Paternalism and Assimilation in Books About Hispanics: Part One of a Two-Part Essay

"Not everything American is worth learning," Aunt Amelia sounded testy.

"That is also true," John agreed. "Unfortunately, the newcomer is apt to pick up some of our most unattractive qualities to copy. But it's better to risk that and try for greater assimilation."

(Whitney 149)

So states the bounteous liberal in Phyllis Whitney's juvenile novel, A Long Time Coming first published in 1954. Though this opinion is presented fictively, it contains the essence of a real and common ideology. While assimilation may have become a bad word in the lexicon of the socially conscious, it is a common assumption that non-white ethnics—in this case Mexican-Americans—need to be freed from the shackles of an inferior culture if they hope to improve themselves. It is an assumption that continues to provide the basis for an overbearing paternalism in literature for Hispanic and other American youths.

The concept of family has been strong in most traditional cultures, and the faltering of the family unit (whether primary or extended family) in modern American culture has been posited as a primary factor in many of our current social afflictions—high rates of drug addiction, teen suicide, etc. The Latino is among those cultural groups for which the closeness of family is especially keen. As novelist Tomas Rivera has said:

La casa is to me the most beautiful word in the Spanish language. It evokes the constant refuge, the constant father, the constant mother. It contains the father, the mother, and the child.

(22-23)

Rivera points out that la cas, el barrio, and la lucha—the home, the community, the struggle of cultures—are "constant elements in the ritual of Chicano literature." The family entity is the center of goals and activities, and culture is tangible daily history. Therefore, a literature that insists upon the inherent inadequacies of the Latino family unit and structure, that routinely degrades the central family figures of mother and father, is surely misguided. Nevertheless, the paternalism in literature about Hispanic youth is often couched in a formulaic plotline involving an Anglo rescuer, exemplar, or surrogate parent figure, and these characters are contrasted with Hispanic adults whose roles are either negative or insubstantial. This literature frequently depicts admirable young Latino protagonists as having been "liberated" by Anglos from their family and community, from an experience usually presented as either violent, sordid, foolish, or anachronistic. The youth overcomes his or her difficulties after the substitution of an outsider father/mother/nurturer/savior figure has taken place.

More than a dozen years ago, the Council on Interracial Books For Children conducted studies which included nearly 300 books with themes concerning Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Chicanos. In 1983, fifty-six additional titles about Puerto Ricans were evaluated by Sonia Nieto under CIBC auspices. For this essay, we selected eight titles published over a twenty-seven year period. The first four of these, published before 1970, are the subject of the first part of this two-part article. Part two, covering more recent novels, will appear in a future Quarterly. Even though these books were published over a period of three decades in which there were important changes in social attitudes, they are surprisingly similar to each other. Within all eight of them, we found that the theme of the paternalistic Anglo rescuer emerges out of a basic cultural assumption-that a social hierarchy exists, with the Anglo-Saxon at the top. It is this presumption of the natural superiority of the fictional Anglo that reflects the cultural imperalism and ethnocentrism cited by the earlier CIBC studies. In other words, while the authors of more recent materials about Hispanics have, in some instances, taken pains to alter structural features of their works—for instance, they offer the "exceptional" Latino protagonist as a positive image—such external mechanical manipulations degenerate quickly like a skin graft that will not take. The sub-cutaneous material of the cultural superiority myth remains in place.

The question must, therefore, be posed: is there no legitimate or satisfying way to present a pluralistic vision in literature...