Exiles, Migrants, Settlers, and
Natives:
Literary Representations of Chicano/as
and Mexicans in the Midwest
by
Theresa Delgadillo
University of California - Los Angeles
Occasional Paper No. 64
August 1999
Abstract:
Since the Chicano/a cultural renaissance of the 1960's and
1970's, the Midwestern United States has emerged as a geographical
reality in Chicano/a literature, sometimes merely as a common
destination for Chicano/as seeking work, but more and more often
as a site of vibrant Chicano/a communities. This paper examines
the divergent perspectives and attitudes in this literature toward
the Midwest, and toward Chicano/as and Mexicans who have made
their homes there. The first section examines texts by Pat Mora,
Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and Wendell Mayo, focusing on the ways
in which these texts offer the Southwest as the true Chicano/a
homeland and suggest that the experience of Chicano/as in the
Midwest is one of exile and isolation. The second part of this
paper discusses texts by Tomás Rivera, Ana Castillo, Sandra
Cisneros, and Hugo Martínez-Serros, and explores representations
of transnational and heterogenous communities of Chicano/as and
Mexicans in the Midwest. This analysis reveals the limitations
of a conception of Aztlán narrowly associated with the
Southwest, and suggests that the complexities of Chicano/a identity
demand greater attention to the diversity of regions in which
Chicano/as live and work.
About the Author: Theresa Delgadillo
Theresa Delgadillo is a doctoral candidate in the Department
of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Familiar
with both regions she discusses in this paper, Delgadillo grew
up in Wisconsin and has lived in the Southwest for 10 years.
She has published essays in Studies in American Indian Literatures
and Modern Fiction Studies. She earned a M.F.A. in Creative Writing
from Arizona State University. Her short stories appear in the
collection Southwestern Women: New Voices and VOCES: A Journal
of Chicana/Latina Studies. Currently she is working on her dissertation,
titled "Hybrid Spiritualities: Resistance and Religious
Faith in Contemporary Chicano/a Cultural Production."
SUGGESTED CITATION
Delgadillo, Theresa. "Exiles, Migrants, Settlers, and Natives:
Literary Representations of Chicano/as and Mexicans in the Midwest."
JSRI Occasional Paper #64. The Julian Samora Research Institute,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1999.
Table Of Contents
- Introduction
- The Midwest Versus the Southwest
- Conclusions
- References
- Endnotes
Introduction
Since the Chicano/a cultural renaissance of the 1960's and
1970's, the Midwestern United States has emerged as a geographical
reality in Chicano/a literature, sometimes merely as a common
destination for Chicano/as seeking work, but more and more often
as a site of vibrant Chicano/a communities. This paper examines
the divergent perspectives and attitudes in this literature toward
the Midwest, and toward Chicano/as and Mexicans who have made
their homes there. Literature often explores the intersection
between place and identity, but the case of contemporary Chicano/a
literature presents a unique situation because this body of work
arises simultaneously with the articulation of a Chicano/a identity
almost exclusively associated with the Southwest and often encapsulated
in the term Aztlán.
A conception that grew out of the Chicano/a Movement, Aztlán
has alternately been described as an actual place (the U.S. Southwest),
a cultural umbrella uniting all Chicano/as, and a spiritual state
or "something that is carried within the heart" (Leal,
1989). "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán," which
was written in 1969 and became a founding document of the Chicano/a
Movement, expresses all three positions. Its program of action
asserts that "land rightfully ours will be fought for and
defended" (Anaya and Lomelí, 2). The 60's and 70's
claim to the Southwest as the original Chicano/a homeland, territory
traditionally inhabited by Indian and Mexican peoples was, and
remains, a key historical and political argument against efforts
to relegate Chicano/as to the status of outsiders or unwelcome
immigrants. Unfortunately, however, the Chicano/a nationalism
that fueled and was fueled by the movement of resistance to marginalization
often also tended to exaggerate cultural homogeneity and to enshrine
the Southwest as the sole site of Chicano/a unity.
Several of the texts I will examine pursue a vision of Chicano/a
identity inextricably linked to the Southwest. Obviously, such
a perspective is rooted in the experience of the large portion
of the Chicano/a population that makes its home in the Southwest.
But in these texts, the recognition of a Southwestern-based Chicano/a
identity takes place against the backdrop of the Midwest. They
suggest that Chicano/as and Mexicans in the Midwest are lost,
not because they are no longer in Mexico - a condition that Chicano/as
and Mexicans in both the Midwest and Southwest share - but because
they live far from the Southwest. These texts thereby imply that
Chicano/as have an authentic home only in the Southwest, often
equating the Midwest with exile, isolation, alienation, and assimilation.
Daniel Cooper Alarcón argues in The Aztec Palimpsest (1997)
that recent work by Chicano/a scholars has expanded and complicated
our understanding of heterogeneity in Chicano/a cultural identity.
In contrast to the unitary view of Chicano/a life and culture
that the nationalism of the 60's and 70's offered, he urges a
"critical paradigm for Chicano/a cultural identity that
can accommodate intracultural differences." Cooper Alarcón
analyzes the "construction and representation of cultural
identity" by conceptualizing it as a palimpsest, that is:
a site where texts have been superimposed onto others in
an attempt to displace earlier or competing histories. Significantly,
such displacement is never total; the suppressed material often
remains legible, however faintly, challenging the dominant text
with an alternate version of events (xiv).
He addresses a number of issues related to Chicano/a identity
that ideas of Aztlán have concealed rather than clarified.
For example, Cooper Alarcón notes within the field of
Chicano/a Studies, a "tendency to focus on the Southwest,
minimizing the attention paid to Chicano/as who live in other
geographic regions," as well as a lack of attention to "the
ongoing dialectic between Chicano/a and Mexican culture(s) and
the effects on those culture(s) of continued Mexican emigration
to the United States." In the analysis that follows, I will
examine the ways in which both of these issues surface in the
representations offered by contemporary Chicano/a literature.
Texts that stress the primacy of the Southwest as Chicano/a
homeland also tend toward a preoccupation with cultural objects
rather than relations, and exhibit a nostalgia for an ideal and
unified community. These representations, however, are increasingly
challenged by Chicano/a texts that suggest that Chicano/as have
multiple origins, forge transnational identities, and belong
to heterogeneous communities. As Frederick Buell notes in his
article "Nationalist Postnationalism: Globalist Discourse
in Contemporary American Culture" (1998), this is not always
a positive phenomenon. Midwestern Chicano/a and Mexican characters
are both victims and agents in the globalization of capitalist
economic mechanisms that spur migration, destroy and reconstitute
communities, and create greater interethnic contact and exchange.
As the literature demonstrates, this process has a long history.
To the degree that they imaginatively challenge the boundaries
of a fixed identity, these literary representations engage populations
and cultures in motion and break down monolithic constructions
of Chicano/a identity or community.
Introduction | The Midwest Versus the
Southwest | Conclusions
| References | Endnotes
The Midwest
Versus the Southwest
In the collection titled Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the
Middle (1993), Pat Mora writes of her relocation to Ohio from
Texas in 1989, her travels throughout the world, and her own
sense of being between different cultures, experiences, and communities.
Mora's essays attempt to subvert the familiar notion of the Midwest
as the center of the U.S. by insisting that her life in El Paso,
her experience as a Latina, and her travels throughout the world
place her at a truer center. It is a challenging argument that
certainly rings truer than geographical explanations of center,
but one that is partially undercut by her own investment in a
sentimental view of the Southwest.
Two of her essays, "Bienvenidos" and "The Border,"
contrast the Midwest and Southwest. In "The Border,"
she stages a counter-invasion:
I brought cassettes of Mexican and Latin American music with
us when we drove to Ohio. I'd roll the car window down and turn
the volume up, taking a certain delight in sending such sounds
like mischievous imps across fields and into trees (12).
One cannot help but appreciate Mora's gesture in releasing
Mexican sounds into the Midwestern landscape. The text, however,
does not acknowledge that they may already have been there. Sociologist
Julian Samora and historian Zaragosa Vargas, among others, have
described the many ways in which significant numbers of Mexicans
and Chicano/as, who began settling in the Midwest in the early
20th Century, both brought a unique culture with them and were
transformed by intercultural interactions in their new homes.
Yet, this brief migration narrative suggests no recognition of
the Mexicans and Chicano/as who for nearly 100 years have traveled
to and settled in the Midwest, and continue to do so.1
Nor does the text describe encounters with this population in
the writer's daily life. One exception occurs in a Cincinnati
restaurant where Mora overhears a conversation in Spanish that
prompts a longing for return to Texas, where Spanish pervades
daily life. Has the writer been privy to an exchange between
fellow diners? Between restaurant employees? Are the speakers
even Latina/os? The reader is not informed, but remains curious
about the writer's "consumption" of Spanish in this
setting. If indeed the speakers are Latina/o, this incidental
event provides the only mention of their presence in the Midwest;
yet, it serves as pointed contrast to a description of a return
visit to Texas:
I stopped to hear a group of mariachis playing their instruments
with proud gusto. I was surprised and probably embarrassed when
my eyes filled with tears not only at the music, but at the sight
of wonderful Mexican faces. The musicians were playing for some
senior citizens. The sight of brown, knowing eyes that quickly
accepted me with a smile, the stories in those eyes and in the
wrinkled faces were more delicious than any fajitas or flan (13).
The emphasis on acceptance suggests that Mora has encountered
some discriminatory rejection or exclusion in the Midwest, an
injury which is healed by return to Texas. This scene reinscribes
the Southwest as the site of Chicano/a unity - the brown-faced
musicians playing for the elderly and offering smiles of acceptance
present a harmonious picture.
These essays do, however, occasionally resist the temptation
to idealize a place the writer understandably misses - her hometown.
For example, "The Border" concludes with this observation:
The culture of the border illustrates this truth daily, glaringly.
Children go to sleep hungry and stare at stores filled with toys
they'll never touch, with books they'll never read. Oddly, I
miss that clear view of the difference between my comfortable
life and the lives of so many... between my insulated, economically
privileged life and the life of most of my fellow humans (14).
Viewing the economic contrasts of the border reminds Mora
of the condition of the world, a reminder she misses in the Midwest.
Yet, by placing this "glaring truth" at the "border,"
the text preserves "Texas" as the site of self-knowledge,
while the Midwest remains a place of exile. This three part division
of space - the Midwest, Texas, the border - corresponds well
to Manuel Hernández-Gutiérrez's critical framework
for examining identity formation in some Chicano/a literature.2
The sense of isolation expressed in these pages is undoubtedly
due in part, to the lack of opportunity for contact between a
university-trained professional and the largely working-class
population of Mexicans and Chicano/as in the Midwest. In this
case, the text's Southwestern perspective occludes a view of
others and prevents an appreciation of the socio-economic factors
that might impinge on this perception, although elsewhere these
essays forthrightly acknowledge privilege. The title of at least
one Midwestern literature anthology takes on the task of correcting
the misconception that Mora's text inadvertently perpetuates:
a community-generated publication, Mireles' I Didn't Know There
Were Latinos in Wisconsin: An Anthology of Hispanic Poetry (1989),
includes the work of 19 poets.
In Alicia Gaspar de Alba's Mystery of Survival and Other Stories
(1993), two stories emphasize metaphoric and literal return to
the Southwest to combat a Midwest-inspired alienation or identity
crisis. In one of these, "The Pi§ata Dream," the
protagonist is Mary, a young Chicana enrolled in a writing program
at an Iowa university who experiences writer's block. Through
dream analysis, Mary remembers her childhood on the border, when
Mexico was just over the bridge, and discovers that she must
re-knit her connection to Mexico and her Mexican heritage. Her
new sense of self, made manifest in her adoption of the name
"Xochitl," helps her to begin writing again. The Southwest
therefore embodies the conception of cultural balance that Xochitl
embraces, suggesting that the further north one is from the Mexican
border, the further away one is from being Mexican.
The latter point is underscored by Mary's observation of a Mexican
Independence Day celebration in Iowa. The description of an event
organized by a Chicano/a community in Iowa would seem to suggest
an acceptance of a Chicano/a identity not linked exclusively
to the Southwest. However, although Mary attends this event,
she feels no connection to the people there. While Mary's thoughts
suggest that "Midwestern Mexican Americans" might be
different from other Chicano/as, her description of the event
suggests that the difference is not salutary:
I was more than a little surprised to see Old Glory hanging
next to the Mexican flag there in the 4-H Club, and when they
opened the festivities with the 'The Star-Spangled Banner' instead
of the Mexican national anthem (which they played after 'The
Star-Spangled Banner'), I knew it wasn't the kind of Independencia
fiesta that the people of Juárez would've understood (56).
Mary doesn't identify with the people at this event, but she
does connect to an object, a star-shaped pi§ata. As she
tells it, such pi§atas are no longer made in Juárez,
but are known to her through her grandfather's stories of his
childhood. The pi§ata, therefore, becomes a "beautiful"
and "special" object that links Mary to her Mexican
past. As in this brief excerpt, the text repeatedly invokes Juárez
as representative of an "authentic Mexicanness." The
sight of this pi§ata, coupled with Mary's recurring pi§ata
dream, eventually leads to Mary/Xochitl's cultural awakening;
however, that epiphany occurs not through identification or solidarity
with Midwestern Chicano/as, but through the establishment of
distance from them. The newly liberated Xochitl remembers previously
suppressed events from her Chicano/a childhood in El Paso, including
the cruel methods by which she was forced to learn the Pledge
of Allegiance. This memory markedly contrasts with the scene
of Iowa Chicano/as voluntarily singing the anthem of the United
States, and singing it before the anthem of Mexico. The text
leads to the conclusion that the Iowa Chicano/as are not, like
Xochitl, balanced and aware, but assimilated and unaware of their
own indoctrination.
In Wendell Mayo's collection of stories Centaur of the North
(1996), the issue of belonging resonates on many levels - from
the broad subject of social and familial configurations to the
particular proposition that a Chicana may feel especially alien
in the Midwestern United States. The textual emphasis on the
latter often, though not always, obscures the larger issues,
including the role of patriarchy and gender paradigms in creating
a character's estrangement.
In Mayo's "The Stone Kitchen," the son of an Anglo
father and a Chicana mother reflects on his childhood memories
of his mother, Silvia. When he was 10, the family moved from
Corpus Christi, Texas, a place of "warmth within warmth
that felt like family," to a suburb north of Chicago. In
Illinois, Silvia grows distant. While she talks with her mother
in Corpus Christi for hours on the phone, in Spanish, she has
few words for her son. When he asks her about who she is, she
makes up stories about growing up in Guatemala, Italy, Vermont,
and China. In an apparent attempt to recreate home, Silvia crams
her kitchen with stone pots shipped to her from Texas. She adorns
her windows with garlic and jalape§os and collects so many
tins of beans so that the boy comes to see the kitchen as "something
strange and fantastic," a feeling heightened by the kinds
of food Silvia cooks in that kitchen: "tortillas, heart,
tongue, tripas, huevos - and other combinations - heart and pintos,
tongue and pintos, tripas and pintos." This description
suggests that both the place of the kitchen and the figure of
his mother embody the family's heart, language, and soul; yet
that intimate center remains inaccessible to the narrator/son.
Silvia has retreated from her family into her own personal sanctuary.
The relocation to Chicago has strained family relations. Although
Silvia tries hard to recreate her Texas environment, she fails
to accomplish this to the degree necessary for her also to be
able to speak her history and her life.3 She becomes stone.
While the above texts construe the Midwest as inherently alienating
and emotionally damaging for Chicano/as and Mexicans, they shy
away from addressing the dynamics of class that separate their
protagonists from Chicano/a and Latina/o communities. Instead,
they ascribe the isolation and alienation of their characters
to their separation from the Southwest. It is not surprising
to turn to another set of literary representations of Chicano/as
in the Midwest featuring primarily working-class characters and
find a radically different view of both the Southwest and the
Midwest. In contrast to representations of the Southwest as more
authentically Mexican or Chicano/a in comparison to the Midwest,
Tomás Rivera's ...y no se lo tragó la tierra (1971)
claims both regions as Chicano/a homelands. The novel is set
in the Midwest - Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin - as well as
the Southwest, primarily Texas.
Rivera's text takes exception to the myth of the Midwest as a
pastoral, idyllic space in the chapter, "Es que duele."
In this story, the protagonist/narrator, a young boy attending
school in an Anglo-dominated Midwestern town, faces first the
racial insults, then the racist violence of an Anglo student.
The narrator is so shaken by these events that he cannot clearly
remember what happened: "Ya no recuerdo cómo ni cuando
le pegué pero sé que sí porque le avisaron
a la principal que nos estábamos peleando en el escusado."
Despite the fact that he was there, he tells us that he only
knows he hit the other boy because the janitor had reported it
to the principal.
Expelled from school and fearful of admitting this to his family,
the boy stops in a cemetery on the way home. Unlike the Texas
cemetery he knows, he thinks the Midwestern one is "puro
zacatito y árboles," so pretty that he imagines people
don't even cry when they bury their loved ones here. The site
is perhaps symbolic of the fertile promise of the U.S. heartland,
but in this case, the fecundity is fed by death. The cemetery
becomes a bucolic refuge for the protagonist/narrator, but a
false one - for to remain in the cemetery, to want the ideal
escape, signals death. This text presents a complicated challenge
to the view that pervades much American literature - that one
can remake oneself in a new land - by contrasting that desire
with the limitations imposed on the boy because of his race and
class. The cemetery scene suggests both the problem of upward
mobility and the danger of idealizing any place.
The latter point emerges more sharply if we consider chapters
of ...y no se lo tragó la tierra set in the Southwest,
a region which does not necessarily provide safety and refuge
for Chicano/as, either, despite our numbers and longstanding
presence there. Chicano/as also face racism, discrimination,
and poor working conditions in the Southwest. In "La noche
buena," do§a María, who suffers from agoraphobia,
ventures out into the small Texas town to purchase Christmas
toys for her children. Once in a store, do§a María
panics and inadvertently leaves without paying for the merchandise.
She is accosted by a store security guard, who complains "these
damn people, always stealing something," and then she is
either thrown or falls to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably
at the sight of the guard's gun before being taken to jail. Afterwards,
do§a María, like the boy of "Es que duele,"
cannot clearly recall the sequence of events.
The unquestioned domination of Anglos in both the Midwest and
Texas leads to uncertainty, doubt, shame, and humiliation for
these Mexican characters. In another chapter set in the Southwest,
"Los ni§os no se aguantaron," a young boy is murdered
by an Anglo boss on a very hot day for making too many trips
to the water tank at the edge of the fields. The refusal to idealize
the Southwest or Chicano/a communities in the Southwest is further
underscored in "El retrato," where returning migrant
workers are swindled out of their money and family photos by
home-grown con artists from San Antonio.
In Rivera's novel, Chicano/a characters in both the Midwest and
Southwest struggle, often unsuccessfully, against hegemonic ideologies.
Sometimes their "home" points of reference are Texas,
but sometimes, as in "La noche buena," they are Mexico
or the Midwest. At least one speaker in the chapter titled "Cuando
lleguemos" insists he will join his uncle in Minneapolis
and work in a hotel rather than return to Texas. This assertion
reminds us of the history of Chicano/as and Mexicans in the Midwest;
as Zaragosa Vargas notes in Proletarians of the North, St. Paul,
Chicago, Gary, and Detroit were sites of Chicano/a settlement
during the first quarter of the century.
While the struggles of Chicano/as across geographic regions may
be more alike than different, the canonized version of ...y no
se lo tragó la tierra suggests that the resolution of
those struggles can occur only in the Southwest. Many of the
chapters in which the protagonist/narrator gains insights about
himself in relation to a broader community or prevailing knowledge
take place in the Southwest, including the final, unifying chapter.
The emphasis on a Southwestern homeland contained in the established
version of Rivera's novel, however, appears to diverge from the
author's original vision. Julian Olivares notes that four stories
were omitted from the published version of ...y no se lo tragó
la tierra, but by whose decision remains unclear. Olivares suggests
that the decision rested with Rivera, but he also quotes Rivera
expressing the view that he "conceded" to the editors'
desire to exclude "El Pete Fonseca," one of the four
stories in question, against his own preferred inclusion of it.
Olivares further suggests that one reason for this particular
exclusion was Rivera's departure from the norm in creating the
character of Pete Fonseca:
This representation of Pete Fonseca did not conform to the
romanticized portrayal of the pachuco as the rebellious Chicano
hero that was appearing in this formative period of Chicano literature
(75).
Another of the excluded stories suggests that Chicano/as might
have a homeland outside of the Southwest and that they may succeed
in knowing and asserting themselves in the struggle against domination
in places other than the Southwest. I refer to "Zoo Island,"
currently included in The Harvest, a collection of Rivera's posthumously
published stories. In "Zoo Island," Chicano/a and Mexicano
migrant workers and families take a census and erect a town sign,
establishing a community in the Iowa migrant camp where they
live. As Olivares explains:
It is important to note that "Zoo Island" is not
a self-disparaging name; it is a transparent sign through which
two societies look at each other. From their perspective outside
this new town, the Anglo onlookers will perceive the sign as
marking the town's inhabitants as monkeys; but they will fail
to note that, with the sign, the Chicanos have ironically marked
the Anglos. From within the town, the inhabitants see the spectators
as inhumane. "Zoo Island" is a sign both of community
and protest ("Introduction" 79-80).
Rivera's intention that "Zoo Island" forms part
of the novel ...y no se lo tragó la tierra is not unimportant.
Without it, as Eliud Martinez notes, the novel's characters are
often "victims of circumstances... helpless." "Zoo
Island" is the only story of the original novel that portrays
community members acting in unison to define themselves against
Anglo attempts to dehumanize them, and it occurs in the Midwest.
Its inclusion in the novel would significantly alter the textual
emphasis on the powerlessness and confusion of migrant workers,
endowing them with greater agency - which in the current published
version emerges only among a few characters and only in the Southwest.
"Zoo Island" situates a Chicano/a and Mexican community
coming to consciousness outside of the Southwest.
Several texts that address or include the Midwest in the range
of Chicano/a experience present Mexico not the Southwest as homeland,
while others make no reference to any place other than the Midwest
itself. Longstanding patterns of migration from Mexico directly
to the Midwest, bypassing the Southwest, or via brief stays in
Texas, have undoubtedly given rise to representations of Chicano/as
in the Midwest. During the 1920's, "Mexico was the primary
source of foreign immigration to the United States" (Vargas,
1993). Northern industries employed labor agents throughout Texas
to recruit Mexican workers, and family or village networks soon
became informal avenues for facilitating migration and securing
employment (Vargas, 1993). Most importantly, Vargas argues that
incorporation into the industrial working class and urbanization
profoundly transformed Mexican and Chicano/a workers in the Midwest
by creating an "industrial lifestyle," and bringing
them into greater contact with Blacks and ethnic Whites. These
features of life for Mexican and Chicano/a populations in the
Midwest appear not only in the fiction of Rivera, but in the
work of Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Hugo Martínez-Serros.
Historian F. Arturo Rosales notes that in the early 20th Century
many Mexicans arriving at the border from places such as Jalisco,
Guanajuato, Michoacán, Aguascalientes, and Zacatecas readily
accepted employment offers in cities like Chicago and Kansas
City. The demands of the First World War and industrialization
brought greater numbers of Mexicans to the Midwest. Rosales maintains
that this generation's allegiance to Mexico led them to see themselves
as el México de afuera.
In his study of mutual aid societies among Mexicans in the U.S.,
Jose Amaro Hernandez records the extent to which these groups
participated in political battles in this country, attempting
to protect and advance their interests and civil rights. Hernandez
sees the numerous mutual aid societies that appeared in the Chicago-Gary
area and in California as groups that provided valuable services
and became the forerunners of the Chicano/a struggle for civil
rights. In the 60's and 70's, Rosales argues, the Chicano/a Movement
benefited from both perspectives - identifying with Mexico culturally
while retaining a commitment to U.S. citizenship and rights.
This history reveals diverse Chicano/a communities, some who
more readily identify with Mexico than with the Southwestern
U.S. Patterns of migration from Mexico directly to the Midwest
continue. A 1997 article by Marc Cooper in The Nation reports
that, in what has become an industry pattern, Mexican and Central
American workers now make up a third of the workforce at Iowa
Beef Processors in Storm Lake, Iowa.
A rich vein of Chicano/a literature has emerged from this transnational
experience in the Midwest. Ana Castillo's short story collection,
Loverboys (1996), contains several stories that explore in unique
ways the experiences of Chicano/as in the Midwest. In "Christmas
Story of the Golden Cockroach," Rosa, Paco, and their children
live in a brick house that Paco's father left him "as legacy
of the thirty-some-odd years he spent in Chicago working to support
his family 'back home.'" The house, as the narrator describes
it, sits "in the middle of what now looks like the vestiges
of a once-thriving area before the steel mills closed down and
left the majority of its residents without means for a livelihood."
This description suggests East Chicago, where a World War I bachelor
community of Chicano/as and Mexicans in the steel industry soon
grew to include women and children (Samora and Lamanna, 1967).
Though Paco inherits the house from his father, Paco and Rosa
"grew up, fell in love, and were married" in the small
Mexican coastal village to which they plan to return for a Christmas
break. Their vacation travel consists of a three-day drive in
a "pickup-turned-camper" loaded with four children,
several other relatives, clothes, and appliances. Not everyone
returns to Mexico for the holidays. The text mentions the neighborhood
posadas that will occur while Paco and Rosa are away, suggesting
that they belong to a community with a claim to both places.
This brief sketch of the family's history reveals that while
Paco's father labored in industrial Chicago, his children and
wife largely (though not necessarily completely) remained in
Mexico. The father retires to Mexico when the steel mill closes,
but Paco replaces him in Chicago. Paco brings his family, but
the employment available to the previous generation is no longer
available to him. Instead, along with the narrator's husband,
Paco is a laid-off welder, trying to provide for himself and
his family with a small, at-home auto body shop.
Paco, like his father before him, travels readily if not always
comfortably between the United States and Mexico. That makes
him part of a transnational community forced to relocate, like
the characters in Rivera's novel, wherever there is work - except
in this case traveling between two countries. The golden cockroach
Paco's father brings with him to the U.S. and the appliances
and other items both he and Paco take back to Mexico represent
a process of transculturation engendered by economic shifts.4
Castillo's story cleverly rewrites the myth of American streets
of gold, turning acculturation into transculturation: Paco's
father did not find gold in the U.S., but brought it with him
in the form of his labor. Paco's father engaged in a complex
transcultural process whereby he both left his mark on U.S. industrial
society and was, in turn, marked by it. Unlike previous generations
of immigrants who succeeded in fighting for decent jobs and sometimes
provided each other with mutual assistance, in the new and harsher
economy nobody knows the true worth of the golden cockroach,
which signals the devaluation of the Mexican laborer's role in
the industrial economy.
Although economic opportunity is of paramount importance in determining
their family's choices, Paco's and Rosa's decisions are also
influenced by family and community networks of support in Mexico
and Chicago. Like Rivera's novel, this text, as well as those
by Cisneros and Martínez-Serros, presents mobile and fluid
communities that change and are changed by the economies, ideologies,
and geographies with which they come in contact. Though their
characters are often poor and always working-class (not sectors
of the population usually perceived as trendsetters,) these stories
show us Chicano/as and Mexicans engendering and participating
in ideological and cultural change, often simply through their
efforts to survive labor conditions under capitalism.
House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a novel profoundly
concerned with home - the lack of home, the search for home,
and finally the construction of home. The novel ultimately claims
Chicago as home. It opens: "We didn't always live on Mango
Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and
before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina,
and before that I can't remember." The invocation of multiple
streets conveys the narrator's longing for stability rather than
mobility, but the naming also functions to claim the space. The
opening and closing phrases, "we didn't always live... I
can't remember" evoke a search for origins or a lost connection
- maybe to the Southwest, maybe to Mexico. However, like the
characters in "Zoo Island," the narrator quickly lays
claim to the Midwest: "The house on Mango Street is ours."
Chicago is now home and it, too, will become a part of memory,
especially because it is "a place where new cultures are
born" out of urban interactions (Heredia 1993/1994).
House on Mango Street reveals a heterogeneous community that
includes at least three categories of Chicano/as - those native
to the city, including Esperanza and her mother; those native
to Texas, like Esperanza's friend Lucy; and those recently arrived
from Mexico, like Geraldo - as well as Puerto Ricans, Blacks,
and Whites. The young narrator of this novel, though attune to
the diversity of experience within Chicano/a communities, is
also aware of what unifies her complex community - in her words,
"all brown all around, we are safe." The chapter in
which Esperanza makes this observation highlights both difficulty
of bridging the misperceptions between differing communities
and strong influence of place and community in shaping individual
identities.
The exchanges among Esperanza, Rachel, and Lucy in "Our
Good Day" furthers this connection as well. Rachel introduces
herself as Lucy's sister and asks Esperanza, "Who are you?"
Her comment and question suggest the centrality of relationships
rather than names. Esperanza is surprised that they don't poke
fun at her name. Instead Lucy immediately identifies herself
as a Texan, linking her acceptance of her new friend with her
own Texan background, where names like Esperanza's would not
be uncommon. While Lucy asserts a common ground between herself
and Esperanza, she also notes a difference when she emphasizes
that Rachel has a different point of origin, each place exerting
influence on the sisters. The bicycle that the three new friends
share in common is emblematic of their unity, but their community
is not free of conflict, as the girls' fight over who will ride
the bike first reveals.
Several characters in House on Mango Street have two names -
a given name and a nickname, a Spanish name and an English name,
a married name and a single name. The inscription of multiple
names suggests that similarity and heterogeneity go hand-in-hand
in this novel's language, setting and characters. Even the multiple
names for clouds and homes are evocative of variety in a community.
Yet the contradiction of belonging and not belonging remains.
In "Four Skinny Trees" Esperanza identifies with the
"four who do not belong here but are here" and describes
the trees as fiercely taking hold of the earth, angrily asserting
their right to be - if not "they'd all droop like tulips
in a glass." In order to be at all, the trees must forcefully
assert their right to be. House on Mango Street evokes an urban
Midwest that is hard, beautiful, and Chicano/a.
The heavily working-class character of Midwestern Chicano/a communities
and the work experience itself become the focal point of Hugo
Martínez-Serros' collection The Last Laugh and Other Stories.
The Mexican men in these stories labor in steel mills and railroad
yards in the Chicago area. None of his characters yearns for
a return to either the Southwest or Mexico. They are either too
young to have known any other place or older and therefore too
busy working to support their families. Their investment in the
Midwest and their experience there leads to the creation of "new
cultural phenomena" (Ortiz, 1995).
Both "Killdeer" and "Jitomates" address José
María Rivera's efforts to manage a full-time laboring
job, and with the help of his sons, to tend the family's milpa
on weekends and evenings. These stories carefully detail work
tasks. They convey the importance of work to survival, the skill
involved, pride in a job well done, and discipline and innovation
in accomplishing tasks despite lack of resources or other difficulties.
These stories suggest a convergence of agricultural and industrial
experiences in José María's labor. They also reveal
the harshness of the industrial pace spilling over into the family
milpa, altering José María's attempts to maintain
a foot in the industrial present and the traditional, and economically
necessary, milpa. These stories provide a glimpse of how industrial
labor transformed Chicano/a workers.5 Martínez-Serros'
attention to the details of work recreates the effort, frustration,
and triumph of Chicano/a workers, and the sheer demands of labor
that limit and alter personal relationships.
In "The Last Laugh," José María rivera
convinces the owner of a run-down flat above a tavern to allow
his family to fix it up and live there:
The whole family labored for weeks to repair the place, as
if their very lives had depended on it. Soap, brushes, paint,
varnish, wallpaper, windowpanes, and so much more had forced
José María to buy on credit. It was worth it. They
made the spacious flat attractive and, in the end, José
María was ahead since Dr. Stern had felt confused and
guilty about how much the rent would be, and he wound up setting
it at a pittance (5-6).
Through their labor and investment, the family improves the
building. Their action parallels their participation, and that
of others like them, in an industrial economy. Yet, the tension
of the word "forced" cannot be ignored, for it indicates
that the riveras are also acted upon in this transaction - the
benefit they derive also fetters them. The labor of the two younger
rivera boys, who are assigned to tend the furnace at home, mirrors
their father's labor: "Big as their furnace was, Lázaro
and Jaime knew it was a toy to their father, a blast furnace
keeper in the steel mill." Lázaro and Jaime face
the prejudice of two older White men who feel displaced by the
boys in the tavern's upkeep, but the young boys successfully
defend themselves against the older men's attacks. Their story
presents a microcosmic view of the interactions and battles that
we assume their father also encounters in the steel mill. Mexican
workers forced to negotiate the hierarchies of race in the ethnically
mixed Midwest often laid to rest the familiar stereotype of willing
and acquiescent Mexican workers in the course of their struggles,
sometimes violent, against the injustices of the industrial workplace
(Vargas, 1993).
The story "Learn! Learn!" chronicles José
María's battle with the local priest over grammar in the
church bulletin, an argument that provides an opportunity to
satisfy his longing for a life outside of the steel mill. José
María does not want the priest or his family to see him
as simply a body or a pair of hands, but also as a thinker, writer,
and fighter - a human being whose fullness is denied by the nature
of the economy in which he is forced to function. However, the
story also reveals his homophobia and sexism, making problematic
his desire to be accepted as a "man." In some ways,
this collection of stories chronicles José María's
efforts to deal with this central limitation. His efforts to
survive by keeping milpas, collecting garbage, and managing part-time
jobs are not only about making money, but also about making use
of multiple talents that often appear meaningless in an industrial
economy.
Introduction | The Midwest Versus the
Southwest | Conclusions
| references | Endnotes
Conclusions
The experience of Chicano/as and Mexicans in the U.S. extends
far beyond the region of the Southwest.6 As I hope this discussion
has revealed, Chicano/a literature has often claimed the space
of the Midwest as its own, creating characters who firmly plant
themselves, their hoes, flags, families, and town signs on its
landscape. Yet, the tendency persists to overlook or dismiss
Chicano/a or Mexican communities in the Midwest in favor of the
Southwest, as the true or ideal Chicano/a homeland. In some cases,
that tendency leads to the disclosure of competing histories.
In texts that interrogate the experience of Chicano/as and Mexicans
in the Midwest, the focus on working, planting, growing, constructing
- in short, staying, but on terms acceptable to the dignity of
human beings - creates an alternative view of homeland. In these
texts, the Midwest is not background, but battleground.
Like Paco and rosa in Castillo's "Christmas Story of the
Golden Cockroach," Mexican immigrants often maintain ties
both to their hometowns in Mexico and to the urban centers of
the U. S. where they live and work. This is one way that the
proximity between Mexico and the United States has shaped, and
continues to shape a distinct Mexican and Chicano/a experience.
Mexicans can and do return to their homeland more frequently
than most other immigrant groups. Chicano/as and Mexicans living
in the U.S. continue to experience life in both nations through
family and economic connections that are continually reinforced
by ongoing large-scale immigration from Mexico. This history
and present have contributed to the bi-national awareness and
diasporic sensibility of many of the above texts.
The continued migration of Mexicans to the major urban centers
of the United States has expanded already existing Mexican and
Chicano/a communities. It has also led to the growth of new communities
in cities and towns throughout the nation - in the Pacific Northwest,
the Southwest, the Midwest, the South, and the East Coast. The
reorganization of Mexican labor and residential patterns in recent
years has also prompted the Mexican government to offer dual
nationality not only to Mexican citizens living in the U.S.,
but also to the U.S.-born children of those citizens. People
we are accustomed to considering Chicano/a may also soon become
Mexicana/o.
These new realities suggest yet another period of creative tension
and negotiation between Chicano/a and Mexican identities throughout
the United States. While the Southwest remains an important site
in the development of Chicano/a literature, creative and critical,
both our literature and history demonstrate that Chicano/a and
Mexican communities have long histories beyond the borders of
the Southwest. Despite attempts to write over them, these histories
emerge - in the overheard conversation in Spanish, the small
town Mexican celebration, the Spanish language radio in the background.
In fact, what contemporary Chicano/a literature demonstrates
is that the palimpsest grows thicker with new versions of Aztlán.
Introduction | The Midwest Versus the
Southwest | Conclusions
| References | Endnotes
References
Alarcón, Norma. 1981. "Hay que inventarnos/We
must invent ourselves." Third Woman. Vol. 1. 1-6.
Buell, Frederick. 1998. "Nationalist Postnationalism: Globalist
Discourse in Contemporary American Culture." American Quarterly,
50, 548-591.
Castillo, Ana. 1996. Loverboys. New York: Norton.
Cisneros, Sandra. 1991. The House on Mango Street. New York:
Vintage-Random.
Cooper, Marc. "The Heartland's Raw Deal: How Meatpacking
is Creating a New Immigrant Underclass." The Nation. Feb.
3, 1997: 11-17.
Cooper Alarcón, Daniel. 1997. The Aztec Palimpsest: Mexico
in the Modern Imagination. Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona
Press.
"El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán." 1989. In Aztlán:
Essays on the Chicano/a Homeland, ed. Rudolfo Anaya and Francisco
A. Lomelí. Albuquerque, N.M.: Academia/El Norte, 1-5.
Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. 1993. The Mystery of Survival and Other
Stories. Tempe, Ariz.: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue.
Heredia, Juanita. 1993/1994. "Down These City Streets: Exploring
Urban Space" in El Bronx Remembered and The House on Mango
Street. Mester 22.2 and 23.1, 93-105.
Hernandez, Jose Amaro. 1983. Mutual Aid for Survival: The Case
of the Mexican American. Malabar, Fla.: Krieger.
Hernández-Gutiérrez, Manuel de Jes£s. 1994.
El Colonialismo Interno en la Narrativa Chicana. Tempe, Ariz:
Bilingual Press /Editorial Bilingue.
Leal, Luis. 1989. "In Search of Aztlán." In
Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano/a Homeland. Rudolfo A. Anaya
and Francisco A. Lomelí. Albuquerque, N.M.: Academia/El
Norte, 6-13.
Martinez, Eliud. 1986. "Tomás Rivera: Witness and
Storyteller." In International Studies in Honor of Tomás
Rivera. Julián Olivares. Houston, Texas: Arte P£blico
Press, 39-52.
Martínez-Serros, Hugo. 1988. The Last Laugh and Other
Stories. Houston, Texas: Arte P£blico Press.
Mayo, Wendell. 1996. Centaur of the North. Houston, Texas: Arte
P£blico Press.
Mireles, Oscar, Ed. 1989. I Didn't Know There Were Latinos in
Wisconsin: An Anthology of Hispanic Poetry. Milwaukee, Wis.:
Focus Communications/Friends of the Hispanic Community.
Mora, Pat. 1993. Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle.
Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press.
Olivares, Julian. 1989. Introduction. The Harvest. Ed. Julian
Olivares. Houston, Texas: Arte P£blico Press, 73-86.
Ortiz, Fernando. 1995. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar.
Trans. Harriet de Onís. 1947. Introd. Fernando Coronil.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Rivera, Tomás. 1989. The Harvest. Ed. Julian Olivares.
Houston, Texas: Arte P£blico Press.
Rivera, Tom*s. 1971. ...y no se lo tragó la tierra. Houston,
Texas: Arte P£blico Press, 1987.
Rosales, F. Arturo. 1996. Chicano/a! The History of the Mexican
American Civil Rights Movement. Houston, Texas: Arte P£blico
Press.
Samora, Julian and Richard A. Lamanna. 1967. Mexican-Americans
in a Midwest Metropolis: A Study of East Chicago. Mexican American
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Vargas, Zaragosa. 1993. Proletarians of the North: A History
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Berkeley: University of California Press.
Introduction | The Midwest Versus the
Southwest | Conclusions
| References | Endnotes
Endnotes
1. While literary essay, sociological analysis, and historical
account respond to very different conventions in conveying their
"truths," my juxtaposition here of these distinct texts
aims to uncover competing versions of Chicana/o identity rather
than to posit one authentic identity.
2. In his critical analysis of Chicano/a literature, Manuel Hernández-Gutiérrez
suggests that the search for identity is marked by the negotiation
among what he terms the Barrio, or space of self-affirmation,
self-determination and cultural pride; the Anti-Barrio, the site
of discrimination and denigration of Chicano/as; and the Exterior,
or space of death and exile. Hernández -Gutiérrez
suggests that the Barrio is most often associated with Texas
or the Southwest, the physical territory of the internal colony
of Chicano/as. He sees the Anti-Barrio as most often associated
with the Midwest, but also present in the Southwest as Anglo
domination, while the Exterior is linked to Mexico or other countries.
3. Like the Tomás Rivera story, "Es que duele,"
Mayo's text explores the impact of loss of community on the individual
psyche, linking collective and individual memory. However, Rivera
does not limit this phenomenon to Midwestern locations.
4. As Fernando Ortiz argued in 1940, acculturation and deculturation,
terms frequently used to discuss shifts from one culture to another,
do not adequately capture the social and historical complexity
of intercultural processes. Ortiz's term, transculturation, conveys
the intertwined acquisition and loss of culture that occur in
such processes, but also the generative capacity of such processes
to create "new cultural phenomena" (97-98, 102-103).
5. This insight derives from Zaragosa Vargas' excellent history
of Mexican automobile workers in the Midwest. Proletarians of
the North documents the changes in residency, lifestyle, work
habits, and attitudes prompted by labor in this industry for
Mexicans in the 1920's. Vargas records the transformations that
industrial work brought for Mexican workers, their employers,
Midwestern urban centers and the industrial working class.
6. In the introduction to the inaugural issue of Third Woman
in 1981 on "Latinas in the Midwest," Norma Alarcón
says that Midwestern Latina writers and artists "are laying
down the foundation of our self-definition as well as our self-invention."
This strong position in recognition of Latina populations outside
the Southwest led to other issues of Third Woman devoted to Latinas
in the Midwest and East.
Introduction | The Midwest Versus the
Southwest | Conclusions
| References | Endnotes
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