The Forked Juniper: Critical Perspectives on Rudolfo Anaya
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The Forked Juniper: Critical Perspectives on Rudolfo Anaya
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806154862 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Oklahoma Press |
| Publication date: | 11/23/2016 |
| Series: | Chicana and Chicano Visions of the Américas Series , #17 |
| Pages: | 328 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
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The Forked Juniper
Critical Perspectives on Rudolfo Anaya
By Roberto Cantú
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5620-0
CHAPTER 1
The Spell of New Mexico
THE WITCHES AND SORCERERS OF COLONIAL NEW MEXICO
Ramón A. Gutiérrez
This chapter owes its inspiration to Rudolfo Anaya's novel Bless Me, Ultima. Back in 1972, when the novel appeared, I was a young man of twenty-one. As a manito, a native New Mexican, reared along the banks of the Río Grande on the south side of Albuquerque, I grew up with stories of El Cucuy, of La Llorona, of the ghosts and spirits that regularly traveled along the río at night looking for souls, and of the brujas and curanderas who brought both evil and good into the world. As a young boy, growing up, much like Antonio Márez Luna, I knew several women in the neighborhood who approached Ultima, la Grande, for their knowledge of curing with native plants and herbs. Women who knew how to lift the hexes that witches cast, curing everything from mal de ojo (evil eye) to empacho (indigestion). Let me transport you to another time and place, to colonial New Mexico, to the spells, hexes, and charms of those days.
It was an April night in 1734, recalled María Manuela de Armijo. It must have been eight o'clock, or thereabouts. Outside on the streets of Santa Fe, New Mexico, all was abolutely still. Inside María's house, the day's end had brought a peaceful hush. The evening embers in the hearth had begun to crackle and pop. Already Cayetano Moya, María's husband, had retired. And all the children had been blessed and safely tucked in. María bolted shut the windows and door to her house. She blessed herself with the sign of the cross, said her evening prayers, and climbed into bed for a night's rest.
But there would be very little rest for María that night. Moments before she fell asleep, a witch entered the house. Bellowing like a raging bull, barking like a dog, with yips and yaps and harrowing cries, the witch, whom María recognized as the coyota Nicolasa Romero, kept shouting out in an ugly cry: "Puta! Puta! Gran Puta!" (You whore! You whore! You big whore!) María tried to scream out in terror, but the cords in her throat were silent. No one heard her desperate cries. "Praised be the Blessed Sacrament," she prayed. "Glory be Saint Anthony," she mumbled helplessly as the witch fondled María's body, caressed her breasts, and did with her as she pleased. And though María's husband, Cayetano, was in bed beside her, he saw and heard absolutely nothing. Then, just as suddenly as Nicolasa Romero appeared, she disappeared into the night.
In the 1700s church authorities in New Mexico launched several investigations into accusations that certain women were practicing brujería (witchcraft) and hechicería (sorcery), as well as making people ill by giving them mal de ojo. Witnesses described the making of love potions and charms wives used to win back the affections of their husbands, the brews that were being cooked to win back lovers, and the hexes that spurned mistresses were placing on the private parts of their former partners. Unlike the witch crazes of Europe and New England, which were often sparked by famine, disease, and factionalism, in New Mexico a fear of witches and sorcery was rather constant in the 1700s. Nothing particularly unusual seemed to provoke the accusations and investigations, or at least nothing that was reported in the historical documents of the time. New Mexico then was in a constant state of war against nomadic Indian enemies, who attacked with impunity. These indigenous enemies were being constantly captured, baptized, and placed into Christian homes as slaves, and so their numbers residing in Spanish households were rapidly rising in the eighteenth century. Captured Apaches and Comanches lived in close quarters with their masters, the women often laboring as housekeepers, wet nurses, and cooks with unfettered access to food, which was often described as the most effective means to bewitch or hex an unsuspecting victim.
Pueblo Indian women were also being sexually assaulted, wooed, and seduced by Spanish men. From such activities illegitimate children were being born who were immediately exiled from Pueblo Indian towns. These infants, often left abandoned at the nearest church and registered in the baptismal books simply as "hijo de la iglesia, padres no conocidos" (child of the church, parents unknown) were incorporated into Spanish households as servants, or criados. Such strays and slaves, known collectively as genízaros, were stigmatized by their ancestry, deemed dishonored by their work, the victims of considerable public stigma and suspicion. It was out of this fear of the Indian enemy living within that the Spanish colonists of New Mexico accused a number of Indian and mestiza women of witchcraft and sorcery. These women were accused of all sort of heinous acts, particularly of plying love magic and of being in cahoots with the devil to make Spanish men impotent. Imagine the two worst things that could happen in a society at war with the Apaches and Comanches: falling in love with the enemy, thus weakening the society's protective resolve, and having impotent Spanish soldiers (machos capados amariconados) who were defenseless against their Indian enemies.
The witchcraft accusations and the investigations they triggered in eighteenth-century New Mexico tell us a great deal about the cultural preoccupations of this society. The racial exclusivity of the area's so-called Spaniards was being eroded by the process of mestizaje. Spanish men, both single and married, were cohabiting with Indians, which was quickly increasing numbers of illegitimate mestizos, numbers only compounded by the proliferation of abandoned strays. If the racial distinctions that allowed Spaniards to lord over Indians were to continue unchallenged, marriage and social mixing had to be tightly regulated. Witchcraft and sorcery denunciations and the investigations they precipitated were precisely the tool Spanish New Mexicans and imperial authorities used to police local racial boundaries. In a moment, we will see specifically how and why all of this happened, but for now, bear in mind that the major accusation against Indian women denounced as witches was that when they engaged in the sexual act, they were always on top. They had control over Spanish men, so totally dominating them that they could ensnare their affections and regulate their erections. Such sexual inversions of the established gender order were extremely subversive, or so opined the Spanish colonial authorities. How could an Indian woman dominate aman? How could a woman have more power than a man? In short, how could Indian women be on top?
Obviously, only by being in cahoots with the devil could such things transpire. In the learned writings of celibate priests, these witches were bad mothers. They were sexually provocative, sinful, and aggressive Eves, who did not accept prescribed gender roles. They were powerful, aggressive, and usurped male prerogatives of authority, or so claimed their accusers. They were by definition shameless women, who had supernatural powers because they slept with the devil. The evil of the night was their domain; under the cover of darkness, they performed their nefarious deeds. The witch, Nicolasa Romero of Santa Fe, was seen riding around on a broomstick one night in 1734. The broomstick, a sign of a woman's domesticity by day, became a giant phallic symbol, the essence of masculinity, when placed between her thighs at night. On December 24, 1745, the very night commemorating Christ's birth, Michaela de Contreras was said to have transformed herself into a big black cat. In this form she attacked a man named Antonio de Orianda, forcing him to fornicate with her and to defile the sanctity of his matrimonial vow. Santa Fe's residents complained of seeing the Indian witch Juana de la Cruz flying about inside an egg, spying on all the men she controlled with her evil potions.
Witches were attackers and deceivers using what was impure and demonic to pollute the pure and holy. They subverted the social order sanctioned by religion. María Domínguez of Santa Fe was prosecuted in 1734 because of the trances she could induce in men with her peyote potions. While under the spell of María's enchanting drinks, men could see the past and the future before their very eyes. And even more demonic still, with her peyote potions, María could gain the affections of any man she desired.
In 1719 Josepha de la Encarnación of El Paso, a woman accused of witchcraft, told María Vélez that if she wanted to know if her husband loved another woman, all she had to do was "toss a caterpillar's cocoon into a fire; if it swelled, he loved another woman." But if "a woman dreamt of raging bulls, this was a sign that she would be pursued by men who loved her."
Witches were known to shatter the limitations of time and space. Beatriz de los Angeles magically transported herself from Santa Cruz de la Cañada, in northern New Mexico, to Senecú, a town just north of El Paso, or a distance of some two hundred miles. Beatriz's only purpose for this travel was to torment María Granillo, on whom she had placed a hex. Though Fray Gerónimo Pedraza tried to exorcize María's demons, he did not have much success. On two occasions during 1731, Michaela de Contreras was seen by several witnesses in two different towns on the same day; these towns were separated by hundreds of miles. And even though the door and all the windows to María Manuela de Armijo's Santa Fe house were securely bolted, as you will recall, Nicolasa Romero entered without constraint.
Witches possessed powers they had obtained from the devil and displayed behaviors that were inappropriate to their gender. Subverting the gender hierarchy enshrined in the honor code and moral order sanctioned by the Catholic Church was precisely the reason that authorities pursued New Mexican Indian and mestiza women as witches and sorceresses. Let us examine a few of more cases to illustrate these points.
In 1745, Beatrice de la Cabrera was investigated by the Inquisition because of the accusation leveled against her by María Rosa Telles Jirón of El Paso. María Rosa told the Inquisition's representative that one day while out in a maize field with Beatrice de la Cabrera, a man named Juan José Romero arrived on horseback. After a brief chat he began to argue bitterly with Beatrice. While still exchanging heated and foul-sounding words, Juan mounted his horse and galloped away, not heeding Beatrice's command that he return at once. "So he does not want to come back," Beatrice said to María Rosa. "Wait a minute and watch how he will return." As she said this, Beatrice reached into her sash and rubbed something; then, something just short of miraculous occurred. In an instance, Juan returned. Later, after Juan and Beatrice had spoken, Juan left again, but this time in a friendly and romantic mood. Quite stunned by what she had seen, María Rosa asked Beatrice how she had performed something so incredible. Beatrice pulled from her sash a white cloth pouch that contained a small wheat cake into which a special weed had been baked. If a woman baked this cake, explained Beatrice, "a man would not abandon his woman, but rather would love her until she tires of him." With this weed, Beatrice could control any man she desired.
In another case, from 1731, Felipe de Ayudo of Socorro denounced Michaela de Contreras as a witch because she had place a hex on him, which had left him sexually impotent. "Michaela left me like a woman," Felipe protested, "putting a spell on my [private] part so that I cannot cohabit with other women." Asked by Fray Andrés Varo, the local representative of the Inquisition, how he knew that Michaela was the source of his affliction, Felipe explained, "When I am with other women I cannot, and only with the said Michaela can I." Felipe claimed that he finally broke the spell by beating Michaela up, "giving her a round of kicks with my spurs, and even though I caused great scandal, from that moment I felt great relief and have been able to function again." Other townspeople complained about Michaela's sinister powers as well. She had hexed the wife of Nicolás Sierra, leaving her so sick that "she was passing her brains through her nose."
Even priests were not immune from the devil's handmaidens. In 1743 the Franciscan friar stationed at the Indian pueblo of Isleta was hexed by Gertudes Sánchez of Santa Fe. Gertudes was accused of sorcery and of having entered "a pact with the devil," for after she secretly placed a weed in the food of Fray Pedro Montaño, the priest began "to love Gertudes very much."
María Padilla accused Magdalena Sánchez of Santa Cruz de la Cañada of plying the sinister craft. Magdalena told her in 1748, "if you want a man to desire you, or if you do not want to lose the one that already loves you, take a few kernels of corn and chew them. Next fetch a pinacate [a big black bug that looks like a cockroach]. Rub it together with the corn in your hands. Call the man you want, or the one you do not wish to lose. And while pretending to be affectionate, let some of the corn kernels fall on his head." This, Magdalena assured María, was a sure way to gain the affections of a man, particularly if one's age and physical attributes had failed to attract him.
Examining these and many other New Mexican cases of witchcraft and sorcery as a whole, certain patterns emerge. Mostly Indian and mestiza women were accused of having such malevolent supernatural powers. In no instance was a man accused. The victims were usually Spanish males, though a few females were also afflicted. Michaela de Contreras, for example, was accused of hexing women and men alike.
Who were the accusers? In only one case did a Spanish male step forward to denounce an Indian or mestiza as a witch, when Felipe Ayudo complained to the Inquisition that Michaela de Contreras had made him sexually impotent with other women. Reading the extensive documentation on this case, we learn that Felipe had had a long-standing adulterous relationship with Michaela. His affliction and the beating he gave her to free himself from her hex occurred only after he had tired of their adulterous affair. He thus justified the great scandal of publicly beating a woman who was not his wife by arguing that Michaela and the devil had made him act this way. He had not been in control but was Michaela's pawn.
In the majority of witchcraft and sorcery cases, the denouncers were either the wives or close female relatives of the bewitched men, troubled that the affections of their men had been stolen through some malevolent means. These women sought to understand why their husbands had cooled to their affections, grown distant and remote, and taken mistresses. Wives could imagine no other explanation than the work of Indian witches and sorcerers.
The 1708 witchcraft denunciation that doña Leonor Domínguez of Santa Fe leveled against three Indian women from San Juan Pueblo, two of whom had disabilities, illustrates this point very well. On May 7, 1708, doña Leonor wrote to New Mexican governor don José Chacón Medina Salazar y Villa, seeking his intercession.
I Doña Leonor Domínguez, native resident of this Province, wife of Miguel Martín, appears before your lordship ... being extremely ill with various troubles and maladies which seem to be caused by witchcraft, having been visited by persons practiced and intelligent in medicine. Wherefore, I cite them, and having just suspicions of certain [persons] ... I know that there have been many examples in this Province of persons of my sex who have been possessed by witchcraft with devilish art, as is well known and perceptible in Augustina Romero, Ana María, the wife of Luiz López, and María Luján, my sister-in-law, and other persons. ... And having just suspicions of certain persons notorious for this crime ... I ask that you may be pleased to [order?] one of your agents [to come] to the house and habitation where I am staying to ... take my legal declaration and solemn oath of what passed between me and the three Indian women of the Pueblo of San Juan, whom I suspect [of witchcraft] promising to declare the occasion, cause and reasons for my suspicion, and in order that likewise it may be seen from the condition in which I find myself, which is also a matter of public knowledge and notoriety. ... I swear, by the Lord God and the Holy Cross, that it is not from malice but from exhaustion that I solicit relief, and I implore and need the royal aid through you.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Forked Juniper by Roberto Cantú. Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction Roberto Cantú 3
Part 1 Rudolfo Anaya and Narratives of the U.S. Southwest
1 The Spell of New Mexico: The Witches and Sorcerers of Colonial New Mexico Ramón A. Gutiérrez 27
2 Disenchanting the "Land of Enchantment"? Sense of Place in Mary Austin and Rudolfo Anaya Heiner Bus 44
3 Sweet Birds of Youth: Coming of Age from Bless Me, Ultima to The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue José E. Limón 73
4 The Nature of Jalamanta: Religious, Philosophical, Spiritual, and Political Interconnections in Rudolfo Anaya's Ecological Novel María Herrera-Sobek 98
5 Land, the Southwest, and Rudolfo Anaya Robert Con Davis-Undiano 120
Part 2 Anaya's Poetics of the Novel
6 Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima: A Nuevomexicano Contribution to the Hemispheric Genealogy of the New World Baroque Monika Kaup 153
7 Chican@ Literary Imagination: Trajectory and Evolution of Canon Building from the Margins Francisco A. Lomelí 179
8 De vatos y profetas: Cultural Authority and Literary Performance in the Writing of Rudolfo Anaya Enrique R. Lamadrid 197
9 How the Gothic Put Its Whammy on Me Mario Acevedo 210
Part 3 History, Ancient Genealogies, and Globalization
10 Rudolfo Anaya's Historical Memory Rosaura Sánchez 221
11 Imagining the Local and the Global in the Work of Rudolfo A. Anaya Horst Tonn 241
12 Transnational Tales: A Millennium of Indigenous Cultural Interaction between the United States and Mexico John M.D. Pohl 253
13 And It Was Good: The Mestizo Creation Stories of Rudolfo Anaya Spencer R. Herrera 289
Part 4 Interview
14 Interview with David Ellis: Film Producer of Rudolfo Anaya: The Magic of Words Roberto Cantú 305
List of Contributors 311