After years of mistreatment of the Chicano people the United States saw the rise of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement in 1960—a time characterized by protest, student walkouts and the creation of activist art with the goal of achieving Mexican-American empowerment. Eleven years after the movement began, Tomás Rivera – a Chicano author, poet, and educator – published the novella “…And the Earth did not Devour Him”, with the intention of illustrating the “suffering and the strength and the beauty…[of] the migrant worker[s]” (Rivera). The novel – being deemed “a primary element of the new Mexican American literary history” (Ramón Saldívar) – is composed of a collection of fragmented short stories and vignettes that follow the lives of a community of migrant farmers. In his novel, Rivera illustrates an inescapable and unbroken circle of suffering for the Chicano people that ultimately becomes a powerful symbol of resilience. He does this through the events depicted in the sections entitled “The Little Burnt Victims” and “The Night Before Christmas” where he consistently illustrates hope transforming into despair and finally, in “When We Arrive”, where he fully converts this despair into a powerful sense of resilience.
In the section entitled “The Little Burnt Victims”, the audience is introduced to the García family – a family of five led by Don Efraín, who, after watching a movie about boxing, becomes infatuated by the idea that his children could “turn out good with the glove” (120). Encapsulated with hope for the future, Don Efraín is quick to begin training the children in the way that he had seen in the film – by bringing out the boxing gloves and rubbing alcohol on their chests. The aura of hope in this section is metamorphosed quickly to anguish when Don Efraín and his wife, Doña Chona, rush home from working in the field to find their home engulfed in flames and two of the three children “charred in the blaze” (121). It is revealed by unidentified commenters that the fire began in the kitchen, where the eldest child was cooking, and it quickly spread to the younger children whose chests were doused in alcohol while they were boxing. In a matter of sentences, Rivera creates a violent shift from joyful hope to painful anguish. He goes even further to create a parallel between the words spoken by Doña Chona in the beginning of the section and an anonymous commenter at the close of it. While it is obvious that Doña Chona had doubts about allowing the children to box in the home, she is eventually convinced by Don Efraín, who assures her that there is hope for their children to become boxing champions and win thousands of dollars. She eventually admits, “you never know, right?” (120). Chillingly, similar words are spoken at the close of the section, where an unnamed commenter explains: “…they’re getting over the grief, although I don’t believe they’ll ever be able to forget it. What else can you do? I tell you, you never know when your turn’s up. My heart goes out to them. But you never know” (122). Through these parallel quotations, Rivera successfully connects the transition from hope to despair throughout the course of this section.
Rivera not only creates a sense of suffering through death for the Chicano people, but in other ways as well. In the section entitled “The Night Before Christmas”, Doña María is characterized as a selfless and devoted mother willing to do anything for her two children. After one of the children sadly explains: “[Santa Claus and the three Wisemen] always forget [about us]. They’ve never brought us anything, not on Christmas Eve, not on the day of the Three Kings”, Doña María is determined to buy toys for them despite both a previous traumatic experience of getting lost in the city and not having the funds to do so (130). Doña María – a woman who “very rarely left the home” (131) – decides to venture downtown alone to retrieve the gifts, a decision that eventually results in a crippling anxiety attack that causes her to lose consciousness. She is not able to return to the home with the stolen gifts before they are taken from her. The beginning of this section is riddled with hope resonating from a loving Doña María, who is evidently willing to push herself to her limits to make her children happy. In the end, however, she is devastated because she could not: she had been defeated by the anxiety that plagued her – the “insanity” that she could not understand (134). In this highly emotional and devastating section, Rivera yet again creates a drastic shift from hope to despair in a matter of paragraphs. Towards the beginning of the section, Rivera allows the audience to believe that Doña María is going to play the role of the hero—that she is going to be able to defeat her anxiety in order to provide for her children. In an expected turn, however, Rivera creates tragedy out of beauty.
In the events depicted in the sections entitled “The Little Burnt Victims” and “The Night Before Christmas”, Rivera consistently illustrates hope transforming into despair, creating an overwhelming idea that the Chicano suffering is inescapable. While he successfully demonstrates the suffering of two individuals – Don Efraín and Doña María – he also subtly introduces a hidden sense of resilience from both these individuals and the Chicano community as a whole. It is evident that the cause of both transformations from hope to despair were caused, either directly or indirectly, by the fact that the two individuals belonged to the Chicano culture; they were both underpaid, overworked, and underrepresented migrant workers. Had the García family not have had to leave their young children alone, the chance of them losing their home and children in a house fire would have dramatically decreased. Likewise, had Doña María or her husband made a livable salary as migrant workers, the situation involving her anxiety most likely wouldn’t have happened. Not once, however, in either section does Rivera chose to allow the characters to blame their situation on their Chicano culture or their mistreatment, nor do they express any hatred towards it. In “The Little Burnt Victims”, the section leaves the reader knowing little about the aftermath of the García family except for that “they’re getting over their grief” (122), evidence in itself that they possess an incredible amount of resilience.
Resilience of the Chicano people is seen heaviest in the section entitled “When We Arrive”, where a moment of despair is transformed. In this section, the audience enters the scene just as a truck carrying forty Chicano workers overheats in the early morning hours, forcing all those riding to be stranded until daybreak. Rivera uses the fragmented thoughts of various individuals to allow the audience to receive multiple perspectives. While some thoughts are positive, an overwhelming majority are negative; many are beginning to grow tired of their situation, comparing their treatment to that of cattle (143). The final perspective that Rivera presents is a man explaining “…I’m tired of arriving. Arriving and leaving, it’s the same thing because we no sooner arrive and…the real truth of the matter…I’m tired of arriving. I really should say when we don’t arrive because that’s the real truth. We never arrive” (145). With this closing remark, it appears that Rivera is creating a scenario in which the suffering is finally proving to be too great of a burden – that many Chicano individuals are finding that their mistreatment is no longer manageable. However, the section ends with the sun rising, “and the people were becoming people. They began getting out of the trailer and they huddled around and commenced to talk about what they would do when they arrived” (146). This is perhaps one of the strongest examples of resilience that Rivera has offered for the to characterize the Chicano people. Despite the suffering that they have evidently encountered, they have proven to be an unbreakable culture.
Throughout this influential novella, Rivera not only discusses in great detail the horrendous suffering that the Chicano individuals had to endure as migrant workers, but also, the incredible level of resilience that they possess despite it. In just fourteen short stories, Rivera was able to encapsulate what it meant to be a part of the Chicano culture, covering all aspects of life and offering the readers a chance to build a connection. In many ways, Rivera was able to create beauty from devastation and, over the course of his short novella, was successfully able to achieve his overall purpose: to illustrate the “suffering and the strength and the beauty…[of] the migrant worker[s]” (Rivera)
Novoa, Bruce. Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980. Print.
Rivera, Tomas. …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. Trans. Evangelina Vigil-Pinon. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1992. Print.
Saldívar, Ramón. “Tomás Rivera.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.