Crowding Out Latinos

10. Ana Castillo's Massacre of the Dreamers: Communicating the Chicana Experience

Ana Castillo's Massacre 01 ,lte Dreamers: Communicating the Chicana Experience he title of Ana Castillo's Massacre ofthe Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (1995) is meant to inform readers that when Hernando Cortes arrived on the eastern shores ofMontezuma's kingdom in 1519, Montezuma ordered that thousands of his dreamers, his diviners of the future, be put to death for prophesying the end of the vast Aztec empire. Because the Spanish conquerer was mistaken for Quetzalcoatl, the mythic god of the Aztecs who was expected to return from the east, Cortes was able to conquer the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan , Mexico's central valley, two years later. Castillo contends that the massacre of the prophets, who dreamed of a better life for the Mexica Empire, "is happening again throughout the globe" and that the responsibility of "silenced dreamers rendered harmless" by the world's larger forces is stoutly to articulate the connection between the tragedy that is happening to today's Latinas and that forgotten event.! The ten essays comprising this collection were initially written to fulfill the requirements for a doctoral degree in American Studies at the University of Bremen in Germany in 1991. Her aim "in offering my interpretation and analyses has been to have my view serve as a springboard for further intellectual discussion" ofmatters thataffect Latinas, issues that have seldom, if ever, been discussed at length in 135 Copyrighted Material 136 Chapter 10 American culture. As in the case of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, whom she cites with admiration for speaking out for third world women (7-8), in Massacre of the Dreamers Castillo rhetorically advances some ofthe passionate prose exhibited in her novels .2 Readers who have little or no sense ofhow insignificant and unappreciated Chicanas and other Latinas who live in the United States can be made to feel may be astonished by the uninhibited ardor ofCastillo's candid essays. Massacre ofthe Dreamers is a hard-hitting book that spiritually seeks to connect the lives of today's Latinas as rendered by Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Maria Elena Viramontes, Carmen Tafolla, Angela de Hoyos, Evangelina Vigil, and other Chicana writers to the lives ofethnic Amerindian women throughout the world. Her objective is to create gender solidarity in the face oflittle appreciation and considerable abuse. Castillo argues that social systems designed by men to advance civilizations often make progress at the expense of socially and economically disenfranchising women. Latina women, in particular , Castillo claims, are used without being properly paid or credited. Since few Amerindian Latinas have recourse to justice or other established ways to seek redress, especially from the people for whom they work, they often remain mistreated. Castillo's compassion, ironically, is quite Christian, but she does not credit or attribute her defense ofwomen to the Catholic Church or any other established religion. Religion and the established Church, indeed, receive harsh criticism for their disregard of indigenous women. The nature ofthat criticism is a measure ofher anger, ofCastillo's sense that religion has not eased the pain and suffering ofwomen who have been burdened with caring for civilizations throughout history.3 Focusing on the widespread plight of the mestiza/MexicanAmerindian woman, Castillo employs language that some readers see as unnecessarily abrasive in explaining "our five-hundred-year status as countryless residents on land that is now the United States." She does not mark the beginning of Mexican American subjugation from the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but from the 1521 overthrow of Montezuma by Cortes. Her need to throw off the constraints and impositions of the European colonizing efforts that Octavio Paz trenchantly discusses in The Labyrinth ofSolitude, as well as those ofAmerican society, sometimes overrides her accompanying counterdesire to invite encouragement and support for her views. Castillo, however, Copyrighted Material Ana Castillo's Massacre of the Dreamers 137 clearly places more importance on speaking forthrightly to a world that her past experience tells her is not likely to pay her much attentionthat , indeed, would not likely mind seeing pugnacious Chicanas like her silenced, much as Montezuma silenced the dreamers ofa message he did not like. Massacre ofthe Dreamers articulates philosophical views that are more invitingly expressed in books such as Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek, and in Castillo's own novels, The Mixquiahuala Letters and So Farfrom God. These fictive works offer different rhetorics on the lives ofLatinas...