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2. TOXIC METROPOLIS
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2 TOXIC METROPOLIS ALEJANDRO MORALES’S THE RAG DOLL PLAGUES Since fifteen hundred and sixteen . . . their borders and boots on top of us Pullin’ knobs on the floor of their toxic metropolis RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, “The People of the Sun” This chapter moves from the dystopian sf future of Butler’s parable novels to the temporally diverse sf depictions of Mexicana/o and Chicana/o communities in Alejandro Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues.1 Whereas Butler’s novels focus on multiethnic communities from an African American point of view, this novel looks at the multiethnic and multiracial elements of Chicana/o communities in and between Mexico City and Southern California. In their apostrophe to Chicana/o identity, “The People of the Sun,” used here as my epigraph, Rage against the Machine describes Los Angeles as a toxic metropolis, drawing a connection between the colonial enterprise in Mexico and the economic, military, and ecological interventions in Mexico by the United States. In 1516 Charles V ascended the throne of Spain, marking that nation’s post-Moor unification and the beginning of Spanish attempts to explore and ultimately gain control over mainland Mesoamerica. The song’s reference to “their border and boots on top of us” refers to the United States wresting its southwestern corner from Mexico by military action and laying its border over preexisting Mexican and indigenous communities.2 As in Butler’s texts, we see an emphasis on the permeability of political borders in The Rag Doll Plagues, as well as allusions to indigenous American identities. In this case, we also note, however, the historic continuity of Mexican 58 Toxic Metropolis and Mexican American presence in the United States and Los Angeles in particular. That this metropolis is “toxic” connects the cultural and economic domination of Mexican Americans in the United States and that of the rest of the human and nonhuman world, a connection similarly emphasized in The Rag Doll Plagues. While, as I will show, this novel on occasion relies on essentialist notions of Chicana/o identity, naturalized heterosexuality, and an essential human body, that essentialism is also repeatedly problematized by the narrators’ frequent refutations of the possibility of purity. Morales’s novel takes great pains to show that states of purity cannot exist in the world, that notions of purity are necessarily atavistic or static and, as such, inapplicable to real-world situations. Instead, the narrators constantly emphasize the ways that identities shift, allegiances form and falter, and hope for human survival lies within the most polluted spaces. These positive pollutions illustrate and elucidate the permeability of human selves and cultures and ultimately assert a connection among humans and between humans and the other species with which we live. Furthermore, the reclamation of cast-off communities, cast-off objects, and desecrated spaces becomes possible through recognizing ourselves as members of broad, complex, and inclusive communities. Moreover, Morales, like Rage against the Machine, draws on Mexica tradition as a base for this communal identity with the nonhuman, a base that, strangely, remains unexamined in the critical texts focused on this novel.3 Finally, I argue Morales’s narrative serves as a form of pepenador, retrieving society’s wretched refuse (both the waste and people who are thrown away) and desecrated spaces and reclaiming and recycling them back into society.4 The Rag Doll Plagues takes place during three periods of time, each told in a sixty-six-page section: book 1, “Mexico City,” takes place from 1788 to 1792 in México df; book 2, “Delhi,” in the mid- to late 1970s in Orange County, California; and book 3, “lamex,” sometime between 2050 and 2100 in lamex, a section of the Triple Alliance—a political entity comprised of Mexico, the United States, and Canada.5 Each book is narrated by a physician named Gregorio, or Gregory Revueltas, who is attempting to treat some manifestation of a recurring, evolving disease: la mona, or “the rag doll,” so named because it swells the limbs, dissolves bone, and renders the infected immobile. [44.201.99.133] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:21 GMT) BOOK 1: MEXICO CITY “First Professor of Medicine, Anatomy and Surgery of the Royal Bedchamber ” and “Director of the Royal Protomedicato” (15)—Gregorio Revueltas, a Spanish doctor in Mexico City who attempts to treat a disease spreading throughout New Spain and effecting people of all classes and races, narrates book 1. Over the course of this first book, Gregorio gradually comes to identify...