Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal Essay -- Mexican Culture Catholicism

Pocho by Jose Antonio VillarrealThe 1959 novel, Pocho, by Jos Antonio Villarreal is an insightful cultural exposition told primarily from the vantage point of Richard Rubio, the coming-of-age son of immigrant Mexican p bents who eventually settle in Santa Clara, California, after many seasons of migrant farm work. Although fiction, the story likely mirrors some of the experiences of the author who was born to migrant laborers in Los Angeles in 1924 and was himself a pocho - a chela of the depression era Mexican-American transition. (I am a Pocho, he state, and we speak like this because here in California we make Castilian words out of side words. p 165)Such a journey was a difficult one (...for the transition from the culture of the old world to that of the new world should never nominate been attempted in one generation. p 135), and Villarreal nicely employs a cross cultural bildungsroman to explore a diversity of related themes.Among the most prominent are strains of racism/class ism, belonging and dislocation, death and meaning and self-identity, and sexual awakening. In a slim 187 pages the author competently weaves social gossip (via the seemingly innocent stripling perspective) into a moving narrative that only occasionally veers toward the pedantic.Richards father, Juan Rubio, is proud to be a Mexican and resents the Spanish people, whom he identifies as oppressors (although Juan is clearly of Spanish demarcation since he had fair skin and blue-gray eyes - p 1). He explains to his son, who exclaims in response to his fathers prejudice, But all your friends are Spanish (p 99)That is all there is here, said Juan Rubio, but these people are different - they are also from the lower class... ...s parents. Second, one should not, on penalty of going to Hell, discuss religion with the priests. And, last, one should not ask questions on history of the teachers, or one will be kept in after school, he said. I do not call up it in me to understand why it is this way. (p 85, 86)Author Jos Antonio Villarreal has a dry sense of humor and, as mentioned above, does a marvelous job weaving bits of wry commentary throughout the novel. Another fun quote is when Richards sister, Luz, demonstrates her own prejudice for the newly arrived, and darker skinned, Mexicans Well, they aint got nuthin and they dont even talk good English. (p 148) Now, 50 years after the novel was prototypic written, the story is still relevant. Its an intriguing narrative and helpful in capturing the double consciousness that many Mexican-Americans lived with as a matter of course.