By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
Note to the Reader: With so much publicity about the release of the movie, Bless me, Ultima, this week, we bring together three pieces Professor Ortego has written about the book, the play, and the movie. Each essay reflects the way in which each genre brings Bless Me, Ultima to life.
1 The Book
Author’s Note about Curanderismo: While some aspects of curanderismo, such as using folk remedies for minor illness, are practiced at home, many people seek out specially trained folk healers called curanderos (male healers) or curanderas (female healers). Curanderos’ knowledge of healing may be passed down from close relatives or learned through apprenticeships with experienced healers. In some cases, their healing powers may be described as a divine gift received later in life. Most curanderos say that their ability to heal involves divine energy being channeled through their bodies.
In addition to the curanderos, there are yerberos (herbalists), parteras (midwives), and sobadores or sobadoras (who use massage, bone manipulation, acupressure, etc.), each of whom treat more specific or limited problems. All of these healers may use herbs in addition to their other treatment methods.
Proponents claim curanderismo can be used to treat a wide range of social, spiritual, psychological, or physical problems, including headache, gastrointestinal distress, back pain, and fever, as well as anxiety, irritability, fatigue, and depression. Bad luck, marital discord, and illnesses caused by “loss of spirit” may be treated by curanderos or curanderas. Treatment may involve physical, spiritual, and mental approaches.
N |
o name in Chicano literature is as well known as Rudolfo Anaya’s, earning him the sobriquet of “Godfather of Chicano Literature.” It’s not an undeserved recognition, for indeed Anaya has advanced awareness of Chicano literature as no other writer has. This is not to diminish the literary contributions of other Chicana/o writers.
When I received the Patricia and Rudolfo Anaya Critica Nueva Award from the University of New Mexico in 2005, Rudy commented at dinner that night that I did not mention him in my study of Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature. To which I reminded him that he was not yet published when I was completing Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (University of New Mexico, 1971), though he had been writing throughout the 60's. He came into his literary maturity towards the end of the Chicano Renaissance (1966-1975) and quickly dominated the field with a string of literary works.
His most remarkable work in that string of literary production is undoubtedly Bless Me, Ultima, his first novel, about a young 7-year old boy coming to terms with life in the New Mexican world of the llano in the years right after World War II. Since its publication in 1972, the novel has been beset with criticism about its content and its characters, namely that its content is vulgar and its characters—especially Ultima—as gross depictions of witchcraft and Satanism, resulting in the book being banned and burned.
Why would anyone want to burn a book about a young seven year old boy growing up in the llanos of New Mexico whose father wants him to be a rancher and his mother wants him to be a priest? More distressingly, however, is that those who want to burn the book are Americans. Despite the barrage of adverse criticism, Bless Me, Ultima has become an American classic and a “family favorite of Laura Bush, one of her 25 Books to Read.”
In Norwood, Colorado, in 2005, Bob Condor, Superintendent of Schools, granted the request of parents to burn in a bonfire Bless Me, Ultima which had become the center of brouhaha at Norwood High School over “profanity” in the text and its “pagan content.” Justifying his actions for burning the most influential novel in Chicano literature, Condor said, “That’s not the kind of garbage I want to sponsor at this high school.” Never mind that he had not read it. In 1981, Bless Me, Ultima was burned in Bloomfield, New Mexico.
Bless Me, Ultimais a novel about a young boy, Antonio, and his quest for knowledge and self-identity as reflected by the narrator years later. In many ways, Antonio’s story in Bless Me, Ultima is similar to Holden Caufield’s story in Catcher in the Rye, a story of self-discovery. In Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya sketches the perils of youth and Antonio’s struggle to make sense of a world peopled by adults whose behavior runs counter to social and religious injunctions. The novel has been variously characterized as a coming-of-age novel, as a bildungsroman, as a quester novel, and as a pastoral novel.
Bless Me, Ultimais one of those rare works that surface into consciousness as one reflects on the story of Antonio Marez and his remarkable relationship with Ultima, the curandera who comes to live with the Marez family the summer when Antonio is almost seven. With the help of her owl, Ultima removes the blinders, as it were, from Antonio’s eyes so he can see and come to terms with the world as it is and not the way it is not. This clarity of mind is one of the essential tenets of Curanderismo, particularly of its aim as holistic healing.
As a curandera, a healer, Ultima is a mentor to Antonio, teaching him about “the pulse of the earth and its beauty.” Like Minerva of the Romans, Ultima’s owl is not a creature of witchery but a symbol of knowledge, of learning, which is why when the owl is killed in the novel by Tenorio, Ultima instructs Antonio to bury the owl in the western hills beneath a forked juniper tree. Ultima also explains to Antonio:
When I was a child, I was taught my life’s work by a wise old man. He gave me the owl and he said that the owl was my spirit, my bond to the time and harmony of the universe. My work was to do good. I was to heal the sick and show them the path of goodness. But I was not to interfere with the destiny of any man. Those who wallow in evil and brujería [witchcraft] cannot understand this. They create a disharmony that in the end reaches out and destroys life.
Curanderismo is thus about the maintenance of harmony, ferreting out the disharmony which destroys life. As a curandera, Ultima could exorcize evil. She could perform limpias, that is, cleanse homes of spiritual impurities. And as a partera(midwife), she helped deliver all of Antonio’s siblings which is why Ultima has come to live with Antonio’s family when they learn of Ultima’s straits in her old age. At Antonio’s first contact with Ultima, la Grande (the elder) as she was called, he felt the power of the whirlwind sweep around him when he grasped her hand to help her into the house on that day when she first came to live with Maria Luna and Gabriel Marez when Antonio was almost 7.
In that moment when Antonio met Ultima, he saw for the first time through the eyes of Ultima, as she swept her gaze at the surrounding hills, the wild beauty of the hills and the magic of the green river. His nostrils quivered as he felt the song of the mockingbird and the drone of the grasshoppers mingle with the pulse of the earth. The four directions of the llano met in him, and the white sun shone on his soul. The granules of sand at his feet and the sun and the sky above seemed to dissolve into one strange, complete being. A cry came to his throat and he wanted to shout it and run in the beauty he had found.
Under Ultima’s careful guidance, Antonio learned “the names of plants and flowers, of trees,and bushes, of birds and animals;” but most important, he “learned from her that there was a beauty in the time of day and in the time of night, and that there was peace in the river and in the hills.” Antonio tells us:
She taught me to listen to the mystery of the groaning earth and to feel complete in the fulfillment of its time . . . . I learned that my spirit shared in the spirit of all things.
And in the incident over Lupito’s “execution” by the hunters, it’s Ultima’s owl that restores Antonio’s courage to deal with the situation. Antonio says:
. . . I heard the owl. Between my gasps for air and my sobs I stopped and listened for its song. My heart was pounding and my lungs hurt, but a calmness had come over the moonlit night when I heard the hooting of Ultima’s owl. I stood still for a long time. I realized that the owl had been with me throughout the night. It had watched over all that had happened on the bridge. Suddenly the terrible, dark fear that had possessed me was gone.
The owl appears frequently in the narrative. In Chapter 7 when Antonio tells us that the war (World War II) was over, he has a dream about his brothers who had been overseas and were telling him they were coming home. Frightened by the giant figures of his broth-
ers looming over him in his dream, he bolts up in bed, trembling and hears the owl crying in alarm, alerting him to the arrival of his brothers, Andrew, León, and Eugene. This kind of prescience (be it in a dream or otherwise), signals an important growth and development in Antonio as a result of Ultima’s presence and influence. With the family now intact, Antonio takes up his school work eagerly, anxious to appropriate “the magic of letters”—the art of writing, which gladdens his mother “that a man of learning was once again to be delivered to the Lunas.”
Via her cures, Ultima helps Antonio’s brothers overcome “the sickness of the war“ [Post Traumatic Stress], especially León who has “shown the sickness most” and who “sometimes at night howled and cried like a wild animal.” Not until after León’s long talks with Ultima and she gives him a remedy does he get better. Here in the narrative, Anaya provides us with more information about Curanderismo.
As the plot of Bless Me, Ultima thickens, Antonio’s brothers stumble onto a “black mass” conducted by the Trementina sisters, daughters of Tenorio, the suspected hunchbacked warlock. Spooked by the curse the Trementina sisters have placed on Lucas, their youngest sibling, and fearing further reprisals for their discovery of the Trementina sister’s “black mass,” Antonio’s brothers elicit Ultima’s help in combating the “black magic” of Tenorio and his daughters. As their last hope, dressed in black, Ultima, la Grande, sets out with her “small black satchel” to battle the forces of evil. “I am ready,” Ultima declared. Oftentimes, curanderas/os performed rites to eradicate the dark forces of life. And “when a curandera is working a cure, she is in charge.”
Unable to persuade Tenorio to get his daughters to lift their curse from Lucas who is wasting away, Ultima prepares to “work the magic beyond evil, the magic that endures forever.” At the point of working to lift the Trementina curse from Lucas, Ultima explains why she has arrived so late to the cure: “the priest at El Puerto did not want the people to place much faith in the powers of la curandera. He wanted the mercy and faith of the church to be the villagers only guiding light.” With the exceptions of the curative and restorative powers of Curanderismo, there is considerable tension between Curanderismo and the church.
Antonio wonders if the magic of Ultima would be stronger than all the powers of the saints and the Holy Mother Church?
Ultima prepared her first remedy. She mixed kerosene and water and carefully warmed the bowl on the stove. She took many herbs and roots from her black ag and mixed them into the warm oily water. She muttered as she stirred her mixture and I did not catch all of what she said, but I did hear her say “the curse of the Tementinas shall bend and fly in their faces. We shall test the young blood of the Lunas against the old blood of the past—“
When she was done she cooled the remedy, then with my help we lifted my uncle and forced the mixture down his throat. He groaned in pain and convulsed as if he wanted to throw up the medicine. It was encouraging to see signs of life in him, but it was difficult to get him to keep the medicine down.
“Drink, Lucas,” she coaxed him, and when he clamped his teeth shut she pried them open and made him drink. Howls of pain filled the small room. It was very frightening, but at length we got the medicine down. Then we covered him because he began sweating and shivering at the same time. His dark eyes looked at us like a captured animal. Then finally they closed and the fa-
tigue made him sleep
“Ay,” Ultima said, “we have begun our cure.”
Ultima prepared atole for them while Lucas sleeps. The fever did not last long.
“There is much good in blue corn meal,” she smiled. “The Indians hold it sacred, and why not, on the day that we can get Lucas to eat a bowl of atole then he shall be cured. Is that not sacred?
After a moment, Antonio hears the call of Ultima’s owl, shrieking into the wind, diving, pouncing on the coyotes, its sharp claws finding flesh, the evil laughter of the coyotes changed to cries of pain.
The power of the doctors and the power of the church had failed to cure my uncle. Now everyone depended on Ultima’s magic. Was it possible that there was more power in Ultima’s magic than in the priest?
After Lucas has been restored to health and the seasons began to change, Ultima gives Antoni a scapular with the picture of the Virgin on it and a small pouch of helpful herbs. Ultima explains that she has had that scapular since she was a child. “It will keep you safe,” she tells Antonio. Historically, the scapular was not unlike the scapular Odysseus wore around his neck given to him by Hermes to ward off the effects of Circe’s potions. In Odysseus’ pouch Hermes had put a patch of the molu plant—an herb moly (perhaps not unlike the herbs in the pouch of Antonio’s scapular), giving rise, perhaps—to the term “holy moly.”
But, despite Ultima’s victory over Tenorio and his daughters, all is not serene in Las Pasturas. One evening toward the end of summer, Narciso barges into the Luna home, warning Ultima about Tenorio who is out to revenge himself on Ultima. Outside, Ultima’s owl hoots a warning of the impending danger—Tenorio blames Ultima for his daughter’s death. Narciso explains: “The small evil one died at El Puerto today—“ Tenorio has gathered a whiskey-filled posse of vigilante witch hunters to eliminate Ultima. But Ultima will not flee from the truth; and Gabriel Marez will not let them take Ultima.
Accused of being a witch, Ultima endures her trial by fire, so to speak, and in a fit of aggres-sion, Ultima’s owl gouges out one of Tenoria’s eyes as he cowers within the crowd of vigilantes. Tenorio slinks off thwarted but determined to do Ultima in.
The winter and its snows come to the llano and Las Pasturas. Antonio and the other boys return to school and create memories of that year with an improvisation of a Christmas play. One particularly cold and wintry night, Antonio witnesses the murder of Narciso by Tenorio who vows more mordantly to kill Ultima Throughout the days of winter, Antonio grows into an early maturity pondering why evil goes unpunished and why God allows the existence of the atomic bomb which has disturbed the cycles of the llano?
A chance encounter with Tenorio alerts Antonio to the peril Ultima faces from Tenorio’s maniacal thirst for revenge, moreso since another of his daughters has taken ill, which he blames on Ultima. From his father, Antonio learns that a wise man listens to the voice of the llano telling him there are years of good weather and there are years of bad weather; and a Christian ponders the mysteries of existence—“maybe there are times when God is with us and times when he is not.”
Failing to destroy Antonio, Tenorio kills Ultima’s owl and is about to have his revenge on Ultima who is ill and lying abed, when he is shot by Uncle Pedro.
In the end, Bless Me, Ultima is about the perseverance of faith in a world beset by evil. But it is through the power of Ultima and Curanderismo that Antonio comes to terms with life as it is and not as it is not. Through the magic of words, Anaya leaves us pondering the infelicities of life.
First presented at a Symposium on Folk Medicine, Western New Mexico University, November 11, 2010; Posted on Somos en Escrito: the Latino Literary online magazine, November 30, 2010; excerpted in the El Paso Times, Living Section and the Las Cruces Sun News, September 9, 2012; In association with the New Mexico Humanities Council, Arts MidWest, the ABC Library, presented as the National Endowment for the Arts Lecture for the Albuquerque Public Library Big Read Program, November 10, 2012.
2 The Play: The Medium and the Message
Bringing a novel to the stage is no small feat, especially if the novel is Bless Me, Ultima by the New Mexican novelist Rudolfo Anaya. Like the Japanese film Rashomon, each genre (novel, play, film) of a particular work tells the story differently. In other words, the medium is the message. That is, reading the novel incites cerebral activity in which the words of the text bring the characters to life in the mind of the reader. In Reader-Response theory, the reader is complicit with the author in giving life to the characters. A film conveys visual signals to the brain stimulated by voice and movement on a screen on which a background is framed. Much like film, a play prompts visual signals to the brain equally stimulated by voice and movement but in a spatial way more proximate than watching a film where the characters are celluloid rather than real. Which of these genres is more rewarding is hard to say—perhaps the French expression chacun `a son goûte says it all—“everyone to his/her own taste.” |
A play like a film based on a novel involves an intermediary, namely the director who slants the story as well as the movement, behavior, and dialog of the actors according to his or her take on the novel (or playbook). I’m well aware of this slant, having played more than 100 roles on stage, directing dozens on plays, and having written extensively for the stage. In 1982, I adapted for the stage the Brazilian Jorge Amado’s novel Quinqas: King of the Vagabonds. Despite my having written the script, the success of the novel as a play was due principally to Ozzie Rodriguez, who directed the play when he was with La Mama Theater in New York City.
An equally successful adaptation of Hamletby Shakespeare was a musical version of mine entitled Elsinore with Mark Medoff (Tony-Award playwright of Children of a Lesser God). Though Joseph Papp was interested in the musical version of Hamlet, we hesitated transforming it into a Rock Musical per Papp’s suggestion. We felt that a rock musical version of Hamlet would not encapsulate the message of our adaptation.
A number of stage adaptations of Bless Me, Ultima have been undertaken with a modicum of success. In partnership with The National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read, Roberto Cantú, professor of Chicano Studies and English produced a dramatic reading as a stage adaptation of the novel at Cal State L.A. The production featured veteran television and film actress Alejandra Flores (A Walk in the Clouds,Friends with Money) as Ultima. Theresa Larkin, a theatre arts professor at Cal State L.A., adapted and directed it (Bless Me, Ultima to Star Alejandra Flores April 10–12 as CAL State L.A. Takes Big Read From Page To Stage For Free. (2008, April 7). US Fed News Service, including U.S. State News. Retrieved January 8, 2012, from General Interest Module, Document ID: 1460653401).
In partnership with The Big Read program, Denver, Colorado's premier Chicano theater company, El Centro Su Teatro, also produced a full length workshop stage production of Bless Me, Ultima, for which Anaya himself wrote the adaptation. The play opened on February 12, 2009, at El Centro Su Teatro, directed by Jennifer McCray Rinn, with the title role of Ultima played by Yolanda Ortega,Antonio Márez by Carlo Rincón, and The Author by Jose Aguila. An encore production was performed at The Shadow Theater in Denver on June 26 and 27, 2009, with the title roles of Ultima played by Yolanda Ortega, Antonio Marez by Isabelle Fries, and the Narrator by Jose Aguila.
Consider the foregoing as prologue to the stage version of Bless Me, Ultima mounted by the Vortex Theatre of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In partnership with the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the Vortex Theatre produced a full stage production of the show from March 26, to April 25, 2010, directed by Valli Marie Rivera and adapted by the author. Juanita Sena-Shannon played Ultima.
As part of its New Mexico tour, the Vortex Theatre production played in various cities in New Mexico. For its final performance on November 19, 2010, in association with the Mimbres Regional Arts Council, Theater Group New Mexico, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the Vortex Players brought their stage version of Bless Me, Ultima to the Fine Arts Center Theatre (FACT) at Western New Mexico University. We were the last stop on the tour.
I had reservations about how successful the Vortex Theatre production of Bless Me, Ultima would be, never having heard of the troupe, and without information about its experience with Chicano theatrical material. Knowing Rudy Anaya since the 1960’s, I figured Rudy Anaya’s script would be good, but Rudy is more a novelist than a playwright, I thought. It turns out that Rudy has written extensively for the stage. I’ve just never seen any of his theatrical works.
Director Valli Marie Rivera brought to Bless Me, Ultima a stunning assembly of theatrical experience including Lorca in a Green Dress by Pulitzer-winner Nilo Cruz and La casa azul about Frida Kahlo. The most difficult feat in stage production is locale. Shakespeare overcame this consideration by simply having one of the characters proclaim the locale for the audience as he does in 1 Henry VI where ostensibly approaching a gate in France one of the characters says “Here we are before the gates of Anjou” thereby establishing the locale (setting) of the scene. As I see it, the difficulty in staging Bless Me, Ultima is how to convince the audience that they are in the locale of Pasturas, New Mexico, where all of the action of the novel takes place. Though actual scenery is minimal, video projections of Anaya’s landscape—as a sort of trompe l’oeil—help to create that dimension for the audience.
Essentially, the Vortex Theatre production of Bless Me, Ultima was an ensemble of music, comedy, and drama. For the children’s scenes in the play, 4 to 8 local children were auditioned. Though spotty here and there in the narrative, the Vortex Theatre production of Bless Me, Ultima was superb.
From The Silver City Daily Press, November 20, 2010
3. The Movie
There we were sitting in the semi-darkened theater waiting for the Coming Attractions to end and the main feature to begin—the main feature being Bless Me, Ultima based on the 1972 novel by Rudolfo Anaya—finally made into a film forty years after its publication. In 1972, the novel won the Premio Quinto Sol for Literature, a prize likened by Chicano writers to the Nobel Prize for Literature. Anaya was the second Chicano writers to win that coveted prize—Premio Quinto Sol; the first was Tomas Rivera for Y no se lo trago la tierra in 1971.
There we were, my wife Gilda and her parents, waiting to see how the film would compare to the novel we had all read. I confess I had some misgivings about the film based on the character of Ultima played by Miriam Colón, the Puerto Rican actress. “Otra vez,” I thought. The film was about a New Mexican curandera, couldn’t “they” find a Mexican American actress to play Ultima? Just as: Couldn’t they find a Mexican American actress to play Selena in the film about Selena, the Mexican American chanteuse from Corpus Christi, Texas. Or just as they couldn’t find Mexican American actors to play the mejicanos in The Milagro Beanfield War produced and directed by Robert Redford with Moctezuma Esparza as co-producer. By the end of the film, however, my estimation of Miriam Colón had grown to mega proportions. She was superb as Ultima. The casting was perfect—in fact, the movie was superbly cast.
No name in Chicano literature is as well known as Rudolfo Anays’s, earning him the sobriquet of “Godfather of Chicano Literature.” It’s not an undeserved recognition, for indeed Anaya has advanced awareness of Chicano literature as no other writer has. This is not to diminish the literary contributions of other Chicana/o writers.
When I received the Patricia and Rudolfo Anaya Critica Nueva Award from the University of New Mexico in 2005 for my contributions to Chicano literature, Rudy commented at dinner that night that I did not mention him in my study of Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature. To which I reminded him that he was not yet published when I was completing Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (University of New Mexico, 1971), though he had been writing throughout the 60's. He came into his literary maturity towards the end of the Chicano Renaissance (1966-1975) and quickly dominated the field with a string of literary works.
I first met Rudolfo Anaya when he was working on his Master’s in English at the University of New Mexico in 1968. I was then completing the Ph.D. in English there. The encounter was fleeting. The next time we met was in Sacramento, California, at a conference where Rudolfo Anaya was reading from Bless Me, Ultima, which had been published by Quinto Sol Publications in 1972 and was chosen to receive the Premio Quinto Sol for Literature—then the most prestigious award for Chicano literature. Octavio Romano, Editor of Quinto Sol Publications had sent me a review copy of the manuscript.
Bless Me, Ultima would not have appeared in print when it did had it not been for the Chicano publishing house of Quinto Sol Publications. Anaya’s efforts to place the novel with a mainstream publishing house were fruitless. Though some Chicano writers like John Rechy and Floyd Salas had novels published by mainstream presses in the 60's. In the early 70's, mainstream publishing houses were wary about publishing Chicanos–about whom they knew little. Surprisingly, Bless Me, Ultima quickly gained a coterie of fans instrumental in promoting the success of the novel by word of mouth. Today it is a runaway best-seller, one of Laura Bush’s 25 novels to read.
In a piece discussing the novel prior to release of the movie (El Paso Times, 9/6/12) I wrote:
Why would anyone want to burn a book about a seven year-old boy growing up in the llanos of New Mexico whose father wants him to be a rancher and whose mother wants him to be a priest? More distressingly, however, is that those who want to burn the book are Americans. Despite the barrage of adverse criticism, Bless Me, Ultima has become an American classic.
The novel has been banned and burned on various grounds, condemned as promoting “witchcraft. The novel is about Antonio Marez a young boy of 7 befriended by the Curandera Ultima when she comes to live with his family in rural New Mexico at the end of World War II. It is in every sense of the word “a coming of age” novel much like Catcher in the Rye, another “coming of age” novel beset by similar problems.
I wondered about the film adaptation of Bless Me, Ultima. The novel is dense with cultural symbolism, especially about curanderismo—Hispanic folk-healing. Any novel perforce has its own lexicon—the language of the genre and the language of the author. I wondered about the fealty of the text in its transformation to film. I wondered about the sequence of the story in terms of the particular strictures of film. Not only do I teach a course on film and theater but I’ve worked in film and theater. I’m still a member of the Screen Actors Guild. On stage I’ve earned credit for more than 100 roles. I’ve also directed and written considerable pieces for the stage.
So there we were waiting for the film to start. The opening shot of the terrain was spectacular. Though I didn’t know it at first, Alfredo Molina was credited as the narrator. I was reminded of my role as Narrator of North From Mexico, the documentary version of Carey McWilliams’ history by the same name. Why wasn’t I asked to narrate the film? Ah, well!
The cast of Bless Me, Ultima is large and versatile. I was particularly struck by Castulo Guerra who plays Tenorio in the film, the villainous father of three daughters drawn to witchcraft. Curanderismo is not about witchcraft but about the healing power of nature, contemplation, and prayer. But the theme of the novel—good versus evil—as Anaya wrote it threads its way through the lives of the townsfolk of Guadalupe, New Mexico, based on Santa Rosa and Pasturas, New Mexico.
Surprisingly, the weight of the film is carried by 9 year old Luke Ganalon who plays Antonio. It’s not an easy role for the 9 year old, but Luke Ganalon plays it like a pro. The supporting cast does just that—it supports the story and the principal cast. Benito Martinez and Dolores Heredia are the father and mother.
Adaptation from one medium to another is not easy; I’ve done it twice: the first time was with Elsinore, a musical adaptation of Hamlet with Mark Medoff, Tony Award playwright of Children of a Lesser God. The last time was adapting the Brazilin writer Jorge Amado’s novel Quinqas: King of the Vagabonds to the stage. Thanks to Ozzie Rodriguez from the La Mama Experimental Theater in New York City the adaptation was successful.
Missing from the story in the film of Bless Me, Ultima was the episode of the Golden Carp, perhaps because it adds little to the plot of the story in the film other than to reinforce Antonio’s personal struggle in coming to terms with good and evil. There could have been more Mexican music in the film. The musical score of the film was deft and pronounced. I felt that even a passing scene of some gaiety with Mexican ranchera music would have added to the verisimilitude of the story. The screenplay was by Carl Franklin who also directed the film. Franklin has directed films with Denzel Washington and Jennifer Aniston.
What most impressed me about the film was how artistically the plot of the novel was carried over into the film with bursts of Anaya’s lyrical prose about the land and the llano of New Mexico. The ending of the film was as poignant as is the ending of the novel.
Bless Me, Ultima, the film, is a testament not only to the creativity and power of Rudolfo Anaya as a novelist but the creativity and power of Chicano literature and to the revelation of a people who have been part of the American mosaic for more than 164 years but of longer duration in generations on the soil that is the Hispanic Southwest. The roots of Chicanos and their antecedents have lain deep for more than 450 years in what is now American soil by conquest. A branch of my mother’s family settled in San Antonio, Texas, in 1731 as members of the 16 families from the Canary Islands to whom the King of Spain issued a grant of land to found La Villita, today’s San Antonio. Often I have to remind others that 1731 was a few years before 1776.
Ultima’s blessing which Antonio seeks is the blessing all women globally give to their children or children in their care. I’m remembering my mother’s blessing when I ventured into the world.
Luna y Mares: Time, Tides, and the Human Condition in Bless Me, Ultima, Posted on Historia Chicana, October 4, 2012
Afterword: From my Review of Man of Aztlan: A Biography of Rudolfo Anaya by Abelardo Baeza, The South Texan, October 12, 2001
To date there is little Chicano biography/autobiography, although many Chicano works are embedded with autobiography. For example, Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez is heavily autobiographical. The most notable works of Chicano autobiography are Barrio Boy by Ernesto Galarza and Original Sin by Anthony Quinn. It’s not that self-representation or the mnemonic impulse are eschewed by Chicano writers. The dearth of Chicano biography, per se, may be due in large part to priorities: other more pressing representational works have been required. Or that a poetics of experience is still evolving for Chicano writers and public figures. There are, of course, autobiographical works by Mexican Americans from earlier times, works by Lorenzo de Zavala, Andrew Garcia, and Miguel Antonio Otero.
In Man of Aztlan, a slim volume by biographic standards, Abelardo Baeza captures the rich texture of Rudolfo Anaya’s life, from boyhood in Pasturas, New Mexico to his worldwide acclaim as a major American writer and novelist. Intended for the secondary school market, the biography transcends that boundary because so little Chicano biography is available. And also because the voice of the biographer speaks to a wider domain of readers. I use Dr. Baeza’s biography of Rudolfo Anaya in my Chicano Literature classes not because of the dearth of Chicano biography but because the biography is that good.
Though a slim volume, Dr. Baeza captures the grand sweep of Anaya the writer. Fittingly, Baeza’s text elides into the category of literary biography because he is not only a professor of literature but is himself a writer and therefore understands the process of writing. I had the good fortune of being a colleague of Abelardo Baeza at Sul Ross State University where before his death he was professor of English.
Students in my literature classes have been captured by the spell of Bless Me, Ultima, the most popular and the most enduring of Rudolfo Anaya’s works. In Man of Aztlan, Abelardo
Baeza has captured the spirit of Anaya’s popularity and endurance.
First posted on Historia Chicana, November 28, 2012, posted on Pueblos en Movimiento Norte, November 29, 2012.
Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Scholar in Residence and Past Chair of the Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University, is 2005 recipient of the Patricia and Rudolfo Anaya Crítica Nueva Award, University of New Mexico.
Editor’s Note: In some instances, previous material has been repeated; excising this material would distort the narrative.