Caballero: A Historical Novel

Caballero was written in a decade marked by heated debate about the Mexican-American's place in United States society.[8] The 1930s saw the birth of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and other organizations that promoted the cultural assimilation of peoples of Latin American heritage into mainstream United States culture.[9] Within LULAC, however, there was disagreement about the forms and the extent of this assimilation. Male "Lulackers" typically promoted assimilation in public but sought to maintain patriarchal structures in private.[10] Many females, however, countered this public/private assimilation and advocated for the modernization of gender roles, especially within Mexican-American homes.[11] González was one of the more vocal of these women, and Caballero, which holds at its center a doomed patriarch who refuses to part ways with traditions that subordinate women, can be read as her "warning of what would happen to the ethnic Mexican community if it resisted the democratization of gender roles and ignored the modernization of Mexican American female subjectivity".[12]

Also contemporaneous with the writing of Caballero was the celebration of the Texas Centennial in 1936.[13] The so-called "centennial discourse" ballyhooed by the media in the 1930s largely extolled the accomplishments of the state's Anglo-American population and, in the words of literary historian John Morán González, depicted Mexicans "as the main obstacle to Anglo-Texan freedom in the past and as a persistent social problem for the state in the present".[14] The "racialized" reconstruction of Texas history prompted the Tejano community to critique their state's marginalization of the Mexican and Mexican-American's contributions.[15] These critiques often took the form of literature written by Mexican-Americans in which they envision "a prominent and honored place in their community within the Lone Star State".[16] Jovita González contested the dominant centennial discourse in her "Catholic Heroines of Texas" poster exhibit at the Texas Centennial Exposition's Catholic Exhibit, an abbreviated version of which she simultaneously published in the Southern Messenger, at about the same time she was beginning work on Caballero.[17]

Although González and Eimer are both credited as authors, literary historians typically consider González the novel's primary creative force.[19] In 1930, she earned her M.A. in history from the University of Texas at Austin, where she knew and was encouraged to write about her Mexican-American heritage by folklorist J. Frank Dobie.[20] After her graduation, González moved to San Antonio, Texas to teach Spanish. However, in 1934, under Dobie's supervision, she received a one-year fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation that commissioned her to research and write a book on South Texas history.[21] Caballero and another novel (Dew on the Thorn) seem to have been the result of that fellowship.[22]

González invited Eimer to coauthor the novel around the year 1937.[23] The details of their collaboration are murky, but correspondence exchanged between the two women, and the fact that Eimer's name is listed first on the novel's manuscript, indicate equal involvement.[24] Completed sometime in the early 1940s, the novel was submitted to MacMillan, Houghton-Mifflin and Bobbs-Merrill but was unanimously rejected.[25] Exasperated, Eimer wrote a letter to an acquaintance, saying "[a]ll of these publishers have admitted that the background is interesting, the plot stirring, the characters alive and yet they reject it".[26] The disillusioned coauthors eventually abandoned the project and parted company.[27]

Margaret Eimer was the co-author for Caballero: A Historical Novel and a close friend to Jovita González. She used the pseudonym Eve Raleigh in her writing, possibly referencing to Eve, the first female, and Raleigh (Sir Walter Raleigh) the English explorer of the Americas.[28] Eimer was a "frustrated but talented writer whose short stories had been rejected by numerous magazines".[29] She had moved to Del Rio, Texas along with her husband "Pop" Eimer from Joplin, Missouri in concurrence with the flow of Anglo settlers moving to Texas during the agricultural boom.[30] In Del Rio, Eimer "developed a warm, even intimate, friendship with Jovita González, a Texas local with Mexican-descent, with whom she shared both a passion for writing and a skeptical stance toward received wisdom about politics, religion, and gender norms".[31] Letters written to González from Eimer expressed her East Coast intellectuality, organized religion, and her opinions regarding societal gender norms, for example, how she persistently refused to marry.[32] González and Eimer collaboratively and interethnically wrote Caballero: A Historical Novel. Although Eimer eventually moved back to Missouri, through the use of the U.S. mail system they continued to work and edit Caballero manuscripts and finish the novel.[33] Common for many other female writers during that time, publishers steadfastly refused to publish the novel and Eimer unfortunately never lived to see the novel published. Eimer died on 27 Oct 1986,[34] however, contrary to previous belief, she died with relatives to claim her belongings, including the original copy of Caballero titled All This is Mine.[35]

González lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, with her husband Edmundo E. Mireles, also a schoolteacher, until her death in 1983.[36] In her lifetime, she never earned acclaim for her novels, but she was nevertheless a prominent Corpus Christi citizen, and she published a couple pieces in the Southwest Review and Publications of the Texas Folklore Society.[37] In the 1970s, González and her husband were interviewed by historian and archivist Martha Cotera for the University of Texas at Austin's Mexican American Library Project[38] Cotera asked about González's 1934 Rockefeller grant and the novel that had resulted. Mireles said then that the Caballero manuscript had been destroyed; however, González indicated with a brief wave of her hand that her husband's statement was untrue.[39]

The Caballero manuscript remained unrecovered until after Mireles's death in 1986.[40] In 1992, the Jovita González and Edmundo E. Mireles papers were archived at the Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi library.[41] Amongst these papers was the manuscript, more than five-hundred yellowed pages in length, bound with twine.[42] A year after its archival, it was identified by University of Texas at Austin Professor José E. Limón who, with María Eugenia Cotera (daughter of the Martha Cotera who interviewed González three decades earlier), edited the novel for publication.[43]

In 1996, Caballero was published for the first time, by the Texas A&M University Press.

• Don Santiago - the titular caballero;[49] grandson of Don José Ramón de Mendoza y Robles; patriarch over Rancho La Palma; characterized by his short temper, his insistence that Spanish customs remain upheld, and his hatred for the incoming Anglo-Americans.
• Doña María Petronilla - Don Santiago's wife; perceived as obedient to a fault; gradually begins to resist her husband's domination.
• Alvaro - the elder son; Don Santiago's favored boy; like his father, characterized as haughty and extremely masculine.
• Luis Gonzaga - the younger son; favored by his mother; a talented and aspiring artist; perceived as unmanly by Don Santiago.
• María de los Angeles (Angela) - the elder daughter; extremely penitent Catholic; would like to join a convent but is forbidden by Don Santiago.
• Susanita - the youngest child; obedient; known for her beauty, her blonde hair and green eyes; one-half of the novel's primary romance.
• Doña Dolores - Don Santiago's widowed sister; has a wart on her face that changes colors to match her mood; characterized by her love for beautiful dresses and social functions; quarrels regularly with Don Santiago.

• Paz - housekeeper, cook and nurse; has worked for the Mendoza family since Don Santiago's youth; uneducated.
• Manuel - Paz's great-grandson; trouble-maker; befriends the American soldiers stationed near Matamoros.
• Tomás - overseer of Rancho La Palma; has worked for the Mendoza family for many years; is lashed by Don Santiago for insubordination.
• José & Tecla - peons in charge of the sheep headquarters; befriend "Red" McLane after he delivers their baby, Alfredo.

• Robert Davis Warrener - suitor to Susanita; American soldier stationed near Matamoros; enlisted to avoid the marriage his southern aristocratic parents had arranged for him; is an excellent singer; woos Susanita with late-night serenades and love letters.
• Alfred ("Red") McLane - suitor to María de los Ángeles; distinguished by his imposing frame and red hair; speaks perfect Spanish; an opportunist who believes helping Spanish-Mexicans adjust to the new American citizenship will prove politically lucrative to him.
• Captain Devlin - army doctor; widower; makes waves by being the first Anglo-American to regularly attend Catholic mass in Matamoros; befriends Luis Gonzaga, with whom he shares an interest in artwork.
• Padre Pierre - Catholic priest; French; facilitates the peaceful relationships between Luis Gonzaga and Devlin, and Susanita and Warrener.
• Gabriel del Lago - another Spanish-Mexican landowner of Don Santiago's generation; suitor to Susanita and (later) to Doña Dolores.
• Inez Sánchez - red-haired and feisty; friend to Susanita; courted unsuccessfully by Alvaro; intermarries with an Anglo-American soldier.
• General Antonio Canales - leader of the Republic of the Rio Grande rebellion; recruits Alvaro and other youths for his guerrillas.

Because of Jovita González's established advocacy for a cultural assimilation that included the modernization of gender roles in the Mexican-American community, and because Caballero is a thinly veiled critique of traditional patriarchal home organizations, the novel has since its rediscovery been analyzed as a feminist text.[50] Editors José E. Limón and María Cotera decided for this reason to dedicate the book to "the mexicanas of Texas".[51] They defend their dedication in the "Editor's Acknowledgements": "Caballero deals centrally with the historical experience of Mexican women in Texas, so we think it wholly appropriate to dedicate this book to this often-neglected sector of Texas society".[52] Cotera considers the novel a precursor to the later-century work done by chicana feminists like Ana Castillo, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa.[53]

Accordingly, many scholars have sought to elucidate the methods and limits of Caballero 's critique of patriarchal power structures. For example, in his 2009 book Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature, John Morán González places Caballero within the context of the ongoing debate over the modernization of gender roles in Mexican-American families. The novel, which he calls the "capstone to literary works by women Lulackers during the 1930s", summarizes the feminist concerns about the "gendered Mexican American subject"—within the scope of an entertaining and ambitious historical novel.[54]

The debate over cultural assimilation versus cultural separatism that split Mexican-American thinkers in the 1930s and 1940s continues to surface today in discussions about Caballero.[55] Particular attention has been paid to the fact of the novel's coauthorship between women of distinct ethnic backgrounds, making it "a product of at least two separate and possibly conflictual historical consciousnesses".[56] Critics have indicted the novel's attitude of assimilation;[57] the book does, after all, feature three interethnic couplings between Don Santiago's surviving children and invading American soldiers. María Eugenia Cotera also isolates "what might be a too-celebratory representation of Anglo American values".[58]

In her book Native Speakers, Cotera argues that the significance of the co-authorship of this novel has often been ignored, under analyzed, and wrongly criticized. The novel has been criticized and rejected by both Chicana/o scholars and historically white publishers because of the unique collaboration between González and Eimer.[59] This played a significant role in the failure of getting Caballero published during their lifetimes.[60] González was extremely frustrated by this during her life.[61] There has, however, been a strong counterargument to these rejections that considers the power of these two women from such different backgrounds speaking out together against "the singularity of patriarchal thinking and its bankrupt formulations of identity and authority".[62] Another fascinating component of this collaboration is that it simultaneously tells the Mexican side of the war and reflects a partnership between a Mexican-American and Anglo-American author.[63] Cotera argues that it is only natural for these women to work together as "the notion of a singular author is a construct of modernity that is inextricably linked ‘to the development of modern capitalism and of intellectual property, to Western rationalism, and to patriarchy’".[64] Caballero works to undo this discourse through collaboration as when you write together "you have to desire the collaborative world under formation more than the unextended ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ of the old power structures".[65] This collaboration is not however, to be confused with assimilation or "selling out". The romance plots in the novel have been perceived as assimilationist as if the Anglo men are conquering the Mexican women.[66] However, as Cotera notes, "such criticisms are founded, of course, on the exigencies of race and nation, forcing what is essentially a critique of patriarchal ideology into service as a critique of imperialism, a service that the novel only imperfectly satisfies".[67] Instead of viewing the collaboration as a "sell out" or a problem, it can be viewed as a nepantla, a term the highly acclaimed and respected Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa uses based on a Nahuatl word that refers to "a space between or a middle ground".[68] This concept favors the recognition of the humanity in others and ourselves in order to create bridges and overcome borders. This works on multiple levels, "collapsing ‘the binaries of colored/white, female/male, mind/body," all of which are relevant to Caballero and the historical context of the novel.[69] Eimer and Gonzalez took a leap of faith in one another in both their friendship and their work, as "Caballero's collaborations across difference take place against a historical and geographical backdrop that highlights the risks that such a crossing entail a U.S.–Mexico borderlands still in formation in 1846–1848…".[70] It cannot be stressed enough that beyond the Mexican/Anglo leap of faith taken, the text works with many layers of collaboration on the "path of conocimiento".[71] Caballero's structure of genres is "part history, part tragedy, part romance, part feminist tract," and "its multivalent strategies of description reflect the very complexity of the historical transformations that it seeks to document.[72] In conclusion, in direct contrast to the common critiques and ignorance of the co-authorship of Caballero, the novel itself is "a collaborative text about collaboration, a text that self-consciously enacts the politics of its production within its pages. But it is also a utopian project, a bid to craft a world that was scarcely imaginable in the Texas of the 1930s".[73]

In just over a decade since its publication, Caballero has been analyzed under a number of other critical lenses. Two recent examples include Marci R. McMahon's 2007 essay, "Politicizing Spanish-Mexican Domesticity, Redefining Fronteras", which interprets González and Raleigh's invocation of "the domestic sphere as a site of both negotiation and resistance to U.S. imperialism and colonialism";[74] and Pablo Ramirez's 2009 essay, "Resignifying Preservation: A Borderlands Response to American Eugenics in Jovita González and Eve Raleigh's Caballero", which analyzes the authors' romantic plots as a response to eugenic claims that "Americanness" was a matter of strong blood lines and deliberate breeding.[75]

This novel deals with the issue of racism on a level beyond a white/other dichotomy. Race relations in the novel are complicated by the favoring of Spanish blood within the ethnic category of "Mexican." This is demonstrated in the multiple references to Spanish features as the beauty ideals within the Mexican communities.[76] Another demonstration of this favoring is evident in the marriage relations and rules, as Mexicans of indigenous blood or features were not allowed into the marriage structures of those with more direct Spanish lineage and were bound to roles as "peons." While this racist structure existed within the hacienda community, there was simultaneously a land conflict between Native American Indians, Mexicans, and Anglo Americans, as referenced in historical context.[77] This caused a lot of bitter feelings, as witnessed in the derogatory use of the word "gringo" and the fear of Indian Americans.[78] The historical context of the U.S./Mexican War] is a continuous theme throughout the entire novel, and is represented often through the gender expressions of the characters. The women come to represent peace and life while the heterosexual men represent fighting and war. This speaks volumes to the strict gender roles of this culture and time period, in which femininity and masculinity are defined in these classic terms.[79] Don Santiago is also seen as the ultimate patriarch, an identity that ultimately does not serve him well.[80]