Jovita Gonzalez Stakes a Claim in Tejas History

This chapter examines the short story, "Shades of the Tenth Muses," the novel, Caballero: A Historical Novel, and a master's thesis – each narrative written by Tejana folklorist and author, Jovita González – to reveal how she contributed to an alternative archive about the Texas/Mexico borderlands. As a member of the Texas folklore society, González participated alongside what were considered prominent Texas folklorists and historians (mainly Anglo males) of the twentieth century, in an effort to (re)tell her own version of Tejano history. The chapter argues that González uses her literary and academic work to create an alternative archive about gender and race relations along the Texas/Mexico border in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work contributes to an ever-growing body of Chicana/o work that recuperates Mexicana/o cultural memory.

Mexican American Women’s Alternative Archive

This chapter discusses the ways in which the U.S. government created an alternative archive when it recorded Mexicanas/os' voices in the "official" record during land grant adjudication proceedings in the mid- to late nineteenth century. The testimonio of landowner María Cleofas Bóne de López serves as a prime focus in the chapter to emphasize the ways in which marriage to Mexican women was one way that both Anglo and Mexican men gained access to and amassed material property. Through this and other key cases, the chapter emphasizes that males' land ownership was often predicated on relationships to and with Mexican women and the ways Mexican men were effeminized within the U.S. legal system. The depositions serve as testimonials to the integral role of gender in the history of property ownership and dispossession.

Negotiating Fragmented Subjectivities from within the Archive

This final chapter describes how the women in this study contribute to an ever-expanding archive and cultural history of the Southwest that aids contemporary scholars in understanding the residual effects of colonialism and the reasons why Chicanas/os struggle with fragmented subjectivities that leave them within a liminal, or in-between space. The chapter suggests that Mexican American women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were precursors to the more radical involvement of women in social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. This chapter also calls attention to the importance of acknowledging the importance of gender displacement alongside the physical displacement experienced by Mexican Americans across the U.S. Southwest just after the Mexican-American War in our understanding of Borderlands, Chicana/o, and feminist history.

Testimonio in the Writings of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the literary work of nineteenth-century Californiana author, María Amparo Ruíz de Burton. Through a detailed examination of her novels, Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) and The Squatter and the Don (1885), the chapter addresses the ways in which Mexican American women used literature to archive their collective memories, or testimonios. Ruiz de Burton's narrative approach is the first in a series of novels written by Mexican American women to document nineteenth-century Borderlands history. The chapter argues that Ruiz de Burton uses testimonio in her first novel to reveal the ways in which women of Mexican/Spanish descent were subject to both material and cultural loss post-1848, while her second novel serves as a personal testimony and collective history of Californio dispossession at the hands of enterprising Euro Americans.

Engendering the Archive

This chapter presents an overview of land ownership/property laws pre- and post-Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Drawing on historical and legal data, the chapter outlines the ways in which Mexican women, specifically, were impacted by a new U.S. legal system and makes the claim that in order to fully understand and appreciate the making the U.S. Southwest, gender must be a primary category of inquiry. The chapter calls for an in-depth and feminist examination and reconceptualization of the "official" archive to rethink: (a) what is considered "archival" and "historical," (b) who should be considered as "archiveable," or a legitimate actor in the production of historical narratives, (c) the ways in which testimonios provide primary source material that offer an alternative narrative of dispossession.

The Not So ”New” Mexico

This chapter shifts the focus of Southwest history back to New Mexico as it analyses the memoir, We Fed Them Cactus, written by Nuevomexicana cultural broker, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca. The memoir allows Cabeza de Baca to (re)claim her herencia, or inheritance, as she documents the historical implications of U.S imperialism and the ways in which she suffers the impacts of physical and cultural displacement in the burgeoning U.S. Southwest. This chapter also argues that Cabeza de Baca employs a unique narrative style and voice that is androgynous – a tactic that allows her access to the masculine space of historical documentation and storytelling that was then dominated by men. Through her work, Cabeza de Baca preserves the stories of her Hispano New Mexican past, she attempts to maintain a social structure on the verge of loss, and she demonstrates her querencia, or deep abiding love for her homeland.