Copyright by Alberto Varon 2012
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Copyright by Alberto Varon 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Alberto Varon Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Enacting Citizenship: A Literary Genealogy of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 Committee: John Morán González, Co-Supervisor Gretchen Murphy, Co-Supervisor Phillip J. Barrish Kirsten Silva Gruesz Domino R. Perez Enacting Citizenship: A Literary Genealogy of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 by Alberto Varon, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2012 Acknowledgements To begin, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my dissertation supervisors, John Morán González and Gretchen Murphy. John’s laser-like insight and vast knowledge of multiple literatures constantly urged me to think big. Gretchen’s historical and linguistic precision, her rigor, and most of all her care for me and the project pushed me to think more carefully about the texts and my writing than I thought possible. Together, John and Gretchen’s mentorship shaped and enabled this project; they are the models for the kind of scholar I hope to become. I would also like to thank my committee members, Phillip Barrish, Kirsten Silva Gruesz, and Domino Perez. Each has contributed in different but significant ways. Since I was an undergraduate, Phil has taught me to slow down and read more closely; Dr.P constantly reminds me about the people behind the books; and Kirsten’s insight has, at key moments, reshaped the project. Thank you. I am grateful to the Office of Graduate Studies, the Department of English and the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas, which provided the financial and research support that made possible the writing of the dissertation. Wayne Lesser and Elizabeth Cullingford have been steadfast advocates for graduate students. My graduate education was deeply influenced by folks associated with the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. Under the leadership of Nicolás Kanellos and directed by Carolina Villarroel, the Recovery Project encouraged me from the beginning. It was acceptance to a Recovery conference that prompted my return to graduate school. Thank you for your support. iv I have been extremely fortunate to have been taught, professionally and otherwise, by an amazing set of teachers and friends. CMAS, E3W, and the American Literatures Groups gave me an academic home while at UT. In both formal and informal venues, Martin Kevorkian, Coleman Hutchison, José Limón, Deb Paredes, Crystal Kurzen, Jeremy Dean, Emily Bloom, Yolanda Padilla, and countless others have inspired me to do what we do better. A special thank you to James Cox who, though not officially on my committee, provided invaluable feedback and mentorship throughout my graduate study. Thank you to the Native American literatures dissertation writing group– particularly Kirby Brown– through which much of the dissertation was written. The workshop profoundly shaped my understanding of nationhood. A special thank you to the current and former occupants of Calhoun hallway 335: Jon Lamb, Caroline Wigginton, Elizabeth Frye, and especially Lydia Wilmeth French, whose camaraderie was a steady source of motivation. Our regular conversations and commiserations helped remind me of what lies at the center of humanistic study. My wholehearted thanks to: Kathryn Hamilton Warren, whose friendship kept me connected; to Mark Goldberg, with whom I’ve been debating history from the beginning; and to Bill Orchard, whose four-letter word got me back in it. Collectively and individually, these people provided the community to make this project possible. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unwavering support during this process. My sincerest thanks go to my parents. Throughout my lifetime, my parents have encouraged my love of reading and learning, and without their support I would never have made it to where I am. I thank my children, Helena and Jacob, whose pure joy daily renews my sense of purpose, and most of all, to my partner v Rachel, who supports me in every imaginable way, and to whom I owe both past and future. You are the reason for all that I am and do. vi Enacting Citizenship: A Literary Genealogy of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 Alberto Varon, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: John Morán González and Gretchen Murphy At the conclusion of the U.S. Mexican War in 1848, Mexican Americans across the United States found their disjointed communities struggling to adapt to a newly acquired national status. My project argues that Mexican American literary manhood functioned as a representational strategy that instantiated a Mexican American national public and that sutured regional communities into a national whole. Within a transnational, multilingual archive, Mexican American manhood served as a means through which to articulate multiple forms of citizenship and competing cultural investments in U.S. and Mexican national projects. Between 1848 and the 1960s– that is, prior to the Chicano movement– USAmerican writers looked to Mexican American manhood for this purpose because it was inseparable from a rival sovereign state, revealed an inconsistent racial hierarchy, and troubled gendered ideals of the civil participation, yet simultaneously contained such contradictions. For Mexican American writers Manuel C. de Baca, Adolfo Carrillo, Maria Cristina Mena, Jovita González, Américo Paredes and José Antonio Villarreal, manhood offered a tactic for imagining participation in national citizenship, unhindered by institutional or legal impediments, although each represented Mexican American manhood in radically different ways. Conversely, authors vii Gertrude Atherton, Stephen Crane, and Jack London turned to Mexican American manhood as a powerful tool for disenfranchising or assimilating Mexican American communities from and into the U.S. nation. For these authors, Mexican American manhood was instrumental in the dissemination of narratives of American progress because it facilitated claims to continental and imperial expansion, reinforcing ideals of Anglo American manhood and masking claims to whiteness. Through analysis of prose fiction in both English and Spanish, my dissertation explicates the cultural creation of Mexican American literary manhood as a constitutive category of American manhood and as a textual strategy that positions Mexican Americans as national citizens. viii Table of Contents Introduction: Mexican American Literary Pasts and Futures..................................1 The Chicana/o Canon......................................................................................................4 National Manhoods....................................................................................................... 10 A New Chicana/o Literary History......................................................................... 19 A note on terminology:................................................................................................ 23 Citizen Outlaws: The Nation, Literary Banditry, and Mexican American Manhood ............................................................................................................................................... 25 Kings of Bandits: Joaquin Murieta and the Broader Chicano Bandit Tradition................................................................................................................. 30 Juan Nepomuceno Cortina: Cortina’s War to be Read................................... 37 Bandit Societies: Manuel Cabeza de Baca and Vicente Silva....................... 49 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 67 Adolfo Carrillo, Mexican American Masculinity, and Competing California Literary Histories .......................................................................................................... 68 The Making of the Fantasy Heritage...................................................................... 69 Gertrude Atherton’s California................................................................................ 78 A Biography of Exile ..................................................................................................... 88 Cultural Haunting and Historical Revision: Carrillo, the Spanish Mission Tradition, and the Limits of Mexico de Afuera....................................... 92 National Borders and Bodily Boundaries: Stephen Crane and Jack London’s Mexican American Manhood..................................................................................114 Stephen Crane’s Short Fiction and South/Western Frontier ...................121 Jack London’s “The Mexican” .................................................................................137 Mediating from the Margins: Alternative Manhoods in Jovita González and Raleigh’s Caballero and Américo Paredes’s George Washington Gomez153 Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero ...................................................157 Generic Mexican American Manhood.................................................................162 ix Caballero’s Alternative Manhoods .......................................................................170 Domestic Economies: Cross Gender Collaborative Manhood ..................177 Américo Paredes’s