Gender and Race in Latin American Nineteenth-Century Travel

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Northern Sights: Gender and Race in Latin American Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives of the United States DISSERTATION Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish by Linda Ruth Gruen Dissertation Committee: Professor Viviane Mahieux, Chair Professor Horacio Legras Professor Santiago Morales-Rivera 2020 © 2020 Linda Ruth Gruen, Spanish and Portuguese Review, Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii VITA iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: The United States Man, Symbol of a Nation 21 CHAPTER 2: Women as a Transnational Marker of Modernity 71 CHAPTER 3: The United States as a Multiethnic Country 117 CONCLUSION 160 BIBLIOGRAPHY 171 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have been fortunate, as a student in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of California, Irvine, to have received the invaluable mentorship of my academic advisor, Viviane Mahieux. I am also grateful for my committee members, Horacio Legras and Santiago Morales-Rivera, for their feedback and encouragement. I wish to thank my husband Lon, my madrina, and my fellow graduate students Blanca Liliana García and Aracelí Calderón, for their ongoing support during the ups and downs of my Ph.D. journey. I also thank the Spanish and Portuguese Review and Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing for permission to include portions of Chapters Two and Three of my dissertation. iii VITA Linda Ruth Gruen 1986 B.A. in Latin American Studies and Geography University of California, Berkeley 1987 Teaching Credential Program California State University, East Bay 2013 M.A. in Teaching Second Language Bennington College 2014-18 Teaching Assistant, Spanish Department University of California, Irvine 2016 M.A. in Spanish University of California, Irvine 2018-20 Teaching Assistant, English Department University of California, Irvine 2019-20 Instructor, Department of Continuing Education University of California, Irvine 2020 Ph.D. in Spanish University of California, Irvine FIELD OF STUDY Travel Writing, Nineteenth-Century Latin American Literature and Culture PUBLICATIONS Translator, Lontanza/Far Away by Rúriko Mata-Banegas, 1991 “Race, Reform, and Nation in Salvador Camacho Roldán’s 1887 Notas de viaje (Colombia y Estados Unidos de América).” Spanish and Portuguese Review, December, 2020 “Argentina and the United States’ Gender Situations in Eduarda Mansilla de García’s Travel Memoirs (1882).” Journeys. The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing, December, 2020 iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Northern Sights: Gender and Race in Latin American Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives of the United States by Linda Ruth Gruen Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish University of California, Irvine, 2020 Professor Viviane Mahieux, Irvine, Chair During the nineteenth century, when Latin American nations were seeking ways to define home territory as distinct from their colonial legacies, some leading intellectuals sought inspiration in a modernizing hemispheric neighbor, the United States. “Northern Sights: Gender and Race in Latin American Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives of the United States” analyzes how nine letrados interrogated gender and race as they related to imaginary geographies. By examining multiple and even contradictory socially-constructed representations of the “United States Man” (Chapter 1), the “United States Woman” (Chapter 2), and “The United States as a Multiethnic Nation” (Chapter 3), this project challenges the predominant North to South trajectory in travel writing studies that implicitly considers Latin America to be a passive recipient of cultural modernity developed elsewhere. Drawing from Benedict Anderson, I argue that travelogues contributed to the consolidation of the nation-building project and to letrado dominance within this project. This study, comprised of three chapters with an introduction and a conclusion, illuminates how these authors established their positions in nascent national canons as well as challenged notions of United States exceptionalism through the genre of travel literature. v INTRODUCTION Territory is only understood to the extent it is written, represented, and inscribed. - Debbie Lisle, The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing If the differences between fiction and non-fiction are often blurred in contemporary narratives or even denied in postmodern thought, there is no place where imagination and actual events intersect as seamlessly as in the genre of travel writing. This ever-popular literary expression includes such disparate texts as the Exodus story from the Bible, Michel de Montaigne’s The diary of Montaigne’s journey to Italy in 1580 and 1581, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries (1952). The heterogenous nature of this genre has made its very definition a challenge to scholars. One way that we can begin to unpack this literary practice is through applying Chole Chard’s concept of “imaginative geography.” Chard has theorized that imaginative geography “entails the construction of particular myths, visions and fantasies, and the voicing of particular desires, demands, and aspirations” (10). Reworking Christian Jacob’s conceptualization of maps, Chard offers this concept as a tool to analyze the strategies that authors employ to appropriate the foreign. Early modern maps, with their decorative borders that included fantastical creatures fancied as existing in remote lands, visually illustrated popular myths about uncharted geographic territories. Like maps, travelogues also re-present spatial imaginaries through descriptive writing in the manner that Lisle and Chard have posited. Imaginative geography throws light on the intersecting purposes of the traveler writer, providing accurate trip representations while also “manipulating language and engaging in a form of imaginative 1 seduction” in order to appeal to a specific readership (Chard 10). This constant slippage between non-fictional and fictional devices underscores the mutable nature of this hybrid genre. The concept of imaginative geography raises the question about to what degree travel literature is, in fact, a performative genre that can be readily appropriated to support a writer’s preconceived notions, predetermined agendas, or an existing status quo. Trips are intrinsically temporal by nature; impressions are necessarily limited and even superficial, particularly when the traveler has little or no mastery of the host country’s language. In any case, this truism regarding the limited nature of an individual’s impressions has not prevented the formulation of sweeping pronouncements regarding unfamiliar peoples and places – always evaluated through the lens of the author’s cultural background. My use of the word “lens” is not random, but intended to highlight the profoundly visual nature of this practice. Fundamentally, travel literature expresses an unremitting tension between the poles of identity and alterity, revealing as much about the traveler as the travelee.1 Travel writers, as a matter of course, must rely heavily on descriptive language in order to readily transport the reader alongside him or her. Nevertheless, contemporary scholars have exposed the problematic associated with such a seemingly neutral writing convention. Linking imaginative geography to colonialism, Edward Said has theorized that the construct “legitimates a vocabulary, a universe of representative discourse peculiar to the discussion and understanding . of the Orient” (Orientalism 71). Said was referring to European accounts of Asia, but his assertions can also be extended to other geographic regions. In other words, travelogues, as 1Georges van den Abbeele offers the term oikos (home) as a tool for interrogating travel literature. He formulates that the oikos “organizes and domesticates a given area by defining all other points in relation to itself” (xviii). Additionally, although travel often connotates freedom, van den Abbeele contends that the oikos, as a touchstone of reference for the traveler, paradoxically constrains this experience. 2 contingent systems of representation, produce situated cultural artifacts imbued with ideological significances that extend well beyond the individual. Today’s commercial maps no longer include mythical creatures just beyond the horizon. Still and all, textual depictions of unfamiliar people and places continue to be permeated with a density of geo-graphy, a written record of the land, in which each subsequent contribution adds to the density of geographic palimpsests and responds in some way to textual predecessors. Intertextuality, as a key generic convention, reminds us that engaging with the prior written archive is nearly unavoidable for the traveler.2 An author is, invariably, a reader, and what we read becomes a part of what we know. Although one may attempt to present a fresh vision of an area, the preceding geographic imaginary, be it from novels, other travelogues, photography, or even word of mouth, necessarily impinges on subsequent representations. The concept of geographic imaginary furthermore illuminates why the Spanish American writers included in this study expressed the poles of attraction and repulsion toward a country that, at the time, was widely advertised and even accepted by many as a model republic. These nine individuals were not casual sightseers. Rather, they were prominent members

Load more