"A Distinct Place in America where All Mestizos Reside": Landscape and Identity in Ana Castillo's Sapogonia and Diana Chang's The Frontiers of Love

Abstract

At very root of concept of an American nationality lies myth of a limitless frontier that unites with unconstrained mobility as an essence of freedom, both physical and spiritual. Early American literature recreated that sense of ceaseless movement into new frontiers that carried with it endless opportunity for adventure, escape, exploration, and quest. But by 1900, unexplored land was no longer limitless and our ethos about land was reversed: instead of penetrating landscape, United States (1) was newly threatened with penetration by advancing numbers of immigrants landing on shores. With closing of frontier by end of 1800s, the very boundlessness of this racial and ethnic diversity generated a need to reinforce interior (Takaki 83). This desire for protection from encroachment by minority groups led, among other things, to relocation of Native Americans from their homelands to reservations and to segregation laws of 1890s that restricted African American from mainstream American social or political arenas. Likewise, in 1800s, Mexican settlers and Chinese immigrants faced loss of land rights. For Mexicans in frontier territory, discovery of America entailed loss of their land. For centuries, natives of Latin American countries and Mexico had crossed Rio Grande in search of work, political asylum from oppressive regimes, and opportunity. With Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, United States government remapped western territory by annexing an entire territory, its possessions and its people, creating borders where there had been none. To end conflict, Mexico accepted Rio Grande as Texas border and ceded southwest territories to United States for $15 million, a territory that includes present day California, New Mexico, Nevada, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. The treaty moved borders and ushered in a perpetual struggle over land and its inhabitants' place on that land. The very meaning of land and ownership unstable, subject to shifting borders and constant redefinition: those who had been Mexican suddenly found themselves inside United States, foreigners on their own land, politically vulnerable, powerless, and economically dispossessed. With intrusion of Anglos, land itself a site for clash of political and cultural ideologies which, according to Americo Paredes, has contributed to sense of an in-between existence (qtd. in Saldivar 17) that characterizes Mexican-American border culture. At that historical moment in 1848 when all Mexican nationals in conquered borderlands overnight became United States citizens, the Mexican American people were created as a people: Mexican by birth, language, and culture; United States citizens by might of arms (Rodolfo Alvarez qtd. in Saldivar 17). So how does that subject survive in exile? Divested of nationhood and reinvested with new loyalties, wanderer claims or feels claimed by no nation and bears emotional costs for losing placement in history and in time. For Chinese immigrants, perceptions of an open continent and limitless opportunity were attractive, but harsh exclusionary laws enacted in 1890s and reinforced in early twentieth century constrained their ability to move within American landscape. The Exclusion Laws of 1924 prohibited entry of aliens ineligible for citizenship, further restraining Chinese-American population. Chinese were systematically denied more lucrative forms of livelihood and were concentrated in low-wage jobs. In early years of immigration, Chinese who had joined Gold Rush in California were soon taxed out of their mining claims; they sought work in other areas, mainly in laying new railroads. In urban areas, they were relegated to low paying jobs as cigar workers, tailors, and seamsters. …