LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Multicultural Literature
Student Research Project
Danielle Lynch-Masterson
May 3, 2006
Research Journal:
Mexican-American Literature:
Does ambivalent minority status lead to ambivalence in relationships?
Introduction
I chose this topic to research because after reading Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek, I understood how important relationships are in Mexican-American Literature. From sexual relationships to love relationships to friendships, the family dynamic and even times when these relationships overlap each other once or twice, community is important to Mexican-Americans. But why does it seem to play more of a role in Mexican-American literature than other types of minority literature? And why do Mexican-Americans seem so self-sabotaging regarding relationships as some of the characters in Woman Hollering Creek? Is there are certain amount of self-loathing that parallels the ethnic group or is martyrdom a popular concept?
In researching my topic, I examined several course objectives to analyze and evaluate. These objectives include:
· Objective 3C: Mexican-American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority;”
· Objective 4B: To distinguish the ideology of American racialism, which sees races as pure, separate and permanent, from American practice, which always involves duality, hybridity and change;
· Objective 6A: To observe images of the individual and family in the writings and experiences of minority groups, moving from the traditional/community aspect of culture to the dominant culture’s variation; and
· Objective 6B: To question sacred modern concepts like individuality, and rights.
The Mexican-American narrative centers on ambivalence. This demonstrates the contradictory and often torn feelings Mexicans have about immigrating to the United States. While struggling to maintain their culture, traditions and language, they also resist assimilation, to a certain extent, making their emersion into American culture rougher terrain.
A history of
Hispanophobia
Raymund A. Parades’ article, “The Origins of Anti-Mexican Sentiment in the United States,” asserts that deep-seated hatred of Mexicans, or Hispanophobia radiates from the abhorrence of the Spanish and their religion, Roman Catholicism. Could this early miscegenation be transferred to more modern Mexican-American relationships, causing self-hatred?
Before the miscegenation of the Spanish and Indians, creating the Mestizo, the Spanish were detested aside from religion in their own right. First of all, their skin color was less than desirable, being closer to black than white, a deviation for Europeans. During the same time, the North Atlantic slave trade and voyages into Africa caused an overwhelming sense of equating blackness with inferiority. Additionally, by Elizabethan standards, blackness was ugliness and the settlers carried this belief over into America. This can also be attributed to being a “product of European Moorish miscegenation which had proceeded for hundreds of years” (Parades 51). Many Englishmen, Shakespeare included, used “the terms ‘Moor’ and ‘Negro’ interchangeably,” (Parades 51) roughly then, equating Spaniards with Africans. There was intense criticism from the English based on the above. Cotton called the Spain a “belligerent nation possessed by Satan” (Parades 52). This hatred of the Spanish is brought with them to Mexico and is reassigned to the Mestizos.
Hispanophobia leads
to self-hatred
This Hispanophobia Americans are said to possess is evident in Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek. As an immigrant, or in Cisneros’ case, the daughter of an immigrant, won’t the duality in cultures that make up a Mexican-American introduce Hispanophobia as a form of self-hatred? This is demonstrated several times in Cisneros 1991 novel. Never Marry a Mexican is a stunning example of self-repugnance in a Mexican-American. Her mother telling her to never marry a Mexican in the story, Clemencia gathers several things about their culture.
For one, she equates “marrying a white woman” as “marrying up, even if the white girl was poor” (Cisneros 69). This expectation in the Mexican culture, whether talking about men or women demonstrates how worthless Mexicans saw themselves as. After her father’s death, her mother quickly married a while man and ignored her two biological children to the point that “it was like (my) ma didn’t exist” (73). “When she married a white man, and he and his boys moved into my father’s house, it was as if she stopped being my mother,” Clemencia says (73). By ignoring her Mexican children for her new white children, Clemencia’s mother also devalues them, creating a rift.
Still later, Clemencia applies her mother’s principals to her own life and her affair with Drew. As a white man, Clemencia figured, Drew could not and would not leave his wife for a Mexican who was unworthly of marriage, even by her own standards.
Ambivalence in Hispanophobia
According to Raymund Parades, the Mexican history of oppression goes back to the Spanish colonization of Mexico and can be attributed to the miscegenation in Mexico due to colonialism (50). But the projection of this learned behavior must be examined. The history Cisneros offers differs greatly from the past offered in textbooks with the public school system, helping the reader to re-envision their history. Is it possible that what Mexican-Americans learned about their past is accounted for in how they approach their future? For that matter, is any culture immune to its past? Can any culture truly transcend historical fact making assimilation flawless?
A history of Mexican oppression
Ronald Takaki said that “it is very natural that the history written by the victim does not altogether chime with the story of the victor,” said a Mexican in 1874 (Takaki 14). But even the most accurate historian will detail a longstanding history of Mexican oppression.
According to Cisneros, after American sailors entered a restricted dock and were arrested, Woodrow Wilson “authorized the Marines to invade the port city of Tampico” (Cisneros 135). Not only does Cisneros point this fact out, but also goes on to mention the contradiction in Wilson trying to “bring about the destruction of General Huerta’s government;” the same government “Wilson had supported” (Cisneros 135). Inasmuch, Cisneros is offering commentary on the fact that not only did the Americans have no respect for Mexican governmental restrictions, but also remained fair-weather in their diplomatic relations, invading the Mexican’s land. Half of the Mexican-American population was also driven from their land, according to Cisneros (142). These Mexican-Americans fled from the “Valley of Texas into war-torn Mexico fleeing the Texas Rangers, rural police ordered to suppress an armed rebellion of Mexican Americans protesting Anglo American authority in South Texas” (Cisneros 142). The American forces, out of vengeance for the armed rebellion forced “more than half” of the innocent population from their land, clearly lacking respect for anyone who wasn’t an Anglo American.
Oppression in Mexican-American Literature
Her historical facts in Caramelo paralleling her literary message, Cisneros shows how this oppression was carried out in the Mexican culture. A traditional article of Mexican apparel, a rebozo, acts as an oppressor for Celaya, the protagonist. The Awful Grandmother believes younger generations of Mexican woman are “too modern” and have lost many values in the process of modernizing. The rebozo acts as a barrier so that women are unable to expose themselves in public. This Cisneros’ metaphor for how oppressive relationships, particularly between the sexes, are in the Mexican-American culture and is this why she remains single with “no children” (Cisneros 169). Could what Mexicans generations back learned during times of revolution be carried down and projected onto the offspring as a metaphor? Is this simply a way of preserving culture?
Little Grandfather’s story of Itza and Popo in Caramelo is another ethnic, oppressive metaphor regarding men’s love toward women. With this story of Itza and Popo, once again, Little Grandfather superimposes another oppressive belief on Celaya:
“Now, the princess’s name was Itzaccihuatl and she was in love with this Prince Popo. But because the families of Itza and Popo hated each other, they had to keep their love a secret. But then something happened, I forget what, except I know he killed her. And then he watched her die, he was so overcome with her beauty he knelt down and wept. And then they both turned into volcanoes. And there they are, the Grandfather says, raising the venetian blinds and pointing to the volcanoes in the distance” (Cisneros 57).
Because Itza and Popo were royalty, they are the epitome of all Mexican lovers. They represent what all Mexicans lovers are destined to arrive at; the death of the woman by her male lover. When Celaya questioned her grandfather as to why Popo killed Itza, he says: “That’s a good question. I don’t know. I suppose that’s the way Mexicans love, I suppose” (Cisneros 57). His oppressive view on the manner in which “Mexicans love” is probably the accepted view in which all Mexicans share.
Ambivalence in
oppression
With the Awful Grandmother accepting the traditional rebozo so readily and denying modernization and the Little Grandfather somewhat condoning the murder of Itza by Popo simply because “that’s the way Mexicans love,” the reader gets a somewhat ambivalent impression of oppression within the culture. Though contemporary generations may be suffocated by tradition, should it be ignored? Or should negative aspects of traditional societies, such as oppression, be changed, accepting a more modern version of Mexican-American culture?
A history of
familial relations
Family is, no doubt, very important to Mexican-Americans. Perhaps even mores than the dominant culture. Primary ties remain in blood relatives on the maternal and paternal sides. The structure of a Mexican household is different from the dominant culture’s ever-popular nuclear family as well.
“Mexican households can include the parents' nuclear family as well as that of a married son or daughter and their young children. Living arrangements vary among the different kinds of households. In most cases in which two or more nuclear families share the same roof, each nuclear family keeps its separate budget and, often, a separate kitchen. After a few years of living with their parents, married children who opt for this arrangement often set up independent households. Other household members can include out-of-town relatives, fellow townsmen, and arrimados” (Mexico – Interpersonal Relations 1).
But despite the importance of the family, reports of familial problems such as domestic abuse in Mexico are astounding. In fact, one heartbreaking example shows the country’s apathy toward family disputes and puts emphasis on keep the family’s business private. Recently, two Mexico City women recently suffered domestic abuse:
“According to Comunicación e Información de la Mujer, Asociación Civil (CIMAC) and La Jornada. Rocio Mancilla had an extramarital affair and was killed by her husband last April. He received less than two years in jail because he pleaded "violent emotion." International business specialist Carolina Gaona's husband threatened her life in October 2000. A judge, who was sympathetic to her husband's feelings of jealousy, sentenced her to return home.”
Strained familial
relations in Mexican-American literature
There are many examples of strained familial relationships in Mexican-American literature. One example of this comes in Woman Hollering Creek with Cleofilas Enriqueta DeLeon Hernandez’s marriage to Juan Pedro Martinez Sanchez. When a happy marriage eventually turned to physical abuse, Cleofilas was surprised, claiming that the first time it happened she had “been so surprised she didn’t cry out of try to defend herself” (Cisneros 47). But after he slapped her “again and again until the lip split and bled an orchid of blood,” (47) she still didn’t react. Sitting motionless, in disbelief and later comforting the man who beat her as he cried and repented, begging for penance, Cleofilas remained with him. Finally, pregnant and fearing the life of her unborn child may be harmed, Cleofilas leaves and flees to her father’s home, despite any criticism she may endure.
Ambivalence in
familial relations
Remaining ambivalent so long about the physical abuse that existed in her marriage, Cleofilas put her unborn child’s life in danger. Should her hesitance to leave her husband put a life in danger? Does it matter within the culture? Who should the loyalty be to?
Truth in
Mexican-American literature
In Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo, fiction is re-envisioned by our narrator and family historian, Celaya Reyes. In fact, the reader’s first introduction to the book comes in the form of an epigraph imploring: “tell me a story, even if it’s a lie” (Cisneros xv). In this sentence, the reader is already conflicted about whether the story told is fact or fiction. Speckled with true and historic events as explained in the footnotes, Caramelo is a pseudo-fictional novel chronicling the lives of mythological characters illustrating typical family problems all strung together like the strands of the unfinished caramelo rebozo, finding its way through the generations. Therefore, Cisneros is saying through Celaya that the absolute truth is irrelevant.
In One Holy Night, the truth Ixchel comes to find out about Chaw Uxmal Paloquin isn’t at all what she imagined. Claiming he was of “an ancient line of Mayan kings,” (Cisneros 27) lies to his young lover repeatedly. Upon finding out his real past, not decorated with royal blood and money, Ixchel is left pregnant, alone and mourning the absence of a thirty-seven-year-old lover who is later accused of raping and murdering eleven women over the past seven years. Still Ixchel cannot see the truth for what it is, claiming she “couldn’t read but only stare at the little black and white dots that make up the face (she is) in love with” (Cisneros 34). Though Ixchel, Cisneros comments not on the relevance of truth, but on its application. We don’t see what we don’t want to believe. Therefore, whether truth exists or not, if we ignore it, it remains irrelevant.
This ambivalent thought on something as concrete and virtuous as truth directly relates to Mexican-American minority status in the United States, all of which is evident in relationships within the ethnic community.
Conclusion
“Ambivalence:
a collision between thought and feeling.” – David Seabury
If it is true that the Mexican-American literary narrative is based on an ambivalent society, this ambivalence is destined to be carried out and applied to relationship – with the self or with others – in this ethnic community. But Ronald Takaki believes hope is not lost. Takaki says that “awareness of our situation must come before inner changes” (426). On the contrary, literature does not always imitate life and both of Cisneros’ novels also question what truth is and whether it matters or not. Whatever our opinions on the Mexican-Americans ambivalent minority status, it is truly telling and demonstrates the modernization of the Mexican culture as a whole; a battle between tradition and modernization and negotiating the duality of the two on a cultural level.
In the end, whether the Mexican-Americans status as an ambivalent culture being detrimental to assimilation into the dominant one remains to be seen. However, the direct parallel of this seemingly apathetic way of life is evident.
Works Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 2002.
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1991.
Paredes, Raymund A. "The Origins of Anti-Mexican Sentiment in the U.S.," New Scholar 6 (1977): 139-66.
Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1993.
"Domestic
Violence: An Ongoing Threat to Women in Latin America and the Caribbean." Population
Reference Bureau. April 2006. Population Reference Bureau. 29 April 2006
<http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Section=PRB&template
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"Mexico: Interpersonal Relations." Country Data. June 1996. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. 29 April 2006 <http://www.country-data.com>.