Customer Reviews

Caballero: A Historical Novel

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The book caught my attention because (1)I like historical novels,(2) my last name is Mireles but no relation to author and (3)the fact that it's written by a woman. It's amazing how this manuscript remained hidden out of fear of what the "gringo" community would do/say mainly because the book addresses what it was like for Mexicans/Mexican Americans of the period and well into the 70s. Being a Chicana this book also told me a lot about how the mujer was treated but inspite of it how brave Jovita was and finally finding the courage to release her manuscript. It proves the courage that toda mujer finds.

I took a class in Mexican-American literature recently, and the course began with a series of the earlier novels in the body of literature, works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was a time when Chicano/a literature had no well-established aesthetic tradition, and authors had little standing in society or in the education and publishing worlds and had little chance of seeing their works in print. So, needless to say, the best minds were not drawn to and trained in novel writing, and these early, like those in any burgeoning literature (think the American novel until Hawthorne), are maybe interesting, but are not of the highest artistic merit. My classmates agreed.

But the novel that stuck out to me as being somewhat above the rest was Jovita Gonzalez's and Eve Raleigh's Caballero. The story concerns the Mendoza family of south Texas at the end of the Mexican-American War. The family's ranch is situated between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers, meaning that their property is inside the American border after the Treaty of Hidalgo. This sparks a crisis for the head of the family, Don Santiago, whose brother was killed by Texans at the Alamo. Don Santiago (with some good and some simply bigoted reasons) fears and hates the Americans, sees them as contaminants, and is horrified at finding himself as an American. He and his oldest son decide to resist the Americans, even their friendly overtures, and Alvaro, the son, even joins Mexican guerilla forces who are still fighting.

The women of the household do not respond in such a way though. The novel is something of a feminist text, and these women, especially the daughters, are frustrated at the parochial life they will live married to one of the uninteresting and paternalistic boys in their social circle. When American soldiers come to town, they see an opportunity, and the youngest daughter, Susanita, falls in love with a gallant captain at first sight. And that's when the real crisis within the family ensues.

I won't say that this is any masterpiece. It's unfinished (and wasn't published until about sixty years after its composition), with occasional blank spaces and notes from the editor noting the gaps in the manuscript. It's also a slightly uneven text, in need of one more revision and some cutting at the end. And readers who do not care for melodrama should look elsewhere. This is quite the soap opera.

But if you like melodrama, Caballero is a fantastic read. It's got plenty of family fireworks, with sons going off to war and children being banished. It's got romance (three couples, in a way, experience love at first sight), plenty of marriage and babies, and heartache (including death by broken heart). It's over-the-top, glorious melodrama that reads very well.

It's also a psychologically astute book. The Don is drawn well, and Gonzalez and Raleigh have illustrated the pressures of life spent attempting to uphold the honor code that he is expected to keep. And the novel makes an appeal for cross-cultural understanding and universal love. And some of the writing--the scene at Midnight Mass at Christmas and of the baptism in the hovel--is simply beautifully written. Caballero may not be a fully realized novel, but it is a good one.