Colonial Itineraries of Contemporary Mexico: Literary and Cultural Inquiries ed. by Oswaldo Estrada, Anna M. Nogar (review)

Beginning with Spanish rule in the sixteenth century through Mexican Independence in 1821, Colonial Itineraries of Contemporary Mexico: Literary and Cultural Inquiries is an anthology that carefully considers artistic representations of Mexico’s colonial era from a contemporary perspective. After an introduction by Oswaldo Estrada and Anna M. Nogar, titled “Reliving the Mexican Colonia in a New Millennium,” the book is structured into four main sections where critics provide new interpretations of works produced in or about Mexico since 2000.

The first section, “Revising Colonial Ruins and Chronicles,” is an exploration of how colonial writing and racism and theocracy have affected the national memory. In chapter 1, “Carlos Monsiváis: Rewriting the Nation’s Memory, Playing Back the Conscience of a Mexico Remiso,” Linda Egan credits the author for rewriting “Catholic providentialism” through scrutiny of Indian and Spanish synchronicity in religion, art, and in the governance of an independent and modern Mexico (35). In chapter 2, “Reading Colonial Ruins in Carmen Boullosa’s Poetry,” Jeremy Paden’s reading of “El son del ángel de la ciudad” clearly points out that the poem’s central indictment is directed not only at foreigners who have exploited Mexico, but also at Mexican nationals. Urban space as a an interstitial space, and the juxtaposition of Mexico City in contrast to Cervantes’s City of Order is how Vinodh Venkatesh frames his argument in chapter 3, “Fiction, History, and Geography: Colonial Returns to Mexico City in Héctor de Mauleón’s El secreto de la noche triste.” He deconstructs how the novel is unique compared to other historical novels that follow Linda Hutcheon’s paradigm of historiographic metafiction.

The second section, “Queering Gender and Twisting Genres,” questions how depictions of gendered and sexual identities have come to dominate current narrative fiction and poetry (11). In chapter 4, “Four Letters and a Funeral: Sor Juana’s Writing in Yo, la peor,” Oswaldo Estrada credits Mónica Lavín for aligning the historical figure with the tradition of the revisionist cronista, while adjacently validating contemporary women’s writing as a political subversive act (95). In chapter 5, “Queering the Auto Sacramental: Anti-heteronormative Parody and the Specter of Silences in Luis Felipe Fabre’s La sodomía en la Nueva España,” Tamara R. Williams examines how original auto sacramentals were complicit in silencing the homosexual voice in Spain’s imperial discourse, and demonstrates through Fabre’s poem how allegorical parody is privileging queer sex. Guillermo de los Reyes-Heredia and Josué Gutiérrez-González convincingly make the point most central to the entire anthology: that issues related to religion, class, race, ethnicity, and sexual identity in colonial times are still haunting postcolonial and contemporary Mexico in chapter 6, “Colonial Confinement, Confession, and Resistance in Ángeles del abismo by Enrique Serna.”

A broader approach to how Mexico’s colonial past has been presented internationally is found in the third section, “Global and Transatlantic Itineraries,” and begins with chapter 7, “Malinche as Cinderellatl: Sweeping Female Agency in Search of a Global Readership,” Irma Cantú’s critique of Laura Esquivel’s novel Malinche (2006) that Cantú insists prolongs the misunderstanding of Mexican female identity. In a similar vein, chapter 8, “Transatlantic Revisions of the Conquest in Inma Chacón’s La princesa india,” Cristina Carrasco notes how the author subverts the framework of the new Latin American novel which is valuable in providing readers a glimpse into “an inversion of colonial otherness,” but fails in empowering her female protagonist by ultimately aligning her with a negative association of Malinche (187). The next chapters take two different approaches: in “También la lluvia: Of Coproductions and Re-Encounters, a Re-Vision of the Colonial,” Llana Dann Luna argues that the film suggests a resumption of a harmonious relationship between Spain and its former colonies by assenting to a more nuanced interpretation about the relationships...