Américo Paredes: Culture and Critique

1. Radical Hope

one Radical Hope A ccording to literary historian John-Michael Rivera, in 1845, on the eve of a momentous shift in the histories of both Mexico and the United States, John O’Sullivan, the American editor and founder of the Democratic Review, broached what he called “the Mexican question.” O’Sullivan used the phrase to label the debate concerning the imminent expansion of the United States westward into Mexican territory, an expansion he certainly favored since he also invented the phrase “Manifest Destiny.” For him there was indeed no question that mixed-race Mexicans were neither racially nor culturally fit to possess such a western dominion, and therefore it was providentially intended to belong to the United States—a generalized American opinion that provided a cultural grounding for the coming war against Mexico in 1846. The phrase continued to be used to name the issue of annexing all of Mexico into the United States after the American victory and occupation in 1847, and before the issue was settled in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Yet, along with other influentials, O’Sullivan was opposed to the annexation of most of what is now the Republic of Mexico. Senator John C. Calhoun, for example, also opposed such a total incorporation on racial-cultural grounds similar to those of O’Sullivan, saying, “Are we to associate with ourselves as equals, companions, and fellow citizens , the Indians and mixed race of Mexico? . . . I should consider such a thing as fatal to our institutions” (Rivera 2006: 58–70). In this fashion “the Mexican question” was historically defined as a still discernible U.S. attitude toward Mexicans in general, but perhaps more so toward Mexicans living in the United States, in much closer proximity to white America. The toxic residue of such xenophobia can be traced to the present. The « 10 » Américo Paredes raging debate on Mexican immigration and views such as those articulated nightly on Fox News is one very recent, and very public, example, as is the only somewhat more benign recent exclusion of Latinos by Ken Burns in his PBS documentary on World War II. Yet, against such racism and other forms of social marginalization, Mexican Americans have also broached our own “Mexican question,” which is: “How are we to define ourselves and make our way in such an American society?” Over time these two intimately related questions have been addressed within this community in different ways; indeed, one such public answer may be seen in the recent nationwide demonstrations by Mexican immigrants and their supporters, the latter including many Mexican Americans, now U.S. citizens, but also in the strong critical reaction that Ken Burns received from the Latino intelligentsia. Both reactions, it should be noted, are premised on the decisive contributions that Mexicans and other Latinos have made to this country. But the question has also been addressed by a historical and present-day lineage of Mexican-American intellectuals and artists. Among the latter, no figure is more important than the late Américo Paredes, especially in his early novelistic writing. américo paredes as novelist Until recently, Paredes’s most important work was thought to be “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, his study of the heroic corrido, a Mexican-American balladry of resistance to Anglo America, and the subject of Chapter 3. In terms of critical commentaryand influence, that work may now be superseded by his novel GeorgeWashington Gómez: A Mexico-Texan Novel, recovered and published in 1990. The latter has become, in Marco Portales’s words, “the master . . . narrative produced by a Mexican-American writer so far” (2000: 82).Though written in the 1930s and ’40s, the novel was not published until 1990. This long hiatus was itself possibly a racist effect of O’Sullivan’s version of the “Mexican question.” Through its many different and complex characters, the novel articulates different and compelling positions on the Mexican question(s), positions that continue to be efficacious in the present moment. This capacious work has drawn significant critical commentary, principally from Mexican-American literary intellectuals, but others as well. Acts of cultural interpretation are themselves acts of culture and politics, and so the readings of these critics—their varying points of view on this radical hope « 11 » novel—must themselves be seen as responses to the Mexican question interpretively intertwined with the text of the novel. Very...