Alex and the Hobo: A Chicano Life and Story

CHAPTER 8: WOMEN IN PERIL

CHAPTER 8 WOMEN IN PERIL Joe Taylor links the fate of his culture to the fate of women. He described how his culture, like his moral vision, depends on churchgoing women like Beatriz Mondragón, who teach their children the concept of sin and stress the importance of having a big heart. He described , in the poetic language of his story, how the class system of Antonito, which is based on greed, threatens women and, by extension , his culture. China died at the hands of a greedy and corrupt Mexicano man who made his living by handling money. The class system is a threat to Joe Taylor’s culture because it enables men and women who do not have big hearts and who have questionable morals to abuse their power and take advantage those who are weaker and more vulnerable. Joe Taylor arranged for me to interview men and women on the western side of the valley so that they could describe in their own words how and why women are in peril. In this chapter I present excerpts from two interviews, one with a man and the other with a woman. Both described how their daughters were in peril because of witches who intended to harm them. Witchcraft is a system of belief with long antecedents in the Southwest that explains misfortune. The particular witchcraft beliefs of the man and the woman Joe Taylor arranged for me to interview are probably an amalgam of Native American and Spanish culture.1 Many of the original Mexicanos who settled along the banks of Culebra Creek and the Conejos River were and still are Penitentes, who believe there is an intense struggle between good and evil.2 In Joe Taylor’s view, witches are evil because they are in league with the devil, they do not have pure hearts, they are envious, and they are 149 greedy. They personify the inverse of the values he learned in his father ’s zapatería and at his mother’s knee. Belief in witchcraft prevailed before the Anglos arrived in force with the coming of the railroad in the late 1800’s. Joe Taylor explained that witches tend to be Mexicanos, they have been around for a long time, and they tend to inhabit the llano rather than the mountains, where Anglos have built their vacation homes. The subject of witchcraft came up in our dialogue when he asked me to define cultural anthropology . Paraphrasing Geertz, I explained that it is the study of culture , which consists of the inherited ways a people make sense of their experience.3 Joe Taylor responded by telling me that I had to learn how witchcraft victims draw from their culture to interpret what has gone wrong in their lives. Their testimonies revealed how they have experienced pressure from the class system that developed on the western (Antonito) side of the valley. Some of their experiences have been disturbing and frightening. In the language of social science, their testimonies reveal how they have reacted to Anglo-Saxon hegemony and poverty.4 Hegemony , according to Raymond Williams, is a notion combining the concept of culture, as a system of meaning, with the Marxist idea of class ideology.5 Marxists contend that meaning depends on one’s position in the class structure, but the production of meaning, in Williams’s terms, is “in the hands of those who control the primary means of production.”6 Therefore, those in subordinate classes must struggle to maintain an independent consciousness.7 The two people whom Joe Taylor arranged for me to interview described in dramatic language how they are struggling with symbols as well as with poverty. I identify them with the pseudonyms of Pedro and Juana to protect their anonymity. The “Psychological Vampire” Pedro’s testimony appears first. He described his encounter with a diabolical Anglo miner who proposed to exchange a mine with rich veins of gold and turquoise for Pedro’s adolescent daughter.8 Pedro eventually rejected the offer but only after experiencing a great deal of confusion that left him with a headache. The pain in his head is a THE LIFE 150 WOMEN IN PERIL palpable expression of his particular struggle to maintain his own independent consciousness. Joe Taylor started the conversation by bringing up the subject of the “psychological vampire,” a term he learned from Pedro’s late father, who applied it to the Anglo...