George Washington Gómez: A Mexicotexan Novel

The novel opens with a more centralized focus on Feliciano García than any other character. He serves as the primary point-of-view character for most of the period immediately following Guálinto’s birth, and the novel returns to him multiple times at various points in Guálinto’s upbringing.

His experience of Jonesville and life in the Rio Grande Valley is very different from Guálinto’s. Unlike his nephew, most of Feliciano’s young life is spent in abject poverty, receiving little to no education, and struggling just to survive as his people’s land and rights are slowly but deliberately stripped away by the encroaching ranchers and Rangers of white post-Revolutionary Texas. Unlike Guálinto, who is ashamed of his childhood home, Feliciano considers it idyllic compared to his old life.

Feliciano also fully embraces his own “Mexicotexan” identity, though unlike Guálinto, he has few alternatives. This preordained singular identity allows him to judge others with a clear head, though it is often mingled with the hatred he continually struggles to suppress.

Feliciano’s single-mindedness is a defining feature of his character and presents as both a strength and a weakness in the events of the novel. It allows him to quickly embed himself into the “Mexicotexan” community in Jonesville, provides him with foresight in business, and empowers him to take on an effective—if sometimes unbalanced—patriarchal role with his sister’s family.

However, Feliciano is not without his flaws. Although he provides for and leads the Gómez family throughout their time in Jonesville, his love is not shown to evenly distribute between the family members. He dotes on Guálinto and goes to great pains—even refusing to tap into the family’s savings during La Chilla—to preserve Guálinto’s future education. With Carmen and Maruca, on the other hand, he is often dismissive. Feliciano is also a hypocrite following Maruca’s pregnancy: while he came close to murdering Martin Goodnam for not forcing his son Buddy to marry Maruca after impregnating her, Feliciano himself has lived believing he has an illegitimate daughter of his own and has been paying her off to keep her out of the Gómezes’ life. When at last he discovers that she never existed at all, he simply throws her letters away and laughs dismissively at having been fooled.

Guálinto’s mother is a woman of variable emotional sensibility. Unlike her brother, María is deeply religious, following the teachings of the Mexican Catholic Church as an absolute morality. She is also more dogmatic than Feliciano in following the traditions of her people, eschewing his Western scientific explanation for Guálinto’s sickness in Part 2 in favor of folk medicine.

Like Feliciano, María carries a separate and unequal love for Guálinto in comparison to his sisters. She rarely scolds Guálinto for acting out in anger or foolishness, saving most of her criticism for what she sees as his moments of cowardice. When Guálinto returns to Jonesville with Ellen Dell for the first time, María weeps when they first meet, and she is eventually accepting of Ellen despite her status as a “gringa.”

María’s reaction to Ellen stands in stark contrast to her reaction to Maruca’s pregnancy in Part 4. María’s violent outburst not only illustrates her mercurial nature, but it also highlights just how little she values her daughters’ qualities outside of their virtue. It is entirely possible that these views come from her strict religious and folk teachings, as Feliciano’s sexism also places different expectations on Guálinto versus his sisters. María’s deference to the men in her life is largely unchanged from the beginning of the book to the end.

The eldest of María’s three children, Carmen as intelligent and studious as Guálinto and later develops a moral independence unique to her family. She is generously self-sacrificing, giving up school to care for María after she breaks her leg and quitting her job at Woolworth’s during La Chilla to care for Maruca when María refuses.

Her decision to keep Maruca’s pregnancy a secret from María showcases her willingness to stand in opposition to her parental figures when she deems it necessary. When María learns she kept Maruca’s pregnancy a secret, she accepts her punishment without complaint or apology, displaying the conviction in her choices that eludes both of her siblings.

Despite her persecution by María, Carmen takes her mother into her household upon marrying and coming of age, displaying a familial dedication similar to Feliciano’s. Like Maruca and Guálinto, her mother’s cruelty has given Carmen every reason to abandon her in her old age, but she again walks the less selfish path in taking her mother under her care.

Carmen, in that she’s gifted like her brother, reveals that a woman who displays the same talents will still be unable to achieve the same heights as a man in an inherently sexist time period and culture. She has both her ethnicity and her gender working against her.