George Washington Gómez: A Mexicotexan Novel

“‘I remember,’ said Gumersindo. ‘Wachinton. Jorge Wachinton.’

‘Guálinto,’ said he grandmother, ‘what a funny name.’

‘Like Hidalgo, eh?’ said Feliciano.

‘Yes. Once he crossed a river while it was freezing. He drove out the English and freed the slaves.’

‘I wish the English would have stayed,’ said Feliciano. ‘I met an Englishman once, and he was a good man. Muy gente.’”

The Gómez family decides on Guálinto’s name. Gumersindo, María, and the grandmother are satisfied, but Feliciano has doubts. The family also displays their mere rudimentary awareness of Washington’s accomplishments. Feliciano questions whether Washington’s accomplishments were in fact good at all.

“It would be very hard to keep such a terrible truth from this male child. Never to tell him how his father died, never to give him a chance at vengeance. That was a hard task, and it was not fair to the boy either. For after all, what were men for but to live and die like men. What would he give to have a son who would avenge him if some day he were at last killed by the rinches?”

Feliciano is anxious due to the immensity of the task that lies before him: caring for María and her children without his mother’s or Gumersindo’s assistance. He also worries about what damage keeping Gumersindo’s secret from Guálinto will do to the boy’s manhood. His narrow view of masculinity will continue to weigh heavily on Guálinto throughout the boy’s childhood.

“His mother tried to calm his fears with religion. Everybody believed, with the possible exception of his Uncle Feliciano, who seemed to believe in nothing. However, he did not interfere with his mother’s teaching religion to her son. So the boy learned a whole rosary of paternosters, aves and credos to protect him from evil. He wore a tin likeness of the Virgin hung around his neck on a string, and he was taken to church on Sundays, where he learned more about Hell than about Heaven.”

Guálinto suffers from an overactive imagination that keeps him from sleeping at night. María, leaning heavily on her religion, takes Guálinto to church and surrounds him with protective holy symbols in an attempt to inspire his courage. They do little to help him sleep, instead inspiring more visions and terrors. That Guálinto learns more about Hell than Heaven speaks his culture’s emphasis on negative reinforcement during this period. Guálinto will encounter more negative reinforcement in school.

“The law. He pushed himself deeper into the clump of weeds. They would come. They would take him away, pushing him along in front of them and cursing him. Then they would beat him to make him tell all he knew. They would make him a witness. The horror of the word struck him like a blow. Witness, informer, pariah.”

Having witnessed the murder of Filomena Menchaca, Guálinto must escape the scene before being captured by the police. The idea of being forced to inform on members of his community is terrifying to him. Despite this, he knows he would not be able to resist the police’s demands if he were captured. This passage reveals Guálinto’s fearfulness of both societal pressures and governing influences.

“Hold one finger, just one finger, over a candle flame and see what pain it will cause you. In less than one minute. Then try to imagine the agony of Hell, where the fire that shall burn your whole body forever and ever shall be as that candle is to the sun […] And even in communities that call themselves pious, so weak is our flesh that for every soul that is saved a thousand shall burn.”

The priest at Guálinto’s church is extreme in his moralizing, adding to Guálinto’s horrors. The moral imperative he places on the children is cruel and nightmarish. Guálinto is given a difficult task of walking a narrow moral path to salvation, and he has trouble believing that the ration of saved versus damned could be so drastically skewed. Paredes paints every aspect of Guálinto’s childhood as steeped in fear, which likely contributes to his disgust for his community when he returns at the end of the novel.

“He’s a lawyer and wants to help his people? That’s it! That’s what Guálinto is going to be when he grows up.”

With the arrival of the lawyer Santiago López-Anguera next door to the Gómezes, María is suddenly hopeful that Gumersindo’s dream for Guálinto is indeed possible. However, she asks no questions as to how Santiago achieved his position or if he is genuinely a good lawyer, reflecting her passionate nature when excited. The passage also foreshadows Guálinto’s eventual career in law.

“Guálinto looked up eagerly at the portrait of his namesake. What a terrible disappointment! He had expected a fierce-looking warrior in a medal-covered uniform. Riding a horse maybe, and holding a sword in his hand. He stared at the picture with disillusionment that was almost contempt. A face like an angry old woman. Long white hair. And that coat! What a man to be named after.” 

Guálinto faces the image of his namesake for the first time and is confronted with the dissonance between the mythology of Washington and the man. He had previously imagined Washington presenting an idealized masculine figure. Instead, the person in the portrait looks more effeminate than Guálinto had expected, and he rejects it.

“Latin American (or simply Latin) was a polite term Anglotexans used when they meant Greaser. Or Mexican, for that matter. The word Mexican had for so long been a symbol of hatred and loathing that to most Anglotexans it had become a hateful and loathsome word. A kindly Anglo hesitated to call a friendly Mexican a Mexican for fear of offending him. Even the Mexicotexan stumbled on the word when he said it in English.”

The racism of Texas has become so insidious that the nationalist term “Mexican” has instead become a racial term, as have most polite variations of it. This creates a conundrum for the “kindly Anglos” and the Mexicotexans who no longer know which term is safe to use to describe the Tejano people. It also aids in the racist institutional mission of erasing Tejano identities and histories systematically by poisoning and complicating originally harmless terms.

“‘Come along,’ said the redhead, ‘and I’ll show you where you can wash your face.’ He led the way towards the boys’ washrooms. ‘Girls are the dirtiest sonsabitches,’ he said.

‘Uhuh,’ said Guálinto. But he made one silent exception.”

Guálinto has just been subjected to bullying by the girls sitting near him in Miss Cornelia’s class. El Colorado, a boy Guálinto avoided due to his fearsome reputation, has come to Guálinto’s aid, but he comforts him with misogynist statements about women in general. Guálinto goes along with these statements, but he excuses María Elena, the object of his affections. This foreshadows the unrealistic expectations he will eventually place on her.

“[I]n fact there were many Guálinto Gómezes, each one of them double like the images reflected on two glass surfaces of a show window. The eternal conflict between two clashing forces within him produced a divided personality, made up of tight little cells independent and almost entirely ignorant of each other, spread out all over his consciousness, mixed with one another like squares on a checkerboard.”

Guálinto gains awareness of the duality within him. He understands that these two identities do not swap places at the flip of the switch but overlap and fight against and corrupt one another. His inability to reconcile these identities becomes his tragic flaw as the story progresses.

“‘Remember when I was little,’ he continued, ‘and you used to read to me from your schoolbooks and sometimes you asked Uncle Feliciano for money to buy me books you thought I should read? I’ll get books for you now. And when I’m in the eighth grade I’ll lend you all my schoolbooks. We’ll study them together.’” 

The scene immediately prior details Carmen’s first sacrifice for the family, when she drops out of school to care for María. Guálinto, recognizing the encouragement Carmen showed him as a boy, offers to help her continue her education by sharing his books with her. This rare moment of pure generosity from Guálinto illustrates his capacity for good, despite his selfish tendencies.

“And Gumersindo had confidently declared that his son would be a great man. And he had put on Feliciano a burden of guilt and responsibility, to see that the son would fulfill his destiny. Gumersindo’s words, spoken once playfully and again as he lay dying, took an almost religious significance for Feliciano and María, a momentousness that grew with the years, as time made the memory of Gumersindo Gómez more nebulous and therefore more heroic. Feliciano, driven by remorse, had worked hard to make Gumersindo’s dream come true.”

Feliciano once again thinks on the heavy burden of fulfilling Gumersindo’s last wish. Now though, the distance of time that has stretched out after Gumersindo’s death has gained a mythological significance that only adds to the weight on Feliciano’s soul. Feliciano’s reliance on this memory will later provide him with the means of abandoning responsibility for the man Guálinto eventually becomes.

“She must have died in the most wretched despair, thought Feliciano, embittered by the failure of all her efforts. Her two remaining sons fugitives from Gingo law, her only daughter a widow. If she could only see them now, living in circumstances that even her grandparents could not have been able to enjoy.”

Feliciano remembers his and María’s mother, the grandmother from the novel’s opening, and considers the dire straits the family found themselves in when she died. He is proud of the life he has built following her death and wishes she could have lived to see it. The generational poverty placed on the family and the miracle of how far their adventures in Jonesville have taken them is presented, though it is only seen through Feliciano’s eyes.

“‘He’s ashamed of the house,’ said Maruca, snapping some gum she tongued from her cheek. ‘I bet he’s in the toilet right now with a book. He’s ashamed of this house. It’s no palace, really.’”

Feliciano has just caught Guálinto hiding from María Elena while she passes near their home. Despite the previous passages, Guálinto is unaware of the family’s incredibly good fortune since his birth and does not see the house with the same idyllic vision as Feliciano. Maruca’s bluntness in delivering this news to her uncle displays her rebellious nature and hints at the fraught relationship between herself and Feliciano.

“Our story book says it was the United States that made the French get out. That is not true. […] It was the Germans, who were getting ready to whack the tar out of the French. So Napoleon III pulled out his troops and left Maximilian holding the bag.”

Guálinto delivers a counterpoint to the history books given to him and his classmates and attempts to argue for his own theory of the end of the Franco-Mexican War. His teacher, Miss Barton, is unable to corroborate his argument due to her hands being tied by the curricula. His argument also angers a white classmate, Ed Garloc, whom Miss Barton is forced to side with against Guálinto, despite believing him to be right.

“‘Are you Mexican?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ Guálinto answered.

‘He’s not,’ María Elena said, tugging at his arm. ‘He’s a Spaniard. Can’t you see he’s white?’

‘I’m a Mexican,’ Guálinto said. María Elena released his arm.’”

This is the turning point in the scene at La Casa Mexicana, where a racist doorman has turned Guálinto’s friends away, but he and María Elena are given the option of passing for white and entering. María Elena has no scruples with doing so and gives the clearest indication that her family’s “Spaniard” label is simply a tool to make themselves appear white. Guálinto resists anyway in another rare moment of generosity that his friends will remind him of later.

“Then Orestes Sierra said, ‘When I was in fifth grade I wrote a theme once, in geography class. About the population of Texas. And I said, ‘Texas is a very big state with very little people.’ The teacher took off five points for that. She said it was bad diction.’”

Guálinto, Orestes, Antonio, and Elodia have left La Casa Mexicana after being turned away, and just prior to this statement Guálinto howls his rage into the night. Orestes offers this statement as a point of levity, and all of the friends burst out laughing. The story serves to illustrate the ignorance and ineptitude of their educational institution, focusing itself on the wrong things when the Tejano students have genuinely revelatory statements to make about the world around them.

“Toward morning he fell asleep and into a nightmare in which he was running, running through the chaparral, bleeding and with his clothes torn to tatters. Finally he emerged into a moonlit plain and kept running, running, pursued by a mob of people, all of them slavering like mad dogs and howling, ‘Alamo! Alamo! Alamo!’ He woke to a gray December dawn, the howls still ringing in his ears.”

After the incident at La Casa Mexicana, Guálinto is plagued by a dream not unlike those of his youth. Guálinto imagines being hunted as someone responsible for the Alamo massacre. The guilt his white education has placed on his people for the event is so powerful that it has passed down the generations all the way to him. This guilt and indoctrination likely plays a role in his rejection of Mexican culture and responsibility for his community at the end of the novel.

“The Mexicotexan has a conveniently dual personality. When he is called upon to do his duty for his country he is an American. When benefits are passed around he is a Mexican and always last in line. And he has no body to help him because he cannot help himself […] Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest are divided into two categories: poor Mexicans and rich Spaniards. So while rich Negroes often help poor Negroes and rich Jews help poor Jews, the Texas-Mexican has to shift for himself.”

The Great Depression hits Jonesville, but no aid comes for the Tejanos in the area. The novel explains that the biculturalism of the Tejanos is partially to blame for their dire straits. While other people of color in the United States who find advancement for themselves often retain their identity and help those of their community who share it, for Tejanos that advancement almost always results in a whitewashing of the individual into a ‘Spaniard’ identity, allowing them to wash their hands of their Tejano heritage and people.

“María made a low bestial sound deep inside her throat and turned toward the door […] At the kitchen door she shot out a nervous claw and seized Carmen, who was standing there. She held her by the hair with one hand and slapped her face with the other. Carmen neither resisted nor made a sound. She just turned her face way and endured the blows. María shook her back and forth by the hair and slammed her against the wall. ‘You knew!’ María said hoarsely. ‘You knew!’”

María punishes Carmen for hiding Maruca’s pregnancy, but unlike Guálinto, she does not try to flee her mother’s wrath. Her stoic acceptance of the situation hints that she was aware of the dangers of keeping her sister’s secret and did so anyway. This displays a moral conviction that stands in stark contrast to Guálinto’s cowardice.

“He sneaked into bed, triumphant, but found it hard to go to sleep. Yes, he would go back to her. These were his people, the real people he belonged with. His place was among them, not the ‘Spaniards’ like the Osunas. He would marry Mercedes and live on the farm. He would go back. Tomorrow night he would go back. He never did.”

Guálinto has beaten Chucho in the knife fight and found himself pursued by Mercedes, the woman in the Tejano party he is smitten with. After the fight, he refuses to go in with her, but is later haunted by the decision, realizing that he has just said no to an irretrievably important moment in his life. Despite his intentions to go back, he will not be given the chance again. This moment foreshadows the final moments in the novel when he rejects his community.

“His thoughts went back to the movie he had just seen. Good thing it had not been a musical comedy; he didn’t like those very much. He wondered why Anglos thought so much of them. Must be something wrong with them. Childish songs and unfunny jokes. And those nightmares of legs and thighs and torsos they put on the screen, he never could understand or like them. Looking at one woman was much better than watching a couple of dozen. All those sexual fireworks churning around made him dizzy and disgusted. Perhaps it was part of their religion, he thought. Looking at one half-naked woman was immoral, but watching twenty or thirty of them was not.”

Guálinto grapples with popular white American films. His sexual insecurities keep him from enjoying the overstimulating images on screen. His religious morality and his experiences with the teasing María Elena further limit his tastes, making it difficult for Guálinto to identify why anyone would enjoy such excess.

“‘But seriously,’ continued Hank Harvey, ‘we’re here to honor this bunch of fine young people, citizens of this great and glorious state of Texas, who are going out into the world. May they never forget the names of Sam Houston, James Bowie, and Davey Crockett. May they remember the Alamo wherever they go.’”

The speaker at Guálinto’s graduation, supposedly an expert on Texas history, has just given a racist, rambling speech to the students. With this closing passage, he invokes the mythological white figures of the Texas Revolution, who are no more real to Guálinto than George Washington and their contribution to his people is suspect at best. With his last wish for the students to “remember the Alamo wherever they go” echoing Guálinto’s dream after the La Casa Mexicana incident, the speech comes off as a wish for the racism of southern Texas to spread far and wide so no corner of the world is safe for Tejanos like Guálinto.

“There is a barrage of mortar fire from behind the hill, and out of the woods come wave after wave of rancheros, superbly mounted and carrying sabers and revolvers. They are followed by ranks of Mexican soldiers dressed in simple brown uniforms but carrying revolving rifles and hand grenades. He already knows what is to follow. Carnage. Houston is easily captured. Santa Anna is joyous at what he thinks is his deliverance. But his joy does not last long. He is immediately hanged. The Yucatecan traitor, Lorenzo de Zavala, will meet the same fate soon after. Texas and the Southwest will remain forever Mexican.”

Long after Guálinto has embraced his “Spaniard” identity, he still dreams of being a Mexican revolutionary. But his dreams are far more violent than those in his youth. Instead of targeting only the “Gringos” or only the sediciosos, Guálinto rewinds all the way back to the Texas Revolution and turns his violence on everyone—the rebelling Texians, Santa Anna, and others. His warrior’s dreams have become fully misanthropic, and his surrender to his final identity fails to banish them.