿a qué vino a este pueblo?” (Reygadas, Japón). Though Claire voyaged to the New World to have a new start, it is her ambiguous and hybrid identity, due in part because she is and neither is male nor female, mestizo, a nobleman or someone else in power, but a third entity

40 Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650) was an historical figure who writes an autobiography about her adventures dressed in men’s clothing. She was placed in a Catholic convent at a young age and escaped as a 15 year old wearing men’s clothing. Unlike Sor Juana Inés, Catalina de Erauso found that she was not fit to live a life as a nun. Instead, she chose a life of adventure where she traveled to the New World and participated in military campaigns. For further reading, see Sonia Pérez-Villanueva’s book The Life of Catalina de Erauso, the Lieutenant Nun: An Early Modern Autobiography and Rosie Seagraves’s article “Violent Masculinity Onstage and Off: A Rereading of Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer through the Memoir of Catalina de Erauso.”

arriving to Mexico via the ocean, that gives her the ability to critically discern her new

social environment and also challenge it. Claire came to this “pueblo” to witness and to

challenge the historical constructions that will survive and be replicated throughout

Mexico’s history. Though Claire voyages to the New World searching for a better life for

herself, once she arrives her objectives change; she becomes an immortal trans-cultural being that seeks to insert the excluded by witnessing, challenging, and retelling colonial history.

Doña Inés represents the indigenous female figure with knowledge. However, she doesn’t play the stereotypical role of mentor to Claire. Instead, doña Inés is suspicious of

Claire. Even though doña Inés recognizes that the ocean is the space where Claire first becomes a threat to the Spaniards and yet, she also recognizes that Claire arrived via the ocean, just like the Spaniards did in a recent past. Doña Inés expresses her suspicion of

Claire to the indigenous man that asks Claire to describe the ocean:

—El mar es como una cazuela llena de agua con sal, meneándose siempre un poco […]. […].Cuidado con esta india, Cosme, qué ya pisó el mar… —¿Por qué contestas tú? Dime, francés, ¿cómo es el mar? —Ni por su nombre le hemos preguntado—arguye otro criado—. Yo soy Diego, para servirle. (Boullosa 45-46)

Even though doña Inés is suspicious of Claire, she strategically confirms and protects the cross-dressing appearance of Claire. The ocean like Claire is continuously changing. The above conversation takes place after Conde Urquiza has been buried, and while the other voices address Claire as “francés” as opposed to “francesa” (Claire at this point is now wearing an indigenous woman’s dress), it is doña Inés who verbally protects Claire’s identity by calling her “india.” Doña Inés’s suspicion of Claire is further demonstrated in the fact that she never reveals her name to Claire. Throughout most of the novel, Claire

identifies doña Inés as “la de las manos tibias.” Doña Inés explains that the reason for

not sharing her name is because Claire will never die after the water transfusion.

Consequently, she is suspicious of how Claire will remember her: “usted no se va a morir

nunca, y yo no quiero que usted conozca mi nombre para que me deje a mí estar muerta

en paz. Usted no guardará nada en el silencio de la tumba. No puede morir” (Boullosa

127). The fact that doña Inés doesn’t share her name also indicates her recognition of the

postmodern fluidity of Claire’s identity, and especially because it is she who helped

Claire with the cultural transformation. Moreover, doña Inés knows that Claire’s future role, as an immortal trans-cultural being, is to witness history and not stay silent.

The magical and untainted waters that Claire absorbs (on the left side where her heart is located) transforms her body. This water is a permanent internal cross-dressing.

Claire’s physical transvestism becomes a cultural transvestism.41 By cultural

transvestism, I am specifically referring to the narrative’s combination of Claire’s

multiple cross-dressings with her magical water transfusion. The water defines not only

Claire’s immortal identity but most importantly her cross-cultural identity. In short, the water has replaced Claire’s blood and has altered traditional understandings of gender and cultural identity; furthermore, the water has also created a layer (from the Aztec god

Tlaloc) that offers protection for Claire and that transforms her into a protector of others.

For example, when she assists an elderly indigenous woman in the cobbled streets of

Mexico or when she battles different metaphorical monsters she encounters as a viceregal soldier. Claire’s arrival to the New World, to Mexico, is to expose and challenge the

41 Marjorie Garber in Vested Interests uses the term tranvestism as a synonym of cross-dressing.

societal rules of colonial Mexico through her different yet simultaneous identities and to reload colonial history.

Conclusion: Reloading Historical Representations

Though a fictional story with fictional characters, Duerme can be considered as part of Latin America’s nueva novela histórica. Boullosa, in this text, purposely recreates a historical period that will shape future constructions of Mexicanidad as well as future historical representations. Claire’s experiences, because of her cultural transvestism

(Garber’s “third entity”), allows her and the reader the opportunity to explore history’s

‘third dimension’ (Pfeiffer 267). Even though Garber’s work focuses on queer identity, her postulation of a “third entity” helps inform the way in which Claire’s multiple embodiments is an alternative option to dichotomous categories. And although Erna

Pfeiffer, in her article “Las novelas históricas de Carmen Boullosa: ¿una escritura posmoderna?,” specifically uses the phrase “tercera dimensión,” and almost in passing, when speaking about one of Boullosa’s other novels, Son vacas, somos puercos (1991), she uses the phrase as a way to explain the reader’s role in constructing an image of historical knowledge: “Es una apuesta histórica, como lo fue la utopía violenta de los filisbusteros; sin moraleja explícita, más bien una adivinanza, un juego de errores, donde el lector/la lectora misma tiene que detectar lo faltante, las ausencias, o bien un dibujo tridimensional, donde con ‘ojo mágico’ hay que descubrir la tercera dimensión, que es la que conforma la imagen” (267). To continue, each of Claire’s cross-dressing performances illustrate the different social (ethnic, racial, class, gender, etc.) categories created in colonial society, but it is her cultural transvestism that makes these different

performativities visible, she puts them on stage. Similarly, Claire’s cultural transvestism puts history on stage, she exposes history’s constructions. Official history (here I correlate it to performativity) reiterates the story of the victors but in each reiteration the silences and omissions become visible, and this is that third historical dimension that

Claire’s cultural transvestism uncovers for the reader. This third historical dimension is a postmodern space that includes multiple and overlapping ambiguities and juxtapositions.

It is a space where the reader is forced to actively reload his or her innate understanding of Mexican history by recognizing the gaps, the absences, and the silences in history.

Especially because the historical period illustrated in Duerme represents a moment when rules delineating socio-political structures were being established. This is a period when the victors (for example, the authors of crónicas, poetry, novels, comedias, etc.) were recording their perspectives about the society in which they lived. Early colonial Mexico was a moment of change and those able to put pen to paper interpreted the interactions and constructions of this historical moment. Pfeiffer explains that Boullosa’s literary corpus is for the most part dedicated to telling the side of the victims or the ones who lost: “La escritora […] siempre se pone del lado de las causas perdidas, de los vencidos, de lo silenciado y olvidado” (259). Throughout Claire’s narrative she illustrates the other side by questioning who documents history. It is her identity, the simultaneous being and not being (male, female, pirate, indigenous, advisor, etc.), that allows her to question history and reveal history’s missing parts. In short, Claire shows how each one of her embodiments experienced colonial societal rules but it also shows how each embodiment illustrated a different world view. Claire is able to see these different world views

because she experiences reality through the different abject persons that, though oft

ignored, romanticized, or disparaged by official history, make colonial Mexico.

In closing, Boullosa uses Claire’s multiple and simultaneous identities to reload

not only Mexico’s early colonial history but also to reload how the present remembers

this historical past. She does this through intertextuality as well, by parodying Golden

Age literary genres. Boullosa’s text forces the reader to recreate not a chronological order of history but a historical moment that informs future representations of Mexicanidad.

Merrim writes that Sor Juana’s 17th century was a transitional time that revealed both

“difference and fixity to instability” (40). And although Boullosa places Claire in a much

earlier period, Boullosa presents this period as the moment when constructions of

“difference and fixity to instability” begin. She does this in order to link Mexican history

to that specific past. For example, Boullosa’s novel illustrates the power that the Viceroy

has in deleting history by demanding silence from his subjects. In the following chapter,

“La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora: Histories and Mexicanidades Reloaded,”

Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz also attempts to silence witnesses of the Tomochic battle.

The similarities in Boullosa’s novel and Domecq’s novel extend to the way in which the

protagonists recognize the marginality of the indigenous, mestizo, and the poor. Whereas

Boullosa sets her novel in early colonial Mexico, Domecq sets her novel in the late 1800s

to early 1900s. Boullosa explores and undermines Mexico’s official historical

representations by reloading history’s silences and inconsistencies into historical literary

narrative. Domecq like Boullosa, as will be explored in the following chapter, reloads

Mexican history and Mexicanidades by exploring the way history remembers and records

an important historical figure, Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora.

CHAPTER TWO

La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora: Histories and Mexicanidades Reloaded

“Usted que es hombre vestido y mujer sin ropas no merece la muerte. No va a morir hoy en la horca, délo por seguro. Permita sólo que vacíe un poco más de agua en su herida. Es agua de los lagos de los tiempos antiguos." (Duerme 27)

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora: Fiction, History, Myth, Legend

La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (1990), written by Mexican novelist

Brianda Domecq, portrays the life of Teresa Urrea, an important historical figure in pre-

Revolutionary Mexico. Whereas the fictional character in Duerme is historically placed during the colonial period, a moment in which Mexico is still under Spanish rule, La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora takes place several decades post-Independence movements. In a similar manner to Duerme’s fictional character Claire, Teresa Urrea emerged as the champion to indigenous groups and the destitute in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Mexico’s northwestern states and would be recognized by these communities as the “Santa de Cabora.”42 Her alias would be central to her role as a leader. Especially because the implication of the first part of this alias, Santa (a title bestowed through an official Catholic beatification process and which is not the case here), served a double function, it allowed Teresa Urrea to provide spiritual as well as social-political protection to her followers. While she became a radicalizing force for indigenous groups and the peasantry in the Northern territories, the Santa de Cabora, also became an essential figure to the intellectuals and activists that opposed the dictatorship

42 Teresa Urrea’s alias, Santa de Cabora, will not be italicized throughout the document. 81

of Porfirio Díaz at the turn of the century.43 Teresa Urrea’s popularity, as a saintly- protector figure of the less fortunate and as a recognized local figure for the intellectual class in the late 1880s up until Urrea’s death in 1906, was seen as a threat to several social-political groups in the area: the dictatorship and its regional control in northwest

Mexico, the local latifundistas or owners of large estates of the same area, and the foreign businessmen allied to the Porfiriato and who were also investors in the region.

In this chapter, I explore the ways in which La insólita historia de la Santa de

Cabora interconnects histories (the life of Teresa Urrea, the Tomochic uprising, the

Porfirio Díaz dictatorship, and the Mexican Revolution), fiction, myth, and legend.

Domecq intertwines the myth and legend of the Santa de Cabora with historical details as a way to underscore how the objectives of the Díaz regime negatively affected the day-today lives of indigenous and peasant peoples. I will show that Domecq strategically revises both the historical figure of Teresa Urrea and the historical events that she inspired; ultimately, I show how Domecq’s writing results in reloading the historical moment that challenged the Porfiriato in northern Mexico as well as the gender roles at

the turn of the century. In the first section titled “Women in the Historical Narrative

Discourse” I write about how women writing history and women in history in 19th

century Latin America relate to Domecq’s text and to Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. In

the section that follows, “The Many faces of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora,” I trace the

many characteristics attributed to Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora by her followers and

detractors. In “Historicizing the Construction of a Cultural Myth: From Teresa Urrea to

Santa de Cabora” I write about Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s historical mythification

43 See Paul Garner’s book Porfirio Díaz (2001) and Georgina García Gutiérrez Vélez’s article, “En busca de una autor perdido. Una vida de novela: la novela de una vida,” in the anthology of Frías’s work, La escritura enjuiciada (2008). These sources mention the opposition to Díaz’s rule and government.

in popular culture and how it redefines historical “truths.” I also look at the ways in which the novel follows characteristics attributed to Latin America’s New Historical

Novel. I consider the ways the two illustrated periods, past and present, offer a historical continuation of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. In the last section, “A Close Reading:

Reloading the Santa de Cabora’s History-Story,” I explore how the unnamed historian’s journey to Mexico’s Northwest is part of her archival revision of history. I study the ways in which Teresa Urrea and Mexico’s history is intrinsically connected to an indigenous worldview about life and knowledge through her mentors, Huila and doña Rosaura

(secondary characters in the novel).

In the novel, the historical portrayal of Teresa Urrea sets the narrative’s biographical framework while also revealing alternative feminist interpretations of

Mexican history and of Mexicanidad.44 The novel follows the biographical events and history of Teresa Urrea’s life in order to grapple with the facts that official history has deleted. It approaches these facts from a perspective that underlines “other” socio-cultural aspects of the period and it also focuses on specific communities that were erased from the official historical discourse of the Mexican Revolution. In an interview with Gabriela de Beer four years after the novel’s first publication, Domecq explains that “the structure of the book is historical. All of Teresa’s life and basic facts are true. What is not historical is the development of the plot” (133). The novel is written deliberately using both historical records of Urrea and a fictional plot in order to illustrate the different

44 Joan W. Scott in “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” explains that when the historical focus is on women’s history both the methodology changes as well as the historical concepts about that period (1057). Scott writes that it is important “to scrutinize our methods of [historical] analysis, clarify our operative assumptions, and explain how we think change occurs. […] We must ask more often how things happened in order to find out why they happened” (1067).

understandings and interpretations of Teresa Urrea as a figure during her lifetime and

afterwards.45

Domecq wrote this text throughout the 1980s and publishes it in 1990. These

dates are significant because they offer a continuation in dialogue between the historical

figure of Teresa Urrea and the 1970s fictional researcher in the novel with the non-

fictional author-researcher (Domecq) in 1980 and 1990. It is the inclusion of this fictional

character as a secondary protagonist in the narrative that helps structure the two time

periods in the novel. Furthermore, these above dates mark 1) the centennial of Teresa

Urrea’s birth in 1873 and 2) her growing recognition in the late 1880s by indigenous

groups and mestizo communities in the region for her abilities in healing the sick and 3)

her involvement in the 1890s and 1900s with the Mexican intellectual class that stood in

opposition to Porfirio Díaz. These last dates also mark the relevance that Teresa Urrea

obtains in the 1980’s for writers like Domecq, who through fiction actively participate in

the historical feminist revision process, with the specific aim of making the presence of

women in all realms of our societies visible.

Constructed into three major parts framed by a prologue and an epilogue, La

insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora illustrates how Teresa Urrea is both recognized

and forgotten in history. Teresa Urrea was recognized by the people who sought her

healing abilities and paradoxically also recognized by the people who disparaged her

45 La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (1990) is the first novel in Mexico since Heriberto Fría’s last edition of Tomochic (1906) that brings to the forefront Teresa Urrea as an important historical figure in pre- Revolutionary Mexico. According to Marina Pérez de Mendiola in her study Gender and Identity Formation in Contemporary Mexican Literature, Lauro Aguirre also wrote a book about Teresa Urrea titled La santa de Cabora (1902) but is “a ‘lost’ bibliographical item” (54). There are other works about Teresa Urrea published in English in the United States: Santa Teresa: A Tale of the Yaquii Rebellion (1900) by William Thomas Whitlock, Teresita (1978) by William Curry Holden, and both The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005) and Queen of America (2011) by Luis Alberto Urrea.

persona and her community work. Even though during her lifetime Teresa Urrea was recognized by supporters and detractors, she would nevertheless be forgotten and set aside in the compilation of official historical events and figures that led to the Mexican

Revolution. Yet, it is Teresa Urrea’s lasting connection to the community and to regional events that make her an unforgettable historical figure. She however is a historical figure that is and is not because of the different roles she embodied during her short lifespan—a healer, a regional leader that opposed the Porfiriato, an indigenous and mestiza girl with humble beginnings, a natural daughter (later recognized in her teenage years) to a regional hacendado, and toward the end of her life, a wife and mother. As such, she becomes a historical figure with a presence and an absence from the history/History of

Mexico because of these different roles. In other words, as a healer, wife, and/or mother she does not have the same “historical appeal” in the documentation of traditional history as she would if she was simply a regional, single, and charismatic mestiza leader opposing the political status quo. But it is precisely this multiplicity in roles that makes

Teresa Urrea stand out as a historical figure. In her book, Mexico’s Nobodies, B.

Christine Arce explains that this “is and is not” is a national narrative paradox that

“monumentalizes a few heroes at the expense of others, [and] neglects the anonymous many who helped create this problematic sense of [a Mexican] ‘nation’” (3). In that sense, both Teresa Urrea and her supporters respectively represent the hero and the anonymous others that have been relegated to the footnotes of Mexico’s national narrative. Domecq, however, reloads history by rearranging the placement of these historical footnotes in a biographical narrative. Domecq underscores how historical footnotes of Teresa Urrea and the events she inspired regionally and nationally are

fundamental to Mexican history/History and Mexicanidad. Domecq accomplishes this by

detailing the biographical and the historical events of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora and intertwining them with the minutiae of daily life in a carefully crafted fictional plot.

The first part of the novel illustrates Teresa Urrea as a natural child searching for a sense of belonging in her father’s land. In this section political events related to the

Porfiriato are referenced. This first section focuses on Teresa’s formative years as a young girl often abused by her maternal family and viewed as an oddity by her community. The second part of the novel shows the ways Teresa Urrea’s near death experience makes her emerge as a healer and a leader to marginal indigenous and mestizo communities and also to anti-Porfiriato political activists. It is in this second part of the novel that don Tomás Urrea, Teresa Urrea’s father, recognizes Teresa Urrea as a legitimate daughter and in doing so gives her access to a different social existence, one that comes with some level of power. Teresa Urrea actively uses her new social position, especially after her near death experience, to help others (the indigenous and mestizo— the anonymous “nobodies”) and to also challenge others (the Porfiriato and his supporters, including the Church) through her humanitarian deeds. The third part of the novel depicts Teresa Urrea’s adult life in forced exile as well as her death in the

Southwest United States. In this section, even though still in exile, Teresa continues to work as a healer and a leader. As such, even though she no longer resides within the borders of Mexico, the Porfiriato considers her a continued regional threat to northwest

Mexico.46 Important to also note in the three part division of the novel, is that in the first part of the novel and in the epilogue Domecq includes the narrative of a present day

46 Though Teresa is in exile, the fact that she lives in the Southwest United States indicates her close ties to the Mexican Northwest. Furthermore, it illustrates that national borderlines cannot split the regional contact that exists between its people.

scholar.47 The inclusion of a second narrative and unnamed protagonist lays out the

format in which history, truths, myths, and fiction are intertwined as a way to question

and also offer alternative understandings of turn-of-the-century Mexican history. It is through the scholar’s research experiences, from the very start of the first chapter, that historical gaps and inconsistencies regarding the figure of Teresa Urrea are exposed.48

These historical gaps are exposed through the scholar’s research and physical

journey from the Mexican Capital to Mexico’s Northwestern states. The physical

locations featured in the novel are an important characteristic that help identify the

historical importance of the Santa de Cabora. This physical landscape is also an important

backdrop to Teresa Urrea’s birth, not just as a person but as a healer and leader. The

Mexican Northwest is depicted as open landscapes and forgotten towns. The Mexican

capital, historically the center of power, is geographically removed from the Mexican

Northwest and consequently, out of touch with the realities of this northern territory.

Oftentimes the Mexican capital only remembers these spaces when there is a strategic use

for them. The depiction of the Northwest topography reveals the social spaces that

populate this same region. And it is these physical and social out of reach spaces that are

at the margins that are seen as a threat the Porfiriato’s centralized control.

The unnamed researcher in the novel is a historian who represents not only one of

the feminist trends of the 1970s (that consisted in recuperating historical women that

47 This present-day scholar is most likely the third person narrative voice. 48 The unnamed historian illustrates the anxieties felt by female academics in the 1970s when grappling with the absence of formidable female figures and the lack of material sources. Informing the feminists of this time period is Simone de Beauvoir’s text The Second Sex (1949). In her work De Beauvoir questions and outlines the treatment and mythification of women/a woman in the first half of the 20th century through her examination of many renowned male authors of the last several centuries. Domecq’s interview with De Beer hints at this concern too, although she is specifically referring to women as writers by arguing that their work must be seen as a literary corpus.

played important roles in history, literature, the arts, and the social sciences), but also the importance of literary fiction as a method to fill the silences and the erasures of the hegemonic historical narratives. Elena Grau-Lleveria, in her article “Narrative Strategies in the Construction of a New Historical Novel: Libertad en llamas by the Panamanian

Author Gloria Guardia,” explains that the narrator as protagonist assists in revealing “the fictional side of history as well as the historical side of fiction” (460). As a narrator, the historical researcher constructs a discourse that includes both the historical data and the mythical narratives that envelope the life and story of the Santa de Cabora. This is in fact the way in which Mexicanidad is reloaded in the novel, from historical and artistic feminist perspectives. Domecq’s use of fiction to tell the story of the Santa de Cabora is a way to emphasize the cultural myth (of the Santa de Cabora) created by the same communities that Teresa Urrea championed. It is through the unnamed narrator- historian’s journey, both physical and intellectual, that the cultural meanings that these communities bestowed on the Santa de Cabora are recuperated. It is these same social and ethnic communities that differentiate the historical figure (with a legal name, Teresa

Urrea) to the mythical figure (with a cultural name, the Santa de Cabora).

The novel’s feminist worldview is constructed by using several narrative strategies that underline how traditional methods of historical research fall short when examining women’s history. Drawing on three feminist historians, Joan W. Scott quotes, in her article “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” that the inclusion and redefinition of women in history must “‘encompass [the] personal, [the] subjective

experience as well as the public and political activities’” (1054).49 As such, one of the

most prominent strategies that Domecq uses in the novel, in order to include and redefine

the role of Teresa Urrea in history, is through the use of the unnamed narrator-historian,

who reviews the historical silences that surround events leading to the Mexican

Revolution. By strategically using a narrator-historian, the novel allows the reader to

connect two time periods, a pre-revolutionary and a post-revolutionary Mexico, and it

allows to uncover the important historical figure of Teresa Urrea, that had been relegated

to footnotes in canonical Mexican history.50 According to Robert McKee Irwin’s

explanation in his article “Santa Teresa de Cabora (and Her Villainous Sister Jovita)”

because Urrea was a historical figure “shape[d] largely outside of lettered culture” she

didn’t “enter any kind of ‘official’ historiography” (91). This happens, writes Grau-

Lleveria, because “history is […] the invention of the group of people in power who try

to propagate their version of events, their interpretations, and the implications that those

interpretations have for creating the sense of what ‘really’ happened” (461).

The closest official historiography of Teresa Urrea is recorded in the regional

presses such as the borderland press, the Mexican capital press, and the United States

press, but even these portrayed her in different ways that consequently indicated each

regions perspective. For example, the borderland press represented Teresa Urrea as “an

embarrassment” and “a fraud. This portrayal, however, was in response to the mocking

49 Scott quotes Ann D. Gordon, Mari Jo Buhle, and Nancy Shrom’s article, “The problem of Women’s History” in Berenice A. Carroll’s edition Liberating Women’s History (1976). 50 Even in turn-of-the-century literature Teresa Urrea functions as a footnote. She is hinted at in Heriberto Frías’ first edition of Tomochic (March-April 1893) and later expanded on in the 4th edition (1906). She is also mentioned in Santa Teresa: A Tale of the Yaquii Rebellion (1900) by William Thomas Whitlock. Robert McKee Irwin explains in “Santa Teresa de Cabora (and Her Villainous Sister Jovita)” that Whitlock’s 19th century dime novel (a popular genre at the time) allowed the figure of Urrea “to cross into the realm of the borderland bandit lore” (89). This appropriation of Teresa Urrea by Whitlock in a “bandit” narrative provides a “historical” presence for her in the United States that differs from the one in Mexico, where she isn’t seen as a bandit but as a saint (by her followers) or as an instigator (by the Porfiriato).

representations coming from Mexico City’s press (Irwin 91). The borderland press followed the sentiments depicted by the press in the Mexican capital. Whereas the borderland press revealed its embarrassment, the capital’s press revealed “urban

Mexico’s prejudices of the borderlands as a place of ignorance and fanaticism” (Irwin

91). The press in the Mexican capital portrayed Teresa Urrea’s followers as superstitious and naïve (Iriwn 91). The United States press on the other hand was similarly “reflecting prejudices not [just] about the borderlands, but about Mexico in general” by portraying

Teresa Urrea “as pure entertainment” (Irwin 91). The only press during Teresa Urrea’s lifetime that portrayed her as a serious and legitimate figure was La Ilustración Espírita, a press based in Mexico City and “for which Lauro Aguirre was correspondent (Irwin

91).51

The two historical periods, that are used and ideologically conceptualized in the novel from a feminist point of view, are intertwined in order to create a story that examines and reloads the historical role of Teresa Urrea as the inspiration for the

Tomochic uprising in 1892 in the northern state of Chihuahua, and as someone who contests gender roles during her lifetime and beyond her death in 1906.52 The depiction of two historical periods is part of the author’s feminist project of recuperating the memory of a key female figure in Mexican history, and most importantly, reloading

51 Lauro Aguirre was a family friend of the Urreas. He was also involved historically in activities against the Porfiriato. In La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora he is a secondary character. In the novel he is relentlessly planning different ways to organize different groups to weaken and bring down the Porfiriato. 52 The Tomochic rebellion in 1892 is a precursor to the Mexican Revolution. It is organized by the Mayo indigenous ethnic group as well as the non-indigenous persons of Tomochic, Chihuahua (Newell 109). In the same year there is also an uprising led by the Mayo people in Navojoa, Sonora (“Santa Teresa,” Irwin 89). The town of Cabora is north of Navojoa and approximately 32 miles through mountainous terrain, both towns are in Sonora. Tomochic is situated North-west of Cabora. They are separated by 240 miles of mountainous terrain. I located these distance differences using Google Maps. Google Maps offers different possible routes, most importantly though, it shows an approximate distance between each of these towns and the terrain in which they are located.

Mexican history from a feminist perspective, represented in the character of the historian- narrator.

The historian-narrator in the novel is an individual attempting to capture the missing facts that history overlooked by looking at the cultural myth surrounding the

Santa de Cabora. This character’s aim is to produce an official historical archive about the Santa de Cabora. This character, however, also represents a historian that intertwines history and fiction; her use of fiction is the creative process used to document the story of

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. Hayden White, in his seminal text Metahistory, terms this process as “narrative prose discourse.” It is a concept that assists in thinking of history as

“more comprehensive in scope than the monograph or archival report” (ix). For White, historical texts that document history in a comprehensive manner are encouraging because the lines between fact, fiction, and myth are blurred. Herman Paul, in his book

Hayden White: The Historical Imagination, explains that the conceptualization of narrative prose discourse “was White’s answer to the questions of how to relate history and myth, or reason and imagination” (13).53 For White, historical texts that explain the

reasons and links that lead to important historical events demonstrate the importance of

the creative process during the piecing of facts:

It is sometimes said that the aim of the historian is to explain the past by

“finding,” “identifying,” or “uncovering” the “stories” that lie buried in

53 Herman Paul’s book Hayden White is a study on White’s intellectual work on history. Paul explains that it is important to note that Hayden White’s views on history often changed and “were rooted in specific historical situations, social structures, political realities, and generational sensitivities” (vii). And although his views evolved, “White’s interest was anything by confined to the historical discipline: his prime interest was historical imagination, in and (especially) outside the ivory tower of professional scholarship” (8). This aspect of White’s intellectual scholarship is in par with Domecq’s Santa de Cabora project. Furthermore, White’s Metahistory is published in 1973 which corresponds with the period in which both the fictional character in the novel, the unnamed historian-narrator, and Domecq conduct their research.

chronicles; and that the difference between “history” and “fiction” resides

in the fact that the historian “finds” his stories, whereas the fiction writer

“invents” his. This conception of the historian’s task, however, obscures

the extent to which “invention” also plays a part in the historian’s

operations. (White 6-7)

The unnamed historian’s research on the Santa de Cabora functions as an uncovering of

the political and social changes occurring under the Porfiriato. And though the novel

does not specifically mention the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the Tomochic uprising

taken up in Teresa Urrea’s name directly precedes it and is one of many events that led

directly to it.54 The regional events that lead to and follow the Tomochic uprising are the

background to Teresa Urrea’s ascent as the Santa de Cabora. As the contemporary reader

can only know in hindsight, these events created leaders that would become either

legendary or forgotten figures. For that reason, the implementation of historical and

mythical details of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora, as a historical-mythical figure, is an

opportunity to reload 20th and 21st century conceptualizations of histories and

Mexicanidades before and after the Mexican Revolution.

It is through Teresa Urrea’s story that Domecq fictionalizes the history behind this

real-life figure to present a leader that belongs to “another” historical discourse with

distinctive rhetorical modes than those traditionally associated with the popular caudillos.

This historical discourse is composed primarily of the fact that Teresa was either known through word of mouth or because a few newspapers and novels during her lifetime

54 The first chapter of the novel indirectly establishes the historical context that the unnamed historian investigates: “Teresa había muerto apenas unos meses antes de que su amigo, junto con los hermanos Flores Magón, firmara el Programa del Partido Liberal Mexicano en San Luis, Misouri; […] ¿Había vivido Lauro la Revolución cuando sobrevino por fin?” (Domecq 12).

documented her story (even if only bits and pieces and at that, exaggerated). Since Teresa

Urrea was an indigenous-mestizo woman and her reputation was at odds with the political

goals of the Porfiriato (as expressed in the newspapers of the time) and later even with

the caudillo leaders of the Mexican Revolution, she never enters the field of official

historical knowledge.55 It is my purpose, in the sections to follow, to demonstrate how history can be and is reloaded when mythical, legendary, and even epic narratives are included as necessary and important “documents” and how the means to do this historical reloading may and must at times include narrative fiction.

Teresa Urrea’s leadership did not fit into the historical representations of either

the mid-to-late 19th century caudillos or especially the Revolutionary caudillos because

her power resided not in a patronage system or in taking up arms (whether it be by guns

or by pen and paper) against the Porfiriato but in taking up the physical and even the emotional health of the poor through the art of healing. Raymond Th. J. Buve in his

article about Tlaxcalan leaders, “Peasant Movements, Caudillos and Land Reform during

the Revolution (1910-1917) in Tlaxcala, Mexico,” explains that Mexico was

characterized by two types of caudillos: those who emerged after Mexico’s Independence

(1810-1821) and established power through “control of hacienda-systems” and those who emerged during the Porfiriato (1876-1911) and gained power through “political patronage on the basis of indirect distribution of favours in exchange for loyalty and services” (118, 120). Porfirio Díaz was a caudillo figure himself. He used his military

55 In the years following the Mexican Revolution a political and social agenda based on the ideals of the Mexican Revolution was created to establish historical unity for a 20th century Mexican nation. The publication of a new Mexican Constitution on February 5, 2017 was the start of this project. Essays, novels, and films in the following decades would assist in creating a national sense of Mexicanidad. For example, José Vasconcelos’s thesis on mestizaje as a national objective in La raza cósmica (1925) and Octavio Paz’s proposal in establishing distinct characteristics that define Mexican identity in his seminal book El laberinto de la soledad (1950).

experience and political contacts, as well as his charisma as a leader, to gain and establish power in the second half of the 19th century.56 Alejandro Quintana in his book, Maximino

Ávila Camacho and the One-Party State, states that the Mexican Revolution generated a new group of caudillos that would “fill the vacuum of power created by the collapse of the dictator” (3).57 Buve explains that “the political revolution aimed at the fall of the ancient régime legitimized the personal power ambitions of the revolutionary caudillos” during the Mexican Revolution (120). The social, political, and regional role of the caudillo, albeit differently, continued to function during the Mexican Revolution. This difference was due to the fact that many local leaders of the Revolution were concerned about their community’s access to resources and not only their ascent to power. Buve writes that Tlaxcalan revolutionary leaders, for example, “combined personal ambition for power with the collective desire of their group for a higher economic status, especially access to land and water, and better labour conditions” (121). It is this latter part, the concern over the livelihood of the collective group, that makes the caudillos of the Mexican Revolution stand out.

Though Buve doesn’t write specifically about Francisco “Pancho” Villa and

Emiliano Zapata, today at a national level and to Mexican communities on this side of the

56 Porfirio Díaz is elected President of México for the first time in 1876-1880. He is reelected again in 1884 and would hold office until1911 when he’s forced into exile. Though he goes to Spain first, he will live in France until his death in 1915. The Mexican Revolution marks the end of his dictatorship. He won his first election on a platform of anti-reelection against President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. However, he would break his platform promise several years later. Díaz’s chosen successor, Manuel Gonzalez, between 1880 and 1884 was a close ally and friend of his, and functioned Díaz’s placeholder and as his political puppet. During that in between period Díaz traveled abroad to the United States and returned several years later to run for his second term as President. 57 Quintana’s book focuses on the rise of General Maximino Camacho as a powerful regional caudillo following the Mexican Revolution. He explains that caudillos are strongly associated with the independence and civil wars of the 19th century: “Caudillo literally means ‘head’ […]. In Latin America, the word ‘caudillo’ is strongly identified with powerful and charismatic leaders, and more often refers to ‘war heroes’ from independence or from any other of the many wars and battles of the nineteenth century” (1-2).

border, both are two of the most recognizable popular revolutionary caudillos who in differing ways sought access to resources for their communities and followers.58

Quintana notes that the most recognized revolutionary caudillos were Álvaro Obregón,

Francisco Villa, and Emiliano Zapata: “Álvaro Obregon emerged as the constitutionalist caudillo, while Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata emerged as the caudillos defending the interests of the poor and oppressed” (3). It is Villa and Zapata however that were recognized as the people’s caudillos and continue to be recognized as such. The revolutionary caudillos, whether for the political class like Obregon or for the people like

Villa and Zapata, are embedded culturally; they are remembered through official history as well as oral and visual history and have become examples of a type of Mexicanidad.59

Although the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary conflicts transformed class relations and notions of Mexicanidad, they did not appear to have upended gender relations, at least not according to official history books that study that period.60 The Santa de Cabora, not traditionally included among the names of the popular caudillos, embodied the characteristics of the local revolutionary caudillo concerned with the plight of the poor and oppressed. She however was female and unlike the popular revolutionary heroes

58 One reason Villa and Zapata are remembered at the national level is because their lives were cut short in a tragic way. Both men were assassinated. They also happen to be contemporaries of Teresa: Teresa Urrea (1873-1906), Francisco Villa (1878-1923), and Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919). Their short life spans and manner of deaths (Urrea in exile) add to their legendary appeal. 59 There are other revolutionary caudillos that would become powerful regional individuals in the 1920s: “Adalberto Tejeda in Veracruz, Lucio Blanco in Coahuila, Saturnino Cedillo in San Luis Potosí, and Salvador Alvarado in Yucatán” (Quintana 23). Many of these individuals gained wealth and land through abusive tactics after the Revolution. Unless one studies Mexican history or is closely familiar with these regions these names are not the first that come to mind when speaking about renown revolutionary caudillos. 60 Works such as John Womack, Jr.’s Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (1968), Jesús Silva Herzog two volume Breve historia de la Revolución Mexicana, volume I. Los antecedents y la etapa maderista and volume II. La etapa constitucionalista y la lucha de facciones (1972), Friedrich Katz’s De Díaz a Madero: Orígenes y estallido de la Revolución Mexicana (2005), and Alan Knight’s La Revolución mexicana. Del porfiriato al nuevo régimen constitucional (2012) among others, look at the various aspects before, during, and after the Mexican Revolution that make it such an important historical moment. These works don’t speak about gender relations during this historical period.

Urrea tended directly to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the poor. Her

actions and the belief in her healing powers by her followers alters the image of the

revolutionary heroes epitomized by figures like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.

Teresa Urrea’s mode of leadership and expression was through her ability to heal

others; this overlooked skill gave her access to the communities she would directly help

and inspire. By interacting directly with the communities around her without expectations, that is, by not seeking any type of political favors, as was the case with regional leaders during the Porfiriato, Teresa Urrea’s popularity and influence increased.

The novel’s historian-narrator presents the Santa de Cabora as a historical-mythical figure whose actions and words make her a contra-cultural model of a revolutionary leader. Recovering and reloading the multiple and simultaneous embodiments of Teresa

Urrea in the La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora is one way to propose how

Mexicanidad is not bound in a masculine framework but is a complex, live, and manifold way of being. The Santa de Cabora’s embodying of a contra-hegemonic Mexicanidad is represented in many manners in Domecq’s novel. Though Teresa Urrea does not pen her own history she is an agent of her history in this text.

Women in the Historical Narrative Discourse

In nineteenth century Latin America, intellectual women functioned as cultural intermediaries. For these women, the writing became the place where they could subversively participate in the historical narrative discourse that was shaping the new nation. Mary Louise Pratt explains, in her article “Las mujeres y el imaginario nacional en el siglo XIX,” that as cultural intermediaries, within the context of Benedict

Anderson’s argument of imagined communities, the authority of women who wrote was built around their role as both marginal individuals and mediators in a discourse that had excluded them from their participation as citizens and furthermore, made their roles in the newly created nations ambiguous:

Desde el momento que el republicanismo negaba a las mujeres los mismos derechos políticos y legales de los hombres, la relación de las mujeres hacia las ideologías de la nación y la comunidad fraternal imaginaria estuvo fuerte y permanentemente diferenciada de la de los hombres. […] A nivel objetivo, creó dentro de todas las naciones-estado una inmensa estructura de exclusión, comprendiendo plenamente la mitad de todas las clases sociales, incluyendo las élites. (Pratt 54)

Furthermore, Pratt states that the women who did have access to the discourse of these imagined communities were critical participants that challenged the established imagined nation in nuanced ways (55). These 19th century women, lettered individuals and intellectuals in their own right, participated in the construction of the new nation by placing fictional characters in the borders: “las mujeres crean sujetos literarios situados en las fronteras de las ideologías nacionalistas, con un pie dentro de ellas y otro afuera”

(Pratt 56). This placement, at the border, provided an opportunity to incorporate historical figures often set aside and footnoted into official historiography.

The topic of history, according to Joan Torres-Pou in his book Aproximaciones a la narrativa femenina del diecinueve en Latinoamérica, was of key concern in the development of the Latin American romantic novel in the 19th century (7). Female authors in the 19th century held this historical concern as well and in their texts would make reference to historical moments the marked the trajectory of Latin American nation building. These historical moments, that frame and mark Latin American countries, include the Conquest of the Americas, the Colonial period, the Independence movements,

and the Civil Wars (Torres-Pou 7). These historical periods cover both longer and shorter

portions of time. Yet Latin American authors would make use of historical events that

were much closer to their present time. This became a narrative strategy characteristic in

19th century Latin American novels. Especially because the probability that readers were

familiar with a recent historical event was much higher. Nevertheless, a narrative

separation with the historical past, whether it be ten or one hundred years ago, was an

important way to provide critical commentary about the new nation and promote new

ideas to a new citizenry (Torres-Pou 11).

One of the ideas that 19th century female writers promoted was to give narrative prominence to female characters. The use of female characters questioned not only who but also what was recorded into official history:

el cuestionamineto de la historia […] en las mujeres (aliadas o no con el discurso en el poder), se hace todavía más evidente pues, traten el tema que traten, lo que las escritoras de novelas históricas, explícita o implícitamente, proponen es una versión de la historia en la que las figuras femeninas asumen mayor significado y ostentan unas características que no tienen o son mencionadas como algo irrelevante en la historia escrita por hombres, o lo que es lo mismo, en la oficial. (Torres-Pou 11)

Important to underline from Torres-Pou’s statement is the intentional narrative masking in the works of 19th century female writers; these writers deliberately emphasized the importance of forgotten and/or unappreciated female characters in historical events and did so by modeling their texts with narrative strategies already found in historical novels.

One way these female writers accomplished this was to continue using a title and a narrative with a leading national male hero. This male hero intentionally functioned as a disguise to the leading female character. The use of a national male hero guaranteed a

reading audience and most crucially guaranteed an opportunity for a female figure not

only to be historically recognized but also to be remembered in better terms:

La figura masculina les asegura [a las escritoras] la atención del público y, si esa figura es un héroe patrio, también la condescendencia de la crítica; algo que [las escritoras] advierten que no van [el público y la crítica] a obtener de anticipar el nombre de una mujer que […] es desconocida o que, siendo conocida, no se la considera merecedora de una novela. (Torres-Pou 12)

The use of a male figure, furthermore, ensured that any criticism on a female figure was

kept at bay and directed elsewhere (Torres-Pou 12). In short, the use of national male

heroes allowed 19th century female authors the ability for unknown and known historical

female figures to have a documented place in Romantic historical narratives and by

extension, in the history that would ultimately define the new nation-state.

Domecq in the telling of Teresa Urrea employs similar narrative strategies as her

19th century counterparts. Although Domecq’s novel is written in the second half of the

20th century her objective is to also bring forth and document the historical role of an important female figure. Domecq, however, instead of having a male hero as a protagonist, places two female characters as protagonists. Whereas 19th century female

authors had to strategically insert female historical figures next to male hero protagonists,

Domecq from the start, in its title and initial chapters, focuses on female characters. The

title simultaneously demands the attention of its readers and makes a statement about

“history” by deliberately including the leading hero’s alias next to the term

“history”/“historia.” The title creates an enticing ambiguity that leads to the questions:

Who is the Santa de Cabora? And what is this unheard-of history? The title’s phrasing is

a provocative strategy that forces its readers and its critics to begin the process of

unveiling the history of the Santa de Cabora and also of recognizing her as a hero.

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Domecq’s use of the term “history”/“historia” in the title, furthermore, hints at the two meanings the Spanish term implies, a history and a story.61 The term introduces the way in which the novel will intertwine and reload the multiple meanings of history—

history as knowledge, history as a biography, and history as a synonym of fiction and of

narrative argument. The use of the term “history” in the title also addresses the strategic

merging of the historical figure and the historical-mythical figure that Teresa Urrea-Santa

de Cabora represents. The narrative, however, favors the historical-mythical role that

Teresa Urrea as the Santa de Cabora embodied. The aliases in the narrative hint at the

difference between Teresa Urrea as an historical figure and the Santa de Cabora as an

historical-mythical figure. Nevertheless, the embodiment of the Santa de Cabora as both

an historical and a mythical figure creates complex meanings for an official Mexican

history. Domecq’s text seeks to demonstrate how history, literature, and cultural myths

help create different meanings of the Santa de Cabora. From a feminist perspective,

history is important because it cements the Santa de Cabora’s regional presence in turn- of-the-century events. Literature, on the other hand, uncovers and reveals details about the Santa de Cabora that official history is unable to document. While cultural myths, and especially those about femininity, are redefined because Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora doesn’t neatly fit in the categories of Mexico’s cultural myths: la malinche, la

Guadalupana, the mother figure, the prostitute, the angelic female or the femme fatale, to name a few. The use of her nickname in the title is particularly important because it is her

61 Northrop Frye, in his essay “The Koine of Myth: Myth as a Universally Intelligible Language” in Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays, 1974-1988, explains that “the words story and history were originally identical, but they are now distinguished, and the word story seems to lie along an axis extending from history to fantasy” (3). He writes that history was understood as “pure” and “true” whereas stories were “not intended to possess ‘truth’” because they were “fantastic enough to be improbable” and even impossible (3). He nevertheless asserts that “such extremes do not really exist” (3).

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followers, who revolted in her name, that created and bestowed the moniker. Her nickname places emphasis on her healing abilities (as a saint) and locates the regional territory of her birth (from Cabora). And though the title indicates Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora’s culturally historical role, the fact is she is both known and unknown in contemporary Mexican history and as such, is deserving of a novel that introduces her to readers in Mexico and abroad.

Teresa Urrea, however, was already an important regional figure to the Yaqui and

Mayo communities in the Mexican Northwest. For these communities, Teresa Urrea-

Santa de Cabora was the inspiration and the banner used to resist the Porfiriato.

Historically one of the objectives of the Porfiriato, in the name of economic and infrastructural progress (and which only benefitted foreign investors and the wealthy families in the region allied to Díaz), was to suppress the Yaqui and Mayo communities in order to gain access to their lands and rivers. And even when the Porfiriato did manage to suppress these communities, the results were brief. The following example is a fictional conversation in Domecq’s novel where don Tomás Urrea’s foreman explains that the Mayo invoked the Santa de Cabora’s name when they attacked the city-town of

Navojoa:

—Me extraña —dijo Tomás, perplejo—: los mayos han estado pacíficos por más de tres años. ¿Qué crees, Miguel? —Me temo que hay más, patrón. Según algunos informantes, los mayos entraron al poblado gritando. . . —Adelante. —. . . gritando “¡Viva la Santa de Cabora! ¡Muera el mal gobierno!”, y por la dirección que tomaron al huir, se cree vienen hacia acá. (Domecq 262)

This fictional conversation between Teresa Urrea’s father and his foreman highlights how the Santa de Cabora’s name functions as a battle cry and how it simultaneously serves as

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a contrast to “el mal gobierno.” In English the adjective “mal” lends itself to either “bad”

or “evil.” The Mayos make a contrast between good and evil by specifically making use of the phrases “viva”/“long live” the Santa de Cabora and “muerte al mal gobierno”/“death to the evil government.” Teresa Urrea’s nickname denotes all that is good and the Porfiriato denotes all that is evil. Whereas the phrase “viva la Santa de

Cabora” (long live) expresses loyalty and support for the Santa de Cabora, the phrase

“muerte al mal gobierno” (death to the evil government) illustrates the discontent towards the figure behind the Porfiriato and its allies, especially by those communities who experienced the regime’s atrocities.62.

As a final point, Domecq’s use of history, myth, and fiction in the novel

challenges the idea of an official Mexican history as the only coherent, objective, and

universally true discourse. In Society Must be Defended, Michel Foucault (in the context

of 17th century France) explains that his concept of “regime of truth and error” is a

concept that “is neither true nor false” (164). The concept “regime of truth” suggests that

there is “a certain division between truth and error” and that historical discourse (in this

case the 17th century French historian Henri de Boulainvillier’s discourse) can be “wrong

about the details” (164). Foucault explains that once “a group, a nation, a minority, or a

class [became aware of knowledge and the knowledge of force], it became possible to

constitute a historico-political field, and to make history function within the political

struggle” (164). He explains that “this is how the organization of a historico-political

field begins. At this point, it all comes together: History functions within politics, and

politics is used to calculate historical relations of force” (Foucault 164). In a similar

62 Some of these atrocities include the taking of lands, the suppression of protests, and the forced migration and labor of Yaqui men to the Yucatán peninsula, to name a few.

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manner, Domecq dialogues with the political history of her time. She distinctly dialogues

with official history and with the historical novels of the 19th century. It is this manifold

dialogue that reloads Mexican history in the text: the fiction supplements the gaps of

official history and does so by using a female historical figure as leader of indigenous and

peasant communities.

The Many Faces of Teresa Urrea-La Santa de Cabora

One of the purposes of La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora is to expand on

what the 19th century novel Tomóchic (1893, 1906), written by former Mexican federal soldier Heriberto Frías, only outlines in regards to Teresa Urrea’s role in the Tomóchic battle. This is a battle that the residents of the Mexican capital were not aware of due to physical distance. It is also a battle, because of this same distance, that the Porfiriato used to quietly suppress its dissenters. Linda Hutcheon in her article “Postcolonial Witnessing

– and Beyond: Rethinking Literary History Today” explains that after reflecting on her earlier research on literary history she “found in examining the intersection of literary history and identity politics [...] that teleological model of national literary history has proved a most attractive means of legitimizing and authorizing the literary production of other groups” (14). Hutcheon explains that “if the historical narratives of some of today’s minoritized literatures do look similar in form to nineteenth-century narratives of nationhood, it may be because the respective group’s political as well as scholarly goals are not so very different” and that “marginalized groups may be driven to use the familiar forms of literary history not by any reactionary nostalgia as much as by need—and political pragmatism” (14). Tomóchic is a turn-of-the-century text that models 19th

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century novels in order to speak about a historical event that exposes the atrocities of the

Porfiriato. Furthermore, it is a text that in a public forum, in El Demócrata, lets its readers in the Mexican capital know about the Santa de Cabora as the leader who inspired the battle of Tomóchic.63 Frías’s inclusion of the Santa de Cabora, as a first witness

account, is part of his narrative strategy to tell the story of the Tomóchic expedition.64

Frías’s first edition of Tomóchic briefly introduces, in the initial chapters of his narrative,

the figure of the Santa de Cabora. It is in his later editions that additional details about

the Tomóchic battle and the Santa de Cabora are included. These additional inclusions

place Teresa Urrea within a literary history that Domecq recognizes as important.

Whereas Frías’s main goal was to expose the violence behind the government’s

Tomóchic expedition and generally outline the factors that led to the rebellion, Domecq’s

goal is to cement the Santa de Cabora’s place in a literary as well as an historical

tradition.

Antonio Saborit, in his introduction to the English translation of Frías’s novel,

“Introduction: Accusations, Confessions, and Proclamations,” explains that Frías did not incorporate some details in his first publication in 1893 due to the work’s proximity to the actual Tomóchic battle in the fall of 1892 (xiv). Porfirio Díaz had sent a military battalion to Tomóchic to suppress the uprising occurring in the region due to the “severe

63 Tomóchic, a small village town located in Mexico’s Northwest, becomes a battleground between the local indigenous and mestizo community and the Porfiriato. Tomóchic belongs to the Municipality of Guerrero located in Chihuahua, a Mexican Northwestern state that shares a border with New Mexico and Texas. Tomóchic is also situated in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain chain. This mountain chain extends from the border of Southern Arizona to most of Mexico’s Western states. The landscape is an important backdrop that helps explain the divisions between the Porfiriato and remote towns like Tomóchic.

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agricultural crisis that threatened to damage the social and political order” of the

Chihuahuan capital (xix).65 Frías was part of this military battalion; he was a witness as

well as a participant in the suppression. Frías’s first installment of ¡Tomóchic! (Episodios

de campaña. Relación escrita por un testigo presencial) is published soon after in March

1893 in the journal El Demócrata. The parenthetical explanation following the title

clearly indicates that what will be narrated is a first witness account of the suppression of

the Tomóchic rebellion. For that reason, the director of El Demócrata, Joaquin Clausell,

takes necessary precautions in concealing the identity of Frías. The narrative details in the

novel’s original installments exposed a massacre that the Mexican people in the Mexican

capital were unaware of:

La obra apareció por entregas en el periódico de oposición a la dictadura de Porfirio Díaz con el objetivo, sugerido en su titular, de ofrecer la versión atestiguada de los hechos acaecidos en Tomochic. La población de todo el país no estaba al tanto de la masacre en Chihuahua, porque la prensa oficialista no sólo no había informado a sus lectores, sino que cuando se ocupó de la campaña fue para restarle importancia o para elogiar las dimensiones de la represión. (García Gutiérrez Vélez 22)

Tomóchic first consisted of 24 installments that were published between the months of

March and April 1893.66 In the fourth edition of Tomóchic, 1906, three new chapters

65 During the Porfiriato the construction of monuments were commissioned as a way to celebrate and establish Mexico’s national heroes during a period of economic and infrastructural progress. These commemorative projects were to function as a visual legitimization of his presidency. Barbara A. Tenenbaum in her article “Streetwise History: The Paseo de la Reforma and the Porfirian State, 1876- 1910” explains that “the Porfirians wanted the [21 August 1887 unveiling of the Cuauhtémoc] statue to inculcate an official liberal ‘national’ history for the country and create public support for their domination of its present and future” (140). In a similar manner, the suppression of Tomóchic in 1892 served as a reminder and a demonstration of Porfirio Díaz’s power. Saborit explains that “Tomochic was of strategic importance to the Díaz administration because it was on the road over which treasures extracted from the mineral mines of western Chihuahua passed daily” (xix). 66 Nineteenth century historical novels were generally published first as installments in local newspapers or journals before being compiled into a book format. See Amy E. Wright’s article “Novels, Newspapers, and Nation: The Beginnings of Serial Fiction in Nineteenth-Century Mexico” in Building Nineteenth-Century Latin America: Re-Rooted Cultures, Identities, and Nations.

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were added, among them a chapter titled “La Santa de Cabora.”67 This chapter

acknowledges the strong presence of the Santa de Cabora in the Tomóchic region. It

offers details on the public-private image of the Santa de Cabora as well as her influential

role in the region. Furthermore, this new chapter on the Santa de Cabora provides the

physical and psychological descriptions about Teresa Urrea as they were circulating in

the oral history of the time. Before the inclusion of these chapters, the figure of la Santa

only appeared through oral history (which is illustrated with a narrated conversation in

Frías’s novel). In his early editions Frías’s takes this into account. In the third chapter of

the 1899 edition, the Santa de Cabora is described through the voice of a soldadera who

places emphasis on Teresa Urrea as a saintly figure that can bless the Tomóchic civilians

and their weapons: “Afigúrese usted, don Chema … afigúrese quesque Teresita mesma

bendice las carabinas, y cada tiro que avientan es un muerto” (Frías 25).68 The

soldadera’s message is to highlight that Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora is a saintly figure

that exerts holy powers with the simple act of providing blessings. The soldadera’s

phrasing can easily go unnoticed because the topic that matters is the Santa de Cabora’s

divine powers. However, the soldadera’s introductory phrasing, “afigúrese usted,” draws

attention to the extraordinary word-of-mouth stories that circulated about the Santa de

Cabora at the turn of the century. It is a phrase that announces to the listener that this is

67 Daniel Chávez, in “Tomochic: Nationalist Narrative, Homogenizing Late Nineteenth-Century Discourse and Society in Mexico,” gives a brief outline of the different editions of Tomochic. He explains that the last edition of Tomochic in 1911 included new engravings with minimal changes because the most significant alterations had been added in the 4th edition of 1906 (72). The 1906 edition also coincides with the year of Teresa Urrea’s death. 68 Soldadera: The soldadera is a woman who travels with an army and carries out different caretaking functions; however, during the Mexican Revolution a soldadera would also be an armed fighter or a leader of battalions. Elena Poniatowska includes definitions, descriptions, as well as photographs of the women who went to battle in her book Las Soldaderas (1999). B. Christine Arce in the first part of her book, México’s Nobodies, also traces the different roles and identity markers of the soldaderas during the Mexican Revolution and subsequently their representations in literary, oral, and visual productions throughout the 20th century.

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the point where important and astonishing details will be explained. This phrasing is a

rhetorical strategy that Frías uses to bring in the readers of the novel. “Afigúrese usted” is

an introductory conversational phrase that from the start asks the listener-reader to

imagine and recreate what will be told. The listener who already knows about the Santa

de Cabora, don Chema in Frías’s novel, will understand the phrase and will participate by

either taking in new information or by providing other details on the Santa de Cabora.

The reader, on the other hand, who for the first time is learning about the Santa de Cabora

is encouraged to imagine the astounding powers of the Santa de Cabora. The information

that follows the phrase “afigúrese usted,” furthermore, speaks to how Teresa Urrea-Santa

de Cabora’s followers seek her to bless them and their weapons because they believe her

divine powers will help in the rebellion against the Porfiriato. The soldadera creates a concrete image of the saint-warrior-protector, the Santa de Cabora, in her conversation.

Though her comment is brief and simple, it projects to the reader-listener a series of narratives that makes it clear why the Santa de Cabora is an historical-mythical figure in the popular culture of the Mexican Northwest.

Even though Frías makes visible the relevance of the Santa de Cabora for some he fails in providing a clear picture of her as a legitimate public figure and leader. The information that is written about Teresa Urrea is mediated through what the reader understands as “oral stories” and by extension, myth.69 As such, the reader who

69 According to Northrop Frye, “a myth, in nearly all its senses, is a narrative that suggests two inconsistent responses: first, ‘this is what is said to have happened,’ and second, ‘this almost certainly is not what happened, at least in precisely the way described” (4). Frye explains that this latter understanding of myth is important because it functions as an “imaginative construct” where there is a “shift from the historical to the literary category” (4). Frye further explains that myth tends to be “a story about a god which is frequently employed in connection with ritual” which is “urgent for the community to know” (4-5). Mythical stories have social importance because “they tell us about the recognized gods, the legendary history, the origins of law, class structure, kinship formations, and natural features” (5). And once they

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reads/hears about Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora for the first time might view the story as not “true” or highly unlikely. Yet the possibility of truth does exist. It is this vacillation between a story being myth-like, true or not, that is difficult for official history to document. Nevertheless, the community that Teresa Urrea belongs to create a specific image of her as a mythical historical figure, one where she is no longer Teresa Urrea but the Santa de Cabora. This image of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora as a mythical historical figure speaks to two different ways of assigning meaning, one way is the hegemonic

Western process of documenting history with “truths” and the other is the way in which cultural communities ascribe non-hegemonic mythical meanings about an event or individuals. Though Frías does not write about meeting the Santa de Cabora personally he does write about the people of that region who spoke of her abilities to help others.

And although Teresa Urrea is not the focal point of Frías’s novel, the fact that he alludes to her in earlier editions and eventually adds a chapter titled after her alias in the 4th

edition, indicates that she is more than just a mere character in Mexican history.

Saborit explains that even though Frías’s novel is written in the third person and

by all accounts a fictional piece, it is “indebted to European war novels, [because] it is a

historical account of facts” (xvi). The fact is that many were aware of Teresa Urrea-Santa

de Cabora and her regional presence. Frías’s inclusion of la Santa in his novel, even if the

details are based on the accounts of others, reveals the strong influence her presence had

for different people in the Northwestern Mexican region, as many historians have

stressed. One of these historians is David Luis-Brown who, in his book Waves of

Decolonization, studies the role of Teresa Urrea as a decolonizing figure against Porfirian

become “serious stories” they are “the cultural possession of a specific society: they form the verbal nucleus of a shared tradition” (5).

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neocolonialism. He explains that “the major indigenous groups of Sonora and Sinaloa

turned to this messianic figure of salvation [the Santa de Cabora] in large part because

their plight was dire indeed” and their livelihood was threatened by the Díaz regime who

saw them as “obstacles to settlement and economic development” (Luis-Brown 134,

135). Díaz and his allies “sought to pacify the Apaches, the Mayos, and the Yaquis in

order to clear the way for the developing of infrastructure to support a revitalized

economy in the north of Mexico” (Luis-Brown 135).

Domecq’s novel, similar to Frías, uses the format of oral history-stories from the

turn of the century to describe the Santa de Cabora. In addition to including individuals

who speak about the Santa de Cabora’s blessings and healing powers, she also includes

entries structured like newspaper and journal articles describing the Santa de Cabora, her

powers, and her followers. These entries reveal how the Santa de Cabora made it to print

and how news about her reached a different group of individuals that would otherwise not

have access to the word of mouth news shared in the Northwestern Mexican region and

in the military camps.70 Additionally, these entries reveal the historical documentation of a mythical figure such as Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. The inclusion of printed news in the novel also creates a sort of bibliography on the Santa de Cabora. Furthermore, the inclusion of print entries is an important intertextual aspect of Domecq’s narrative because these entries complement the word of mouth stories circulating about the Santa

de Cabora. The following is an entry extract, introduced by the narrative voice in third

person, that illustrates how the editors of newspapers would respond to concerns raised

by readers:

70 The entries found in the narrative are based on the unnamed historian’s research. This character’s research process indirectly alludes to Domecq’s process in compiling documents (historical references, newspaper articles, oral stories, etc.) to write the novel.

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El Monitor Republicano dedicó una plana entera a describir las reuniones multitudinarias que se efectuaban por influencia de la Santa de Cabora y a insinuar que podrían resultar subversivas; El Siglo XIX, en respuesta a cartas de sus lectores, publicó una nota explicativa: —Ante la inquietud expresada por algunos lectores respecto a los extraños sucesos en Sonora, nuestros reporteros han investigado lo siguiente: —Cabora es un rancho al norte de Navojoa cuya única autoridad es el padre de la supuesta «santa», don Tomás Urrea, individuo de dudosa moral y antecedentes criminales según nos informan de Sinaloa donde es buscado por abigeato y otras actividades contra la ley. —La joven Urrea es una mujer de escasa educación que, en complicidad con su padre, se dedica a extorsionar a la gente, haciendo de sus supuestas curaciones un buen negocio para ambos. (Domecq 219)

This excerpt illustrates the way local periodicals attempted to calm the fears of its readers in Mexico City; both la Santa and her father were characterized as dishonest and criminal individuals. The tone of the article also identifies its audience as readers that do not support or believe in the Santa de Cabora. This audience, most likely middle class to upper class, belongs to a social group adhering to the Porfirian rhetoric of national progress. Which as Rober McKee Irwin states, in his book Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints: Cultural Icons of Mexico’s Northwest Borderlands, Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora clearly does not belong to: “divine mission did not coincide with the image of

Mexico as the modern, progressive, and rational nation” (202). For that reason, the ruling and elite classes of the capital dismissed her “as a hysteric and a fraud” (Irwin 202). The fictional article that Domecq generates in the novel illustrates the condemning tones that

Mexico City journals used against Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. In informing their readers with the “facts” of Teresa Urrea’s deception journals would remove any “divine” powers that identified her as an exceptional individual. Yet, this vilification in the written

form of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora (as a dangerous and a subversive individual)

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accomplished the opposite because in its attempt to remove her social power journals

inadvertently acknowledged that Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora was a powerful regional

and social entity.

Moreover, Irwin also explains that newspapers purposely attempted to discredit

Teresa Urrea’s influence by describing her as an ignorant hysteric, and did so because the

region was important to the Porfiriato and its foreign investors.71 And even though the

mocking of Teresa Urrea by newspapers was relentless she nevertheless was impossible

to dismiss because she was clearly already a public and national figure, to such an extent,

that even the popular artist “José Guadalupe Posada took an interest in her, illustrating a

corrido dedicated to her in which federal agents carry her off, tied to a cross, while her

supporters rally in rebellion” (Irwin 202).72 Posada’s illustration metaphorically correlates the life of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora to that of Jesus Christ. Just like Jesus

Christ, Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora helped the sick and the poor and was degraded and exiled from her home (metaphorically crucified) for these actions. Teresa Urrea becomes a martyr to her followers who in turn transform her into a symbol of rebellion and resistance (Irwin 202). This symbolic transformation of Teresa Urrea into a Christ-like

martyr alludes to the use of Catholic narratives in revolutionary and rebellious causes by

marginal groups located in the rural and open spaces of Mexico.73 Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora was clearly not only a threat to the Porfiriato but a challenge to the Catholic

71 Specifically, the states of Sonora and Chihuahua which border the United States. American investors, businessmen allied to the Porfiriato, had a stake in the region. 72 The image Corrido: Santa de Cabora by José Guadalupe Posada is digitally available on Museo Blaisten’s website: http://museoblaisten.com/Obra/7520/Corrido:-Santa-de-Cabora. 73 Hegemonic Mexican history does not document how marginal groups utilize Catholic religious teaching narratives to rebel and resist. However, Elena Garro’s novel Los recuerdos del porvenir (1963) demonstrates how Catholic narratives are integral to the Cristero rebellions in 1926-1929. The Cristero rebellion was a response to the anti-clerical posture of the new Mexican government established post- Revolution.

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Church, a close ally of Díaz: “Urrea had become more than a local sideshow; errant

Catholics were treating her as a legitimate saint. She was challenging the authority of the

Catholic Church with more than rhetoric; she was insinuating herself into the belief

system of many Catholics of Sonora” (Irwin 202).74 For that reason, in his need to undermine Teresa Urrea’s social influence in Mexico, Díaz exiles the Santa de Cabora to the Southwest United States. Living in exile, however, did not diminish Teresa Urrea-

Santa de Cabora’s social influence because even in the Southwest United States she continued to have followers and supporters.

According to Brandon Bayne, in his article “From Saint to Seeker: Teresa Urrea’s

Search for a Place of Her Own,” Teresa Urrea’s social power was situated in a religious realm and in a feminine realm. For Bayne, this is made evident in the connotation of the terminology that he uses in the following statement: “Teresa’s healing ministry began and ended in private homes. And in many ways, her entire career was characterized by hospitality, as she stayed as a guest in the homes of others and welcomed uncountable visitors in her own homes” (my emphasis 616). Bayne situates Urrea’s social and healing

powers in religious terms by using the words ministry and hospitality.75 Unlike her home in Cabora where she could openly help the sick and the poor (in the grounds of her father’s property), in exile, she was dependent on the hospitality of others to continue her ministry. She in turn extended that hospitality to her followers. Another aspect of Urrea’s healing ministry was based in the fact, explains Bayne, that she had to make most of her living situation because she no longer was the daughter of a wealthy man. Just like her, her father had lost everything when they were forced into exile. Once in the United

74 Irwin writes that parishioners were asking the local bishop to bless images of the Santa de Cabora, images that parishioners purchased as religious tokens (Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints 201-202). 75 To have a ministry is to work for the religious and spiritual wellbeing of the community.

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States, American audiences were fascinated with Teresa Urrea’s healing abilities. The fascination with Teresa Urrea’s healing knowledge spearheaded another facet of her life:

“Beyond her work in the border towns like Nogales and El Paso, Teresa traveled to growing urban centers such as San Francisco, St. Louis, Los Angles, and even New York.

More specifically, from 1900 to 1902 she mounted a two-year healing tour that brought her into diverse spaces well beyond the U.S.-Mexican frontier” (Bayne 613). Even though some believed that by touring American cities Teresa Urrea had lost “sanctity, social conscience, and spiritual power” she nevertheless was a woman who “navigated the varied topography of urban American spirituality: as she moved into private homes and out to public theaters, as she mounted medicine shows and managed the media”

(Bayne 615). For Bayne, Teresa Urrea was a woman “who sought out her own sacred and social position” as a new immigrant, even if she was forced into exile (615).

The combination of the soldadera’s comment in Frías’s novel, the newspaper entry in Domecq’s novel quoted earlier, Posada’s illustration, and David Luis-Brown’s as well as Brandon Bayne’s understandings of Teresa Urrea illustrate the tension between different ideologies that address the figure of the Santa de Cabora. However, they also illustrate, as is the case with the soldadera’s storytelling and the newspaper entry, the possibility of “investigation.” The documentation of word-of-mouth information demonstrates that the opposing views that existed, and which were factual realities of

Teresa Urrea’s life, command the need for further research into Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora as a social and an historical entity. These juxtaposing sources draw attention to

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s historical presence. The soldadera’s discourse (in Frías’s novel) stems from an orally mythical-historical perspective whereas the newspaper’s

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discourse (the entry in Domecq’s text) stems from a journalistic and informative perspective that is presumably impartial. Yet these divergent narratives employed reveal how Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora is revered for her curative powers by some and disregarded for her social influence by others. In short, these narrative modes underscore the instability in understanding the truths about Teresa Urrea in an isolated manner. As a set, however, they allow for a more comprehensive understanding of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora.

One of Domecq’s strategies is to uncover the multiple “truths” about Teresa

Urrea-Santa de Cabora. Domecq puts in contra-dialogue the different narratives about

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora to showcase the power struggles (between marginal individuals such as the popular class, the poor, the mestizo, the indigenous and the middle class, the Díaz regime, the Church) about historical meanings of events and historical agents. At length, Domecq goes beyond simply mentioning or including a chapter of the

Santa de Cabora or inscribing her in a feminine narrative of a “healing ministry.”

Domecq writes a novel that connects all those narratives in order to reload the story of

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora and Mexican history.

Historicizing the Construction of a Cultural Myth: From Teresa Urrea to Santa de Cabora

Historical discourse takes precedence in Frías’s novel, it focuses on linear events in order to expose the truth behind the Toméchic military campaign, specifically, the slaughter of Mexican citizens by the Díaz dictatorship. Mythical discourse is secondary in the novel and only functions as a way to speak about the Santa de Cabora through the voice and views of the soldadera, as I have analyzed in the previous section of this

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chapter. Domecq, unlike Frías, purposely incorporates both historical and mythical

discourses to depict and provide an interpretation of the Santa de Cabora’s place in

Mexican history, but also in Mexican cultures.76 Domecq allows mythical discourse to lead and then reload the gaps that historical discourse has created.

Domecq states in her interview with De Beer that her text is about women and myth (de Beer 131). She explains that women and myth “are the two basic threads” and that myth should be “understood in the broadest sense of the word” (de Beer 131). The objective in her novel, she argues, was to bring an extraordinary character such as Teresa to life because “despite everything, [this figure] triumphs; she makes herself politically visible; she is a character that moves the world. There aren’t many women characters in

Mexican literature who move the public world, and Teresa achieves heroic stature” (de

Beer 142). Different narrative discourses about Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora existed during her lifetime and afterwards, exactly because she was recognized as a public figure and a mythical figure who influenced historical events. In order to understand how mythical figures are created in popular storytelling, it is important to underscore the narrative models that the general populace possessed, the religious biblical narratives and

76 Historical discourse will attempt to focus only on events and actions that are verifiable whereas mythical discourse will center on events and occurrences that are viewed as supernatural and mystical. From the logic of modernity, historical discourse is produced by individuals in positions of power that can record events and corroborate them with documentation. Mythical discourse, on the other hand, is produced by individuals who depend on and have traditionally shared historical events through oral storytelling and have a divergent logic from the modernity one. Not all storytelling is “mythical” and yet, that is what La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora includes as an important aspect of Teresa Urrea’s story. Word-of- mouth stories about Teresa are important and those that survived could possibly be considered as testimonios, which is an oral genre from a first witness account that often gets transcribed in order to become a “document.” To read more on testimonios see John Beverly’s study Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth (2004). Elena Poniatowska’s novel Hasta no verte Jesús mío (1969) is a fictional work that relies on its main character’s testimony, a non-fictious woman named Jesusa Palancares. Poniatowska interviews Palancares about her experience as a soldadera during the Mexican Revolution.

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the hagiographies depicting the lives of religious saints.77 These are only some traditional

models; other models are the cultural narratives distinctive to indigenous communities.

The latter is crucial in understanding the worldview that Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora

acquires, that is the same worldview that creates the narratives around her figure. These

are familiar narratives that play with the bordering of truth and fabrication as a way to

emphasize the leadership and inspirational role of Teresa Urrea during her lifetime.78

La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora can be considered as part of the new

Latin American historical novel. The new historical novel is a literary genre that illustrates protagonists that were famous during their historical period as is the case with

Teresa Urrea (Rössner 69). The new historical Latin American novel, explains Michael

Rössner in his article “De utopia histórica a la historia utópica: reflexiones sobre la nueva novela histórica como re-escritura de textos históricos,” rewrites history using both fictional and historical texts:

. . . en una forma extrema [que está] partiendo del hecho innegable que la historiografía siempre es una escritura nueva edificada sobre textos anteriores (las fuentes por una parte, la historiografía anterior por otra). La “nueva novela histórica latinoamericana” . . . se concibe . . . ya de antemano como una re-escritura de textos preexistentes, literarios o historiográficos, llegando así a una superposición de varios textos que

77 In the previous section of this chapter I mentioned that some of Teresa Urrea’s followers would ask the local bishop to bless images of the Santa de Cabora. These images worked as a protection for its owners, a talisman of sorts. 78 The story of Teresa Urrea is narrated in Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005). Luis Alberto Urrea, a distant relative of Teresa Urrea, writes this novel in English and publishes his work in the United States 15 years after Domecq’s novel. The difference in the language and the country of publication are an important consideration because it points at a different readership. Furthermore, Luis Alberto Urrea in his author’s note clarifies from the first sentence, and with capital letters, that though his novel is fiction he writes about a historical figure, “TERESA URREA WAS A REAL PERSON” (497). Luis Alberto Urrea also stresses his family connection with Teresa Urrea and explains that his novel entailed twenty years of research, from 1985 to 2005. He outlines the different sources that informed his novel and takes care in clarifying that Domecq’s novel was not one of the sources he accessed or read during his research: “Ms. Domecq’s work remained a mystery to me, since I didn’t want any fiction affecting the fiction I was composing” (498). Domecq’s novel being a mystery to him does not clarify whether he knew about the novel’s content. He does, however, admit having accessed Domecq’s notes and essays located with the Arizona Historical Society.

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crean un espacio de diálogo intertextual en el que la Historia con mayúscula se descompone. (70)

This use of multiple narratives is a technique that shows how the notion of history is

much more encompassing than a hegemonic history and it also shows how history can be

reloaded not one but multiple times. That is, when one revisits history new information, different narratives, and divergent accounts are reloaded into hegemonic historical discourses.79 Domecq, for example, reloads the history-story of Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora with new details about her life, details that are a narrative retelling of different moments of her past and that become important in the present. This is accomplished after the phrase “el día de su segunda muerte” is narratively repeated.80 The phrase works as a

thread that links all the different historical narrative discourses about Teresa Urrea-Santa

de Cabora. It is also an oral story telling strategy, like the phrasing “afigúrese usted” of

the soldadera in Frías’s text, that allows the storyteller and the listener-reader to recall

and not forget that all information told is important in connecting Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora’s history-story before and after she became the Santa de Cabora. It is this

narrative phrasing that assists in narratively historicizing the construction of a cultural

myth, in tracing how Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora goes from being an unrecognized

daughter to becoming a leader, healer, and protector to many.

In his book La nueva novela histórica de la América Latina, 1979-1992, Seymour

Menton explains that a key element in new historical novels is to illustrate a protagonist

79 Domecq’s research on Teresa Urrea began in the 1970s and continued until the publication of her novel. This is a period when a new generation of female authors in Latin American, whose texts are academically referred to as the post-boom, began to publish works that reinterpreted the role and the place of women in hegemonic history and literature. 80 Domecq explains that the use of this technique in her novel was pointed out by John Brushwood and that “it is a technique similar to the one used by Gabriel García Márquez in Cien años de soledad: ‘Muchos años después frente al pelotón de fusilamiento…’” (de Beer 127-28).

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that is obsessed with discovering the past, as is the case with the unnamed researcher in

La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (34). The narrative must also predominately be in the past for the discovery to occur: “la gran mayoría de la novela transcurre en el pasado y su meta es redescrubir ese pasado” (Menton 34). Though these are important aspects to new historical novels, Menton outlines six key components that are common in the narrative structuring of these types of novels: “las ideas que se destacan son la imposibilidad de conocer la verdad histórica o la realidad” (42), “la distorsión consciente de la historia mediante omisiones, exageraciones y anacronismos” (43), “la ficcionalización de personajes históricos” (43), “la metaficción o los comentarios del narrador sobre el proceso de creación” (43), “la intertextualidad” (43) and finally, “los conceptos bajtinianos de lo dialógico, lo carnavalesco, la parodia y la heteroglosia” (44).

The first three characteristics outlined by Menton are crucial to understanding the historical reloading that occurs in La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora because they play with the notion of historical truth and the official histories rendered necessary by precarious nation-states.

To begin, Domecq’s novel illustrates the prerogatives of the new historical novel outlined by Menton, for example, by destabilizing the notion of historical truth. The first component speaks about the impossibility of knowing the historical truth; this impossibility, for example, is illustrated when at different moments there are contradictory descriptions of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s physical appearance and mental health. These contradictions do not provide a single comprehensive image of

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora, but rather, they provide multiple images of her persona, as is made evident by different sources referenced in the previous section “The Many Faces

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of Teresa Urrea-La Santa de Cabora.” In a similar manner, the unnamed researcher in the

novel observes that the multiple photographs that she’s encountered depicting Teresa

Urrea-Santa de Cabora are different and yet they still hold one similarity:

Había ahí una fotografía enorme de Teresita, con ojos grandes, luminosos, profundos, contémplándola como desde una lejanía. La joven Urrea es una mujer sin mayors dotes físicos, corriente en sus facciones e histérica en su cáracter. . . A través de los años había encontrado muchas fotografías de Teresa y todas tenían en común que parecían ser mujeres diferentes, excepto la mirada. Era lo único que no cambiaba. (Italics are part of novel, 84)

The information that the unnamed historical researcher has encountered in the past, italicized in the above quote, gives a version of Teresa Urrea as a woman with average looks and a hysterical nature.81 This is another written account on Teresa Urrea’s

physical description that is inconclusive and is similar to the photographs that the

unnamed historian has encountered. All photographs of Teresa Urrea are of different

women. However, the researcher-historian notices that regardless of whether the photographic images do or do not match it is the gaze (not the eyes) that remains the same. It is the consistency of this gaze that connects the many and varied physical traits attributed to Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. The contradictions on the physical appearance however are also reloadings of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora because although the physical and character descriptions are dissimilar they nevertheless show

81 Frida Gorbach, in her article “From Uterus to the Brain: Images of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” briefly traces the history of the study of hysteria by Mexican doctors in the second half of the 19th century. Though Gorbach does not clarify the significance of the political period (the Porfiriato), she does write that Mexican doctors began to study hysteria because of the “political stability” of the moment (85). Gorbach’s study does not look at the cultural and social connotations of the term hysteria but she does explain that it was an imported medical term. Sabine Arnaud’s book, On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category Between 1670 and 1820, explains that hysteria was a term used to diagnose various female symptoms: from physical to mental. She writes that “hysteria” was a medical category in Europe that “spread unsystematically, yet continued to surface as a tool for thought across medical, literary, and political discourses” (2). And most importantly, it functioned as a way to discredit patients while also creating a fascination with their possible disorders (2).

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how different social, cultural, and national groups depicted and perceived her during her

lifetime.

The second component, according to Menton’s taxonomy, speaks about the

deliberate act of distorting, omitting, and/or exaggerating factual events. The novel

repeatedly incurs in this fictive deceit when Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s healing

powers are exaggerated or distorted in newspaper articles. Another example would

include passages where other characters see her as a farce and see her followers as naïve,

including characters that are her closest allies such as her father Tomás Urrea. For

example, when news of Teresa Urrea’s powers to heal spread in local and capital

newspapers, the incidents are described in anecdotal and miraculous terms:

Un día, llegó un joven que estaba más sordo que una tapia, en el momento que ella concluía una exhortación diciendo: “Tienen ojos y no ven. Tienen oídos y no oyen” y el sordo, por primera vez en catorce años, escuchó lo que se decía. Salió corriendo y pidió a su familia que le hablaran y todo lo oía. Cuando se acercó a Teresa ésta le frotó con las manos cerca de las orejas y depositó dentro de ellas un poco de algodón con tierra; con esto el sordo acabó por curarse totalmente. (Domecq 174)

Tomás replies to this and other news of cured individuals by giving reasonable

explanations for the healings. Simply put, he indicates disbelief in his daughter’s

miraculous powers: “Debe haber tenido un tapón de cerilla del tamaño del mundo. La

Huila los curaba por millares. A eso le llaman milagro” (Domecq 175). His observations attempt to rationalize his daughter’s healing skills by clarifying that Huila, Teresa Urrea’s indigenous teacher, had been healing similar ailments and the cures didn’t have any miraculous aspects to them. His disbelief also represents the hegemonic view held by others about folk healing, especially the views belonging to the intellectual and political class.

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The third component that Menton underlines is the fictionalization of historical figures. In the case of Domecq’s novel it is through the distortions and/or exaggerations of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s healing capabilities that the fictionalization, or better said, the mythification of this historical character is in part built. However, before her and her healing abilities can be mythicized Teresa Urrea must first learn how to heal. Teresa learns from her mentor Huila how to cure all types of illnesses and injuries, including those that are not physical: “Mientras la curandera suministraba medicinas y consejos, alivio y comprensión a cada enfermo, ella observaba cómo iba manejando en turno la esperanza y la desesperanza, la vida y la muerte, el regreso lento a la salud o el lento acercamiento al final” (Domecq 130). It is only after her mentor’s death that Teresa begins to use her healing abilities. And it is through word of mouth that her abilities become known as miraculous cures:

Y Gabriela se lo contaba a Josefina, y Josefina a Camilda, y Camilda a Abdulia y Abdulia … “que a los diez minutos llegó aquél matacaballo con el buqui en los brazos, hecho un grito con la pierna fracturada y que Teresita lo tomó y con sólo mirarlo lo durmió, tan tranquilo como si no tuviera nada. Luego le arregló la fractura y el chiquillo no despertó hasta que Teresa le dijo que abriera los ojos y entonces sonrió…” […] “Que el otro día cargo al grandulón de Maximino como si no pesara nada… “Que cura con la luz que sale de sus ojos… “Que cura con la voz… (Domecq 171)82

The news that spreads about Teresa Urrea’s curative abilities eventually transforms her into the Santa de Cabora. The fact that she is a young healer, a teenager in today’s standards, and not an elder like Huila makes her healing abilities seem miraculous.

Furthermore, her knowledge in healing any ailment or injury, her youth, and her

82 A buqui is a child or a young person.

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newfound social status adds not only to the exaggeration but also to the mythification of her abilities.83 She becomes a miraculous individual, to such an extent, that those who seek her aid are simply cured with her gaze and her voice: “Que cura con la luz que sale de sus ojos” and “Que cura con la voz” (Domecq 171). However, it is not just her gaze or her words that cure, it is the light that shines from the gaze and the voice from her words that cure. In short, Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora becomes herself a miraculous being that with her presence alone heals.

The three first components identified by Menton are narrative strategies that allow multiple points of view and generate a reloaded history by including the social mythification that hegemonic history excludes. La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora appropriates hegemonic literary forms and dialogues with official hegemonic constructions of Mexican history, that produce hegemonic cultural imaginaries in order to insert individual and collective identities that give voice to what has been silenced by official history. The novel brings attention to alternative narratives to create a “history” that does not fit into the specific “scientific” and accepted historical discourses. The novel does not necessarily dismantle the chronological history that is known, however, it does reload the perception of national history and Mexicanidad by incorporating alternative narrative sources from marginalized individuals like la Santa and her followers.

The exercise of including these alternative narratives is part of what Anjali

Arondekar, in her introduction to For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India, terms as an historical continuation. Specifically, she explains that archival

83 Teresa Urrea as a teenager moves in with her father after he recognizes her as his daughter.

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retrieval should be understood as an historical continuation in which “the practice of

archival reading […] incites relationships between the seductions of recovery and the

occlusions such retrieval mandates” (1). In the novel, the multiple sources of information

presented through the unnamed historian’s research on the history-story of Teresa Urrea-

Santa de Cabora create this historical continuation. It is impossible to recover everything about the Santa de Cabora, however, it is possible to create a historical-narrative. Saidiya

Hartman, in her article “Venus in Two Acts,” similarly purposes that the gaps and silences in the archive require a narrative that as impossible as it might be still allows the

“retrieving [of] what remains dormant” (2). Hartman, referencing her own archival work on black women in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, explains that bridging the past and the present as a scholar is a personal endeavor that marks:

This writing is personal because this history has engendered me, because “the knowledge of the other marks me,” because of the pain experienced in my encounter with the scraps of the archive, and because of the kinds of stories I have fashioned to bridge the past and the present and to dramatize the production of nothing—empty rooms, and silence, and lives reduced to waste. (4)

Just like Hartman, the unnamed researcher in Domecq’s novel is a character that is marked by the “scraps of the archive” on Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. She too imagines and recreates what the archive is unable to record and even though the archive represents Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora in contradictory ways it is nevertheless “a productive tension and one unavoidable in narrating the lives of the subaltern, the dispossessed, and the enslaved” (Hartman 12).

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A Close Reading: Reloading the Santa de Cabora’s History-Story

Central to the novel’s historical reloading is the presence of the unnamed historian who connects the present with the past through her archival research of Teresa Urrea-

Santa de Cabora. The unnamed historian’s research is a direct gesture to the revision of the archive as well as the way in which the archive is narrated. A close reading of the unnamed historian’s archival journey as well as her journey through Mexico’s Northwest landscape reveals the historical reloading of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s history- story. In this final section I discuss the importance of Domecq’s portrayal of landscape in relation to the unnamed researcher and Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. I also consider how secondary characters, such as Huila and doña Rosaura, contribute in redefining the historical period before the Mexican Revolution. Throughout their various encounters with each other and the Porfiriato, these characters consistently articulate alternative viewpoints that shape and explain the course taken into the 20th century.

The novel’s first chapter opens with the unnamed scholar ready to take her

research from the confines of library walls and her desk to the open Northwestern landscapes where Teresa Urrea was born. It specifically opens with the unnamed historian’s adamant belief that Cabora exists: “«Cabora…» pensó al acostarse: «tiene que existir»” (Domecq 9). The unnamed historian’s openings thoughts however also draw attention to the ambiguous existence of Cabora. The uncertainty of existence, one that archive is unable to validate, propels the unnamed historian’s search for Cabora and by extension, Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. It is also what sets the tone of the chapter and

the novel. But most importantly, it indicates that the archive, though abundant, is

incomplete and it can only be completed with the unnamed historian’s journey from the

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Mexican Capital to the Mexican Northwest. The unnamed historian’s exit from the

Mexican capital captures an image of a miserable city that forgets its inhabitants, which

is similar to how official history also forgets important historical female figures like

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora:

En la ciudad de México aún no amanecía, pero una tenue luz grisácea comenzaba a invadir las calles. […] El panorama era desolador. […] Todo ello le produjo de nuevo angustia; pensó en la inutilidad de la vida humana, en su anonimato, su insignificancia. (Domecq 12)

Even though the urban landscape makes its inhabitants anonymous, it is individuals such as the unnamed researcher that give meaning to forgotten people and places. Especially when hegemonic history makes places such as Cabora and the Mexican Northwest a footnote. Cabora is an important part of the archive. This is a landscape that politically and socially informed Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. Though Michel de Certeau, in The

Practice of Everyday Life, specifically writes about the practice of walking in the urban

space his work nevertheless informs the importance of the unnamed historian’s journey to

Cabora. De Certeau writes that it is the act of “the walker [that] transforms each spatial

signifier into something else” (98). That is, places and spaces acquire meaning through

the act of walking and it is the pedestrian, through the act of walking, that appropriates

his or her surroundings and creates meaningful connections (97-98).84 The act of walking

is “a space of enunciation” (De Certeau 98). In a similar fashion, it is the unnamed

scholar’s research and journey to Cabora that gives meaning to the historical-narrative

discourse of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora.

84 De Certeau defines places and spaces in the following manner: “A place is […] an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability” and “A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it” (117).

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Although the first chapter illustrates how the archive is incomplete and ambiguous, it also shows proof of the existence of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora and a place called Cabora. This archive, even with its contradictory information, helps the unnamed historian create a historical-narrative that had hitherto been unknown in mainstream 20th century Mexican constructions. The archive reveals portions of the past and provides, as indicated by the following passage, a sense of discovery for the unnamed historian:

A un lado, en el piso, el portafolios repleto de documentos, escritos y fotografías que había reunido durante tantos años de investigación. […] Pensaba en Cabora. Era el último paso en un trayecto muy largo a través de archivos y bibliotecas, un recorrido lleno de rumores y pistas falsas, de descubrimientos y desilusiones, una peregrinación espiritual para la que ella, y sólo ella, había sido escogida. Se acercaba ya el final; después de Cabora no habría más. (Domecq 9)

The act of finding Cabora, even if it means the end to the unnamed historian’s research, functions as the final archival document that will help reload Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora’s history-story. Finding Cabora, however, becomes not only an academic endeavor for the unnamed historian but also a spiritual endeavor. The historian-narrator’s research process is spiritual in the sense that her research is an intimate discovery of self as well as an intimate discovery of the Santa de Cabora. It is a spiritual journey that allows for the profound questions that will help explain Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s historical purpose. The historian-narrator’s research process addresses and appropriates the different types of knowledge that give meaning. For example, she incorporates the narrative techniques that are characteristic to mystery fictions with her own historical methodology as a way to demonstrate that her historical-narrative is a mystery waiting to be discovered. The act of discovering the mystery about Cabora and Teresa Urrea-Santa

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de Cabora is the spiritual journey that will provide meaningful answers: “Por eso iba a

Cabora: era lo único que faltaba para desentrañar el secreto, comprender la historia, llegar

al final del camino” (Domecq 10). Cabora is the physical space that represents a region,

its people, and la Santa, therefore, exposing the mystery of Cabora means locating a

missing piece of history.

Even though the researcher does not find any mention of Cabora in conventional

sources, such as maps, dictionaries, or encyclopedias, she does find it referenced in

Heriberto Frías’s 1906 edition of Tomóchic: “Pensó que [Cabora] era una invención de su

propia mente y estaba por olvidarlo cuando vio aquel libro [en la biblioteca],

aparentemente dejado al azar sobre una mesa; sintió un escalofrío al darse cuenta de que

no lo había visto antes. Se acercó a hojearlo” (Domecq 10). The absence of Cabora in conventional sources is an immediate reference to the novel’s prologue, where neither

God nor his angel recognize the existence of the Santa de Cabora: “¡Nada! Dile que no está registrada. O se equivocó de nombre o se equivocó de año o se equivocó de cielo”

(Domecq 6). Yet when the researcher-historian leafs through Frías’s text and sees the editor’s note about “la Santa de Cabora” she knows that Cabora is a place that exists.

The discovery of Frías’s novel leads the historian to a new historical archive that is composed of a compilation of newspaper writings, essays, and memories passed down through various generations:

Los documentos, los rastros, las menciones, los datos y las mentiras, el mito y la verdad que se habían escrito se fueron apilando en su escritorio, en desorden: testimonios […]; fotografías […]; susurrantes telegramas […]; artículos […]; entrevistas a personas vivas que arrojaban recuerdos de los recuerdos de otros… (Domecq 11)

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The combination of documents, especially the memories passed down through

generations, indicate that both la Santa and Cabora are part of a collective memory that still survives. Even as the historian-narrator questions why some individuals are remembered more than others, she observes that those that remain in the collective memory are remembered as myth:

¿Quiénes llegaban a ser conocidos? ¿Quiénes destacaban? ¿Cuáles no serían carroña del olvido? ¿Quiénes? Jesús y Porfirio Díaz y ellos sólo convertidos en mitos. Los demás, como ella misma, anodinos, perdidos en un polvo común que lo cubría todo. Y ¿Teresa? Anodina también, desaparecida, como si nunca hubiera existido… (Domecq 12)

These questions postulate Teresa Urrea as an insignificant character that didn’t make it to the history books or even to myth. However, they also demonstrate the historical existence of Teresa. It is the “como si nunca” phrase in the above passage that allows the historian-narrator the opportunity to uncover the history-story of Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora.

The unnamed researcher’s journey to Cabora, which is in Sonora’s Navojoa region, also emphasizes the historical importance of the area. It is a place where Teresa

Urrea comes of age. It is also where she becomes la Santa and most importantly, it is the region where many indigenous groups crossed to flee the Porfiriato and where many others with dissenters like Lauro Aguirre orchestrated ways to contest the regime.

Because Cabora and its surrounding areas are located far from the center of power, the

Mexican Capital, its distance provided a level of protection from the Díaz regime. An important aspect to note is the fact that this Northwestern region, the Navojoa, belongs to a long history of local revolts, indigenous uprisings and peasant rebellions that in the past were led by the Rarámuri/Tarahumara, Pima, Guarijío, and the Tepehuán peoples in

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different historical moments.85 The lack of infrastructure in this region as well as the

pejorative tones of Mexican journals when speaking about this region provided another

level of defense against the central powers. The following passage is one of many in

which the novel intertwines the historical past with the present, in this case, with the

region itself:

Desde el mes de abril comenzaron a sentirse en el Valle del Yaqui síntomas de una próxima insurrección. José María Cajeme les predicaba la necesidad de recobrar la independencia, despertando el orgullo de aquella raza guerrera y belicosa... A ambos lados del angosto camino se extienden las llanuras costeras; enfrente a la izquierda, los agresivos e imponentes picos de la Sierra del Bacatete, la montaña sagrada de los yaquis el centro del mundo en donde tuvo lugar la declaración de Dios: el arcoíris sería su señal y nunca más un diluvio destruiría a la humanidad… su último refugio contra las tropas federales antes de la masacre, forman un muro de silencio y olvido. (Domecq 111)

The portion of text that is in italics narrates the historical past. The text not in italics is the

unnamed researcher’s encounter with the landscape. The landscape in a way becomes a

protagonist in the narrative; it not only protects those who seek refuge in it but it also sees

the different generations that come through it. The region, as the passage suggests,

creates a sense of independence and ownership for indigenous groups such as the Yaquis.

For the local communities, this land is a refuge because it is more than just territory. It is

a sacred homeland that has the power to protect and that preserves the history of the

communities who inhabit it.

The unnamed researcher’s trajectory through the Navojoa landscape functions as

an archival discovery: “Repentinamente, el camino se bifurca; hay dos letreros. A la derecha se va hacia Quiriego; a la izquierda, las letras deslavadas dicen ‘Cabora’”

(Domecq 113). The faded sign indicating the direction towards Cabora is an archival

85 Tarahumara is the name the Spaniards gave to the Rarámuri people.

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document, even though it is not located within a library. The sign that occupies the

landscape confirms the existence of Cabora. However, the faded letters in the sign

suggest that Cabora is a forgotten landscape left with ruins. Yet even if it seems that the region has forgotten Cabora as well as Teresa Urrea, the ruins and the people that remain continue to remember both Cabora and la Santa. Furthermore, it is Cabora that possesses the experiences and the stories of its inhabitants.86 It is also Cabora’s landscape that

narratively links the unnamed researcher and the Santa de Cabora. The narrative

connection between the two protagonists occurs when the researcher hikes the hill located

behind the ruins. The hill and the ruins are symbolic spaces that physically link the two

protagonists as well as the two distinct historical periods that they belong to. Both

protagonists hike to the ruins in the hill and this action illustrates the moment when both

protagonists and time (the Santa de Cabora’s historical time and the historian’s present

time) are superimposed.87

Since the hill is the physical landmark that links two periods and two persons it is

also the place that represents where the protagonists can see the totality of Cabora. Mary

Louise Pratt’s concept “contact zones,” in her book Imperial Eyes, helps inform the link

between Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora and the unnamed historian. Although the term is

used to describe the colonial experience, it nevertheless “invoke[s] the spatial and

temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical

disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect” (7). The experience of both

86 In Elena Garro’s Recuerdos de Porvenir (1963) it is the town of Ixtepec that as an entity remembers and narrates the stories of the people who inhabited it. 87 Elena Garro in “La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas” (1964) explores “trauma” as a way to speak about a different time. Linda Hutcheon also writes about “trauma” in her article “Postcolonial Witnessing—and Beyond: Rethinking Literary History Today” (2003). Juan Rulfo in Pedro Páramo (1955) illustrates the physical journey of its protagonist to his birthplace as well as the notion of time.

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protagonists fills the gaps and adds the missing historical knowledge to the larger picture of Cabora. In the case of Teresa Urrea, the hill provides a different physical viewpoint to see Cabora. It’s a panoramic view that allows her to experience a different perspective of the land and the people that she interacts with: “Se sentó y miró hacia Cabora que a distancia había recobrado proporciones humanas. Seguía siendo blanca, blanquísima y hermosa, pero ante la inconmensurable extensión de la llanura, […] no resultaba para nada importante, inclusive se veía un poco perdida y solitaria” (Domecq 94). Teresa

Urrea gains a different perspective on social positions and simultaneously gains a sense of belonging to and isolation from the community. Her vantage point of view also creates, as De Certeau explains, the necessary distance to have power over Cabora and its inhabitants. Her newfound perspective “transforms the bewitching world by which one was ‘possessed’ into a text that lies before one’s eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god” (De Certeau 92). This positioning gives Teresa the power to put her everyday environment into perspective. Furthermore, it provides her with the strength and even authority over her own father: “Don Tomás no era más grande que los diminutos vaqueros que veía y el caserón podía ser de enanos: todo dependía de la perspectiva” (Domecq 94). For Teresa, seeing her father as just another man working in the ranch removes his authoritative stature, both physically and verbally, while it also gives her the interpretative power over what she sees.

Just like the hill gives Teresa the power to see Cabora differently, it also gives the unnamed historian the historical perspective to accept, but most importantly, to validate the existence of Cabora and the existence of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora. It is the unnamed historian who ultimately makes the connections possible: “Abre los ojos y mira

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hacia abajo y hacia el horizonte y, de repente, ve Cabora en cada detalle, no como lo

había visto antes, destruido, inexistente, sino como si lo estuviera viendo desde siempre,

a través de los recuerdos de Teresita” (Domecq 149). The fact that the unnamed historian

and Teresa experience the landscape similarly underscores Cabora’s role (the rural space

and its people) in history. Cabora is the bridge the links Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora’s

historical past with the unnamed researcher’s historical present. This historical bridge

isn’t just a way to revisit and reconstruct Cabora but a way to reload Mexican history. In

other words, this historical bridge shows that Mexican history is not just informed by but

in dialogue with the past and the present. In the case of Teresa Urrea, Cabora

metaphorically demonstrates the ways in which power can be created and is created. Her

newfound perspective, from the strategic distance (on the hill) where she sees all of

Cabora, allows Teresa the opportunity to create her own power in this society. In the case

of the historian-narrator, Cabora reveals in a tangible way how official history only

inscribes portions of reality, the parts that benefit hegemonic powers.

Cabora is not only a landmark that figuratively unites Teresa Urrea and the

historian-narrator but is also the place where both share near-death experience. Teresa

and the unnamed historian metaphysically share the experience of almost dying while

discovering Cabora separately. This specific experience is narrated in the only titled and

unnumbered chapter, “La caída.” This chapter narratively concludes the first part of the novel. It also strategically links the two protagonists and their respective historical journeys. The first part of the novel separates the stories of the unnamed researcher and

Teresa Urrea with alternating chapters—the first chapter is about the unnamed researcher and the second chapter is about Teresa and so forth. This alternating format is maintained

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until the very last chapter when both Teresa and the unnamed historian experience a physical fall that is narrated as a superimposed event: “En aquel instante se sintieron arrebatadas por la muerte” (Domecq 153). Before either can share this experience, everything before their respective falls must be narrated separately to illustrate not only the knowledge each protagonist acquires but also to emphasize the historical period that each represents.

How they fall and from where they fall is narratively important to their shared experience. This is especially so because the act of falling and the near-death experience is the doubling of the two characters. The unnamed researcher’s fall takes place from the hill that overlooks Cabora: “De repente su pie tropieza con una piedra y cae, pero esta vez…” (Domecq 150). This hill is the same spot where Teresa becomes aware of her own power. The way the narration finishes the description of the historian’s fall is equally important because the phrase “pero esta vez…” with ellipses implies not only the difference in this fall but the existence of a previous fall. The phrasing connects the unnamed researcher’s fall with Teresa’s fall. Whereas the historian falls from a stumble on the same hill where Teresa stood a century ago, Teresa falls while galloping on her horse Espíritu: “Apenas percibió la sensación de caerse, no del caballo, sino hacia adentro, hacia el conticinio de sí misma” (Domecq 152). The phrasing of the quoted passage suggests that Teresa’s physical fall is a spiritual one. Her aptly named horse,

Espíritu, assists in describing the fall as an encounter with death and with self. This experience changes the trajectory of Teresa Urrea’s life. It is after her fall that she becomes a healer and leader. The respective falls and “near death” experiences of Teresa and the historian achieve more than just the blurring and linking of historical fictional

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lines, they also bring into dialogue the manifestations of different physical spaces and

even, different forms of spiritual and mystical powers. These powers are another layer

that contribute to the mythification of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora.

The near-death experiences, furthermore, create a strategic “before” and “after” to

Teresa Urrea’s biographical history-story. Before the fall Teresa is known by her first name and after her fall and “near death” experience she is known as the Santa de Cabora.

It is before her fall that Teresa Urrea learns the art of healing under the tutelage of Huila.

As mentioned earlier in the chapter, it is Huila, Cabora’s local healer, midwife, and

Teresa’s mentor, that passes on her knowledge to Teresa. However, it is only after

Huila’s death (which follows Teresa’s near-death experience) that Teresa becomes

Cabora’s healer. Telling though, is that one of Huila’s most important lessons to Teresa is that classifications limit knowledge:

Como decía mi maestro, Apolinio: la realidad es constante transformación donde nada cambia; todo es parte de lo mismo. El problema no es de vida o de muerte, sino que las hemos separado al hablar de ellas. Hay que aprender a conocer las cosas sin nombrarlas para percibir su unidad. En cuanto les ponemos nombres, nos quedamos con puros pedacitos huérfanos, tan solitos que ya no significan nada. (Domecq 133)

Huila is a teacher who comes from a line of healers. She shares what she has learned as a student and as a healer. Huila’s teachings provide a different worldview: “Para la Huila todo era muy sencillo. Se trataba de apartarse un poco de aquello que llamamos

‘realidad’” (Domecq 133). Huila teaches Teresa how to understand and heal ailments that are not physical. She teaches her to create distance with everyday reality in order to help those who are in pain. Huila’s teachings support Teresa’s newfound understanding of perspectives. It is Huila’s training that also sets the stage for Teresa’s success as a healer and as a political-spiritual leader. Encouraged by the word-of-mouth healing success of

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Teresa, the local indigenous-mestizo communities would either seek her out in person to help with ailments or would invoke her name as the Santa de Cabora. As a result, the powerful landowners and business owners in the Mexican northwest who were allied to

Porfirio Díaz became nervous about Teresa’s growing status as a healer-leader amongst the region’s indigenous-mestizo communities.

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora learns from Huila to recognize the physical and spiritual needs of others and to consciously recognize the dominant indigenous-mestizo worldview in which she lives in. It is from her other mentor, doña Rosaura, that Teresa

Urrea learns about the social and political importance of the Porfiriato. Her awareness of the Porfiriato early on allows her to identify the different (physical, emotional, political) needs of those who search for her help. This awareness, however, only occurs after she first sees and experiences the near-death experience of another individual. It is as Huila’s assistant that Teresa experiences pain and the nearness of death with a local woman who is in the middle of a difficult labor. When this woman cries for help, Teresa responds by physically placing her body and hands on the woman. This causes Teresa to briefly lose consciousness. Once Teresa regains consciousness, she is surprised to see that both the mother and the newborn survived. Huila is unable to offer an explanation as to why they survived. She does declare, however, that it was Teresa who prevented death from taking mother and child:

No hice nada. Tú lo hiciste, Niña […]. No te desmayaste hasta que todo había terminado. Cuando entró la muerte en aquella mujer, brincaste como un gato encima de ella, le tomaste con fuerza la cara y gritaste: «¡Mírame!» y ella, que ya se había ido, abrió los ojos y los clavó en tu mirada y se fue quedando laxa y quieta, toda suavecita y blanda, como si simplemente fuera a dormirse. … Algo extraño tienes tú, Niña, algo que ni siquiera yo te puedo explicar. (Domecq 135-136)

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Saving the woman and newborn from death is the first manifestation of Teresa’s curative powers. Hear healing powers underline why both David Luis-Brown and Desirée Martín see Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora not only as a saintly figure but as a messianic figure to her followers. For Luis-Brown and for Martín, Teresa Urrea is a transregional, even a transnational individual that represents all those individuals positioned in the margins.

Luis-Brown argues that Teresa Urrea’s figure proposes “an inclusion of those excluded from citizenship rights” (76). And that as a transnational figure she critiques

“U.S. imperialism and its Latin American allies (such as the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship in

Mexico) and … create[s] a vision of alternative possibilities of alliance among the oppressed” (Luis-Brown 76). This is possible because her portrayal as a “Messiah insists on the illegitimacy of institutionalized power by creating a counterstate of exception” and

“suspends the law in order to erase all social distinctions” (Luis-Brown 77). Martín, in a similar manner, in her article “Possessing La Santa de Cabora: The Union of Sacred,

Human, and Transnational Identities,” explains that Teresa Urrea’s Messiah-like spirituality and healing powers “emphasize her connection to progressive gender politics, migration, transnational identities, and the affirmation of popular spirituality as a conscious revolutionary choice” (181). Teresa Urrea’s curative and healing powers represent what is outside the control of the Porfiriato. Her contact with indigenous and peasant communities especially assisted in her political acumen locally and eventually transnationally (when she is forced into exile and sought by the poor and sickly) to the displeasure of the Porfiriato and the local hacendados—including her father Tomás. The irony is that it’s because of Tomás’s acceptance of Teresa as his daughter that she can even offer help to the many indigenous and mestizo peasants of the Northwest region. But

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it is because all of this that her social and political standing, as the Santa de Cabora,

reloads notions of what a regional leader and a Mexican pre-Revolutionary leader looks like; especially when the identifiers that those in power use to delegitimize her are the same ones (indigenous, mestiza, female, poor) that permit her to become the iconic symbol for marginal groups that are similarly targeted.

Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora, as a child, also learns from her first mentor doña

Rosaura about the injustices caused by the Porfiriato. Doña Rosaura, as the eldest person

amongst their social group, provides and represents knowledge, although not the same as

Huila’s:

Doña Rosaura era una anciana, panzuda y encorvada, de cabello completamente blanco. Vivía sola y olía a tierra. Nunca se había casado y no tenía hijos; era la más vieja de la ranchería y algunas la consideraban sabia porque era muy leída. Había pasado su vida en Aquihuiquichi, excepto por cuatro años […] cuando se mudó a Guaymas para trabajar en casa de una familia adinerada. Ahí pudo darse vuelo cuidando hijos ajenos y leyendo por las noches a la luz de quinqué los periódicos y revistas que la familia desechaba. (Domecq 61)88

The community recognizes doña Rosaura as a wise individual even though she never

married or had children. Though being married and having children are important social

markers in this community, this community also recognizes the importance in knowing

how to read (having access to information) and the importance of knowing how to heal.

The latter two might actually surpass all other social markers. The narrative doesn’t

explain how doña Rosaura learned to read (unlike Huila who learned from her mentor),

but it does describe doña Rosaura as an avid reader, which translates into someone with

access to knowledge. Doña Rosaura, just like Huila, passes on her knowledge by teaching

88 Both doña Rosaura and Huila achieve a status in their communities as wise elder women. Both are also unmarried characters with no children.

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Teresa how to read and write. Through dated newspaper articles and conversations with

doña Rosaura, Teresa learns about the social and political structure of their time,

including Porfirio Díaz’s humble beginnings, his rise to power, and his strategic political

alliances as president of Mexico. But most importantly, Teresa learns that circumstances

(for example, not being from a particular social class or not having a formal education)

don’t necessarily prohibit the ability to gain power: “¿Cómo puede ser presidente si no

sabe leer ni escribir?” (Domecq 65). This is a detail not lost on Teresa and one that correlates to her perspective about Cabora and her father from atop the hill. Ultimately, from doña Rosaura, Teresa learns that being able to analyze what she reads and develop her own conclusions gives her the power to understand her social and political environment.

Teresa’s private lessons with doña Rosaura serve as a contrast to the school house lessons her cousins receive. Teresa’s informal education gives her access to knowledge and by extension power. Her cousins, on the other hand, learn how to memorize (not even read) and as a result, don’t learn the different ways to acquire power:

…se estableció en la ranchería la primera escuela y comenzaron a acudir los niños, entre ellos, los hijos de la tía Tula. Teresa no quería ir. Por mera curiosidad se asomó un día y al ver a todos sentados en el suelo repitiendo como loritos los versos del himno nacional terminó de convencerse que no le convenía. (Domecq 57) 89

The lessons Teresa’s cousins receive point to the inadequacy of formal schooling, sponsored by the Porfiriato.90 Teresa’s lessons with doña Rosaura, even though the

newspapers were dated, allowed her to learn and draw parallels between her immediate

89 In 1854 Francisco González Bocanegra debuts the lyrics for Mexico’s Naitonal Anthem along with Jaime Nunó musical composition accompaniment (104). 90 María de Lourdes Alvarado, in her book La educación superior femenina en el México del siglo XIX, traces the creation of formal education centers for women, especially in the second half of the 19th century. She briefly explains that the expansion of public education was an important project during the Porfiriato.

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social surroundings and the greater social-political environment outside of Cabora. These moments of awareness, where she sees the failings of the Porfiriato, are illustrative of her independent thought, subversion of gender and class norms, and the desire to move beyond oppressive regimes of power as a woman who is mixed-race and as an illegitimate (natural/“bastard”) child. Teresa Urrea’s interactions with doña Rosaura are a glimpse of the short (in)formal education she receives, but most importantly, they underscores her need for knowledge during her formative years. Doña Rosaura and Huila are the only two female individuals that purposely pass their knowledge to Teresa. And even though Tomás Urrea and Porfirio Díaz represent status and authority, it is their counterparts, Huila and doña Rosaura, who are the role models that teach Teresa how to become a leader.91

After her fall, Teresa Urrea immediately stops being a student companion to

Huila. There is a marked difference to how Teresa Urrea practices her healing abilities.

Whereas Huila healed the sick in their own homes located in the outskirts of the

ranchería, Teresa heals the sick in the front steps of the main house. The sick came to

her, especially after she survives the fall. The residents of the ranchería believing Teresa

was dead and not unconscious (perhaps due to a coma) see her waking up as a miraculous

event: “¡Ave María Purísima, se ha levantado! ¡Padre Nuestro que estás en los Cielos,

Jesús, María y José! ¡Un milagro! ¡Ha resucitado! ¡Milagro, milagro!” (Domecq 164).

Teresa’s miraculous survival changes how she is viewed by others. No longer is she the

abandoned girl of her youth or the teenage daughter of el patron (don Tomás), but a

91 Teresa Urrea’s access to knowledge is an important point in Brianda Domecq’s and Luis Alberto Urrea’s respective novels. The knowledge Teresa Urrea acquires with her interaction with Huila and doña Rosaura correlates with the knowledge she acquires when she joins her father in la casa grande. The interactions with her mentors and the society that her father belong to grant Teresa the resources to become a leader.

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divine and saintly figure. As such, when Teresa Urrea wakes and begins to immediately

heal others, she changes the space where healing happens, from private to public. More

specific, she mixes the private and the public when she heals others out in the open and

not in their private homes. She makes the ranchería’s sick and poor become visible after being ignored, forgotten and/or, hidden from the casa grande (big/main house). By doing

this, Teresa undoes the authority of the casa grande, specifically the authority of her

father. Her actions and her miraculous survival change the perception of the casa grande,

by making it an accessible center of power to the sick, poor, and indigenous members of

the ranchería. Teresa’s use of the casa grande as her healing center is a type of precursor to her stance against the Porfiriato. Furthermore, Teresa accentuates the fact that the

Porfiriato (with its national projects of scientific progress) is unable to meet the needs of

its citizens, especially those living in the margins. Teresa Urrea’s use of the casa grande

also accentuates how she doesn’t surrender to Mexican notions of femininity. She does

not hide herself or those she heals. She does not capitulate to her father’s demands,

instead, she makes them:

—He tenido suficiente de tus altiveces, señorita. Te acabo de dar una orden: la quiero cumplida. No hablemos más del asunto. Teresa se quedó un momento en silencio, midiendo al enemigo. Luego se dio media vuelta, pero al llegar a la puerta se detuvo, la mano en la perilla. Volvió a mirar a su padre. —No se hará como tú dices. No se puede, pero te ofrezco una alternativa: que mandes acondicionar el taller del herrero al otro lado de la explanada para poder atender allí a mi gente y dejarte la Casa Grande con más privacía. (Domecq 194)

The above quote identifies Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora as a figure who took her healing role seriously. Instead of yielding to her father’s demands, she creates alternatives. Rosario Castellanos, in Mujer que sabe latín (1973), writes that women have

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been identified as myth and positioned as external to history. Castellanos explains that the

female body has historically been reduced to helplessness by making it “fragile,

vulnerable, and nonexistent as possible” (238).92 Castellanos states that the Mexican woman has been “stripped of her spontaneity of action, forbidden the initiative of decision, taught to obey the commandments of an ethic that is completely alien to her and has no more justification or basis than that of serving the interests, goals and ends of

others” (240). In short, for Castellanos, women have been considered both myth and

archetype and the latter brings about an imprisonment to “rules” governed by “ideal

models.” Simone de Beauvoir, in the Second Sex, writes that women are posited as a

“negative” (25) and as “Other” (27) and that “men profit in many … subtle ways from

woman’s alterity” because “the myth of the Woman, of the Other, remains precious”

(34). She explains the connection between myth and woman:

It is always difficult to describe a myth; it does not lend itself to being grasped or defined […]. The object fluctuates so much and is so contradictory that its unity is not at first discerned: Delilah and Judith, Aspasia and Lucretia, Pandora and Athena, woman is both Eve and the Virgin Mary. She is an idol, a servant, source of life, power of darkness; she is the elementary silence of truth, she is artifice, gossip, and lies; she is the medicine woman and witch. (de Beauvoir 196-97)

The female protagonists in the novel, the Santa de Cabora and the unnamed researcher, display agency and contest 19th and early 20th century images of hegemonic femininities,

as described by Castellanos and De Beauvoir. Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora, in part,

creates her own image. The historian-narrator, in turn, preserves this image. They

demonstrate how “the models that society proposes and imposes upon” can be broken

92 See A Rosario Castellanos Reader: An Anthology of Her Poetry, Short Fiction, Essays, and Drama, edited by Maureen Ahern and translated by Diane E. Marting and Betty Tyree Osiek.

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(Castellanos 243). These characters are the opposite of fragility and vulnerability; as is the case of Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora, such characters affirm “authority over disgrace, scorn, and even death” (Castellanos 244). In a sense, both Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora and the historian-narrator create another type of myth, but one that is of their own creation.

According to De Beer, in writing about women, Domecq draws attention to “their history, the myths that surround them, their place in a patriarchal society, [and] their struggle to free themselves from a repressive family and society, and behave as they choose” (109). Domecq’s text illustrates how Teresa Urrea’s historical personage is shrouded in myth and yet, it is this same myth that questions Mexican patriarchal society, and allows her freedoms outside her cultural and generic norm. Teresa Urrea as the Santa de Cabora appropriates the cultural discourses familiar to her by transforming the content of narratives and by extension, owning them. The appropriation of the myth transforms her into la Santa. As la Santa, Teresa Urrea appropriates the title as a symbol that stands against oppression and represents the oppressed. Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora constructs this image, especially, explains De Beer, because she “symbolized everything that a Mexican woman couldn’t and shouldn’t represent and prefigured the contemporary

Mexican woman of a hundred years later” (117).

Conclusion

The resurgence of Teresa Urrea in the 1980s and 1990s, one hundred years later after her fame and healing activism, speaks to the need to reload Mexican history and

Mexicanidad in a contemporary landscape. Reloading Mexican history and Mexicanidad

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is especially important when pre-Revolutionary figures such as Teresa Urrea-Santa de

Cabora and even groups such as the Yaqui and the Mayo have been ignored and

shadowed by figures such as Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.

Granted, the latter two of this list, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, are admired and

hold a place in history because they too came from disenfranchised groups. Emiliano

Zapata, unlike Madero and Villa who are from the northern Mexican region, was from

southern Mexico and represents a different Mexican history and different indigenous

groups. Nevertheless, unlike Teresa Urrea, Villa’s and Zapata’s agency and leadership

was unquestioned because they were seen as military figures in the Revolution, uniting

both North and South. In this novel, Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora constructs her own

image by using familiar cultural discursive mechanisims, such as the ethnic, social, and

generic cultural narratives available to her, to become a leader to the communities that

she belongs to and that she represents. Through the historian-narrator’s portrayal, Teresa

Urrea-Santa de Cabora shapes herself into a charismatic leader that politically and

socially motivated as well as inspired those who admired and marveled at her curative

powers. Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora prefigures the leaders that emerged during the

Revolutionary period and provides a framework for these revolutionary leaders. As a

historical figure, Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora disarticulates 19th and 20th century

hegemonic discourses on femininity which are reloaded by an academic historian in a

present day. It is through Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora that the discourses of el eterno

femenino, presented by Castellanos, are denaturalized.93

93 El eterno femenino (1973), written by Rosario Castellanos, is a play composed of monologues from women known famously in Mexican history.

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As literary protagonists, Teresa Urrea-Santa de Caboras’s and the unnamed researcher’s near death experiences create the narrative link that transcends time in order to shape a mode of historical discourse in which facts and myth are intertwined, as are the

past and the present. Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora as an actor and the historian as a

discourse builder intervene to change our conception of history by accentuating the gaps

that destabilize the “grand narrative” of history. Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora, in

different historical moments and for many communities, symbolizes the “evolution from

illegitimacy to legitimacy in the broadest sense” (de Beer 118) because both her fictional,

mythical, and historical persona reload history.

Domecq’s novel La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora is characterized by the

intertwining of fiction, myth, and history by tracing the history-story of Teresa Urrea-

Santa de Cabora in Mexico’s pre-Revolutionary period. In a similar manner, Carmen

Boullosa’s novel Duerme intertwines fiction, myth, and history but does so with the story of a fictional character named Claire in Colonial Mexico. Claire, just like Teresa Urrea-

Santa de Cabora, represents and becomes a leader to different marginal groups, in particular to women, indigenous ethnic groups, and mestizos located in the colonial capital (Mexico City) and its surrounding areas, such as the Valley of Mexico. Whereas as the Santa de Cabora is known for her healing abilities, Claire is known for her self- healing abilities. These female characters and their mythical healing abilities become integral to their roles as leaders. They appropriate the definitions of femininity to become the leaders that their respective communities need. These female leaders reload historical understandings of Colonial Mexico and pre-Revolutionary Mexico by drawing attention to the various groups and regions rebelling, respectively, against the crown and the

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Porfiriato. Though Carlos Reygadas’s film Japón is a visual text and its main

protagonists, a middle-aged man from the Mexican Capital and an elderly indigenous woman, aren’t revolutionary leaders like Teresa Urrea-Santa de Cabora and Claire, they nevertheless draw attention to a Mexico that is often mythicized. Japón, like the unnamed historian’s journey in La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora, illustrates the journey of an unnamed artist from Mexico’s capital to the rural space. The next chapter discusses how the interactions of these two characters in Japón reload historical conceptions of

Mexico’s indigenous and mestizo people located in the rural spaces.

CHAPTER THREE Japón: Visual Reloadings of Mexicanidad at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

“En los alrededores, las elevaciones eran todas lisas, suaves, redondeadas. Ésta, en cambio, parecía un amontonamiento de rocas gigantes en delicado equilibrio, un milagro de arquitectura divina, siempre a punto de desmoronarse y, a la vez, inamovible.”

(La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora 93)

The Familiar and Unfamiliar, Rural Mexico Reloaded

The visual hegemonic conceptualizations of Mexicanidad are cinematically accentuated in Mexican director Carlos Reygadas’s debut film Japón (2002). Reygadas visually underscores the complexity of Mexicanidad by emphasizing the familiar and the unfamiliar through the interactions of an unnamed and urban artist with an elderly indigenous-mestiza woman, Ascen, in a Mexican rural landscape. Whereas the previous two chapters explored the ways that Brianda Domecq (La insólita historia de la Santa de

Cabora) and Carmen Boullosa (Duerme) reload Mexican history by drawing attention to forgotten historical figures as well as to racial, indigenous, mestizo, and gendered communities, this chapter similarly explores the ways in which Reygadas reloads

Mexicanidad by contrasting rural life with the preconceived notions of an urban artist and even those of a spectator. In the film, the unnamed artist embarks on a journey from urban Mexico City to rural Ayacatzintla, shortened to Catzintla.94 His journey introduces canonical subjects reproduced in Mexican literature and film (such as the rural agricultural landscape, the indigenous-mestizo community, the intellectual artistic class,

94 The credits list the town’s full name as Ayacatzintla. In the film it is referred to as Catzintla. 146

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and death) as a way to conceptually reload the visual tradition of Mexicanidad. Reygadas

creates a defamiliarization of these topics by exposing the artist’s ignorance of an

indigenous-mestizo community’s way-of-life. This defamiliarization is accentuated through the artist’s interactions with the lead female protagonist, Ascen, and with the

townspeople of Catzintla. His interactions produce a type of inverted voyeurism in which

he is no longer the observer of Ascen and the Catzintla community but the object of

observation of this same community. As such, Reygadas shows in a postmodern way not

only how Mexicanidad has been imagined, defined, and visualized but also how the

creation of this visualization is an ongoing process.

In Japón, Carlos Reygadas explores the relationship between individuals and

society by selecting a location in the southern part of Mexico that represents both the

local and the global. That is, the sequence of images that Reygadas uses to open Japón

shows not only Mexico City and rural Mexico but also any metropolis and rural town

anywhere in the world. For example, the depiction of Mexico City and Catzintla can also

be the depiction of Buenos Aires and Las Charcas (or any village that’s located outside

the Argentinean metropolis) or of Miami and any of Florida’s agricultural rural towns,

and so forth.95 This representation of the local and the global is accentuated with the

unnamed artist’s journey, a recognizable narrative of an individual (whether an artist, a

95 These examples (Argentina and Florida), although they might appear random, actually came to mind for the following reasons: first, in 2003 the lead actor in Japón Alejandro Ferretis Elizondo wins the Best Actor award (and the only win outside of Mexico) at the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI) and second, because as a long-time resident of Florida I am familiar with the representations of Florida’s urban and rural spaces. The unnamed artist’s journey from the urban center to the rural periphery in Japón is one that can happen anywhere. As a side note, in 2004 Alejandro Ferretis Elizondo also wins Mexico’s Ariel award in the Best Actor category. However, due to his untimely and mysterious death in his San Miguel de Allende home, at the age of 59, he was unable to attend the ceremony. The Ariel is a prestigious award given annually by the Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas. For a list of the film’s wins and nominations from other cinematography organizations see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322824/awards?ref_=tt_awd.

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university student, or a researcher, for example) who leaves familiar surroundings in search of self or of greater intellectual meaning. Yet, the events that occur in the artist’s journey, albeit minimal, transcend the unnamed artist. Because even though the artist’s motive for leaving behind his urban life is important to the film’s narrative, it is his relationship with Ascen and Ascen’s story that start to take precedence. Part of the film’s narrative journey is seeing the shift of focus from the artist to Ascen. As we follow the artist’s journey, we along with the artist are left with the desire to know about Ascen because she is an enigma. At first, Ascen is meant to only provide lodging for the artist.

Instead, she interrupts the artist’s journey with her presence and story. She represents more than the character-type role of the indigenous-mestiza elderly woman that is traditionally portrayed as a mother figure or a wise woman who takes care of others.

Rather, she is a complex individual whose life is not in full display as there are secrets that she keeps. As a result, Ascen simultaneously represents the familiar and unfamiliar.

Consequently, the character of Ascen shifts and cracks the traditional narrative of an indigenous-mestiza woman by capturing a particular kind of indigenous reality.

Even though Britta Sjogren in Into the Vortex is looking at the role of the female voice in classical 1940s-50s Hollywood films, her argument of why it’s important to not dismiss female characters, in what we can label as male-centered films, also rings true for

Japón:

Feminine difference is a positive structuring force within these films—one sustained, rather than stifled, through the apperception of contradiction on the levels of consciousness, point of view, and discourse. Indeed, an orientation that presumes and insists that the woman cannot speak or be heard in the classical cinema may bar us from perceiving ways in which the feminine is represented, eventually suppressing what we seek to find. (1)

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Indeed, it is Ascen’s presence, as the leading female protagonist in Japón, that exposes

the unnamed artist’s preconceived definitions of rural Mexico. Ascen demonstrates that

quotidian life is full of contradictions; she encapsulates a “Mexico profundo” that is not

easily categorized or defined.

In Japón, the countryside provides a framework that presents the multiple layers that construct meanings of Mexicanidad and that constitute a contra-discourse vis-à-vis

the narrations of the 1960s and 1970s.96 Some of those layers are created through the use

of diverse narrative film techniques and technical devices, such as the use of wide camera

angles, extended length of scenes, animal sounds, non-diegetic classical music, and the

limited use of dialogue. The film, in an almost exclusive point of view, that of the

narrator, and in a post-modern paradox, questions the artist’s role as a traditional narrator

(who either attempts to make sense of what he sees or is unable to make sense of what he

sees). This narrative questioning makes obvious that the artist’s visual narration not only

produces his isolation but stresses his “foreignness” to the ways of the community, a

community that he chooses as his final destination to die perhaps because of a belief that

it is far removed from the Mexican capital. Furthermore, the fact that his name is never

stated and that Ascen refers to him as “joven” from the start also cements his

96 Al filo del Agua (1947), Pedro Páramo (1955), Balún Canán (1957), La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Recuerdos del Porvenir (1963), and Gringo Viejo (1985), are all novels that portray the Mexican Revolutionary period and that are published in the middle part of the 20th century. Though not all of these listed novels belong specifically to the Latin American Boom (a literary movement in the 1960s and 1970s that was closely tied to the commercial international marketing of publishing houses of Latin American novels, in particular Seix Barral in Barcelona, Spain), together they are part of an intellectual, broad literary project that creates a 20th century vision of Mexico as a nation and of Mexicanness. These post- revolutionary novels, regardless of their publication date, rethink the nation-building and mestizaje projects that were started in the previous century (post-Independence) and that continued well into the twentieth century. Furthermore, Elena Garro in Recuerdos del Porvenir and Rosario Castellanos in Balún Canán were establishing a feminist perspective for twentieth century literary history.

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“strangeness” and “foreignness” to the community.97 Additionally, his perspective

highlights his angst as an artist and also his self-centered way of looking at the world.

Reygadas contrasts the artist’s point of view with panoramic landscape shots of Catzintla and the close-ups of the community’s quotidian life. These images don’t fit into the artist’s predetermined way of seeing because what he encounters is a rural space with its own set of routines and rules unfamiliar to him. Although the film illustrates a quotidian reality mediated through the artist’s point of view, it is important to remember, as stated earlier, that the artist is also scrutinized by Ascen and the people of Catzintla.

Consequently, even though the artist’s conceptual understanding of rural Mexico is always front and center, one of the film’s narrative objectives is to discern his self- reflective transformation.

In Japón, another important layer in the narrative is the use of sounds: for example, the sounds that are present during the filmmaking or that are added during post- production. Sjogren states that “sound is frequently more consciously crafted than the visual image” (5). She explains that whereas “the image often contains many accidental and unforeseen elements that surface within the ‘real space’ where the film takes place

(play of light, weather, etc., especially in on location shooting), the creation of a sound track is more often completely contrived—created artificially in an independent process and composed with elements that were not necessarily present during the filming”

(Sjogren 5-6). Sounds in Japón are not gratuitous, in fact, they strategically frame the narrative. Sjogren writes that it’s important we recognize that sound generates narrative meaning (11). She specifically explains that “the textual relations between the

97 I use both “artist” and “unnamed artist” when referencing this character. I strategically use “unnamed” throughout the text to draw attention to the fact that he is a stranger in this community and is only passing by.

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protagonists within a rhetoric of sound to image must be carefully considered in

interpreting the representation of perspective in film” (Sjogren 82). In Japón, the sounds

that we hear are not simply framing the narrative but creating narrative. Sjogren also

writes that the traditional “privileging of the visual over the acoustic register of cinema”

in academic and film critique misses the importance of sound and speech (11). She notes

that in “the origins of cinema, there is ample evidence that a ‘purely’ visual filmic

experience was never produced for, nor desired by, spectators. The representational

history of film suggests that the alterity that sound presents to the image has always structured film texts” (Sjogren 11). In other words, Sjogren is arguing that in film sound is crucial to the visual and vice versa because together they create a more complete cinematographic narrative, that nevertheless is complex. Sjogren explains that the connection between sound and image is “a complex narrating process, wherein sound and image, and representations of ‘listening,’ ‘speaking,’ ‘being seen,’ and ‘seeing’ interplay

to produce a recognition of point of view that enables the spectator to negotiate difference

(rather than suppress it)” (82). Because there is little dialogue in the Japón, the use of

classical music and the sounds that are present in an agricultural rural landscape (nature

itself, such as the chirping of birds, as well as the slaughtering of animals) dominate just

as much as the visual. The sounds are a set of juxtapositions that further draw attention to

the artist’s self-centered journey and to the fact that he is a foreigner to this rural

landscape. The soundtrack in Japón, moreover, addresses the traditional mystification of

Mexicanidad by intellectual writers and artists (like the Mexican muralists José Clemente

Orozco or Diego Rivera or essayists like José Vasconcelos and Octavio Paz), that is, the soundtrack shows how the intellectual artistic class reimagines a rural community when it

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attempts to define or paint it without its quotidian reality. The use of classical music however also functions as a strategic spotlight to the rural Mexican landscape. Sound directs the way we see, but more precisely, it directs the way we interpret the narrative. I should note here that, in his journey, it is the artist who brings classical music to the countryside. He travels with few items, one of those items, is a CD player. The musical preference of the unnamed artist both identifies and accentuates his “artistic” and intellectual point of view. However, even though the soundtrack underlines the unnamed artist’s point of view it also makes clear, again, that in this rural Mexican landscape he is an outsider, a foreigner and wildly out of place. He makes this even more obvious when in a drunken, belligerent state, in the town’s cantina, he knocks down the stereo playing the Mexican version of country music.

Additionally, the use of classical music in Japón also introduces us to another narrator, one that is outside the film. This outside narrator creates an external visuality that submits the narrator-character (the unnamed artist) to the same visuality that he exercises over the members of the community and the landscape. The presence of an outside narrator and the unnamed artist-character-narrator provide different interpretative lenses of Mexicanidad. These two “official” narrators create a set of questions: who sees and who creates meaning? It is these questions and the answers to them that allow us to identify the multiple entities that see, observe, and create meaning: the unnamed artist as a character-narrator, the outside narrator, Ascen, the community of Catzintla, and the viewer. Although Guido Mazzoni in his Theory of the Novel only focuses on the structures that make a novel, his definition on the narrator is apropos in understanding the

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different interpretative lenses or meaning producers that are found in Japón. Mazzoni explains that

[e]very story has four categories of interpreters: the author (or authors), the narrator (or narrators), the hero (or heros), and the reader (or readers). The first and fourth remain outside the work; the second and third enter into the text connected by a relationship that is at the same time symmetrical and asymmetrical. Both express points of view and generate an interpretation of reality in which they are seen as protagonists or spectators. (51)

Mazzoni states that “the narrator holds only one of many possible points of view; his or her word is partial” (52). He explains that “narratives leave open the theoretical possibility that the story can be told from a different perspective” (Mazzoni 52). Though he does not elaborate on the technical alternating of narrative voices in novels (from the first person to the third person), that sometimes are not clearly demarcated, it is important to remember that this is also strategy present in novels as a way to expand on narrative partiality; for example, in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1955), Carlos Fuentes’s La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), and in post-Boom texts like Brianda Domecq’s La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (1990) and Carmen Boullosa’s Duerme (1994).

Reygadas in Japón, in a similar way, creates different interpretative perspectives through film. Both the visual and sound aspects of Japón generate a different way of questioning previous constructions of Mexicanidad as well as creating new unbounded definitions of

Mexicanidad.

In the following sections, I explore the ways in which Reygadas strategically uses cinematography to visually reload Mexicanidad at the start of the twenty-first century. In the first section titled “Italian Neorealism and the New Latin American Cinema” I briefly trace two cinematic movements that transformed, informed, and created a new cinema

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that focused on the quotidian and the marginal. In the section, “Aspects of Auteur &

Documentary filmmaking in Japón” I situate the importance and relevance of the film

techniques used in auteur and documentary films to Japón. I also reference the lasting images left by Mexico’s celebrated cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. The final section,

“Crack! A Close-reading of Ascen and Mexicanidad,” traces how the statements in the

Manifiesto Crack literary movement aligns itself with Reygadas’s project through an exploration of the way in which Ascen creates a rupture in both the film’s narrative and even including literary narratives where the elderly indigenous-mestizo female is

represented, such as and ironically, in La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora and

Duerme. However, before continue I want to address the role of the viewer in Japón and

also outline the film’s visual narrative.

Although the narrator-character (the unnamed artist) and the outside narrator, as

mentioned earlier, create partial narrative interpretations, it is the viewer who must make

the connections. In his introduction to The Reader as Peeping Tom, Jeremy Hawthorn

explains that the act of “watching a film […] is the ultimate voyeuristic experience” for a

viewer (4). He writes that “certain postmodernist exceptions apart, the characters we

encounter in novels and films […] remain in blissful ignorance that we are observing

them. In their most intimate moments, we are there, in their private spaces and even

inside their heads” (Hawthorn 4). Hawthorn adds that

as readers we smile as if we can be seen by others [when watching a film], and yet at the same time, and paradoxically, we observe characters in their most private moments as if we cannot be seen by them (and indeed we cannot). All this may seem obvious when considered, yet novels and films typically manage to anaesthetize readers and viewers against an awareness of the voyeuristic aspects of their activity. (4)

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Hawthorn, in this quote, hints that even though most films keep viewers from noticing their own voyeuristic participation, their voyeurism nevertheless can still be revealed.

That is, films can and do make viewers aware of their voyeuristic participation. In Japón, for example, the viewer is made aware of his and her voyeuristic presence when viewing, as one example, the sexual encounter between Ascen and the unnamed artist that occurs towards the end of the narrative. The scene is not a stylized sexual encounter between youthful healthy bodies, but a scene that depicts the bodies of two aging individuals that are hurting physically. This physical pain, for example, is demonstrated early on in the film when Ascen admits that she has arthritis and that she recently sprained her ankle.

Similarly, the unnamed artist, though he doesn’t verbally state it, uses a cane to support his leg because he walks with a limp. Their sexual encounter exposes our subjective voyeurism because we are keenly aware of their bodies. Their bodies are not hidden. We interpret their physical joining as awkward because their encounter is about the act itself, at least for the unnamed artist. The artist has previously confirmed this when he asks

Ascen to have sex because he wants to satisfy a physical need. Yet, the actual encounter is awkward not only because we see their naked bodies but because we also see two different responses, the artist who verbally and physical directs Ascen’s positioning so he can experience a sexual release (before he can commit suicide) and Ascen who attempts to offer comfort by embracing the artist during the sexual act. Even though we do become aware of our presence as viewers in a scene such as this one, our reaction is nevertheless mediated through the unnamed artist and the outside narrator. Hawthorn explains that

“the demarcation line between the fictional and the extra-fictional worlds” or in this case, the presence of the unnamed artist and the outside artist, “is used to effect a rigid

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demarcation between the two, so that rather than witnessing our own voyeuristic activity

mirrored in the text and thus being forced to recognize it” we can then “scrutinize and

judge without ourselves being scrutinized or judged” (8). Although this last assertion by

Hawthorn implies that the presence of the fictional and extra-fictional narrators shield us

from self-reflecting on our roles as voyeurs, it nevertheless is unable to erase the sense of

awkwardness that we feel when encountering scenes that make us aware of our viewing.

Whether we use the awkwardness to self-reflect or use it to reflect on the juxtapositions that the film exposes, what that sense of awkwardness does accomplish is identify the postmodern participatory role of the viewer.

Norman K. Denzin states, in his introductory paragraph to The Cinematic Society:

The Voyeur’s Gaze, that “the voyeur is the iconic, postmodern self. Adrift in a sea of symbols, we find ourselves, voyeurs all, products of the cinematic gaze” (1). Denzin explains that films that make voyeurism part of the narrative, which he calls reflexive- voyeuristic cinema, illustrate how “the voyeur […] becomes a metaphor for the knowing eye who sees through the fabricated structures of truth that a society presents to itself”

(2). He acknowledges that this is “the cinematic version of Foucault’s gaze” (Denzin 2).

He further explains that there are “multiple forms of the voyeur’s gaze” that “expose the cultural logics which have led the postmodern self to interiorize this investigative gaze”

(Denzin 5). According to Denzin, this is a gaze that not only exercises “power in its rawest, yet most sophisticated forms” but that it “unmasks all of us, and makes each of us a willing participant in the regimes of surveillance, deterrence, power and control that threaten to destroy the very fabric of postmodern life” (5). Although Denizen doesn’t explain what he means by postmodern life and how our roles threaten this postmodern

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life, what implicitly stands out in his outlining of these regimes (of surveillance, deterrence, power, control) is our role as creators of meaning. What is not included in this last quote but that is hinted at in his earlier argument, is that even though the viewer interiorizes his and her voyeurism, the viewer is nevertheless one that sees through the structures that fabricate a “truth.” This matters for Japón, because as I have been outlining, the film through its different observers (the unnamed artist who observes

Ascen and the community of Catzintla, the outside narrator who observes them, Ascen and Catzintla who observe the unnamed artist, and finally, the viewer who observes all of this), together generate a postmodern and reloaded understanding of Mexicanidad.

What happens in Jápón? An easy answer would be to say that nothing happens in

Japón because of its non-traditional narrative. However, the narrative in Japón is a sequence of images that capture the everyday interactions and routines in rural Mexico.98

The film captures moments. Reygadas in an interview with José Castillo explains that in his films “the plot is a skeleton from which things are hung” and that the purpose of a

‘story’ is to look at everything “structured around it” (75). These next paragraphs outline the narrative action of the film. I attempt to provide a synopsis of sorts as a way to capture the sequence of events. I believe that it is important to provide an outline of the film’s events in order to better understand the film’s aesthetic framing. It is this latter part that generates the different narrative points of views presented in the film. Furthermore,

98 This is my interpretation of the film’s narrative outline. However, before I continue, I must acknowledge my role as an interpretive viewer because it is important to recognize that I am encountering this film from a specific cultural and academic background that in itself is complex. Although I use the term viewer and viewers throughout this chapter, I am aware that there are multiple interpretations. The viewer is not one monolithic subject (Hawthorn 10, 14). Keeping this in mind, I recognize that even though I attempt to provide an objective narrative outline of Japón, I will nevertheless illustrate it through my particular point of view. Especially because as Hawthorn reminds us “divisions associated with gender, class, race, culture, and history do not all fade away when we enter the world of the fiction” (15).

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the film’s uncontrived plot also functions as a narrative technique which allows the viewer to better see the day-to-day realities of rural Mexico.

The viewer of Japón witnesses the story of an unnamed artist who travels from the urban space of the Mexican Capital to the rural space, a small town in the state of

Hidalgo, in search of his death. For the artist, the town of Catzintla is the rural place he’s chosen to commit suicide. When the artist arrives to the town he asks a man from the community if there is a place where he can stay. The man suggests that he speak to the local leader, who is the town’s judge and representative. After welcoming the artist to

Catzintla, the judge suggests that he go speak with Ascen, and elderly and widowed woman who lives by herself on a cliff in the outskirts of the town, about lodging. A friend of Ascen’s, Sabina, leads the artist to her home. Once there and after a short discussion, Ascen allows the artist to stay. During his stay in Catzintla, the unnamed artist attempts to commit suicide a couple of times and fails. He also begins to interact and develop a relationship with both Ascen and the local townspeople.

Throughout his stay with Ascen, the unnamed artist learns about her nephew’s plans to take the block structures that are the foundation of her home and protect it from the environmental dangers that arise from living on a cliff. Ascen’s interaction with her nephew becomes a point of interest for the unnamed artist. Upon comprehending the familial relationship between Ascen and her nephew, although minimally, the artist decides to help Ascen by confronting the nephew. The unnamed artist proceeds to interact with the townspeople to learn more about the relationship between Ascen and her nephew. As he starts to learn more about Ascen, he also starts to have sexual fantasies about her. The unnamed artist propositions Ascen for sex. Ascen listens to his proposition

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and agrees to his request. The morning after their (failed?) sexual encounter, the nephew

with the help of men from the town begins to tear down the block structures supporting

Ascen’s home. The artist and Ascen hear the strikes against the blocks and the shouts of

men and immediately leave the bed and head outside. The artist attempts to stop, through

insults and shouts, the nephew and the local men from tearing down Ascen’s home.

Ascen does not challenge the destruction of her home and instead provides food and

drink to her nephew and the townsmen. Once the blocks are torn down, the men begin to

load the blocks into a tractor truck. Before they head out to the neighboring town, Ascen

asks to join them in the journey. The weight of the blocks causes the tractor to topple during the trip. With the exception of the unnamed artist who only watched the proceedings and stayed behind in the cliff, everyone, including Ascen dies. Ascen’s death concludes the film’s narrative storyline.

Italian Neorealism and the New Latin American Cinema

As mentioned at the start, the unnamed artist’s journey to Catzintla highlights the juxtaposing experiences of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Specifically, his journey depicts experiences that can only be found in marginal spaces like the rural landscape in the outskirts of the Mexican capital. It is the portrayal of these experiences that align

Japón with the thematic, visual, political, and social aesthetics of Italian Neorealism and the New Latin American Cinema. Though these movements emerge in the mid-20th

century, it is their aesthetic proposals that evolve and continue to thrive in films such as

Japón. Susan Hayward, in her book Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, explains that the

films of Italian Neorealism, between the years of 1942 and 1952, were a reaction to the

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previous films produced under Italy’s fascist government, headed by Benito Mussolini

(1883-1945). The films produced during Mussolini’s rule, between 1922 and 1943, were required to illustrate a positive image of Italy (Hayward 226).99 Hayward explains that at the time “the government had decreed that crime and immorality should not be put on screen” (226). With the end of Mussolini’s censorship, Italian filmmakers and directors begin to make films that illustrated “the impoverished conditions of the working classes and [the conditions] of urban life” (Hayward 227). In their introduction to Italian

Neorealism and Global Cinema, Laura E. Ruberto and Kristi M. Wilson describe the relationship between literary aesthetics and cinema in this period in the following manner: “Neorealism, for one, grew out of Western literary styles, such as naturalism, realism, and, most importantly, Italian verismo, which strove to illustrate the stark realities of the peasant and working class with a detached, ‘scientific’ mode of narration”

(3). By portraying the urban conditions of the working classes, Italian Neorealism’s filmmakers not only exposed the realities marginal communities were experiencing but also created a film style that was “defined by its influence, by its ability to inspire politicized, ideological, and aesthetic alternatives to Hollywood narrative tendencies, while simultaneously accomplishing the task of entertaining” (Ruberto and Wilson 10).

Hayward outlines the following characteristics that identified Italian Neorealism’s cinematic filming style, important to its “scientific” narrative objective:

First, it should project a slice of life, it should appear to enter and then leave everyday life. As “reality” it should not use literary adaptations but go for the real. Second, it should focus on social reality: on the poverty and unemployment so rampant in postwar Italy. Third, in order to

99 Important to note, the dates of the Second World War (1939-1945) overlap with the second half of Mussolini’s rule. Italy along with Germany and Japan created a military alliance called the Axis powers or the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. Their counterparts were the Allied powers, composed of Britain, France, Russia, and the United States.

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guarantee this realism, dialogue and language should be natural—even to the point of keeping to the regional dialects. To this effect, preferably non- professional actors should be used. And, finally, the shooting should be documentary in style, shot in natural light, with a hand-held camera and using observation and analysis. (227-28)

Though these are the general parameters that identified Italian Neorealism filmmaking,

they nevertheless are characteristics also found in Japón’s narrative, but with key

differences. In Japón, for example, Reygadas makes use of “natural” dialogue and

dialect, non-professional actors, natural light, and the hand-held camera to illustrate a

quotidian twenty-first-century Mexican reality, but unlike Italian Neorealist films that

portray a post-war urban working class, Japón portrays an agricultural twenty-first

century rural community with its owns social constructions. In one of his many interviews in the past year, Reygadas answers that his films are similar to what Italian filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s were portraying:

For example, the Italian directors from the 1960s and ‘70s, [Michelangelo] Antonioni, [Ermanno] Olmi, and of course, [Pier Paolo] Pasolini, they made a lot of films around factories, around wastelands. The sound of the factory horns, of the machines – it was all very important for the films too. They lived in these places and so they were very concerned about these kinds of atmospheres. (Dima ques. 7)

Though the filmmakers that Reygadas references don’t fall within the historical dates of

Italian Neorealism, the films nevertheless are stylistically neorealist. Reygadas is also informed by Neorealist techniques and utilizes them to portray the many layers of rural

Mexico that are missed when only seen through a traditional lens of Mexicanidad.

Though Reygadas in his answer above only references Italian filmmakers, his portrayal

of the artist’s journey and his interactions with the townspeople (and vice versa) in Japón

also aligns itself with the concerns and objectives promoted by the New Latin American

Cinema movement. For example, though the filmic style of Japón contains documentary-

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like elements that are also present in Neorealist films, in Japón they are mitigated by the artist’s eye and the outside narrator.

Ruberto and Wilson explain that for the directors and filmmakers of the New

Latin American movement in the 1960s the goal was to use film as an aesthetic for social and political commentary beyond what was offered by Italian Neorealism. Though Italian

Neorealism provided the aesthetic means to depict social issues, it did not “go far enough in using film as a tool for social commentary” (Ruberto and Wilson 4). However, Kristi

M. Wilson argues, in her article “From the Pensioner to Teenager: Everyday Violence in

De Sica’s Umberto D and Gaviria’s Rodrigo D: No Future,” that even though the filmmakers and theorists of the New Latin American Cinema “faulted neorealist filmmakers … for a lack of revolutionary insight that prevented them from interrogating their country’s Fascist past and from effecting real social change,” there were some

Neorealist Italian filmmakers, like director Vittorio De Sica and scriptwriter Cesare

Zavattini, who were nevertheless concerned with the “Fascist residue in postwar Italian society” (Wilson 144). Whether or not Neorealism created films that generated enough social impact, it is the filming techniques that Italian Neorealism emphasized (such as the use of a handheld camera in order to create a “collaborative, low budget technique”) that provided an aesthetic which Latin American filmmakers could use as a way to produce narratives containing social, political, and historical commentary (Ruberto and Wilson 5).

Michael T. Martin writes, in his introductory chapter “Unfinished Social Practice of the

New Latin American Cinema: Introductory Notes” to New Latin American Cinema, that the proliferation of manifestoes and essays calling for a new type of Latin American cinema “in the late 1950s and 1960s, [was] in response to the deepening

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underdevelopment and economic and cultural dependency of the continent, [which as a result,] the movement has inscribed itself in Latin Americans’ struggles for national and continental autonomy” (16).100 Martin reminds us that even though the filmmakers and theorists in this historical period “shared aesthetic and thematic concerns, their representational strategies are as diverse as the population groups and hybrid cultures of

Latin America” (16). Although Zuzana M. Pick looks at the New Latin American Cinema movement through a modernist lens in her article “The New Latin American Cinema: A

Modernist Critique of Modernity,” it is her closing argument that underscores how this cinema paves the way for films like Japón to employ postmodern representational strategies as a way to revolutionize conceptualizations of Mexicanidad:

New Latin American Cinema emerges as a site of struggle between diverging, and sometimes contentious, processes of historical construction. Latin American identity has been shaped by cultural practices that have sanctioned or contested prevalent forms of representation and social organization. By authorizing different approaches to production, distribution, and exhibition, the movement has endorsed radical forms of filmmaking capable of revolutionizing existing social relations. (308)

To the above quote, I will add Ana M. López’s assertion, in her article “An ‘Other’

History: The New Latin American Cinema,” that more than being a movement this term identifies “a social practice that revels in the diversity and multiplicity of its efforts to

create an ‘other’ cinema with ‘other’ social effects as a prerequisite of its principal goal

to reveal and analyze the ‘reality,’ the underdevelopment and national characteristics, that

decades of dependency have concealed” (139).

It is around the time that Italian Neorealism starts to gradually fade that the New

Latin American Cinema emerges, in the 1950s. B. Ruby Rich in her article “An/Other

100 Also during this period there is heavy US intervention in Latin America; it is a historical period of tension due to the Cold War (1947-1991) following World War II (1939-1945).

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View of New Latin American Cinema” supports that this cinema made use of Italian

Neorealism aesthetics to illustrate the particular realities of Latin America (277). This

type of cinema allowed the New Latin American Cinema filmmakers the opportunity to

oppose “the long-dominant Hollywood style of studio shooting and seamlessly composed

narratives” (Rich 277). However, this isn’t the first time that Latin American directors

opposed a Hollywood filmmaking model. Charles Ramírez Berg explicates that in

Mexico’s Golden Age Cinema, in his book Classical Mexican Cinema, there was a group

of filmmakers that rejected Hollywood’s narrative and technical model and produced

some of the most iconic films between the mid-1930s and mid-1950s that define the

period, three examples of an extensive list, Dos monjes (1934) directed by Juan Bustillo

Oro, Allá en el rancho grande (1936) directed by Fernando de Fuentes, and María

Candelaria (1943) directed by Emilio Fernández.101 Ramírez Berg divides Mexico’s

Golden Age period into two camps, first there was the Mainstream Mexican Cinema that

closely imitated the Hollywood narrative model and then there was the Classical Mexican

Cinema that explored an alternative movie making process emphasizing Mexican narrative themes specifically for a Mexican audience. After the Second World War, however, the Hollywood industry sought to once again regain footing in Mexican theaters as they had before the war. Consequently, as Hollywood began to demand its previous market again and Mexican politicians the types of films produced during this postwar period in Mexico suffered because filmmakers didn’t have access to similar budgets as they had during the Golden Age period. Yet, even though there was an obvious decline in filmmaking and in the quality of films, as I have been outlining, a new cinema emerged

101 Berg writes that María Candelaria holds the distinction of being the first film to win the Golden Palm Award at the inaugural 1946 Cannes Film Festival (91).

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during this postwar period that, although heterogeneous in its socio-political nature

nonetheless attempted to illustrate a very real Latin American reality. The film creators of

the New Latin American Cinema period, instead of representing “the preoccupations of a

leisure class, and the presentation of a sanitized history, … replaced [it] by the here-and- now, historical reclamations, [and] the lives of a class that had not seen itself reflected in the cinema” (Rich 277). Rich stresses the importance of understanding films that came before Japón, films such as La negra angustias (1949) by Mexican film director Matilde

Landeta, though this film is part of Mexico’s Golden Age period, Los inundados (1962) by Argentinean director Fernando Birri, and De cierta manera (1974), though released in

1978 by Cuban director Sara Gómez, because of their aesthetic “refusal to attribute

‘otherness’ to subjects formerly marked as such, accompanied by a commitment to the narrative inscription of an ‘other’ selfhood, identity, and subjectivity” (280). Though from three distinct decades, together these three films create and illustrate ambiguities with the stories they are telling and the characters they present and, furthermore, demonstrate alternative endings with a hegemonic objective for societies experiencing

historical transformations.102 Although these films predate Japón, the cinematic aesthetics used are comparably crucial when looking at the narrative-visual structure of

102 Rich asserts that the ending of La negra Angustias is unusual for its time because the films produced in this historical period, in a post-Revolutionary era, were creating “a national agenda for a family model within which women were subservient” (279). In the film, the protagonist Angustias fights as a leader in the Mexican Revolution instead of choosing marriage. Although it is innovative that Angustias does not marry, an important feminist point that director Matilde Landeta underscores, both the film as well as the novel in which the film is based are nevertheless defending traditional Mexicanidad and also the Revolutionary project of mestizaje. The novel was published in 1944 by Francisco Rojas González. B. Chrissy Arce in “La Negra Angustias: The Mulata in Mexican Literature and Cinema,” explains that not only (in both the film and the novel) Angustias’s racial identity as a mulata is lost but her blackness is also “disfigured […with] racist representations” (1086). Yet, the film and the novel, even when endorsing traditional Mexicanidad and mestizaje, are unable to erase her identity even when she is portrayed as “other” and as “an exotic, anomalous—read black—transgressor,” as Jane J. Hampton states in her article “La Negra Angustias: Flawed Hero or Tragic Victim?: A Feminist Reading” (31).

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Japón. Reygadas in Japón, however, takes it further by altering who is and who becomes

the “other.” Reygadas in Japón illustrates the reversal of roles. The unnamed artist’s journey initially seems to suggest that Ascen and her community are the “other,”

however, his interactions with this community demonstrates that he, the intellectual artist

from the capital is the “other,” not an abject “other” but an “other” nonetheless.

Moreover, Reygadas also examines who the “other” is and who defines the “other.” Even though the unnamed artist only plans to live for a short period of time in Catzintla, the reasons for his brief stay, his plan to commit suicide, make it even more evident that he does not belong in this rural environment. By illustrating the strangeness of the unnamed artist in this rural space, Japón’s narrative highlights the paradox of “otherness.”

In their introduction to The Cinema of Latin America, Alberto Elena and Marina

Díaz López explain that the New Latin American Cinema also contributed to the creation of national cinemas that were either “underdeveloped or even non-existent” and that it also created “its own pantheon of renowned filmmakers, and its own political and aesthetic commitment” (6 and 11). Important to note is that Mexico was one of the leading Latin American cinematic producers during its Golden Age period and exported many of their films, however, it was only after the postwar period that cinematic organizations, many times sponsored by the state, began to emerge in other Latin

American countries. Yet, these national cinemas and their catalog of past filmmakers has allowed for Latin American filmmakers in the 1990s and early 2000s the ability to express their “own cultural roots” in a globalized era (Elena and Díaz López 11). As such, Rich explains that the trajectory of the New Latin American Cinema as a movement

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with its various social-political agendas has allowed for the continuation of telling stories that focus on both the individual and history not just in its nascent period but also today:

If the period of the early New Latin American Cinema movement was strongly identified with the reclaiming of the dispossessed and with the portrayal of the sweep of history, in both ideological and folkloric terms— then it is fitting that the current phase of the New Latin American Cinema should follow the lead of these films, turning away from the epic toward the chronicle, a record of a time in which no spectacular events occur but in which the extraordinary nature of the everyday is allowed to surface. (281)

It is the second part of Rich’s assertion that is key to understanding films like Japón at

the start of the 21st century. Even though it was released in 2002, the film chronicles an

ordinary journey that is nothing but ordinary. The supposed mundanity of this journey,

instead, creates a sense of shock and discomfort with the familiar and unfamiliar,

especially, through the interactions between the unnamed artist, Ascen, the townspeople

and, the rural landscape. These interactions emphasize the manner in which recording the

ordinary, that is, the day-to-day, creates a reloaded history of Mexico and Mexicanidad.

Aspects of Auteur & Documentary filmmaking in Japón

The filmic strategies that Carlos Reygadas employs, such as the presence of an

outside narrator and limited narrative action, also mark Japón as an auteur film. Hayward

briefly outlines the trajectory and debates of auteur films from the early 1900s to the

mid-1960s. Hayward explains that as early as the 1920s French critics and silent era

directors where already identifying an auteur film as one where “the filmmaker is the

auteur—irrespective of the origin of the script” (31). Generally, explains Hayward, “the

author of the script and the film-maker were one and the same (but not always)” (31).

Hayward’s parenthetical addition underscores how auteur films in the beginning were

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rarely if ever identified as a collaborative effort. This however would gradually change in

the following decades with the advent of different theoretical perspectives. The debates

surrounding auteur films went through what Hayward identifies as three phases, from the

1950s to the 1970s, which “shift[ed] the notion of film theory” from a sociological

analysis to one with multiple theories (33-34).

The first phase takes place in the 1950s and is identified as the politique des auteurs. In this first phase the auteur is the central figure that produces meaning

(Hayward 32). Soon after the end of World War II, a group of young French filmmakers dissatisfied with both the imported narratives from Hollywood and the films from

Hollywood, championed filmmaking that was distinctive in its narrative format and that focused on the new French reality (Gerstner 6). The auteur and his films, writes David A.

Gerstner in his introductory chapter “the practices of authorship” to Authorship and Film, employed the camera as the director’s writing tool, la caméra-stylo (6). Gerstner, referencing Alexandre Astruc’s 1948 piece “The Birth of a New Avant-garde: La

Caméra-stylo,” explains that “la camera-stylo indicated the director’s creative ability to

‘translate his obsessions’ (18) and ‘write ideas’ (19) so as to reach the profound achievements that exist in great literature and painting” (6). Astruc’s propositions would become important to the directors and critics in the mid-to-late 1950s and 1960s that would define the French New Wave. In his introduction, “Introduction: Fifty years of the

French New Wave: From Hysteria to Nostalgia,” to Peter Graham’s book The French

New Wave, Ginette Vincendeau outlines the complex historical trajectory of the French

New Wave and the directors and critics that were tied to it. He writes that this moment was not just a critical but a cultural cinematic landmark that has influenced world cinema

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since its beginning because it promoted not only an alternative way of making cinema but also because it “transformed the way people saw and analysed films” (1-2). He states that is during this period that both filmmaking and film criticism flourished and created a film culture that was uniquely French (Vincendeau 2). This was especially the case in the establishment of the journal Cahiers du cinema with its critics who also became filmmakers (such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol, amongst others) and who not only defined the French New Wave but whose names were synonymous to it. Vincendeau explains that even though the role of the auteur wasn’t necessarily a must to French New Wave films it nevertheless was important to the overall aesthetic goals of this cinematic movement, even when its filmmakers and film critics weren’t in accord (3). Richard John Neupert in his introduction to A History of the

French New Wave establishes that although the period of the French New Wave is brief, from 1958 to 1964, it nevertheless was a complex moment where “social, technological, economic, and cinematic factors helped generate one of the most intensely creative movements in film history” that to this day still inform our understanding of filmmaking and film studies (Neupert xviii). He states that what is significant about this movement, beyond the directors and the movie titles defining this period, is the way in which a “new interpretation of the cinema and its narrative strategies” has characterized the way in which films are not only made but also analyzed (xviii). Vincendeau sums the French

New Wave with its directors, films, and film criticism in the following manner: “the New

Wave has lost none of its social, cultural and cinematic relevance, [… because] it has truly become part of the national and international patrimony (25). As such, the aesthetic importance of the mise en scène, the role of the auteur, and films’ contents will always be

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important when interpreting films (Vincendeau 19). For that reason, it is important to

closely pay attention whether a film can be defined as an auteur film today. Even though

Gerstner doesn’t speak about the different phases of auteur cinema like Hayward, he

expresses that auteur cinema received criticism in its promotion of films produced solely

for film’s sake (a linguistic reference to the avant-garde artistic movement in the 1920s

where “art for art’s sake” was considered an innovative endeavor), that is, where what

mattered was the relationship between the director and the art and not how the viewer

interpreted it (7). In these films, when auteur theory first emerged, there was no place for

or, specifically, no thought of the spectator, an ideology, or an historical context

(Hayward 32). However, by the 1960s, the second phase generates structuralism where

the producers of meaning included the auteur, linguistic and social aspects, as well as the

institution and its ideologies (Hayward 32). In this second phase there are “underlying

structures of texts” yet the filmic text “still [has] no spectator or ideology” (Hayward 32).

It is in the 1970s, phase three, where post-structuralism generates a “paradigm that makes possible [an] establishment of parameters” that will be able to “show what the texts and subjects are doing and how the interplay produces meanings” (Hayward 32). Hayward explains that this is possible by using semiotics, psychoanalysis, feminism, and deconstruction. The auteur and the spectator are also part of this creation of meaning. It is this phase that provides “a pluralism of theories that cross-fertilize each other” instead

of only one theoretical framework (Hayward 37). In this third phase it is easier to identify

“the auteur’s place within the textual process” and it also allows for “the intertextuality

[…] of any film text […] including auteurial intertextuality” (Hayward 37).

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The plurality of perspectives that emerges in the third phase of auteur films can

be seen when, for example, the character of Ascen in Japón implicitly references the

relationship between artist and art when she asks the unnamed artist about the “dibujitos”

in his art book. Ascen compares her “dibujitos” (small religious cards with a prayer on

one side and an image of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, or a Saint on the other) that hold

meaning to her to the paintings in the unnamed artist’s art book. Ascen is asking the

unnamed artist not just which “dibujitos” he prefers but why he prefers them. The scene

appears to be a self-reflective act on behalf of Reygadas. Reygadas wants to create

meaning between the viewers and what he is depicting; the conversation Ascen initiates

is implicitly posed not just to the artist but to the viewer as well, which images (films) do

you prefer, why do you prefer them, and what meaning do they hold for you. Though in

the following statement Reygadas is not speaking about Japón or this scene in particular,

he states that when comparing the “imperfect” captured images in his films to others’

crispy crafted shots, then “you introduce something that creates doubt, then you’ll

probably look again, and then you might be able to enter another realm” (Smith ques. 1).

In other words, he wants the images in his films to produce meaning not just once but

multiple times. In any case, this complex self-reflection about the role of art and film in

the rural space is more in line with Hayward’s third phase of auteur films.

Janet Staiger, in her chapter “authorship approaches” in Authorship and Film,

explains that the role of the author in contemporary films today is important precisely

because of the messages being produced for a reader (30). From the start she states that

authorship matters: “It matters especially to those in non-dominant positions in which asserting even a partial agency may seem to be important for day-to-day survival or

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where locating moments of alternative practice takes away the naturalized privileges of normativity” (Staiger 27). This statement seems to focus on authorship from the perspective of marginalized peoples. And granted, Carlos Reygadas’s background, a former lawyer who lived and worked abroad and who was born and raised in Mexico

City, intuitively doesn’t seem the most likely person to illustrate the day-to-day realities of marginalized spaces and peoples because he doesn’t belong to those spaces, however, as Sjogren’s quote at the start of this chapter suggests, it’s important that as readers and viewers we don’t discard the ways in which these other spaces are being represented by a filmmaker like Reygadas.103 Yet, Reygadas does live in the countryside or was at the very least familiar with this rural space when he filmed Japón. When he answers why he films the countryside, in regard to his work as a corpus (his last film Nuestro tiempo debuted in 2018), he states the following:

I suppose that is because that’s where I live, and that’s where I spend a lot of my life, and I like the countryside more than the cities. But most films take place in the city—and I’m sure that most people don’t get asked about this because most journalists are also from the city. That seems to be the “natural” environment for most filmmakers and most critics, but since I come from the countryside, that’s a question that arises. (Dimas ques. 7)

Though his formal education and upbringing does seem at odds to Staiger’s statement of why authorship matters (when authorship is produced from a marginalized perspective), we become aware of the why when in combination we look at the participation of non- professional actors like Ascen and the depiction of a rural landscape like Catzintla along with the filmmaking intent of Reygadas.

103 Carlos Reygadas was born in 1971 in Mexico City. He studied International Law. Worked for the European Commission and also for the Mexican Foreign Service. See biography in IFFR: https://iffr.com/en/persons/carlos-reygadas

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It is not surprising then, to see how the trajectory of auteur films throughout the

20th century informs Japón. Reygadas follows a tradition of filmmakers that have been

and continue to be critical of Hollywood’s filmmaking industry, in particular, the

narrative models that it promotes. Thus, his films do not follow the conventions set by an

industry that is commercially driven. When speaking about Hollywood mainstream films,

Reygadas has stated in many interviews that he purposely does the opposite in his films:

Because cinema is meant to be an industry, there’s meant to be a book of instructions, so cinema doesn’t develop. The only thing that develops is the eccentricity of the stories themselves and the visual effects, the explosions and the excess of the plot. It depletes you. You’re probably sad when you watch these films, you get depressed. It’s like a drug. It brings you very high and then it drops you down very low, so you need more of it. I don’t like that kind of cinema, so I do something else as a filmmaker. (Smith ques. 2)

Moreover, Reygadas describes his films not as representations of structuralism à la

Roland Barthes or even Gilles Deleuze’s post-structuralism representations but as what he calls, though he doesn’t use this exact word combination, “capturing reality passively”: “if you become more passive [when capturing an image] then you will get an image and that image will not be a representation […but it will instead] share a quality of reality” (Smith ques. 4).104 For Reygadas, representation means an intervention that

creates images but “capturing reality passively” means capturing the power in “the

presence of a person, an object or a landscape,” that when they are “observed, will have

the same capacity of giving off reality as when they are present in everyday life” (Smith

ques. 4). Furthermore, Reygadas illustrates a reality that includes diverse forms of human

104 When Reygadas speaks about Barthes and Deleuze he specifically states the following: “The structuralist Roland Barthes and eventually, Gilles Deleuze came to this idea that an image because it has been produced by a human, is a representation rather than reality. That there’s human projection in deciding on the lens, on the color, that all this implied representation. What we are seeing is how he filters the image through himself, and how he sees it” (Smith ques. 4).

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interaction that are felt as real because the non-professional actors in the film don’t pretend to be otherwise. These actors are aware of the camera; they interrupt and reference the act of filming. In an informal interview with Mexican actor Miguel Rodarte,

Reygadas makes mention of the important role of the non-professional actors not just as creators of meaning but as the ones who make the filmmaker and viewers aware of being in the film, of the making the film, of seeing the film, and ultimately of living the story of the film: “En Japón uno de los campesinos que están bebiendo dicen que los de la película no les dan de comer, eso es vivir dentro del cine y la propia película” (ques. 4).

These interactions are further accentuated with the filmic strategies that Reygadas utilizes, which are not intended for commercial production or for a contemporary commercial audience. For example, the use of slow and wide camera takes and the extreme close-ups of the human body without make-up or costumes. The images that are captured are intended for a viewer that is willing to decode the multiple, whether they are mundane or more intellectual, meanings presented.

Additionally, although Reygadas does not believe in creating traditional linear narratives in his films, it is still possible to locate a narrative in Japón. It is a narrative, however, that is constructed to capture the reality of life in its moment because similar to everyday life, it is impossible to know for certain what will happen next and how it will happen. One of the ways in which Reygadas documents this reality is by using documentary-like techniques. In her article “Fictual Factions: On the Emergence of a

Documentary Style in Recent Cuban Films,” Edna M. Rodríguez-Mangual explains that when speaking about the documentary, as a type of film genre, it is important we notice the consistent play “between fact and fiction” (301). Rodríguez-Mangual, referencing the

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work of filmmaker and theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha, outlines the main components that

identify a documentary:

the directional microphone (to select particular sounds); lip-synchronous sound; “real time” instead of film time, thus the long-take with minimal or not editing; the wide-angle lens (as opposed to the closeup which shows too much partiality); the handheld camera since its both mobile and invisible (don’t let them see you filming, just act natural); and, relatedly, the subject should not look into the camera (remember, act natural – pay no attention to the man behind the curtain). (301)

These components are meant to provide an objective film, however, they have also been used as a genre technique “where fiction films will mimic their functions for other purposes” (Rodríguez-Mangual 301). We see this in Japón, the strategic use of specific sounds (when in the first part of the film the viewer hears animals being slaughtered), the wide-angle lens (when the artist looks out into the landscape from the cliff), the handheld camera (from the point of view of the artist as he walks and takes in the expansive rural landscape), and especially when the camera focuses on the judge’s welcoming speech (an interview with subjects), all of these function as a way to illustrate and simultaneously question the visual definitions of rural Mexico in everyday life.

The scene in which the unnamed artist interviews the town’s lead representative, el juez, illustrates how Reygadas uses documentary-like techniques to expose the familiar and the unfamiliar. In this scene, it is important to notice the eyes of the juez when he speaks as well as his welcoming speech. He doesn’t look directly at the camera when he speaks to the artist. We know he is speaking to the artist because he acknowledges the artist in the second person (using the tú form). His eyes in this scene are purposely aimed to the side of the camera where the artist is presumably standing. However, when he is interrupted by a voice in off, that’s when it becomes obvious how he avoids looking at

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the camera. This is further demonstrated when men from the community begin to stand behind him. These men look directly at the camera. Their gazes are not focused on the artist. There are several layers in this scene that stand out; the first layer is the documentary-like interview setup of the frame, the second layer is the role of the gaze that, in a complex manner, makes us the viewers aware that in the making of this scene the men were mindful of being looked at, and the third layer is the sounds, from the welcoming speech, and the interruption, to the birds chirping in the background. The background sounds and especially the voice interrupting the juez’s welcoming speech together highlight how unfamiliar these elements are to the documentary “interview” frame. A traditional documentary shot would not be able to capture the real rural Mexico because its objective is to represent facts through a stylized frame that will not distract the viewer.

Although Antonio Traverso and Kristi Wilson in their introductory chapter to

Political Documentary Cinema in Latin America don’t provide a definition for a documentary, they do explain that in Latin America “documentary filmmaking opens up spaces for formal experimentation often not permitted to sponsor-constrained narrative film directors” (2). In other words, because the directors of documentaries are not subjected to social-political government sponsored restrictions they are able to explore a variety of topics. This is in part due to the fact that the production of documentaries is difficult to finance because it is a cinematic genre that attracts a limited audience.

Nevertheless, Traverso and Wilson argue “that political documentary cinema in Latin

America has constituted itself as a prime aesthetic and ideological referent for all cinematic forms and practices in the region” (2). Latin American filmmakers who are

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committed to the documentary, approach it as a genre and not a stepping stone to fiction;

as a result, the material that filmmakers of documentaries produce is engaged with social

and political issues (Traverso and Wilson 2). Japón is not a documentary but it does

illustrate a commitment to documenting a Mexican reality that can otherwise be

discarded as uninteresting. For Reygadas, everything that is captured in his films serves an analytical purpose, he states: “The viewer has such capacity to observe and to hear, to create meaning, that everything is meaningful to an incredible extent” (Dima ques. 11).

Both the visual and narratological techniques in the film force viewers to decipher

and fill in the gaps because the sequence of images that Reygadas captures, as stated

earlier, don’t subscribe to a traditional plot. In other words, viewers are left with multiple

perspectives and their responsibility at this point is to reload their innate understanding of

rural Mexico. Furthermore, the lack of a traditional plot is a postmodern narrative

paradox, where traditional Aristotelian narrative arguments are subverted.105 Even though

Reygadas does reference Aristotle’s ideas in one of his recent interviews, he centers not

in Aristotle’s formal guidelines for narrative but on the ideas of using cosmos and chaos

in his films as a way “to see humans in the complicated periods that they have in life”

(Dima ques. 4). Reygadas accomplishes this by creating a type of dissembled narrative

with complicated camerawork as a way to challenge the film’s viewers. Viewers are

obliged to focus on each image and sound individually, so that these can be seen not just

105 Seth Friedman, in his book Are You Watching Closely?, in studying Hollywood films that are partly defined by their narrative structure, and which he labels as “misdirection” films, argues that “the classification [of] ‘complex storytelling,’ which Aristotle originally devised in Poetics, is too ‘vague’ [of a term] because it merely signifies that a film somehow ‘does not adhere to a classical narrative structure’” (2). Even though Friedman is focusing on “misdirection” films produced since the 1990s, and which “encouraged viewers to reinterpret them retrospectively,” his statement that the Aristotelian argument doesn’t give room for the narrative techniques found in films like Inception (2010) is also true for a non- Hollywood film like Japón.

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as broken but as finished potential plotlines that at the same time, and purposely, are

never completely developed. Jonathan Romney, in “Carlos Reygadas,” explains that this

is part of Reygadas experimentation as an auteur filmmaker: “his films are deeply

experimental in that they’re about unknown outcomes […]; they seem to be searching for

their own form as they play out on screen” (par. 1). Regarding the relationship between

the viewer and the image, Reygadas states that that is the interpretative intention: “when

images are reinterpreted, when they are not what they are meant to be, then you question

them again” (Smith ques. 1). Subsequently, the presence of these techniques in Japón

creates meditative textures of landscape and subjectivity, and by extension, of

Mexicanidad. More specifically, the emphasis on the visual and the auditory experience

reloads and re-conceptualizes both the rural landscape of Mexico and the distinctiveness

of individuals who live in these rural areas. The experiences and filmic strategies that

help understand and reformulate a notion of Mexico and Mexicanidad in the twenty-first

century are reconsidered when spaces, free of artistic and even, state manipulation, are

used to represent individuals in their everyday environment.

Before I continue, it is important that I reference Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997), a

renowned Mexican cinematographer whose works spans many decades, and whose

collaboration with several directors made a mark in Mexican and Latin American cinema,

as well as in some major Hollywood films. 106 He is a cinematic figure who has not just

106 Figueroa’s film Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936) directed by Fernando de Fuentes won him a Venice Film Festival award in 1938. This success would be the first of many. He collaborated with renowned filmmakers and produced some of the best known Latin American films of the 20th century, for example, María Candelaria (1944) directed by Emilio “El Indio” Fernández (1904-1986) and Los olvidados (1950) directed by Luis Buñuel (1900-1983). In the United States, he received a best cinematography Academy Award nomination for the film The Night of the Iguana (1964). Other U.S. based films include, Tarzan and the Mermaids (1947), The Fugitive (1947), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1969), Kelly’s Heroes (1970), Once a Scoundrel (1972), The Children of Sanchez (1977), The Border (1979), and Under the Volcano (1983).

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lived through the different movements outlined above but has also been a participant in

many of its aesthetic and social-political purposes. Evan Lieberman and Kerry Hegarty explain, in their article “Authors of the Image: Cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and

Gregg Toland,” that Figueroa along with Mexican director Emilio Fernández are identified as the creators of “a ‘Mexican’ style of filmmaking that became recognized throughout the world for its striking imagery” (34). What’s more, as Ramírez Berg supports, in his chapter “The Cinematic Invention of Mexico,” the reason this style was recognized is because the duo’s ultimate aesthetic aim was “to forge a uniquely Mexican style to tell Mexican stories, about Mexicans, for Mexicans” (94).107 Ramírez Berg

summarizes, as Figueroa and Fernández tell it, that they were working on a nationalist

project that would create a distinct “Mexican cinematic aesthetic […] to express lo

mexicano (Mexicanness)” that would in turn be used to create “nationalistic identification

(7 and 11). They did this by using Mexican themes based on the popular, that is, they created a “Mexican visual grammar” that included “quotidian details of Mexican life—

the devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the celebration of the Days of the Dead and the

ubiquitous calaveras (skeleton figures), and the countless maguey and cactus plants

dotting the countryside” (Ramírez Berg 106). This however was only possible due to

Figueroa’s technical expertise in art, photography, and film (Ramírez Berg 94). Before I

continue, I want to once again reiterate that although Reygadas also captures the

quotidian Mexican life just like Figueroa and Fernández did in their collaborative films,

107 Ramírez Berg explains in his introduction to Classical Mexican Cinema that his book is a compilation of reworked published articles. His chapter “The Cinematic Invention of Mexico” is a second rendering. Lieberman and Hagerty cite his first version. He explains that Ceri Higgins in Gabriel Figueroa: Nuevas perspectivas took him to task for not giving Gabriel Figueroa the full credit he deserved as the cinematographer in his collaboration with director Emilio Fernández. Berg corrects his director centered analysis.

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he does it in a different manner, as I also suggested earlier, the images aren’t

aestheticized with costumes or make-up.

In their study, Lieberman and Hegarty go into a detailed comparative analysis of

the techniques that Figueroa and his friend and mentor Gregg Toland (1904-1948) used

in their cinematic compositions, such as the reliance on low-angle shots, wide-angle

lenses, and deep-focus photography, the latter “which allowed for composition in depth

by maintaining focus on all planes of the image at once (a phenomenon that runs counter

to the basic optics of lenses, which generally produce a relatively shallow focal plane)”

(35).108 Moreover, Figueroa’s and Toland’s work was also defined by “chiaroscuro

lighting, which emphasizes areas of darkness and shadow, as well as an awareness of

perspective and the ability to manipulate it for compositional effect” (Lieberman and

Hegarty 35). However, Figueroa strategically used deep focus as a way “to connect

character and environment” (Lieberman and Hegarty 38). The following is an example of

how Figueroa through deep focus connected character and environment in the film María

Candelaria:

the connection between María (Dolores Del Río), an innocent peasant girl, and the land is constantly reinforced by her primacy in the foreground, the expansive and beautiful Mexican landscape in the middle ground, and the dramatic sky with its trademark “Figueroa clouds” in the background. (Lieberman and Hegarty 38)109

Lieberman and Hegarty also explain that Figueroa’s use of deep focus was his “way of drawing the elements of the composition into dramatic relation with one another—of reflecting a connection between the Mexican people and the land, and of creating an

108 A shallow focal shot doesn’t keep everything in perspective, the characters and their surroundings don’t stand out equally as they would in a deep focus shot that balances foreground, middle ground, and background (terms that identify the spaces in an image). 109 Lieberman and Hegarty write that “similar shots connecting the rural people to the land and the sky can be seen in La Perla (1945) and Maclovia (1948)” (38).

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organic and powerful image of the Mexican nation itself” (40). Additionally, this

connection between land and character asserted the cinematic nationalistic intentions of

Figueroa and filming partner-director Fernández:

Mexican cinema relied far more on exterior locations, saving the cost of construction by using real places and post-dubbing dialogue when necessary to circumvent the problems of location sound recording. As well, in accordance with the ideology of the Revolution, Mexican cinema aimed to place the locus of national culture in the countryside (underscoring the agrarian ideology of the Revolution […]). (Lieberman and Hegarty 43)

This is an image that would endure asserts Carlos Monsiváis in “Gabriel Figueroa: Las profecías y los espejismos de la imagen.” Monsiváis explains that even though Figueroa

incorporates Toland’s techniques, which were heavily informed by German

expressionism, Figueroa does something completely different because of Mexico’s

industry expectation: “por los requerimientos de la industria Mexicana, él se afilia más

bien al ‘realismo’, a las mezclas entre tradición y parábolas, al ‘bosque de símbolos’. Es

en los espacios desolados donde mejor reverbera las claves de lo nacional” (54).

Monsiváis adds that even throughout some Figueroa’s most conventional narrative films,

where he was brought on as the director of photography, his carefully crafted images

stood out: “Figueroa cumple con su propósito obsesivo: disminuir o eliminar las escenas

insignificantes y los momentos muertos” (55). Reygadas employs many of the strategies

associated with Figueroa. For example, Reygadas use of the deep shot also connects the

protagonists with the landscape, we see this when the unnamed artist starts walking

through the open llano. The artist pauses in the foreground and looks at the magueys in

the middleground and then out to the sierra in background. Unlike Figueroa however, the

“momentos muertos” that Monsiváis says Figueroa erased, are important moments for

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Reygadas because it is in these slow insignificant moments where Mexico’s true reality can be etched out.

In regard to chiaroscuro, Figueroa strategically used it as a way to identify a character’s traits. The different gradients of darkness, shadows, and light allowed

Figueroa “to reflect a sense of morality and ethics, right and wrong, good and evil”

(Lieberman and Hegarty 46). Furthermore, unlike many cinematographers of his time he was unafraid of letting a scene go as dark as possible. Ramírez Berg informs that

Figueroa admits to always experimenting and as a result took “films not just beyond what any Mexican films had done, but also beyond what any filmmakers at the time were doing” (119). Figueroa acknowledges that he was heavily influenced by the Mexican muralist of the 1920s and used it as a model to create his images: “Y así pude, creo yo, incorporar la fotografía cinematográfica al movimiento plástico mexicano, incorporé el paisaje mexicano en forma de balances, de claroscuros, de cielos entornados, de nubes fuertes como las que tenemos […], para así poder obtener una imagen muy mexicana”

(Monsiváis 56). However, unlike Figueroa whose chiaroscuro techniques required the use of filters to aestheticize the natural lighting in the image, Reygadas in Japón makes use of natural lighting as is. Granted, Figueroa is creating images with the full understanding that he’s part of group of artists creating a unified national image of Mexicanidad. He purposely curates the landscape and characters in his films. Reygadas, on the other hand, is aiming for an aesthetic that captures an environment’s “reality” or a person’s physical features as closely as possible. The use of deep focus and chiaroscuro are just two of the techniques that identify Figueroa’s work and which along with his other cinematographic contributions have provided a type of foundational Mexican cinematic history. Reygadas

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honors this cinematic past but “cracks” with it when he intentionally uses, for example,

the “dead moments” to reload the portrayal of rural Mexico.

Though we do not know to what extent Reygadas frames his work within a very

specific Mexican cinematic tradition, he does admit that as a teenager he purposely began

to watch films daily: “From seventeen till I did my first film, I’d watch a film a day. I

really loved cinema and at a certain point, I thought I had to try and make films” (Smith

ques. 6). He created a type of self-led informal education for himself, which would then

allow him to respond, in particular, to images that have become the norm not just in

Hollywood movies but also in Mexican screens (cinema and television):

For instance, in Mexican telenovelas, when they want to represent a rural tiendita (a bodega), they’ll have three shelves stacked with the products that people assume are sold there as well as a middle-aged señora with an apron at the register. Everyone gets used to seeing that tiendita, the code representing it, that is, instead of the real thing. If we went to a real tiendita right now and the camera was rolling, we’d discover a number of incredible surprises there and people would appreciate having access to a different experience. (Castillo 74)

Therefore, what stands out in Japón are the images that highlight a specific Mexican landscape and that visually draw attention to the human relationships and interactions that occur within this space. Reygadas does this in a contemplative manner as a way to draw in the viewer. This is accomplished with deliberate camera movements that focus on the landscape as a body, for example, that of Catzintla and its farm lands and mountains, and

parallels it with the human body, specifically, that of the unnamed artist and Ascen. In

Japón, the physical landscape as an open space contains the layers of interaction between

the people and the environment. As such, the landscape allegorically encompasses

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layered nuances of history and human relationships.110 The presence of the individual in

an open space, as is the case in the unnamed artist’s trajectory to and in Catzintla, speaks

to how Reygadas wants the presence of nature to matter, not just in the film but also to

the viewer. In Japón, Reygadas directs both the unnamed artist and the viewer to

experience nature. Reygadas asserts this when asked about why nature dominates in his

films: “I think cinema could be […] closer to nature and nature doesn’t talk to you, or

entertain you, it just presents itself. Then a relationship can be formed between you as

viewer as an experiencer of life and whatever is there in front of you” (Smith ques. 5).

Because the countryside and everything in it is taken for granted, Reygadas makes it a

point to sequence images that capture nature’s presence, which in turn accentuates the

paradoxes when encountering (what might seem as) familiar settings. Reygadas shows

the materiality of life to individuals, he makes it “present” by tracing the unnamed artist’s

journey.111

The landscape in Japón constitutes a crucial background to the narrative because

initially, through the unnamed artist’s point of view, it is meant to be static and

immutable. However, no landscape is unchanging. The camera illustrates this

juxtaposition with shots that are long in duration and slow in movement. These camera

110 Similarly, in the Insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora, the protagonists, Teresa Urrea and the unnamed researcher, discover the connection of landscape and history when they hike the hill in Cabora. Both protagonists underscore human interaction and landscape as actors and witnesses that embody history and its various layers. 111 On the “materiality of life,” Reygadas states that even though Alfred Hitchcock’s films are beautifully staged and rightfully celebrated, they still don’t capture life as it is. He postulates that the cinema that documents the reality of life will hold more interest than the narratives created by the Hitchcock: “I think that if Martians came to Earth in a thousand years when we’d all be dead, and they found what he left behind, they would probably prefer a film by [Abbas] Kiarostami than a film by Hitchcock. I think this capacity of cinema, to carry the actual material of life, is an amazing capacity. I would prefer to see such a film, but maybe that’s banal” (Dima ques. 7). Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016) was a reknowned Iranian filmmaker who was known for using “child protagonists” as well telling “stories that take place in rural villages,” and for using “illusions of documentary filmmaking within [his] narrative films” (Parhami sec. 4).

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movements capture panoramic views to show an unchanging landscape and at the same capture the nuances that define nature’s daily cycles. The landscape in Japón includes open terrain as well as mountains. It includes farmland with growing crops. It also includes a creek that the townspeople use daily. There are farm animals and wild life.

And all of this is framed by an open sky, another aspect of landscape. The community is also part of this landscape and depends on it. Combined, these aspects of Catzintla illustrate a multifaceted landscape and people, creating a unique perspective of Mexican identity that is not the stereotypical understandings of Mexicanidad. In other words,

Japón through imagery demonstrates how this community does not subscribe to an invented imagery of Mexicanidad. For example, Monsiváis suggests that the version of images that Figueroa left us have created a truth of Mexicanidad that in the end is invention:

Figueroa da su versión de lo nacional en un fluir de imágenes asombrosas. Si es tarea vana, por inasible o inexistente, apresar “Lo Mexicano”, sí se puede recrear lo que allí presente, mirar de otra manera las costumbres y la “patria íntima” y pública. Gracias a tal convicción, el México inventado se torna artísticamente verdadero. (58)

On the contrary, Reygadas highlights the mundane as a way not just to make nature present but to confront the unnamed artist’s, as well as the viewer’s, preconceived expectations of a remote farming community that are based on invented perceptions. The images that Reygadas captures are a postmodern and reloaded reiteration of the rural

Mexican landscape.

The rural landscape is brought into relief through the juxtaposition of the town’s unhurried lifestyle with the artist’s arrival to Catzintla and Ascen’s departure from

Catzintla. This juxtaposing is constructed by the way in which Reygadas sets the camera

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shots. The film is framed in the beginning by the artist’s speedy exit from Mexico City

and the purposely frantic zigzagging shots that search for Ascen’s dead body in the end.

Another way to look at it is that the frenetic pace that is captured in the opening and

closing scenes are inversely framed by the deliberate longs takes within Japón. These are

the only two moments, the opening and closing scenes, where the camera captures fast

paced movement. These two moments, as a set, function as a counterpoint to the long and

slow camera shots in the film. Reygadas long and slow takes strategically create a

contemplative pace that in turn reloads the ways historical events, places, and individuals

are characterized. In other words, though events in history occur through layers of time it

is the characterization of events within these layers that determine whether events happen

immediately or gradually. In Japón the opening scenes illustrate the quick exit from the city to a rural region and yet they also illustrate how the act of departing and arriving are in themselves gradual events. The opening scene seems inconsequential at first but when observed as a part of a whole it takes on a larger meaning. In the case of the unnamed artist, the viewer is confronted with a fast-paced departure from the Mexican City that hints at the rapidity in which every day experiences and interactions are overlooked, especially but not exclusively in an urban landscape. In a similar manner, for example,

Mexican history can be seen as specific moments where in the historical timeline certain events or figures stand out as prominent but when looked at through a postmodern contemplative lens, Mexican history then becomes a series of gradual and reloaded events that lead to a historical outcome. I am creating a parallel with the cinematographic narrative image framing of Japón with the moments of history. The fast paced opening and closing scenes in Japón acquire more significance when contrasted with the

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contemplative scenes within the film. As such, historical moments like the 1810 Mexican

Independence, the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the 1968 student protest in Tlatelolco turned massacre by the government, or the 1994 Zapatista Uprising, become moments that disrupt the previous status quo. These historical events are framed and connected by everything that happens in between and become more meaningful as a result.

Crack! A Close-reading of Ascen and Mexicanidad

One of the ways Japón reloads representations of Mexico and Mexicanidad is by

illustrating how the unnamed artist interacts with his surroundings and Ascen. The landscape functions as the backdrop to his journey. The landscape also frames the relationship that develops between the unnamed artist and Ascen. Earlier, I mentioned that Japón begins its focus with the unnamed artist but ends with Ascen. This transition from unnamed artist to Ascen is the break or the crack with previous narrative formulas.

A rupture or a crack does not imply a deconstruction of previous narratives because these terms suggest the importance of these past aesthetic models; however, what they propose is that there is an alternation from the past that keeps some parts of it. It is this crack that helps reload the ways in which history, Mexico, and Mexicanidad are represented in the

present.

The narrative aesthetic in Japón aligns itself with the novels of a group of

Mexican writers that are part of Reygadas’s generation, individuals born in the 1960s and

1970s. The objective of this group of writers, explains Pilar Pérez in her brief article

“México, la generación del Crack,” was to crack, that is, was to both reference and

rupture with the texts that were produced in the 1960s and 1970s under the headings of

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the Boom or the New Latin American Novel and, also the post-Boom novels.112 The

Manifiesto del Crack (released as a compilation of texts in 1996) was spearheaded by

Mexican authors Jorge Volpi, Ignacio Padilla, Eloy Urroz, Pedro Angel Palou, and

Ricardo Chávez as a way to consolidate not only their literary proposals but to also promote their upcoming novels (Sabo 106). Pedro Angel Palou, as quoted by Pilar Pérez, explains the group’s literary objectives: “La idea era jugar con la onomatopeya. Haciendo crack hacíamos una fisura, una grieta, en la tradición. Queremos reescribir la tradición latinoamericana sin romper con ella. Estamos cansados de lo latinoamericano como marca” (no page). The argument is that the novels in the previous decades created a brand, a type of narrative that became commercially and internationally palatable. That’s not to say that these fin-de-siècle authors didn’t want to produce significant works that were also commercially popular but they wanted to create texts in a manner that better defined the multiple representations of Latin America in the present, particularly at the end of the century.113

María José Sabo in her book, La nueva narrativa en los años noventa: el

Manifiesto Crack en la teoría-crítica latinoamericana, explains that this new generation of writers at the time received negative reviews from literary critics and authors in

Mexico who criticized both their Manifesto and their literary production. They were

112 María José Sabo in her study La “nueva narrativa” de los años noventa: el Manifiesto Crack en la teoría-crítica latinoamericana explains that there were several manifests during the 1990s but that for the most, they part pragmatically problematized the idea of a Latin American literature (87). Sabo lists some of the writers that begin to both create and identify a fin-de-siècle genre: Mario Bellatín, Rodrigo Fresán, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Sergio Chejfec, Jaime Bayly, Alan Pauls, Juan Villorio, Santiago Roncagliolo, Jorge Volpi, Alberto Fuguet, Stantiago Gamboa (90). 113It is significant to also note that Carlos Reygadas and Jorge Volpi, Ignacio Padilla, Eloy Urroz, Pedro Angel Palou, and Ricardo Chávez all possess university degrees and held different careers before receiving recognition as a film maker and novelists, respectively. Reygadas was a lawyer before he became a film director. And some of the authors were literary/academic critics in the 1980s and 1990s before breaking through as literary authors.

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viewed as young presumptuous authors that utilized the local experience to create

narratives that revered European literary aesthetics (Sabo 113). Nevertheless, although

their proposals in their manifesto did not initially sit well, today the manifesto is seen as a

text and a moment that identifies turn-of-century literature:

[…] se recoge en el Manifiesto el eco de tres consignas básicas: emancipación (respecto de los depositivos exotizantes), descolonización (de los modelos letrados y criollos en la literatura) y posmodernidad (salir de lo local para entrar en lo ecuménico): las tres se vinculan a su vez a la construcción de un espacio de escritura cosmopolita que niegue toda aprehensión nacional. (Sabo 114)

Their proposal outlined emancipation from a literary past, a decolonization, and postmodernity. For these authors, their Manifesto and their novels move beyond the literary markers that identify the classic novels of the 20th century by instead, focusing on

narratives that represent the present: “salir del pasado y entrar radicalmente en una

escritura del presente […], salir del tiempo mítico y entrar en la historia, de lo tropical y

bucólico a una experiencia de la sordidez urbana, en síntesis, salir de la modernidad hacia

la posmodernidad de las letras latinoamericanas” (Sabo 103). Literary productions of the

Boom and Post-Boom combine myth and history to tell the stories of fictional characters

and non-fictional historical figures. Myth references a past that is difficult to prove unless

there is, and even then, a historical archive that documents this past. This new generation,

however, wants the literary focus to be in the present historical moment. They want to

move beyond myth and history as narrative strategies and yet, they also want to be able to

use them as referents. These writers have created literary texts that both include and

depart from the New Latin American literary model and its regional representations.

Their aim is to create narratives that represent both the local and the global, the national

and international:

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[…] una novela que no sólo pretendiera representar o aludir al universo cultural latinoamericano, sino que incluso se aventurase a recrear—desde el género histórico o desde la parodia—la historia europea, particularmente de Europa del Este, o apelando a escenarios tan alejados como Japón, China, Oriente Próximo, muchas veces sin recurrir siquiera a índices geográficos específicos, sino también jugando con los archivos y estereotipos culturales desde el horizonte de las expectativas lectoras. (Sabo 103-04)

It is this act of representing a cultural universe that can be both distinctly Latin American and distinctly global that marks turn-of-the-century artistic productions like Japón.

Locating narratives in distant settings, or as in the case of Japón, using names that belong to distant places helps to simultaneously create a sense of familiarity and distance.

Ignacio Padilla in his section of the Manifiesto del Crack, “III. Septenario del bolsillo,” explains that the Crack literary movement is most of all an attitude:

Y si algo está ocurriendo con las novelas del Crack, no es un movimiento literario, sino simple y llanamente una actitud. No hay más propuesta que la falta de propuesta. […] Las novelas del Crack “no son muchas cosas”, son todo y nada, esa expresión con que Borges definió acertadamente a Shakespeare. A veces, las definiciones matan al misterio, y una literatura sin misterio no merece la pena ser escrita. (Padilla section 3.1)

Though Carlos Reygadas is not directly linked with these writers, his aesthetic proposal in Japón complements the general proposals that are laid out in the middle of the 1990s by the members of the Manifiesto del Crack. Reygadas has expressed that it is up to the viewer to make sense and arrive to conclusions about Japón similar to the expectations that the writers of this literary movement have for their readers. In an interview with

Andrew Pulver, Reygadas explains his films in the following manner:

We are used to knowing exactly what's going on when we are watching something, which is very strange because in life it is precisely the opposite. Most of the time in life we are living through things and don't know what they mean at the time, except at a very superficial level. It is only later they become important, or take on a particular relevance. (10)

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The Crack Generation, similarly, is also invested in producing narratives where readers can actively participate, interpret, and reinterpret the texts as often as possible. For

Reygadas Japón is a narrative open to interpretations. This allows the viewer in identifying the journey of the unnamed artist to Catzintla, the setting, and the narrative as distinctly Mexican, yet, it also allows the viewer to recognize Japón as a universal story that references a distant place with its title and that illustrates how an individual, as is the case with the artist, can be a foreigner in his own country.

However, it is through characters like Ascen that the complexities of history,

Mexico, and Mexicanidad can be represented. The viewer can distinguish the unnamed artist’s preconceived views of this rural community because his journey is contrasted with Ascen’s life. At first, Ascen, an elderly spiritual and indigenous woman, appears to embody the common literary and cinematography tropes of history, forgiveness, and myth. She is a poor and humble woman that is loved by her community; yet, these classifications only offer a superficial understanding of her character. Ascen, instead of providing spiritual guidance, explains the community’s complex preferences to religious imagery. Ascen is a multifaceted individual who instead of offering knowledge or history about the land and its past to the unnamed artist would rather ask the artist questions. She wants to know about his experiences outside Catzintla. She asks him about his art, listens to his music, and even shares his joint:

Artist: ¿Quiere un poco? Ascen: ¿Qué cosa? Artist: Marijuana. Ascen: A mí me gusta mucho el dibujo de los que usted ve. Artist: ¿Siempre contesta algo distinto de lo que le preguntan? Ascen: ¿Me lo recomendaría?

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Artist: ¿Qué cosa? […] Ascen: Bueno, nomás para probar. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

Ascen wants to learn and experience. Her everyday reality is located in Catzintla. She already knows it and understands it, what she doesn’t know or understand is the artist, the foreigner. As a result, the unnamed artist is confronted with someone who doesn’t exactly subscribe to the trope of the elderly indigenous-mestiza woman of the countryside. In a similar manner, the town also doesn’t fit into the artist’s expectations.

Though Catzintla is a town located in a remote area, it is far from isolated.

Catzintla exists and its community has its own ways of life. This lack of complete isolation prevents the unnamed artist from committing suicide for several reasons, first he is being watched by the townspeople, in particular the youth who see him as a curiosity, and second, he is observing others and begins to form relationships with the townspeople,

Ascen and an unnamed younger man who lives in the town. Mariano Paz in his article

“Las leyes del deseo: sexualidad, anomia y nación en el cine de Carlos Reygadas,” explains that the reason the unnamed artist doesn’t kill himself is because he creates ties with Ascen and the community (1067). Paz labels the unnamed artist’s planned suicide as both a selfish suicide and an anonymous suicide:

El suicidio egoísta tiene lugar cuando los vínculos sociales son débiles y el suicida no siente ningún tipo de nexos con su comunidad. El suicidio anómico es el que aparece con la modernidad. Los marcos normativos tradicionales son destruidos por los bruscos cambios sociales en la vida política, económica y cultural, y la ruptura del tejido social hace que los individuos se desorienten y no sepan cómo comportarse. (1067)

He explains that the unnamed artist wants to kill himself because he is dissatisfied with

the society in which he lives (M. Paz 1067). However, the fact that the community sees

the unnamed artist as a stranger, a foreigner, makes the artist aware of his own subjective

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identity, especially in this agricultural town. His nascent ties with the community in combination with his subjective awareness work in tandem, to keep him from committing suicide. The artist as a foreigner is made even clearer when he speaks to the elected leader of the town when he first arrives. Discussed earlier when describing the documentary-like aspects of Japón, what the juez says in his welcome speech to the unnamed artist is important to note for various reasons. One, the speech shows the local dialect and introduces a group of non-professional actors. Though the juez gives the welcoming speech, the community is still involved, they stand behind him and they interrupt him. Two, the man that interrupts the juez is speaking about watering tomatoes.

This mention is a verbal confirmation that this is an agricultural community. Three, there’s a sense of pride in the juez’s voice when he speaks about his town. He describes his town as lovely and the people as good and noble persons. And finally, towards the end, when the juez mentions Ascen for the first time he simultaneously references a previous conversation he had off-screen with the artist and the outside narrator about

Ascen. As a result, this on-screen reference reminds the viewer that this scene is purposely being directed and more, the viewer has to make the connections and as

Reygadas suggests, “experience the film”:

Juez: O sea, yo lo entiendo ‘edad, que venga por aquí a este pueblo pos a descansar, ‘edad. Como gentes como usted son las que queremos en este pueblo, en este lugar, ‘edad. Yo no veo porque no, la realidad este, no veo porque no, sino que, no es porque sea mi pueblo, no es porque sea mi pueblo, pero ha escogido un pueblo… Voice in Off: [shouting to get attention] Juez: ¡Espera tantito, estoy con una persona! Este, no es porque sea mi pueblo, pero la realidad ha escogido un pueblo muy bueno y gente muy noble, muy sencilla… Voice: ¡Orale Rolan! Qué voy a regar mis tomates. Juez: ¡Espera tantito, estoy con una persona! ¡Por Favor! Este… Voice: ¡Orale Rolan!

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Juez: ¡Te digo que te esperes, cabrón! Este, entonces sí, le comentaba … Voice: ¡Orale Rolan! Juez: Pues sí, como le estaba diciendo. Yo no veo porque no. Ha caído en un pueblo muy bonito. Si viera, hay otros pueblos más allá que hasta por caminar lo agreden, yo creo que desgraciadamente…. Muy bonito aquí. No porque sea mi pueblo pero desgraciadamente, es de los mejores, no es tan turístico pero yo creo que es lo mejor. Este, ya parece que se fue el amigo. Me comentaba allí, platicamos de la señora Ascen. […] (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

Furthermore, this conversation also identifies the unnamed artist as both a stranger and a curiosity to the townspeople. The unnamed artist is seen as an educated man from the city that might possibly, though not stated in such a direct manner, bring tourism to Catzintla.

This interest in the artist becomes especially evident later on in his interactions with

Ascen. Ascen is curious to learn about him; however, the artist sees her curiosity and attentiveness as intrusive. And though her curiosity doesn’t allow for the isolation he desperately wants, in the end, it is also his curiosity about Ascen that keeps him alive.

Furthermore, the unnamed artist’s journey from the urban space to the rural space and his interaction with Ascen also emphasizes the rupture that Japón makes with previous

images and narratives that represent Mexico and Mexicanidad.

There are several moments between the unnamed artist and Ascen that illustrate

how Ascen’s character breaks from an expected role of rural, elderly and indigenous,

womanhood. Ascen departs from the trope in Mexican letters and cinema where the

female figure is framed as an abnegated woman similar to the Virgin Mary. Additionally,

Ascen’s initial interactions with the artist show how she too, from her point of view, sees

him as a foreigner. Furthermore, her sexual encounter with the artist breaks a sexual

taboo. It’s not that older woman sexually interacting with younger man hasn’t been

illustrated in film, it’s the fact that Ascen is an elderly 80-year-old woman sexually

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interacting with a middle-aged man of 50. Craig Epplin, in his article “Sacrifice and

Recognition in Carlos Reygadas’s Japón,” describes the sexual encounter between the unnamed artist and Ascen as an uncomfortable scene because it causes feelings of life for the unnamed artist. Even if these feelings of life are only based on the fulfillment of a sexual need: “in his encounters with Ascen, the elderly woman who selflessly puts him up in her barn, he rediscovers a disconsolate sort of vitality manifested most clearly in an uncomfortable sex scene between himself and his host” (Epplin 290). On the other hand,

Tiago de Luca in his article, “Carnal Spirituality: The Films of Carlos Reygadas,” interprets this scene as a spiritual cleansing for the unnamed artist: “what should be noted is that the man’s spiritual regeneration is effected through the carnality of sexual intercourse” (no page). The symbolic connotations, concludes De Luca, can be overridden because the “graphic frankness [of] the sexual event … stands out for its resolutely carnal aspect” (no page). Unlike Epplin and De Luca, Cynthia Tompkins, in her book Experimental Latin American Cinema, focuses not on what the sexual encounter means for the artist’s story but on what it means for Ascen’s story. For Tompkins what stands out in the sexual encounter is not Epplin’s interpretation of awkwardness but the way in which Ascen’s body is portrayed. Especially because “breaking the taboo of intergenerational sexuality with the shots of a nude Ascen marks an attempt to expand the western imaginary in homage to the beauty of an old woman’s body” (Tompkins 165).

However, this sexual taboo is broken much earlier. It starts the moment the unnamed artist propositions Ascen for sex. Though he is the one who propositions, it is ultimately

Ascen who makes the decision and accepts his proposal.

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The unnamed artist propositions Ascen after he shares his music with her. The

camera shows Ascen and the unnamed artist sitting side by side on his bed. Ascen wears

the CD’s earplugs and listens to the music. The lighting is dark. Ascen wears her rebozo and the artist wears a sleeveless shirt. The scene illustrates a private moment between both individuals:

Ascen: ¿Ya acabó [la música]? Artist: Ah ha. Ascen: Ahora sí, dígame qué es lo que me va a decir. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

In order for the artist to make his request he first shares a part of himself, his music.

Throughout the film he has avoided giving explanations. When asked why he’s going to

Catzintla he doesn’t avoid answering but neither does he elaborate. In this scene he shares an intimate moment with Ascen and then attempts to explain why he wants to have sexual intercourse with her. The camera follows the artist standing up and stepping towards the background of the room. He creates physical distance so he can approach the proposition in an objective manner. Ascen continues to sit on the bed and visually follows the artist. The artist turns around in the background to look at Ascen, who is now in profile to the camera:

Artist: Se acuerda que le dije sobre que se necesitaba mucha serenidad para poder cumplir una decisión. Ascen: Ah sí, lo de tirar las cosas. Artist: Sí, más o menos. Mire, yo sé que es usted una persona mayor que siempre ha vivido en esta barranca. Y quizás lo que le voy a decir le parezca un poco extraño, pero en realidad es lo más normal si lo piensa un momento. Acen: Dígame lo que me tenga que decir de una vez. [Brief pause.] Perdone, es que no lo entiendo. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

The artist walks towards Ascen. The camera follows him as he sits in the bed down next to her. Ascen, who is to the left of the screen, turns to look at the unnamed artist, who is

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to the right of the screen. The artist is tilting his head down while Ascen watches and hears him make his request:

Artist: No, no se preocupe. Bueno, buscando esa serenidad, se me despertaron otras emociones. Otros instintos. Mire, en realidad lo que me gustaría es tener relaciones con usted. Es más complicado que eso pero, pero sí, es eso. Me gustaría si usted quiere. […] Ascen: Ah, pero no ve que ya estoy muy viejita. Artist: No me importa. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

This interaction reveals the awkwardness the unnamed artist feels asking Ascen for sex.

But it also reveals how Ascen would rather him not linger on his request. When he finally does ask her for sex she wants clarification. For him it is a matter of satisfying a basic need. For her it is a matter of understanding whether there are other expectations. When she realizes that that is not the case, that it is only about sex, she makes sure to explain to him that she is old. The artist, however, does not see that as an issue. The camera sees

Ascen pause after his reply. The camera focuses on and follows the direction of Ascen’s eyes. She is looking at the unnamed artist’s plaid jacket that lies on the floor against the wall. The camera shifts focus to both Ascen and the unnamed artist:

Ascen: Ah ha. Oiga, no tenía prisa por irse ya. Artist: Sí, me iré mañana definitivamente pero antes quisiera esto. Ascen: ¿Así es de que usted lo qué quiere es fornicarme hoy mismo? Artist: No tiene que ser en este momento. Ascen: ¿Antes que acabe mañana? Artist: [nods] Ascen: Bueno, está bien. Artist: Gracias, gracias señora. Ascen: Oiga, pero me gustaría que fuera mañana. Artist: Claro, cuando usted diga. Buenas noches. Ascen: Buenas noches. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

Ascen wants to know when the artist is planning to leave. Again, she seems to want to make sure that his request has no strings attached. When he asserts that he is indeed

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leaving tomorrow she wants to make sure that it will be on her terms. They will have sex

tomorrow at some point but not tonight. Both Ascen and the artist stand up from the bed

and bid each other goodnight. This scene frames the sexual encounter that will occur the

following morning. Each individual has a basic need that is different. For the artist, it is a

last carnal desire, of sorts, before committing suicide but for Ascen, it is access to the

unnamed artist’s jacket. It is important to note that in the first meeting between Ascen

and the unnamed artist no money was exchanged. She is a poor woman with minimal

means. This interaction reveals that she too is an individual that must find ways to

survive.

When the unnamed artist first met Ascen he wasn’t thinking about having a

sexual relationship with her. He was only interested in the location of her home. Ascen’s

home is not only at the margins of the town but in a difficult to reach area that requires

walking uphill. In the film, the camera shows doña Sabina leading the unnamed artist to

Ascen’s home. The trek to Ascen’s home is steep and gradual. When they arrive doña

Sabina asks the artist to wait outside while she finds Ascen. As he waits, the camera focuses on him and begins to pan 360 degrees in order to illustrate the mountains and the landscape that surround Ascen’s home. The scenery that the camera illustrates makes it obvious that Ascen lives far from the town’s center. Furthermore, the panoramic shots show how her home is located on a cliff with a steep drop. The artist confirms this elevation when he kicks rocks down the cliff. As he watches the rocks roll down the side of the cliff, the viewer hears the voice of an elderly woman, Ascen, greeting the unnamed artist: “Buenas tardes señor.” The camera pans to Ascen and doña Sabina. The unnamed artist walks to Ascen and greets and shakes her hand. She invites him in: “Pase, que hace

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bastante calor.” The artist thanks her and incorrectly pronounces her name: “Gracias

Señora Asunción.” She immediately corrects him by explaining the difference in the

names Ascención and Asunción:

De nada pero no soy Asunción. Soy Ascención, que Ascención es la de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo cuando subió a los cielos sin ayuda de nadie. Y Asunción es de la Virgen María que subió con los ángeles al cielo. Pero no se preocupe porque aquí todos me dicen Ascen. ¿Verdad Sabi? Pasen, pasen, aquí a la sombra. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

This explanation between the meanings of names that identify Jesus and the Virgin Mary

will appear again when Ascen speaks about her nephew. By explaining the meaning of

her name, Ascen makes a connection with the figure of Jesus and not with the figure of

the Virgin Mary. Ascen’s explanation of her name rejects the correlation with the Virgin

Mary. And by extension, she rejects the image of the abnegated woman. Later in the film,

when Ascen and the unnamed artist speak about the dibujitos (the art) she likes, her

emphasis in making clear what her name means makes retrospective sense. She explains

that when her nephew was in prison he would masturbate to the image of the Virgin

Mary:

Artist: A ver, ¿cuál es el dibujito que dice que le gusto? Ascen: Este. Fíjese que a mí me gustan mucho los monitos. Hasta colecciono. Nada más que son de católicos. Ya ve cuantos Jesusitos tengo. […] Ascen: ¿A usted cual le gusta más? ¿La Virgen o Diosito? Artist: Puta, no sabía que era cuestión de preferencias. Ya le dije ayer que a mi todos me dan igual. Ascen: Pues aquí a las mujeres les gusta más Diosito. Y a los hombres la Guadalupe. Pues hasta fíjese que tenía un sobrino que estaba en la cárcel. Le llevaba sus cositas. Y le mande su santa imagen. Pero se la quitaron. Y le dieron de patadas porque nomas andaban masturbando sobre de ella. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

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Ascen exposes a taboo. She reveals her nephew’s depravity. His actions cross a moral

religious line. He is punished in prison, unknown however, is whether it was fellow

prisoners or guards that beat him. The above conversation also shows how each of them

interprets religion and its deities differently. The artist’s comment suggests indifference to religion, whereas Ascen’s comments suggest the opposite. However, her religious beliefs appear to be tied to catholic iconography.

After she explains the differences in the meanings of the name Asunción and

Ascención, Ascen begins to ask the unnamed artist about his planned stay. In her conversation, she makes it clear that the resources in her home are limited. She is not set up to house a guest. She indicates that she cannot offer him much help as a host because she is advanced in age and has health issues:

Ascen: Me dijo Sabina que usted quiere quedarse unos días en la troje. Artist: Sí, unos días señora. Ascen: Pero, es que sabe, yo ya estoy grande y no puedo servirle y además de eso tengo artritis y el 3 de marzo se me chisparon los tobillos. ¿Por qué mejor no se queda, busca un alojamiento en el pueblo? Artist: No importa que me sirva señora. Además, su casa me gusta porque está lejos del pueblo y en lo alto. Ascen: Pero sabe, que no hay agua. Y se necesita subirla con el burro. ¿A usted no le importaría? Artist: Por mi está bien sin agua señora. Me quedaré poco tiempo. Ascen: Está bien, que se quede. Sabi, que se quede. Sabina:Que se quede. Artist: Me quedo, gracias. Ascen: Muy bien, entonces vengan para que les enseñe mi casita. (Reygadas, dir. Japón)

The brief conversation shows Ascen’s hesitation having the unnamed artist stay with her.

The artist insists that his stay will only be brief and that he wants a place that is far away

from the town. Ascen allows him to stay. It’s important to pay close attention to the

Ascen’s invitation to see her home. She is not only inviting the artist and Sabina her

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friend, she is also inviting the person behind the camera and the viewer. We know this

because she specifically says, “vengan para que les enseñe mi casita.” Ascen and her

fellow non-professional actors repeatedly remind us that we’re experiencing the film as its being made. The awkward conversations and the awkward moments feel that way because they are being portrayed by non-professional actors. The relationship that

unfolds between the two protagonists is one that counters different ways of being,

especially because both Ascen and the artist illustrate different ways of understanding

their respective social environments.

In the final scene of Japón, Ascen replaces the death of the existential artist. This

is the final narrative rupture. As viewers we are no longer interested in the artist but in

Ascen. Her death compels us to retrospectively consider Ascen’s role in her community.

Her character highlights and puts into question the gender norms that the rural Mexican

woman conforms to when she develops a relationship with the artist. By doing this,

Ascen’s character provides a re-conceptualization of the Mexican female body, her role

in her society, and also a re-examination of existentialism in Mexican narratives. As a

postmodern film, Japón illustrates the contradictions that are part of everyday rural life

and that define Mexico and Mexicanidad at the turn of century.

Conclusion: Mexicanidad for Posterity

Reygadas in Japón closes and opens a new century with reloaded interpretations

of Mexico and Mexicanidad. He uses common twentieth century literary and cinematic

tropes to capture rural Mexico in its historical present. These tropes include but are not

limited to, for example, the portrayal of spaces and objects such as, the journey into the

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rural landscape, the rural landscape with its agricultural land (magueys and corn milpas), open skies, and mountains, the rural community, the cantina (when the artist knocks down the stereo), and the rebozo (the wrap that Ascen wears to keep warm). Reygadas intentionally captures these spaces and objects not to aestheticize Mexico’s rural landscape like Gabriel Figueroa does in his films in the name of Mexican national visual unification or even to comment on Mexico’s post-Revolutionary inheritance like Juan

Rulfo does in Pedro Páramo, but to draw attention to the fact that these are part of the everyday routines of rural Mexico, like Catzintla. More than anything, he creates a rupture with the images that have become stereotypes. In short, he challenges the cinematic archive’s cultural stereotypes. He wants viewers to recognize that these familiar images deserve introspection because in their mundanity they capture the mystery of everyday life. For Reygadas the presence of the unfamiliar or the foreign is crucial to understanding our realities. All this is succinctly captured when the artist petitions Ascen for sex. He suggests that although his petition might sound strange it is completely normal. He has a physical need. It is only odd, for example, because the petition isn’t framed within a cinematic (Hollywood) romantic narrative or a literary one.

Asking for sex and having sex is nothing more than another aspect of life. Ascen confirms this point when she agrees to have sex with him for her own reasons.

Japón is a representation of the present. In other words, the film illustrates experiences in their moment. Reygadas reloads Mexico and Mexicanidad by bringing forth the mundane into discussion. He makes the contemplation of every detail in our lives integral to the making of history. Especially because Reygadas is thinking of the way our historical present will be remembered in a future hundreds of years from now.

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For him, a film that carries “the actual material of life” will provide a more accurate representation of Mexico and Mexicanidad not just for viewers today but for posterity.

CONCLUSION

A Retrospective Self-Reflection on Turn-of-the-Century Mexican Texts

“Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.” (101)

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

“Este modo de reparos en todo me sucedía y sucede siempre, sin tener yo arbitrio en ello, que antes me suelo enfadar porque me cansa la cabeza; y yo creía que a todos sucedía esto mismo y el hacer versos, hasta que la experiencia me ha demostrado lo contrario; y es de tal manera esta naturaleza o costumbre, que nada veo sin segunda consideración.” (40)

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Carta a Sor Filotea”

So what? I was asked this question early on in my graduate studies at a conference. I was one of few humanities students, in the only humanities panel, presenting to a mostly non-humanities audience. The question however was asked after the panel presentations were over, in the hallway during panel breaks, by the president of my fellowship program. He wasn’t in the audience during the presentation. He first asked about my research interests and the presentation I had just finished. I answered as succinctly as possible. And then the question came, “so what?” I was taken aback. It’s a jarring question. How did I explain the value of my work? How did I, a scholar in training, explain that my research, that my interests in Latin American Studies and

Literatures were and are just as important as stem research? How did I explain that

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presenting on a Mexican film from the Golden Age period culturally mattered even

today? That it mattered to communities like the one I grew up in, that are multi-cultural,

that are familiar and connected with what happens south of the border, on the other side

of the Gulf of Mexico, on the other side of the Caribbean charco? Since that moment, the

“so what” question has always been at the forefront for me. Especially because even

though I know that others aren’t interested in or might not comprehend the reasons for

the formal study of literatures, arts, films, I believe that at an individual and personal

level they are interested. And although a five-minute conversation doesn’t give me enough time to explain the “so what” and even the “why does it matter,” I realize that it is more than enough time to share and convince and advocate why it does matters. It matters because these cultural productions are read, seen, experienced, and shared by everyday people. Especially because these cultural productions, the novels and film studied here, not only create images of a historical and cultural background but reload those images to new generations. It matters because the female authors I study here are part of my mother’s generation and their work illustrates different experiences than the memories that were shared with me. Especially when, within my family’s storytelling oral tradition, you learn that in 1965 your mother, a little girl of 10 years of age living in

Michoacán (she would come to the states 7 years later), paid a few pesos to see the funeral of John F. Kennedy in the only black and white television in the pueblo. But that in 1968 not one adult spoke about the student massacre in Tlatelolco or paid to see televised images in some neighbor’s home (there were no images available in a southwestern state, several hours away from the capital).114 Or when your mother

114 This experience is similar to the Battle of Tomóchic narrated in Frías’s historical novel Tomóchic and

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remembers mass spoken in Spanish for the first time and that her aunt, a novice at the

convent, returned the following year not wearing her habit. Retrospectively, the result of

the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). This same aunt would later leave the convent and marry a seminarist, who also abandoned his religious studies. It matters when these memories I’ve directly inherited are reloaded with the novels and film I study here. That even though the anecdotal experiences my mother shared aren’t the same ones captured in Duerme, La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora, and Japón, and might seem unrelated, they nevertheless are part of the historical archive that informs the way that we understand Mexico and Mexicanidad, and not just in the second half of the 20th century

but especially at the turn of the 21st century and even today.

And it matters because each of the texts studied here are published in a historical

moment where there’s a sense of urgency not just to rethink how Mexico and

Mexicanidad are documented and internalized but to reveal the different cultural and

historical processes that create 20th and 21st century Mexico. Carmen Boullosa publishes

Duerme two years after the 500 year anniversary of the “discovery” of the Americas.

This year marks the 500 year anniversary of the conquest of Tenochtitlan. Today, her

novel continues to offer insights on how that 500 year historical event remains in our

collective memories. And more than offer a historical guideline the novel proposes a

reloading of Mexico’s foundational aperture. It encourages the reader to see how

historical non-dominant figures, the people who have been relegated to the margins, the

referenced in Domecq’s La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora. The state wanted to suppress the rebels and wanted no news to reach the Mexican capital. The irony is that the 20th century Mexican government that was founded on the ideals of the Revolution acted similarily to the Porfiriato on October 2, 1968; the government didn’t want news of the student massacre to reach the rest of the Mexican republic. See Elena Poniatowska’s historical, archival, and journalistic text La noche de Tlatelolco (1971).

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ethnically, racially, and gendered individuals that make this space, are integral to

Mexicanidad and not only as referents but as architects of Mexican culture and history. It

is through the fictional character of Claire that Boullosa reveals colonial society’s

complex heterogeneity and as a result, challenges historical absolutes. Brianda Domecq’s

novel, La insolita historia de la Santa de Cabora, published two years before the 500 year anniversary, similarly reveals how an historical figure with humble beginnings like

Teresa Urrea, Santa de Cabora, inspired and laid the groundwork for Mexico’s

Revolutionary movement in Mexico’s northwestern states. More importantly, Domecq exposes the lapses in official historiography. She reloads the historical origins of the

Mexican Revolution by accessing and carefully referencing the anecdotal historical archive (pictures and images, fringe newspapers and journals, and oral history) in

combination with official history. She expands Mexico’s pantheon of heroes and reveals

that there are other ways to start a revolution. Such as, the Santa de Cabora’s healing of

marginalized communities. Teresa Urrea, Santa de Cabora was actively part of these

communities and worked with these communities. She, in short, was a leader in a grass- roots movement that would eventually become integrated into the larger revolutionary narrative. It is the introductory frames in Japón that illustrate the urgency to recapture

Mexico differently. Yet, the remainder of Reygadas’s film suggests that this urgency must be contemplatively paced. That is, it’s important that we not only slow down and take the time to observe and contemplate our surroundings but that we become aware of our own points-of-views and interactions when encountering both the familiar and unfamiliar. The unnamed artist’s fast paced exit of the urban space and the willingness to kill himself is offset by a rural quotidian lifestyle that is unhurried and socially complex.

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Together these texts show that Mexico’s national “other,” its people and its rural landscapes, are socially and historically multifaceted and reloading our historical present is both a meaningful and necessary practice. In other words, it is imperative to not only pay attention to the details that characterize Mexico and Mexicanidad but to willingly reinterpret them in order to, as the opening epigraph by Gloria Anzaldúa suggests, “go another route” because “the possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.” Especially because as readers and viewers it is our cultural and historical responsibility to not take representations at face value but, as Sor Juana Inés indirectly advises in the above epigraph, to take a second look: “y es de tal manera esta naturaleza o costumbre, que nada veo sin segunda consideración.”

Reinterpreting, taking a second look, revising, deconstructing in order to reconstruct, are all the different ways that the authors and director of the works studied here reload Mexicanidad. And I want to place emphasis on the postmodern term “reload,” because these authors aren’t simply reconstructing, that is, erasing and breaking free of the past, they are intentionally utilizing it to create their narratives. In other words, they purposely use the tropes and the narrative strategies of the past to crack with the hegemonic historical project of the previous intellectual classes (writers, painters, directors) and also, as is especially the case with Domecq and Boullosa, of their contemporaries. The texts presented here narratively focus on the present, even when it appears that they are only referencing the historical past. For example, the unnamed researcher in La insolita historia de Cabora is conducting her archival work from her present moment. This present is synonymous to the implicit presence of the outside researcher-author Brianda Domecq, who similarly conducted research for her fictional-

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historical novel. Correspondingly, Reygadas as the presumed outside-narrator of Japón

(because as viewers we are encouraged to recognize his role in the filmmaking process)

captures the quotidian realities of a historical present and is also simultaneously honoring

and cracking with the visual and narrative tropes of Mexicanidad. And finally, Carmen

Boullosa paradoxically illustrates in Duerme that the historical past continues to live in and inform the present and that relatedly (valga la redundancia postmoderna) our historical present informs the way in which we interpret this same historical past. All of this is done in order to give the secondary figures that have traditionally been erased, marginalized, and stereotyped in hegemonic history their historical place in a new century.

However, event though I have demonstrated the ways in which Domecq,

Boullosa, and Reygadas reload Mexican history and Mexicanidad, I am also consciously aware that this project still has numerous research possibilities that must be continued.

For example, in each text the respective rural settings are important spaces of resistance.

These spaces deserve further analysis. In what ways do these rural spaces contest the traditional centers of power today? How does the Mexican topography shape Mexico and

Mexicanidad? After all, it has three major mountain ranges to the west, east and south, deserts to the north, and tropical lowland jungles, and two peninsulas. Another research possibility is tracing and reloading the trope of the elderly indigenous-mestiza woman in literature and films as a wise woman: doña Inés in Duerme, Huila and doña Rosaura in

La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora, and Ascen in Japón. If they are bearers of knowledge, then why is their background information limited and a mystery? Why do they appear to live solitary lives? Why is the survival of others contingent on their

210

deaths? These are secondary female characters and yet they are crucial to the narratives in each text. And finally, how can I further develop the term “reload”? Specifically, how can the term be applied to other disciplines, for example, with the digital humanities?

Especially because it is a metaphoric-theoretical term that allows us, for example, to continually dialogue with the past, present, and future.

In closing, the interpretative journey I embarked on when reading these texts has demonstrated that reloading the historical past and present means jointly examining official history with all other informal and yet dominant forms of history. These texts reaffirm that to truly understand Mexico and Mexicanidad one must look at the multiple possibilities and recognize that each time they are reloaded we achieve a better and more complete understanding of our present.

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