Université de Montréal Representations of Curanderismo in Chicana/o Texts par Anna Julia Maszewska Départements de Littératures et de Langues du Monde Études Anglaises Faculté des Arts et des Sciences Thèse présentée à la Faculté des Arts et des Sciences en vue de l’obtention du grade de Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) Août, 2015 © Maszewska, 2015 Résumé Ma thèse porte sur les représentations de curanderismo dans Chicana/o textes. Une tradition de guérison, une vision du monde, un système de croyances et de pratiques d'origines diverses, curanderismo répond aux besoins médicaux, religieux, culturels, sociaux et politiques des Chicanas/os à la fois sur le plan individuel et communautaire. Dans mon analyse de textes littéraires (Bless Me, Ultima de Rudolfo Anaya, les poèmes sélectionnés de Pat Mora, The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea de Cherríe Moraga) et du cours académique sur curanderismo enseigné à l'Université du Nouveau-Mexique à Albuquerque, que j’approche comme un texte culturel, curanderismo reflète les façons complexes et souvent ambiguës de représenter Chicana/o recherche d'identité, d’affirmation de soi et d’émancipation, résultat d'une longue histoire de domination et de discrimination de Chicana/o aux Etats-Unis. Dans les textes que j’aborde dans ma thèse curanderismo assume le rôle d'une puissante métaphore qui réunit une variété de valeurs, attitudes, concepts et notions dans le but ultimede célébrer le potentiel de soi-même. Mots-clés: littérature Chicana/o, communautés Mexico-Américaines, la frontière Mexico-Américaine, représentation, curanderismo, identité, politique, académie, genre i Abstract My dissertation focuses on representations of curanderismo in Chicana/o texts. A healing tradition, a worldview, a system of beliefs and practices of diverse origins, curanderismo addresses medical, religious, cultural, social and political needs of the Mexican American people on both individual and communal level. In my discussion of literary texts (Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, Pat Mora’s selected poems, Cherrie Moraga’s play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea) and of the 2014 academic course on curanderismo at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, which I approach as a cultural text, curanderismo reflects complex, often ambiguous ways of representing Chicana/o search for self-identity, self-affirmation and self-empowerment, growing out of a long history of subjugation and discrimination. In the texts under analysis curanderismo assumes the role of a powerful metaphor of the possibility of bringing together a variety of values, attitudes, concepts and notions with the ultimate aim of celebrating the potential of the Chicana/o self. Keywords: Chicana/o literature, Mexican American communities, U.S.- Mexico borderland, representation, curanderismo, identity, gender, politics, academia ii Table of Contents Representations of Curanderismo in Chicana/o Texts ........................ ii Abstract ............................................................................................. ii Table of Contents .............................................................................. iii Acknowledgments ............................................................................. iv Introduction ....................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 ......................................................................................... 42 The Figure of the Curandera in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima Chapter 2 ......................................................................................... 91 The Woman “Who Casts Spells:” Pat Mora’s Art of Curanderismo Chapter 3 ....................................................................................... 126 Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea–A Queer Curandera’s Retelling of an Ancient Tragedy Chapter 4 ....................................................................................... 165 Curanderismo at the University. “Traditional Medicine Without Borders: Curanderismo in the Southwest and Mexico:” The 2014 Summer Course at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Conclusion ..................................................................................... 213 Works Cited ................................................................................... 227 Works Consulted ............................................................................ 235 iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Amaryll Chanady, for her generous support and encouragement while I was preparing my dissertation. I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with Professor Chanady. I would also like to thank my parents, my brother, and my friends for their love, faith in me and the inspiration they offered. iv Introduction In his essay “Shipwrecked in the Seas of Signification: Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación and Chicano Literature,” published in 1993, the same year a new annotated translation of the sixteenth century Spanish explorer’s text into English was brought out by Arte Publico Press, Juan Bruce-Novoa ponders the origins of Chicano literature. “To the question ’When did the Chicano literature begin?’ (a question that barely covers the a priori denial of our having any status among the established canons) we respond that it began about four centuries ago” (4), says Bruce-Novoa, as he sets out on the task of giving reasons for raising Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación, originally published in Spain in 1542, to the status of the text which “marks the beginning of Chicano literature” (4). Bruce-Novoa asks himself what Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative account means to Chicanos/as and what role it plays in the emerging Chicano/a literature, developing and looking for “fundamental” texts “cementing” its origins (4). An experienced literary critic, he is well aware of the fact that finding parallels between “the defining characteristics” of Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación and late twentieth-century Chicano/a literary texts, suggesting (after Don Luis Leal and others) that the sources of Chicano/a literature go back to colonial times, would render the works of Chicano/a writers more 1 firmly established and afford them the much needed “dignity in the politics of literature” (4). Ambiguity and displacement are the two terms which Bruce-Novoa finds particularly helpful in opening his discussion of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación. The very title of the chronicle was changed in 1749 by Andres Gonzales Barcia to Naufragios (‘shipwreck’), possibly with an intention to suggest its affinity with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1715) and, by doing so, to enhance its commercial success. The very name of the author, as well as the possibility of altering it through various abbreviations, have been creating problems for editors, literary historians and librarians, uncertain how to classify and where to “shelve” him. In the expedition, whose sponsors and members represented different, often opposing interests, Cabeza de Vaca’s own status was, Bruce-Novoa argues convincingly, highly unclear; he left the Spanish shore in the role of an observer, a witness, a chronicler whose “analytical position” (7) was always inseparable from the demands of official authority, his function of the treasurer of the voyage, a representative of the Holy Inquisition, a carrier of the spirit of conquest. Leading from the centrally located Imperial Court of Spain to the colonial margins of the Spanish Empire in America, Cabeza de Vaca’s life of continuous displacements, Bruce-Novoa writes, helped establish his position as “an enigma for Western thought” (6). Shipwrecked in 1528, together with Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, and Esteban de 2 Dorantes,1 Cabeza de Vaca spent the next eight years wandering through the territory of today’s American Southwest and northern Mexico. La Relación, translated into English as The Account,2 is a compelling and detailed narrative, one of the earliest Spanish chronicles documenting the lands, the people, the customs, and the languages of the New World3. Its form in itself escapes rigid categorization. Of hybrid nature, combining elements of “essay, narration, and exposition” (7), the chronicle was meant to provide material for those it was commissioned by to further analyze and interpret. It still seems to remain in the service of interpretative change. Bruce-Novoa discusses the significance of La Relación in terms of its representation of the new kind of manCabeza de Vaca became when transformed by his experiences in the New World. In the author of the chronicle, he sees “the protagonist of a fabulous adventure” turning into “a being whose essence is alterability” (11). Alterability makes it possible for Cabeza de Vaca and his companions to survive in the unknown and hostile 1 Esteban de Dorantes, otherwise known as Estebancio, was a Moroccan slave and one of the first Africans to join the Spanish expedition in the discovery of the Americas. Following the eight years of travelling on foot with Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and two other survivors, he became the most important guide in the Spanish conquest of the American Southwest and of today’s New Mexico in particular. 2 Martin A. Favata and José B. Fernández explain that their translation of Cabeza de Vaca’s LaRelación was “much needed” (19) as it provided significant information about the Americas as the 16th century Spanish conquistadors ‘discovered’ them, and that in the 1990s there was a lot of interest