Copyright by Manuel Callahan 2003
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Copyright by Manuel Callahan 2003 The Dissertation Committee for Manuel Callahan Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Mexican Border Troubles: Social War, Settler Colonialism and the Production of Frontier Discourses, 1848-1880 Committee: David Montejano, Co-supervisor Emilio Zamora, Co-supervisor Oloruntoyin Falola Mauricio Tenorio José Limón Mexican Border Troubles: Social War, Settler Colonialism and the Production of Frontier Discourses, 1848-1880 by Manuel Callahan, B.A, M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2003 Dedication This work is dedicated to my grandmother, Josefina López Gonzales, who gave us the word; to my mother, Carmen Gonzales Callahan, who taught me how to fight for it; and to Rebecca Michelle Gámez, who showed me how to share it. PREFACE Two overriding influences inform this study. The first is a set of stories that narrate the Gonzales family history, my mother’s side of the family. The second is a number of jokes that my father regularly told at social gatherings. Both are brief examples of a Mexican American expressive culture “in relation to its socially dominated condition.”1 Taken together, they constitute a “social heuristic, a real construction of identity for navigating a chaotic social world.” In this particular instance, these performances illustrate Mexicano families interpreting their past in the face of Anglo domination. Hopefully, these “texts” achieve what Ramón Saldívar claims for the “pedagogy of conjunto” and that is they “instruct us while they delight.”2 Often at the urging of my mother, my grandmother would entertain us around her kitchen table with countless stories of past generations of Gonzales, on occasion referring to events as far back as the Spanish colonial period. Most of 1 José Limón, Dancing with the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 7. 2 Ramón Saldívar, “Transnational Migrations and Border Identities: Immigration and Postmodern Culture,” South Atlantic Quarterly 98: 1/2 (Winter/Spring 1999): 220; 230. v these accounts revolved around the family’s ancestral home, a large adobe house that at one time served as the county seat for El Paso.3 One of the most prominent sketches, if only because it was my favorite, narrated the defiance and leading role of Francisco “Chico” Barela during what came to be known as the San Elizario Salt War in 1877. In this clash between organized Mexicanos from San Elizario, Ysleta and Socorro and Anglos a company of Texas Rangers were defeated and captured as Mexicanos resisted Anglo attempts to enclose communal spaces. Barela, designated as “the leader” of the uprising by Anglo authorities and later by historians, no doubt preoccupied the Gonzales clan and its patriarch José María “Chema” Gonzales. The retribution directed at Barela was likely to impact the Gonzales since the two families were united through marriage.4 The rebellion affected great numbers of people. Many innocent families, for example, were forced to fend for themselves during the conflict. Immediately following the Mexicano victory, Anglos reorganized themselves and terrorized the communities of the lower valley, summarily executing and raping innocent Mexicano victims who had no role in the rebellion. in the wake of brutal Anglo reprisals. Brutal Anglo reprisals continued until Buffalo soldiers were able to intervene. The aftermath of the “war” posed a challenge as well. José María, for example, successfully negotiated Anglo legal efforts to punish close to one 3 See, J. Morgan Broaddus, The Legal Heritage of El Paso (El Paso: Texas Western College Press, 1963): 124. 4 Antonia Barela, the daughter of Francisco Barela, was married to Francisco Gonzales, the son of Jose Maria Gonzales and a prominent freighter. vi hundred and fifty alleged perpetrators by excusing himself from his civic duty as a grand juror in order to keep peace in his own household. The dramatic telling of the Salt War, however, was not the only tale of conflict shared by my family around my grandmother’s kitchen table. There were also tales of “everyday” struggles, including adventures in freighting to Las Vegas, New Mexico, responding to raids by “marauding” Apaches, as well as less prominent struggles of meeting the demands and obligations of a diverse frontier community. The vital role of women in sustaining the Gonzales home, for example, while considerably less dramatic than the Salt War, were no less compelling especially given the myriad of vital tasks they performed. Ultimately, the range of stories reflected the complex, diverse, if at times, contradictory life of rancheros and the Mexicano community whose political and economic power slowly dissipated during the last half of the nineteenth century.5 In a less serious, but no less compelling contribution, my father occasionally could be found telling a favorite joke, which went as follows: An Anglo and Mexicano, both standing at opposite shores of the Rio Grande, simultaneously shoot at a passing duck overhead. Each wades to the middle of the 5 Rancheros were small self-sufficient ranchers and farmers who depended on networks of extended family for labor. The ranchero also played a central role in maintaining the stability of the community in the number of artisanal tasks he performed as well as through his access to larger markets. For a brief discussion of the ranchero, see Jane-Dale Lloyd, “Rancheros and Rebellion: The Case of Northwestern Chihuahua, 1905-1909,” in Daniel Nugent, ed., Rural Revolt in Mexico: U.S. Intervention and the Domain of Subaltern Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998): 108-109. See also Armando C. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). vii river to retrieve the fallen bird. After a period of grappling over the prize, the Mexicano proposes a test of strength to determine who should possess the duck. The Anglo, at a loss for a solution, defers to his opponent, who suggests that the prize should be awarded to the one who is best able to endure a formidable test of strength. The Anglo acquiesces to his opponent’s suggestion so they move to shore in order to properly settle the dispute. The Mexicano explains that they should take turns striking the other with all the force they each can muster until the more formidable of the two remains standing. The Anglo dismissively commands the Mexicano, whom he believes to be his social inferior, to make the initial strike. Hesitant at first, the Mexicano assents, and just as quickly strikes the Anglo with great precision and force. His blow lands on the Anglo’s genitals, dropping him to the ground writhing in pain. After his tortured spasms have passed, the Anglo picks himself up and dusts himself off. Composed, he orders his adversary to stand ready to receive what he plans will be a devastating blow. At which moment, the Mexicano replies, “Take the duck….”6 6 The joke conforms to the genre of joke or anecdote that, according to Américo Paredes, expresses a veiled hostility “expressed in an escapist type of jest featuring dream situations in which the Mexican bests the Anglo-American.” Paredes identified a taxonomy of jokes or jests that reflected Mexican attitudes towards Anglos “since the period of the first armed clashes in the 1830s down to the present.” The open hostility of the first stage gives way to the veiled hostility of the second, culminating in the third stage of self satire. It should be noted that these stages are not “strictly confined to a definite historical period.” See, Américo Paredes, “The Anglo American in Mexican Folklore,” in Ray Browne, Donald Winkelman and Allen Hayman, eds., New Voices in American Studies (Purdue University Studies, 1966): 113-127. See also, José Limón, “Agringado Joking in Texas Mexican Society: Folklore and Differential Identity,” in New Directions in Chicano Scholarship, Ricardo Romo and Raymund Paredes, eds., (San Diego: University of California at San Diego Press, 1978); José Limón, “Carne, Carnales, and the Carnivalesque: Bakhtinian Batos, Disorder, and Narrative Discourses,” American Ethnologist 16:3 (August 1989). viii The stories of my family’s past and the jokes of Anglo-Mexican conflict inform the perceptions of resistance and domination that animate this study. In one way, this dissertation is part of an effort to document and analyze Mexicano resistance during the late nineteenth century. However, it also seeks to do more than re-narrate episodes of conflict and resistance. This study attempts to fulfill the tasks of subaltern studies suggested by José Rabasa. “For if subalternity partakes of hegemony and consensus,” argues Rabasa, “it is no less urgent to examine how subaltern subjects are constituted through dominance and coercion. War, in this regard, would not be an exceptional state of affairs, but the course of the world.”7 Each cultural practice, the sharing of family history and the telling of jokes conveys a tension between domination and resistance, pointing to a rich and complicated history of struggle. The resistance narrated in the oral history of my family and the popular memory of struggle is much more subtle than what has usually been celebrated as Mexicano resistance undertaken “with his pistol in his hand.”8 While less dramatic than more overt acts of defiance, these examples of expressive culture do indicate the contradictions and conflicts that result from a position of social domination. 7 José Rabasa, “Of Zapatismo: Reflections on the Folkloric and the Impossible in a Subaltern Insurrection,” in Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd, eds., The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997): 405.