The Creation of a New Country or the Ruined Dream of a Unified Nation? Queer Aztlán in Cherríe Moraga’s Play "The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea"

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Chicano Movement and Chicano Theatre

3. The Dream of Queer Aztlán

4. The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea
4.1. Place and Setting: Desired Aztlán and the Exile Phoenix/ Tamoanchán
4.2. Messenger between this World and the Other: Chac-Mool
4.3. Desperate Captivity in Two Worlds: Medea

5. Conclusion

6. Works Cited

Deutsche Zusammenfassung

Die vorliegende Bachelorarbeit untersucht die Darstellung von „Queer Aztlán“ in Cherríe Moragas Theaterstück The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea und wie der Untergang der Protagonistin Medea exemplarisch auch für den Untergang des reformierten Aztlán steht. Der Begriff „Queer Aztlán“ stammt aus einem ihrer Essays von 1993. Als Einstieg in meine Untersuchung beleuchte ich in kurzer Form die geschichtlichen Ereignisse, die zum Chicano Movement führten. In dieser Zeit wurde „Aztlán“, der Legende nach das ursprüngliche Heimatland der Azteken, zu einem Symbolbild für den Chicano Nationalismus. Heutzutage bezieht sich Aztlán auf den Südwesten der USA. Da sich die Amerikaner mit mexikanischer Herkunft in den USA benachteiligt fühlten, forderten sie eine Gleichstellung in verschiedenen Bereichen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens, u.a. Zugang zu Bildung und politische Teilhabe. Erweiternd gehe ich auch darauf ein, welche Einflüsse diese Bewegung im Bereich des Chicano Theaters hatte. Moraga stellt in ihrem Essay heraus, dass diese Bewegung problematischerweise auch die patriarchalen Strukturen der weißen Amerikaner auf ihre Familien übertrugen und Frauen, sowohl im privaten als auch im öffentlichen Leben, eine niedere Rolle zugeschrieben wurde. Außerdem wurden auch homosexuelle Chicano/a Einwohner von der Bewegung ausgeschloßen und ihre Dienste im Sinne der Gemeinschaft nicht anerkannt. Daher fordert Moraga eine Erweiterung des Konzepts „Aztlán“ um die Bezeichnung „Queer Aztlán“. Ein Land in dem alle Chicano/as unabhängig von Geschlecht, Sexualität, Klasse, etc. leben können. Der zweite Teil meiner Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit ihrem Theaterstück, in dem sie die Handlung der griechischen Sage Medea in das USA der Zukunft transferiert. Nach einer Revolution leben die Menschen nun in Staaten, die auf ihrer ethnischen Herkunft basieren. Allerdings werden Homosexuelle und andere „ungewollte“ Menschen in Aztlán nicht geduldet und Medea, ihr Sohn Chac-Mool, ihre Großmutter, sowie ihre lesbische Geliebte Luna mussten in das Exil Phoenix ausreisen. In den drei Unterkapiteln gehe ich als erstes auf die Beschreibung des Settings ein, als zweites auf die Darstellung Chac-Mools und als letztes auf die von Medea ein. Als Jasón, Chac-Mools Vater zurückkehrt um seinen Sohn für ein traditionelles Initiationsrituell nach Aztlán zurückzuholen, spitzt sich die Lage zu und Medea sieht keinen anderen Ausweg als ihren Sohn umzubringen um ihn von der Ausreise abzuhalten. Das Stück endet mit Medeas eigenem Selbstmord. Als Fazit ziehe ich, dass das Scheitern Medeas und das von Queer Aztlán nötig waren, da die Gesellschaft für solch eine Revolution noch nicht bereit war. Aber dass das Scheitern, und Medea und Chac-Mool als „gefalle Krieger“, gleichzeitig für einen Neubeginn stehen.

1. Introduction

June 16, 2015. Donald J. Trump, the current President of the United States of America, announces his presidential bid. In his speech, he refers to the immigration of Mexicans: “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. [. . .] They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” (Washington Post Staff). June 27, 2015. BBC News headlines “US Supreme Court rules gay marriage is legal nationwide”. Up to this point, same-sex marriage was banned in 14 states. Former U.S. President Barack Obama calls this decision by the Supreme Court a “victory for America”. In October 2016, THE WASHINGTON POST releases a video in which Trump makes offensive comments on women during a conversation with Billy Bush, an American radio and television host. He uses vulgar language to make it clear that he can easily manage to get physically intimate with a woman and demonstrates his superiority by saying “when you’re a star, they let you do it” (Fahrenthold).

Taken together, these incidents, that have happened in the last three years in US history, are just a few examples of events that created a tense atmosphere that sprawled out over the country. These incidents also show that there is still no equality in regards of heritage or sex. Non-white Americans, women and – although the United States legalized gay marriage – homosexuals still have to fear various forms of discrimination in the U.S. Now, imagine a person that possesses all of those three attributes in the current U.S society. What would it be like to be a homosexual woman with Mexican roots living in the United States? Cherríe Moraga answers this question by creating a post-revolutionary dystopic tale with her play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea where she envisions an extremely negative future for the protagonist Medea. Unlike Medea in the Greek original, Moraga’s play ends not only with the death of Medea’s son Chac-Mool, but also with her own suicide. Moraga transfers the classical story of the Greek myth by Euripide into a future where “[a]n ethnic civil war has ‘balkanized’ about half of the United States into several smaller nations of people” and where “[h]ierarchies were established between male and female; and queer folk were unilaterally sent into exile” (Moraga The Hungry Woman 6). This region of exile is located in a border region between Gringolandia, where the white American citizens live, and Aztlán, country for the citizens of Mexican descent where Medea, her son Chac-Mool and her female partner Luna have been sent to and where the play takes place (6). Medea’s journey is interlaced by her feelings of otherness and isolation and her willingness to live a self-determined life as a confident mother and lesbian lover in a surrounding which is dominated by patriarchal structures and ethnic conflicts. Moraga does not provide any source of hope for her protagonist, or for the development of a peaceful society regardless of class, race, sex or sexuality within the United States. She wrote the first edition of the play in 1995, but the issues she exemplifies are still relevant when we look on today’s problems of racism, xenophobia or homophobia in U.S. society. Although she reflects upon a more positive future in her essay “Queer Aztlán: the Re-formation of Chicano Tribe” from 1993, she does not adopt her vision onto the nation she creates in The Hungry Women. In her essay, Moraga expands the image of Aztlán to Queer Aztlán, a place where class, race, sex or sexuality does not matter. Aztlán was originally the land of the Aztecs but during the Chicano Movement in the 1960s, it became a symbol of a metaphysical homeland for the Chicano people. In this thesis I will show how Moraga’s realization of Aztlán and the characters Medea and Chac-Mool living in the exile Phoenix leads to their own downfall as much as to the destruction of the dream of Queer Aztlán.

2. The Chicano Movement and Chicano Theatre

Chicano theatre has its roots in the Chicano Movement from the 1960s. To understand the development it has undergone until the changed realisations by Chicana artists such as Cherríe Moraga, it is important to look at the historical circumstances that caused the Chicano Movement. According to the Encyclopedia of American Studies it was the American Dream which incites the Mexican American citizens to overcome social, economic, and political inequalities. During this time the term Chicano was transformed from a degrading notion into a “positive self-identifier that made clear their critique of prevailing institutions” (Chávez). The goals demanded by the Chicano community differed from groups within the movement. That is why it “is best viewed not as a unified entity but as an amalgamation of organizations pressing for ethnic Mexican empowerment in various localities” according to Chávez. One of the greatest accomplishments during the following ten years was the organisation of the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in March of 1968. The participants of this conference drew up the construct of a nation within a nation: El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (“Spiritual Plan of Aztlán”), which from then on became the “quintessential expression of Chicano nationalism” (Chávez). Originally said to be the homeland of the Aztecs, it then functioned and still functions now as an imagined homeland located in the southwest of the United States which should shape “cultural nationalism and oppositional resistance” (Díaz-Sánchez 143). As its central theme, the authors emphasize that “Chicanos . . . must use their nationalism as the key or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization” (Anaya and Lomelí 2). The effects of this Movement are still visible in today’s society . One of the measuring results is the growing participation of Mexican Americans, e.g. in fields of politics and academia. Nevertheless, the Chicano Movement also created negative impacts on its community members which led to the main point of criticism expressed by dramatist Cherríe Moraga and other female activists. The Movement so far centred the equalization of the Mexican man to the American white man. The needs and wishes of the female members in the community were neglected. Moreover, the patriarchal structures of American society were transferred into the Chicano community and la famila became the reflection of this process. As Moraga describes it, “Chicano políticos ensured that the patriarchal father figure remained in charge both in their private and political lives” (“Queer Aztlán” 157). As an answer to those oppressive structures, female activists joined forces and initiated Chicana feminist movements during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. Pelak points out that there was no “monolithic ideology of Chicana feminism”. Instead, they were aware of the inequalities which effected the lifes of women of colour. Race, class and gender were interconnected. (“Feminism and Women of Color”). Chicana activists addressed many issues such as poverty, limited opportunities in higher education, health care and bilingual education. Their achievements can be observed in changed conditions in those fields. In the fields of literature, arts and performance, too, Chicanos and Chicanas are now represented in today’s American society. Nevertheless, these fields were entered solely by male figures of the Chicano/a community at first. One of the main important characters in the Mexican American theatre scene was Luis Valdez who was founder and artistic director of the 1965 established El Teatro Campesino. The plays performed under its patronage dealt with the concerns and identities of the Chicano community and were influenced by the political circumstances of that time. The main aim was to critique “the ways in which Mexican Americans were treated as a racialized minority” (Elliot “Chicano Literature”). But the productions still focused on the male Mexican American either onstage or behind the stage and the image of women followed the patriarchal structures of la famila. In her essay “Toward a Re‐Vision of Chicano Theatre History: The Women of El Teatro Campesino”, Yolanda Broyles González describes her alarming experience watching a performance of El Teatro Campesino’s group in 1980:

My own dissatisfaction with the piece sprang from the portrayal of Chicanas. The women characters in the show felt like an eerie rerun of earlier Teatro plays: the saintlike wilting wife, the sleazy whore, and the grandmother figure. Compared with the male characters, the females seemed one-dimensional and relatively insignificant. (211)

To her amazement, she had to discover afterwards that the most popular figure of the play, a male Pachuco youth, was played by a woman which had never been mentioned by scholars of Chicano drama. For Broyles González, it was a striking example for the role of women during history. As she notes, “numerous realms of women’s historical experience have been lost due to the (male) gender-specific interpretation of past reality” (211). During the Chicana feminist movement it was inevitable to reform the Chicano theatre as well. The problem was that behind the scenes men were in charge and women nearly invisible. As Moraga points out, over 80 percent of the Chicano theatres were directed by men¹ (“Queer Aztlán” 157). Topics such as female sexuality in general, homosexuality and violence against women were censored onstage, because they were not “socially relevant to Chicanos” (158). Moraga’s desire to reform the Chicano/a community is represented in various plays, essays and prose. As Obenland claims, “[j]oining the search for new cultural forms, symbols, and a ‘home’ for the queer Chicana, Moraga’s plays . . . focus less on the inner mental conflicts of the mestiza, but concentrate . . . on the transformation of local communities” (272). The next chapter therefore will focus on her vision to reform Aztlán, the homeland of the Chicano/a community, described in her essay “Queer Aztlán: the Re-formation of Chicano Tribe”. Subsequently I will explore if and how she transferred this concept of a reformed Aztlán to her play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea.

3. The Dream of Queer Aztlán

Cherríe Moraga’s essay “Queer Aztlán” was published in 1993 in her collection of essays and poems The Last Generation. Although the first edition of her play The Hungry Woman was published in 1995, she worked on both works simultaneously. Interconnections are therefore visible in both of these works (Straile-Costa 213). Her essay starts with her own personal journey forming her consciousness of being a “Chicana, lesbiana, half-breed, and poeta” (“Queer Aztlán” 146). In those twenty years of her journey she experienced “the racism of the Women’s Movement, the elitism of the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the homophobia and sexism of the Chicano Movement, and the benign cultural imperialism of the Latin American Solidarity Movement” (146). The flash of inspiration she needed to devise a possible solution for these issues came in a conversation with poet Ricardo Bracho as he told her “What we need, Cherríe, is a ‘Queer Aztlán’” (147).

She goes on with a quick overview of the Chicano Movement in regards with its meaning for the female members of the community. The Movement was said to be dead but Moraga insists on its evolution since “it has retreated into subterranean uncontaminated soils awaiting resurrection in a ‘queerer,’ more feminist generation” (148). Before mentioning Aztlán, she emphasizes how the Chicano nationalism should progress. She demands a disengagement from former structures where women’s bodies are no longer seen as “territories to be conquered” (150):

The nationalism I seek is one that decolonizes the brown and female body as it decolonizes the brown and female earth. It is a new nationalism in which la Chicana Indígena stands at the center, and heterosexism and homophobia are no longer the cultural order of the day. (150)

She uses the term “nationalism” intentionally, saying that she fears the losing of nation when skipping it. What she looks for is a nation that “could embrace all its people, including its jotería” (147): Queer Aztlán. As López highlights, Moraga uses the term queer to define an all-inclusive community (174). Moraga continues by retelling the obstacles gay and lesbian members had to overcome during the movement. She stresses that lesbians and gay men play an important role in spiritual, cultural and political terms in the Chicano community but were never acknowledged for their effort (“Queer Aztlán” 164). López supports this statement expressing that, ironically, many of the Chicano/a activists have been gay (175). She describes that the Chicano nationalist view excluded queers from la famila “because of their refusal of a model of compulsory heterosexuality” (175). Since Aztlán is an imagined homeland for the Chicano/a community it functions more as a metaphysical region. Although it has its roots in El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, the expectations placed on Aztlán can differ within the Chicano/a community. For Moraga, “[i]n a ‘queer’ Aztlán, there would be no freaks, no ‘others’ to point one’s finger at” (“Queer Aztlán” 164). Accomando reminds us that the term queer is also a constructed image which can have several meanings. According to her, Moraga wants us to heed the “juxtaposing ‘queer’ with the concreteness of Aztlán” since “[q]ueer and Aztlán are both political constructions and as real as flesh and land” (113). The word “queer” and its connotations refering to sexuality experienced a change in the last two decades. Coming from the original meaning as “strange”, “uncommon” or even as an insult, it is now used as a positive self-reference within the gay community (“Queer”). Querness includes any forms of gender and sexuality and supports therefore Moraga’s idea of a land where no “others” exist.

After introducing Queer Aztlán, Moraga provides a detailed description of the history from the beginnings as the origin Aztec home up to the struggles the Chicano Movement had to face. She touched upon her critique as a “Chicana Lésbica” and provides an outlook for the future. She admits not knowing how the future will look like but calls for a better relationship with nature and the need to invent “new ways of making culture . . to survive and flourish as members of the world community in the next millennium” (“Queer Aztlán” 174). Her representations interweave with each other to create her main goal: the creation of Queer Aztlán. As Accomando concludes:

In reclaiming and renaming Aztlán, Moraga neither romanticizes nor rejects the Chicano nationalism that took that mythic and real homeland as a starting point. Moraga doesn’t recuperate nationalism but she does seek to re-imagine it – to queer it in fact. Queer Aztlán is not just additive – gay folks plus Chicano folks – instead it racializes “queer” and queers nation. (115)

4. The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea

4.1. Place and Setting: Desired Aztlán and the Exile Phoenix/ Tamoanchán

To refer to the previous chapter on the background and the framework of Moraga’s dreamed Queer Aztlán, I want to raise special attention to the following fact: there is no Queer Aztlán in Moraga’s play The Hungry Women: A Mexican Medea. Rather, she creates a setting that consists of demarcated and contrasting areas where ethnical diversity is missing. The Playwright’s Note gives the reader information about the current geographic situation in which the play is set:

An ethnic civil war has “balkanized” about half of the United States into several smaller nations of people. These include: Africa-America located in the southern states of the U.S. (excluding, of course, Florida); the Mechicano Nation of Aztlán which includes parts of the Southwest and the border states of what was once Northern México; . . . (Moraga The Hungry Woman 6)

After this revolution that formed those new states, a counter-revolution took place and caused a setback to sexist and homophobic hierarchies. The story is located after this counter-revolution where “unwanted” people, especially queer citizens, are being sent relentlessly into exile:

The play takes place several years after MEDEA . . . was exiled from Aztlán with her son, CHAC-MOOL, and her lesbian lover, LUNA. They reside in what remains of Phoenix, Arizona, located in a kind of metaphysical border region between Gringolandia (U.S.A) and Aztlán (Mechicano country). Phoenix is now a city-in-ruin, the dumping site of every kind of poison and person unwanted by its neighbors. (Moraga The Hungry Woman 6)

When Moraga chooses the word “balkanized” (6), it comes as no surprise that her futuristic, imaginary version of the U.S. reminds her, as well as the reader, of a drastic event in European history: the breakup of Yugoslavia. As Solloch points out, she transfers those wars between different ethnic groups to the conditions of the imagined United States (244). Besides that, the short description of place and setting provides more insights into Moraga’s refined reflections on the contrasting regions of Aztlán and Gringolandia as well as on the no man’s land in between: Phoenix, which “is represented by the ceaseless racket of a city out of control (constant traffic, low-flying jet planes, hawkers squawking their wares, muy ‘Blade Runner-esque’)” (Moraga The Hunrgy Woman 7). It can already be seen in the naming of the countries, that Moraga highlights the marginalization which originates from these societies. Solloch refers to an edition of The Hungry Woman from 2000², where Moraga describes Gringolandia as “white Amerika”, which excludes people with different skin colour from this society. Whereas in Aztlán as the “Mechicano country”, or the “Chicano country” as in the 2000 edition, the exclusion is related to gender, since woman are subordinated in this version of a patriarchal society (245). The following dialogue between Mama Sal, Medea’s 80 year-old grandmother, and Savannah, African-American with native roots and who is also Luna’s girlfriend, illustrates such developments in Aztlán after the counter-revolution:

MAMA SAL: We were contentos for awhile –

SAVANNAH: Sort of. Until the revolutionaries told the women, put down your guns and pick up your babies.

MAMA SAL: ¡Fuera de las calles!

SAVANNAH: And into the kitchens! (Beat) Now that’s not in the “official” version.

(Moraga The Hungry Woman 24)

Those comments show that the initial idea of the revolution to form nations based on ethnic origin (therefore gender or sexuality of the revolutionary fighters have been or should have been irrelevant) and with it its important actors, among them exemplarily Medea, “who had served as a leader in the Chicano revolt”, had vanished under newly established patriarchal structures (6). As Díaz-Sánchez puts it, “[t]he democracy implied by revolutionary struggles did not enable the reconfiguration of gender hierarchies in postcolonial nation-states” (145). The dialogue between Mama Sal and Savannah which is, according to the Playwright’s Note, based on a history that has never happened, refers nevertheless to the actual Chicano Movement of the 1960’s (Moraga The Hungry Woman 6). Moraga herself writes in her essay “Queer Aztlán: the Re-formation of Chicano Tribe” that “the male-dominated Chicano Movement embraced the most patriarchal aspects of its Mexican heritage” and further: “. . . they took the worst of Mexican machismo and Aztec warrior bravado, combined it with some of the most oppressive male-conceived idealizations of ‘traditional’ Mexican womanhood and called that cultural integrity” (156). Although Moraga refuses those entrenched patriarchal structures, she sticks to the revolutionary ideologies of Chicano nationalism but demands a recreation of the desired homeland of Aztlán. As Straile-Costa emphasizes, Moraga’s plays with its reappraisal of the Chicano history through native myths and history references are important for future generations to rewrite and renew current conditions: “Thus, [Moraga’s] engagement with myths has a dual purpose: to create a sense of ‘home’ or belonging and cultural pride for Mechicano people; and to critique destructive socio-political influences deriving from within and outwith the Chicano community with the aim of healing it” (211). This aspect can also be found in The Hungry Women where Medea, although she has been sent to exile, still expresses her longing for Aztlán as her homeland and her frustration over the lacking appreciation as a revolt leader:

[...]

¹ Since this comment was published in her collection of essays and poems The Last Generation, this data refers to 1993.

² Moraga, Cherríe. “The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea.” Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/Latino Theatre and Performance, edited by Caridad Svich and Maria Teresa Marrero, Theatre Communications Group, 2000, pp. 289-362.