Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Houston, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [279]-286).

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My thesis begins with the rapid tracking down of a word that demands the acknowledgment of a territory in its own right: Aztlan. I trace this term from prehispanic times up to the present in order to formulate the mythical, historical, cultural, and literary characteristics of a conglomerate that is currently identifiable and recognizable as the Chicano people of Aztlan. The main hypothesis of this work, which is to establish a coherent starting point for the study of the Aztlanese novel written in Spanish, is set within a historical-literary context. As a consequence, this thesis cannot encompass all the Aztlanese narratives written in Spanish; instead, it focuses specifically on two works--from the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively--that I consider the first and foremost historical-literary links. El hijo de la tempestad (1892), by Eusebio Chacon, and Peregrinos de Aztlan (1974), by Miguel Mendez, are the first texts that exhibit a clear literary awareness. I have what such concepts imply within an artistic framework. I am fully convinced that these two narrative texts are the first and foremost links in the Aztlanese novel as it currently exists, particularly in those novels written in Spanish. In some fashion, these two trail blazing novels constitute concrete examples that can help to establish and systematize, on the basis of specifically literary formulations, the literary tradition of the complex and heterogenous literary phenomenon which is Aztlan. My approach is restricted to a method that recognizes a literary work as a semi-autonomous structure--that is, one which exhibits structural relations with other facts and phenomena outside itself. The second chapter traces the meaning and location of the concept Aztlan, and it notes that the said concept is a myth and a spiritual rallying point among Chicanos. The chapter also comments on the principal aspects of the history of people of Mexican origin in the United States, as well as the so-called "Chicano Movement". The third chapter discusses the principal literary tendencies with regard to esthetic phenomena. It delimits the concept of the novel, the parameters of Aztlanese expression--particularly of works written in Spanish--and, of course, my approach. Each of the two following chapters is devoted to one of the two novels at issue. Each chapter studies the concept and function of literature held by its novel’s author, as well as the structural process exemplified by each of the texts. Significantly, both novels display characteristics that allow them to be classified with modern and contemporary Latinamerican novels, respectively: El hijo de la tempestad clearly fits in with Naturalism, Peregrinos de Aztlan in with Superrealism.

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The literature written and being spoken by writers of Mexican origin in the United States continues to reformulate the notion of borders as well as subjects and forms within and beyond the house leitmotif. Writings by Sandra Cisneros, Pat Mora, and Tomás Rivera construct public and private spaces that merit validation in historical, literary, and cultural contexts. As architects, Chicana and Chicano writers challenge the nationalist canon and house. / text

"Mexican Americans Write Toward Justice in Texas, 1973 - 1982" examines literature produced in the course of struggles for justice conducted by Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and their allies, the origins of this literature, and its effects. Three areas -- police brutality, exploitation of farmworkers, and inequitable, inadequate public education - troubled Mexican Americans activists across the political spectrum. Additionally, many people were appalled by U.S. treatment of immigrants. The poetry and plays of Nephtalí De León, Heriberto Terán, Gil Scott-Heron, Carlos Morton, and an activist teatro in Houston exemplify a long tradition of cultural production that simultaneously mourns and organizes in response to violence against Mexicans in Texas. The Texas Farmworker Union (TFWU) newspaper, El Cuhamil , documents the cacophony of voices participating in farmworker mobilizations for social justice in Texas. El Cuhamil also reorients the narratives about farm worker organizing from a U.S.- centered "civil rights" perspective to a Mexican-centered one. Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions arising from Texas, San Antonio v. Rodríguez (1973) and Plyler v. Doe (1982), illustrate how federal courts began to retreat from the engagement with social justice that had characterized much civil rights jurisprudence between roughly 1946 and 1973. These decisions also reveal the contradictions at the heart of constitutional equal protection at its "best" or most effective. This dissertation seeks to understand how Mexicans and Mexican Americans tested a variety of rhetorical strategies - U.S. citizenship, Aztlán, the international working class, Catholic universalism, and human rights - to articulate their needs and desires and make claims in popular culture, labor organizing, and the law. I situate these writings historically and in U.S. Southwestern literature, Mexican American literature, U.S. civil rights jurisprudence, and Mexican intellectual traditions. A subsidiary contribution of this dissertation is its tentative exploration of the distinct trajectories of Mexican Americans in what is now the Texas Plains and Panhandle. The alienating sense of "nothingness" that some people attribute to this region derives from the conditions under which Anglo settlement began in the 1880s. Modernity, here, did not alter or overlap with the modes of production that preceded it, but violently obliterated them. / text

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Paraíso, Caída y Regeneración en tres novelas chicanas is a detailed literary analysis of three well-known chicano novels: Pocho, Bless Me, Ultima and Peregrinos de Aztlán. The approach is the utilization of the "paradise-fall-regeneration" pattern as a means to study the three stages of the principal characters' development. By identifying and characterizing this process within each of these novels, this writer acquires a better understanding as to what constitutes the characters' self-perception as well as their relation to the reality around them. This fictitious representation of Chicano life in turn sheds light on the three novelists' perceptions of what Chicano reality is and how it is reflected in their works. Pocho is a clear manifestation of the "fall" from Mexican traditional culture. The old characters* geographic and spiritual removal from what they consider the paradisal state and the slow eroding process of their cultural system is what the novel is about. Although the characters make a vain attempt at the preservation of these values, the defeat is clearly manifested in their children's acculturation, especially in the protagonist, Richard. At the end of the novel there is no indication that the characters attain some sort of regeneration. On the contrary, there is only chaos, a disintegrated marriage, and a psychologically disoriented protagonist. Bless Me, Ultima offers a much broader view of the "paradise-fall-regeneration” pattern and appears on various planes. Culture, from the protagonist's point of view, is not seen as conflict or as a fall but as an affirmation of cultural roots. Paradisal remnants of the New Mexican heritage are still manifest in contemporary life; thus, the fall is no more than the protagonist's coming of age. This fallen state is temporary and at the end of the novel the protagonist gathers all the knowledge acquired through his life experience and builds a positive world view. This new stage in life is what represents regeneration. Moreover, the incursion into the ancestral roots of New Mexican culture and the knowledge acquired in the writing of the novel is in itself an act of regeneration for the author. In this manner, the regenerative state in Bless Me, Ultima is also represented outside its fictitious boundaries. Peregrinos de Aztlán is by far the most complex of the three novels. It also represents the extreme "fall" of man. There is no paradise for the characters but a continuous degeneration of humanity on every conceivable plane. For the characters there is no salvation and human life can well be considered hell. Paradise is characterized by dreams and illusions which serve to help tolerate the dehumanizing existence of the characters. The regenerative state, consequently, is non-existent within the world of Peregrinos de Aztlán. Nevertheless, the work itself is an act of regeneration for the author and for the Chicano Movement because it is an act of rebellion. Méndez exposes a realistic condition of the two societies in which Chicanos live and offers the Chicano perspective of himself and his circumstance. His novel's importance is as great as Rudy Acuña's Occupied America in the area of the history of Chicanos in the Southwest. This dissertation has been written entirely in Spanish.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-179).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1996. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Ruth Vinz. Dissertation Committee: Olga Rubio. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-241).