Triptych Cultural Critique: Fray Angelico Chavez and Southwestern Critical Regionalism, 1939-2004 Melina Vizcaino-Aleman
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository American Studies ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 6-28-2010 Triptych Cultural Critique: Fray Angelico Chavez and Southwestern Critical Regionalism, 1939-2004 Melina Vizcaino-Aleman Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds Recommended Citation Vizcaino-Aleman, Melina. "Triptych Cultural Critique: Fray Angelico Chavez and Southwestern Critical Regionalism, 1939-2004." (2010). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds/42 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in American Studies ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TRIPTYCH CULTURAL CRITIQUE: FRAY ANGELICO CHAVEZ AND SOUTHWESTERN CRITICAL REGIONALISM, 1939-2004 BY MELINA VIZCAINO-ALEMAN B.A., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2001 M.A., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2003 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2010 DEDICATION To the memory of Dr. Hector Torres, whose undying spirit and critical insight inform the pages of this dissertation and inhabit the heart of my scholarship. For my family, whose love and devotion sustain me in my darkest hours. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people to thank for the completion of this dissertation, for one’s scholarship is never entirely her own. First and foremost, I thank Fray Angélico Chávez for the seven decades of research, writing, and service that made this dissertation possible. Secondly, I thank my committee members. Professor Gabriel Meléndez, my committee chair, has provided me with an immeasurable amount of support over the past ten years, and he has seen me grow from an undergraduate student to the scholar I am today. Thank you also to Professor Felipe Gonzales, whose close readings kept me sharp and attentive to the social histories that inform New Mexican writing. Professor Alex Lubin furnished me with the discourses of critical race studies and helped me expand my sense of the Southwest. Many thanks also to Professor Rebecca Schreiber, whose seminars in visual culture informed my readings of art and literature, and whose office door was always open when I needed to talk through my ideas. Special thanks also to Tomas Jaehn at the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library; Brother Allan Schmitz, O.F.M., and Ron Cooper at the Franciscan Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio; and Geoffrey Starks in Special Collections at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. I am especially thankful for the two-year fellowship Dr. Tobías Durán at the Center for Southwest Research granted me in support of the completion of my writing. Finally, thank you to my partner in life, literature, and love, and to our kids. iv TRIPTYCH CULTURAL CRITIQUE: FRAY ANGELICO CHAVEZ AND SOUTHWESTERN CRITICAL REGIONALISM, 1939-2004 BY MELINA VIZCAINO-ALEMAN ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2010 TRIPTYCH CULTURAL CRITIQUE: FRAY ANGELICO CHAVEZ AND SOUTHWESTERN CRITICAL REGIONALISM, 1939-2004 Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán B.A. American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2001 M.A. American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2003 Ph.D. American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2010 ABSTRACT Fray Angélico Chávez was a Franciscan priest and man of letters whose published writings span most of the twentieth century. He was born in Wagon Mound, New Mexico on April 10, 1910, and he entered the Saint Francis Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1924. In 1937, he returned to Santa Fe and was ordained a Franciscan priest in the St. Francis Cathedral. By this time, he was a well-known Catholic poet, and in 1939 the Writer’s Edition, a local publishing venue, published his first book of poetry, Clothed With the Sun. Fray Angélico passed away in 1996, the same year in which the Palace of the Governors opened its doors to the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library in Santa Fe. In 2001, the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project published his Cantáres: Canticles and Songs of Youth, 1929-1935, a posthumous collection of poetry that Fray Angélico wrote as a seminarian in the Midwest. Three years later and eight years after his death, his nephew Thomas Chávez completed and published Wake for a Fat Vicar, a biography of the nineteenth-century New Mexican priest Father Juan Felipe Ortiz of Santa Fe. vi As the history of his published writings and the library dedicated to his name demonstrate, Fray Angélico Chávez is a well-known New Mexican writer. Yet, this dissertation argues that his Franciscanism widens the regional scope of his writing. Indeed, the Franciscans are tied to the Southwest historically and religiously, but the Franciscan Order is an American institution centered in Ohio, and Fray Angélico became a Franciscan outside of his regional homeland. He was a Catholic poet before he was a Southwestern writer, and his poetry was an extension of his religious personality. Thus, I argue Fray Angélico’s Franciscanism fosters a mode of Southwestern critical regionalism in his writing. The dissertation is a critical biography of Fray Angélico’s writing, and it uses religion as a critical lens for understanding his work in relation to a host of other Southwestern regional writers, both Anglo and Mexican American. The main objective of this dissertation is to build and apply a comparative methodology that I call “triptych cultural critique” to understand better the different modes of regional writing about the Southwest. Fray Angélico utilized the triptych in his artwork and creative writings, so it is an aesthetic that is particular to his Franciscan personality. However, triptych cultural critique is a useful tool for anyone interested in New Mexican history, Southwestern or U.S. Hispanic literature, and Chicana/o cultural production. Fray Angélico’s work dialogues with Anglo Southwestern and Chicana/o literary canons in ways that redefine them, and so he is central to this dissertation and its focus on comparative regionalisms. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: FRAY ANGELICO CHAVEZ AS A CENTRAL CATEGORY OF STUDY…………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER ONE: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY AND TRIPTYCH CULTURAL CRITIQUE…………………………………………………………………….8 Background: How Manuel Ezequiel Became Fray Angélico…………………..8 Fray Angélico’s Triptychs: From Religious Art to Critical Paradigm………...14 Triptych Cultural Critique: The Anglo and Chicana/o Southwest, Two Adjacent Panels…………………………………………………………..22 Southwestern Critical Regionalism: The Study’s Central Panel………………30 Coda: Fray Angélico’s Southwestern Critical Regionalism…………………...37 CHAPTER TWO: THE REGIONAL POETICS OF JOHN GOULD FLETCHER, FRAY ANGELICO CHAVEZ, AND AMERICO PAREDES.....................46 Panel One: Fletcher’s Regionalism and Fray Angélico’s Early Formation……49 Southwestern Critical Regionalism: Fray Angélico’s The Virgin of Port Lligat………………………………………………………..65 A Third Panel: Paredes’ Precocious Poetry and Regional Modernism…………72 CHAPTER THREE: FOLK RELIGIONS AND THE ETHNOGRAPHIC FICTION OF ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON, FRAY ANGELICO, AND JOVITA GONZALEZ…………………………………………………………………….84 Panel One: Alice Corbin Henderson and Southwestern Regionalism…………...87 Panel Two: Fray Angélico’s Critical Regional Fiction………………………….96 viii Third Panel: The Double-Sided Regionalism of Jovita González’s Ethnography…………………………………………………………………….109 CHAPTER FOUR: RECONFIGURING NUCLEAR NEW MEXICO IN FABIOLA CABEZA DE BACA, FRAY ANGELICO, AND HANIEL LONG…………………………………………………………………………122 Preserving the Present Past: Cabeza de Baca’s We Fed Them Cactus………...125 Mediating the Past Present: Fray Angélico’s La Conquistadora………………137 Haniel Long and Regional Modernism: The Case of Malinche………………..150 CHAPTER FIVE: FROM CRITICAL REGIONALISM TO REGIONAL NATIONALISM: FRAY ANGELICO’S HISTORICAL RECOVERY, 1959-1985………………………………………………………………………164 Three Regional Modalities, One Theory: Fray Angélico’s Pueblo Revolt, 1959-1967………………………………………………………………………168 A Tri-Cultural Allegory: Fray Angélico’s My Penitente Land, 1971-1975……179 Fray Angélico’s Auto-Biographies and the Politics of Religion, 1981-1985…..188 EPILOGUE: CULTURAL WARFARE, RELIGIOUS REPRESENTATION, AND THE POSTMODERN SIGNIFICANCE OF SANTA FE’S MARIAN IMAGES……………………………………………………………………….202 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………..214 ix 1 Introduction: Fray Angélico Chávez as a Central Category of Study Introducing Fray Angélico Chávez, New Mexico’s prolific poet-priest and “Renaissance Man,” is a difficult task because his published work spans most of the twentieth century. His first published book, Clothed With the Sun (1939), is a collection of poetry, and his last book, Wake for a Fat Vicar (2004), is a biography of Father Juan Felipe Ortiz of Santa Fe published posthumously and co-authored with his nephew, Thomas Chávez. Coinciding with the year of Fray Angélico’s passing in 1996, the state of New Mexico opened the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, a building connected to the Palace of the Governors in what used to be Santa Fe’s first library built in 1851 in a quaint but Romanesque Style.1 In the 1930s, John Gaw Meem remodeled the building in the Territorial Revival Style, and in the mid-1980s