Politicizing Spanish-Mexican Domesticity, Redefining Fronteras: Jovita González's Caballero and Cleofas Jaramillo's Romance of a Little Village Girl

3. Taking my cue from Deena J. Gonzalez, I use the term "Spanish-Mexican" to refer to communities hi the Southwest border region that were Spanish-speaking and lived under the Mexican flag after 1821. As Gonzalez notes, even though these communities referred to themselves as "espanoles" or "Spaniards," the majority were not Spanish but mestizos (a person of mixed ancestry, specifically a person of Native indigenous and Spanish heritage). Deena J. Gonzalez, Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880 (New York Oxford University Press, 1999), xix.

4. In 1848, the United States signed a treaty with Mexico acquiring more than 500,000 square miles of new territory. According to Richard Griswold del Castîllo, "Along with the land came more than 100,000 new citizens, Indians and Mexicans living in camps, villages and ranchos throughout the Southwest." Richard Griswold del Castillo, "The American Courts and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo: A Century of Legal Interpretation " in Chicana Social and Political History in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Richard Griswold del Castillo and Manuel Hidalgo (Van Nuys: Floricanto Press, 1992). 39

5. David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987)) 115·

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Several texts of the early and middle parts of the twentieth century comprise an early Spanish-Mexican literary tradition of documenting domesticity. see Gonzalez's Caballero and Dew on the Thorn, éd. José Limon (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1997), along with texts by New Mexican authors Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, We Fed Them Cactus (1954; repr., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Nina Otero-Warren, Old Spain in Our Southwest (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936); and Cleofas Jaramillo, Romance of a Little Village Girl (1955; repr., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000) and The Genuine New Mexico Tasty Recipes [cookbook] (1939; repr., Ancient City Press, 1981). Tey Diana Rebolledo has written extensively on these New Mexican women authors in Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature, ed. Eliana S. Rivero and Tey Diana Rebolledo (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993); Women Singing in the Snow: A Cultural Analysis of Chicana Literature (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995); and "Tradition and Mythology: Signatures of Landscape in Chicana Literature," in The Desert Is No Lady: Southwestern Landscapes in Women's Writing and Art, ed. Vera Norwood and Janice Monk (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). In Infinite Divisions, Rebolledo argues, "Along with Jovita Gonzalez, who was collecting Texas folklore in the 19203 and 19305, these women felt the need to document what they saw as a vanishing cultural heritage: their sense that their identity was being assimilated through history and cultural domination" (Rebolledo, Infinite Divisons, 17). I build upon Rebolledo's scholarship to analyze the ways these early authors specifically use domesticity to negotiate Anglo racial discourses circulating throughout the U.S. Southwest.