Caballero: A Historical Novel, often known only as Caballero, is a historical romance novel coauthored by Jovita GonzálezJovita González's full married name is Jovita González de Mireles, the "Mireles" referring to her husband, E.E. Mireles, also a schoolteacher. See Purdy. and Margaret Eimer (under the pseudonym Eve Raleigh).See Purdy 142-143. Not much is known about González and Eimer's partnership, except that the two women likely met in Del Rio, Texas, in the year 1937, and that González was already developing the novel at that time. Some of their correspondence is preserved in the archives at the University of Texas at San Marcos. Written in the 1930s and early 1940s, but not published until 1996,See Kreneck ix. the novel is sometimes called Texas's Gone with the Wind.See Purdy 144.
The book is set in the vicinity of Matamoros at the time of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded its lands north of the Rio Grande to the United States. Its principal character is Don Santiago Mendoza y Soría, a landowner and descendant of the Spanish explorers who first colonized the region, and his family and servants, whose destinies are rewritten by the treaty, the occupation of the region by the American military, and the influx of English-speaking Americans.
Since its rediscovery and publication, Caballero has been branded an important Tejano achievement of national and international relevanceSee González & Raleigh xi. These comments come from the Editors' Acknowledgement and are co-written by José E. Limón and María Cotera. and has received much scholarly attention. It is also recognized as an important early piece of Mexican-American literature, in particular for its awareness of the ethnic, gender and class struggles that have characterized Texas history.See Purdy 144.
Background When interviewed in the 1970s, Jovita González's husband, E.E. Mireles, acknowledged that their lives and careers in Corpus Christi, Texas, would have been made controversial in the "racial-political climate" in the 1930s and 1940s—had Caballero actually been published at that time.See Limón xviii.
League of Latin American Citizens Caballero was written in a decade marked by heated debate about the Mexican-American's place in United States society.See Cotera ("Hombres") 339. The 1930s saw the birth of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and other organizations that promoted the cultural assimilation of peoples of Latin American heritage into mainstream United States culture.See Cotera ("Hombres") 339. Within LULAC, however, there was disagreement about the forms and the extent of this assimilation. Male "Lulackers" typically promoted assimilation in public but sought to maintain patriarchal structures in private.See González 163. Many females, however, countered this public/private assimilation and advocated for the modernization of gender roles, especially within Mexican-American homes.See González 163. González was one of the more vocal of these women, and Caballero, which holds at its center a doomed patriarch who refuses to part ways with traditions that subordinate women, can be read as her "warning of what would happen to the ethnic Mexican community if it resisted the democratization of gender roles and ignored the modernization of Mexican American female subjectivity".See González 181.
Texas Centennial (1936) Also contemporaneous with the writing of Caballero was the celebration of the Texas Centennial in 1936.See González 1. The so-called "centennial discourse" ballyhooed by the media in the 1930s largely extolled the accomplishments of the state's Anglo-American population and, in the words of literary historian John Morán González, depicted Mexicans "as the main obstacle to Anglo-Texan freedom in the past and as a persistent social problem for the state in the present".See González 1. The "racialized" reconstruction of Texas history prompted the Tejano community to critique their state's marginalization of the Mexican and Mexican-American's contributions.See González 1. These critiques often took the form of literature written by Mexican-Americans in which they envision "a prominent and honored place in their community within the Lone Star State".See González 1. Jovita González contested the dominant centennial discourse in her "Catholic Heroines of Texas" poster exhibit at the Texas Centennial Exposition's Catholic Exhibit, an abbreviated version of which she simultaneously published in the Southern Messenger, at about the same time she was beginning work on Caballero.See González 26.
Publication The book is famed as much for its place in Mexican-American literary historySee Purdy 144. as for the troubled circumstances surrounding its publication.
Failed early attempts Although González and Eimer are both credited as authors, literary historians typically consider González the novel's primary creative force.See Limón xxi. In 1930, she earned her M.A. in history from the University of Texas at Austin, where she knew and was encouraged to write about her Mexican-American heritage by folklorist J. Frank Dobie.See Limón xvii. After her graduation, González moved to San Antonio, Texas to teach Spanish. However, in 1934, under Dobie's supervision, she received a one-year fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation that commissioned her to research and write a book on South Texas history.See Purdy 142. Caballero and another novel (Dew on the Thorn) seem to have been the result of that fellowship.See Purdy 142. I should clarify that Eimer is credited for her participation on Caballero, but Dew on the Thorn was written by González without collaboration.
González invited Eimer to coauthor the novel around the year 1937.See Purdy 142 The details of their collaboration are murky, but correspondence exchanged between the two women, and the fact that Eimer's name is listed first on the novel's manuscript, indicate equal involvement.See Limón xviii. Completed sometime in the early 1940s, the novel was submitted to MacMillan, Houghton-Mifflin and Bobbs-Merrill but was unanimously rejected.See Limón xix. Exasperated, Eimer wrote a letter to an acquaintance, saying "[a]ll of these publishers have admitted that the background is interesting, the plot stirring, the characters alive and yet they reject it".See Limón xix. This letter is addressed to John Joseph Gorrell, whose identity, like Eimer's, is at best enigmatic. The disillusioned coauthors eventually abandoned the project and parted company.See Limón xxi.
Posthumous recovery
Margaret Eimer was the co-author for Caballero: A Historical Novel and a close friend to Jovita González. She used the pseudonym Eve Raleigh in her writing, possibly referencing to Eve, the first female, and Raleigh (Sir Walter Raleigh) the English explorer of the Americas.See Cotera's Native Speaker's 203. Eimer was a "frustrated but talented writer whose short stories had been rejected by numerous magazines".See Cotera's Native Speaker's She had moved to Del Rio, Texas along with her husband "Pop" Eimer from Joplin, Missouri in concurrence with the flow of Anglo settlers moving to Texas during the agricultural boom.See Cotera's Native Speaker's 206. In Del Rio, Eimer "developed a warm, even intimate, friendship with Jovita González, a Texas local with Mexican-descent, with whom she shared both a passion for writing and a skeptical stance toward received wisdom about politics, religion, and gender norms".See Cotera's Native Speaker's 207 Letters written to González from Eimer expressed her East Coast intellectuality, organized religion, and her opinions regarding societal gender norms, for example, how she persistently refused to marry.See Cotera's Native Speaker's 207. González and Eimer collaboratively and interethnically wrote Caballero: A Historical Novel. Although Eimer eventually moved back to Missouri, through the use of the U.S. mail system they continued to work and edit Caballero manuscripts and finish the novel.See Cotera's Native Speaker's 199. Common for many other female writers during that time, publishers steadfastly refused to publish the novel and Eimer unfortunately never lived to see the novel published. Eimer died on 27 Oct 1986,See Jovita González & Margaret Eimer's Caballero however, contrary to previous belief, she died with relatives to claim her belongings, including the original copy of Caballero titled All This is Mine.See Cotera's Native Speaker's
González lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, with her husband Edmundo E. Mireles, also a schoolteacher, until her death in 1983.See Limón xxi. In her lifetime, she never earned acclaim for her novels, but she was nevertheless a prominent Corpus Christi citizen, and she published a couple pieces in the Southwest Review and Publications of the Texas Folklore Society.See Limón xviii. In the 1970s, González and her husband were interviewed by historian and archivist Martha Cotera for the University of Texas at Austin's Mexican American Library ProjectSee Purdy 143. Cotera asked about González's 1934 Rockefeller grant and the novel that had resulted. Mireles said then that the Caballero manuscript had been destroyed; however, González indicated with a brief wave of her hand that her husband's statement was untrue.See Limón xviii.
The Caballero manuscript remained unrecovered until after Mireles's death in 1986.See Purdy 143. In 1992, the Jovita González and Edmundo E. Mireles papers were archived at the Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi library.See Purdy 143. Amongst these papers was the manuscript, more than five-hundred yellowed pages in length, bound with twine.See Kreneck ix. A year after its archival, it was identified by University of Texas at Austin Professor José E. Limón who, with María Eugenia Cotera (daughter of the Martha Cotera who interviewed González three decades earlier), edited the novel for publication.See Kreneck ix.
In 1996, Caballero was published for the first time, by the Texas A&M University Press.
Plot summary The novel consists of a foreword and thirty-six chapters. In chronological sequence, it interweaves both historical and fictional events that occurred near or in other ways impacted the Mexico–United States border in the late 1840s.
The foreword establishes the history of the Mendoza family's presence in Texas. This commences in 1748, when Don José Ramón de Mendoza y Robles, a Spanish explorer, receives permission from the viceroy in Mexico City to lead an expedition of wealthy landowners to the land between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers. The land he claims for himself he names the Rancho La Palma de Cristo. Soon after, he marries the blonde and green-eyed Susanita Ulloa, who is his junior by many years, and they have one son who survives childhood, named Francisco. Francisco marries Amalia Soría, who bears him three children—Santiago, Dolores and Ramón—before she dies. Santiago, Dolores and Ramón are raised by their grandmother, Susanita, who instills in them their grandfather's greatness and the importance of upholding one's Catholic faith. Susanita, Francisco and Ramón have all died before the novel's proper beginning, leaving the Rancho La Palma completely under Don Santiago's care.
Chapter One introduces us to Don Santiago, the uncontested patriarch of Rancho La Palma, and his family. He, like his father and grandfather before him, has also married a pureblooded Spanish woman, Doña María Petronilla, who is characterized by her simple and unprepossessing dresses. They have four children, all of whom are in their teenage years. Two of these are sons—Alvaro and Luis Gonzaga—and two are daughters—María de los Ángeles and Susanita. Susanita, like the grandmother whose name she shares, is blonde and green-eyed. She is described as Don Santiago's "dearest" childSee González & Raleigh 5. and as he watches her join the family for dinner, he glumly acknowledges that time has come to find her a husband.