Estadounidenses and Gringos As Reality and Imagination in Mexican Narrative of the Late Twentieth Century
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Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 12-2008 Estadounidenses and Gringos as Reality and Imagination in Mexican Narrative of the Late Twentieth Century Jessica Lynam Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the Chicana/o Studies Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, and the Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Lynam, Jessica, "Estadounidenses and Gringos as Reality and Imagination in Mexican Narrative of the Late Twentieth Century" (2008). Dissertations. 791. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/791 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ESTADOUNIDENSES AND GRINGOS AS REALITY AND IMAGINATION IN MEXICAN NARRATIVE OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Jessica Lynam A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Spanish Advisor: John Benson, Ph.D. Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan December 2008 UMI Number: 3340191 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3340191 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway PO Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Copyright by Jessica Lynam 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 INFATUATION AND ABANDONMENT IN LAS BATALLAS EN ELDESIERTO 11 THE BORDER AS AXIS OF MUTUAL DISTORTION IN LA FRONTERA DE CRISTAL 41 THANKS, BUT NO THANKS: BUYING IN AND OPTING OUT IN CIUDADES DESIERTAS 74 BETWEEN PLACES AND SPACES AND UNDER THE BRIDGE: IN SEARCH OF A FATHER IN LAS HOJAS MUERTAS 110 APPROACHING THE COATLICUE STATE: TRANSCENDING BINARY OPPOSITIONS IN CALLEJON SUCRE 144 UNRULY MEMORY: THE FRUSTRATED SEARCH FOR LOVE, HATE, MEANING AND HISTORY IN COLUMBUS 178 CONCLUSION: "UN MUTUO Y PERTINAZ ENGANO" 210 BIBLIOGRAPHY 220 ii 1 INTRODUCTION It is not surprising that the United States and estadounidenses are frequent topics in Mexican novels. Stephen D. Morris points out in his book Gringolandia that "Mexicans encounter los Estados Unidos on a daily basis, at virtually every turn, without having to leave the country. Mexicans find the U.S. in their school texts, in newspapers, on television, in novels and magazines, on billboards, or while listening to politicos debate national issues" (1). The two countries share 2000 miles of border, yet the case has often been made that nowhere else in the world do two neighboring nations differ so greatly from one another. The renowned Mexican essayist, poet and cultural commentator Octavio Paz comments in "Posiciones y contraposiciones: Mexico y Estados Unidos" that "Nuestros paises son vecinos y estan condenados a vivir el uno al lado del otro; sin embargo, mas que por fronteras fisicas y politicas, estan separados por diferencias sociales, economicas y psiquicas muy profundas" (168). The shared history has been contentious. According to Paz, the opposition between the two countries began in the Pre-Columbian era, "de modo que es anterior a la existencia misma de los Estados Unidos y Mexico" (170). Mexico lost roughly half its territory to the United States in the mid 19th century and has been plagued by a vague threat of U.S. military intervention on and off ever since. The United States, in pursuit of what it considered its Manifest Destiny to colonize all of North America and, in so doing, to promote its version of democracy and justice, often saw fit to 2 intervene in Mexican internal affairs. In Mexico: Biography of Power, historian Enrique Krauze describes how Manifest Destiny was used in support of the secession of Texas from Mexico in 1836, its subsequent annexation nine years later, and the Spanish American War that followed: "On September 16, 1847 - the anniversary of Mexico's independence - the troops of General Winfield Scott had raised the Stars and Stripes over the National Palace. Nothing could erase this insult from the collective Mexican memory" (5). Later, Mexico was compelled to relinquish lands rich in gold to the United States, as well as other stretches of land along its northern border; and President Benito Juarez nearly accepted a proposal by President Buchanan under which Mexico would have become little more than a U.S. protectorate in exchange for economic aid and military protections. In his book Mexico and the United States: Ambivalent Vistas, W. Dirk Raat writes that the nearness of Mexico to the United States is in itself a cause of the discrepancy between the two countries: This proximity has dictated that the relationship be asymmetrical: an economically and militarily powerful United States that views Mexico in terms of strategic and commercial interests and geopolitical concerns, and an underdeveloped Mexico that seeks to protect its cultural integrity and national identity while promoting economic growth in the face of the Colossus of the North, (xiv) Thus, Mexico has always faced - and continues to face - a formidable task as it balances its cultural and political sovereignty with exchange and interaction with the U.S. 3 The current relationship is characterized by economic dominance on the part of the United States. As Jaime Rodriguez and Kathryn Vincent state in the introduction to Myths, Misdeeds and Understandings: The Roots of Conflict in U.S. Mexican Relations, "[...] the economies and societies of Mexico and the United States become increasingly interdependent, and the environmental and resource management issues faced by the two countries are of ever-more critical importance." (12). In this context of ever-increasing interdependence, Mexicans have not forgotten historical acts of U.S. hostility in and toward their country, and accuse the U.S. of indifference with regard to the same events. For example, Jose E. Iturriaga writes in his introduction to Ustedes y nosotros, "ocho generaciones de estadounidenses han padecido amnesia historica acerca de uno de los origenes de su actual grandeza y expansion y es opuesta a la memoria de los mexicanos que no olvidamos los agravios que agrandaron, a fortiori, la dimension geografica de Estados Unidos a costa de Mexico" (380). Clearly, the fact that the United States perception of itself differs greatly from that of its immediate neighbor to the South is no secret to Mexicans. Although there are abundant sociological, historical and political studies of the relationship Mexico shares with the U. S., relatively little has thus far been written about literature describing the bond between the two countries. Robert Weis, Alicia Borinsky and Hugo Verani all comment on the role played by the United States in Jose Emilio Pacheco's novel Las batallas en el desierto. Lucille Kerr comments on the influence of the North American academic system over Latin American scholars in two novels in her article entitled "Academic Relations and Latin American Fictions". Debra Castillo and Dolores Tabuenca recognize the impact that the United 4 States has upon the characters in Rosario Sanmiguel's collection of stories Callejon Sucre. Stephen Morris dedicates a chapter in his cultural study Gringolandia to the perceptions of the Mexican intellectual and cultural elite with regard to estadounidenses. Nonetheless, critical analysis has generally made little more than passing mention of the characterization of North Americans in Mexican narrative. Notwithstanding the paucity of critical analysis of the depiction of North Americans in Mexican literature, the representation of estadounidenses in narrative texts is frequent, complex and worthy of study. The present dissertation makes no pretense of being a comprehensive catalogue of "gringos" in Mexican narrative; it can be better seen as a cross-section of Mexican literature concerning estadounidenses published during the final two decades of the twentieth century. My intention is to explore how this Mexican narrative has characterized non-Mexican Americans and contextualize these visions in terms of their cultural and historical origins. In this study I analyze six texts authored by both men and women, border authors as well as writers from Central Mexico. Estadounidenses are not necessarily the central theme of these novels, but do have a pronounced presence in them, constituting a part of daily life and a part of the Mexican psyche. In the two narrative texts written by women, Las hojas muertas by Barbara Jacobs and Callejon Sucre y otros relatos by Rosario Sanmiguel, other themes such as family, individual identity and gender roles figure prominently and are inextricable from the notions presented about estadounidenses. This dissertation is organized into six chapters, each concerning a novel by a different contemporary Mexican author. These chapters have been organized 5 according to the region of Mexico considered to be the sitio de enunciation of the author. Las batallas en el desierto, Lafrontera de cristal, Las hojas muertas and Ciudades desiertas were written by authors from Mexico City. Callejon Sucre y otros relatos and Columbus were both written by authors from Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city directly across the border from El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juarez is itself an apt object of study. In 1999 it was the sixth largest urban area of Mexico, with a population of approximately two million inhabitants and "considered by some to be the border's unofficial capital" (Lorey, 3).