Writing Bless Me, Ultima

Although Bless Me, Ultima (1972) was Anaya’s first published novel and the one that gained him international acclaim as a writer, it was not his first novel. His previously written novels did not see print. During the mid-1960s, he wrote prodigiously, expressing his life and his experiences through poetry, short stories, and novels. For Anaya, writing became an expression of freedom. Seeing his people around him “in chains,” he revolted against that world. Breaking those chains was important; his characters would not be enslaved. He realized that if he could write about his experiences and his family, using the town where he grew up as a setting, he could focus on these early years and create a sense of being liberated. While doing so, he would also come to know himself better and better understand the forces that shaped him as a person yearning to write and yearning to be free.

Bless Me, Ultima was begun as a story about Antonio, a young Mexican-American boy who is a main character in the novel, but it was Ultima, the curandera (folk healer) and partera (midwife) who made the story click. Through Ultima, Anaya explored the subconscious and supernatural worlds, worlds below the surface of experience that contain his culture’s collective images, symbols, and dreams. In these worlds, Anaya examines the cultural forces that shaped the lives of Nuevo Mejicanos and Nuevo Mejicanas in the 1930s and 1940s.

The novel brings to literary life a search for personal identity in the context of the social changes experienced by Chicano/as in New Mexico during the 1940s. Anaya’s story covers a two-year period at the close of World War II. The setting for the novel is the Pecos Valley in New Mexico. The valley is situated on the western edge of the Great plains Province, which comprises the eastern third of the state. It is bounded on the west by the Southern Rockies and on the east by the bluffs of the Llano Estacado. The Llano (or plain) is bounded on the east by the Canadian River and on the west by the Pecos River. The area is part of the Lower Sonoran zone of mesquite and black grama grass. Altitudes are below 4,500 feet, allowing for more grazing than do areas at higher elevations. The long, frost-free period, the fertile soil of the valley, and the high temperatures make the area an important agricultural zone. The flood plain of the valley is farmed and the plains of the Llano are grazed, with just enough water to permit both modes of production.

Anaya writes about “epiphany in landscape,” that profound sense of place that humans have with their environments—in particular, the relationship that Chicano/as have with the earth. Several of these “epiphanies” occur throughout the novel. The novel is written in a simple style that demonstrates the perceptive images of Anaya’s understanding of the rural culture of Chicano/as in eastern New Mexico in the 1940s. It is bilingual in that it is interspersed with Spanish phrases and terms, which mimics the more fluid code-switching between Spanish and English found in everyday life.

The autobiographical ethos of the novel has been recognized by many critical reviewers, and Anaya himself has been very explicit on this matter. The trilogy comprised of Bless Me, Ultima, Heart of Aztlan, and Tortuga has been acknowledged by Anaya as quasi-autobiographical in the sense that he uses the memories of his experiences as sources for his writings. His mother was from the Puerto de Luna valley, where Billy the Kid, (known as el Bilito), attended Mexican dances and wrestled in the streets with his Mexican-American friends. Anaya’s father was a vaquero (cowboy) who knew the hard work of the large ranchos on the plains. More affinities between the life of Antonio and that of Rudolfo can be traced, but the novel is not truly autobiographical, nor is it intended as such. Rather, it is a cultural novel that explores the ancestral heritage of Chicano/as and its relevance for their lives in the present.

Bibliographical Sources:

“The Writer’s Landscape: Epiphany in Landscape,” Latin American Literary Review, 5:10 (1977):

98-102.

Vasallo, Paul. The Magic of Words: Rudolfo a. Anaya and His Writings. Albuquerque, New

Mexico: University of New Mexico, 1982.