UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Transindigenous Modernism
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Transindigenous Modernism: Literature of the Americas, 1929-1945 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Paulina Margarita Gonzales Committee in charge: Professor Gloria Chacón, Co-Chair Professor Michael Davidson, Co-Chair Professor Ross Frank Professor Max Parra Professor Pasquale Verdicchio Professor Meg Wesling 2016 Copyright Paulina Margarita Gonzales, 2016 All rights reserved. The dissertation of Paulina Margarita Gonzales is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2016 iii DEDICATION For my late grandfather, James Blake Moore, who taught me to read in English and Spanish. Continuing our conversations about language, literature, and history. iv EPIGRAPH “…the feeling was that we need to not only learn each other’s colonial languages, but also each other’s Native languages…” (Inés Hernández-Ávila and Stefan Varese) v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature page …………………………………………………………………………...iii Dedication ..………………………………………………………………………............iv Epigraph …...……………………………………………………………………………...v Table of Contents …………………………………………………………….…………..vi Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………….……………..vii Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………..viii Abstract of the Dissertation …..………………………………………………………….ix Introduction: “To The Library”……………...…………………………...……………….1 Chapter One: The Epic of American Civilizations: José Clemente Orozco’s Critique of Indigenismo …………………………………..…………………….……..........37 Chapter Two: “The First Step on the Othe Side”: Intellectual Mediation in Todd Downing’s The Mexican Earth…………………………………………..…… ..........83 Chapter Three: Escribiendo Patria (“Writing the Nation”): Andrés Henestrosa and Neza…………………………………………………………………………… ….........121 Chapter Four: Routes of Spirituality: Peyotism in the Works of John Joseph Mathews …………………………………………………………………………………..169 Coda: Modern Industrial Woman? A Critical Reflection on Mestizo/a-Indigenous Connections …………..……………………………………………………….217 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………224 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee members for their endless support and enthusiasm for my project. My appreciation and gratitude also go to the staff at the Biblioteca Henestrosa in Oaxaca City. I send many heartfelt thanks to my family, especially my husband John Newsome. Thank you for believing in me. vii VITA 2008 Bachelor of Arts, University of San Diego 2010 Master of Arts, Dartmouth College 2016 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Transindigenous Modernism: Literature of the Americas, 1929-1945 by Paulina Margarita Gonzales Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2016 Professor Gloria Chacón, Co-Chair Professor Michael Davidson, Co-Chair Transindigenous Modernism indigenizes the study of literary modernism. It applies the term indigenismo, generally defined as a discourse of assimilating Indigenous peoples in the Americas, to begin with the premise that settler nation-state consolidation and modernization were dependent on assimilating Indigenous peoples culturally and politically. Transindigenous Modernism questions the extent to which Indigenous peoples normalized indigenismo. Using a North-South methodology that brings together English- language and Spanish-language primary sources, theory, and literary criticism, ix Transindigenous Modernism interprets artistic and literary productions such as literary criticism, oral traditions, novels, and histories published by American Indian and Indigenous Mexican artists between 1929 and 1945. Through this approach, this dissertation seeks to recover and interpret Indigenous-to-Indigenous connections made through writing, (re)writing, and translation, which are often obscured or under-examined due to the dominance of nation-state paradigms to pursue literary studies. Transindigenous Modernism argues that these transindigenous connections attest to Indigenous peoples’ creative adaptations and contestations to settler nation-state consolidation (indigenismo) and their insistence on modern Indigenous, and tribal- specific, identities and futurities. Traveling intellectuals and writers such as Todd Downing (Choctaw), Andrés Henestrosa (Zapotec), and John Joseph Mathews (Osage), helped shape a North-South circuit of knowledge and cultural production that scholars are beginning to explore and appreciate. In order to capture the historical moment, chapter one examines the discourses of indigenismo and mestizaje in the Mexican, modern artist José Clemente Orozco’s writing and mural, The Epic of American Civilization , at Dartmouth College. Chapter two re-examines the themes explicated in chapter one through the lens of an American Indian narrator traveling south in Todd Downing’s The Mexican Earth . Chapters three and four examine Indigenous-to-Indigenous connections across time and space in the tribal-centric writings of Andrés Henestrosa and John Joseph Mathews. The epilogue explores further questions about mestizo/a-Indigenous connections. x Introduction: “To the library” I was surprised when the copy I requested of Andrés Henestrosa’s 1953 publication “El retrato de mi madre, ” 1 arrived with the following handwritten inscription: “A la Biblioteca de la Universidad de California en Berkeley. Respeto del Autor… (“To the Library at the University of California at Berkeley. Respect from the author…”). “To the library” sets into motion a whole series of associations. The inscription implies that the text was a gift to the library. But more than a gift, it was sent “to the library” because the author thought people should read it. The inscription connects back to the time Henestrosa was studying in the library at Berkeley, literally walking “to the library” during his first year as a Guggenheim fellow working to phonetize Zapotec and create a Zapotec-Spanish dictionary. The inscription also situates the library as a transnational space: Henestrosa, working in Mexico City, sends the book to Berkeley, California. Should this text be in the library’s special collections? How was it possible for a signed copy of a beautifully printed text to travel through the UC inter-library loan system from Berkeley to San Diego? My immediate assumption was that the text ought to be stored away and preserved; it was beautiful with its deckled edges and Garamond font. Experiencing first hand how the text, number 73 of 250 signed copies, has moved from Mexico City, to Berkeley, to San Diego, I soon realized that the inscription helps produce a different kind of knowledge about the text. The text became a touchstone for my work. Transindigenous Modernism began to cohere with Henestrosa’s dedication in my hands. I 1 “Retrato de mi madre” (“Photo of my mother”) is an excerpt from a letter he wrote in 1937 to the pianist Ruth Dworkin. He met her while studying in the U.S. as a Guggenheim fellow. 1 2 saw and continue to see Henestrosa’s text as a traveling cultural object whose form and content proposes a theory of transindigenous knowledge production and Indigenous presence through writing. Through its North-South circuit, it highlights the profound social and ethical dimensions that underpin our work as collectors and producers of knowledge to excavate and circulate rather than to close off and store away. Through a process of recovery and interpretation of texts produced in the early twentieth century, Transindigenous Modernism: Literature of the Americas, 1929-1945 seeks to excavate a modernist discourse generated by native and non-native writers and artists working within the U.S. and Mexico. Transindigenous modernism is defined as the aesthetic and intellectual expression by Indigenous peoples that contests modernization as another form of assimilation at the same time that it insists on claiming a modern indigeneity that draws its strength from Indigenous pasts to imagine an Indigenous present and future in the Americas. The post-revolutionary, inter-war period of the 1920s and 1930s brings this transindigenous modernist dynamic into sharp relief as it draws attention to a synchronous cultural and political climate of assimilationist policies and ideologies - indigenismo on both sides of the border. The texts under examination are in large part authored by American Indian and Indigenous Mexican intellectuals and artists and include murals, novels, recopilaciones (“writing and collection”) of oral traditions, and a growing body of nonfiction writing including criticism and histories. This diverse and multilingual body of work makes valuable contributions to the cultures of the Americas and through its complex negotiations with settler colonial cultures challenges the dominant indigenista perspective of seeing indigenous peoples as objects of research and bodies to assimilate. It is from the theoretical and aesthetic insights of this body of 3 work that Transindigenous Modernism proposes a modernism that can speak back to the assimilationist impulses of Latin-American and American modernism(o). Transindigeneity: Crossing Indigenista Borders Indigenous artists and intellectuals working in the early twentieth century moved between settler nation-states in the Americas, reinforcing Indigenous-to-Indigenous connections. My attention to American Indian and Indigenous Mexican artists and intellectuals seeks a North-South approach to interpreting these