63 pages • 2 hours read
George Washington Gómez: A Mexicotexan Novel
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Personal and Regional Bicultural Identity Conflicts
Bicultural identity conflict is the core theme around which the plot of George Washington Gómez revolves. The two cultures in question are Anglo-Texan and Tejano, colloquially referred to most often in the book as “Gringo” and “Mexicotexan.”
As Texas was historically a part of Mexico (formerly New Spain) from the 16th through the 19th century, a significant portion of the population was Spanish-speaking and shared more in common with Mexican culture than American. The novel explores the aftermath of America’s annexation and economic and cultural takeover of the area, where its new white citizens’ racist society butts up against the preexisting Mexican culture.
Certain characters within the story—such as Feliciano, María, the Texas Rangers, and many of Guálinto’s teachers—are born and raised solidly on one side or the other of this divide. These characters are more adaptable within the region’s struggles due to their clearer minds and, at times, the nobler intentions they carry in the ways they address the conflict. Their disregard, dismissiveness, or simple lack of experience with individuals and communities of the culture adjoining their own often blind or handicap them in their endeavors. Feliciano’s hatred for all “Gringos” remains as sharp after he finds economic success in Jonesville as it was when he hunted Rangers with the sediciosos, and though he learns to suppress and work around that hatred, it continues to weigh heavily on him throughout his life.
Characters whose identities do not fall as clearly on one side of the line or the other—such as (most vividly) Guálinto, the Osunas, and the Goodnams—are by contrast subject to the expectations of both peoples’ traditions. It is this form of struggle that Paredes highlights through Guálinto’s character arc, beginning with Guálinto’s interchangeable fantasies of being both a rinche and a sedicioso and ending with his becoming an American spy. His choice parallels those of Don Onofre and María Elena Osuna, who call themselves “Spaniards” rather than “Mexicotexans” and go against the expectations and prejudices of both cultures for personal gain. While these characters are materially better off than their fellow Tejanos, the honor and dignity they sacrifice to attain this status extracts a heavy toll. This toll is most readily apparent in Guálinto’s removal from Feliciano’s will and his lack of a community on returning home.
Racism on the Texas-Mexico Border in the Early 20th Century
The novel explores and critiques racist structures in the Rio Grande Valley via its social, economic, and institutional products. On the social front, we see a tendency towards racial segregation in how the schoolchildren choose to co-mingle at certain times. In the classroom, under a collective subjugation under their (mostly) well-meaning teachers, Anglo and Tejano integrate themselves and work together. On the playground and the streets, where their own politics come into play, there is hardly ever any crossover. Later, Guálinto faces the most overt form of social segregationist racism when Antonio, Orestes, and Elodia are kept out of La Casa Mexicana restaurant in Harlanburg.
Economic racism is shown to be even more complex, as its intensity waxes and wanes depending on the situation with the economy-at-large. Before the Depression/La Chilla, there is some economic division in Jonesville and the city’s wealthiest residents are overwhelmingly white, but opportunities remain available for Tejanos. Feliciano experiences an economic version of the American Dream, as he uses his wits and his willingness to work to climb the social ladder out of abject poverty and into a situation resembling the middle class ideal. When La Chilla hits, the city’s latent economic racism drops like a hammer—relief appears to go more readily to northern white people than the more racially diverse Rio Grande Valley, and when job openings do begin to appear, they are available solely for white workers. The Tejanos are left to fend for themselves, last in line to be given a climb out of the crisis.
Jonesville’s public school system serves as the focal point of the novel’s exploration of institutional racism. The school initially presents as a progressive outlier compared to other Texas schools, which are more often segregated. In practice, the school’s white teachers are ill-equipped to understand the situation of their Tejano students and are boxed in by a white-centered curriculum that they cannot stray from without fear of losing their jobs. Miss Barton, Guálinto’s senior class teacher, shows the most initiative in trying to break out of the established racist norms, but she is forced to challenge Guálinto’s questioning of their history lessons and fails to foresee the incident at La Casa Mexicana. Even with her privileged position as a white person in Jonesville, Miss Barton’s efforts to affect change prove futile in the end.
Sexism in Tejano culture
While George Washington Gómez wastes no time in pointing out that “Gringo” culture and its encroachment on traditionally Mexican land is the source of most of the struggles facing its Tejano characters, the novel also paints a nuanced portrait of Tejano culture as flawed in its own ways, and most strongly within its sexist traditions.
The beginning of the novel introduces several male characters by name, including Feliciano, Lupe, Gumersindo, MacDougal, etc. When the women finally enter the scene, particularly María and the grandmother, their names appear after their relevance to the situation is explained, if those names come at all. “The grandmother” goes unnamed for the entirety of the novel, even though she is the one who names Guálinto at his birth. When Guálinto encounters girls as a young man, he very rarely grows close enough to them to learn their surnames, with the notable exception of María Elena Osuna, his love interest.
When Guálinto struggles to connect with María Elena, he leans on the community around him for reason and consolation—a community that mostly prioritizes men and boys. He receives much of his advice on women from El Colorado, whose misogyny only reinforces Guálinto’s bitterness. His uncle Feliciano, the closest person to a “father” Guálinto has ever had, also displays sexist tendencies in his domineering over María and his dismissive attitude towards Carmen and Maruca. The combination of Guálinto’s having been bullied by other Tejano girls in his class and his rejection by María Elena solidifies his view of Tejano women as inferior. Conversely, his white teachers—such as Miss Huff and Miss Barton—while naïve, are supportive of Guálinto and encourage his growth. It is possible that this is what inspires him to marry Ellen Dell, a white woman whom the novel introduces immediately with her full name.
Despite these flaws the novel paints in Guálinto’s culture, its power over the community is not shown to be as infallible as the racism of Jonesville. Carmen displays enough independence to suggest that she might have progressed much further in society were it not for the ill-timed incidents that force her into more traditionally subservient roles. Elodia’s leadership in the committee at the end of the novel—a committee that includes El Colorado, Guálinto’s formerly misogynist best friend—shows the active anti-sexist steps his own peers have taken in his absence.
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