RUDOLFO ANAYA: CATCHING CULTURES IN BLESS ME, ULTIMA

Serious literary scholars often take deep dives into novels to study their literary artistry, thematic emphases and characterizations. Conversely, fewer academic readers diligently study works of fiction as cultural artifacts. But examining a novel for what it reveals about the culture it captures can be a rewarding step for understanding significant emphases in a novel. Such is the case with Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima (1972), an elucidative work of fiction about New Mexico’s Hispanic culture.
      
In his exemplary novel, Anaya juxtaposes well-known themes with revealing glimpses of Hispanic culture. Most readers will recognize the familiar “coming-of-age” theme at the novel’s center, a Huck Finn “growing up” plot. Young Antonio Márez, just beginning school, tells a story of his two years maturing in Guadalupe, a fictional version of Santa Rosa. Throughout the novel, “Tony” embodies a combination of recognizable preteen experiences and his individual life in eastern New Mexico. Anaya greatly expands the cultural contributions of his novel by combining the usual (Bildungsroman—growing up theme) with the unusual (complex, diverse New Mexico Hispanic culture).
      
The usual coming-of-age culture is displayed in Tony’s family life, his schooling and religious experiences. But these familiar topics are made more complex in their marriage to New Mexican Hispanic culture.
      
Anaya provides further, enhancing portraits of a diverse culture by showing how Tony is the product of two competing sociocultural backgrounds. His father, Gabriel Márez, is from the llano farther to the east on the plains stretching into Texas. Gabriel, of vaquero background, is a roving, independent-minded, high-spirited man still in love with his earlier years. On the other hand, Tony’s mother, María Luna, descends from a “moon” culture and its farmer outlook, with devotion to the soil and a love of water sources. These conflicting New Mexican Hispanic viewpoints come together in Tony. Throughout the novel, he is trying to decide whether to follow his father’s dream of going to California to launch a new way of living or following his mother’s dream of his staying home and becoming a priest.
      
Another experience-shaping influence on Tony’s cultural outlooks is his Catholic background. Tony goes to church, participates in his initial catechism ritual and takes part in confessions. His involvement in these events warm the heart of his religious mother. But Tony is also a questioner, sometimes more like his less religious father. He wonders about God: Is He all-knowing, forgiving and loving? Tony is increasingly uncertain.
      
The most enigmatic character in the novel, Ultíma — a curandera (healer) — personifies other aspects of New Mexico Hispanic culture. Known as “El Grande” to the Márez family, she reflects the dual heritages of Hispanics: European backgrounds through Spanish history, language and religion; but also, Native American inheritances in her unrivaled knowledge of healing, herbs and other less-well-known cultural convictions. In her closeness to Tony, she adds further diversity and complexity to his experiences and outlooks.
      
Anaya adds to the complications of Tony’s outlook in his reactions to natural and human environments. He worries about the varied terrains that surround him, the weather changes that rush into his homelands, the nearby turbulent water sources; and he is fascinated with a golden carp in an adjacent stream that seems almost godlike in its appearance and actions. Tony’s three brothers are in World War II and then come home, and they and his two older sisters expand but also make more difficult their young brother’s cultural outlook. These increasingly complex experiences bring added wincing to Tony’s life. The same with the young guys in Tony’s school and church. These young boys furnish new ideas and actions for Tony to consider, but these additions also load down the young hero’s life with complexities and indecisions. Thinking how to abide by, dismiss, or both accept and reject ideas and actions is at the center of his growing-up pathway.
     
A few years after the publication of his novel, Anaya provided a clear-cut explanation of its major purpose. He told an interviewer “what I’ve wanted to do is compose a Chicano worldview — the synthesis that shows our true mestizo [mixed] identity — and clarify it for my community and myself.”
      
If readers follow Anaya’s statement and the suggestions here, they can become culture catchers. They will be able to see and now understand how novels often overflow with illustrations of varied cultures. They will see how much Anaya’s first-rate novel Bless Me, Ultima reveals about New Mexican Hispanic culture.