WAR, GENDER, AND STATE FORMATION IN LATINA WAR STORIES FROM THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION TO THE WAR ON TERROR A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Belinda Linn Rincón August 2009 © 2009 Belinda Linn Rincón WAR, GENDER, AND STATE FORMATION IN LATINA WAR STORIES FROM THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION TO THE WAR ON TERROR Belinda Linn Rincón, Ph. Cornell University 2009 By defining war as a form of state violence that naturalizes racial oppression and restrictive gender norms, my dissertation renders an understanding of war’s effects on Chicana/o and Mexican culture and gender formation. Whereas most studies of war culture bypass a consideration of women’s experiences within militarized societies, I examine how Latina writers disrupt the state’s self-legitimizing war discourses with counternarratives of their own. In Chapter 1, I study the relationship between state formations, culture, and war.
Focusing on Latina writers, my dissertation asks: How do state formations naturalize war? How do women intervene in war’s discursive formations? How are war and gender articulated? In Chapter 2, I examine Mexican nationalist and Chicano cultural nationalist discourses that feature revenant icons like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Sabina Berman’s Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda (1994), Sandra Cisneros’s “Eyes of Zapata” (1991), and Helena María Viramontes’s “The Long Reconciliation” (1985) present feminist literary critiques that counter these reiterations. By re-centering female desire in revolutionary historiography, the authors generate critical analyses of patriarchal master narratives. In Chapter 3, I analyze María Cristina Mena’s critique of postrevolutionary nationalism in The Water-Carrier’s Secret (1942).
Drawing on economic development theories, I show how Mena rejects official narratives of revolutionary progress, anticlericalism, and Indian assimilation. Next, I situate Mena’s Boy Heroes of Chapultepec (1953) within discourses of Good Neighborism and the Cold War. Mena’s text repudiates the historical revisionism during the 1950s that attempted to reframe the US-Mexico War of 1848 within an anti-communist context. Chapter 4 examines the role of Latinas/os in the modern US military.
I analyze the various effects of neoliberalism on military protocol – recruitment methodologies, military advertising, and voluntarism – to examine how the military targets Latina/o recruits. I read Elena Rodriguez’s Peacetime (1997), a novel about a Chicana soldier, along with published accounts of Latinas in the Iraq War. I further consider the complex role of Latina/o immigrants as non-citizen soldiers. Analyzing Latina war stories of life in boot camp and on the front lines, shows how Latina soldiering has profound implications for conceptions of citizenship, nationalism, and militarized gender norms.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Belinda Linn Rincón earned her B. in English and Women’s Studies from Vassar College. After graduating, she returned to her hometown to teach English at Fontana High School while earning a teaching credential in secondary education at California State University at San Bernardino. She later received an M.
in English from Boston College before entering the Ph. program in English at Cornell University. iii Para mi esposo Rodrigo Rodríguez quien tiene todo mi corazón iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the opening pages of his novel La Maravilla (1993), Alfredo Véa Jr. writes: “Hay gente en esta página conmigo.
There are people with me on this page.” For me, those people include Pablo and Socorro Linn from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, and Gilberto and Victoria Rincón from El Paso, Texas, and Las Cruces, New Mexico, respectively. Both sets of my fronterizo abuelos were born during the waning years of the Mexican Revolution. This study has been a genealogical project that attempts to imagine how their lives and those of my bisabuelos – Pablo and Rosa Linn and Santos and Hipolita Rincón – were shaped by a war that raged in the northern Mexican deserts of Sonora and Chihuahua. Their memories and experiences are inscribed in my heart and in my name where I carry them proudly.
Hay gente en estas páginas conmigo. I wish to thank Mary Pat Brady, Committee Chair, for her wise counsel, encouraging words, and unfailing support. From the moment I began attending Cornell, I always knew I had someone on my side, and that has made all the difference in my success. It has been an honor to work with such an amazing mentor who literally read every word of every draft of every chapter that I ever gave her as if she did not have more pressing concerns.
She always says, “It’s my job.” Everybody has a job, but not everybody does it as well. Thank you, Mary Pat. I also owe a great debt of appreciation to the other esteemed members of my committee whose guidance, encouragement, and suggestions helped direct my thinking beyond the disciplinary boundaries of English. I sincerely thank Helena María Viramontes for showing such great enthusiasm for my work and for sharing her teaching and writing wisdom with me.
Also, thank you, Helena, for giving me the greatest compliment ever: that you have faith in me. To Raymond Craib, thank you for guiding me into Mexican history and historiography and for reminding me to think of history as more than just background information. My chapter on the Mexican v revolution would have been seriously deficient without your input and your reading list. Finally, to Debra Castillo, thank you for your encouragement, your suggestions on how to expand my thinking on transnationalism, and for telling me about which Mexican women writers I should absolutely read.
I feel extremely fortunate to have had such distinguished intellectuals guide my way. But there are also other consummate professors who have given generously of their time and have contributed to my education in US literature. Here, I want to thank three individuals who were extremely helpful in my early years in the program. First, thank you, Kate McCullough, for opening up your home, for teaching an amazing class, and for being part of my support system.
Thank you, Eric Cheyfitz, for pushing me to think more critically about indigeneity and the law. Thirdly, thank you, Shirley Samuels, for supporting and encouraging me in so many ways. It has been an honor to learn from you about 19th century literature and about how to be a successful academic. I sincerely appreciate everything you have done for me.
Finally, I would like to thank all of the amazing professors I have had during my time here. They all shaped my intellectual growth and have served as inspirational figures and gracious individuals. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Ronald Mize and María Cristina García for their encouraging words. I also take pleasure in thanking Marti Dense and the Latino Studies Program for providing so much help over the years.
Two generous grants from the LSP funded much of my travel and research. Similarly, I would like to thank the English Department and the Graduate School for much needed conference travel grants. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Michele Mannella for helping me in so many ways. Finally, I thank the Provost’s Office for providing a one-year Diversity Fellowship which was critical to my academic development.
vi Hay familia en estas páginas conmigo. The subject of this dissertation was inspired by the ways in which militarism has insinuated itself in small and significant ways into my family’s life. The military marks my family in the way my father, Sobel, still carries his dog tags in his wallet to this day. He is a proud yet unpretentious man who rarely talks about his years in the war, but when he does, his stories help me imagine the experience of young Chicanos in Viet Nam.
As a child, I remember that while his hands were always calloused and cut from working with machinery and greasy moving metal parts, my dad was always happy. After coming home tired from work, he would drive my sister and me to the public library and fall asleep in the parking lot as we spent hours choosing and checking out books. I think about my mother, Rosa, and what her life must have been like during the 1960s and 70s as a recent immigrant living amidst anti-war protests and school blowouts in East L. Growing up, I remember how my mother would work all day in stuffy offices, endure torturous commutes on congested freeways, and then do extra chores on the weekends rather than tell me to stop reading from my stack of Agatha Christie mysteries.
of the Rincón family, she made sure we had what we needed and usually what we wanted. My mother is an intelligent woman who was not given the opportunities that she gave to me and Irene. I also think about my sister Irene’s struggle to finish her college education as she shuttled around from base to base as the wife of a Navy seaman. Eventually, my hard-working sister would raise three amazing children virtually single-handedly while working full time as a teacher and going to night school to earn her Masters.
Renee, Robert, and Ryan inherited their beauty, charm, humor, and intelligence from Irene. These Chicanitos represent the next generation. I love them deeply. My family taught me how to work hard, and those skills have served me well.
Their sacrifices and love are written on the pages you are about to read. vii Hay una persona muy especial en estas páginas conmigo. There is one person, above all others, who deserves and receives my greatest love, respect, and appreciation. Even though my doctoral degree selfishly displays my name only, it is more accurately a jointly-held degree that I share with Rodrigo.
I thank him for putting his needs and goals secondary to mine as we bounced around the country in pursuit of my education. I thank him for all the things he did to help me endure graduate school. He planted a beautiful garden for me to meditate on and made sure I had a warm casita to work in during frigid Ithaca winters. He drove me to conferences, sat in the audience, and attended lectures with me.
He fixed stubborn computers and printers that refused to work. He took care of me when I was sick. He did all of this and more while earning his own degree and, in the process, inspiring me with his own thirst for knowledge and his drive for self-improvement. I take great pride in inscribing his name, Rodrigo Rodríguez, within this institution of higher learning because this degree is the cumulative result of the mundane acts and magnanimous sacrifices he has made throughout the years to contribute to my education.
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Chapter 1: War, Gender, and State Formation in Latina War Stories 1 Chapter 2: Desiring History in Sabina Berman’s, Sandra Cisneros’s, and 20 Helena María Viramontes’s Narratives of the Mexican Revolution Chapter 3: Heroic Boys and Good Neighbors: U.-Mexico Relations in 101 María Cristina Mena’s Young Adult Fiction Chapter 4: Representing the Nation: Latinas/os and Neoliberal Militarism 168 Conclusion 239 Works Cited 255 ix CHAPTER 1: WAR, GENDER, AND STATE FORMATION IN LATINA WAR STORIES Reflecting on his military experience, former Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez notes that “the ethics and the value system of the military profession fit almost perfectly with my own heritage” (Mariscal “Homeland” 39). For Sanchez, both his Mexican heritage and his military service complement each other for the purported notions of duty they espouse, the culture of pride they instill, and the normative masculinities they support. In her statement about her Mexican heritage, Brigadier General Angela Salinas describes a similar cultural affinity for military service: “The Marine Corps is much like my Hispanic culture. It’s about family.
The family is the core held together by tradition, pride, honor, and commitment” (qtd. in Young and Corvino).