The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory (review)

In this provocative study, Lázaro Lima links the difficulties the Latino subject faces in the mainstream American imaginary to the “literal and metaphorical divide between Mexico” and the US (5). Lima contends that in order to demonstrate that they pose no threat to the US, Latinos have had to create a “specific Latino subject of American cultural and literary history” (6). This subjectivity is one that he identifies as purely “American,” one that makes no room for any element of the foreign. Examining literature and cultural artifacts such as prose writing, poems, photographs, and newspaper accounts, the author analyzes the manner in which the Latino body has been masticated and regurgitated by the US “National Symbolic Order” for more palatable popular consumption (9).

Lima divides his study into two parts, each containing three chapters. In the first part, “Longing History,” he looks at cultural artifacts dating from the Mexican American War (1846–1848) to the Brown Power Movement of the 1960s. He highlights the intricate dance of surrender and defiance that marks these texts, as artists recognize and welcome the strength of the imperial power of the US while they attempt to maintain their cultural difference. In the second part of the study, “Postmodern Genealogies: The Latino Body, in Theory,” Lima shifts his focus to the increasingly complex theorizations of Latino bodies and subjectivities in the last four decades.

The Introduction, “‘The American Congo’ and the National Symbolic,” examines the construction of the Latino subject and the importance of the body and memory to make clear Lima’s highly sophisticated argument. Perhaps most important, Lima also looks at the purpose of such a project. In Chapter One, “Negotiating Cultural Memory in the Aftermath of the Mexican-American War: Nineteenth-Century Mexican American Testimonials and The Squatter and the Don,” Lima traces the demarcation of the boundaries of Latino subjectivity for these new citizens of the US in the years after the war that resulted in the acquisition of much of the Southwest. Most intriguing is his excavation of newspaper accounts of Eulalia Pérez, a 139-year-old woman whose image, reproduced in periodicals across the country, became an emblematic representation of the Mexican in the late 1800s. In the midst of efforts to define itself as a unified nation after the horrors of the Civil War, the US was contending with other bodies that at times more closely resembled the annihilated Native American population or the newly-freed community of African slaves and their descendants. Lima’s examination of these accounts is noteworthy, not only because he resurrects stories that have been buried in archives, but also because his analysis underscores the need for more multilingual scholars in the field of American Studies. As the understanding of the notion of the Americas expands, so too does the need for researchers who can reveal the contributions of non-English speakers to this country’s development.

Chapter Two, “Reading the Corpus Delicti: Tomás Rivera’s Earth and the Chicano Body in the Public Sphere,” examines Latino literary self-portraits and identifies and analyzes two critical gestures toward incorporation by the US mainstream: full assimilation and a delicate balance between recognition of the foreign and an emphasis on shared aims with the Anglo-American populace. In Lima’s estimation, Rivera’s 1971 novel . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra ( . . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him) testifies to the wounds suffered by members of an overlooked and disregarded community who pledge allegiance to the very giant that destroyed the community. Along with the Civil Rights Movement, Rivera’s novel set the stage for the canonization of Latino literature, the subject of Lima’s third chapter.

In “The Institutionalization of Latino Literature in the Academy: Cabeza de Vaca’s Castaways and the Crisis of Legitimation,” Lima looks at political and scholarly attempts to claim the writings of...