Bless Me Ultima (1972) – Rudolfo Anaya

Structure: First person, past tense, from Antonio’s view.  Numbered chapters named simply Uno, Dos, Tres, etc.  This particular edition has an introduction by the author (not dated, but publishing info indicates 1999).  After the novel’s end, a “Reading Group Guide” follows with an interview with the author and discussion questions for a reading group.  The novel lasts about two years (ends the summer after Antonio’s second year of school).  Antonio’s vivid dreams are told in italics—usually at the beginning or end of chapters.

Setting: Set in New Mexico during and after WWII.  Antonio is born in Las Pasturas on el llano (open plain), where his family once lived and where his father is from.  Ultima is also from Las Pasturas and helped deliver Antonio and his brothers.  Antonio’s family now lives on the edge of el llano, which is a short distance from Guadalupe, where he goes to school.  They moved because his mother wanted to live close to town.  Antonio’s father and three brothers built the house they live in.  The land surrounding the house is not especially fertile (like the land they would have had if they had lived further from el llano), and the soil is very rocky.  Antonio’s mother’s family lives ten miles away in El Puerto (de los Lunas).

Characters:

Antonio Luna Márez – 7 years-old when the story begins (the summer before he is to begin school).  He feels divided by the two sides of his family and by Catholicism and Native religion that accepts the Golden Carp as a god.  In the end he recognizes his ability to choose both.  Even the priest on his mother’s side whom the family desires him to be like was not a pure Catholic.  Ultima the curandera is an example for him of one who mixes things (magic) with Catholicism.

Maria Luna – Antonio’s mother.  She wants Antonio to be a priest like the founder of the Lunas, who led the conquering of the area (it’s a family secret revealed to Antonio only near the book’s end that this priest had a wife and children).  Her family are farmers, and her brothers quiet men.

Gabriel Márez – Antonio’s father.  He comes from people on el llano, a rough people.  The book opens with discussions of how the lifestyle of the vaquero is “as ancient as the coming of the Spaniard to Nuevo Méjico” (2) and how much Gabriel misses the comradery he had on el llano with men like Benito Campos (to whom he gave his horse), Bonney, and the Gonzales brothers.  Gabriel had great hopes his three sons would move with him to California to begin a new life.  They encourage his idea but don’t believe in it because they want freedom.

Deborah Márez – Antonio’s eldest sister who along with their sister Theresa has an absolutely marginal role in the book.  Deborah is older than Antonio and Theresa and does not generally have good manners (because there’s “too much Márez blood in her” (11).   She has been to school for two years prior to the summer which begins the books.  She prefers to speak English even at home.

Theresa Márez – Antonio’s sister.  Most people assume she is younger than Deborah and older than Antonio.  This is probably because Ultima says that Antonio is the last child she pulled from Maria’s womb (13).  But Maria says Ultima attended the births of her sons (4) (not necessarily her daughters).  Theresa may actually be younger than Antonio—Deborah is teaching her English (11) (not the school), and Deborah rocks her to sleep when she’s scared of the owl (14).

Andrew Márez – After Eugene and León leave for Las Vegas or Santa Fe (both are mentioned), Andrew stays on at his parents’ house and works at the local grocer’s.  Though his mother thinks he has a girl in town, he secretly spends his money on prostitutes at Rosie’s.  Narciso goes to Rosie’s during the big snow storm to get him to go warn his family that Tenorio was making threats against Ultima, but Andrew refuses to take him seriously.

Eugene Márez – He suggests the brothers move to Las Vegas or Santa Fe.  After Narcisso dies, the two brothers return briefly after wrecking the car they bought then all three leave for Santa Fe shortly after.

León Márez – The eldest brother, he has nightmares after returning from the war.  Ultima talks with him and gives him medicine to help him stop having them.  The three boys helped their father build the house on the edge of the llano.

Narciso – A friend of Antonio’s father.  He’s known as the town drunk even though he has some sort of magically fertile garden (Cico takes Antonio there and tells him Narciso’s garden is so fertile because he plants by the light of the moon—as in some sensitivity and femininity mixed into his identity).  He’s the only one to speak up that someone should try to talk with Lupito when he goes nuts after coming home from the war (he kills the sheriff, Jacob’s father’s—Chávez—brother).  He speaks up for Ultima to Tenorio a few times.  After warning Andrew, Narciso tries to go to the house himself.  Tenorio waits for Narciso under the juniper tree and shoots him.

Samuel – Only a year or so older than Antonio, Samuel tells Antonio that Cico will show him the Golden Carp (though because Cico is gone for much of the summer, he has to wait).  Samuel mysteriously says the Vitamin Kid (who races everyone on the bridge) is his brother.  Antonio and Samuel often go see the golden carp and discuss what he means.

Florence – A catechism student along with Antonio.  Florence did not pass, however; he only came to be with his friends.  He does not believe in God because his parents are dead and his sisters prostitutes.  He is punished (must stand in shape of cross) but Antonio forgiven when they are late to catechism class.  Samuel and Antonio discuss how the Golden Carp would be a better god for Florence, and Samuel says he may be ready.  In the summer when Antonio and Samuel are on their way to see the carp, they discover that Florence has drown.

Tenorio Trementina – His daughters are witches who cursed Antonio’s uncle Lucas after he tried to call them out on their witchcraft.  Because Ultima used their curse to curse those who cast it, the women get sick and die one by one.  After the first dies, Tenorio comes to Antonio’s house with a mob and threatens Ultima (After she passes under a cross—or does she break the cross first?—they are convinced she’s not a bruja/witch).  He fights with Narciso a couple times then kills him.  He gets away with it because the police rule his death as self-inflicted even though Antonio witnesses the murder and hears Narciso’s last confession.

Uncle Pedro – The brother of Antonio’s mother who feels terrible after not standing up for Ultima after she had saved his brother Lucas’s life.  He drives to Antonio’s house when Antonio has run the ten miles to warn Ultima about Tenorino’s plans to kill the owl (Ultima’s spirit).  When Tenorino points the gun at Antonio, Pedro shoots him.

Ultima – She comes to stay with Antonio’s family at the beginning of the book.  An owl accompanies her whether she’s at their house or in El Puerto healing Lucas.  She is a good woman, but there is some ambiguity about whether or not she’s really a witch.  After healing Lucas, she reverses the curse, and uses little clay figurines to represent Tenorio’s daughters to curse them.

Key moments in text in chronological order:

• He follows his father to the bridge one night and witnesses the death of Lupito.  He thinks he hears Lupito say, “Bless Me,” then Antonio prays the Act of Contrition for him (the last prayer Catholics are to say before death) while he runs home.
• Tony blesses his brothers in a dream
• Antonio’s uncle Lucas is cursed by 3 witches.  Antonio goes with Ultima (driven by his uncle Pedro) to lift the curse because “he is a Juan” (whatever that means).
• Cico takes Antonio to see the Golden Carp and tells the stories of the presence, Hidden Lakes, mermaid, the carps, the return of the golden carp to signify punishment on the town for its wickedness (they are not to eat the carp, who were once people).
• Mob raised by Tenorio comes to kill Ultima.  Antonio’s family is warned by Narciso, who along with his father reason with the mob.  Ultima passes their test of passing under a cross (though it had broken (141)).
• Antonio realizes he had lost his innocence when he sees his brother Andrew in the whore house.
• Narciso is shot.  He hears Narciso’s last confession. prays the Act of Contrition for him, blesses him, and holds him as he dies under the juniper tree.
• He’s very sick for a while.  His brothers return temporarily, then all three leave.  He returns to school and begins catechism, very aware that he seeks knowledge.
• Antonio and Florence help Horse down the aisle when he’s sick while praying the stations of the cross.
• While waiting for their first confession, the children make Antonio pretend to be the priest taking confessions.  After Horse and Bones make a game of who’s sin is the worse (best), the group forces Florence to confess his atheism.  When Antonio absolves him, the kids strip and beat Antonio.
• Antonio takes his first communion and feels nothing though he continues to diligently pursue knowledge from God.
• He beats the Vitamin Kid across the bridge for the first time only because the Kid was walking with a girl.
• Ultima agrees to lift a curse on the house of a friend of Gabriel’s.  Telléz’s house is cursed because the Indian souls have been cursed (most likely by Tenorio’s daughters).  The procedure amounts to an Indian Burial.  Antonio and his father burn the items that look like bodies.
• Samuel and Antonio ask if it’s necessary to choose gods.  They are on their way to go see the Golden carp after deciding that Antonio is probably ready to meet him too when they come across a bunch of their friends and a place where kids aren’t supposed to swim.  It turns out Florence has drowned.
• Antonio realizes he can be both Luna and Márez just as the wind and earth work together.  While talking to his father, he realizes he can form a new religion out of Catholicism and mysticism.
• Antonio spends the summer with his mother’s family learning how to work in the fields.
• After Tenorino’s second daughter dies, he makes all kinds of threats, and Antonio’s uncle Juan brings news of the threats to Uncle Pedro and Antonio.  They are to go to Ultima and warn of the threats, but on Antonio’s way in from the fields, he is almost run down by Tenorino and his horse, and Tenorino says he will kill the owl, Ultima’s spirit.
• Antonio hides from Tenorino then runs the ten miles to his parents’ house.  Just when he is almost there, Uncle Pedro drives by in the truck.  Tenorino shoots the owl, Antonio yells, then when Tenorino points his gun at Antonio’s head, Pedro shoots Tenorino.
• Ultima immediately goes to bed, and is sick and dying.  Antonio takes the dead owl to her.  She blesses him, he goes out to bury the owl under the juniper tree.  She dies and is given a proper Christian burial (unlike Tenorino’s daughters).

Notes:

• The sisters are not only marginalized, but they are consistently forgotten in the text.  Seems like an extreme case of female characters being marginalized (except Ultima and Antonio’s mother) in combination with shoddy writing.  The shoddy writing is also indicated when one of the characters keeps talking about lawsuits against teachers (not likely for a child in the 1940s when in other places in the text children are being beaten at school).

• Men are said to be like wild animals.  “Men walk the world as animals” (32).  “It’s a sin for a boy to grow to be a man” (33).  Some characters are referred to as wild animals: Lupito when he’s gone crazy, his brothers, sometimes children when they’re acting out (Horse and Bones are two of Antonio’s rowdy friends).  To be a priest is definitely feminized (“to be his mother’s priest of his father’s son” 45).  God is a man, and is unforgiving, but the Virgin is a woman and forgives all.  “Ultima in wisdom, mother in dream, father in rebellion” (59).

• Antonio is surprised to learn that the Golden Carp is a god, and he feels very conflicted because he assumed there was only one god.  He had been aware of something called “the presence” watching him.  Cico tells him it’s not good or bad—he also discusses the Hidden Lakes and the mermaid.

What Some Critics are Saying:

• Critics see it as a case study for Chicano narratives of family life, or a book on New Mexican local color, or as a classic bildungsroman.  How it fits into Chicano literature.
• Bilingualism giving characters agency.  Bilingualism being a signal for biculturalism as in Woman Warrior.
• The novel transcends the seemingly contradictory categories of the mythic/magical versus the social relevancy of Chicano lit, awareness of historical forces from colonization by Hispanic farmers and ranchers to the coming of Anglos and WWII
• Criticism over the denial of indigenous peoples in the book, i.e. Jasón’s Indian.  Antonio’s search for social identity is not based on ethnicity in the vein of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 70s.
• Antonio’s dual inheritance of familial, religious, influences signifies the mestizaje a la Anzaldúa or hybridity.
• Critiques the novel for not allowing his readers to question or understand his narrative as in Saldívar’s understanding that the Chicano narrative should use open forms to produce creative structures of knowledge.  How the conflicts of acculturation affect the Chicanas in the novel in ways that do not affect Chicanos.