María Ruiz de Burton

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (July 3, 1832 – 1895) in Loreto, Baja California is considered the first female Mexican-American author to write in English. In her career she published two books: Who Would Have Thought It? (1872), The Squatter and the Don (1885), and one play: Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts: Taken From Cervantes' Novel of That Name (1876). Her life is widely considered by contemporary scholars to be reflective of the experience of Californios in the years following the end of the Mexican-American War when California transitioned from Mexican rule to US statehood. Her writings reflect this background and frequently deal with topics such regional and religious conflict, hereditary and cultural legitimacy, land rights, and gender issues.

Biography

Early Life

María Amparo Ruiz was born in either Loreto, Baja California Sur|Loreto, Baja California]] or La Paz, Baja California on July 3, 1832 to an aristocratic family. The precise location of her birth is unknown due to the dearth of records from that region during that time. A large flood in 1829 severely damaged Loreto, causing Mexico to move the capital to La Paz. However, La Paz similarly never had many records at that time due to Indian uprisings and abandonments of the mission in 1734 and 1738. The takeover of La Paz in 1848 by US troops further damaged or caused to be lost the few records from that time.

Ruiz de Burton's grandfather, Don Jose Manuel Ruiz, was a Commander of the Mexican northern frontier in Baja California and later governor of the region from 1822 to 1825. Due to his outstanding work in the services, Don Jose Manuel received two sites of over 3,500 hectares of land in the Ensanada region. This land became very important for the Ruiz family for Ruiz de Burton's entire life. Then many years later, Francisco Ruiz, her great-uncle, was commandate for the presidio of San Diego, for which service he too was awarded a land grant.

At the age of fifteen, Ruiz de Burton witnessed the surrender of La Paz to American forces. In a twist of fate, she met her future husband, Captain Henry S. Burton of Norwich, Vermont, who was in command of the First Regi­ment of New York Volunteers to capture La Paz. In 1848 she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. Just prior to the implementation of the treaty, Burton promised residents of Baja California transport to Monterey, Alta California on refugee ships and full U.S. citizenship. Ruiz de Burton accepted the offer and traveled there with her mother and her brother.

Married Life

She married Burton on July 7, 1849 in Monterey, CA, six days after her seventeenth birthday. The couple faced obstacles on the path to marriage due to their differing religions, she was Catholic and Burton was a protestant. Burton was also something of a national war hero and could not be expected to change his religion, and Ruiz de Burton came from a prominent Spanish Catholic family and could not be expected to change hers. There was vocal opposition from both the Bishop of Upper and Lower California as well as the Governor of California. However, the couple were eventually able to find a Protestant minister in Monterey who was willing to perform the ceremony. The couple's first chiled, Nellie, was born on July 4, 1850.

In 1852, Ruiz de Burton's husband was assigned to to take charge of the Army post at Mission San Diego de Alcala. Ruiz de Burton and her husband were a popular couple in San Diego, and Ruiz de Burton started a small theatre company employing soldier-actors at the time. In 1853, the couple bought a ranch outside San Diego, called Rancho Jamul, which Ruiz de Burton would spend the last twenty odd years of her life fighting legal battles over her land claims to. The couple homesteaded the ranch on March 3, 1854 with their daughter, and Ruiz de Burton's mother and brother. Their second child, a son, was born later that year on November 24.

In 1859, Henry Burton was sent to the East Coast to aid the Union army toward the end of the Civil War. Ruiz de Burton and their two children accompanied the Captain there. On August 2, 1859, they left for Fort Monroe, Virginia on a steamer via the Isthmus of Panama. Over the next ten years, they lived in Rhode Island, New York, Washington D.C., Delaware and Virginia, as Ruiz de Burton's husband was transferred from post to post.

Ruiz de Burton's husband contracted malaria while involved in reconstruction in Petersburg, Virginia after the Union captured the city, which resulted in recurrent attacks of illness over the next five years. Captain Burton died on April 4, 1869 of apoplexy resulting from the malarial attacks, in Newport, Rhode Island.

Later Life, Legal Issues and Death

After her husband's burial at West Point, Ruiz de Burton returned to Rancho Jamul in San Diego, CA in 1870 after her husband's death, and spent the rest of her life in lawsuits trying to keep the title to Rancho Jamul and also began her writing career. While the Burtons bought Rancho Jamul in the 1850s, the deed of purchase did not come through until the 1870s. As a result of the long and extensive litigation process, squatters settled onto parts of the ranch. However, the ranch was never without the presence of a member of the Burton family even when they moved east with Henry. Finally, in 1875 Ruiz de Burton received the land grant, but after years fighting legally over the land it was very heavily mortgaged. Ruiz de Burton then had no choice but to apply for a homestead instead which granted her only 986.6 hectares of land. Even after this small victory in 1887, the government still fought with her over the land for the next two years, which ultimately remained in her name.Vorlage:Fact

Ruiz de Burton was an enterprising woman and engaged in various business dealings and entrepreneurial activities during this period in her life. In 1869, soon after she returned to the West coast, Ruiz de Burton formed the Jamul Portland Cement Manufacturing Company with her son Henry and other financial backers. The company produced cement with lime produced from the limestone present in Rancho Jamul. The company closed in 1891. In the early 1870s, she continued living on Rancho Jamul where she ran cattle, grew wheat, barley, and castor beans, and rented the wildflowered hillsides to beekeepers.

During this latter part of her life, Ruiz de Burton published two novels and one major play. Who Would Have Thought It?, her first novel, was published in 1872, Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts: Taken From Cervantes' Novel of That Name a play, was published and first performed in San Francisco in 1876, and The Squatter and the Don, her second novel, was published in 1885.

The lawsuits surrounding Ruiz de Burton's land claims occupied her until her death. She travelled continually on business connected to the various lawsuits she was involved in, and was in Chicago at the time of her death on August 12, 1895, when she succumbed to gastric fever. Her body was returned to San Diego for burial, where it was interred at Calvary Catholic Cemetary.

Literary career

Ruiz de Burton published two novels in her lifetime, Who Would Have Thought It?, published in 1872, and The Squatter and the Don, published in 1885. Most of Ruiz de Burton's works were published under the pen name C. Loyal. She chose C. Loyal for the meaning Loyal Citizen, which in Spanish translates to Cuidadano Leal. The idea for her pen name came from the way government officials in Mexico would end their letters in the nineteenth century.Vorlage:Fact

Who Would Have Thought It?

Who Would Have Thought It? does not actually have her name attached to it; however, in the US Library of Congress the novel is under the names H. S. Burton and Mrs. Henry S. Burton. This novel deals with the Civil War in a very sardonic manner. In Who Would Have Thought It? a Presbyterian minister and the wife of one of his friends engage in a love affair that in the context of the Civil War illuminates the hypocrisy and racism of this Northern abolitionist family. A quick synopsis of the book tells one that it is a satirical novel based on her observations and experiences of the New England culture and society.

The Squatter and the Don

The Squatter and the Don is her most famous literary piece. This work of fiction adopts the narrative perspective of a conquered Mexican population that feels exploited and inferior to Americans, despite the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848.Vorlage:Fact The story of The Squatter and the Don fictionally documents the many Californio families that lost their land due to squatters and litigation, which is something with which Ruiz de Burton had first hand experience.

Theatre career

Ruiz de Burton is credited with the authorship and publication of one play in her career, entitled Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts, Taken from Cervantes' Novel of That Name, published in San Francisco, CA in 1876.Vorlage:Page number Many scholars interpret Ruiz de Burton's rewriting Cervantes' novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha, as an effort to reclaim her cultural heritage on California lands. Ruiz de Burton spent roughly the last twenty years of her life fighting legal battles to assert her right to her family's land in California, but her efforts proved to be futile in the face of the American concept of Manifest Destiny which gave legitimacy to the squatters who had settled on her lands and the racism towards non-white residents in the US.

In the novel, Don Quixote pursues a life of knight errantry, roaming the land seeking chivalrous adventures in an attempt to maintain the culture of his nostalgia. Many scholars read Quixote's character in Ruiz de Burton's play as being the author herself, a California Hidalgo out to defend the fading culture of the Hacienda life. The play concludes with Quixote defeated and shamed, conquered by jokesters who pretend aristocratic lineage.

Some scholars consider the play to be a reenactment of the mismanagement by the Spanish of Alta California that allowed it to be easily taken by the United States. Don Quixote then is a Califonia Hidalgo, transformed into a Mexican American, who rides through stolen lands believing he is a Spanish saviour with the duty to redress the wrongs of his people. The final defeat and imprisonment of Don Quixote at the hands of the jokesters is a symbolic death to Ruiz de Burton's aristocratic heritage and her land rights.

Political Ideals

Although María Ruiz de Burton's novels are politically charged it is hard to analyze certain aspects of her political ideals with a certain level of concreteness. Therefore analyzing her characters is one way to take a step into how Ruiz de Burton feels about the political situatins happening during her lifetime. There is a conflict where in her novels there is support for individuality, political freedom, and equality for women, while the novel is vague in its judgement of democracy for mass politics.

In order to make any claims as to the political ideals that Mrs. Burton held one would have to draw parallels from her novels to the political and social turmoil during her lifetime. Readers of Who Would Have Thought It? are able to draw some of her cultural politics from the book. The satirical style of Who Would Have Thought It? demonstrates her unhappiness with the current institutions of the American lifestyle through a Mexican perspective. Religion and morality are two abstractions she criticizes in this book. She parodies the Protestant's belief that they are the official religion of the United States of America.Vorlage:Page number

As well as critiquing religion, she is also critiquing other aspects of American culture. Her critique aims at disentangling the anglo-american contradictions in their society in view of the Mexican American. "Her use of satire and parody unmasks the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and displays the hypocrisy among New Englanders who espouse piety and condemn the South's alliance with slavery, yet demonstrate the opposite through their actions" ( Aldama,178). Here in Who Would Have Thought It? she battles against the Anglo-American culture in order to illustrate the injustices and violations against her culture from them.

However, this her books touches on many other political issues; such as gender equality. The issue of land ownership by women is brought up in her book The Squatter and the Don. At the time Mexican and Spanish law allowed women to have rights to property and wealth. However, this was not common practice in the United States at the time. One can take that Mrs. Burton did not take too kindly to not being able to have an entitlement to land. This is because women were not equal according to U.S. law and by custom. This combined with the prejudice on Mexicans at the time added up to be an issue for Mrs. Burton.Vorlage:Page number

"As a romantic racialist/romantic feminist strategy of vindicating groups exploited on the basis of region, race, culture, class, or gender, sentimentalism links gender politics to racial caste politics."

Another issue pertaining to land ownership is brought up in "The Squatter and the Don." Primarily land dispossession of the Hispanic Californians. Because she was a Californian ranchero this book is an example of her victimization. This book was a tool to sway public opinion on her behalf.Vorlage:Page number This was a daunting task because of the audience for whom she had to write. "...Ruiz de Burton had to write in English to address a mainly English-speaking readership, but she also had to incorporate some Spanish to be truthful to her characters and settings. Her efforts resulted in one of the first published examples of Spanish-English code mixing in American Literature". Doing this helped Mrs. Burton open her ideals to a broader market. Therefore helping cast her ideals of land litigation to the very people from who she felt victimized by. She was trying to cajole the Anglo majority of the unfair conduct towards the top-tiered Californians.

Some critics claim that Ruiz de Burton "sympathized with the defeated Confederacy, seeing in the South's defeat a mirror of the defeat of Mexico in 1848, and in Reconstruction, a clear imposition of Yankee hegemony on the Southern states" (Sánchez and Pita, Conflicts of Interest, 195). Ruiz de Burton was not alone in California in her expressions of sympathy relating towards the Confederacy. In the 1850s, Mexican Americans were a majority in Los Angeles, the city was considered a pro-slavery and Democratic town (Pérez, 60). One can see Ruiz de Burton's identification with the fallen Confederacy in chapter III of The Squatter and the Don. Here, Ruiz de Burton references to a term conceived by white southerners, "carpet baggers," to hinder northerners from moving to the South during the Reconstruction era of the United States. Indeed, The Squatter and the Don depicts "political views that emerge from this liberalism as naive, weak, and ineffectual in defending Mexican interests against "Yankee" aggression. This weakness is often figured by the physical illness of male Californio characters..." (Pérez, 80). Ruiz de Burton believed that te U.S. government and especially the judicial system do not in fact serve the people in the United States, but rather, the interests of capital and those who control Congress. (Pérez, 80).

Again Ruiz de Burton criticizes anglo-American aristocrats through her book The Squatter and the Don. This book describes the account of Californio aristocrats being minimized to common laborers throuh dispossesion. This can be read as a parallel to the "loss of Ruiz de Burton's landed status subverted her own class and racial positioning withing post-Reconstruction U.S. society" (Pérez, 60).

Major Themes

María Ruiz de Burton has a few consistent themes running through her major works. These are the subordination race, gender, and class. Class, gender, and race are all intertwined to illustrate the cultural constraints on women and how they should submit or be rejected. It also demonstrates the construction fo the upper class and how chicanos are viewed. In her two major works both major families are wealthy and have some sort of problem pertaining to finances.

Writing Herself Into Fiction

It is widely considered that Ruiz de Burton's own life was a well-mined source for her fiction.Vorlage:Fact The story tVorlage:Clarifyme

Criticism of the US

Ruiz de Burton is very critical of the US in her fiction, both objectively and in relation to her native Mexico. She accuses the US as childishly holding on to a provincial mentality, maintaining that Europe still sets the standard for cultural judgment. In The Squatter and the Don, the characters Clarence and Hubert discuss wines from California, which is patronizing criticism of California from Northeasterners, but, according to Anne Elizabeth Goldman, is in fact more of a criticism of the provincial sensibilities maintained by Bostonians. Like the Norval sisters in Who Would Have Thought It? who travel to Europe to learn good taste, Clarence notes this mentality saying "Don't you know I like some of our California wines quite as well as the imported, if not better? I suppose I ought to be ashamed to admit it, thus showing my taste is not cultivated...I think sooner or later our wines will be better liked, better appreciated." Hubert responds: "I think so too, but for the present it is the fashion to cry down our native wines and extol the imported. When foreigners come to California to tell us that we can make good wines, that we have soils in which to grow the best grapes, then we will believe it, not before."

Ruiz de Burton is critical of US foreign policy in her fiction, accusing it of imperialist and hegemonic tendencies, contradictory to its intentions and foundation. In 1823, US President James Monroe delivered a statement declaring the US foreign policy regarding the Western Hemisphere henceforth, which became later known as the Monroe Doctrine. His message declared that the Western Hemisphere's move toward democracy and away from monarchy was inevitable and that the United States would usher that transformation and protect any country in the Americas from future colonization by any European powers. This Doctrine remained virtually ignored in US politics until President James Polk told Congress in 1845 that "The American system of government is entirely different from that of Europe...a system of self-government which seems natural to our soil and which will ever resist foreign interference" (137).Vorlage:Fact However, the character Don Felipe in The Squatter and the Don says "Of course the ideas of this continent are different from those of Europe, be we all know that such would not be the case if the influence of the United States did not prevail with such despotic sway over the minds of the leading men of the Hispanic American republics. If it were not for this terrible, this fatal influence - which will eventually destroy us- the Mexicans, instead of seeing anything objectionable in the proposed change, would be proud to hail a prince who, after all, has some sore of claim to this land, and who will cut us loose from the leading strings of the United States ."

List of works

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References

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