Caballero: A Historical Novel by Jovita Gonzalez, Eve Raleigh
Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh's Caballero: A Historical Novel, a milestone in Mexican-American and Texas literature written during the 1930s and 1940s, centers on a mid-nineteenth-century Mexican landowner and his family living in the heart of southern Texas during a time of tumultuous change. After covering the American military occupation of South Texas, the story involves the reader in romances between two young lovers from opposing sides during the military conflict of the U.S.-Mexico War. Caballero's young protagonists fall in love but face struggles with race, class, gender and sexual contradictions. An introduction by Jose E. Limon, epilogue by Maria Cotera, and foreword by Thomas H. Kreneck offer a clear picture of the importance of the work to the study of Mexican-American and Texas history and to the feminist critique of culture. This work, long lost in a collection of private papers and unavailable until now, serves as a literary ethnography of South Texas-Mexican folklore customs and traditions.
The story is told without much of how we tend to see this conflict through today’s lens. Did most of the Mexicans living in the area prefer the rule of the Anglo? According to the story that was the case. The peons would now be paid for their work, the women allowed more freedom. Was that the case? It’s hard to say.
The two Mexican sisters who fall in love with Anglos are part of the ruling class, and, because their family’s bloodline has stayed “pure,” are European, rather than mestizos. That tended to put a different spin on the story, since it was culture, not race, that was the problem. And it was that that causes the friction between those two young women and their domineering father, a man who is holding tight to the hidalgo culture.
But race is shown to be a problem, too, especially with the Texas Rangers, a group whose reputation has been romanticized, changing them from the thugs they were to outstanding heroes. This book does much to erase that notion, as many of the Mexican inhabitants of the stolen land are brutally murdered or chased off from what was their country.
It’s an interesting story given a fresh perspective, though I would have liked to see how the two couples work out over time.
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