Knight without Armor: Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, 1896–1958 (review)

Knight without Armor: Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, 1896-1958. By Félix D. Almaráz, Jr. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 1999. Pp. xxi, 430. $39.95.)

It is on rare occasions--if ever at all--that a scholar is called upon to review a book that he or she can confidently acclaim as a work which will find itself lodged as a classic in the annals of historiography for decades to come. Such, however, is the case with this reviewer as he with great enthusiasm read Félix D. Almaráz's biography of one of Texas' most revered historians, the late Dr. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda. Beyond any doubt, Almaráz's effort will endure as the standard by which forthcoming biographical studies of personages prominent in the narratives of Mexico, the Catholic Southwest, or the Borderlands will be measured.

Almost twenty years in the making, Knight without Armor: Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, 1896-1958, is an intellectually and spiritually compelling tome that matured from the author's hand in a brilliant historical literary style. Written clearly and in a way that illustrates the author's profound understanding of Castañeda and his times, Almaráz's volume goes well beyond merely tracing the life of his subject. Buttressed by the biographer's well-developed historical insight regarding the whole period under study, Knight without Armor places the great University of Texas historian at the center of the scholarly, political, Catholic, economic, and social milieus of the day with refinement. Moreover, Professor Almaráz accomplishes this while kneading throughout the story the substance of Castañeda's deep devotion to what ultimately mattered most to him--his Catholic faith and his family.

In thirteen carefully-scripted chapters, Almaráz engages his readers with the Castañeda saga. From Carlos' birth on November 11, 1896, in Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, to his death at Seton Hospital in Austin, Texas, on Holy Thursday, April 3, 1958, the narrative unfolds. At the center of his young life were his parents, Timoteo C. Castañeda and Elisa Andrea Leroux Castañeda and his five brothers and four sisters. Ultimately the family moved to Brownsville, Texas, where their bi-national identity (Almaráz's own term, p. 5) developed. Meanwhile, as Carlos matured into his early- to mid-twenties he attended the University of Texas at Austin, became a school teacher in Beaumont, and married Elisa Rios (December 27, 1921).

While his family grew (three daughters, Gloria--who died as a child--Rosemary, and Consuelo), Carlos pursued an academic career that was to become almost legendary. With precision Almaráz details these years, ones which geographically extend mostly from Texas south into Mexico as well as north and east to Virginia, Washington, D.C., and New England, and span the more than three-and-a-half decades of Castañeda's adult life.

Working from a perspective that had converted this would-be engineering student to an historian, Castañeda consistently involved students and colleagues, as well as persons outside of academia, in the ventures on which he was working. This was true from his early days as a member of the faculty at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia; through his time spent as librarian of the Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin; to his two years as an energetic superintendent of schools in Del Rio, Texas; on through his World War II years as a public servant; to his emerging as a distinguished historian at the University of Texas at Austin. In all of this, Almaráz poignantly highlights the influence on Castañeda of such scholarly and spiritual luminaries as--among others--Professors Eugene C. Barker and Herbert Eugene Bolton, as well as Father Paul J. Foik of the Knights of Columbus' Texas Historical Commission.

Carlos Eduardo Castañeda has left a firm legacy as not only a...