The Guardians

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Religion

Religion is an important motif within The Guardians. Although Gabo and Father Juan Bosco are the novel’s only devoutly religious characters, both Regina and Miguel have a complex relationship with religion and religiosity. This motif allows Castillo to explore the Borderlands’ complex identity politics and develop the theme of Identity in the Borderlands.

The Texas/New Mexico/Mexico region where The Guardians is set has a long and fraught religious history. Settled first by Indigenous peoples, it was colonized by Spain and then invaded by the US. Catholicism, the religion to which Gabo is devoted but about which Regina and Miguel have serious reservations, was part of Spain’s assimilationist project in the region, and its role within Indigenous communities in the Borderlands is fiercely contested. Many Indigenous communities still feel that their own spiritual and religious practices were subjected to erasure during the era in which they were made to convert to the religion of their colonizers and oppressors. However, for those who identify as Mexican, Hispanic, Chicano, or Anglo, Catholicism is often a key part of their identitarian framework. This identification has deepened over the centuries that Catholicism has been practiced in this region, blending with Indigenous traditions to create a unique form of Catholicism. With this, Gabo understands Catholicism as an important piece of his ethnoreligious identity and clearly understands his Mexican heritage through a religious framework. Regina and Miguel, because they are so attuned to social and gender justice, are leery of a religion that was such an intrinsic part of the region’s colonial history. For them, Catholicism was one piece of a broader assimilationist movement that was arguably genocidal.

The shifting, contested, fraught understanding of what it means to be Catholic in the Borderlands is an important piece of this novel, but it also speaks to the politics of ethnoreligious identity within the Borderlands region as a whole. It is an idea that Castillo wrestles with in multiple different texts, and it also connects her writing intertextually to other works of Chicano literature.

The US-Mexico Border

The Guardians is set in the Borderlands region that encompasses parts of northern Mexico and the southeastern US. Mentions of the border abound within the novel, and although the border situates the narrative within a particular sociocultural landscape, it also helps the author explore each of the novel’s key themes. The border shapes both individual and cultural identity for Regina, her friends, and her family. The cross-cultural communities that exist in and around the Borderlands region speak to the novel’s interest in how family and community create a sense of belonging for the area’s inhabitants. Additionally, the violence that scars the Borderlands becomes a catalyst for Regina’s interest in social justice, and the novel’s attunement to femicide places it firmly within a tradition of Borderlands writing.

Regina’s family is scattered throughout New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, and because they live on both sides of the border, their identity is complex and shifting. Miguel identifies as decisively Chicano. Regina hesitates to adopt the political stance that “Chicano” represents to her but understands herself as existing at the intersection of Mexican and American cultures. Rafa eschews beliefs, values, and practices that he labels as “gringo” and identifies as Mexican, even during the years he spends living and working in the US. Gabo locates his own Borderlands identity firmly within his faith. Each character is defined in part through their relationship to the US-Mexico border and the cross-cultural communities to which they belong.

Border crossings abound within the novel: Regina, Rafa, and Gabo have all crossed the border multiple times in the past, and Miguel, El Abuelo Milton, and Gabo also cross and re-cross the border together in the novel’s present. These many border crossings speak to the fluidity of migration within the region and the porosity of the border itself: The national boundary does not actually separate populations neatly into Mexican or American categories. Rather, the population moves back and forth across the border, and the border does not truly divide nations, societies, or families.

The epidemic of femicides depicted in the novel is historically accurate and is another way the motif of the border speaks to lived experience in the region. Hundreds of women were killed or disappeared in and around Juárez during the 1990s and early 2000s, and their deaths were linked to the violence that characterized much of the cross-border movement during that time. The cartels, traffickers, and smugglers responsible for moving drugs, humans, and other materials across the border were behind these deaths, and Crucita’s disappearance is the key way that The Guardians engages with this violent history.

Agriculture/Produce

Mentions of agriculture, agricultural work, and produce abound within this novel, and Regina often recalls the years she spent as a migrant agricultural worker, speaking to the lived experiences of many Mexican and Mexican American individuals who cross and re-cross the border to find temporary, seasonal farm work. This motif speaks to the theme of Identity in the Borderlands in that “migrant worker” is often the first “American” identity claimed by Mexican migrants. Regina and her family members crossed the border because of the promise of agricultural jobs, and those jobs gave them a foothold in the country and a path toward legal status and citizenship. As such, agriculture represents opportunity, though it also embodies the sort of exploitation inflicted on migrant workers.

This motif also speaks to the theme of Family and Belonging in that the communities formed by agricultural workers like Regina and her family progress from temporary to permanent and come to shape their “American” experience. The region where Regina lives produces chilis, pecans, and other important crops, and individual relationships with agriculture become foundational within their communities. Regina and others like her are inextricably tied to the land and what it produces. Various threats to that land and those communities in the form of industries that, with the tacit approval of the US government, pollute and damage the environment become the catalyst for Gender, Social, and Environmental Justice, and Castillo uses Miguel to explore the Borderlands’ history of environmental activism. This idea of identity being tied to environment, agriculture, and land is important within Chicano literature as a whole, and Castillo’s engagement with it here connects this text to others within its genre.