María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (July 3, 1832 – August 12, 1895) was a Californio author and intellectual, best known as the first female Mexican-American writer to be published in English. During her career, she published two books: Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) and The Squatter and the Don (1885); and one play: Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts: Taken From Cervantes' Novel of That Name (1876).
Ruiz de Burton's work is considered to be one of the first instances of Mexican-American literature, and gives the perspective of the conquered Mexican population that, despite being granted full rights of citizenship by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, was a marginalized national minority. Her background provided her a critical distance from the New England Protestant culture into which she was brought by her marriage to her husband, a powerful and influential Protestant Union Army General, Henry S. Burton. Her life took her from coast to coast in the United States, which provided her with opportunity for first-hand observation of the U.S., its westward expansion, the American Civil War, and its aftermath. This vantage point and her status as a woman provided her with both an insider's and outsider's perspective on issues of ethnicity, power, gender, class, and race.
Early life
Family María Amparo Ruiz de Burton was born on July 3, 1832, in Loreto, Baja California. Her grandfather, Jose Manuel Ruiz, commanded the Mexican troops along the northern frontier in Baja California and served as governor of the region from 1822 until 1825. For his services, he was granted over 3,500 hectares of land in the Ensenada region. His brother, Francisco Ruiz, was commandate of the Presidio of San Diego. Her parents were Jesús Maitorena and Isabel Ruiz Maitorena. She had two siblings, Manuela and Federico Maitorena. She kept her mother's maiden name, which signified her prominent social standing. She lived a privileged life as a member of the elite. Ruiz de Burton came of age during the Mexican-American War. When she was fifteen, she witnessed the surrender of her hometown, La Paz, to American forces. She soon met her future husband, Captain Henry S. Burton, the commander of the First Regiment of New York Volunteers, who had participated in the capture. As the war drew to a close, it appeared that Baja California would remain a Mexican state, while Alta California would become territory of the United States. Burton offered to help residents of Baja California move to Alta California and become United States citizens. Soon after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848, Ruiz de Burton, her mother, and her brother moved to Monterey and became American citizens.
Education Little is known about her education except that she was schooled in Spanish and French, then later in English. Her work suggests a background in the classics, English, Spanish, and American literature, and in European and American history.
Marriage Marriages between Californios and prominent American soldiers were rare. Among Californios, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton could be considered a traitor for embracing a man who had led an invasion of her country. Theirs was a union of ‘natural enemies’ given their differences in religion, nationality, and age, during wartime. While the marriage did not bring Ruiz de Burton any specific power or property, it did offer a new social status and opportunities that were previously out of reach to her as a Mexican woman. As Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita see it, "While birth gave María Ruíz de Burton a sense of family, regional, and national identity, migration and marriage determined citizenship, social status, and access to a variety of social strategies in the United States"Sánchez, Rosaura and Beatrice Pita, Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruíz de Burton. Arte Público Press. Houston. 2001. p 18 Although Ruíz de Burton was not shy to take full advantage of these insider connections over the course of her life, it is clear that she often found herself in contradictory positions, and simultaneously holding opposing views, while attempting to balance her heritage with her ideals.Sánchez, Rosaura and Beatrice Pita, Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruíz de Burton. Arte Público Press. Houston. 2001. Introduction p x
Religion Maria Amparo Ruiz and Henry S. Burton found it difficult to plan their wedding. They belonged to different religions; she was Catholic and he was Protestant. Neither wished to change religions, and neither could be expected to do so: Burton was a national war hero and Ruiz de Burton belonged to a prominent Mexican Catholic family of Spanish lineage. Both the Bishop of Upper and Lower California and the Governor of California protested the planned nuptials, but the couple eventually persuaded a Protestant minister in Monterey to perform the ceremony. They were married on July 7, 1849, six days after her seventeenth birthday. Their differing religions made their marriage a scandal so much so, that the Catholic bishop of California had to grant ecclesiastic legitimacy to the wedding.
Family life Ruiz de Burton gave birth to her first child, Nellie, on July 4, 1850. Two years later, the family moved to San Diego, where Burton commanded the Army post at Mission San Diego de Alcala. Ruiz de Burton and her husband were a popular couple in San Diego, and Ruiz de Burton started a small theatre company to feature soldier-actors. In 1853, the couple bought Rancho Jamul, outside San Diego. The couple homesteaded the ranch on March 3, 1854, with their daughter, and Ruiz de Burton's mother and brother. Their second child, a son, was born later that year on November 24. In 1859, Burton was sent to the East Coast. Ruiz de Burton and their two children accompanied the Captain there. On August 2, 1859, they left for Fort Monroe, Virginia, on a steamer via the Isthmus of Panama. Over the next ten years, they lived in Rhode Island, New York, Washington, D.C., Delaware and Virginia, as Ruiz de Burton's husband was transferred from post to post. The Union captured Petersburg, Virginia, in 1865. Burton was assigned to assist with Reconstruction of the city. He contracted malaria there and for the next five years suffered recurrent attacks of the illness. Burton died on April 4, 1869, of apoplexy resulting from the malarial attacks, in Newport, Rhode Island.
Later life Ruiz de Burton's husband was assigned to San Diego where the couple moved for eight years and had two children. Henry Burton bought a Mexican land grant, Rancho Jamul. In 1859 near the start of the civil war, Burton was ordered to serve in the Union army, and he, Ruiz, and the family moved to the East coast for a decade. She lived in "the highest military, political, and social circles,” and became friends with First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Maria was not as happy adjusting to “Yankee life,” describing it in a letter to a friend as “’a humbug so methodical and well supported that they even almost believe it.'” This gave her a close look at the corruption in the government, which she would later use in her writings critiquing U.S. society and government. Though she was part of U.S. society, she remained loyal to her roots. She used her writing to counter portrayals of Mexicans and critique discrimination of Californios from individuals and the state.
Henry Burton died in 1869 because of a malarial fever in Rhode Island, leaving her a 37-year-old widow. She then returned to San Diego. Unfortunately she found Rancho Jamul in pieces, some parts sold to cover her late husband's debts, and some parts occupied by squatters, made legal by the California Land Act of 1851. This stated that “all Mexican land grants are public domain and available for resettlement until a federal land commission could verify the legitimacy of land titles.” She was forced to go to court to fight for her land, and these legal fees drained her savings and she was forced to mortgage her land. To combat this once wrote her own legal briefs and to earn money she “planted castor beans on the rancho, considered using it for a water reservoir, and started a short-lived cement company, all to generate income beyond the meager widow’s pension she was receiving from the U.S. government.” Ruiz de Burton was an enterprising woman and engaged in various business dealings and entrepreneurial activities during this period in her life. In 1869, soon after she returned to the West Coast, Ruiz de Burton formed the Jamul Portland Cement Manufacturing Company with her son Henry and other financial backers. The company produced cement with lime produced from the limestone present in Rancho Jamul. The company closed in 1891. She never got her rancho back because the court proceedings lasted until after her death. She travelled continually on business connected to the various lawsuits she was involved in, and was in Chicago at the time of her death on August 12, 1895, when she succumbed to gastric fever. Her body was returned to San Diego for burial, where it was interred at Pioneer Park (San Diego).
Literary career Ruiz de Burton published two novels in her lifetime: Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) and The Squatter and the Don (1885). She is considered to be the first Mexican-American author and the first Mexican-American author to write in English. María Ruiz de Burton was important in literature because she addressed crucial issues of ethnicity, power, gender, class and race in her writing. Her life and writings demonstrate the historical contradictions of the Mexican American identity. Her writing shows a variety of influences; historical romance is often seen in British, French, Spanish and Mexican works while her realism and naturalism mirrors American writing. Her works challenge traditional American and Mexican American literary histories because they “openly critiqued northeastern materialism and portrayed California’s land-holding Mexicans as a genteel, white population wrongfully displaced in the United States by racism and corrupt politics. She is a Chicano author not just because of her race but because her novels investigate issues at the core of Chicano/a history and literature: identification, disidentification, dual nationality, citizenship, latinidad, and gender constraints. Even writing and publishing this book was an act of empowerment for the Californios. One of the most noteworthy aspects of Ruiz de Burton is her “sense of identification and nationality, her sense of displacement, her contradictory accommodation to and disidentification with the united States, her sense of a ‘Latin’ race beyond national identify and citizenship”.
Who Would Have Thought It?
Who Would Have Thought It? was the first novel to be written in English by a Mexican living in the United States. The book was published in 1872 by J.B. Lippincott in Philadelphia without the author's name on the title page, but was registered at the Library of Congress under the names of H.S. Burton and Mrs. Henry S. Burton. The book details the struggles of a Mexican-American girl born in Indian captivity, Lola, in an American society obsessed with class, religion, race and gender. "The novel scrutinizes the pettiness and racism of a Northern Abolitionist family and discourses on issues of democracy, liberalism, women's suffrage, imperialism, political opportunism, and religious hypocrisy." Ruiz shows “the fall of ‘republican motherhood,’ that is of ‘moral authority’ of a Yankee matron... [and] the fall of romantic conception of politics and the unmasking of liberal/democratic ideals” (76). Ruiz wants to dismantle perceptions of idealized democracy and justice in the U.S. and prove it to be corrupt and only just for the rich and powerful.