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By
John S. Christie, Ph.D. |
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Chapter Six (Part II):
"Flowers of the Dead:" The Latino Quest
for Ancestors
For Latina writers in
particular, the ties to a homeland are
both necessary and problematic. Links
with a Mexican heritage, while
important, can constitute what Rosaura
Sánchez calls a "contradictory
inclusion/exclusion trap" ("Discourses"
84) for the Chicana. This is true for
Latinas of Cuban or Puerto Rican descent
as well, and the tensions involved in
confronting male traditions consequently
produce works in which the family, the
"community" ("collectivity" for Sánchez)
becomes divided along gender lines.
Whenever Latinos, especially women, as
individuals, are pitted against the
family social codes, the Latino finds
him/herself caught between a refusal to
abide by rules of the past and being
incapable of living without certain
familial bonds. "The family is hostile
to the individual" complains Pilar
midway through a novel that will
demonstrate that the family is also
essential to the individual. The
father's side of the family is
frequently disparaged in stories and
novels, often because the male
genealogies reveal the line from Latino
to Spanish to Conquistador (the ultimate
criminal) rather than from Latino to
Mestizo to Mexican, Indian or African
(the victims). In Castillo's So Far
From God, the patriarchal lines pass
along rare blood diseases (20),
 while in
Lucha Corpi's mystery novel Eulogy
for a Brown Angel, it is the
father's side of the family, a la
Hawthorne, that hands down the curse for
revenge from Grandfather Soren Bjorgun
to the murderer and rapist Paul
Cisneros. The latter figure is part of
a Brazilian paramilitary group
(185-186). Such a heritage, according
to Corpi, ultimately leads to a game
"where all the main players were men,
and the losers were all women and their
children (170).
The effort (in Corpi's case,
transparent), to validate the female
line while discrediting the male is not
uncommon in Latina fiction. Alma
Villanueva's The Ultraviolet Sky
even manages to lay the blame for a
malamute's violent behavior not on the
dog's nature but upon a young boy who
has trained it to attack other dogs
(373). Eliud Martínez constructs a
relationship between a grandfather Don
Miguel Velásquez and his grandson, the
"voice haunted passenger" who tells the
story, which is not entirely built on
affection, despite the same name and a
"remarkable resemblance" between them.
The memory of this grandfather, however,haunts him throughout the book, like his
"tocayo" or namesake, allowing the older
man to live o n through him (121). The
sins of the grandfather in this case are
handed down to young Miguel who comes
from "his grandfather's garden" (190),
searches for and discovers him "in the
rumors of the family elders" (14) and
suffers from the same personality
defects. He tells himself that his
writings, like his grandfather's
notebooks, are "nothing more than a
record of a man who was born to bring
grief and anguish to loved ones" (228).
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Unlike the general
tendency of Latino fiction to
portray the grandmother figure in a
positive light, the abuelo and his
descendants exert an ambiguous and
complicated influence. We see the
moving and beneficial relationship
between, for instance, a grandson
and his shaman, Yaqui grandfather in
Alfredo Véa's La Maravilla,
but also the oedipal struggles of
the Velásquez family in Martínez's
Voice-haunted Journey or the
homophobic machismo of Arturo
Islas's male figures. In the story
"A Silent Love" by Bejamin Alire
Sáenz, a deaf boy and his 73 year
old grandfather communicate
non-verbally "like dancers" in much
the ways abuelas and granddaughters
do (Flowers 21). Their
signing turns the old man's hands
into "wings" according to the older
grandson who sits outside this
silent mystical communion between
the two. The scene recalls the
wing-like hands of Anderson's Wing
Biddlebaum not only because the
hands express what words cannot, but
because the love between the older
man and younger boy is genuinely
maternal. At one point, the older
brother tells his grandfather that
he has "turned into an old woman,"
become, in effect, an abuela.
Though not meant as a compliment
from the older brother, the remark
is ironically positive to the
reader.
Male characters in the
works of Sáenz, Véa and Islas seem
to generate sympathy in direct
proportion to their feminine
qualities. To resemble the abuela
is to reject the stereotypical
bravado of Latin American fathers
and grandfathers, and become aware
of the deficiencies of a patriarchal
tradition. This is so because the
abuela figure usually represents the
connection to everything outside the
injustice and corruption of
institutional controls. She is the
"transmitter" of oral, folk culture,
and serves as the link between the
present, often oppressive world, and
the lost past (Rebolledo "Abuelitas"
153). The abuela is often
"nurturing, comforting and stable"
(156). Though a writer like Roberto
Fernández makes fun of the formulaic
"abuela" by describing one rather
inept grandmother as being "in a
trance for a few minutes, rewinding
her mind" (Raining 147),
usually, as Marcienne Rocard notes,
the abuelita is sympathetically
portrayed as a person "closer to
grandchildren... [than children]
especially granddaughters" and who
thus "insures continuity with the
past" (153-154). Her intuition is
bound up with an oral tradition and
she communicates the non-European
cultural values otherwise ignored by
society.
Perhaps, above all, the
grandmother is the conveyor of folk
spirituality, the means by which
granddaughters and grandsons attach
themselves to the world of
unorthodox religious beliefs. She
has ties to a "knowledge and wisdom
identified with magic and old ways"
(Rebolledo "Abuelitas"
153).
Abuelas are linked to curanderas
(healers), seers, and to the rituals
of indigenous cultures and the
practices of syncretic religions --
validated or not by the texts in
which they appear.[ix]
They can even be related to brujas
(witches) or the dual goddesses and
mythic figures like Coatlicue that
suggest both negative and positive
aspects of female power. Sometimes,
like curanderas, they know of
medicinal herbs and homeopathic
remedies. Thus, in the Latino
search for identity, characters
venture through the kitchens[x]
and dreams of older women on their
way to understanding themselves.
Anaya's Ultima, perhaps the most
famous curandera figure, leads the
young hero on his spiritual quest.
The mythic curandera figure combines
the strength and power of
independence with the wisdom and
ability to heal the sick. As
Rebolledo notes, she "has control
over her own life and destiny as
well as that of others" (Women
88). When Cristina Garcia's
Pilar returns to Cuba, she gathers
the folk-spirituality of her
independent grandmother at the same
time she denounces the male
traditions of the old world. In
Villanueva's novel, it is
Rosa Luján's Grandmother, Luz
[light] after whom Rosa names her
newborn baby, and not her mother
Dolores [pain]. Rosa's "Mamacita"
has taught her the prophetic quality
of dreams (58) on which she relies
extensively and has showed her how
notions of God and the Devil could
be "lumped together" (89) and seen
as masculine vehicles for the
repression of women. Near the end
of her search for self-identity and
independence, Rosa thanks this
"dark-skinned, Indian looking woman"
(126) "por todo" [for everything]
(377). When her husband's
grandmother dies, he photographs a series of stark, desert pictures
suggesting that the death of an
abuela marks a loss of fertility and
life. Those grandmothers who
rebelled against past convention
even acquire heroic status in the
eyes of their descendants.
Cisneros's Esperanza of The House
on Mango Street admires her
great-grandmother as "a wild horse
of a woman, so wild she wouldn't
marry until my great-grandfather
threw a sack over her head and
carried her off" (12). In
Memories of the Alhambra,
Theresa Rafa sees a genuine peace in
the home of her storytelling
grandmother. Compared to the Rafa
women, dressed in black and
reminiscent of Islas's elderly,
Catholic matriarchs, Theresa's
"Nana" is naturally connected to
"our mother, the earth" (69),
believes deeply in the holy dirt of
Chimayo (73) and her home in the
mountains has a "nesting quality of
comfort and refuge...a place in
which to be fed and kept warm" (68).
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In the effort to
explore the past, Latino writers authenticate the grandmother's
spirituality, and in so doing, identify themselves with a whole
range of unwritten, unorthodox religious traditions. Female
lineage encourages a writer to enter a vast world of non-western
attitudes toward life and death, and bringing these concepts
into Latino fiction raises interesting complications. The trend
of documenting non-european religious thought suggests that
Latino writers are not merely aiming their work at mainstream
audiences, but rather guiding readers in a new direction. They
seem rather to be engaged in an active pursuit of living mixed
cultures, and interested in the cross-fertilization going on
between the accepted and the taboo, the modern and the "old
ways." In this process which is guided not by nostalgia, but
by respect, superstitions get reevaluated. We find that
Cuban-American and Puerto Rico writers depict the ritualistic
elements of Santería or "the religion of the saints,"[xi]
while Chicanos incorporate both Native American and Mexican folk
traditions into their stories. What significance these elements
contribute to the literature depends on the writer, but their
inclusion demonstrates the importance and diversity of Latino
spirituality. Latino fiction shows an increasingly pronounced
need for Latinos to confront their indigenous, non-western
spiritual roots if they are to adequately understand the
influences that have shaped their lives, in terms of their
culture and religion.
We see, for example,
the importance of ritual bathing in several works. While
typically seen in literature as a symbolic representation of
spiritual cleansing (or in Roman Catholicism as baptism or
rebirth into the world of God), in Latino fiction, bathing also
suggests emotional bonding between characters, particularly
between women. A Taino Indian instructs the gypsy Rosa on the
precision necessary for magical, ritual bath in Judith Cofer's
In the Line of the Sun. The out-of-body telepathic
connections between a woman and her lost brother in Benjamin
Alire Sáenz's Carry Me Like Water begin with a bath in
clean and hot and seductive water (38). In Helena
Viramontes's story "The Moths," both granddaughter and
grandmother "nurse" each other and bath in "the waters of the
womb" (28). This bath is in direct opposition to
institutionalized religious purification for it represents a
personal ritual of connecting where the young granddaughter acts
"with the sacredness of a priest" though no actual priest is
involved. The dying grandmother cannot speak, yet her
granddaughter who cradles her in the tub can somehow hear her.
In
Dreaming in
Cuban, Pilar bathes in a tub filled with herbs while her
distant grandmother, Celia, swims in the ocean. Somehow,
telepathically, the bathing connects Pilar with her abuela. The
magic of her herbal baths is derived from the magic of the
Santería ritual, the cleansing ceremonial bath known as a "despojo"
(González-Wippler 22). "Nine consecutive nights" of herbal
bathing (usually, according to González-Wippler "to attract good
vibrations and help solve the problems of the consultant" 219)
convinces Pilar that she and her mother must go to Cuba and find
her abuela. She can, as Ivanito sees, bring her grandmother
"back to life" (Dreaming 230); she feels her
"grandmother's life passing to [her] through her hands. It's a
steady electricity, humming and true" (222).[xii]
Throughout the novel, Garcia refuses to discount the validity of
Santería beliefs. In fact, the novel endorses them in as much
as Pilar's actions bring her toward her grandmother which is the
essential element of her quest for identity. Moreover, the
ritual bathing links Pilar to her rebellious aunt Felicia when
we recall Felicia's initiation ceremony where sixteen Santeras
bathed her in river water (187). Pilar is recognized as a
daughter of Changó, the Yoruban deity disguised under the
Catholic Santa Barbara [Saint Barbara] and thus associated with
power, either "procreative, authoritative, destructive,
medicinal, or moral" (González-Wippler 40), suggesting perhaps
the power of the artist to unify and gather strength from a
complex cultural heritage. In any case, the inclusion of
Santería mysticism emphasizes the other worldly quality of
Pilar's relationship with her family. Like Herminia, the black
daughter of a Santería priest (90) who lives "on the fringe of
life" (184), Pilar is also "connected to another world (186);
part of her spiritual growth depends on her recognizing, like
the granddaughter in the Viramontes story, the non-verbal
channels of communication, the "languages lost."
Ana Castillo goes to
extremes to validate southwestern curandera practices by filling
her novel So Far from God with information about "limpias"
or "sobasos" or cleansings. By declaring that "all who had
lived on that tierra of thistle and tumbleweed knew that every
cactus and thorn had a purpose and reason, once put into a pot
to boil" (233), the narrator authenticates the medicinal beliefs
of women over those learned, for example, at "Northwestern
University Medical School in the coldest city of the world"
(227). The healing women are particularly attractive to Chicano
political writers like Castillo since they stack up well against
the stereotypical Mexican mother who is always patient and
enduring. In contrast, the curandera exhibits a magical
strength unknown to others and avenges herself when necessary (Rebolledo
Women 90). |
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There are many
parallels between the folk
religions of African/Cuban
practice and the healing rituals
of indigenous south westerners,
and, in fact, we find mention of
Santería itself in ría itself in
So Far
from God. Two soldiers in
Vietnam ponder the differences
between Puerto Rican and New
Mexican Santería as they wait
"to be killed if they didn't
kill first" (96). They discover
that the details of ritual
practice vary, but both men
share a respect for the Yorubic
tradition. They are, in effect,
united on a spiritual level as
they fight the U.S. government's
war. Francisco el Penitente,
the Chicano, is known as "Chico"
while his Puerto Rican friend is
called "Little Chico," because
"to the white and black soldiers
all 'Spanish boys' were 'Chico'"
(94). Clearly, believing in the
syncretic religion provides each
Latino with an escape from the
prejudice of a world
"transforming beyond
comprehension" (97).
In a different sort
of novel, the detective story The Killing of the Saints
by
Alex Abella, a Marielitos belief
in Santería collides with the
logic of U.S. law. Two Cuban
exiles murder a group of people
in a jewelry store and, acting
in their own defense, claim they
had been possessed by the
warrior god Oggun. The store's owner had taken back an object
which had been used as a
propitiatory offering to the
Santería orisha who had
therefore retaliated with the
ghastly massacre via the two
"innocent" men. Though the dust
jacket of the novel dismisses
the story's religion as mere
"voodoo-like cult," Abella
relays the importance of these
beliefs in several ways.
Ramón, one of the accused is an
especially articulate speaker.
Charlie Morell, the private
detective investigating the
crime, notes that he had never
before "seen someone use his
foreignness to such an
advantage, to be able to enjoy
the benefit of both worlds, the
alien and the native, the
Hispanic and the Anglo." Ramón
argues that "the truth of the
matter depends on one's personal
interpretation" (260).
"Witchcraft," according to this
eloquent Cuban exile, "is a
pejorative term used by members
of one religion against
practitioners of another" (282),
and thus his innocence or guilt
becomes "a question of selective
belief" (282). The reader, and
the jury, is persuaded by this
sort of intelligent logic, and
Ramón is acquitted, thanks to
what he calls his "cultural
defense" (170). Turning to the
narrator/detective, we find even
more that authenticates beliefs
in Santería. Charlie Morell,
like many Latino figures, is
also investigating his own life,
specifically his relationship to
his dead father whom he feels he
had abandoned. Morell's
confrontation with the mystical
spiritualism of the Cuban exiles
brings him closer to
understanding the reasons for
the guilt he feels. He seeks to
discover the "pieces of [him]self
that were scattered among these
Caribbean exiles like the arms
and legs of a starfish, which,
torn from the body, will grow a
new center to replace the
missing heart" (74). Something
in the exposure to the spiritual
side of his Cuban past allows
him to become reconciled with
his father's ghost. Because of
the encounter, at the novel's
conclusion, he rejoins his
estranged wife and begins a new
relationship with his son.
Chicana critic
Gloria Anzaldúa would argue that
Charlie's Morell's enlightenment
comes as a result of his
"entering into the serpent," by
which she means a willingness to
believe in other modes of
consciousness. She has in mind
pre-Colombian serpent goddesses,
the powers of mother earth, and
the rejection of
institutionalized religions like
Catholicism and Protestantism
which "encourage a split between
body and spirit and totally
ignore the soul" (Borderlands
37). Whatever the name
given to these alternative
religion systems, Latinos,
particularly in recent fiction,
are moving toward an embrace of
the spirit world. Even writers
as focused on concrete realities
as Dagoberto Gilb seem unwilling
to deny the validity of dreams,
intuitions, and visions. This
is due in part to a
dissatisfaction with orthodox
religion. The reverend, for
example, in Gilb's The Last
Residence of Mickey Acuña,
though "polite," is surely the
most "threatening" resident of
the YMCA (145). Anzaldúa claims
that understanding "La Facultad"
[the faculty] or the ability "to
see in surface phenomena the
meaning of deeper realities" (Borderlands
38) will help women
understand themselves where
organized religions "encourage
fear and distrust of life and of
the body" (37). Those
individuals on the outskirts of
society (outcasts or rebels) are
sensitized by the natural world
and able to escape the confines
of society's limited vision.
The victims of society (the
abused, the raped, the
misunderstood) can develop extra
perceptions because the standard
roles have broken down, and the
domestic rigidity given way.
Anzaldúa writes: "Those who are
pounced on the most have it the
strongest -- the females, the
homosexuals of all races, the
darkskinned...the persecuted,
the marginalized, the foreign"
(38) "La Facultad" is "a
survival tactic that people
caught between the worlds,
unknowingly cultivate" (39), and
can be brought on by "anything
that tears the fabric of our
everyday mode of consciousness"
(39).
One thinks of
Garcia's Felicia, for instance,
or Castillo's Caridad, or the
narrator and abandoned lover of
Cisneros's story "Eyes of
Zapata." All three are women
wronged by an unjust world and
all exist in a liminal haze.
One would expect, by Anzaldúa's
reasoning, some degree of
acceptance of the occult in
fiction about men and women in
the margins of U.S. society. In
his first novel, Our House in
the Last World, Hijuelos
offers judgments on Cuban
spiritualists whose beliefs
Mercedes inflicts on her son
Hector (pounding on his stomach
"to get the devils out" for
instance - 93). There is even a
brutal edge to Hijuelos's
commentary as, for example, when
he writes that Mercedes "had the
kind of faith in science that
the ignorant have: It will do
everything. She had a faith
like the faith hoods with knife
wounds that spill their guts
have, who come to the hospitals
thinking they won't die. They
come walking in nonchalantly and
then fall to the floor, dead
(95). These types of authorial
judgments are atypical. There
are also minor characters who
adhere to the rigidity of
Pentecostal doctrine (mostly in
Puerto Rican-American fiction)
and old world Catholicism
(notably, the New Mexican
Hispanos) within Latino stories,
but the central figures are
rarely people intolerant of non-european
beliefs. More often, as in
Sáenz novel Carry Me Like
Water, the fringe dwellers
(the gay, poor, abused, deaf and
dumb, illegal, criminal -- the
novel includes them all) find
themselves connecting
spiritually and miraculously
across barriers of time and
space. The mixtures and blends
of religious thought even take
place within individual
characters as is the case with
Véa's snycretic Josephina who is
both Castillian Catholic and a
mystical curandera.
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In two novels,
we find young heroines
passing beyond the folk
spirituality associated with
the adults around them. The
rites of passage for Marisol,
in Cofer's The Line of
the Sun, and Estrella,
in Viramontes's Under the
Feet of Jesus, both
confirm a young woman's need
to assert her independence
against any sort of
spiritual limitation.
Marisol is "in a state of
limbo, halfway between two
cultures" (222). She is
caught between the
"organized, sanitized world
of school" (220), the
"discipline and order"
imposed on her by Catholic
nuns and the "hidden world
of Puerto Rican women and
secret "spiritist meetings"
(232). Her initiation into
the "world of phones,
offices, concrete buildings
and the English language"
(273) comes when the
apartment building where she
lives burns to the ground.
"El Building" is a "parody"
of Puerto Rican life in
which all the sounds and
smells of the island are
mimicked by the tenants, and
it is destroyed when
overzealous Spiritists, in
"a mass despojo,"
offer the god Changó a bit
too much lighter fluid. The
novel's ending suggests
Cofer's attitude that the
"silly" (230) folk
spirituality is antiquated,
and Marisol draws a
 practical lesson from the
experience: she will carry
her "island heritage" with
her, but she will abide by a
"new efficient voice"
(276). For Viramontes, the
outcome is less
unequivocal. Her young
heroine never completely
discards adult
superstitions. Estrella
listens to stories of the
"evil eye" (24) and knows
that "not even a few drops
of menstrual blood in [her
father's] coffee would keep
him from leaving" (23).
More than once, she follows
her mother's instructions to
draw a circle around the
dirt house in order to ward
off scorpions, while
Perfecto, her mother's
companion, dreams of ghosts,
his memories binding him "to
the native soil" (100). He
knows the ghosts are
"working in the dream world
to tell him something" and
he believes in the "insect
signs" (100-101). The
process of Estrella's
maturation does not involve
outright denial of her
family's beliefs, yet in the
final scenes when her
mother's statue of Jesus is
smashed and Perfecto
abandons them, Estrella
finds her own brand of
spiritual connection to the
natural world; she climbs up
through the barn's loft as
if "out of a box" (174) and
gazes at the stars, standing
"on the verge of faith"
(176).
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[vii]Perhaps
Castillo's use of the
small "i" throughout the
novel for the first
person singular signals
an uncertainty of the
subject
[viii]The
critic Alvina E.
Quintana calls Ana
Castillo an ethnographer
novelist because
Castillo's novel
incorporates
observations and
descriptions of Mexican
and Chicano culture as
seen through Teresa's
eyes.
[ix]Rosaura
Sánchez argues that
while critics sometimes
view these figures as
exaggerated,
one-dimensional,
"formulaic images of
Chicano/Mexican women"
(84), they are also
portrayed as complex
individuals who
nevertheless embody a
common set of positive
characteristics.
[x]See
the preceding chapter
for more on the role of
food in Latino fiction.
[xi]Santería
is defined rather
succinctly (by a
murderer) in Max
Abella's The Killing
of the Saints as "a
syncretic religion...it
has fused together two
separate strands to from
a new one. It is a
combination of West
African religion and
Catholicism, wherein the
old Nigerian Yoruba
pantheon of gods is
identified with the
saints of the Catholic
church. It was born
during the times of
slavery, when African
slaves had to hide their
religion from their
white masters" (281).
To which we might add
that the practice began
in Cuba though now spans
throughout Puerto Rico,
The Dominican Republic,
and along the South
American coast. See
Gonzalez-Wippler's Santería: the Religion
for further information.
[xii]The
final scene of the novel
suggests as well the
death of Virginia Woolf
(who advocated looking
back "through our
mothers" - which is what
Pilar is literally doing
by skipping her mother)
and Kate Chopin's Edna
Pontellier's
"awakening." Thinking
of Eliot, the reader
knows that in Pilar (who
loves pearls and the
sea" - 176) the artist
figure will be born
again, as Celia drops
her pearls to the
fertility god, the
eyeless dead Phoenician
soldier in "Wasteland."
The allusive quality of
the final scene is
strong enough to bring
in Joyce as well when
one remembers the
"strange and beautiful
seabird" woman, half in
the water, half out from
Portrait and the
epiphanic result to
Stephen's artistic mind,
the symbolic initiation
of the artist
creator.[xii] Celia,
the lyrical letter
writer (one is even
composed in blank verse
- 51) will be reborn in
the younger woman
painter -- a fact Celia
recognizes: Pilar "will
remember everything" she
tells her lover Gustavo
in her last letter
(245). This kind of
rebirth is understood as
well by the narrator of
"The Moths" in her
conclusion that "endings
are inevitable. They are
necessary for rebirths"
(27). The ocean swim
is a frequent motif in
Latina writing. In Alma
Luz Villanueva's The
Ultraviolet Sky, Rosa's swimming (in the
ocean, in a whirlpool,
and later in dark
mountain lakes) signals
her communing with the
natural world and her
Jungian psychic
integration with her own
darker side with
"something they couldn't
name: fear chaos, raw
power"(83) In her
story "Golden Glass" a
mother "too naked,
somehow" (thinks her
son) swims "out into the
water, at night, as
though trying to touch
the moon" (Growing Up
Latino 261).
Discussing Villanueva's
poetry, Ordóñez sees
this theme of "the
interconnectedness of
all living things" and
"the self as an
integrated union of
opposites" as something
prevalent throughout her
work ("Body, Spirit" in
Criticism in the
Borderlands 62).
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July 25, 2011
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