The City in Contemporary Chicano Fiction

NOTES THE CITY IN CONTEMPORARY CHICANO FICTION Vernon E. Lattin Northern Illinois University Although eighty percent of Chícanos in the United States live in cities,1 little has been written about their literature reflecting this urban existence. Perhaps this is because Chícanos have generally been the subject of sociologists more interested in historical cities than imaginative ones. Yet the fictive, metaphorical city, which gains its reality from within the literary work, extensively exists.2 The writers of Chicano fiction are the new romantics in their attitude toward the city. They maintain, as Northrop Frye has said of the British Romantics of the early nineteenth century, a "sense of antagonism to the city, as a kind of cancerous growth" which destroys the individual's relation with himself and nature.3 Most modern Chicano writers would appreciate Wordsworth's view of city life as a destructive , though seductive, sideshow, as a "vanity fair" which is an illusion and a dangerous trap. The Chicano writer is also like the traditional Romantic in seeking nature as solace from the destructive city: nature is Mother Earth, a redemptive, protective force. Bless Me, Ultima, The Plum-Plum Pickers, and "y no se lo trago la tierra" are examples of works in which nature is seen as offering a wholeness that the city destroys. The destructive city in Chicano fiction has two components: the Anglo city, with its terrifying power and strangeness; and the ghetto, the Chicano part of the city which has been perverted by Anglo power and oppression, a place of violence and poverty. The Chicano may be sucked into the vörtex of the modern Anglo city where he loses his identity or is destroyed, or else he finds himself a prisoner within the ghetto existence. The alternative, however, to the destructive cities is not only nature but also el barrio, an emotional or spiritual reality within the ghetto. The barrio, as distinct from the ghetto and the city, becomes part of the reconciling or atoning myth of redemption for those alienated in their urban existence. As Luis Valdez has written, "The barrio is not a ghetto, though there are ghettos in the barrio."4 For the Chicano writer, then, there are three distinct, dominant images of the metropolis: the "city," created by los gabachos, which is destructive, 94Notes mechanical, and terrifying; the "ghetto," which results from the Anglo's dominance and power; "el barrio," which is a spiritual home and haven, offering the Chicano identity and warmth. Villareal's Pocho, the first contemporary Chicano novel, contains the story of the Juan Rubio family, trapped between two cultures, American and Mexican. The family's decay is precipitated by Juan Rubio's decision to buy a house in the city. In Mexico they had been country people who maintained the old customs, but when Juan says, "I have decided that we are urbanités,"5 the final destruction begins. In the city the family adopts the mores of the Anglo middle class, destroying their Mexican traditions and rural heritage (p. 132). Even Richard, the sensitive Pocho, does not see what is happening until it is too late. When the father finally leaves to seek an older existence, the family is left in shambles. Even more destructive is the city in Richard Vasquez's novel, Chicano; almost every image of the city in the book is unpleasant. Hector Sandoval's first view of an "American city" is one of poverty, slum shacks, and mud roads.8 He soon comes to see the power and money of the Anglo city surrounding this barrio bajo as a gigantic trap, and this realization drives him to drink and, eventually, death through drink. Hector's son, Neftalí, seeking to hold on to old customs, hopes thereby to avoid the trap of the city. His efforts are futile, however; the city, with its Anglo money and power, soon makes whores of his two sisters. He attempts to escape into a small Mexican community on the outskirts of Los Angeles, but the city follows and engulfs him and his new family : modernization reaches them, and they are choked by the dust from trucks roaring by. Lured by the city, his...