El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family's American Journey, 1503-1980, and: Famous All Over Town, and: Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos (review)

reviews 145 Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas. El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family's American Journey, 1503-1980. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983. 205 pp. $20 (cloth). Danny Santiago. Famous Alt Over Town. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983. 285 pp. $14.95 (doth). Juan Bruce-Novoa. Chicano Poetry: A Response to Chaos. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1982. 238 pp. $25 (doth). The Chicano Movement which climaxed in the late 1960's clearly responded to the situation that people of Mexican descent have confronted in the United States ance 1848. The term itsdf, Chicano, was perceived by many primarily as an attempt at self-definition and as a first step toward sdf-determination. This desire for sdf-determination was a result of several factors. Of utmost importance was what the cultural-nationalist dements in the leadership of the movement at the time interpreted as an imposition of fordgn cultural values on Chícanos by a dominant and oppressive "Anglo" sodety. Concomitant with this imposition was, of course, the denial and obliteration of the Chícanos' true history and rightful cultural heritage. The related desire for sdf-definition arose from the feeling, prevalent among many Chícanos, of not bdng Mexican and yet not bdng full-fledged "Americans" dther. To rescue and protect the history and cultural heritage which had been denied to generadons of Chícanos, a vast number of creative and scholarly works on and by Chícanos have been pubUshed during the past fifteen years. A central theme in this Uterature is the Chicano nuclear and extended family-considered a pillar ofthe values and traditions to be preserved—and the effects on it of the oppression it has suffered. El Pueblo—the second book co-authored by Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas (the first, Wasi'chu: The Continuing Indian Wars, appeared in 1979)—attempts to provide the reader with a multi-faceted view ofthe Chicano experience by tracing thehistory ofa single "representative" family, beginning with adventurers who left Spain in the sixteenth century to partidpate in the pUlage of the Americas. El Pueblo could thus be characterized as a Chicano version of Roots. The purposes of the authors are various, but their central motivation seems to be to give us "a small sh'ce of personal history iUuminatíng a broader story" (p.20). In doing so, they expect "to add something to the existing record" and to participate in the effort to restore to Chícanos their rightful place in the history and culture of the United States of America. They achieve this aim by demonstrating that the roots of the Chicano people were planted in this land long before those of Angloamericans. Written as a polemic against those who portray Chícanos as newcomers ("iUegal" newcomers at that), or as an invading wave which threatens the cultural integrity ofthis country, El Pueblo constitutes, in general, a relativdy innovative contribution to the overall endeavor of documenting Chicano history. The book, however, has serious shortcomings. These may be grouped into three main categories: lack of scholarly rigor, ideological contradictions, and stylistic deficiendes. The lack of rigor appears, for example, in the authors' suggestion that thdr book fills an almost complete vacuum in Chicano historiography: "Between the era of the conquistadors and the present day, the history ofChicano America is nearly a void" (p. 10). Whereas this was more or less true in the 1960's, today such a daim can only be attributed to dther ignorance or pretentiousness, since there are important works deaUng with the subjed (McWiUiams, Pitt, Samora, Romo, Galarza, CamariUo, Gutiérrez, Griswold del Castillo, Mario Garda, etc.), works that Johansen and Maestas should not only know but also cite. Further, they continuously assume blood Uneage among the many GaUegoses that they indude in thdr history without satisfactorily documenting this relationship. They admit, in an appendix, that the relationship is "conjectural" (p. 192), but insist, "If we had the funds to travel to Mexico City, Seville, and Madrid, it is likely that we could have Unked blood ties back to Spain in 1503 and provided genealogical links with the [Gallegos] family and the conquistadors Juan, Baltasar, and Hernán" (p. 191). Finally, one...