Ana Castillo's novel depicting life among the Spanish speaking community where the Texas, New Mexico and Mexican borders intersect is an account delineated by pathos in the broad, while the individual events and characters are rich and warm, often filled with a quirky humor.
As is unavoidable when situating a novel thusly, many issues facing this community are raised: poverty; undocumented workers - good and bad; illegal border crossings varying from those who want to permanently emigrate to the US, through those looking for seasonal work, to those engaged in drug trafficking, gun running and smuggling immigrants; vigilantism; gangs and crime; poor sanitation and infrastructure in the predominantly Spanish neighborhoods; domestic violence; drug and alcohol abuse; corruption and violence; spiraling numbers of unwed teenage mothers and the changing role of the church and its ministers in the community.
Castillo does not pull punches in describing the situations; refreshingly, neither does she tar everyone with the same brush: there are bad cops and there are good cops; there are good people and bad people on each side of a border, and among all the communities.
A few things rankled in the novel: first, the pacing was somewhat uneven. The further the novel progressed, the larger the jumps between events, and the more the reader is left to pick up by inference. It began to seem as if there was a mad rush to finish this slim (211 pages in my copy) novel.
The second issue relates to the characters. The novel is told by four characters, each in first person. Tia Regina is a naturalized citizen (through marriage), working as a teacher's aide; Gabo is her nephew ( her brother's son) and undocumented, who lives with her to finish his education; Miguel is a school teacher at Regina's school, with a complicated history that includes an excellent education; Grandpa Milton is Miguel's grandfather.
The problem is that initially all the voices sound alike; the undertone, the timbre. Regina's voice is the first to become distinct, followed by that of el Abuelo Milton. Gabo's - whose is mostly heard in the long letters he writes to St. Francis - does not quite ring true; frequently the phrasing slips incongruously into that of an academic, which is unlikely even for this very precocious and well-read sixteen year-old. With Miguel - who had been on the verge of entering grad school before his family life interfered - the problem is the opposite; in an attempt to keep him approachable, some (equally incongruous) dumbing-down of mental dialogue seems to have occurred.
The characters themselves are almost caricatures; stereotyped in the effort not to use stereotypes. Regina is opinionated and quirky to the nth degree; everything about her, each character trait has to be quirky. Gabo is the intense teenager driven to dedicate himself to God and the Church, praying fervently for stigmata and communicating more with St. Francis than with the humans around him; he never slips even for a moment’s irresponsible teenage hi-jinks. El Abuelo Milton is the crusty, ornery, irascible but lovable grandfather who is almost blind in the day, and almost deaf; fiercely independent, filled with stories from the past and spouting worldly wisdom; never does he become, even for a moment, just a tired and scared old man.
Despite this, the characters come alive, and the reader shares the rollercoaster ride of events building to the climax.
But this novel is about so much more than this climax, or even the main plotline. The overwhelming feeling that one is left with after mulling over the book is that of the impotence of the characters: the observation of the ills all around - from within the community and without, from both sides of the border - and their inability to effect any lasting, meaningful change despite their best efforts. Powerless, yet not giving up.
