T. R.

SELCUK UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

UNDERSTANDING CHICANA FEMINISM:

TRADITION AND REBELLION IN ANA CASTILLO’S

SO FAR FROM GOD

Yasemin YILDIZ

MASTER OF ART THESIS

Supervisor

Assist. Prof. Dr. Sema Zafer SÜMER

Konya - 2011

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TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………………………….i BİLİMSEL ETİK SAYFASI …………………………………………………………………iii TEZ KABUL FORMU ……………………………………………………………………….iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………………………………………………………………….v ÖZET …………………………………………………………………………………………vi ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………….vii INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………….1

CHAPTER ONE – THE WORLD OF ANA CASTILLO …………………………………7 1.1. The Life of Ana Castillo …………………………………………………………..7 1.2. Ana Castillo as a Novelist and an Activist ………………………………………14

CHAPTER TWO – WHO IS THE CHICANA? …………………………………………23 2.1. Some Historical Background ……………………………………………………23 2.2. How the Mexican American Came into Being ………………………………….29 2.3. The Chicanos within U.S. Society ………………………………………………34 2.4. The Chicana: The Brown Woman ………………………………………………38

CHAPTER THREE – ANALYSING THE DYNAMICS OF CHICANA OPPRESSION……………………………………………………………………………….43 3.1. Familism, Machismo and Gender Roles ………………………………………..43 3.2. Rape, Abuse, Abortion and Health Care ………………………………………..49 3.3. Labor Force and Unequal Opportunity …………………………………………56 3.4. Perspectives for Education ……………………………………………………...61

CHAPTER FOUR – UNDERSTANDING THE CHICANA FEMINISM ……………..66 4.1. Understanding the Chicana Movement ………………………………………….66 4.2. The Birth of Chicana Feminist Thought ………………………………………...71 4.3. The Development of Chicana Feminism ………………………………………..75

CHAPTER FIVE – THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY: SURVIVAL AND ENDURANCE IN SO FAR FROM GOD…………………...……………………………………………….81

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CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………..110

WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………………115

ÖZGEÇMİŞ ………………………………………………………………………………...119

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my great depth of gratitude to my thesis supervisor Assistant Professor Dr. SEMA ZAFER SÜMER who directed, supported, and encouraged me willingly during the process of preparing this thesis.. Without her support, I could not write my thesis.

I am initially thankful for Adalet YILDIZ, without whose guidance, encouragement, and belief that this is a worthwhile endeavor, this study might never have been finished.

Special thank goes to my husband Koray YILDIZ, who has always been a real lover and supporter of this entire journey and my life.

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ÖZET

Ana Castillo, önemli bir Çikana Feminizm yazarı olarak bilinir. Erkek egemen toplum tarafından ezilmiş kahve tenli Çikana kadınlarının boyun eğiş hikayelerini konu edinir. Çikana Feminizminin eş anlamlısı olan Xicanisma teriminin yaratısı olan yazar Çikana feministlerinin mücadelesini anlatmayı amaç edinir. Edebi eserleri Çikana’ları baskın topluma meydan okumaya zorlar. Meksikalı Amerikalı kadınların yaşamlarında karşılaştıkları kimlik, cinsiyet ve ikilem durumlarını gözler önüne serer ve eserlerinde kullandığı kadın karakterleriyle bizlere Çikana kadınlarının sorunlarını yapıcı bir dille anlatır.

Çikana kadınları olarak da bilinen Latin kadınları geçmişten bu yana Amerika’nın özellikle de güneybatısına itilmiş, kültürel, sosyal, politik ve ekonomik olarak dışlanmıştır.. Tarihleri çok eskilere, güçlü kadın savaşçılara, baskın anne figürlerine ve insanüstü tanrıçalara dayansa da bu güç zamanla özellikle de Aztek halkının burjuvazi eylemleri, İspanyolların ise sürekli işgalleri ile zayıflatılmıştır.

Ana Castillo, Tanrıdan Çok Uzak adlı romanında kadın gücünü yeniden ortaya çıkarır. Romanında büyük üzüntüler ve kederler içinde bir kadının küllerinden yeriden doğmasını konu alır. Bu konu, yalnızca diğer kadınlar için bir model olmaktan öte efsanevi kadın karakterlerinin gücünün yeniden gün yüzüne çıkarılması için de bir ışık niteliğindedir.

Bu bastırılmış ırkın geçmişten günümüze tarihi verilerek, okuyucuya Çikana kadınlarının kendilerine karşı bir tehdit olan topluma nasıl başkaldırdıkları gösterilmek istenmiştir. Kadının, geleneksel değerleri nasıl yıktığını, kendisine hayatı zorlaştıran erkeklerden daha üstün olduğunu ve artık bir birey olarak nasıl davrandıklarını Castillo etkileyici bir dille gözler önüne serer.

Bu çalışma kadının gücünü yeniden kazanışını inceler. Castillo güçlü ve akıllı kadın karaketerler yaratarak ataerkil toplumun karşı çıktığı normları yıkar. Ataerkil egemen toplum düzenini anaerkil toplum düzeniyle yer değiştirir. Böyle bir çabayla kendisine miras kalmış olan kadın sorunsalına etkileyici bir bakış açısıyla değinir.

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ABSTRACT

Ana Castillo has emerged as a prominent Chicana writer. She examines the history and subjugation of women of color, specifically brown- skinned women, Chicanas, by a patriarchal society. Coining the term Xicanisma, a synonym for Chicana feminism, Castillo aims to include more women into the struggle faced by Chicana feminists. Her literary works force Chicanas to challenge the dominant society. She examines the issues of identity, sexuality, and duality that Chicanas face in their lives and shows the female characters in her novels dealing with these issues in constructive ways.

Latina women also known Chicana women have traditionally been culturally, socially, politically, and economically marginalized in the United States, particularly in the Southwestern region. Despite the fact that their heritage, which extends back for centuries, consists of forceful women warriors, dominant mothers, and superhuman goddesses, the power base has been weakened by a combination of circumstances beginning with the burgeoning militarism of the Aztecs and the colonization by the Spaniards. “Monotheistic Catholicism and its pantheon of male saints replaced earlier matriarchal cultures which resulted in an abject subjugation of women” (Davis, 2004:x).

In So Far From God Ana Castillo sets out to reclaim the power feminine. She creates a novel in which an older female, despite having suffered tremendous losses and sorrows, rises from her own ashes to save her community from the same ills that infect many impoverished, indigenous communities in the late 20th and early 21st century. Castillo not only creates a viable and identifiable role model with whom women everywhere can identify, she layers in and infuses her fiction with European and early meso- American mythological, historical, and legendary figures as a means to recapture the diluted power once the main purview of females.

By giving the background of this oppressed nation from very beginning of the history to the present, it is tried to be understood by the reader how the Chicana women in the novel try to function in a society that neither understands nor respects viii

them, in fact, which works against them. They are much stronger than the men in their lives, who do not or cannot help them overcome the abuse of their society: companies that encourage employees' contact with residual radiation, the violent attack on a defenseless woman, discrimination, and the loss of Native American autonomy by European conquest. Castillo portrays subjects who resist traditional roles and the hardships of their society while exploring their individual paths or callings.

This study examines how Castillo attempts to reempower women. It discusses the ways in which Castillo creates strong and wise females who seem to have supernatural, paranormal, and/or somehow mystical powers. Further it traces how Castillo, as a writer, acts as an agent for change as she uses her characters' situations, behaviors, and experiences to critique unacceptable social conditions.

Finally, this study takes up Castillo's attempt to dismantle patriarchy and her replacement of it with matriarchy. In doing so, Castillo is addressing the problems inherent in marginalization.

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INTRODUCTION

The feminist movement that surfaced in the late 1960s seemed to encompass all women who felt slighted by a male-dominated, patriarchal society. Refusing to accept that they were inferior to males, feminists expected equality. Unfortunately, this feminism was not all-encompassing. Anglo-American women were ignoring the plight of their Spanish-speaking sisters of Mexican and Indian descent. This increasingly growing portion of the population was given little voice during the early period of the feminist movement. The differences exist within the feminist movement and to deny these differences is to ignore the search for a solution. To each woman, feminism has its own definition. The Chicana feminist embraces this and, through discourse about these differences, searches for a solution.

Many feel that the terms Mexican-American and Chicano/a describe the same group of persons. The term Mexican-American was coined by an Anglo society and the use of the suffix American suggests that those of Mexican descent cannot be validated without it. One of Mexican heritage who allows himself or herself to be called Mexican-American wishes to be accepted by an Anglo-dominant society. The term Chicano/a describes one who is not fully Mexican nor fully American, and that the term has been in use much longer than popular culture recognizes. Common since the 1930s, this term delineates one who sees their culture and heritage being at least equal, if not superior, to Anglo culture. This pride in culture and heritage is what separates a Chicano/a from a Mexican-American. The Chicana feminist embraces this ideal and aims to give a voice to a group largely viewed as inferior by Anglo-American society.

That the plight of the Chicana was largely overlooked during the surge of the Anglo feminism movement means that Chicanas are behind in the struggle for recognition and equality. Chicanas are struggling with not only gender issues, but also racial-ethnic and class identification struggles at the same time. The existence of multiple groups to identify with causes conflict with how to satisfy each. This is the 2 crux of the Chicana feminist problem: how to identify with multiple groups and find a solution to satisfy each group.

Chicana writers have come to the defense of women dealing with this issue and are striving to give voice to the women. Writers such as Norma Alarcon, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, and Ana Castillo have risen to the challenge and become voices for the Chicana feminista.

Ana Castillo has devoted time and energy in her writings to bring light to the suffering and oppression felt by the women of her culture. The fruits of Castillo's doctoral dissertation come in the form of a collection of critical essays titled Massacre of the Dreamers. In it, Castillo (Collins, 2002: 1) writes, "The woman in the United States who is politically self-described as Chicana, mestiza in terms of race, and Latina or Hispanic in regards to her Spanish-speaking heritage, and who numbers in the millions in the United States cannot be summarized nor neatly categorized" This suppression and ignorance are the catalyst for Castillo's work. Castillo (Collins, 2002: 5) sees that these women of mixed race exist "in the void," and through her introspective essays, she strives to validate the existence of these women. Negating the idea that everyone who is classified as a citizen or resident of the United States seeks to assimilate into that culture, Castillo (Collins, 2002: 6) explores the struggles faced by Mexic-Amerindian women who, due to their mixed heritage, wish to preserve their Mexican and/or Native American heritage. Merging her identity with that of all Chicana, mestiza, Latina, and Hispanic women, she challenges all to "find a clue as to who we are and from whom we descend".

When So Far From God was published in 1993, it was heralded as the newest masterpiece from one of the most elegant voices in the Chicana movement. The novel revolves around the life of Sofi, a wife, a mother, and a Chicana who discovers what it means to be a woman. Through the deterioration of her marriage, the deaths of her daughters, and the awakening of her social activism, Castillo produces an image of a Mexican-American woman who endures all and comes out stronger than ever before. Castillo mixes religion, supernatural occurrences, sex, laughter, and heartbreak in a novel unlike anything previously seen in American Literature. So Far 3

From God is a funny novel than does not have a happy ending; a novel dominated by tragedy, yet full of the victory of the human spirit; a novel that is highly entertained while still thought provoking. Castillo wants to expose the joys and realities of contemporary Mexican-American life on the edge of American culture.

With all that in mind that, the thesis consists of five chapters apart from the introduction and conclusion. The first chapter is about the writer, Ana Castillo who is novelist, poet, editor, translator, painter, coiner of the term Xicanisma. She is the author of several works in multiple genres and one of the leading feminist activist of Chicanas, as well. Her life and career as a novelist and as an activist will be analyzed to explain the reader to form the basis of her novels and her Chicana identity.

Chapter Two, titled Who is the Chicana? sets off the term Chicana referring to women of Mexican descent who are born or raised in the United States. It will be also explained that although the term is widely used by Chicana activists and scholars today, many Chicana women debate the term’s origin and early connotations. According to this it will be shown some believe that the term originated with the native Mexica tribes of Mesoamerica while others claim that the word was originally used by colonizers as a racial mark. By giving historical background such as during the 1960s and 1970s Chicano Nationalist Movement, it will be displayed Mexican-American women reclaimed the term Chicana. The necessity stems from the need to look into the history for some historical evidence to understand the origin of the name of Chicana. With the three subsections of this chapter it will be pointed out the very beginning of the history of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to the present by giving the information about the Aztecs, The Spanish Conquest of Mexico, U.S. and Mexico War and migration of Mexicans to the United States. It will be also focused on the Chicano/as within the U.S. society as an ethnic group in this Chapter. By identifiying the situation of the Chicanas within the Chicano and U.S. community this chapter will be concluded.

The oppression of the Chicana is complicated and arises from a multitude of domineering means. She is an ethnic minority, she is woman who is universally oppressed by men, and her Chicano heritage exaggerates this male domination over 4 women. The first type of oppression mentioned is due to ethnicity of the Chicana. The Chicano culture is politically and economically exploited by Anglo society. Chicanos are considered subordinate, dependent and have been subjected to numerous accounts of genocide. Another type of oppression is due to gender. Women across the vast majority of cultures are considered subordinate and are universally oppressed by her male counterpart. In addition, there is also an internal oppression caused by the Chicana heritage. Some identify this as “machismo” and caused by the colonization of the Chicano. Whatever the origin, it has a declining effect on the Chicana and must be addressed.

Perhaps the unique characteristic of the Chicana is in the nature of her triple oppression. Chicanas suffer more than the double oppression of women who are members of a colonized group; they are also internally oppressed. As noted earlier, Chicanas are part of an economically and politically exploited colony. They are victims of attempted cultural genocide as the dominant group has sought dangerously to destroy the Chicano culture and render its institutions subordinate and dependant. Chicanos, however, have resisted assimilation and women have played a critical part in this resistance. The second form of oppression is results from their gender. As women, Chicanas experience the universal oppression that comes from being female. In most societies, past and present, they have been subordinate to men. Even in matrilineal society the woman is never anything more than the symbol of her family. Matrilineal descent is the authority of the women’s father or brother extended to the brother-in-law’s village. So, the authority runs through the male line. Finally Chicanas carry an additional burden of internal oppression by a cultural heritage that tends to be dominated by males and exaggerates male domination over women. The issue of machismo is a complex and sensitive for Chicanos. The problem of male dominance in Chicano culture is real and must be faced directly.

In her song Mujer, Mary Helen Virgil best goes over the main points of the dynamics of Chicana oppression:

Mujer, since I can remember you have suffered with eight muchachos You have cooked day in and day out. You know no peace. 5

Your older muchachos go out and leave you with the chiquitos. You have lost weight. The shine in your hair is gone. You smile no more. You were cheated out of life since your hombre was taken to the cold war overseas. Mujer you never complained: you never even once raised your voice in protests. Why then, do you weep in silence? (Garcia, 1997:109)

In the light of these information, Chapter Three will be analysed by focusing on the familiar terms such as gender roles, rape, abuse, labor force and unequal conditions. In terms of four subsections of this chapter the issues mentioned before will be analysed in a more detailed way.

In the fourth chapter titled Understanding the Chicana Feminism, it will be commented on Chicana Feminism to make reader understand the term. Because feminism is a world-wide event. It has been a world-wide event since the beginning of oppression. You can find the roots of women’s struggle to end of oppression people and of themselves as far back as 200 years before the birth of Christ. Namely, through history, women have been devalued, often even abused, in many different societies. In Latin America in particular, many women were, for centuries, treated by their fathers, brothers and husbands with discrimination. Women in Latin America, Mexico included, were seen as child-bearers, homemakers and caregivers. These women had to watch their children, perform household chores and cook for their husbands. Many men did not consider women to be capable of working outside the home, which is part of the reason why the term weaker sex was coined.

At this point, Chicana Feminism, referred to as Xicanism, is an ideology based on the rejection of the traditional household role of a Mexican-American woman. It challenges the stereotypes of women across the lines of gender, ethnicity, class, race, and sexuality. The issue is summarized like:

Chicana Feminism is in various stages of development… It is recognition that women are oppressed as a group and exploited as a part of la Raza 6

people. It is a direction to be responsible to identify and act upon the issues and needs of Chicana women. Chicana Feminists are involved in understanding the nature of women’s oppression. (Garcia, 1997:5)

Although many issues contributed the development of Chicana Feminist thought, the ideological critique of sexism or machismo contributed significantly the formation of Chicana Feminism. Chicana Feminists, as active participants, in the Chicano Movement experienced the immediate constraints of male domination in their daily lives. To the extent that Chicanas found their contributions triviliazed, subordinated and often ignored. Thus Chicanas recognized the need to move against racism and sexism simultaneously. Chicanas’ recognition of their paradoxical situation within Chicano Movement formed the basis for the development of what we have come to know today as Chicana Feminism. With the help of this findings this chapter will achieve its purpose.

The last chapter will explain us the politics of Chicana identity in terms of survival and endurance within Chicano and Anglo society. Given the controversial history of the Chicana/o population in the U.S., it is not surprising that much of its literature is politically charged or deals with political, economic, social, and cultural resistance to oppression. It is not unusual for the literature of this heterogeneous community to struggle with conflicting claims and demands, for its characters to engage a discourse of identity in which issues of power and opposition to the dominant society are central. Consequently, it will be stated that Chicana/o literature has demonstrated a preoccupation with the multiplicity of subject positions that colonized and oppressed people must of necessity occupy in their experiences. In this respect, Castillo's novel is no exception, representing a virtual catalog of the subjectivities, often in opposition to one another, in Chicana communities. However, So Far from God expands our definitions of what constitutes resistance, of what is political, and of who is capable of effecting social change, by focusing on the defiance that characterizes the family of women at its center and the rebellion that explodes as they engage in ongoing battles.

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CHAPTER ONE - THE WORLD OF ANA CASTILLO

1.1. The Life of Ana Castillo

Ana Castillo is one of a few Mexican American writers who have attracted the attention of the mainstream reading public. From her earliest writing she has tried to unite those segments of the American population often separated by class, economics, gender, and sexual orientation. Her success is a tribute to her self- discipline, her courage, and her considerable literary ability.

Castillo was born in Chicago on 15 June 1953 and her family is Raymond Castillo and Raquel Rocha Castillo, struggling working-class people. In an interview Castillo told that she attended a secretarial high school studying to become a file clerk, which her parents considered a good job (Saeta, 1997: 134). Castillo, however, had other ideas. She said “I couldn't have been a secretary because I'm a lousy typist and I've always had this aversion to authority, so I knew that I wouldn't get far in that atmosphere” (Saeta, 1997: 134) so she abandoned secretarial training. After attending Chicago City College for two years, she transferred to Northeastern Illinois University, where she majored in secondary education, planning to teach art. She received her B.A. in 1975.

Castillo's experience as a student at Northeastern Illinois was largely negative because the extent of the racism and the sexism of the university in a city like Chicago discouraged her from becoming an art teacher. In the interview, she went on: "by the time I was finishing my B.A., I was really convinced that I had no talent. I couldn't draw and I had no right to be painting" (Saeta, 1997: 134). As a result of these experiences, Castillo stopped painting. During her third year of college, however, she resumed writing poetry.

These first poems were a response to her grandmother's death and her family's working-class status set the stage for a developing writer who throughout her literary career has examined pervasive social and economic inequities that affect women and Chicanos in the United States. 8

Castillo's literary career began before she finished college. At twenty she gave her first poetry reading at Northeastern Illinois University, and in 1975 Revista Chicano-Riqueña published two of her poems, The Vigil (and the Vow) and Untitled That same year another poem, Mi Maestro was included in the anthology Zero Makes Me Hungry. The following year the Revista Chicano-Riqueña published a second group of her poems about racial injustice, particularly the fate of indigenous peoples in America. Mindful of her previous experience as a painter, Castillo told Saeta she promised herself never to take writing courses "with anybody or any university . . . because I was so afraid that I would be discouraged and told that I had no right to be writing poetry, that I didn't write English well enough, that I didn't write Spanish well enough" (Saeta, 1997: 134). Like many other Chicano poets of her generation, Castillo felt that she had no models that spoke to her experience in her languages and she admits she wanted to be a good poet, but a poet on her own terms, with a political conscience and fluency in the two languages that she used to navigate through a predominantly Anglo world.

Despite her uncertainty about the value of her poems, Castillo continued to write and develop her poetic voice. Caught up in the political enthusiasm of the 1970s and concerned by the plight of Chicanos in the United States, she told Saeta (1997: 139) that she thought of herself as "a political poet, or what is sometimes called a protest poet talking about the economic inequality of Chicano people in this country". One of her early poems, Invierno salvaje (Savage Winter), written in 1975 and published in the anthology Canto al Pueblo (1980), addresses the difficult lives of Chicanos during a hard winter.

In 1975 Castillo moved to Sonoma County, California, where she taught ethnic studies for a year at Santa Rosa Junior College. Returning to Chicago in 1976, she pursued a master's degree in Latin American and Caribbean studies in 1978 and 1979. In 1977 she published a chapbook, Otro Canto (Other Song), in which she collected her earlier political poems, including Napa, California, dedicated to migrant-labor activist César Chávez, and 1975 a poem about talking proletariat talks. From 1977 to 1979 she was writer in residence for the Illinois Arts Council. In 1979 9 she published her second chapbook, The Invitation, a collection that exhibits for the first time Castillo's interest in sexuality and the oppression of women, especially Latinas. She also received her M.A. degree in 1979 from the University of Chicago and between 1980 and 1981 was poet in residence of the Urban Gateways of Chicago. A son, Marcel Ramón Herrera, was born on 21 September 1983.

In 1984 Arte Público Press published Women Are Not Roses, a collection of poems that includes some poems from her chapbooks. In 1986 her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters, which she had begun writing in 1979, was published by the Bilingual Press; it received the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in 1987. Written as a series of letters from Teresa, a Latina, to her Anglo- Spanish friend Alicia, the novel reveals Teresa's complicated feelings for Alicia during their ten-year friendship. Castillo provides three tables of contents or reading strategies, labeled For the Conformist, For the Cynic, and For the Quixotic.

Regardless of which reading strategy the reader chooses, The Mixquiahuala Letters begins with Teresa's description of three trips to Mexico taken by Teresa and Alicia, together or separately, and follows a narrative through which Teresa not only reminds her friend what happened during their time together but also admits her own feelings of love and hate. Anne Bower (1997: 134) claims that The Mixquiahuala Letters "is very much a quest novel . . . with form and explanation taking us into the women's emotional and artistic searches". Then in her essay she went on:

Castillo's heroine never expresses doubts about her sexuality, desires, pleasures, her mestizo background, or her career choice. Her letters demonstrate, however, that she does struggle with discovering the writing self's best modes of expression, questing for more suitable patterns (in writing and living) than the ones the past has cut. (Bower, 1997:134)

By suppressing the nature and development of the experiences of people of color, The Mixquiahuala Letters reveals Ana Castillo's attempt to react, by striking out against the limitations created by canonical structures. Castillo's novel functions as an oppositional feminist discourse that challenges the limitations inherent in both 10

Anglo-American and Mexican culture.

By 1985 Castillo was once again in California teaching at San Francisco State University, becoming more and more involved as an editor for Third Woman Press and receiving early praise for The Mixquiahuala Letters. After the novel received the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in 1987, Castillo was further honored by the Women's Foundation of San Francisco in 1988 with the Women of Words Award for pioneering excellence in literature. Still needing money and finding it difficult to raise her son alone, she taught Chicano humanities and literature at Sonoma State University in 1988, creative writing and fiction writing at California State University at Chico as a visiting professor in 1988-1989, and Chicana feminist literature at the University of California at Santa Barbara as a dissertation fellow/lecturer for the Chicano Studies Department during the same school year. In 1989 she received a California Arts Council Fellowship for Fiction and in 1990 a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Castillo's second novel, Sapogonia: An Anti-Romance in 3/8 Meter (1990), was written in Chicago in 1984 and 1985 while she was teaching English as a second language and taking care of her new baby. The novel springs from her passion for flamenco music, which had earlier led her to the Al-Andalus flamenco performance group, with which she performed in 1981 and 1982; Máximo Madrigal is the main male character in the novel and a second-generation flamenco artist. Although Castillo denies that the novel is autobiographical, several aspects of the female protagonist, Pastora Velásquez Aké, are reminiscent of the author's life. Pastora sings her own poems, becomes involved in liberation politics, and questions her Catholic faith just as the author herself.

Sapogonia is a complicated narrative about the love/hate relationship between Pastora and Máximo. The novel explores male fantasy, its potential for violence against women and the female subject's struggle to interpret herself both within and outside of the discourse on femininity and it evolves through Pastora's web of connections with both men and women as well as through her commitment to Chicano politics. 11

By the early 1990s Castillo was a fellow at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she gave a seminar and researched her dissertation. She received her Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Bremen in 1991 with a dissertation on Xicanisma, or Chicana feminism, subsequently published as Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (1994) defined as a collection of essays on the experience of the Mexic Amerindian (Castillo's term) women living in the United States and a meditation on the recent history of Mexic activism. In this book Castillo advocates their own mythmaking from which to establish role models to guide them out of historical convolution and de-evolution and she believes these myths should address their spiritual, political, and erotic needs as a people.

In August 1990, before completing her Ph.D., Castillo moved to New Mexico, where she began to write her third novel. Undoubtedly her best novel, So Far from God (1993) distinguishes itself through Castillo's use of the New Mexicans' English sprinkled with Spanish, a language whose rhythm often makes the characters' English sound like Spanish. The characters in this novel use double negatives and code switch (alternate) between Spanish and English as they communicate.

So Far from God, Castillo's best-known novel, focuses on the lives of a New Mexican mother, Sofia, and her four daughters, who seem doomed to live chaotic lives from page one when la Loca climbs during her own funeral and ascends to the roof of the church. What follows is an elaborately developed story through which the four daughters--Fé (Faith), Esperanza (Hope), Caridad (Charity), and la Loca--live their lives and die young. Fé dies from exposure to chemicals at a job that promised to help her achieve the "American Dream" to which she aspired. Esperanza, the only one of the four sisters who leaves her hometown in Tome and, thereby, the safety offered by the family, disappears during Desert Storm as she covers the war for a news station. Caridad is first attacked and left disfigured by la malogra the evil that lurks out in the night, and then is miraculously healed during one of la Loca's seizures. Caridad not only becomes herself again but also becomes a healer; shortly after falling in love with a woman, she takes the woman's hand and plunges off a mountain to become, perhaps, a mythological character. La Loca, a character who 12 never leaves home, contracts AIDS from no apparent source and dies, leaving Sofia, alone and angry, to become a radical political organizer.

So Far from God is simultaneously funny and sad, as Castillo examines several different issues at once. Fé's story illustrates what can happen to Latinas who turn their backs on their culture to pursue material possessions. Sofia's story is probably the most poignant; even before she loses all four daughters, she becomes a community activist, hoping to improve the lives of the people of Tome. Because spirituality also plays a significant role in this novel, many critics consider it Castillo's homegrown version of Mexican American magic realism, but So Far from God is actually a work in which the lives of five women are realistically defined not by their imaginations but by their connections to each other and the world around them. In 1993 the novel won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award in Fiction and the National Association of Chicano Studies Certificate of Distinguished Recognition for "Outstanding Contributions to the Arts, Academia, and to Our Community." The following year, So Far From God won the Mountains and Plains Bookseller Award, and Castillo also received a second National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction.

In 1996 Castillo published Lover Boys, an uneven but interesting collection of short stories. Brian Evenson, writing for the Review of Contemporary Fiction (Spring 1997:204), claims that "as intriguing as the book's cultural depictions is the complex way in which gender and desire are figured and refigured from story to story". Evenson recognizes in the stories a theme that runs through much of Castillo's work, "desire of all types, heterosexual and homosexual, from women who flirt with other women despite feeling themselves largely heterosexual, to the lesbian in the title story who finds herself drawn irresistibly to a young man" (Spring 1997:204). With the stories often showing passage from gay to straight relationships or vice versa, with the characters often torn between different desires, sexuality is envisioned as fluid. Sometimes this is echoed culturally when characters seem to experience similar fluidity in terms of possessing a social identity that makes multiple claims on the individual. 13

In Peel My Love Like an Onion (1999), Castillo returns to one of her favorite themes: flamenco dancing and music. Castillo creates Carmen, La Coja (the cripple), whom she invests with an obsession to become a flamenco dancer although she is not a gypsy and one of her legs is afflicted by polio. The trip down, however, is filled with convoluted love stories about Carmen and Manolo and Carmen and Agustín, both dancers and gypsies as well. These two men dance in and out of Carmen's life without ever committing to much more than a good time. Máximo Madrigal, the main character from Sapogonia, makes an appearance as a flamenco musician who becomes Carmen La Coja's gallant, but temporary, lover. Peel My Love Like an Onion is the first of Castillo's novels to be deeply concerned with the erotic lives of its main characters.

Carmen is in many ways defined by her nonsupportive, selfish family. They recognize her passion for dancing only when she becomes a singer earning good money. That she could become a flamenco dancer in spite of her condition escapes them, and they are not capable of giving her more than occasional reassurance, a lack of support that might explain why Carmen expects nothing of the men in her life. Her one purpose and joy in life is to be onstage dancing to flamenco music.

Castillo also published a new volume of poetry in 2001, I Ask the Impossible, which collects her verse work of the past eleven years and presents poems alight with stubborn love, crackling wit, and towering anger. In this collection Castillo enjoys an enviable reputation as a novelist, essayist, and poet, the latter evident.

Castillo's is a voice that speaks from deeply held beliefs and deep identification with the Chicana movement, though her works cut across gender and political lines, speaking to the common thread of humanity in each reader. Castillo's novels, short stories, and poetry all emerge from a working-class, Latina sensibility; yet, her work has crossed social and ethnic lines to examine issues common to all people regardless of their cultural backgrounds or ethnicity. Her detailed descriptions of a specifically Chicano culture are the backdrop for a body of literature that speaks to people of all cultures. 14

1.2. Ana Castillo as a Novelist and an Activist

Ana Castillo has emerged as a prominent Chicana writer. Through Massacre of Dreamers, the product of her doctoral dissertation, she examines the history and subjugation of women of color, specifically brown skinned women, Chicanas by a patriarchal society. Coining the term Xicanisma, a synonym for Chicana Feminism, Castillo aims to include more women into the struggle, faced by Chicana feminists. Her literary works force Chicanas to challenge the dominant society. She examines the issues of identity, sexualty and duality that Chicanas face in their lives and shows the female characters in her novels dealing with these issues in constructive ways.

To survey Castillo's career is to chronicle the growing recognition of Chicana literature in the United States during the last three decades, when many of these writers have moved from small presses to more powerful publishing houses. Her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters, published by the small Bilingual Press in 1986, won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and Sapogonia (1994), her next novel, was published by the same press. Norton published her third novel, So Far from God (1993), which won both a Carl Sandburg Award and a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award. In 1995, Norton republished its edition of her 1988 book My Father Was a Toltec, a collection of poems, some written in English, some in Spanish, telling the story of her father as member of the Toltec street gang, and included in the volume a selection of her earlier poems. Along with the publication of Peel My Love like an Onion, Doubleday reissued her first two novels. Henceforth, Castillo has become a powerful presence not only in the literature of Chicanas--Mexican-American women--but in the literature of the Americas.

She specifically identifies herself with Chicana authors: the forerunner writers publishing in the early 1970s, such as Lorna Dee Cervantes and Lucha Corpi, and her contemporaries and friends like Sandra Cisneros, Cherrie Moraga, and Denise Chavez. The label Chicana is problematic, however, according to Castillo, because it is a matter of perception as well as bloodline. She points out that women of Mexican descent or background--Mexic Amerindians--or Latinas born in the U.S. but closely 15 linked to Mexican culture all might be called Chicana because they are all part of the Chicana/o diaspora in the U.S. In fact, she champions the working-class brown women, who are joined by their economic position regardless of ethnicity, in a world where the black/white dichotomy prevails.

These are the people who are the subject of her fiction and the people with whom she grew up. Born, raised, and still living in Chicago, Castillo is the daughter of Mexican-American parents and raised in the neighborhood for so many immigrants of that period--Jewish, Italian, black, and Mexican. Castillo attended public schools, became a political activist in the 1970s, and received a BA degree in liberal arts from Northeastern University and an MA in Latin and Caribbean Studies from the University of Chicago. For years she made her living as a teacher--early on in Chicago at Malcolm X Junior College, later at Sonoma State College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of New Mexico--but never considered teaching as a primary career. A self-taught writer who is deliberate about her decision not to participate in traditional MFA programs or workshops, she began writing, because she had something to say. Her academic background was in the social sciences--philosophy, women's studies, sociology, literature so she figured that would all inform her writing. So she linked her impulse to write to idealism and went on:

Being of Mexican background, being Indian-looking, being a female, coming from a working-class background, and then becoming politicized in high school, that was my direction. I was going to be an artist, a poet. Never once did I think of it as a career…I could possibly earn a dime writing protest poetry. So all those years I went around like a lot of young poets…going anywhere I could find an audience, getting on a soapbox and reading. I was a Chicana protest poet, a complete renegade-- and I continue to write that way. (Baker, 1996: 59)

Even as Castillo continues to write as a renegade, however, her work--in particular, her fiction--has found a home with the reading public. Her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 1986. It brought 16

Castillo critical acclaim, an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and steady sales. Without consulting Castillo, Bilingual Review sold the rights to that novel and to Castillo's subsequent effort, Sapogonia, to Doubleday/Anchor, which brought them out in paperback in 1992 and 1994, respectively. This annoyed Castillo, who would have liked to have had more involvement in the publication (she eventually was able to make some revisions to Sapogonia). Her chief comment on the matter now is to urge young writers to have their contracts vetted, no matter how small and friendly the press.

In the wake of the success of her first fiction efforts, Castillo signed up with agent Susan Bergholz, of whom she speaks warmly. Bergholz, Castillo says, played a key role in the genesis of what would become Castillo's debut publication with Norton, the novel So Far from God. In an emotionally bleak period during her stay in New Mexico, Castillo had happened upon an edition of The Lives of the Saints. Reading its spiritual biographies inspired her to write a story about a modern-day miracle that happens to a little girl known as La Loca. After dying, La Loca does not only rise from the dead: she ascends to the roof of the church that had been about to house her funeral and reproves the Padre for attributing her resurrection to the devil. Upon reading this story, Bergholz suggested that Castillo develop it into a novel. So she wrote two more chapters, then she sent it out and eventually Gerald Howard took it at Norton. The story grew to encompass the lives of four sisters, martyrs in different ways to the modern Southwest, and of their mother, Sofia, who turns her bereavements to positive account by organizing the community politically and by working to reconfigure the Catholic religion. Castillo speaks very highly of Howard's editing. When So Far from God came out, Castillo declares: "I started looking at writing as a career, because indeed, after 22 years, I began to earn my living from it" (Baker, 1996:60).

Castillo has made attacks into writing cultural criticism, collected in Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1994), in which she defines the Mestiza/Mexic Amerindian woman's identity through the concept of Xicanisma, a term she coined to capture the concept of Chicana feminism, earned her 17 a Ph.D. from the University of Bremen. Writing against an Anglocentric perspective and carefully distinguishing her concerns and position from those of white feminists, Castillo's essay collection is a manifesto on racism, machismo, sexuality, mothering, spirituality, and language. The title derives from the legend that the Aztec ruler Montezuma sought out the people who he had heard dreamed of the fall of his empire and had them massacred. No one, after that, dared tell of their dreams. Castillo includes herself in "we, the silenced dreamers" who must reclaim the vision of wholeness--a spiritually grounded self defined apart from the greed on which patriarchy is based and living in harmony with the natural world. In this work, she analyzes the forces that have instilled self-contempt in the mestiza and calls for recognition of the vast difference between the reality of the mestiza and that of the dominant cultures. Castillo intends for this collection, as she writes in her introduction, to be a contribution to "the ongoing polemic of our 500-year status as countryless residents on land that is now the United States"(Shea, 2000:35).

Castillo explains that since the 1970s, European academics have taken an interest in Native American and Chicano studies, and by the 1980s had become interested in women within these groups. Dieter Herms, former dean of the American Studies Program at the University of Bremen, had traveled to the U.S., where he met Castillo and invited her to give a keynote address for an annual conference of German Americanists. My Father Was a Toltec and The Mixquiahuala Letters were being used in Germany as Chicana feminist theory, and when Castillo told Herms that one day she was going to sit down and write her ideas out in essay form, he told her that when she did, she should submit it as a formal dissertation.

In the tradition of the academic world, the approval process was lengthy and often contentious, but Herms, who became very ill with cancer, remained Castillo's champion and shepherded the book through the necessary channels. Castillo traveled to Germany, where she successfully defended the work a few months before Herms's death. While Massacre of the Dreamers has the vital theoretical foundations expected of a dissertation in interdisciplinary studies, including references to critical work in social sciences, history, and literature, the bare difference is in approach. 18

This is a dissertation by, for, and about Chicanas. It seeks to raise consciousness of their history and to incite change in their self-awareness and, thus, their future. In the call for inclusion, its message is a revolutionary one calling for change throughout the culture.

Not surprisingly, one of those changes come about through a re-visioning of language. Not interested in becoming part of an existing discourse, Castillo looks toward creating a new, more inclusive one. She calls for a critical understanding of the consequences of being marginalized from the language of the dominant society and writes of the need to take on the re-visioning of Chicana’s own culture's metaphors--not only to understand but to act on the bone-and-blood link between language and identity. In the topic of an earlier poem, A Christmas Gift for the President of the United States, Chicano Poets, and a Marxist or Two I've Known in My Time Castillo points out the issue : “My verses have no legitimacy. A white woman inherits her father's library, her brother's friends, Privilege gives language that escapes me. Past my Nahua eyes and Spanish surname, English syntax makes its way to my mouth with the grace of a club foot” (Shea, 2000:37) .

Castillo writes and publishes some poetry in Spanish, but she writes mostly in English, a decision, she says, she made over 20 years ago--"not because I was trying to reach a gringo audience. But I was raised in Chicago without the privilege of bilingual education, so the people I thought would read my work would be the Chicanos who read English. I didn't learn to write in Spanish" (Ibid.). She has stated in interviews (Saeta, 1997:141) that the English she writes is not "white standard English" and that an essential element of her work is the distinctive language of the narrator, particularly in Sapogonia, where the narrator's pretentiousness is signaled by the second-language English he proudly uses.

When she sits down to write, language is not the only choice Castillo has to make, since she feels equally at home in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She claims that the choice is sometimes hers, sometimes not:

I have worked, for example, on Massacre of the Dreamers with So Far 19

from God, then the short stories, then back to painting, then some poetry- -and that was all in one day! At some point, I say, "Enough is enough," go back to the easel, and spend the rest of the day painting…I felt confident enough in my writing at that time that it didn't matter what people thought of me as a painter… Usually, I paint myself in whatever is going on at the moment. Then, I don't necessarily put that in my writing. (Shea, 2000: 37-38)

Castillo is never alone in her creative process. One of the key chapters in Massacre of the Dreamers is about spirituality. In the doctrine of Xicanisma, spirituality involves acceptance of self in the context of forces that Western thought might consider supernatural and requires rejection of the hierarchical thinking characteristic of Western culture. In Chicana culture, spiritualism is embodied in curanderas and brujas, the latter spiritual healers or psychics, by Castillo's definition, the former specialized healers, learned in the knowledge of specifically healing the body. Castillo is the granddaughter of a curandera, and it is she, Castillo says, "who taught me how to love and care for other living things. We lived in the heart of Chicago in a flat in the back with a kitchen looking out into a nasty, rat- infested alley. Yet she grew her herbs there, in coffee cans" (Shea, 2000: 37-38). In the introduction to Toltec, Castillo tells a moving story of beginning to write at age nine when this grandmother, her abuelita, died. "My lines were short, roughly whittled saetas [flamenco-style songs] of sorrow spun out of the biting late winter of Chicago"(Shea, 2000: 37-38), she writes and so Ana the writer was born out of the death of the woman who was and is her spiritual guide.

Castillo is herself a curandera, but explains that she has been reluctant to take on that lifestyle. In 1997, she was crowned a curandera and hail-maker by the Nahua people of Central Mexico, the region of my ancestry. She believes this is work she is destined to do, but chooses not to elaborate on what that means: "I'm not trying to be mysterious, but as I learn and accept my responsibilities and duties, I must humbly keep them private" (Shea, 2000: 37-38).

Castillo is also a follower of the Virgin of Guadalupe and always wears a large 20 square ring honoring this figure. Her poem La Wild Woman is dedicated Para Clarissa to Clarissa Pinkola Estés, kindred spirit and author of the best-seller Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1992). In 1996, Castillo published Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe, a series of pieces she commissioned from Chicano artists and writers, including Estés, to explore the meaning of la Virgencita at the end of the millennium. Authors of these essays refuse to separate spirituality and sexuality, much as Castillo herself refused in Massacre of the Dreamers, seeing them as part of the same energy.

The erotic and spiritual coexist in Peel My Love like an Onion. At 40 years old, Carmen describes herself to look like a Picasso forgery but, as Castillo puts it she knows herself to be beautiful inside and out. This novel's about self-love. Unlike the Carmen of Bizet's opera, this one refuses to be a tragic heroine. Something about a grand final exit doesn't appeal to me as much as the idea of being asked for an encore. She's the one who brings clients in the beauty parlor, where she is the shampoo girl, to tears when she demonstrates the flamenco in her cross-trainers.

So Carmen didn't merely waltz into Castillo's imagination, she flamencoed into a novel about the Chicano and gypsy cultures of Chicago. An irresistible metaphor, flamenco is more a way of life than a dance, one that begins not with the feet but with the heart. Although Castillo is not a professional flamenco dancer, she does not deny that she can do some fancy footwork herself:

You don't have to be tall and svelte or have shiny hair or even all your teeth. The other night on the book tour, there was a flamenco dancer as part of the event--and she's about sixty years old, five feet tall, and sort of all-the-way round--and she gave a really great performance! Flamenco is a very passionate dance, like the tango; it comes from the streets, from poor people, and it's like the blues, an expression of loss, oppression, migrations. (Shea, 2000: 38-39)

Castillo does have a strong investment in pedagogy, however, a commitment currently finding its most direct expression in a children's book project, My 21

Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, the Dove. This manuscript consists of two long poems based on Aztec and Nahuatal instructions to youths facing rites of passage that Castillo discovered during her research for Massacre of the Dreamers: "There are chronicles of talking. Imagine that you're coming of age, getting married, going off to war, and you're brought to the elders, who tell you the significance of the event. I took passages of those speeches, which the Spaniards documented from the Aztecs, and turned them into two chants--one for the son, one for the daughter” (Shea, 2000: 38-39). This lyrical advice is not so different, Castillo says, from what parents say -or should say-to children today when offering counsel about life: When you speak, speak not too loud and not soft but with honest words always.

Like Castillo's other work, there is an emphasis on ancestry and history as a source of pride:Understand, my daughter that you are of noble and generous blood; you are precious as an emerald, precious as sapphire. You were sculpted of relations cultivated like jade.

Castillo says she is particularly excited about the book, as well as its sequel-- for the newborn--because of her own son, Marcel Ramon, who is 16 and the subject of a number of poems in her newest, unpublished collection, I Ask the Impossible. One of these, the whimsical El Chicle appears in the New York City subway as part of the Poetry in Motion series and recalls a younger Marcel in more innocent times. Castillo says her major concern today is how her son is perceived as a young, brown- skinned male on the streets of Chicago:

I grew up in a world that was racist, and young people were harassed by the police and by kids from other neighborhoods, but we're living now in a much more dangerous time. My biggest worry is not the choices he's going to make, but how the world has become so much more violent and aggressive. (Shea, 2000: 38-39)

Castillo shows great respect for the community that can be created and nurtured by those of Mexican heritage. Each of her characters respects those close to her, whether they be family or friends. Castillo supports the idea that close ties to the 22 community and certain individuals are both a part of Mexican culture and heritage, with characters who come to appreciate and family and the culture they embody. Her characters come to realize their part in something much larger than just their immediate world; they realize they must work toward the betterment of the community which they belong. Castillo empowers the Xicanista in Massacre by asserting that “we can endure any circumstances” (Collins, 2002: 39). She also suggests that this endurance is not enough by challenging that “daily we prove that we must be reckoned with by dominant culture, we must have faith in our vision” (Collins, 2002: 39). Castillo instills in her characters with this faith.

23

CHAPTER TWO - WHO IS THE CHICANA?

2.1. Some Historical Background

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Americans continue to deal with the impact and consequences of immigration from various countries to the United States. As with other immigrant groups, Mexican immigration to the United States created generations of New Americans. Mexican immigration differs from other immigrations in one major way: Mexico shares a 2,000 mile-long border with the United States. Mexican immigrants never had to cross an ocean to reach American shores. In fact, unlike all other immigrant groups, the American Southwest belonged to Mexico until the country's defeat by the United States in 1848. The history and culture of contemporary Mexican society have always influenced the lives of Mexican immigrants living in the United States.

An overview of Mexican history begins with Mexico's early civilizations and continues through the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The earliest groups to arrive in Mexico migrated from the north, near the Bering Strait, around 8000 B.C.E. These nomadic tribes roamed the countryside hunting buffalos, mammoths, and mastodons. When these herds died out, around 7000 B.C.E., some tribes living in what is now the state of Puebla discovered how to cultivate crops such as corn and beans. Agriculture transformed the nomadic tribes into village-dwellers, and by 2000 B.C.E., large villages existed in the Valley of Mexico, in what is now Mexico City, and in the southern highland region with its fertile soil, which was ideal for farming. An evolving and complex society emerged around 1000 B.C.E. The Olmec Indians led the first major developments in pre-Columbian Mexico. The Olmecs settled in the Southern Gulf of Mexico Coast and their empire thrived between 1200 B.C.E and 400 B.C.E. Archaeologists identify the Classic Period (300-900 C.E.) in ancient Mexico as the one during which the most significant cultural and artistic achievements developed. The rise of cities, particularly in the Valley of Mexico, led to the development of complex societies characterized by social classes, commerce, transportation systems, and religious centers. Cultural centers in the Classic Period included those of the Maya in Yucatán and Guatemala, the Mexican Highlands of Teotihuacán, the Zapotee cities of Monte Albán and Mitla in Oaxaca, and the 24

Totonac cities of Tajin on the Gulf Coast. These civilizations declined as a result of the frequent warfare that existed throughout the Classic Period.But still, from 900 to 1520, a variety of tribes continued to engage in warfare. Later pre-Columbian cultures thrived but never reached the cultural heights of the Classic Period's civilizations.

Beginning in 1300, the Aztecs, a highly warlike people, entered the Valley of Mexico and settled on Lake Texcoco, which is now Mexico City. They established their capital of Tenochtitlán on an island in Lake Texcoco. The Aztecs selected, this site because one of their legends said that they should build their capital on the site where they found a cactus with an eagle sitting on it, holding a serpent in its mouth. This symbol became the national symbol of Mexico. The population of this Aztec city reached the amazing number of 300,000. The Aztecs ruled over a loose confederation of surrounding states and spread their social, cultural, and, most important, their religious influence throughout the Valley of Mexico. In 1519 when the Spanish arrived in what is now the state of Veracruz, Hernán Cortés encountered an Aztec empire ruled by the emperor Moctezuma. The arrival of the Spanish signaled the defeat of the Aztecs and the creation of a Spanish colony that would eventually rebel against the Spanish Crown and establish its independence in the nineteenth century.

Cortés and his expedition entered the Aztec Empire in 1519. When Moc- tezuma first heard of the arrival of these strangers from the East, he believed that Cortés was the Aztec god Quetzalcoatle—the Feathered Serpent—who, according to legend, flew away from the world but promised to return from the East. Moctezuma also realized that the Spaniards represented a military threat to his Aztec Empire, and he tried to appease Cortés with gifts of gold and other precious metals. After a preliminary setback, the Spanish subdued the Aztecs in 1521 with the surrender of Cuauhtémoc, who was to become the last Aztec emperor. The Spanish Conquest incorporated a vast territory into the Spanish Empire. In the two centuries that followed, the Spanish maintained governmental control over its colony, and The Spanish accumulated great wealth from the silver mines and other raw materials 25 discovered throughout Mexico, facilitating its economic and political superiority over other European powers by means of the wealth accumulated in the New World.

Throughout the sixteenth century, Spanish America experienced the continued expansion of the Spanish monarchy. During these early years of discovery, Spain brought to the New World or New Spain its culture and language and supported the Christianization efforts of the Catholic Church. Furthermore Spain's contributions to the development of the cultural life in New Spain go hand in hand with its military conquest. Although pre-Columbian cultures such as the Aztec and the Mayan left a rich heritage of arts and sciences, Spain contributed its own cultural heritage. Many times Spanish culture, particularly language, integrated native elements, creating a uniquely New World culture. The ultimate result of the introduction of Spanish to the Americas, like the introduction of English to North America, was the expansion of the Spanish language to the twenty countries in the New World.

The Spanish Conquest of Mexico created a highly stratified society. At the top, Spaniards (born in Spain) and Peninsulares (Spaniards born in Mexico) dominated almost every aspect of life in the colony. They controlled the government, owned all the land, and maintained a strong coalition with the Catholic Church. Through intermarriage, many other racial/ethnic groups developed within New Spain. Intermarriages between Spaniards and indigenous people created a completely new group called Mestizos who eventually formed the majority of present-day Mexican people. Indigenous groups and enslaved Africans remained at the bottom of the social class ladder.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Europe found itself in a state of political uprising. In Spain, King Charles IV's reign was built on corruption and repression. Eventually an opposition movement succeeded in forcing Charles IV to abandon, and his son became King Ferdinand VII. Almost immediately Napoleon gave refuge to Charles who began a campaign to regain the Spanish throne. Napoleon's attempt to place his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne in Spain led to the Peninsular War of Spain in 1808. 26

These political disorders were felt in New Spain where a growing anger against colonial rule continued to increase. Although there were many groups in Mexico, such as the Spaniards, various opposition groups joined together in a common cause to overthrow the Spanish. The Spaniards represented a small group of ruling elite whom the rest of Mexican society resented for their oligarchic rule. The Mexican War for Independence pitted the existing social classes against the ruling class of Spaniards. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a local priest, began organizing a combination of Mestizos and indigenous groups so a call to revolt issued on the night of September 15, 1810.

Soon after, Hidalgo led a band of his followers to the town of San Miguel where he again issued a cry that has become a central part of Mexico's historical and cultural past. Hidalgo's troops won important victories in the towns of Celaya and Guanajuato. Eventually Hidalgo and his followers fought their way to Mexico City, but, tragically, Hidalgo, with his limited military skills, made a poor strategic move when he turned his troops away from Mexico City to regroup. The Spanish troops began to win several critical battles that increased the disorganization of the opposition's forces. Eventually Hidalgo and his military co leader Ignacio de Allende were captured, court-martialed, and shot. Other leaders continued the struggle for independence. The Spanish government strike backed with a series of repressive measures against the insurgents, but their strategy backfired as more and more groups joined the independence movement. As a result of a coalition of anti- Spanish leaders, Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821. New Spain became the young nation of Mexico, and Hidalgo had succeeded in turning the course of Mexican history. He remains Mexico's greatest patriot.

The decades after 1821 proved to be some of the most turbulent in Mexican history. The political coalitions that had been formed to gain independence from Spain soon disintegrated, producing intense civil trouble. Some groups favored establishing a monarchy to rule Mexico whereas others dreamed of creating a form of government patterned after the United States. The former leader of the independence movement, Iturbide, gained control of the country and declared 27 himself emperor of Mexico until he was overthrown by the military. Finally, in 1824, the various factions agreed upon a republic headed by an elected president and a Congress. Guadalupe Victoria became Mexico's first president.

The new republic soon faced one of the most turbulent episodes in Mexican history to have a long-range impact on contemporary Mexican society: Mexican immigration to the United States and relations between Mexico and the United States.

Mexico’s dramatic upheavals went on through the first half of the nineteenth century. Although a democratic republic existed on paper, political chaos prevailed throughout the country. Some groups opposed the constitution; others favored military intervention. Shifting political coalitions produced one of the most confusing periods in the country's history. The disastrous political decisions of the leaders of Mexico led to one of the most critical turning points in Mexican history: the war between Mexico and the United States.

Prior to 1848, the most northern region of Mexico, the American Southwest and particularly Texas, was sparsely populated. After Mexican independence in 1821, the Mexican government encouraged greater numbers of Mexicans to move into this border region. The government recognized the potential threat of American settlers crossing the U.S.-Mexico border who had started to take up residence in Mexico's northern territory. Under the leadership of such well-known historical figures as Sam Houston, adventuresome Americans settled in Texas. By 1835, an estimated 65,000 Mexicans lived in Texas; about 50,000 were Americans, most of whom opposed the Mexican government that enforced restrictions on them. Santa Anna, Mexico leader set blockade on San Antonio, where serious uprisings had developed. The famous Battle of the Alamo witnessed the efforts of Americans and some Mexicans who joined in opposition to the Mexican government. Santa Anna's victory put a temporary halt to the Texas uprising. The noted historian Carey McWilliams analyzed the clash of cultures that developed inevitably as more and more Anglo-Americans established permanent residence in Mexican territory: 28

In Texas, the Spanish-Mexican settlements were directly in the path of Anglo-American expansion. Unlike the rest of the borderlands, Texas was not separated from the centers of Anglo-American population by mountain ranges and desert wastes; geographically it invited invasion. In a series of belts or strips, its rich, alluvial plains stretched from the plateaus to the gulf. The rivers that marked these belts could be crossed, at all seasons, at almost any point, without much trouble. (Garcia, 2002: 9)

An overwhelming distance, characterized by expansive semiarid land, existed between Mexico City and the closest Mexican settlements in Texas. The Mexican government had little chance of protecting its northern borders from Anglo- American influx because too many physical barriers stood between the center of Mexican power and the Texas region. Mexican culture differed vastly from Anglo- American culture. Language represented the greatest cultural barrier between the groups. Most Anglos and Mexicans were not bilingual and, in addition, lived in different areas. Mexicans were concentrated in small towns along the border, and Anglo-American settlers lived on ranches and farms farther removed from settlements. The increasing tension between the U.S. and Mexican government worsened cultural tensions between the two groups. By 1836 the explosion led to the declaration of Texas's independence from Mexico, an action that would culminate in war between Mexico and the United States. Developments in Mexico also contributed to the declaration of war between the two countries.

Between 1836 and 1848, a complicated series of political developments shaped the course of Mexican history. With the declaration of independence, border raids and skirmishes became an everyday occurrence. Texans raided Mexican settlements, and Mexicans sent forces into Texas, whose independence it never recognized. Interestingly, a significant number of Mexicans living in Texas sided with the Anglo Americans against the Mexican government. In fact, two Mexicans joined the other forty-eight signers of the declaration of Texas independence and a third signer became vice president of the Texas republic. 29

Mexico refused to recognize these actions and attacked U.S. soldiers in Texas. These military skirmishes ended in a declaration of war against Mexico in 1845. American General Zachary Taylor claimed victory over the Mexican general Santa Anna's forces in the north. General Winfield Scott landed in Veracruz and led an invasion force that captured Mexico City in 1847. One of Mexico's most revered national monuments is the statue outside of Chapultepec Castle commemorating the heroic actions of six young military cadets who gave their lives fighting against Scott's invading army. Mexico surrendered in 1848 and signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ceded Mexico's northwest territory to the United States. The states of California, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and certain areas of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado became part of the United States. In 1853, the United States gained the remaining parts of Arizona and New Mexico through the Gadsden Purchase. Mexico also recognized the takeover of Texas by the United States. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also provided that the United States would recognize the rights of Mexicans holding land titles. The increased numbers of Anglo Americans into the Southwest, however, eventually resulted in the takeover of these Mexican land grants. The California Gold Rush resulted in an even greater influx of Anglo Americans, and within a matter of years, few Mexicans maintained title to southwestern lands. Hostilities between the two groups persisted long after the war ended.

2.2. How the Mexican American Came into Being

Throughout the years there is an endless discussion on who the Mexican American is and what he should call himself. In the Southwest, where over 90% of Americans who can trace their ancestry to Mexico live, one can find such descriptive names being used as the following: Mexican Americans, Mexicans, Latins, Latin Americans, Hispatios and Chicanos. And this list does not include slang terms that are used by both majority and minority groups. Few, if any, other minority groups in the United States encounter such diversity with respect to their identity. Indeed, great emotional value is attached to each of the above terms, as well as to the way in which it is used. 30

As looked into history, one might understand the formation of the new term Mexican American easily. When Porfirio Díaz took over the reins of the Mexican government in 1876, neither his supporters nor his opponents could have understood the impact that his dictatorship would have on the development of twentieth-century Mexico and the short- and long-term impact of the consequent mass immigration of Mexicans to the United States. The social fabric of both Mexico and the United States would never be the same. Dictatorship led to revolution, and revolution to the international migration of Mexicans to the United States.

From the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, Mexicans sought refuge in the United States. They left their small villages and set out to El Norte - the North - as they called the United States. The railroad system built under the Diaz regime transported the mass migration of Mexicans to the American Southwest. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans made this trip across the Rio Grande. The United States did not keep complete immigration records for Mexicans entering the country. Many crossed and then recrossed la frontera, as Mexicans called the U.S.-Mexican frontier. In addition, many entered without checking at border entry points.

The U.S. Census started keeping records for Mexican immigration in 1930, although record keeping for immigration figures continues to be difficult even to the present day due to such factors as large numbers of undocumented immigrants and patterns of reentry to the United States by deported immigrants. Data gathered in the 1930 Census show that the total population of Mexican immigrants actually grew from 367,510 in 1910 to 700,541 in 1920. By the beginning of the Great Depression, approximately 1 million Mexicans resided in the United States. The majority of Mexican immigrants who came during these years settled along the U.S.-Mexican border in such states as Texas, Arizona, and California, with about half of these residing in Texas. Communities of Mexican immigrants were established in places such as El Paso and San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego and Los Angeles, California. By 1920, El Paso, Texas had the largest Mexican population of any city in the United States and had more Mexicans than Anglos. San Antonio had the second-largest population of Mexicans. 31

The majority of immigrants were displaced peasants, unemployed and dissatisfied working-class persons who fled the impoverished conditions and violence prevalent throughout Mexico. Some immigrants, however, came from the middle and upper classes of Mexican society who left for political and economic reasons. Many prominent elite families, such as the Terrazas family from the state of Chihuahua, represented exiled supporters of the Diaz regime who had fled Mexico and settled in El Paso, Texas. These families brought their wealth to the United States and formed an early leadership group among the Mexican immigrant community. Regardless of the socioeconomic and political background, this wave of Mexican immigrants left their homeland, a country engaged in one of the most violent social revolutions.

During this period, Mexicans crossed the border into the United States with relative ease. Marked social and geographic continuities created a borderland on the American side that differed very little from the Mexican immigrants' own country. Ernesto Galarza, a prominent Mexican immigrant who spent his adult life in the United States and became the most influential educator, political activist, and scholar in the Mexican-American community, wrote his autobiography, Barrio Boy (1971), in which he recounts his family's immigrant journey to the United States. Galarza recalls his first impression of the United States as he left Mexico. He says:

Everything looked the same; one side of the border looked like the other side. The American flag flying over the border inspection post was the only marker indicating that he and thousands of other Mexican immigrants were now in the United States. Mexicans wanting to enter the United States reported to the immigration office on the American side and provided the officer with a few pieces of relevant information such as name, date and place of birth, and destination in the United States. (Garcia, 2002:18)

The need for unskilled and semiskilled workers for the rapidly industrializing American Southwest represented one of the major reasons for the ease with which Mexican immigrants entered the United States during the late nineteenth and early 32 twentieth centuries. Throughout the Southwest, a booming economy in mining, ranching, and agriculture followed a national and international industrialization period which was characterized by industrial expansion and production. New factories turned out textiles, chemicals, steel, iron, and electricity. Rapid industrialization developed along regionally specialized production centers. In the Northeast and parts of the Midwest, a large supply of Western European immigrants entered light manufacturing factories such as textiles. The Pacific Northwest shipped lumber to the East Coast. The Great Plains region supplied unlimited amounts of beef. The Lake Superior region developed the extraction of iron and copper. Cotton became King in the South, supplying the textile mills in the Northeast with raw materials.

The South and Southwest served as suppliers of the raw materials and agricultural products needed to supply the industrial centers and the growing working class they employed. This region developed only a limited number of short- lived industries. All along the U.S.-Mexico border and other cities in the Southwest, centers of mining and agriculture emerged as regional parts of a national industrialization process. Mexican immigrants formed the backbone of the Southwestern economy by providing an abundant, constant, and cheap source of mostly unskilled labor. These jobs provided employment but also created strong barriers to the upward social mobility for the masses of immigrants. Unskilled Mexican workers contributed to the economic boom, but they failed to collect its rewards. They were concentrated in such industries us the railroads, construction, mining, and agriculture. Although Mexican men dominated the working class in Mexican immigrant communities, large numbers of Mexican women also became part of the paid labor force. Widowed and young, single women worked as domestics, laundresses, seamstresses, and garment workers. In whatever industries they found themselves, Mexican immigrant workers resided in largely segregated occupations with little chance of improvement. Economic discrimination created a dual labor force with Anglo-American workers concentrated in higher-paying occupations than Mexicans. Unskilled workers found it practically impossible to improve their occupational status because most unions restricted membership to 33

Anglos. These patterns of discrimination affected the development of Mexican immigrant communities during this period and subsequent generations of Mexican Americans who, for the most part, continue to face patterns of inequality.

The Immigration Act of 1917 represented an early attempt to restrict the (low of immigrants to the United States. The years leading up to the passage of this legislation were marked with increased concern with the large numbers of immigrants from all parts of the world, including Mexico. Exaggerated and often inaccurate reports of Mexicans posing health problems and representing a bad moral influence on American citizens contributed to this early episode of anti-Mexican immigrant sentiments. The Immigration Act of 1917 called for a head tax of $8 and a literacy test. Mexican immigration hardly increased from 1917 to 1918. Although they were not eligible to be drafted, many Mexicans feared conscription to the American armed forces fighting in World War I and returned to Mexico, discouraging others from immigrating to the United States. American employers experienced economic difficulties caused by a shortage of labor due to decreases in Mexican immigration and the numbers of American citizens drafted into the armed services. Sufficient pressure was exerted by employers and eventually the De- partment of Labor suspended the immigration law to allow Mexican immigrants to enter the country as agricultural workers. By the middle of 1918, Mexican immigration resumed and continued to increase rapidly. Many companies, especially the railroads and mining, actually entered Mexico to take on laborers. These immigrants became known as Los Enganchados (The Hooked Ones). A popular Mexican ballad captured the feelings of those who came as farm workers to the fields in the United States. The ballad tells of the journey to El Norte—the unfair treatment, low wages, and unsanitary conditions experienced by immigrants. More than anything, the ballad tells of the homesickness of the immigrants as they worked in the fields, longing to return to their homeland but always keeping the American dream: making a better life for themselves and, most important, the lives of their children, who would eventually form a generation of U.S.-born citizens— Mexican Americans. 34

2.3. The Chicanos within U.S. Society

Like all immigrant groups, the Mexicans who entered the United States brought with them their cultural traditions and ways of life. Their Mexican culture provided them with a strong sense of community, an important survival strategy as they lived, worked, and raised their children in their new country. In Mexican immigrant communities throughout the United States, particularly in the Southwest, Mexican culture thrived within the immigrants' families, religion, and community activities.

The proximity of Mexico to the United States represented a major factor in the development of cultural practices among immigrant communities. For the immigrant, La Frontera, the border between Mexico and the United States, did not serve as a barrier from one side to the other. They crossed La Frontera, but they did not turn away from Mexico. They lived and raised their families in Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and even in states far removed from the border such as Kansas and Illinois, but they continued to keep Mexico alive as its culture flourished in their immigrant communities. Many Mexican immigrants even believed that they would return to Mexico when the revolution ended. In reality, most of them remained in the United States. The immigrants' longing for their homeland resulted in their conscious efforts to create little Mexicos in the United States. Anthropologist Manuel Gamio (Garcia, 2002:22) interviewed Mexican immigrants who arrived in the United States from Mexico in the 1910s and 1920s. One immigrant told of how she wanted her family to eat the Mexican food she prepared exactly as she did in her hometown. She said that her family could live their everyday lives as if they were still in Mexico. She and her husband spoke only Spanish in their home. Her family lived in a neighborhood of Mexicans, and she said that she could walk all around her community and hear only Spanish and see only Mexicans. Many immigrants would tell their children that when they left their home they were in the United States, but when they came back into their home, they were in Mexico. All along the border, Mexican immigrants attempted to re-create their lives as they had been before they 35 left Mexico. Although they could not be completely isolated from the Anglo- American world, Mexican immigrant culture survived in the United States.

The family became the most important cultural institution that Mexicans carried with them to their new immigrant communities. Mexican immigrant families were diverse, but common patterns existed. During this immigration period, Mexicans came to the United States as a family unit. In other immigrant groups, single men formed the majority of immigrants. Mexicans traveled as families, sometimes extended families. Some industries, such as the railroads, enrolled entire Mexican families in an effort to keep a stable workforce. In his autobiography Barrio Boy, Ernesto Galarza (Garcia, 2002:22) tells the story of how his mother, his uncles, and he made the long trip to Sacramento from his home village in the rural state of Nayarit, Mexico. When they arrived in California, his extended family continued to live together. Other extended family members eventually made a similar journey, setding in Galarza's thriving Mexican community. The process through which immigrant communities serve as magnets for other immigrants is called chain migration. As Mexican immigrant communities experienced large-scale chain migration, the Mexican immigrant family, with its native customs, values, and kinship systems, allowed Mexicans to maintain strong Mexican identities.

Mexican families retained many traditional cultural practices. Religious and family celebrations also forged new traditional family networks. Baptisms and weddings created the kinship bond of coparenthood called compadrazco. Parents would select a couple to sponsor the baptism of their son or daughter, becoming the madrino and madrina, godfather and godmother, respectively. This religious and cultural practice provided a safety net for the child; godparents were expected to step in to raise their godchild if either or both parents died. This practice also exists among other immigrant groups such as Italians. Among all groups, immigrants believed that these family kinship networks were key to their cultural and economic survival in their new country.

Mexican folk customs and practices existed both inside and outside of immigrant families. Traditional folk songs and music from their homeland served as 36 popular forms of entertainment. Family celebrations usually included some form of musical entertainment. Some families could afford to hire a small group of musicians who played a variety of musical styles. Mexican folk ballads, corridos, represented human interest stories set to music. These corridos expressed the emotions and life histories of Mexicans. Although they continued to listen to the best-known corridos from Mexico, songwriters composed new corridos that expressed the specific attitudes and feelings of the immigrants. Such new songs told of the immigrant journey and the adjustment to problems in the United States. One very popular corrido told the story of Aurelio Pompa, who was executed in California for killing an Anglo. Mexican immigrants throughout the Southwest believed in his innocence, stressing that he acted in self-defense. The Corrido of Aurelio Pompa could be heard in Mexican immigrant communities from California to Texas.

Music formed an important part of the immigrant's life. Most communities organized Sunday concerts in neighborhood parks. Summer concerts were particularly popular and were usually accompanied by dancing. Dance forms included waltzes, polkas, and a version of the American foxtrot. German immigrants to Texas introduced the polka to Mexican immigrants. These public concerts also served as a site for courtship among young Mexicans. Girls waited on one side of the dance floor in the park or plaza to be asked to dance, always under the watchful eyes of parents or chaperones.

Family gatherings in a backyard, neighborhood park, or at some other location for a celebration usually included storytelling. As in other immigrant communities, the oral tradition provided immigrants with a connection to their homelands. Oral literature included Mexican tales called cuentos, legends, and children's stories. Ghost stories were very popular and usually included a moral lesson. A story with many variations is that of La Llorona, the weeping woman who supposedly killed her children by drowning them, then repented for her horrible deed and wandered the earth crying for her murdered children. Many Mexican immigrant children came home to bed immediately when their mothers called them in from play out of their fear that La Llorona would steal them. 37

Religion played a key role in the daily life of Mexican immigrants. The majority of Mexican immigrants practiced Catholicism but blended specific Mexican cultural practices with the traditional Catholic beliefs and rituals. Historically, the Catholic Church in Mexico maintained a stronghold on political power through its accumulated wealth, landholdings, and dramatic influence on social life. Although some clerics championed liberal causes, Mexico's clergy is best known for its alliance with conservative groups.

At the level of the everyday citizen, the church exerted a tremendous force by shaping every aspect of society from birth to death. As immigrants, Mexicans continued to practice Catholicism, but the church took on an additional role in their communities: as an important source of comfort and cultural continuity. In most Mexican communities, the majority of priests were mosdy Irish Americans and Italian Americans due to the shortage of Mexican priests. Parish priests, such as those at Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas, made serious attempts to deal with the specific cultural needs of their Mexican parishioners. Within Mexican immigrant communities, it was common practice for priests to learn Spanish and try their best to understand Mexican religious practices that were often very different from the formal practices of the Catholic Church. Many of the wealthy immigrants sent their children to Catholic schools. In places such as Los Angeles, San Antonio, and El Paso, Mexican immigrants continued to follow the religious rituals that they had brought with them. For example, many Mexicans retained their devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe. According to Mexican Catholics, the Virgin Mary appeared to a Mexican peasant in 1531 and directed him to convince the Spanish bishops that she wanted a shrine built on the hilltop outside of Mexico City. Her indigenous features led her to become a national symbol for social justice for the masses of peasants. This is the present-day site for the National Basilica, the most revered shrine in Latin America.

Devotional societies to the Virgin of Guadalupe existed in both rural and urban communities in Mexico, and immigrants transferred their local societies to their American settlements. Religious parades in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe attracted hundreds of Mexican immigrants. The Catholic Church and its activities 38 helped Mexicans to adjust to their lives in the United States and to maintain a strong sense of pride in their Mexican culture. Many Mexican homes displayed home altars, usually cared for by women. Home altars were small shrines located on top of a dresser or table, which consisted of one or more religious statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and other popular saints. Candles, either natural or, in later years, electric, were kept as illumination. Fresh or plastic flowers adorned the home altars that could be located either in one room or in many. Among the most religious, these home altars became the focal point for daily prayers.

Mexican immigrants will always have a special relationship with the United States due to its proximity to Mexico. Although specific periods of immigration can be identified, such as the mass migrations in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, a continuous influx of immigrants helps to maintain many aspects of Mexican culture.

2.4. The Chicana: The Brown Woman

Since the word Chicana is the feminine of Chicano it is necessary define both before the term of Chicana is characterized. Chicano is used to refer to the people of Mexican descent born and/or raised in the United States. Other terms such as Mexican, Mexican-American, hispano, and Chicano are also in use, but Chicano is rapidly becoming the preferred term. While it has not gained wide public exposure until recently, the term is certainly not new. For many years its use was limited to Chicanos. Some argue that its origins are ancient, deriving from the Nahuathl for Mexican or Aztec. A less elevated but perhaps more plausible interpretation is that it is a deformed or Americanized version of mexicano. The Chicano was a tainted or contaminated mexicano. The word seems to have had a paradoxical meaning like nigger or queer, pejorative when used by outsiders and positive when used by insiders. Significantly, it is a term that has been adopted by Chicanos themselves. Just as black Americans selected black, a previously pejorative term, as the rallying point for the black movement and as a source of pride and dignity, so Chicanos have self-consciously chosen Chicano. 39

Another common term Mexican-American means middle-class respectability and is perhaps more agreeable to Anglos than Chicano because it gathers such persons with other hyphenated American groups like Irish-Americans, Italian- Americans, and German-Americans, thereby reinforcing the belief that American society is a melting pot of diverse ethnic groups. Chicano, on the other hand, underscores the uniqueness of this group. Unlike immigrant groups who entered American society voluntarily, Chicanos’ entrance into the United States was imposed. Terms such as hispano and Chicano are euphemistic and fail to differentiate Chicanos from other Spanish-speaking people. While some New Mexicans trace their ancestry to the original Spanish colonists, for many years the use of Hispanic or Spanish was a way of saying that one was European and Caucasian, not to be confused with Chicanos, whose heritage was predominantly Indian. These terms in other words, provided ways for Chicanos to assimilate, ways to become noncolonized non-Chicanos.

The term Chicana is used to denote a woman of Mexican ancestry living in the United States, whether she refers to herself as Mexican, Mexican-American, latina, hispana, or whatever. One of the most outspoken voices for the colonized woman, and has taken brave positions opposing the suppression of brown women in an elitist, racist society, Ana Castillo (Milligan, 1999: 20) defines the Chicana like that:

When I started doing the research for Massacre of the Dreamers, I asked myself, "what is a Chicaina-who is this woman that I'm going to write about?" …it was that the Mexican woman, in terms of both pre-Hispanic culture and afterwards, is defined by society in a very religious way. I could not extract one from the other…So, in that sense, I can't separate the identity of the Mexican woman, the Chicana woman, from some sort of religiosity. This is…investigating the meaning of our existence, aside from social or political identity.

The history of the brown woman shows us that her role has been a very strong one. Wherever she has seen the suffering of her people, she has responded bravely, with total commitment. In the case of the Chicana and other brown women, however, 40 this role has often been a silent one. Because of the high unemployment rate among brown men, brown women have often been placed in the difficult role of being both mother and father to her children. She must then face not only racist bosses in her work, but also many household and child care burdens. Child care is one of the most difficult problems for a woman to face alone. She is troubled with having to leave a good part of the raising of her children to others, because she wants the best care for them. But it must be understood exactly what la Familia de la Raza means. The Raza movement is based on brother and sisterhood, so according to the this opinion Chicanas must look at each other as one large family and must look at all the children as belonging to all of them. Therefore, Ravias sums the situation: “The brown woman who sees her true responsibility not only to her family but to all of her people, has many difficulties to face. Only the will and determination to serve our people which is our heritage, can overcome these difficulties” (Milligan, 1999:172).

However, it is not suggested that Chicanas are homogeneous or uniform, for there is great diversity among them. In terms of ethnic identity they range from those who see themselves mexicanas, even though raised and even perhaps even born in the United States, to those who see themselves Americans, sometimes called coconuts, in that they are said to be brown on the outside and white inside. Similarly, some Chicanas are bilingual, while others are monolingual, either in English or Spanish.

There are also generational differences. This arouses another discussions. “Like other Third World or non-white women, the Chicana suffers from what some have called triple oppression. In addition to the racism and exploitation that all of La Raza face, she faces also a third enemy, oppression based on the fact that she was born a woman, oppression in the form of sexism” (Rivas, 1973:168). Third and fourth generation women tend to become more Americanized, although many, especially the college educated, are rediscovering their Mexican-Indian roots. Another source of variation is the degree of commitment to or acceptance of the traditional female role. While some Chicanas accept their traditional role and escape any affiliation with feminism, others are deeply committed to feminist ideals and 41 seek to improve women’s condition. Some Chicanas are homemakers, others work, and still others are on some form of public assistance. There are also urban-rural, educational, and economic differences. The more affluent, college educated, urban, third or fourth generation Chicana provide a sharp contrast to her impoverished, less educated, rural, tradidional, first generation Chicana.

Despite their diversity, Chicanas share a number of important characteristics. The Chicana is a woman of Mexican descent, living in the United States, culturally neither Mexican nor American but influenced by both societies, and from a colonized minority. An overriding characteristic shared by Chicanas, in addition to their Mexican heritage, is a sense of marginality in an Anglo-dominated society. The essence of being Chicana is that one is not fully Mexican or American. Internal colonization means that Chicanas are free to be Mexican or American but not Chicana since Chicanos are nonentity in colonial America. On other words, she may be Mexican or American a noncolonized non- Chicana.

The term Chicana (and Chicano) came into popular usage during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 70s as Mexican American women wanted to establish social, cultural, and political identities for themselves in America. Chicana refers to a woman who embracers her Mexican culture and heritage, but simultaneously, recognizes the fact that she is an American. It is a self-selected term that usually applies to those Mexican-American women who acknowledge a dominance of males in society, and a history of discrimination and neglect in both the household and the workplace.

The name Chicana, in the present, is the name of resistance that enables cultural and political points of departure and thinking through the multiple migrations and dislocations of women of Mexican descent. The name Chicana is not a name that women are born to or with, as is often to case with Mexican but rather it is consciously and critically assumed and serves as point of re-departure for taking down historical conjunctures of crisis, confusion, political and ideological conflict and contradictions of the simultaneous effects (Alarcon, 2006: 185). 42

As a result, to date most writers and scholars of Mexican descent refuse the give up the term Chicana. Despite the social reaccommodation of many as Hispanics or Mexican-Americans, it is the consideration of the excluded evoked by the name Chicana that provides the position for multiple cultural critiques between and within, inside and outside, centers and margins.

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CHAPTER THREE - ANALYSING THE DYNAMICS OF CHICANA OPPRESSION

3.1. Familism, Machismo and Gender Roles

Mexican immigrant or Mexican American families living in the United States have always attempted to keep many aspects of their traditional Mexican culture. With the passing of time, Mexican immigrants experienced many changes taking place within their own families. Social forces from the larger American society introduce Mexican immigrant families to different values, and different gender roles and gender behavior may eventually develop. As a result, although most Mexican immigrants retain a sense of pride and loyalty to Mexico and their traditional cultural values and practices, they adopt new gender roles and behavior patterns that usually lead to changes in their family.

It must be kept in mind that there is no one general type of Mexican immigrant family. Differences exist based on time of immigration to the United States, region of Mexico, number of family members, social class, occupation, education, and other similar social factors. Nevertheless, it is possible to discuss some general characteristics that can be used to study Mexican immigrant families within the context of changing gender roles and behavior patterns.

Familism is perhaps the most well-known characteristic identified with Mexican families. Familism refers to the belief and value that a person's family represents the most central group to which one gives unconditional loyalty. Familism can be defined in more detail by identifying specific types. Demographic familism refers to the total number of people residing under one roof. Structural familism refers to the multigenerational dimension of families. Mexican immigrant families take many multigenerational forms, including both the nuclear family consisting of parents and children, and the extended family, consisting of such relatives as grandparents, in-laws, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Normative familism involves the degree of value a person places on family loyalty and unity. Behavioral familism is related to all of the other dimensions, but it refers specifically to degree of interaction between both nuclear and extended family members. For the most 44 part, Mexican immigrant families display the following characteristics: their families are larger than families in the larger American society, and they tend to include extended family members, usually grandparents. In addition, Mexican immigrants believe that their families are the most central group in their lives and, as such, demonstrate high levels of interaction with family members. In fact, when Mexican immigrants refer to their families, they are usually referring both to their immediate nuclear family and their extended family members, who may or may not live under the same roof.

Familism as a many-sided characteristic provides Mexican immigrants with much-needed assistance during their early years of settlement in the United States. Close family ties, for example, assist immigrants during various stages of the migration process. Throughout the history of Mexican immigration, immigrants already living in the United States serve as a magnet for attracting members of their immediate and extended family to make the trip to the United States. Living in close proximity and maintaining high levels of kinship interaction allows newly arrived Mexican immigrant families to adjust to their new lives. Even after immigrant families have settled in, familism creates a strong support network that assists the immigrant family in time of need. Families lend each other money, provide child care, assist with the elderly and sick, and join together to celebrate important dates.

Research on Mexican immigrant families continues to document the effects of high levels of familism. For example, over 50 percent of Mexican immigrants established their places of residence in the United States with the help of family members (Garcia, 2002:102). Mexican immigrants living in the United States continue to maintain their ties, both direct and indirect, with family members still living in Mexico, even those who do not intend to come to the United States. Community studies of Mexican immigrants document an extensive and complicated set of kinship interrelationships between Mexicans living in the United States and their compatriots living in Mexico. Studies of communities such as the one in Redwood City, California, conclude that events that take place in a Mexican immigrant's hometown in Mexico have an impact on his or her life in the United 45

States. The same is true for those Mexicans who continue to live in an immigrant's hometown in Mexico as events in the United States, in turn, affect them. This process through which a binational community of Mexican immigrants and their counterparts in Mexico form a type of community is called the transnational migrant circuit (Garcia, 2002:103). These types of transnational migration patterns involve the in-and-out flow of immigrants as they enter the United States; return to their country of origin, in this case Mexico; and then return to the United States. Mexican communities will continue to flourish as the exchange of goods, services, and communication networks becomes even more sophisticated and as transnational migration continues. Interestingly, a few immigration studies have already documented how this transnational migrant circuit is contributing to dramatic changes in gender relations among Mexican immigrants.

A study of changing gender roles and behavior within Mexican immigrant families usually begins with an understanding of one of the most commonly identified characteristics associated with traditional Mexican immigrant families. Perhaps the most widely identified theme involves what is referred to as machismo. Machismo comes from the Spanish word for male: macho. Machismo is defined as a form of masculinity involving an exaggerated sense of male boasting; it is also associated with the belief that the Mexican male is the sole, unquestionable authority within the household. Recently social scientists used the term patriarchy to describe this type of family form in which men exhibit various degrees of male dominance. Machismo, therefore, is an extreme form of male dominance and is often associated with a double- standard of sexuality for men. Men are expected to demonstrate their sexual competence whereas Mexican women and their families are expected to guard their virginity until marriage at all costs. Some people believe that machismo is most likely to be found among lower working-class immigrant families, but studies show that it exists in varying degrees within all social classes and educational levels.

Social scientists continue to debate the positive and negative aspects of machismo as a form of exaggerated masculinity and male dominance (Garcia, 46

2002:104). Some suggest that machismo has served as an adaptive mechanism for traditional Mexican men who come to the United States and experience high levels of prejudice and discrimination. In this case, machismo can be seen as a survival strategy for Mexican men, protecting them from the problems associated with living in a society characterized with varying degrees of anti-Mexican immigrant sentiments. On the other hand, machismo is seen as a form of patriarchy in which women are treated as inferior by their male counterparts. As such, machismo is not seen as solely a Mexican family characteristic but rather as one level of male dominance, occurring in all families, immigrant or not, Mexican or not. The most current research on Mexican immigrant families suggests that both approaches, the one that views machismo as a survival tool for men and the one that views it as detrimental to women, can help in the understanding of Mexican immigrant families (Garcia, 2002:104). A more recent and different perspective believes that Mexican families have been stereotyped by those researchers who believe that machismo is an established gender value exclusive to Mexican society and culture. In the last few years, immigration studies of Mexican families have found that machismo is not a universal value or gender behavioral pattern central to Mexican families. In addition, these new studies have found that Mexican immigrant families residing in the United States exhibit a wide range of gender values with machismo being only one, and when it does exist, it can appear with varying degrees of intensity.

Findings point out that the Mexican immigrant women experienced a more difficult adjustment to life in the United States specifically when they did not have members of their extended family living in close proximity. Mexican traditional cultural values stressed the importance of women's support networks, particularly for household work and child rearing. As a result, Mexican immigrant families often decide to live close to their relatives in order to best meet the needs of their families, particularly their children. In this way, Mexican family values and gender relations patterned after those characteristic to Mexican society were easier to re-create in the United States. 47

Although Mexican immigrants tended to migrate as a family group in the first half of the twentieth century, a new development involves the migration of the father with the rest of the family staying in Mexico. Mexican men who arrive in the United States by themselves usually made the decision to migrate on their own, deciding that this would benefit the entire family. Joint decision making, a characteristic of an egalitarian family structure, is usually not evident in Mexican families whose head of household immigrates to the United States. Oral histories support this perspective. One Mexican woman discussed her relationship with her husband, criticizing him for his long absences from home:

He would leave and come back, and sometimes he would leave for three years, four years. Every time that he returned home to visit I became pregnant, and I had children, and more children, as they say, "fatherless" children. The check that they [immigrant fathers] send, that's very different than being a father. . . . They are fathers only by check. They are fathers who in reality have not helped raise the children. (Garcia, 2002: 105)

Other immigrant women also expressed deep-rooted resentment that their husbands did not consult with them when they decided to move to the United States, leaving them and their children in Mexico. Some women agreed that when their husbands worked in the United States, they were able to improve their lives as a result of the money they sent back to Mexico. Nevertheless, Mexican women believed that they should be consulted by their husbands regarding family issues. These women resented that they had to take on all the family responsibilities. Wives of husbands who have been working in the United States without their families believe that their husbands find it more convenient for them to stay in Mexico. Immigration studies of the past ten years, however, suggest that more and more Mexican women and their families are leaving Mexico to be reunited with their husbands, some of whom had been in the United States for many years.

Mexican women who decide to make the journey to the United States to join their husbands usually have to develop some kind of belief in their independence 48 from their husband's wishes and authority. Mexican women often ask their own extended family members living in the United States to assist them in their migration, often against the wishes of their husbands.

After the new immigration laws of 1965, many Mexican men gained legal residency in the U.S. Those members, like their wives, who wanted to enter the United States to join their families had to have the legal residents permission.this situation produced widespread conflicts between those Mexican men who are now permanent residents in the United States and their Mexican wives who wanted to enter the United States. For those women who successfully persuaded their husbands to sponsor their legal immigration, studies documented that they experinced a change in their traditional Mexican values. These women begin to see themselves as active decision makers within their families, more so than they ever did in Mexico. Their immigrant experience leads to a decline in traditional Mexican gender roles. In fact, Mexican women often design innovative strategies in exerting their newly gained sense of independence. Hondagneu-Sotelo (Garcia 2002: 106) tells the following story to illustrate this.

In 1974 Tola Bonilla, an illiterate woman, managed with the help of a friend, to write letters to her husband in California, asking that he either return home or bring her and the children to the United States. Luis Bonilla ignored his wife's pleas, so Tola secretly borrowed money from her mother and sister, both women worked in California, and after Luis had unexpectedly arrived home for a brief visit due to an expulsion by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), she used these funds to go north. She accompanied him when he departed, yet separate income funds covered their migration costs.

Other Mexican women share Tola Bonilla's experience, exhibiting new gender roles in relation to their husbands. Oral histories document that this type of immigration experience represents one of most important ways in which Mexican immigrant families undergo gender role transformations. Interestingly, these families, whose structure may show signs of becoming less traditional and more 49 egalitarian, often continue to support the retention of other Mexican traditions. Although machismo dominance and patriarchy still persist in varying degrees within Mexican families, many Mexican women who decide to become immigrants often change themselves, their husbands, and eventually their children into New Americans with more egalitarian gender roles.

3.2. Rape, Abuse, Abortion and Health Care

Rape and abuse to women must always be taken seriously and it must be associated with the violence because violence in all its forms attacks the self. Women described themselves as suffering from low self-esteem, difficulty trusting others, especially men, and attacks on the self. So consistent effect of verbal and emotional abuse makes the women especially Chicana low self- esteemed. One college student (Aldama, 2003:351) illustrates the situation:

I doubt the good qualities people seem to point out about me. I basically have a low self-esteem about my appearance, my abilities. I think it hap- pened over time. He used to call me gorda, fea, vieja, mensa [fat, ugly, old, dumb]. He used to tell me Mexican women were not as fine as the white girls were. I would wonder, then why is he with me? I think I started to feel he was doing me a favor. After all, yeah, if you look at the women on TV, yes, they are taller and thinner and clearly lighter-skinned than I am. So, yeah, he must be right. It took me a while to realize that he was being abusive. But part of me still believes what he said to be true. - Sofia, age 21-

Another woman (Aldama, 2003:351) states:

I struggle with low self-esteem because as a child I was told I was nobody—in fact, worthless. It started at home, with my dad calling me "white girl" because I am light-skinned, but continued at school where I was called beaner, greaser, stuff like that by the other kids. The teachers always referred to me as the Mexican kid. I eventually got tired of telling them I was Salvadoreña. 50

In Sofia's case, her boyfriend's attacks on her appearance resonated with media images reflecting a standard of beauty irrelevant to (and unattainable for) many Latin as. The man she loved repudiated her appearance, and she did not see anyone who affirmed her worth in the media. Sofia suffered multiple erasures, which targeted her body and racial identity. Both Sofia and Juana described the pain of enduring such erasures over time.

Physical abuse, sometimes viewed by respondents as discipline, also affected the women's self-esteem:

When I was a little girl, my father's solution to all his children's problems was to hit us and that was the end of it. Nothing said. If you had a problem with it [being hit], you would just be hit again. We were never spanked, just hit with whatever my dad had in his hand at the time, such as a shoe, stick, or belt. Yes, I felt bad. I never felt safe because I could not predict when the attack would happen. I felt stupid, like I should know how to avoid the attacks, but I never seemed to know how. -Rosa, age 22- (Aldama, 2003:351)

Women victimized by violence often internalize blame for the abuse and punish themselves for the injustices suffered. When women are made to feel guilty for their own victimization, they may attack what they perceive to be the reason: the physical attribute that called attention to themselves. This reaction is particularly common where the body has been the site of the abuse. These attacks on the self can take the form of self-condemnation or hatred, with attempts to alter appearance to look more or less ethnic, eating disorders, substance abuse, self-mutilation, a myriad of physical difficulties (e.g., colitis, gastritis, eczema), depression, high- risk behaviors (including sexual acting out), and the ultimate assault on the self: suicide.

A number of respondents described incidents of sexual and racial harassment, which were viewed as inescapable, everyday experiences leading to attacks on the self: 51

Well, here [in the United States], I feel women may have more rights, but if you are Latina, you still can't stop this stuff from happening. My boss was coming at me with compliments, or so he claimed when I confronted him. He used to call me "chiquita" and tell me how beautiful my long black hair is. I told him he made me feel uncomfortable. So he acted all innocent and said I must be a feminist. What a fool. Yes, I was angry, but what could I do? I need the job. I just try to ignore him until I can find another job. But the one thing I did was cut my hair. -Daniela, age 22- (Aldama, 2003:352)

Daniela experienced both sexual and ethnic harassment. Her boss used a term often ascribed to Latinas. Chiquita is a coded term, as it generally refers to Chiquita bananas, a brand name of the United Fruit Company, which occupied many regions of the continent and which was sometimes used to refer to Latinas in the region. An implication of the term is that the women were as much the property of the company as the bananas they cultivated. It is a term intended to objectify and put women in their place. Having grown up in Central America, Daniela understood the use of the word and how it positioned her relative to her Anglo boss. So she cut off her long black hair, the object of his desire. (Aldama, 2003:352)

Ultimately, experiences with violence affect the entire self and can be manifested somatically and psychologically. The long-term sequela however, may negotiation not only the physical and psychological health of those affected by injustice but may negotiation the spirit as well.

Healing from violence can be a long and difficult path. Social and family violence results in feelings of victimization. Healing involves transforming trauma into recovery—shifting from feeling victimized to feeling like a survivor. Most victims of violence, however, need to find meaning in their experiences of violation. Women also seek explanations for the behavior of the performer. If he or she is a family member, women tend to seek explanations and create narratives that forgive the abuser. 52

The knowledge and stories families and communities negotiate and engage in, in order to give meaning to their experiences, in turn shape the lives and relationships of people. It is argued that Latinas' social position within U.S. culture and the gender relations of men and women within ethnically dominated societies tend to produce narratives of conquest and disempowerment that create scripts for negotiating injustice. Specifically, the experiences of marginality, dislocation, and denial expe- rienced at the social level are reproduced in the family. Over time, women come to feel responsible for the social and family violence they endure, as well as for the behavior of the men and women who are violent.

Chicano families negotiate survival within a context of race and class discrimination. Women in these families are often called upon to understand, anticipate, and absolve the behaviors of men leading to narratives that suggest men are often the victims of descontrol, loss of control.

Latinas victimized by family violence must negotiate cultural scripts that mandate family loyalty, which can result in a culture of silence that protects the men at the expense of the women's mental and physical health. Ultimately, everyone is compromised. The man is not afforded the help he needs; women explode in frustration and rage, hurting themselves and sometimes their children; male children learn aggression as a social script, and female children may learn to suppress feelings of rage, potentially leading to disempowerment and depression. So, this is the poem which sums the brutality: “a woman / was raped/ by her father/yesterday/and she was only/thirteen/and/ i never laugh at/ rape jokes …”(Rebolledo and Rivero, 1993:152).

Chicanas along with Chicanos suffer from lack of education, poor health care, job discrimination, along with all the other necessary results of oppression that capitalism exerts on its working class members and members of ethnic and racial minorities. But Chicanas also suffer as women within their culture. Octovia Paz (Garcia, 1997: 120) states: “Mexican women are inferior beings because, in submitting, they open themselves up. Their inferiority is constitutional and resides in their sex, their submissiveness is a wound that never heals”. 53

The submissiveness of the Chicana to her man is very real. Chicanas have been victims of this submissiveness so long that many pride themselves as being less than her man. As Chulita (Garcia, 1997: 120) says: “Many Chicanos feel that Chicanas are needed right there behind her mach. But like the Chicano answers to the gringo, we also answer no more behind, but besides at times leading and guiding the revolutionary struggle”.

Whereas the female is viewed as passive, quiet, and restricted to the home, it is from within the locks up the home that her traditional activity has derived. The macho is typically considered to resist oppression and colonization actively, but the woman in fact has resisted this force actively and equally via her own role. Social Scientists describe the Chicana that she is perceived to be a submissive, passive, woman under the command of the Chicano. Her roles are typically in the home and she is isolated from and ignorant to the world surrounding her. The Catholic Church is also another factor that affects the roles of women as inferior and maintaining the family and sex roles currently in place. Through the idea of marianismo the Chicana is often seen as the Virgin Mary: she is saintly and motherly, a martyr, a virgin, a wife and sex object. Saldivar- Hull (2000:30) sums up the situation that: “women’s role in the Chicano family is primarily to serve men.” The second role of the Chicana is typically of the mother and the caregiver. Many Chicanas are socialized to believe that their chief purpose in life is raising children. Not denying the fact that “motherhood” can be a beautiful experience, it becomes rather, one of the few experiences, not only supported but expected in a traditional Chicano community. So a Chicana has had no choice but to bear the burdens of a life role that was selected for her. To be a good mother and a good wife has been her only acceptable role. All other outside activities she might have chosen have had to remain within the domestic domain.

Many feel that the issue of right to abortion and controls of one’s own body is a white women’s-liberation problem. For years, Chicanas, just as all women have been bearing children that they did not want. For years, they have suffered and died from self-induced and illegal abortions. For years, they have been ridiculed and 54 scorned for becoming pregnant out of marriage. They confess of tales long ago spoken by their mothers and aunts. Talks of rapping sessions, quiet and secret discussions with other women on how to have a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion by sitting in hot tubs of water, sitting on smoke, drinking and eating many types of potions.) when the Chicano men denies the Chicana her basic right to organize against her special forms of oppression like the abortion laws, he is denying her control of her own life, he is helping maintain the same status which keeps him down. He is acting in the best interest of his oppressor. That is the real Anglo thing. It is the Chicano oppressor that benefits most when Chicanas are down.

The utilization of health-care services by Chicanas is complicated. Gender roles within the family, acculturation, education, and income influence their use of health care services. Also, the role of caregiver places Chicanas at the center of their family's healthcare. Not only are they responsible for their own health care, but the role of unending caregiver makes them responsible for fulfilling the health-care needs of their family members. In this context, Chicanas will subordinate their own needs, to those of the family. At the same time, seeking healthcare "is a profoundly social process that involves primarily women, conforming to their socially ascribed role of keepers of the family" (Ginther, 2006: 12). Generally Mexican American women sight and obtain medical care through their informal interacts. Ethnicity is a significant factor affecting health-seeking behavior. As Cafferty and Engstrom (2002: 200) state:

Through socialization, ethnic groups teach group members characteristic ways of defining and responding to their problems. When problems arise, individuals have group-prescribed ways of viewing them and of determining whether they are to be addressed, and if so by whom and how. Not surprisingly, ethnicity has been linked to preferences as to the source of medical care. Culture, defined as ethnic group membership, has also been found to influence "symptoms," that is, the complaints a patient presents to a physician and how these complaints are expressed. Hence, 55

sociocultural variables may lead to different interpretations of and responses to essentially the same experience.

Several historical and cultural currents affect health problem definition by Hispanics. The terms popular medicine ox folk medicine refer to medical systems of indigenous rural and urban lower socioeconomic groups. Beliefs and knowledge about disease among Spanish- speaking persons living in the United States derive from medieval Spanish traditions brought to the New World by colonizers and influenced by indigenous Indian beliefs. Upon migration to the United States, these beliefs, in turn, have been incorporated with elements of Anglo popular traditions and scientific or biomedical knowledge. Elements of popular medicine are evident in and reinforced by mass media and advertising in the Spanish-language television and radio stations. Hence, Hispanics' etiological concepts and their use of diagnostic resources and curing approaches tend to reflect these multicultural influences. People adhering to this system make use of orthodox (mainstream medical) services as well as using the services of the local spiritist or curandero, folk healer (Cafferty and Engstrom, 2002:201). The practice of folk medicine may depend on the individual's level of acculturation and whether the person lives in an ethnic enclave or near the Mexican border. It is not unusual for immigrants living near the border to go back to Mexico to seek medicine, herbs, and consultations from folk healers.

However, providing medical care through informal interacts as opposed to utilizing health care services can have negative results on a Chicana's physical health. But, Chicanas keep on seeing a physician until an illness or problem becomes critical. With regard to caregiving responsibilities and health-care utilization, researches show the patterns of formal service utilization by Mexican American caregivers, the majority of whom are women. Caregivers with a smaller family network and a higher level of acculturation were more likely to utilize formal services. In contrast, caregivers with large family networks and lower levels of acculturation were less likely to utilize formal services. Importantly, however, level of acculturation is not the only barrier that Chicanas face when accessing health-care services. 56

Other barriers to health care-service utilization range from language differences and lack of knowledge of available services to discrimination and a sense of alienation from the dominant society. Education and income are other predictors of health care utilization by Chicanas.In addition to education, this research found that lack of health insurance is a strong predictor of the use of health services.

Additionally, employment status is a strong predictor associated with the use of health services. Many Chicanas face the prospect of forgoing income in order to provide health services for themselves, their children, their parents or their partners. Chicanas working full-time or part-time cannot afford the loss of income to leave work in order to provide health-related services. Therefore, they must choose between accessing healthcare services for themselves or family members and forgoing needed income.

In sum, underutilization of formal health-services persists among all caregivers, regardless of race/ethnicity, Chicano caregivers underutilize formal health-care services relative to other caregivers. Furthermore, Chicanas are more likely than their Caucasian or African-American counterparts to serve as the gatekeepers for health-care service utilization within the family. The culturally assigned roles of caregiver and gatekeeper translates to Chicanas being primarily in charge of the family's healthcare and thus are responsible for utilizing healthcare for family members.

3.3. Labor Force and Unequal Opportunity

Over the last thirty years, in particular, women from all parts of public and private life have challenged old gender role assumptions and attempted to change their status in their jobs and families. Demands for fair, equal treatment have included a variety of gender role negotiations for shared power and resources.

As with race/ethnic discrimination, an important distinction can be made between individual and institutional discrimination. Because the Chicana may suffer from sex discrimination as well as from racial discrimination, the Chicana’s income is at the bottom of the economic ladder. Employers who discriminate against women 57 because they believe women to be unfit for the job by saying women are too emotional, not physically strong enough, lack the presence to be in supervisory posts, are holding individual sexist attitudes and are engaging in individual discrimination. In many cases, however, gender inequalities and discrimination may be embedded in the system itself. That is, every day routines and practices may impact harmful consequences on women even if there is very little personal, sexist prejudice involved. Women are expected to work the same hours as men. Yet child care is often assumed to be the responsibility of a woman. Most work organization do not provide day-care facilities or after school care, or allow flexibility in work hours that would allow men and women to pick up a child after school. Showering and sleeping facilities in fire stations formerly were constructed with only one gender in mind. Architects, designers, and business owners do not consciously discriminate against women when they build large recreational or entertainment centers with equal numbers of restrooms for men and women. There is a traditional institutional insensitivity to women's needs. Both individual and institutional sexism are operating in U.S. society. Therefore, it is considered three aspects of gender inequality: income, occupational status, and household labor (Ransford, 1994: 135).

Income is an important variable when discussing the concept of privilege because many services, rights and immunities are purchased. But when it is thought there are substantial differences in the incomes of men and women. Ransford (1994:135) exemplifies the situation clearly:

In 1987, the median annual earnings of women who worked year-round full-time was 65 percent that of men.2 That is, women earned 65 cents for each dollar earned by men. At every level of education, women have much lower incomes than men who have achieved the same educational level. For example, among those with four years of high school, women employed full-time, year-round earned 65 percent of male earnings; for those with four or more years of college, the gap was about the same—68 percent. 58

Some of the explanation for the gender gap in income can be explained by qualifications and work experience. Men and women differ in educational attainment and fields of occupation chosen. Once employed, women are more likely to have job interruptions and to spend less time in the labor force. For instance, “in 1984, among full-time, year-round workers (aged twenty-one to sixty-four), 42 percent of the women experienced one or more work interruptions lasting six months or more over the course of their labor market careers, as compared to 12 percent of the men" (Ransford, 1994:135-136). But when all income-relevant factors are held constant, such as education and work history, there is still a significant gender differential and this remaining gap is believed to be a result of sex discrimination. Research suggests that one half or more of the income gap between men and women is due to discrimination.

Although women have moved into management and professional occupations in record numbers in the last decade, most women are still confined to a relatively few low to middle status occupation categories. The female labor force is found in the administrative support (including clerical) and service occupations. Men are slightly more likely than women to be found in executive, managerial, and administrative positions and much more likely to be found in the best paying, most prestigious blue-collar jobs. However, Blau and Winkler (Ransford, 1994:136) note that “about half of the women in this professional category are concentrated in tradition- ally female dominated fields of librarian, registered nurse, prekindergarten and kindergarten teacher, elementary-school teacher, special-education teacher, dietician, and speech therapist”. By contrast, male professional workers are more concentrated in better paying occupations of engineer, lawyer, architect, chemist, announcer, and physician.

Women are highly concentrated in roughly twenty occupations while men are more widely distributed throughout the occupational structure. Not only is there a high degree of occupational segregation, but the twenty occupations dominated by women involve low income and prestige and poor chances for advancement. Clerical jobs are the classic example. Although some clerical jobs involve work challenge and 59 responsibility, many involve routine tasks; most are, at best, moderately well paid and practically all are sealed off as a separate hierarchy with virtually no possibility of crossing over into better paying management positions. The segregation of male and female jobs is commonly referred to as the dual labor market. Collins notes that men and women are not only occupying different positions, but typically women work in occupations in which they receive orders from men and give orders only to other women or to children, clerical work, nursing, elementary school teaching

(Ransford, 1994:137). Thus, the distribution of men and women in occupations is an example of unequal power.

Not only are women entering male-dominated occupations, architecture, law, medicine, business management, police enforcement, and the military, but increasingly they are in positions in which they give orders to both male and female subordinates, thus overturning the traditional power inequality gender pattern that has so pervaded the occupational structure. Women as an aggregate are highly concentrated in traditionally female occupations. The dual labor market is still very much alive.

“Privilege involves not only access to the good things in life, but also immunity from the unpleasant things in life. Much of the household labor may be considered unpleasant”(Ransford, 1994: 137). Household labor, meal preparation, laundry, cleaning, is a never-ending chore involving often dirty and monotonous tasks. In addition, child care, though involving many satisfactions, is extremely time consuming. However, with recent developments, such as the increase in the number of working women and the rise of the feminist movement, one gets the impression that there has been a more equitable division of household labor.

Gender inequality combines or interacts with race and class inequality in a number of interesting ways. Discrimination against women may occur as a result of stereotypical judgments that a woman's career commitment is likely to be in competition with child care or that a female candidate for promotion lacks the aggressiveness or toughness necessary for the job. Moreover, if she reaches a 60 relatively high position in the organization, she may face a situation of role encapsulation. Rosabeth Kanter (Ransford, 1994:139) notes that:

Women (often in high positions) were placed in limited roles that gave them the security of a "place" but constrained their areas of permissible behavior. Tokens were perceived in terms of stereotypical roles that preserved familiar gender role interactions. For example, a token woman in the organization was sometimes treated as a "mother" (one to whom men brought their private troubles and expected comfort), a "seductress" or sex object, a "pet" (one adopted by the male group as cute and amusing; a cheerleader), and an "ironmaiden" (a tough or dangerous, strong woman).

Thus, even with achievement, there were strong gender constraints operating. The mobility is incomplete. Incomplete mobility refers to instances in which people who have attained high status in occupation, authority over others, or education are denied the full privileges of that status because of their race or gender. That is, mobility in the class hierarchy is not accompanied by full access to power, privilege, and prestige. The person has made it from a class achievement standpoint, but inequalities remain because of the person's attributed status.

Women of all ranks were more likely to be rated low by co-workers in perceived influence and professional respect and to be more isolated from persons in positions of authority. One would logically expect that women who had reached higher positions in organizations would be more favorably rated. Especially important was the finding that women in higher positions of authority, education and occupational rank faced the greatest inequities in respect, influence, and access to information. Although they had reached a higher position, their access to power and influence was less than that of men in the same position. There are similar barriers to women's advancement in the professions such as law, medicine, dentistry and engineering. These professions involve a high degree of informal interaction. 61

Therefore, the Chicana is primarily a poorly paid worker, with little or no job opportunities. Additionally, the majority of the Mexican-American women have many obstacles to overcome. They are usually unprepared to enter the labor market. A lack of skills, vocational and communicational skills in addition to racist, sexist and age discriminatory stereotyping contribute to the her unemployment status. Racist sexist stereotypes also work as social barriers. From educational systems to the employment force, the image of Chicana is still that of nurturing, passive and submissive woman. These false stereotypes influence counselors and educators to offer nonsupport to the Chicana to continue the school. Thus the women enter the labor market ill prepared. Employers consequently contribute to the Chicana’s economic situation when they selectively sign the women according to how closely they fit the image of the Anglo women prototype.

3.4. Perspectives for Education

Mexican Americans are educationally disadvantaged group in America. Whether one looks at students' skill levels, years of school completed, or performance in school, Chicano students fare worse than any other racial or ethnic group. The educational attainment and achievement of Mexican Americans has also not been improving as rapidly as other groups (Cafferty and Engstrom, 2002: 123).

For immigrants and nonimmigrants alike, education has always been a means to growing mobility in America. Through education, young adults gain access to better jobs and economic mobility. Through education, groups' gain access to the political process. Through education, groups enhance their ability to make important cultural and intellectual contributions to American society. The ability of the Chicano community to address the poor educational performance and experiences of its youth will shape the future of this community, and the ability of the education system to address the disadvantaged status of Chicano youth will shape the future of America (Cafferty and Engstrom, 2002: 123).

As noted earrlier, the 1980s and 1990s have seen the most immigration to the United States since the beginning of this century. Mexican Americans make up the 62 largest proportion of these new immigrants. These new immigrants look to education as a means of helping their children become assimilated and gain economic mobility. However, like earlier immigrants, these new immigrants face similar barriers: unfamiliarity with the American educational system, language barriers, overcrowding in urban schools, poverty, familial and social disruption, and discrimination by schools and teachers who are unfamiliar with the new group's cul- ture and norms.

Cafferty and Engstrom (2002: 126) point out:

From 1980 to 1995, the median earnings of 25- to 34-year-old Chicano male high school dropouts declined by 36 percent.The median earnings of Chicano male young adults who graduated from high school but did not attend college also declined by 24 percent during this period. Similar trends are observed among Chicano women, though declines in earnings have not been as large. Between 1980 and 1995, the medium earnings of Chicana young adults aged 25 to 35 who had not graduated from high school or attained a high school equivalency degree declined by 23 percent.

Writing about the education of Mexican- American children, Joan Moore (Ransford, 1994: 176) notes:

Federal financial assistance has encouraged southwestern educators to develop 'compensatory education' programs to help Mexican-American children compensate for certain inadequacies they display when compared to a 'standard' middle class child. The idea of 'cultural disadvantage' provides a rationale for action to overcome the minority group child's real or assumed deficiencies. It is designed not to change the school but to change the child.

The study of the patterns of racism and classism in educational institutions is an extremely important area with obvious implications for policy research. The failure to educate lower-class Chicano children is seen by many as not so much a 63 function of a depressed environment as of an insensitive reaction of educational institutions to children produced from this environment, that is, the mechanical tendency to sort and classify students according to the degree to which they match the middle-class Anglo model. Schools are not so much deliberately attempting to exclude lower-class minority children as they are perpetuating an impersonal con- veyer belt of failure for them by favoring an unmodified adherence to middle-class Anglo standards. There is often total insensitivity to the background of the lower- class child. For example, Mexican language and culture may often be tied to punishment and failure rather than being creatively integrated into the curriculum of the school (Ransford, 1994: 176).

Cafferty and Engstrom (2002:126) identify the rates and add:

Between 1980 and 1990, the median earnings of young adult Chicano males with four years of college or more remained stable; earnings for young adult Chicana college graduates increased by 12 percent... In 1980, the median earnings of Chicano young adult male college graduates were 40 percent higher than those of Chicano male high school dropouts. By 1995, the median earnings of Chicano young adult male college graduates were more than twice as high (payoff = 2.08) as those of Chicano male high school dropouts, and were 60 percent higher (payoff = 1.62) than those of Chicano males in this age group who had not gone on to college. Among Chicanas in 1995, the median earnings of young adult college graduates were more than three times those of Chicanas who had not attained a high school diploma or equivalent.

The payoff for completing four years of college is particularly high for Mexican Americans. Although the payoffs for education have increased dramatically among Mexican Americans, it is important to recognize that education does not reduce the ethnic gap in earnings among men. “In 1996, the earnings of Chicano male young adults who had four years of college was 81 percent of those of non- Chicano White college graduates” (Ransford, 1994:127). This earnings gap was 64 comparable across education levels. Among women, in contrast, there is less earnings inequality by ethnicity.

One of the most striking aspects of these trends is that changes in the payoffs for skills have been color- and ethnic-blind. Every race and ethnic group has been affected. For example, “from 1980 to 1990, the median earnings of non-Chicano White male young adults who did not have a high school diploma or equivalent declined by 23 percent, while those of non-Chicano White college graduates remained stable” (Ransford, 1994:127). Mexican Americans have been excessively affected because they have the lowest level of educational attainment of any ethnic or racial group.

Another factor shaping the poorer educational attainment of Chicano young adults is immigration. Because of high rates of immigration, many Chicano young adults are immigrants who never attended U.S. schools. “About one in five Chicano young adults never attended U.S. schools” (Ransford, 1994:127).

Another critical issue is the language problems for Chicano community. the high school drop-out rate for young Chicanos is very extreme in many Southwestern schools. The very high drop-out rate is partly a function of language problems. The joint effects of social class and ethnicity are very much involved in the language adjustment problems. Middle-class Chicanos fluent in English experience no problems. It is lower- and working-class socioeconomic status, in combination with ethnicity and language barriers, that produces a system problem. Working- and lower-class children of all ethnic groups often have a more difficult school adjustment experience than middle- and upper middle-class children. There is often a difference between socioeconomic groups in study habits and environments encouraging to study, in parental reinforcement, in opportunities for written and oral language instruction, and in educationally enriching experiences. Lower social class in combination with a language problem is likely to produce special demands on the school system. 65

Ransford argues that “the child will loam English fastest by complete saturation in the language with no opportunity to speak Spanish in the classroom and a child may feel hopelessly outside mainstream instruction. Unable to comprehend the lessons, children easily fall behind classmates and may feel isolated and unsuccessful” (1994: 181-182). So there may be a subtle message conveyed that the ability to speak Spanish is a negative factor ór something to be hidden rather than a positive ability of which to be proud.

So, here the most significant elements for Chicanas to get education are that race, gender and language. Chicanas want education that is culturally relevant to them and is free of sexism. Chicanas have been historically and presently underrepresented in education. Chicanas want education for their children that is bilingual and will not reject their culture. A few reasons for this is are the lack of support from the public education system and the lack of importance place on education for females in Chicano culture. Employment and education go hand in hand. Problems that exist with employment are communication barriers, lack of information concerning interview techniques and a lack of competitive entry level skills. Even when Chicanas do have the required skills they are not getting equal pay for equal work. They are making less than the Chicano and the Anglo male and less than the Anglo woman.

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CHAPTER FOUR - UNDERSTANDING THE CHICANA FEMINISM

4.1. Understanding Chicana Movement

Public awareness of the status of social minorities in American society has grown rapidly in recent years. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the urban unrest which characterized this period served not only to dramatize the subordination and exploitation of black Americans but also to increase the awareness of the exploitation of other groups. In the aftermath of this turbulent period in American history, it became clear that racial oppression was not limited to blacks but extended to Native Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos and other groups with racial and cultural characteristics that differed from the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideal.

To understand the Chicana Movement, it is essential to analyse and differentiate the discrimination between Chicanas and white women liberation affairs. There are major philosophical and tactical differences between Chicanas and white women's liberation groups. Neither of the two factions of the women's movement addresses itself totally to the issues central to the concern of the Chicana. The most obvious discrepancy lies in the very concept of a women's movement as an independent force for social change. In the United States there is no qualitative difference between the social experience of the Chicana and the Chicano. That is not true in the case of white women and white men. In American society, white men have a distinct advantage and have used that advantage to limit and shape the lives of women with the same apparent lack of conscience with which they oppress racial minorities. It makes sense for white women to struggle against the controlling influence of white men just as it makes sense for Chicanos and Chicanas to struggle together against the forces of racism and economic exploitation that deny them the basic human right to self-determination.

The women’s liberation movement shifted attention to the subordination and exploitation of the women. It attempted to show that women were subjected to the differential and unequal treatment and that their subjugation cut across racial, ethnic, and social class groupings. While the women’s movement seemingly sought to 67 liberate all women, it was the focus more on the needs of middle-class Anglo women. Founded and led by middle-class women, ultimately the movement reflected their needs, concerns and biases. In the process of establishing goals and priorities, the unique needs and concerns of minority women were not taken into account. So, the radical faction of women's liberation does address itself precisely to the social, economic and political conditions that happen to oppressed white women in some of the ways Third World people have been oppressed ever since white men and women set foot on the Americas. Unfortunately, many of these women focus on the maleness of our present social system as though, by implication, a female- dommated white America would have taken a more reasonable course. Chicanas have no more faith in white women than in white men.

As racial-ethnic movement developed and their goals and tactics, strengthened, it became clear that minority women would be neglected by their men as they had been by their Anglo sisters. For example, The Chicano Movement was an example of the attempt of Mexican Americans or Chicana/o community of the Southwest to redefine their common identity and their relations to the white majority. Cuellar discusses the major force of the movement:

Chicanismo emphasizes that the Mexican was transferred into a rootless economic commodity... It is argued that Anglo racism denies the Mexican his ethnicity by making him ashamed of his "Mexican-ness." Mexican ancestry, instead of being a source of pride, becomes a symbol of shame and inferiority. As a consequence, Mexicans spend their lives apologizing or denying their ancestry to the point that many dislike and resent being called "Mexican," preferring "Spanish American," "Latin," "Latin American," and similar euphemisms. For these reasons, the term "Chicano" is now insisted upon by activists as a symbol of the new assertiveness...Chicano ideologues insist that social advance based on material achievement is, in the final analysis, less important than social advance based on la raza, they reject what they call the myth of American individualism. (Ransford, 1994: 119-120) 68

A major goal of Chicano Movement was to end the colonial oppression of Chicanos. It challenged the ethnic stereotypes that existed in America about the Mexican culture and heritage. The Chicano Movement was comprised of many separate protests, which included ones that sought educational, social, and political equality in the United States. It was said to concentrate on concerns common to all Chicanos but in fact focused on male issues and for the most part ignored the problems of women. Not wishing to divide or split the movement, Chicanas subordinated their needs to the good of the entire group. Many came to believe that some resemblance of equality had to be achieved for their people as a whole before feminine concerns could be voiced. Internal division would be taken by the larger society as a sign of weakness or a lack of unity.

However, in the movimiento, Chicano Movement, Chicanas have been in the background of organizations. Few Chicanas take leadership roles. Las mujeres, the women, have largely played the role of the secretary. When women were given leadership roles, it was mainly out of tokenism to a silent, yet potentially powerful group. This has been the very same type of tokenism that the system has used only now it’s the Chicanos doing it to their women.

It is about time that Chicanas rebelled against being subjected to a less assertive position in the movement. If a Chicana feels that she can best contribute to the movement by typing for the newspaper, or for a Chicano studies department, then her work should not be interfered with. However if a Chicana feels she wants to go beyond the secretarial norm then she must be given the opportunity to extend her involvement (Hernandez, 1997: 84). The conflict arises when a Chicana is prevented from taking positions of leadership. This prevention generally comes from the oppressive mentality of the majority of Chicanos. It is of course unjustifiable.

Furthermore, in part, the awakening of Chicana consciousness has been prompted by the machismo she encounters in the movement. It is adequately described by one Chicana in an article entitled Macho Attitudes in which she says: 69

When something must be done there is always a Chicana there to do the work. “It is her pace and duty to stand behind and back up her Macho!.. Another aspect of the MACHO attitude is their lack of respect for Chicanas. They play their games, plotting girl against the girl for their own benefit… They use the movement and Chicanismo to take her to bed. And when she refuses, she is a vendida [sell-out] because she is not looking after the welfare of her men. (Garcia, 1997: 23)

This behavior, typical of Chicano men, is a serious obstacle to women anxious to play a role in the struggle for Chicano liberation.

The oppression suffered by Chicanas is different from that suffered by most women in the United States. Because Chicanas are part of an oppressed nationality, they are subjected to the racism practiced against the La Raza. Since the overwhelming majority of Chicanos are workers, Chicanas are also victims of the exploitation working class. But in addition Chicanas along with the rest of women are relegated to inferior position because of their sex. Thus, Raza women suffer a triple form of oppression: as members of an oppressed nationality, as workers, as women.

Moreover, Chicano men oppose the efforts of women to move against their oppression. They are denying Chicanas, who are triply oppressed, the right to struggle around their specific, real, and immediate needs.

All of these events that took place in the Chicano Movement impacted the Chicanas within it, and eventually propelled them to speak out against the inequalities that they faced not only outside their culture, but also within it.

But, Chicanos and Chicano loyalists often accused Chicanas of being venditas or traitors to the movement and compared to Anglos of the Women's Liberation movement. They are viewed as being anti-family, anti-cultural, and anti-man. They accused them of trying to split the movement and not supporting the cause. The Chicano Movement often ignored the request of Chicanas to incorporate issues such 70 as abortion and reproductive choice, along with other issues important to Chicanas, into their platform. This backlash from the community forced Chicanas to discuss how Chicana Feminism should relate its movement to the rest of the Chicano Movement. Loyalists to the Chicano movement felt that racism needed to be addressed before sexism. They used arguments against Chicanas were disrupting the roles or males and females within the Chicano community. The more independent she became, the more she was labeled by the movement as Mujer Mala, or Bad Women, and the more they were accused of taking up the Anglo woman's fight.

Chicana had two main arguments to counter these accusations. They pointed out historical independent women in Chicano and Mexican history. They used examples of women who fought in the Mexican Revolution. They used examples of indigenous women prior to colonization by Spain and how they were strong, independent equals in the society. The other argument used by Chicanas was "the need to remake the family in struggle against Anglo domination." This was different from the Anglo movement because there was not much importance placed on the family structure in the Anglo movement. Through restructuring the family Chicanas thought the movement would progress further. They wanted to change the traditional gender roles imposed on them while recognizing the importance of the family structure in the Chicana/o community.

There were other differences between the Women's Liberation movement and the Chicana Feminist movement was the inclusion of race and class. The Anglo women focused on gender and felt that Chicanas should choose gender over culture. Chicanas had faced oppression concerning all three of these and did not think that one was more important than the other. Also, Chicanas lack of participation in the Anglo Feminist movement helped to reassure Chicano loyalists that they were not traitors to their culture and community. The Women's Liberation movement viewed the Chicana women, and other minorities as well, as all similar. The classism of the movement failed to recognize the diverse background that these women came from. Anglo feminists felt superior not only in race but in class and often undermined and disregarded the ideology of different minority feminist movements. 71

So, the Chicana could not rely on the men in the Chicano Movement or the women in the Women's Liberation Movement as mentioned at the beginning. Each of the movements wanted the Chicana to sacrifice her needs for the larger movement. Women who fought for their rights were often told by both groups that they had to choose between being women and being Chicana.

The net result has been that Chicanas and other minority women have suffered kind neglect at the hands of Anglo women and their oppressed brothers. Of late, interest in the status of black women has intensified, as witnessed by the publication of articles that deal with their unique problems and concerns. The Chicana, however, remains a mystery. Little is known about her needs, goals, problems, or history. But at last Chicana women gain a platform for themselves, and formally declare themselves a separate activist.

4.2. The Birth of Chicana Feminist Thought

Chicana feminist and activist of today have much to gain from looking at their past. They do not have to trace the origins of their feminist consciousness via the white woman’s movement or even the African American women’s movement because they have their own unique cultural roots to identify with. Chicana feminists of today need only to turn to own extensive history of activism in order to gain both knowledge and inspiration to fuel their current difficulty.

As early as the sixteen hundreds there were women who were thinking socially and politically in the Americas. One of these women was Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz. She was an educated woman of her time who produced works that described the plight of the subordinate people of New Spain including women and the indigenous and mestizo populations. Even at this early stage the interaction of the issues of sexism and racism can be seen. In her literary works Sor Juana was describing the condition of subordinated groups and producing knowledge and theory. Her legacy can be seen in modern works of Chicana feminists of today who use methods such as literature and poems in order to produce knowledge and the interaction between sexism and racism still an important issue that addressed today. 72

Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz addressed issues surrounding the need for Mexico’s independence from Spain and when the war for independence materialized in 1810, women of the time made their presence felt. In this era the ability of Mexican women’s politically organization can be clearly seen. Their political activism was vital and by the help of their support, it resulted with Mexican independence. They played a key role not only on the political front, but also on the war front. They fought bravely alongside the men and also lost their lives for the cause of independence. In this era we see that Mexican women of the time had a passion for freedom and actually channeled this passion into political action. This same dynamic can be identified when one looks at the women of the Chicano movement of the nineteen sixties and present Chicana feminists.

Mexican women of the 1800’s key role did not disappear from the political front in the 1900’s. The political activism of Mexican women in the early nineteen hundreds influenced the Chicana activism. At times it is difficult to separate the two movements due to their overlap. In the time period of the nineteen thirties and the nineteen forties Chicanas, like their Mexican descendants, once again showed their ability to organize politically. They organized various labor movements and this legacy can be seen in the great women labor organizers that arose during the Chicano movement and still live on today.

Chicanas stayed in the political arena throughout these decades and in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies they made their voices heard to both Chicanos and non-Chicanos alike. Chicanas’ feminist consciousness began to emerge during the Chicano movement. When looking at the Chicano movement one can see how Chicanos as a whole came to the realization that they were being oppressed and joined together in order to bring attention to their cause. Within the Chicano movement, Chicanas developed their own consciousness and created a new movement that advanced the development of Chicana feminist thought and demanded that the Chicano movement reflected the voice of the Chicana. At its conception the Chicano Movement did not deal with issues that were specific to 73

Chicanas. The Chicano movement was primarily concerned with issues of race and class.

The group of the Chicano movement that seems to have left the most lasting legacy is the Chicano student movement. In her essay Ramirez (2004:7) points out that:

The first sign of students organizing to change the existing educational system came in 1968 when high school students in Denver, Colorado and Los Angeles, California staged massive walkouts. In Los Angeles over 15,000 students abandoned their classes over a one-week period to protest to the poor conditions in their schools. The student walkouts served to bring attention and politicize the plight of Chicano students.

Chicanas were very active in all the dimensions of the movement yet their perspectives as women were never discussed. Chicanas began to realize that there were certain contradictions within the movement when they compared the rhetoric of the movement with their lived experiences as part of the movement. The Chicano movement called for unity and equality, yet Chicanas in the movement were rarely put in leadership positions, and if they were they were associated with a male counterpart. They did most of the background labor such as cooking, cleaning, and clerical duties and were expected to fill culturally accepted sex roles. Ransford (1994:141) summarizes the situation most clearly:

The gender roles of Mexican Americans tend to be traditional. The woman is expected to be the nurturer and the emotional caregiver of children. The Catholic Church’s conception of Marianismo or idealization of the Virgin Mary reinforces these expectations of nurturing mother and wife. These traditions allow little room for individual expressions or roles outside of the home.

The Chicano movement also embraced the idea of nationalism that held sexist and patriarchal viewpoints. Chicanas at this time had to try to reconcile and find some common ground among the opposing ideas of cultural nationalism and feminist 74 ideologies. The contradiction that existed between cultural nationalism and feminism was one of the hardest obstacles for Chicanas to surpass. Once they became aware of this they began to identify traits within their culture that were oppressive and maintained gender inequalities. One of the cultural concepts that were identified as oppressive by Chicanas was the Chicano family structure. Sanchez (1995:131) exemplifies the condition: “Mexican families as hierarchical, rigidly patriarchal, solidified by age-old customs rooted in peasant values and Catholic tradition. Mexicans were characterized as having large, extended family structures in which gender roles were strictly separated, reinforced by stern parental discipline and community pressure”. Chicanas were socialized to believe that in their families their main role was that of nurturer, wife, and cook. A good woman in a Mexican family was described as tame, hard working, and obedient. The Chicano movement also embraced religious icons such as the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary was seen as the model Mexican woman who suffered, served, nurtured and did not complain. Chicanas were expected to aspire to be like the Virgin Mary and to use these virtues to successfully raise their families and take care of their husbands. Chicanas realized that these cultural ideologies within the system had to be changed therefore they began a struggle for liberation within a movement that embraced oppressive cultural ideologies and sought to strengthen and reproduce these ideologies.

It is clearly evident that Chicana feminists did not find the ideological support they were looking for within the Chicano movement. When they analyzed and tried to participate in the white women’s feminist movement they also encountered racism and class oppression. Like in the Chicano movement, the focus of the white women’s movement on gender oppression did not adequately address the issues that Chicanas wanted to deal with. The white women’s feminist movement also tried to rank the oppressions in the lives of Chicanas by asserting that all women were oppressed primarily because of their gender, racism was seen as an oppression that would disappear once gender equality was achieved. Whereas white women were concerned with issues regarding ownership of their bodies, Chicanas were concerned with issues of forced sterilization and other material based experiences. When Chicanas began to realize the complexity of their oppression and the fact that neither the White 75

Women’s Feminist Movement nor the Chicano Movement described their real life experiences they fought for their voices to be heard and sought to create a movement all their own that dealt with their specific concerns.

In 1971 Chicana feminists organized the First National Chicana Conference in Houston, Texas. Over 600 Chicanas from 23 states participated and from this conference emerged a list of concerns that was specific to the experience of Chicanas. They talked about the need for birth control and abortion education in their communities and also stressed the importance of Chicanas pursuing higher education. They identified the Chicano family structure as oppressive and encouraged Chicanas to get politically involved and championed the development of childcare centers in order to facilitate their political involvement and participation in higher education. A more divisive and controversial issue that arose was their rejection of institutional religion and their assertion that the Catholic religion was oppressive. The main points that arose at this conference were meant to create an agenda that all Chicana feminists could follow, although the conference was plagued by internal divisions, it was still a big assertion and proof of a newly developed Chicana sociopolitical consciousness. Chicanas of this time also began a huge effort to unite and build coalitions. They created groups such as the Hijas de Cuauhtemoc, Daughters of Cuauhtemoc, and Chicana publications such as Encuentro Femenil, Feminine Encounter, and Regeneracion, Regenaration. These newly formed groups and publications helped to publicize the political schema of Chicana feminists and served as a setting of expression for Chicana activists (Ramirez, 2004: 13).

Consequently, Chicanas’ emerging sense of unity encouraged them to uncover their own feminist history as women of Mexican heritage. In looking and exposing this history Chicana feminists began to claim a legacy of their own which they utilized to unify and solidify their movement.

4.3. The Development of Chicana Feminism

The years between 1970 and 1980 represented a formative period in the development of Chicana feminist thought in the United States. During this period, 76

Chicana feminists addressed the specific issues affecting Chicanasas women of color in the United States. As a result of their collective efforts in struggling against racial, class, and gender oppression, Chicana feminists developed an ideological discourse that addressed three major issues. These were the relationship between Chicana feminism and the ideology of cultural nationalism, feminist baiting within the Chicano movement, and the relationship between the Chicana feminist movement and the white feminist movement.

Between 1970 and 1980, a Chicana feminist movement developed in the United States that addressed the specific issues that affected Chicanas as women of color. During this era there was a great expansion of Chicana feminist writings that have been utilized by Chicanas to further develop Chicana feminist thought. The growth of the Chicana feminist movement can be traced in the speeches, essays, letters, and articles published in Chicano and Chicana newspapers, journals, newsletters, and other printed materials addressed feminist and social issues. . Cordova (Alquatami, 2009: 170) states that these writings focused on four major points:

1) The Chicana is not inherently passive- nor is she what the stereotypes say she is; 2) She has a history rooted in a legacy of struggle; 3) Her history and her contemporary experiences can only be understood in the context of a race and class analysis; 4) The Chicana is in the best position to describe and define her own reality.

Clearly, these areas of focus reflect empowered Chicana feminists who are dedicated to resistance and change. Their writings are acts of resistance through which they insist that they write their own history and address their own issues because they are capable of reflecting over their own situation and defining their own reality as Cordova puts it.

The 1970s witnessed the development of Chicana feminists whose activities, organizations, and writings can be analyzed in terms of a feminist movement by 77 women of color in American society. Chicana feminists outlined a cluster of ideas that crystallized into an emergent Chicana feminist debate. In the same way that Chicano males were reinterpreting the historical and contemporary experience of Chicanos in the United States, Chicanas began to investigate the forces shaping their own experiences as women of color.

Throughout the seventies, Chicana feminists viewed the struggle against sexism within the Chicano movement and the struggle against racism in the larger society as integral parts of Chicana feminism. As Nieto Gomez (Garcia, 1989:221- 222) said:

Chicana feminism is in various stages of development. However, in general, Chicana feminism is the recognition that women are oppressed as a group and are exploited as part of la Raza people. It is a direction to be responsible to identify and act upon the issues and needs of Chicana women. Chicana feminists are involved in understanding the nature of women's oppression.

Chicanas’ political action and feminist activism can be demonstrated through several historical achievements in the 1980s. That is, Chicana activists succeeded in both asserting their presence in the National Association for Chicano Studies (NACS), resulting in its renaming as the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) and establishing a Chicana Studies organization, Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social or MALCS (Women Active in Writing and Social Change). This group has formed its objectives by keeping a strong commitment to the original goals held by Chicana activists of the past. They serve as a support network for Chicana activists everywhere and are committed to the fight against the oppression of Chicanas. This group also aims to maintain a connection between the community and their academic work.

Intellectual Chicana women have been able to establish a space for themselves within the academy. That is, they were able to create the field of Chicana Studies, and claimed that their purpose was to fight the oppression they experienced and to 78 reject the separation of academic scholarship and community involvement. Through the Chicana Studies Organization, Chicanas recognized their scarcity in institutions of higher education and knew that they needed to join together to identify their common problems, to support each other and to define collective solutions. To continue the involvement of Chicana feminists with the community and fight for social justice, feminists have carried out extensive research about problems within the community such as prisons in the neighborhood, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, low wage employment, disease, health care, alcohol consumption, displacement and reduction of natural resources. Chicana activists have expressed their views on these serious issues through magazines, newsletters, and correspondence.

Chicana feminisms have concentrated their efforts on changing the conditions in which women live, achieving autonomy and resisting patriarchy. However, although they acknowledge that Chicano men have patriarchal power over them, at a very early stage of their lives, many Chicana feminists have come to recognize the distinction between the white male and Chicano male’s position in society. It is this atmosphere of imprisonment, under- estimation, and subordination Chicana feminists have strived to resist. They have continuously challenged the patriarchal structure that limits their roles in society and strips them of any control over their lives.

Chicana feminists not only struggled with patriarchy but also with women within the movement. Chicanas have experienced tension within their own feminist movement due to the insufficient knowledge and lack of education some women have of the Chicana woman’s involvement in society and activism throughout history. At the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) conference in the 1990s, a Chicana had questioned the near- invisibility of women in the preview showing of the film Chicano!. One of the members on the panel presenting the documentary responded, “Those were traditional times. Women were just not as involved” (Garcia, 1989:177). This notion that Chicanas were not as involved in the movement as were men has been challenged by Chicana feminists 79 who suggest that those traditional times were actually the figment of a patriarchal imaginary.

Chicana feminists have creatively engaged in carving a space for themselves in the borderland in which they rewrite themselves and their history of freedom and oppression. They have created a counter- hegemonic discourse in which they assert their identity and resist the multiple oppressions imposed on them by Chicano and White patriarchy. Living in the borderlands, they have sought new images of themselves, and new beliefs about themselves that do not erase who they are or silence their voices. A feminism from the borderlands emerged due to what they had experienced in their community and the need to create a new space from which Chicana feminists can shift male designed paradigms and break structures of oppression that have continuously crippled them, and free themselves to create new roles and new images of themselves and retrieve self-respect. Chicana feminists theorize from the borderland a place. It is where two worlds merge toform a third country and a border culture. In her book Borderlands: La Frontera, Anzaldua (Castillo-Speed, 1995: 251-256) argues that:

Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary…The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants….The only “legitimate” inhabitants are those in power, the whites and those who align themselves with whites… ambivalence and unrest reside there…

These borderlands found in the Chicano culture in which its people belong to both and neither of the two sides of the borders. At the borders, they are not victims of either side because they belong to neither society yet being in this inbetween space, and during the process of crossing borders they can be victimized by both cultures. The Chicana woman’s status and dissatisfaction with her situation in the Chicano community is perhaps what sparked the need for a new space, the borders. She had undergone various types of oppression from both sides of the borders, that is, by insiders and outsiders of her community. She was confined by both forces that 80 did not allow her the freedom to have an identity of her own or to invent new social roles that actually appeal to women. Thereupon, Chicana women can be viewed as doubly colonized since they have been over powered and subordinated by both white and brown men.

Chicana feminist thought has also emerged as complete area of study within its own right. Chicana theorists of today have attempted to create paradigm shifts and have defined and taken ownership of their theories, methods, and modes of expression. Present Chicana feminists express their perspectives in many ways. Some of the methods adopted by them include oral histories, poetry, creative productions, and traditional social science methods. They use these methods in order to create sociological thought that comes from their perspective and describes their ways of knowing and their systems of knowledge production. Chicana feminists such as Hurtado, Garcia, Anzaldua, and Moraga have contributed greatly to the development of Chicana feminist thought and have created a large body of written work that documents the development and future directions in this area. Presently Chicana feminists have begun to address issues of sexuality and have tried to create bonds with other Third World feminist movements. They have retained their commitment to social change and the advancement of their cause.

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CHAPTER FIVE - THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY: SURVIVAL AND ENDURANCE IN SO FAR FROM GOD

Ana Castillo's novel So Far from God tells of the losses and hardships in the lives of the female characters, and of how these women find the strength to survive. It is a respond to a pervasive stereotype of Chicanas as passive individuals victimized by oppression or subordinated by a patriarchal society by presenting a cast of female characters who resist domination every day of their lives. The awakenings that these characters experience emerge from a continual battle against subjugation in which they shift the terms and tactics of their struggle as circumstances permit. The novel insists that the transformative effort of human life engaged in struggle also finds expression in the spiritual, metaphysical, and religious life of the oppressed. Through an emphasis on communities of women, a Chicana feminism fueled by a woman- centered spirituality emerges to challenge the subjugation of women within and without Chicana/o cultures, the marginalization of other sectors of U.S. society, and the destruction of the environment. Because it highlights the centrality of hybrid spirituality in the lives of characters engaged in cultural and political resistance, the novel challenges pervasive notions of religion as an obstacle to progressive action and perceptions of the sway of Catholicism in Chicana communities. It also asks us to see cultural resistance alongside political resistance, and to recognize women as agents of social change.

So Far from God tells the story of a family of women including Sofi, a single mother for much of her daughters' lives, and her four daughters: Esperanza, a political activist and broadcast journalist; Caridad, first a nurse's aide, then a battered woman and, finally, a curandera; Fe, a jilted bride whose job as a factory worker leads to her death by cancer; and Loca, a childhood saint, a recluse and healer.

From the very beginning of the novel characters are introducd us in a very simple, clear but effective way: “ La Loca was only three yeras old when she died. Her mother Sofi...checked the bedroom with the three older girls: Esperanza, the eldest, had her arms wrapped the two smaller ones, Fe and Caridad” (Castillo,1993: 19). Names are subsequently pointed out to the reader. Under patriarchy, naming constitutes a tool of domination through its power to symbolically confine the named 82 within the parameters of an imposed gender identity. Silvio Sirias and Richard McGarry (2000: 84) stress the importance placed on names in the Chicana/o society: "Naming, however, can also function as a tool for empowering self-definition, a means by which to redefine women's identity and reject imposed descriptions of the self. Sirias and McGarry (2000: 84) also assert that naming is traditionally a tool imposed by a patriarchal society. Castillo uses the names in So Far from God in a paradoxical fashion. The novel has Sofia, the embodiment of wisdom, at its core, a mother who survives the death of her four daughters: Esperanza, Fe, Caridad, and La Loca. Each daughter is given a name of virtue and value associated with women. Esperanza means hope; Fe means faith; Caridad means charity and La Loca means crazy. The names of the first three daughters denote the three major Christian ideals. However, in the cruelest of ironies, the destiny of each of these characters is the antithesis of the ideal the name represents.

Esperanza, the most liberated of the sisters, devotes the energy of her college years to the Chicano Movement. She lives her life as a glowing example of La Raza Politics, working to better the lives of her people. But her death as a television reporter covering the Gulf Crisis is utterly meaningless. The reader is left without any hope or, better yet, Esperanza, of finding redemption in this character's demise.

Fe, the sister who most subscribes to the traditions of her culture, desires nothing more than to participate fully in society's patriarchal mandate for women to marry and serve their husbands. When her first fiance, Tom, breaks their engagement, she gives up her first crisis of faith and of identity. Her reaction to her disillusionment humorously becomes known to the members of her family as the era of El Big Grito, which consisted of "one loud continuous scream that would have woken the dead" (Castillo, 1993:30). For months after she is jilted, Fe is unable to produce any discourse other than the scream. As a result of the straining of her vocal cords during her crisis, Fe is left with a speech impediment whereby she cannot vocalize every word in a sentence. Although El Big Grito disqualifies Fe from realizing her potential, she does find a man who will fulfill her dream of marrying: her cousin Casimiro. He is completely devoted to her, and together they plan a 83 blissful future. In order to secure this, however, Fe leaves her safe position at the bank for a higher paying job at an arms manufacturing company. She tackles her work with her usual diligence and earns a promotion. Thus, her faith in the American Way of Life is rewarded. This promotion, however, proves fatal as the company exposes her to a hazardous chemical that causes her death from cancer. In the end, the faith that Fe places in the basic tenets of society and its culture completely fails her. Thus, faith also becomes meaningless.

Caridad, after being abandoned by her husband, became known for "loving anyone she met at the bars who vaguely resembled Memo" (Castillo, 1993:27). Because of her immoral life, she is brutally raped and disfigured by a mysterious and misogynist spirit identity known as the malogra. In this manner, Caridad's charity towards men is severely punished. However, she heals miraculously and from that moment on, she no longer has an interest in men. Caridad becomes an apprentice curandera, and during a religious pilgrimage with her mentor, she spots a woman with whom she instantly falls in love. Caridad never reconciles herself with her homosexual feelings until she suddenly and dramatically leaps off of a cliff while holding hands with Esmeralda, the object of her affection, as they are being pursued by Francisco el Penitente, Caridad's obsessed stalker. Those who witness the jump search for the bodies, but they are never found. What the witnesses do hear, however, is:

the spirit deity Tsichtinako calling loudly with a voice like wind, guiding the two women back, not out toward the sun's rays or up to the clouds but down, deep within the soft moist dark earth where Esmeralda and Caridad would be safe and live forever. (Castillo, 1993:211)

An ancient Pre-Colombian god emerges at the appropriate moment and wholly embraces the lovers, taking them into mother earth's womb where they can become one and live in peace. There they will dwell far from society's condemnation of their relationship, and be free to plant the seeds of their affection. In spite of her life- affirming end, Caridad constitutes a pharmakos for the community of Tome. Her lesbianism is unacceptable, and she is sacrificed in order to purify patriarchal society. 84

Ultimately, La Loca's destiny, like those of her sisters, is to die at an early age. On a surreal death pilgrimage to an Albuquerque hospital, the people canonize her and eventually declare her the patron saint of kitchens, new brides, and progressive grooms. La Loca's life, then, is characterized by her first death, resurrection, contraction of AIDS without human contact, and her canonization. After the deaths of hope, faith, and charity, the three theological ideals of the Church, and the death of what can arguably be construed as the female personification of Jesus Christ in the personage of La Loca, all that remains is Sofia's wisdom.

According to Rebolledo (2000: 236) "silence, and overcoming it, are significant concerns in Chicana literature." In this novel these main Chicana characters mentioned labor to overcome silence and testify to their own lives, a process that allows them to break out of their isolation and rebel against the patriarchal society.

Loca, Sofia's youngest daughter, refuses to have anything to do with anyone outside her house, especially men. After her reincarnation, she comes to abhor the smell of humans, because the smell reminds her of the "places she had passed through when she thought she was dead" (Castillo, 1993:23). Loca's resistance to and ignorance of the patriarchal structure of society may suggest that her character will be the one who lives and flourishes in life.

The death of the child La Loca and her funeral are powerful opening images that indicate clearly and strongly the direction of this story. From unexplained violence to Sleeping-Beauty-like death, then to rebellion, which transforms her into a living and respected female healer, La Loca's journey in the first few pages foreshadows the journeys of each of her sisters and her mother in the rest of the novel.

The opening scene of the novel frames the issue of woman-centered healing in opposition to the patriarchal church that predominates throughout the narrative. Loca's resurrection as well as her ability to fly to the top of the church confounds Father Jerome, who asks her "Are you the devil's messenger or a winged angel?" 85

(Castillo, 1993:23). Father Jerome's words have several effects. Unsure about what he sees, he asks for clarification and thereby implicates Loca, a female, in deception. Second, his question calls attention to the possible presence of a dangerous power as well as a healing one, emphasizing a dualistic view of good and evil. Third, his question reflects a preoccupation with the institution and doctrine of the church rather than its adherents.

Father Jerome, "a little concerned about the grieving mother," stops the funeral from proceeding into the church, despite the intense outdoor heat, because he wants to avoid a scene inside. Father Jerome's decision to detain the funeral procession outside, in 118-degree heat, for what, as our narrator tells us, is a lecture on "funeral decorum" reveals how, for him, doctrine comes before people. Soft's intense grief is juxtaposed with the callous act of a representative of what he claims is a compassionate institution. Despite his sermon, Sofi cries out in agony over what is to her the inexplicable death of her daughter (Castillo, 1993:22).

Sofi's cry challenges Father Jerome's sermon and insists on her own right and ability to know why her daughter has died. Her very human reaction of grief and the stir it creates could also well be the catalyst for waking Loca up from the dead, or what is later described as a type of epileptic coma. Hence, Sofi's action also has practical impacts on changing the course of events because Loca does awaken, to the surprise and fear of all present, and ascends to the church roof, primarily to avoid contact with Father Jerome. This striking scene suggests that “Castillo is engaged in revisionism on a small scale, substituting a Chicana resurrection for Christ's resurrection, and accordingly creating an alternate religious history or perhaps a new myth” (Delgadillo, 2000: 217). La Loca's resurrection at the beginning of the novel indicates that this will be a story about the recovery of Chicana power and voice.

When Father Jerome suggests that Loca might be a messenger of the devil, Sofi defends Loca, and by extension herself and every other woman, and scolds the priest, rejecting his authority to name or define the phenomenon before him (Castillo, 1993:23). Sofi's action here, while mildly censured by the surrounding crowd, is indicative of the kind of independence of spirit that her daughters inherit. 86

Another challenge to Father Jerome's authority to interpret faith occurs when the priest calls La Loca down from the roof of the building and tells her, "we'll all pray for you." Loca does float down to the ground but corrects the priest, saying, "Remember, it is I who am here to pray for you" (Castillo, 1993:24). From this moment on, Sofi's faith in her daughter never wavers. Loca sees spirits and is gifted with an ability to heal, as she does with two of her sisters, Fe and Caridad. These healing abilities work against a need for modern medicine, which can be of no help to Sofi's daughters. Loca is the redeemer of Sofi's family. By insisting on the miraculousness of her experience and her communion with other realms, Loca insists on her spiritual power and agency. She is a character whose very presence refutes the Church's propositions that she is either merely a victim, offered by Father Jerome, or the product of an ignorant family and community, a position later taken by the Bishop. After her reincarnation, it is clear that Loca's life will lead her down a path quite different from those her sisters traveled. Instead of trying to immerse herself in a male-dominated society and living by its rules and standards, she claims to supersede the most revered of patriarchal institutions, the church.

Castillo, through Loca, presents the idea that patriarchy can be displaced. She thrives in the female-dominated environment that is her mother's home, not associating with the outside world until it becomes absolutely necessary. She needs no spiritual guidance from the outside world, discounting the importance even of the Catholic church. Here Castillo suggests that women can transcend the patriarchal institution of religion and achieve a spirituality that comes from within instead of above.

Her extreme resistance to the world outside the walls of her home is duly punished as her life is invaded by an unseen force: AIDS. Not even Loca's ability to heal can save her from this destructive force, which is neither male nor female. With her death certain, Loca is still resistant to accepting the church as spiritual guide, becoming a spiritual force for herself and others: "Perhaps some [...] had hoped to see her rise again. And yet there were still others who believed that her true powers would be revealed after her final death" (Castillo, 1993:232). Using Loca, Castillo 87 suggests that the patriarchy can be dominated by a matriarchy. Loca is not measured in any way by her relationship to a man. She serves as a symbol of strength and power to Sofi and other women. Sofia does not question Loca's mysterious contraction of AIDS nor Loca's role of martyr/saint; neither does Loca. Both merely accept it as another consequence of living in a world split by faithfulness to two value systems.

In So Far from God, Caridad, abandoned by a husband who chose the Marines over her, engages in a lifestyle of sexual freedom. Her actions, however, require a consequence, and she is brutally attacked one night and left near death. Her attackers are never caught, but this fact doesn't weigh heavily on the minds of the community. The police and sheriff's department do nothing to catch her attackers, "feeling no kindness in their hearts for a young woman who has enjoyed life, so to speak" (Castillo, 1993:33). Here the male-dominated institutions refuse help to her because of choices she has made in how to live her life. Castillo implies that male-dominated cultures look down upon women who enjoy sex and use it merely for pleasure, as Caridad does. With male-dominated institutions offering no support and remedy for the attack, it is Loca who heals her sister. Castillo is able to refute the pain and suffering caused by the patriarchy with the establishment of a matriarchy within the confines of Sofi's house. It is here, surrounded by women, that Sofi and her daughters are able to flourish.

After a reincarnation of sorts, Caridad assumes a more penitent lifestyle, training under a curandera, doña Felicia. Her travels and teachings with doña Felicia lead her to Chimayo where she falls in love with a woman she sees sitting on a wall, Esmeralda. Deep, emotional relationships between two women are not received well by a male-dominated society. Esmeralda lives with her lover, Maria, reinforcing her status as a strong female. Caridad feels drawn to this woman because she is strong, stronger than Caridad has ever been. That Caridad's feelings for Esmeralda will never be openly expressed is one factor contributing to their jump from a cliff in Sky City. Both women see this as an escape from a male-dominated society. In this jump, each is freed from the binding culture that holds them back from expressing their true 88 identities. As they leap into the air, the female voice of the spirit goddess Tsichtinako calls them "[...] down, deep within the dark moist earth where Esmeralda and Caridad would be safe and live forever" (Castillo, 1993:211). Here Esmeralda and Caridad will be free from the restrictions placed on them by a patriarchal society.

Caridad, who has fallen into a life of drink and one-night stands with men she meets in bars, suffers a brutal and overpowering physical attack (Castillo, 1993:33). The narrator reports that some townspeople regard the attack as the natural outcome of what they consider Caridad's questionable behavior, and we are left with the impression that Caridad has learned "the bitter truth" about the violent enforcement of women's second-class status in this society. However, while Castillo shows us the real physical oppression that all women face in the figure of a beaten and mutilated Caridad, she does not simply point the finger at men.

Caridad, Loca, and doña Felicia know that:

It wasn't a man with a face and a name who had attacked and left Caridad mangled like a run-down rabbit. Nor two or three men. That was why she had never been able to give no information to the police. It was not a stray and desperate coyote either, but a thing, both tangible and amorphous. A thing that might be described as made of sharp metal and splintered wood, of limestone, gold, and brittle parchment. It held the weight of a continent and was indelible as ink, centuries old and yet as strong as a young wolf. (Castillo, 1993:77)

Rather than the all-too-familiar story of a woman's brutalization, Caridad's experience directs us to the purpose of revisioning Chicana and Chicano lives, for what is so destructive and evil, always present yet not always easy to identify. Castillo's malogra metaphorically describes the force of the institutionalized patriarchal relations that encourage disrespect for women at every level of society. Castillo thereby illuminates both the real physical threats that women face and the ideological discourse that authorizes that violence. 89

The episode of Caridad's life, however, does not end with mutilation but with renewal. That human beings are both products and producers of the society they inhabit directs us to Castillo's portrayals of women. Because Caridad shifts from a position of consent to one of dissent in relation to the ideology that supports violence against her and other women, she demonstrates that both men and women can alter the underlying reasons for violence against women. The stages of her physical and spiritual transformation pose the challenges of engaging in this process. Looked down upon by the police who found her (Castillo, 1993:33) and "half repaired by modern medical technology" (Castillo, 1993:38), both highly representative of the dominant power and the difficulty of undertaking to alter that power, Caridad returns home to experience a miraculous recovery while in the care of her sisters and mother. She then dedicates her life to helping others by learning how to become a curandera. But the realization that she finds herself attracted to another woman leads Caridad to a year of isolation and reflection; this experience strengthens her to such a degree that when she is discovered in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains she is literally immovable despite her small physical size. When Francisco and several other men attempt to relocate her from the cave where they find her, they are both angry and stumped by her amazing power (Castillo, 1993:87). Like her sister Loca, Caridad's curanderismo and spiritual life, combining attention to her own health with a vocation for healing others, allows her to challenge her own marginality and to assume agency. Her acceptance of love for women is a part of this change and contrasts sharply with her previous relations with men. By falling in love another woman, Caridad shows us her rebellious act towards the established rules of the society.

Fe tries to accept her cultural traditions and embraces the notion of marriage and family. Unfortunately this life is not to be. Left by her fiancé, Tom, she spirals into destructive behavior consisting of constant screaming until cured by her sister, Loca. Fe's overt expression of pain, rage, and frustration temporarily brings her closer to what is, in her view, an overly emotional and superstitious family from whom she had previously remained aloof. Her release, however, is only a partial escape from her dependence on dominant ideologies. When Fe finally stops 90 screaming, her vocal chords are damaged, signaling that her recovery is incomplete. Though no longer dependent on Tom, she remains vulnerable to the consumerist American Dream of life, buying her way to happiness and then placing herself at the service of Acme International in her quest to get ahead, a company whose illegal and environmentally unsound practices kill her. Fe's life then shifts course as she marries her cousin and focuses on climbing a corporate ladder of sorts by taking this well- paid job. Here Castillo shows the danger of trying to buy into the notion that money and status are important, thinking perpetrated by an Anglo corporate society. Instead of being rewarded by her job at an arms manufacturing plant, she is slowly poisoned, ultimately dying a horrific death. Not only is Fe's life lost, but she also miscarries while working at the plant. The life of her unborn child is the price Fe must pay for admittance into this male-dominated Anglo culture. Only it does not buy her admittance into the world she longs for. Here Castillo suggests that these two worlds sought by Fe are incompatible. Fe wishes to belong to separate cultures, those of motherhood and Anglo corporate society. Castillo implies that women are often forced to choose, for they cannot have both.

The dichotomy experienced by Fe is echoed in that experienced by many Chicana women; as women of color they are not allowed to flourish in a culture of white domination. Fe's devotion to her job and desperation to live the American dream make her an easy and defenseless target for her employers. Pleased to be offered special assignments, she is forced to work in isolation in a dark basement. Her inquiries as to the safety of such an environment are met with condescending looks and short replies. In essence, Fe is poisoned by the male-dominated environment.

As a result of her poisoning, she is subjected to even more horrors, all at the hands of traditionally male-dominated institutions. Acme International takes no responsibility for the cancer that plagues her insides because she already had melanoma before she started there. The doctors at the hospital can do little for her suffering, and their treatment of Fe is torturous: 91

First they went about removing the cancerous moles on her legs and arms and eventually, chest and back and then whole body so that Fe's flesh almost all at once was scarred all over. [....] The next stupefying "mistake" made by the medical staff was when feeding a catheter through her collarbone, which was supposed to supply chemotherapy down somewhere, the guideline traveled up to her head instead. They thought they had removed it when she left the hospital, but they hadn't. (Castillo,1993:186-87)

At first, Fe rejects her family, particularly her sister Loca, in her drive to assimilate. Embarrassed by what she sees as an odd family, she moves away from home and neighborhood. Her uncritical acceptance of the hegemonic discourse of middle-class America imposes distance between Fe and a family not considered typically American in such discourses because of its gender composition, race, ethnicity, and culture. Fe's isolation contributes to a silence and passivity that eventually kills her. When she recognizes this in her last visit to the Acme plant, the realization comes too late to save her:

The whole plant had been completely remodeled. . . all the stations...which used to be open to everybody and everything, were partitioned off. Nobody and nothing able to know what was going on around them no more. And everybody, meanwhile, was working in silence as usual. (Castillo, 1993: 189)

In light of her newly acquired knowledge about the poisonous work environment at Acme and the company's practice of releasing toxic pollutants outside of the plant, Fe's graphic description of the physical divisions between silent workers indicates a developing class-consciousness that was previously blocked by her acceptance of dominant discourses. But her observation on the silence of the workers also speaks to a reevaluation of her cultural, ethnic, and racial consciousness as well. Previously, Fe considered Sofi, Loca, and Caridad self-defeating and unambitious because they were not interested in becoming wage workers; she felt disappointment and disgust for Loca's condition; although she respected Esperanza's 92 television job, she "had no desire to copy Esperanza's La Raza politics" (Castillo, 1993:28-9). Because her family did not fit the profile of the American Dream, Fe limited her interaction with them and maintained a silence regarding her own life and plans (Castillo, 1993:31). The scene of her return to the Acme plant represents her awakening to the many divisions that Fe has unwittingly allowed to dominate her life. In the end, however, none of patriarchal institutions help or save her. But Fe, on its behalf, follows her dreams. She survives and endures as possible as she can in the most patriarchal area, economic field. By taking a part in the dominant patriarchal area as a woman she shows how she is rebellious. But unfortunately her endurance does not last long.

Esperanza appears to be the most liberated of the four sisters. She embodies the traits of an Anglo feminist, trying to make her way in a world dominated by Anglo males. Her wish is to make a difference in the world, which she attempts by devoting energy to the Chicana movement while in college. She displays the traits of a strong woman, one who is not afraid to speak for what she believes in. She willingly sacrifices the traditional role of mother and notion of family to further herself professionally. Her profession of news reporter requires an engagement in patriarchal values of disallowing emotion and family. But, Esperanza, though a political activist and broadcast journalist, does not protest the way in which Rubén treats her, and consequently falls victim to his selfishness. Her inability to demand more from Rubén stems in part from societal constraints against female self- fulfillment that lead her to feel that "a woman with brains was as good as dead for all the happiness it brought her in the love department" (Castillo, 1993:26). It is with this career that her identity becomes compromised as she is drawn into the throes of a patriarchal rite, the Gulf War Crisis. Her former voice and aggressiveness are lost when she is kidnapped and presumed dead. The patriarchal society that shuns brown women tries to recognize Esperanza after her death by inviting Sofi to Washington, D.C., where Esperanza is recognized as a hero.

So Far from God’s matriarchal character, Sofia, rises above her given circumstances many times to become a strong woman. Sofia has much hardship in 93 her life, yet she overcomes with grace and ease. Sofia's strength is apparent from the start of the novel as the story reveals that she cares for her four daughters without a husband present. This maternal side of Sofia is pivotal to her identity. Motherhood is all she has, and all she is. Castillo paints the picture of a character who laughs in the face of adversity and does not fall victim to the circumstances of her situation, that of raising four daughters by herself. As the story unfolds, Sofia survives because of her strength.

Early in the novel, Sofia's faith is shaken to the core when her youngest daughter, Loca, dies. Sofia is weighted down with the anguish and pain of losing a child. Her belief in a patriarchal system wavers when her daughter is prematurely declared dead. Her pain is soon erased when Loca is resurrected. The disbelief and doubt on the part of Father Jerome angers Sofia to the point of attacking the priest, horrified at the thought that her daughter's resurrection is anything short of a miracle: unable to tolerate the mere suggestion by Father Jerome that her daughter, her blessed, sweet baby, could by any means be the devil's own. "Don't you dare!" she screamed at Father Jerome, charging at him and beating her fists.

Don't you dare start this about my baby! If our Lord in His heaven has sent my child back to me, don't you dare start this backward thinking against her; the devil doesn't produce miracles! And this is a miracle, an answer to a brokenhearted mother". (Castillo, 1993:23)

Sofia's outburst questioning such a respected institution as the Catholic church demonstrates an uncommon strength. Questioning this institution is seen by the other women in her community as irreverent; at Loca's resurrection the other women around cross "themselves at hearing Sofi call the priest a pendejo, which was a blasphemy" (Castillo, 1993:23). Through Sofi, Castillo is challenging the stereotype that Chicana women are passive and submissive. This challenging nature in Sofi does not recede; it only grows stronger as she realizes her ability as a woman.

Sofi's faith in the church may be shaken, but her faith in her daughter, Loca, never wavers. Loca turns out much differently than Sofia's other daughters, having 94 returned from her near-death with an other-worldly intuition and loathing of others: "She [Loca] claimed that all humans bore an odor akin to that which she had smelled in the places she had passed through when, she was dead" (Castillo, 1993:23). Her ability to heal and cure is never questioned by Sofia; Sofia accepts Loca as she is.

Sofia accepts not only Loca; she also displays this quality with others in her life, no matter how hard that acceptance may be. No one character is harder for Sofia to accept than her long-lost, now-returned husband, Domingo. This acceptance of Domingo suggests that Sofia has a feminine side and that it, too, must be recognized. Castillo allows Sofia to recognize her feminine needs by accepting Domingo back into her life and the lives of her four daughters. While it does not happen directly, the anger she feels toward Domingo for leaving her finally weakens. Nostalgia overcomes Sofi as she finally recaptures the feelings she remembers having for Domingo when they first met as Domingo plans to take her to a dance:

So it was on the evening of August fourteenth, leaving Loca under the supervision of la Fe, Sofi, in the only party dress she had bought for herself ever in her life, since she made all her clothes, a kind of dark green to match her eyes, went out to two-step to the famous fiddle with her one and only honey [...]. (Castillo, 1993:113)

The essence of woman is her femininity. Norma Alarcon reinforces this in her essay The Sardonic Powers of the Erotic in the Work of Ana Castillo. Alarcon (1989: 94) examines an erotic dance that Castillo's female characters engage in with the male characters. This erotic dance redefines the feminine side of woman as strong and having power over man. With the emergence of Sofia's feminine side, Castillo suggests that this is what makes her a woman. Castillo reinforces through Sofia that Xicanisma does not deny the feminine side of a woman; it embraces it without shame. Sofia comes to embody these Xicanista traits in her life as her identity emerges and solidifies.

Influenced by her children, La Loca's and Caridad's faith in an expanded reality, Esperanza's rebellious restiveness, and Fe's suicidal materialist attitude--Sofi 95 becomes the emblem of female activism. Her daughters show her that it is possible and necessary to make choices in life and that life itself should be "defined as a state of courage and wisdom and not an uncontrollable participation in society" (Castillo, 1993:250).

Sofi overcomes her own longstanding silence when she notices the disintegration invading her community. The people, and especially the men, on whom Sofi had always relied to keep things running smoothly seem unable to do anything to solve the town's problems. As unofficial Mayor of Tome, she organizes a town-wide cooperative project, involving both women and men, and wins the respect of her community. When her husband Domingo soon gambles away their income from the effort, Sofi finally remembers that twenty years before it was was not he who had walked out on his family, but she who had kicked him out.

Castillo embraces Sofia's femininity and displays it with enthusiasm. Sofia emerges as a different person in her newfound identity as a woman. Sofia's decision to run for mayor stems from a reluctance to ignore issues in her town of Tome, New Mexico, and to stand up for something she believes in. Frustrated with mere household trivialities, "she decided that she was going to run for la mayor of Tome and make some changes around here" (Castillo, 1993:130). Her motivations may be personal in nature, but the impact her decision has is far-reaching. Even though she has no idea how to run a campaign, she is hell-bent on achieving her goal. This is an action that represents the challenging of male/female stereotypes. Sofi is taking matters into her hands and trying to create a changed environment. No longer is she content to be the passive female. Yet, she receives little initial support from those around her, namely her comadre down the street:

Now the comadre really didn't get it. She especially didn't get it because Tome never had no mayor. She didn't know much about those kinds of government things [...], but could one just decide to become mayor of an area? [....] Then why stop at mayor? [....] Why not become Queen of Tome for that matter? (Castillo, 1993:137) 96

The fact that this "one little detail" was "forgotten" by Sofi and everybody else in the community suggests that there were no other roles for women beyond wife/mother or abandoned wife/mother. Sofi could not, in a sense, truly speak her life until she had created new roles for women where she and others could be appreciated for something other than being wife/mother. When this happens, Sofi remembers this story of her break-up with Domingo. In the meantime, however, she has, with difficulty, lived an independent life apart from this unsatisfying relationship, even if disguised in abandonment. Although for many years Sofi's effort to avoid the pattern of subordination forced on other women is covert, her resistance does eventually become a public effort to fully include women in communal governance.

Sofi realizes that being a woman means she is strong and stands up for what she believes in; the same comadre who once laughed at Sofi's decision becomes her biggest supporter, realizing the same. By running for, and becoming, mayor of Tome, Sofi breaks the stereotype of Chicanas as quiet observers and shows a Chicana as a vehicle of change. In this respect, she serves as a role model for other women in her town of Tome.

In the novel, the female characters and their stories need to be examined in opposition to their male counterparts. “The men represent patriarchy's systematic domination of women as achieved and maintained through male control of cultural, social, and economic institutions” (Sirias and McGarry, 2000: 89). In So Far From God, Castillo creates a cast of male characters who are, in essence, emasculated. Castillo uses the women in this novel to assert a feeling of matriarchal superiority and integrity, further demonstrated by the male characters in the novel. Castillo uses traditional male roles of father, priest, and boyfriend/suitor to discount the patriarchal structure she sees women struggling against, calling for a radical transformation of our sense of being, living and thinking. Each of the male characters of substance fails the woman to whom he is bound.

Domingo, Sofi's husband, gambles incessantly and leaves her to raise their four daughters. Sofi does not question his reappearance later in the novel; she merely 97 tolerates it. In this sense, Sofi subordinates herself to the patriarchal ideal of having a man in the house. Yet Domingo's presence does little more than take up space in this house shared by women. His ignorance of all that Sofi has been through is evident as he questions the fact that Loca ever died:

Look at me, Domingo! While you were gone, doing who knows what [...] I have been [...] praying to God to give me the strength to do the best by my girls alone and with the wits I had left after what I'd been through with them, starting from when Loca died!" "Loca's not dead," Domingo protested, although just barely daring to speak up, since he knew this was not a good time to assert his own observations or opinions [...]. "Well, she was! ¡Chingao!" (112)

Sofi vents not only fury at being left alone to raise her daughters but also fury at his questioning of her. Domingo reveals his inferiority to Sofi's matriarchal power and his fear of her by not being able to speak up when questioning her. His tame nature continues for the remainder of the novel as he humbly submits to any request she makes.

Sofia's acceptance of Domingo is not rewarded as his later behavior indicates. He ends up gambling away the house that has been in Sofi's family for generations. Sofi finally throws him out of the house and her life for good. The maternal instinct in her, however, will not let him go homeless. She rises above justifiable anger and allows him to reside in the house he built for Caridad in Chimayo. His removal from her life allows her to thrive in a matriarchy she helped to create. Sofi counters Trujillo's assertion of needing a male to be validated in life. The creation of a female- run coop results from his laziness and inability to function as a patriarchal figure. This new position in life and in her family allows for her to assert herself as a matriarchal figure capable of providing better than her husband can.

Her daughter, Esperanza, had one love in her life: her college sweetheart Ruben. He holds a fearsome spell over Esperanza and controls her until she wises up and leaves him to pursue her career. In the end, after Esperanza's death, Ruben 98 becomes a pathetic figure who, sad and alone, remembers how the days with most meaning in his life were those of his youth spent observing and admiring Esperanza's militancy in the cause of La Raza (Sirias and McGarry, 2000: 90):

Back in college, if it wasn't for la Esperanza who led the protest, they never would have had one Chicano Studies class offered on the curriculum. If it wasn't for la Esperanza, who would have known about the struggle of the United Farm Workers on campus? Who would have ever told him about anything at all? (Castillo, 1993:239)

Without Esperanza to open his eyes, Ruben would have seen very little. Now, without her, he will see nothing and therefore signify even less.

Fe has two men in her life. The first one, Tom, breaks his engagement with Fe. He proves a failure in So Far from God. Tom backs out of his marriage in the most cowardly of ways, writing a letter to Fe, informing her that he "didn't have the nerve to tell her in person" (Castillo, 1993:31). His behavior is easily explained by his mother who claims he has susto, fear, Sofi refuses to accept his being scared as an excuse for his behavior. Tom's status as a strong male is never reclaimed and is further diminished by his reappearance later in the novel. Tom's destiny following his relationship with Fe is to lead a desperate, lonely life, where he remains forever locked into repairing Big Slurpy machines as the manager of a convenience store. Fe's second love is her cousin, Casimiro, a man totally and hopelessly devoted to her. Although college-educated, or perhaps because he is college-educated, Casimiro is as meek as men come. A soft-spoken man, his gentle discourse includes bleating like a sheep, a trait inherited over seven generations of sheepherding. As Fe becomes increasingly ill, Casimiro is too timid to urge her to seek medical attention, and he waits until Sofia intervenes. By then it is too late.

By far the most intriguing male character in So Far From God is Francisco el Penitente. A Vietnam veteran who after the war loses himself in drugs and failed relationships, Francisco finds his calling as a santero, a maker of bultos, figures of saints carved from wood, whose creations are guided by divine inspiration. It does 99 not take long before Francisco el Penitente becomes a religious fanatic. He deprives himself of all worldly pleasures and lives his entire life in penance. He meets Caridad after she has taken on the identity of La Armitania, the hermit who lived for a year in seclusion in a cave, and he falls hopelessly and platonically in love with her. He dubs Caridad The Handmaiden of Christ and projects qualities of sainthood upon her. He imagines her pure and virginal. Francisco el Penitente, however, obsessed with Caridad, begins stalking her, and while spying on her he discovers her secret passion for Esmeralda. At first, Francisco's distant relationship indicates a simple case of scopophilia. His voyeurism appears to be an intermediary stage along the path to some sort of sexual/religious fulfillment. However, Caridad's lesbianism violates the patriarchal codes to which he strongly subscribes, and he perversely snaps. Castillo implies that his fanatical pursuit and condemnation of their homosexuality force the women to leap from the cliff. Francisco el Penitente is incapable of forgiving himself for the extreme act to which he drove Caridad and he hangs himself from a tree. “As we can observe, the male characters in So Far From God are either powerless beings, completely lacking in fortitude, or zealots, as in the case of Francisco el Penitente, who will go to any length to protect male dominance in our society” (Sirias and McGarry, 2000: 91).

Father Jerome is another traditional male character who loses standing as a patriarchal figure. Traditionally, the role of priest in a small Mexican community would be much respected. Father Jerome loses this respect with Sofi when he questions the resurrection of Loca. He becomes just a man. His inability to further investigate the miracle of Loca's resurrection and Caridad's healing further negates his patriarchal standing and shows his fear. Sofi is not afraid in the face of the unknown, but Father Jerome is. When faced with Loca after her rising from the dead, he "is too stunned to utter so much as a word of prayer" (Castillo, 1993:22). When he is finally able to speak, he questions her appearance as an "act of God or Satan?" (Castillo, 1993:23). Castillo further contradicts Father Jerome's power in this community when he is unable to explain how Caridad mysteriously recovers from the injuries suffered in her attack. His role in the novel thus becomes secondary; his 100 respected standing lost. Sofi and her daughters cease to need guidance from the patriarchal church.

Castillo uses the males in this novel to lift the status of the women, at times making females into victims of male circumstance. So Far from God makes use of the patriarchal system society is based on and introduces a matriarchal system that is just as powerful and just as effective for those who subscribe to it.

In this novel home place takes very important roles. Castillo is successful here to display this image. Carmela Delia Lanza(1998: 65) suggests that the home is a "site of resistance" for women of color where they can assert themselves more freely than in an outside world dominated by males.

In the nineteenth century, Louisa May Alcott made subjects of objects when she wrote her domestic novel Little Women, which centered on four sisters and their mother during the American Civil War. Alcott created a home for the March girls that were removed from the world of war and male supremacy. The subject of home space also has been focused on by some women of color, like cultural theorists Bell Hooks and Gloria Anzaldua, and novelist Toni Morrison. Each of these writers is revisioning the home space and its significance regarding gender roles, racism and spirituality in the homes of working-class women of color. Among these writers Bell Hooks defines the space as a site of resistance and liberation struggle.

Bell Hooks's theory on the homeplace can be used to explore the domestic world that Ana Castillo has created in her novel, So Far From God. In this novel, Castillo, like Hooks and other women writers of color, constructs the home as a site of resistance for the woman of color living in a racist and sexist world. With its playful and ironic style, and its persistence on ambiguity and contradictions, So Far From God offers a postmodern inversion of Alcott's Little Women. Both works are American novels dealing with the primary relationships of four sisters; however, Castillo's novel is concerned with four Chicana sisters and a mother living a working class life in Tome, New Mexico. Unlike Alcott's created home space that for the most part is politically neutral, the home space in Castillo's novel is infused with 101 political resistance. According to Bell Hooks (Lanza, 1998 : 66) It is a place where women of color have an "opportunity to grow and develop spiritually and politically, which is not always possible or allowable in a culture of white supremacy".

The daughters in So Far From God are dealing with power relations that the March girls in nineteenth century middle class America did not even have to think about. The March girls, despite their own oppression in a patriarchal culture and their own sympathy for the poor and destitute, were part of the hegemony of white culture. The sisters in So Far From God, on the other hand, must construct a home space that will offer them sustenance, security and spirituality in order to move into a white world as subjects.

Sofi is the head of her home, a home she has created for her daughters. For one daughter, Loca, the home is the only space she can call her own. She stays home, not playing the role of angel or devil, and is "without exception, healing her sisters from the traumas and injustices they were dealt by society, a society she herself never experienced firsthand" (Castillo, 1993:27). As for the other daughters, they "had gone out into the world and had all eventually returned to their mother's home" (Castillo, 1993:25). In the novel, the daughters can only face chaos when they reenter their mother's home and rediscover their identity, their spirituality, and their strength. Eventually all of the daughters, including La Loca, experience loss in the collision of their need to create a home space with the destructive forces outside.

The first daughter to move away from the home and into the perilous and destructive outside world is Esperanza. She enters her quest-pattern when she chooses to leave home and work as a television anchorwoman in Washington, D.C. On the surface, her decision appears sensible: "...it was pretty clear to her that there was no need of her on the home front. Her sisters had recovered" (Castillo, 1993:46) from their encounters with physical and emotional abuse. Esperanza also believes her mother no longer needs her because her father has returned home years after abandoning the family. Esperanza, however, misjudges her own position and the source of power within her family. In turning away from her home, her mother, her sisters continue to need her and her father is as ineffective now as he has always 102 been. Esperanza is deceived by the male values that dominate the outside world in the novel; in turning from the female world of her home space, which her mother and sisters created, to the male world of war, she is moving towards self-destruction and can only return home after she is dead, in the form of a spirit. At first she speaks through La Llorona, who is described in the novel as "a loving mother goddess" (Castillo, 1993:163). La Llorona is a messenger who informs La Loca that Esperanza has died. After that, Esperanza is seen by all the members of the family including the father who is a bit disturbed by his "transparent daughter" (Castillo, 1993:163). Sofi sees Esperanza as a little girl who "had had a nightmare and went to be near her mother for comfort" (Castillo, 1993:163). Caridad has one-sided conversations with Esperanza talking mostly about politics, and La Loca sees and talks to her by the river behind their home.

As a spirit, Esperanza returns to the home space to be comforted by her mother and sisters and to also teach them. Once Esperanza becomes a spirit, she is no longer a victim or an object of the white world. It is no accident that the dead Esperanza communicates with La Llorona, "a woman who had been given a bad rap by every generation of people since the beginning of time..." (Castillo, 1993:162-63). While she lived, Esperanza was also given a "bad rap." But in death, La Llorona is revisioned and so is Esperanza. Both are liberated from the boundaries of white culture.

After Esperanza accepts her job in Washington, D.C., she is assigned to Saudi Arabia, a place about to erupt in war. Esperanza accepts this fate because she desires to move away from the home. It is ironic that Esperanza, in choosing the male hero as her model-leaving home, participating in a patriarchal institution, war, because "'it's part of my job"' (Castillo, 1993:48) is really choosing torture and death. She is living with the fear of rejection from the outside culture and she is also living with the fear of losing her home, her mother, "La Raza" (Castillo, 1993:20). Esperanza experiences this psychic paralysis. She is a woman of color who is:

Alienated from her mother culture, 'alien' in the dominant culture, the woman of color does not feel safe with the inner life of her Self. Petri- 103

fied, she can't respond, her face caught between los intersticios, the spaces between the different worlds she inhabits. (Castillo, 1993:20)

Fe is another one of the daughters in So Far From God who chooses a patriarchal institution that moves her away from her home space and eventually destroys her. Fe chooses marriage and in a literal and symbolic way, it poisons her to death. Fe, in marrying Casimiro and moving to the land of "the long-dreamed-of automatic dishwasher, microwave, Cuisinart and the VCR" (Castillo, 1993:171), is trying in her own way to return to her mother but she cannot truly find her way back because of her inability to view her home and her culture in all of its complexity. She can only look at her mother's home and her sisters as a source of embarrassment or pity:

As it was, while Fe had a little something to talk to Esperanza about, she kept away from her other sisters, her mother, and the animals, because she just didn't understand how they could all be so self-defeating, so unambitious. (Castillo, 1993:28)

Fe wants desperately to revision her mother's home by making it sterile, shiny, closer to the definition of home by mainstream white culture. She cannot see the spiritual richness in her home. In fact, Fe describes one of her sisters, La Loca, as "a soulless creature" (Castillo, 1993:28) because she always wears the same clothes and doesn't bother with shoes. For herself, Fe insists on imitating the mainstream culture with a considerable amount of effort: "Fe was beyond reproach. She maintained her image above all from the organized desk at work to weekly manicured fingernails and a neat coiffure" (Castillo, 1993:28).

At the beginning of the novel, Fe embraces mainstream white culture; she wants to be like the white women she works with. She chooses "three gabachas" from her job to be her bridesmaids instead of her sisters (Castillo, 1993:29). But instead of gaining any power, she ends up wrapped in the shower curtain, screaming her way back to the matriarchal circle of her mother and sisters. Her first boyfriend, Tom, decides he isn't ready for intimacy and commitment. And it is her mother and 104 her sisters who become the healers and nurse, who clean and pray over Fe. Fe loses her voice as a result of her constant screaming yet she still does not learn how to integrate her home space with the world outside. Eventually, Fe marries one of her cousins, Casimiro. She still desires to live in a suburb in a house that does not smell the way her mother's house smells. Fe's journey does end back at home and she is finally able to see her home as a source of comfort, wisdom and spirituality but it is only after the outside world has done its best to destroy her. After being exposed unknowingly to a very toxic chemical, Fe goes home to die:

A year from the time of her wedding, everything ended, dreams and nightmares alike, for that daughter of Sofi who had all her life sought to escape her mother's depressing home-with its smell of animal urine and hot animal breath and its couch and cobijas that itched with ticks and fleas; where the coming and goings of the vecinos had be-come routine because of her mom's mayoral calling...Despite all this and more, Fe found herself wanting to go nowhere else but back to her mom and La Loca and even to the animals to die just before her twenty-seventh birthday. Sofia's chaotic home became a sanctuary from the even more incomprehensible world that Fe encountered that last year of her pathetic life. (Castillo, 1993: 171-72)

In Fe's chase for the American Dream, she only finds infertility, deception, and ultimately a death that unlike her sisters' deaths, offers no spiritual transformation or resurrection: "Fe just died. And when someone dies that plain dead, it is hard to talk about" (Castillo, 1993:186).

Caridad, the other sister who leaves, like Fe and Esperanza also finds violence and ultimate destruction in the world outside the home. Early in the novel Caridad is physically attacked. It is a brutal sexual invasion, an attack on the female body:

Sofi was told that her daughter's nipples had been bitten off. She had also been scourged with something, branded like cattle. Worst of all, a 105

tracheotomy was performed because she had also been stabbed in the throat. (Castillo, 1993: 33)

Caridad's attack is treated by her society as merely a cause for prayer, because "the mutilation of the lovely young woman was akin to martyrdom" (Castillo, 1993:33). And it is treated with contempt by the police department who felt she deserved what she got because of her sexual promiscuity. In the end Caridad is "left in the hands of her family, a nightmare incarnated" (Castillo, 1993:33). Caridad's attack is an attack on the female, on what is closest to home-death, birth, blood.

Caridad becomes the stranger, the other when she is attacked, and she is only healed through her sisters and mother at home. She floats through the living room wearing Fe's wedding gown and is beautiful again; her wounds all vanish because La Loca prays for her. She moves into a transcendent world by no longer existing as an object for the world. Instead, Caridad meets an older woman, Dona Felicia, a surrogate mother who teachers her to become a healer. Dona Felicia is the one who points out the power that Caridad and her family possess:

All they did at the hospital was patch you up and send you home, more dead than alive. It was with the help of God, heaven knows how He watches over that house where you come from.... (Castillo, 1993:55)

Therefore, it is through the rituals of the home that Caridad enters into a spiritual life. Caridad's renewed life "became a rhythm of scented baths, tea remedies, rubdowns, and general good feeling" (Castillo, 1993:63). She makes particular chores like dusting her altar and her statues and pictures of saints, taking baths, and cleaning her incense brazier part of her spiritual life. She takes on the role of a priestess primarily for her own benefit.

Despite Caridad's rejection of institutionalized religions and her attempts to create a protective home space for herself, whether it is in a trailer or in a cave, she is again terrorized by the outside world. The woman she loves, Esmeralda, is raped by Francisco, a man who is obsessed with Caridad. Because of this man's desire to own a woman at any cost, because of his machismo, Caridad and Esperanza both commit 106 suicide at Acoma. They go to Acoma after Esmeralda's attack, and when Caridad realizes that Esmeralda was violated, and that Francisco followed them, they hold hands and jump off the mesa and are taken by Tsichtinako, "the Invisible One who had nourished the first two humans, who were also both females" (Castillo, 1993:211). This spirit leads both women back to the womb, back to a safe home: “…not out toward the sun's rays or up to the clouds but down, deep with-in the soft, moist dark earth where Esmeralda and Caridad would be safe and live forever” (Castillo, 1993:211).

The two women in the novel who do not leave home are the mother, Sofi, and one daughter, La Loca. Both women look to their home space as a source for spiritual growth and as a reconnection between their own culture and the outside dominating culture. Neither Sofi nor Loca desire the objects, the static role or the sterile, domestic environment of mainstream white culture. They are rooted in their own history and at the same time, they accept their world in its playful state of constant change, and contradictions (Lanza, 1998: 75).

Sofi was married to a gambler, Domingo, who returns years later and attempts to win back Sofi's affection but she has no desire to share a life with him again. She will no longer accept his perceptions as law: "'And don't call me 'silly Sofi' no more neither.' ... 'Do I look like a silly woman to you, Domingo?"' (Castillo: 1993: 109- 10). Sofi is participating in what Norma Alarc6n (1989:94) describes as "the ironically erotic dance that Castillo's speaking subjects often take up with men" ; however, Sofi is no longer allowing herself to be victimized by the dance.

Domingo makes the mistake of losing Sofi's house in a gambling bet and that is one mistake Sofi cannot forgive, for her identity, her history is her house:

But the house, that home of mud and straw and stucco and in some places brick-which had been her mother's and father's and her grandparents', for that matter, and in which she and her sister had been born and raised-that house had belonged to her. (Castillo, 1993:215) 107

Domingo's insensitivity and carelessness concerning this loss is what finally pushes Sofi to file divorce papers. She also manages to hold on to her house. Sofi balances her dedication to her home, her duty to "La Loquita, her eternal baby" and her devotion to herself when she decides to finally bring closure to her failed marriage. Sofi does not act in a fit of rage; in fact with a charitable and flexible nature, she offers him a small house in Chimayo, which was built for Caridad. She may not want to be married to Domingo but she refuses to see him homeless.

This balancing act is also evident when Sofi, despite the fact that her own grandparents built the house, accepts an arrangement with the judge who won the house in a cockfight. He allows Sofi to "reside in her own home after she agreed to pay him a modest rent" (Castillo, 1993:216).

As Rabuzzi time (Lanza, 1992: 96) stated that Like her mother, La Loca uses the home space as a source of spiritual nourishment and a source of strength. Loca does all her work, whether it is healing her sisters or talking to La Llorona, within the domestic sphere. While living in her mother's home, Loca becomes a mythic force in her own right. She becomes a player in a scene far older and larger than her individual self. No longer does she participate in profane historical time; instead she is participating in mythic Loca visits hell, heals her sisters Fe and Caridad, and can smell other people's agony. According to Romines (Lanza, 1992:198) She, La Loca, participates in a "mortal collision between the rituals of a house" when she describes to Sofi how she can smell her father's spiritual pain:

'Mom,' La Loca said, 'I smell my dad. And he was in hell, too.... Mom, I been to hell. You never forget that smell. And my dad...he was there, too.' 'So you think I should forgive your dad for leaving me, for leaving us all those years?' Sofi asked. 'Here we don't forgive, Mom.... Only in hell do we learn to forgive and you got to die first.... Mom, hell is where you go to see yourself. This dad out there, sitting watching T.V., he was in hell a long time.' (Castillo, 1993:41-42) 108

According to Rabuzzi Loca, like Hestia, is a virgin who is "the representative of pure homelife" (Lanza, 1992: 95). Since her experience of death and resurrection at age three, Loca never leaves home, and she only allows her mother to come close to her. She never went to school, to mass, to any social activity. Her entire world is the house, the stalls, and the river by the house. She does not attempt to assimilate into the dominant culture like her sisters, Fe and Esperanza. She plays the violin without having to go to a teacher outside the home; she just learns using her own ability and talent. Loca doesn't rely on mainstream institutions for anything, whether it is to gain knowledge or spirituality in her life (Lanza, 1998: 77).

Rabuzzi points out that yet the world comes to Loca in the shape of a disease, AIDS. Castillo does not explain how Loca contracts the disease, which adds to Loca's role in the novel as a character who is larger than her own self (Lanza, 1992:96). The disease, which Castillo describes as the "Murder of the Innocent" (Castillo, 1993:243), seeks Loca out.

Loca, within her domestic sphere, is still disrupted by the racism and sexism of the patriarchy. And because of the disease she contracts, a disease of the postmodern world, she, like her sisters, Esperanza, Fe and Caridad, is a representative victim of the patriarchy. For only Sofi remains at the end of the novel, as the president of Mothers of Martyrs and Saints, an organization that worships another symbol of the home. Yet all of them survive and endure all the pains and oppressions of the patriarchal society as they can.

Castillo's characters have the potential to change Anglo-American's understanding of the plight of the Chicana woman, to show Chicanas as noble women. Through strong characters Castillo creates an archetype that encompasses the struggles she sees the Chicana woman facing. Castillo strives to create characters in her novels who dig up their past and envision their future, all the while trying to bring these two facets of life into balance. Castillo does not trivialize the struggles that all women of color face living in a male-dominated society, nor does she allow her characters to use their gender, color, or heritage as an excuse for complacency. 109

Each of the characters in the Castillo's novel attempts to reconcile the issues of identity, cultural heritage, sexuality, and male-domination while overcoming the stereotypes associated with the female gender.

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CONCLUSION

The position of the female in American society poses a particularly difficult struggle for the Mexican American woman.

The traditional role of the Mexican American female or Chicana has been that of housewife and mother whose primary purpose in life is to serve and assist her man, the Chicano. This is no longer true. The Chicana has stepped out of the kitchen into the world to become a visible force for change and the elimination of discrimination. Therefore it is understandable when the general public assumes that the Mexican American woman who has become very vocal and assertive is part of the current Women’s Liberation Movement sweeping the country, or has at least been inspired by its efforts.

Actually the emergence of the Chicana as a strong motivating force within the Spanish-speaking community has been in conjunction with that of the Chicano. For this reason, her struggle cannot be paralleled with the Anglo woman’s fight for rights against the Anglo male. Chicanas have fought side by side with their men in the struggle for equal opportunity in all areas of American life. Unfortunately, the major emphasis has always been on opening doors of opportunity for the Mexican American male, the female in essence fights the battle but does not share in the spoils.

The Chicano Revolution has brought about great changes in the Mexican American community and family structure. The Mexican American female has taken on some characteristics of what has been described as a Macho. She may be very vocal, aggressive, and an effective community organizer. She may prefer to pursue interests outside the home and reject homemaking as the total fulfillment in her life.

This is the new image of for some Chicanas. The passivity and submissiveness are evidently declining and although the Chicano views her with interests, this interest is not totally absent of fear, wonder and suspicion. Fear because, Mexican American women always have been expected totally to be submissive to males. Wonder, because Chicanas are now demonstrating abilities the Chicano thought them 111 incapable of. Lastly, suspicion because, one is always suspicious of something one does not understand. Chicanas who have grouped together for strength and unity of purpose are at best tolerated, more often detested and ridiculed by Chicanos.

Women have stepped out of the background into the spotlight as spokesmen at various public meeting. School boards, commissions, and city councils, to name a few, have felt the sting of the verbal strikes from furious Mexican-American women. Chicanas have shown themselves to be alert, forceful and intelligent and they have proved to be a major channel in the Chicano community.

Consequently, Chicana feminism accords a privileged place to women’s experiences of suffering and pain that are the consequences of their social location. The Chicana’s exploration of her pain allows her to acquire the necessary self- knowledge to realize a work of self-transformation and build an identity with a privileged cognitive value. This process of self-transformation is largely based on the legitimization and revalorization of the Chicana’s experiences of psychic and physical suffering. The analysis and comprehension of such experiences allows her to develop a subjective standpoint informed by her social location that enables her to read the world in meaningful ways. Furthermore, the understanding and coming to terms with painful experiences makes her reach an awareness of the sources of oppression forming the basis of such suffering.

Thus, The novel So Far from God asserts that indigenous cosmologies and perspectives that challenge not only Western conceptions of history as linear and teleological but also Western notions of progress form an essential component of resistance. The novel's stress on the harm caused by such notions of progress rests on both this negative history and the continued presence of Western conceptions of progress in the lives of its characters. Yet the novel challenges those conceptions by emphasizing not one past, but many, and by bringing these into the present. The narrative touches on past events, such as the Mexican Revolution and the Chicano student movement, that reveal the officially unrecognized role of women. Castillo's characters also occasionally become the figures of indigenous myths, new versions of old stories. 112

Castillo's characters have the potential to change Anglo-American's understanding of the plight of the Chicana woman, to show Chicanas as noble women. Through strong characters such as Sofia, Esperanza, Fe, Caridad and La Loca Castillo creates an archetype that encompasses the struggles she sees the Chicana woman of facing. Castillo strives to create characters in her novel who dig up their past and envision their future, all the while trying to bring these two facets of life into balance. Castillo does not trivialize the struggles that all women of color face living in a male-dominated society, nor does she allow her characters to use their gender, color, or heritage as an excuse for complacency.

Castillo does not deny that the issue of Chicana identity in an Anglo- dominated society will be a multi-faceted one. She readily embraces the issues facing Chicanas and portrays her characters in a constant struggle with these issues. Castillo is breaking through this barrier by introducing the themes of color and heritage as intrinsic to the Xicanista. Breaking through another barrier of feminism, Castillo challenges relationships with women as well as those with men.

Each of the characters in Castillo's novel attempts to reconcile the issues of identity, cultural heritage, sexuality, and male-domination while overcoming the stereotypes associated with the female gender. The character of Sofi in So Far from God shows that a woman does not need a man to thrive and live a life full of meaning. Sofi's life lacks nothing with the absence of her husband. With Sofi, Castillo challenges the long-held belief that a woman must be associated with a man to have validation in her life. When Sofi laments to her comadre that they are all "so far from God," she echoes Francisco's sentiments (Castillo, 1993:139). Yet Sofi and her comadre both come to understand that they can get closer to God through their own actions. The efforts they initiate to improve the economic self-sufficiency of Tome for the benefit of everyone in the community also succeed in restoring communal social relations and dignity. So, through her characters Castillo creates a model for Chicanas to admire and learn from. These women refuse to subjugate their cultural strengths to assimilate into Anglo-American society. With these novels, Castillo examines the causes of domination in a patriarchal society and the effects of 113 accepting cultural heritage as inherent to life. She strives to broaden the audience who is aware of the trials faced by many Chicana women.

This novel has allowed us to see the multiple, sometimes competing, sometimes converging, interests in a Chicana subjectivity through female characters who struggle to name, assert and lead their complicated selves against societies that continually seek to categorize them with one-dimensional labels such as: single mother, jilted woman, slut, devil, Catholic, troublemaker, or loyal worker. What Sofi and her comadre accomplish in Tome results just as much from their religious faith as it does from their ethnic, gender, and class identifications, and it demonstrates that spirituality and religious faith both shape and are shaped by questions of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. The strength of the characters in this novel flows from their ability to embrace all aspects of themselves to effect such astonishing change. Like other characters, Sofi and her comadre are grounded in the multiple material, social, economic, political, and religious realities of their world.

By focusing on communities of women who engage in resistance the text has offerred an alternative to the dominant literary paradigms wherein "individualism often represents the strength of male power, while community becomes equated with female weakness" (Collins, 2002:59). This novel attacks the individualism that fuels a chaotic live-for-the- moment mentality by exploring how that individualist ethic harms women, communities, and the environment.

Castillo shows great respect for the community that can be created and nurtured by those of Mexican heritage. Their spiritual hybridity is central to the process of self-discovery, assertion, and union with others in which Castillo's female characters engage. Their practice of Catholicism represents endurance, survival, and sometimes conformity, but it is also a faith shaped by its practitioners into what they need. Some women gain this knowledge directly, as in the case of Caridad, Loca, while others acquire it indirectly, for example, Sofi learns from her daughters, but all are empowered and fortified by it. The text also has displayed that setting the novel in Tome, New Mexico, creates a textual link to a specific history of indigenous women that reminds us of the constructedness of patriarchal economic relations. 114

So Far from God has illustrated the complexity of Chicana lives and the varied perspectives necessary to enact transformation because it depicts a community both defined and moved to action by diverse subjectivities. The novelist adds to an economic analysis the cultural resistance of oppressed nationalities and honors the role of women in this resistance. By doing so, she reveals a strength, not an obstacle, in her culture.

Not only does Castillo challenge women to break these barriers, she also challenges society to reevaluate generations-old stereotypes. By yhe help of the novel Castillo has highlighted issues she sees common to the experience of brown women, namely the acceptance of history and culture, searching for an identity in a world that denies one to her, the dichotomy of motherhood and individuality, all the while in a constant struggle against the male-dominated patriarchal society that tries to dominate her. The duality of embracing heritage and trying to assimilate into Anglo society is central to the struggle Castillo's characters face. The novel So Far from God has featured characters in various stages of one or more of these struggles.

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