American Encounters : Greaater Mexico, the United States, and the Erotics of Culture

Rating:
Summary: Read this provocative, wonderful book: American Encounters.
Review: José E. Limón explores what he calls the "conflicted yet enamoured" relations between Greater Mexico and the United States through a series of encounters - real and imagined - between Mexicans, including Mexican Americans, and Anglos.

Limón sets the scene with a surprising, original comparison of Mexico and the U.S. South. Both were based on agricultural economies, slow to industrialize, poor, and defeated in major wars. The winners stigmatized the losers as culturally inferior. But the artists and intellectuals of both the U.S. South and Greater Mexico reversed the negative stereotypes assigned them. The "losers" didn't see themselves as degraded, but rather "projected a profoundly eroticized and affirming vision of their cultures as more bodily intense, inherently 'artistic,' and sensuously spiritual." How these images change over time, who is doing the changing and for what purposes, are themes of this complicated, rewarding book.

Going to the movies with Dr. Limón suggests that, at least on the big screen, we've come a long way. In 1953, High Noon presented a strong, ethical and morally superior Helen Ramirez, a woman loved and desired by the sheriff Will Kane, but to whom he lacks the moral courage to commit himself. Helen Ramirez, as town madam, is politically and economically a step above the sexy "señoritas" Anglo cowboys lusted after in popular culture, but still marginalized, stigmatized, and relegated to what we now call "the sex industry." The 1956 movie Giant gave us the serious Juana, who is not defined by her sexuality, but by her work and seriousness of purpose. Juana does not suffer from forbidden love, but marries Jordy Benedict, son of the wealthy ranchowners Leslie and Bick Benedict. Juana and Jordy have a son who will be a leader in the emerging, more equal Texas. By 1995, Lone Star showed the smart, well-educated and sexy schoolteacher Pilar and her Mexican-American community politically ascendant in their community. Pilar romantically encounters her old flame, Sam, the soon-to-be-former Anglo sheriff, as his complete equal.

"We do our best political work," asserts writer Anne Finger, "at the place where hurt and questioning come together." We could hardly find better proof than in Limón's discussion of Katherine Anne Porter's short story "Noon Wine." Porter, a writer who Limón clearly admires, grew up in Central Texas and was drawn throughout her life to Mexico and Mexicans. But in her fiction set in Central Texas, she completely ignored her Mexican American neighbors. Why?

The easiest answer is that Katherine Anne Porter, while a great writer, was poisoned by the racism of her time and place. Limón takes this possibility seriously, but is not a man who ever settles for the obvious. Pushing beyond the surface, he wrestles to find another solution to Porter's painful omission. Limón's struggle, while poignant, yields an answer that may or may not convince you. What is admirable is Limón's almost overwhelming generosity of spirit. He wants to give Porter every benefit of the doubt. Applying the same quality of devotion with which he restored the unpublished fiction of Jovita Gonzalez, Limón now attempts to restore Porter's actual, but unrealized (perhaps unconscious) intentions to portray Mexican Americans sympathetically and respectfully. The world would be a much different place if we gave one another a thimbleful of such attention: listening for the best, trying to understand (though not to excuse) even the most hurtful failings.

Gustavo Perez Firmat (on the book's back cover) promises that "Limón writes with passion and precision." That promise is more than fulfilled in Limón's discussion of Manuel Gamio. Limón defends Gamio, a Mexican anthropologist, intellectual and activist, against recent rather blunt charges of "racism," charges which are either thinly substantiated or not substantiated at all, depending on whom you believe. With great care, Limón insists on getting the facts right, particularly since someone else's moral and intellectual reputation -- someone else's honor -- is at stake.

So what are we Texas Mexicans and Anglos to each other? Family? Partners? Enemies? Friends? John Sayles, whose film Lone Star Limón so much appreciates, mixes metaphors: we are family, at least half-siblings, but we are also once-thwarted lovers who are going to try to make things work out this time, in a landscape of political and cultural equality.

Limón, through most of the book, tends towards the metaphor of marriage, or at least romantic or sexual pairings. He undercuts the marriage metaphor in his last chapter, however, pointing towards a wider range of possibilities for equal, creative, formative, non-repressive and erotically charged relationships. It is not only particular individual Anglos and Mexicans, but our cultures and nations, that Limón hopes will "encounter" one another in equality, respect and pleasure.

Reading American Encounters, I often felt like an inexperienced trailrider following a skilled horseman. The beginning was rough. Our guide seemed to have forgotten that not every rider can make her way through thickets (of literary criticism, psychoanalytic theory and cultural studies) that he negotiates gracefully. My head almost got lopped off a few times by low-hanging branches with names like Russell Jacoby, Herbert Marcuse, and Raymond Williams. Other moments provided a lovely, comfortable gallop across familiar territory made intriguingly new by Limón's observations. Then he picked up speed again. Irrationally, I crouched lower; dangerously, I dropped the reins. All I could do was hang on for dear life, grabbing fistfulls of mane. I yelled to our guide -- Slow down! Come back, Dr. Limón! Help! -- but he was much too far ahead to hear. I survived. Exhilarated by the end of the ride, which took me further and faster than I would have dared go on my own, I'm left with plenty of questions. The most pressing is: When can we ride again?

Like many worthy relationships, this book is complicated and a tad on the high-maintenance side. But it's worth the effort. Limón is never predictable and always provocative. This eloquent, vulnerable, passionate and brilliant book is a delight even when (perhaps especially when) you find yourself arguing with its author. Enjoy.