Bless Me, Ultima - Composing the Chicano World View

In his fiction Rudolpho Anaya has undertaken "a quest to compose the Chicano literary world view"(Olmos 40). Looking at his first and best-know novel, Bless Me, Ultima, through this lens we see a world view grounded in the families, traditions, and values of the northern New Mexican landscape. Through the interaction of his title character, a curandera named Ultima, and his child protagonist, Antonio Marez, he has woven together indigenous and Spanish traditions in the context of a community that is self-contained, although it is subject to an Anglo power structure. However, in this novel Anaya's focus is not on the clash of Anglo and Hispanic cultures, nor is it on the borders. Rather, it is on the unfolding of a story in a setting where every character is part of the Latino New Mexican community. Within this community he explores complex tensions and diverse points of view. The realities of the Anglo setting--the participation of sons in World War II, the school taught in English--impinge on the characters, but their characters are fully formed by their own cultural landscape.

Bless Me, Ultima is also portrays a traditional community in transition. The Marez and Luna family fight over whether Antonio will represent one or the other in his way of life. But in truth, both ways of life are disappearing. Antonio's mother persuades her family to move to the town of Guadelupe because she understands that Antonio needs to go to school. But she cannot face what it might mean for her boy to grow up and be a man. To preserve his "innocence," or at least the special qualities she discerns in him, she urges him to become a priest. His father, devoted to the freedoms of the vaquero lifestyle he has left behind, insists that Antonio will grow up to make his own decision. But in post World War II New Mexico, he will come of age in a world that neither of his parents can yet imagine.

Although much in New Mexico has changed since the 1940s that Anaya portrays--including the use of Northern New Mexico as test sites for atomic bombs--the indigenous culture still persists and curanderas are still around. The curandera was originally an indigenous healer, but Spanish settlers quickly incorporated this health care practice in their societies. It is possible that some folk healing practices from Spain were incorporated with indigenous healing traditions, as every culture has its folk healers. In Desert Pilgrim, Mary Swander writes a memoir of a healing journey to New Mexico in which she encountered both a curandera and an orthodox priest who contributed to her recovery from a debilitating spinal injury.

Because it has been a popular book in schools since its publication in 1972, there are many internet resources on Bless Me, Ultima. It was also a selection of The Big Read. See some of these resources below.

Resources and interview with Anaya about his desire to document in fiction the spirit of a way of life that was disappearing.

Resouces from the University of New Mexico, including links to several critical articles from peer-reviewed journals.

Bless Me Ultima is also #75 on the American Library Association's list of Banned Books. Read about it on the blog Pluma Fronteriza.

It also appears that a movie based on the book is in production, but not yet released.

Works Cited

Olmos, Margarite Fernandez. "Historical and Magical, Ancient and Contemporary: The World of Rudolfo A. Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima." In U.S. Latino Literature: A Critical Guide for Students and Teachers. Ed. Harold Augenbraum and Margarite Fernandez Olmos. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. 39-54.