Estudiante

Martin Garcia
3/2/10
One of the more original contributions of Ruben Martinez’s Crossing Over is his examination of what I would call the “global pueblo,” a sort of take-off from the global city which instead highlights the manner in which an ever-changing global economy has affected town life across both sides of the border. Of central interest would be the Mexican pueblo Cherán, a Michoacánpueblo with deeply rooted indigenous heritage and trilingual immigrants who come to embody globalized hybridity. Cherán is also home to the Chavez family that tragically loses three brothers in a border crossing gone wrong. The destination of these three men was Watsonville, which as an entry point I will focus my attention on. Aside from personal reasons, I find the chapter on Watsonville to beof interest because of the seeming resolution that it seems to provide for the book, both in terms of narration in that it brings the fragmented tale full circle by tracing the unrealized migration path of the Chavez brothers and perhaps teleologically in that it provides a sort of progressive middle ground between Mexican home town and American middle class where migrants and others have had somesuccess in resisting unfair labor practices and attaining personal wealth. Martinez very generously describes the town as “the center of migrant activism, a constant portent, of economic, political, and cultural struggle whose repercussions are felt far beyond the Pajaro Valley” (301).
After having proven that Mexican immigrants have stretched out across what seems the entirety of the Americanlandscape, Martinez returns to the familiar California landscape where Mexican immigration is anything but new. He leaves his hometown of Los Angeles behind to hop on the 101 north to the Pajaro Valley passing along his way a slew of bucolic, tourist industries often idealized in the popular imaginary. Before delving into Watsonville itself, I found it interesting that he makes a literary detour ofsorts to speak about immigrant ingenuity in the face of the ’89 and ’94 earthquakes connecting the two regions (and later the ’85 Mexico City quake) and in a more unique analysis the noiseless battery-operated leaf blower that made it possible to subvert the L.A. “noise pollution” ordinance and eliminate the need for ensuing hunger strikes. The former case, in particular, interested me in that itgave insights into the adaptability of immigrants to chaotic conditions where order and regularity have fled; Martinez also makes it a point to make apocalyptic allusions to a world-ending paradigm of sorts (in which one might deduce that the possibility of a new order or way of life emerges).
The move from L.A. to Watsonville activism, sprinkled with romantic images of workers in the fields,flows pretty fluidly as references to UFW fights and global restructuring help to frame its position within economic and cultural struggle. In what is a very “Chicano” move, Martinez seems to me to frame the mainstay of immigrants and landed Chicanos in a new (reverse?) conquest of sorts where the clashing of Mexican and American cultures follows suit with that of indigenous and Spaniard cultures.Serving as the catalyst for this world-shattering change is Martinez’s representation of the Virgen de Guadalupe’s claimed appearance in Pinto Lake County Park where a distressed local labor leader first saw the image appear to her. In what I thought was a highly intriguing move, he then draws parallels between the Virgen and the contemporary empowered woman, most particularly a local bartender atLa Frontera named La Lupe de Guerrero who first appears dancing with El Luis de Jalisco, a Juan Diego look-alike. Like her holy counterpart, she provides steady comfort to her patrons, “[watching] over them, pitying them, cursing them, understanding” (311). Her role as an empowered woman emblemizes a recurring theme throughout the novel of differing cultural norms and private/public policies in...