María Ruiz de Burton

María Ruiz de Burton
María Amparo Ruiz de Burton from the Graves Family Collection María Amparo Ruiz de Burton from the Graves Family Collection
Occupation	Writer, political instigator, active feminist
Nationality	Mexican-American
Spouse	Henry S. Burton

María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (July 3, 1832 – August 12, 1895) was the first female Mexican-American author to write in English. In her career she published two books: Who Would Have Thought It? (1872), The Squatter and the Don (1885), and one play: Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts: Taken From Cervantes' Novel of That Name (1876). Her life is widely considered by contemporary scholars to be reflective of the experience of Californios in the years following the end of the Mexican-American War when California transitioned from Mexican rule to US statehood. Her writings reflect this background and deal with topics such regional and religious conflict, hereditary and cultural legitimacy, land rights, as well as attempts to vindicate her aristocratic heritage and justify her claims to estate holdings.

Early life

María Amparo Ruiz was born on July 3, 1832 in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. The precise location of her birth is unknown but is usually given as either Loreto or La Paz. Her grandfather, Jose Manuel Ruiz, commanded the Mexican troops alon ght northern frontier in Baja California and served as governor of the region from 1822 until 1825. For his services, he was granted over 3,500 hectares of land in the Ensenada region. His brother, Francisco Ruiz, was commandate of the Presidio of San Diego.

Ruiz de Burton came of age during the Mexican-American War. When she was fifteen, she witnessed the surrender of her hometown, La Paz, to American forces. She soon met her future husband, Captain Henry S. Burton, the commander of the First Regiment of New York Volunteers, who had participated in the capture. As the war drew to a close, it appeared that Baja California would remain a Mexican state, while Alta California would become territory of the United States. Burton offered to help residents of Baja California move to Alta California and become United States citizens. Soon after the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848, Ruiz de Burton, her mother, and her brother moved the Monterey and became American citizens.

Marriage

Ruiz de Burton and Burton found it difficult to plan their wedding. They belonged to different religions; she was Catholic and he was Protestant. Neither wished to change religions, and neither could be expected to do so: Burton was a national war hero and Ruiz de Burton belonged to a prominent Spanish Catholic family. Both the Bishop of Upper and Lower California and the Governor of California protested the planned nuptials, but the couple eventually persuaded a Protestant minister in Monterey to perform the ceremony. They were married on July 7, 1849, six days after her seventeenth birthday.

Marriages between Californios and prominent American soldiers were rare. Among Californios, Ruiz de Burton could be considered a traitor for embracing a man who had led an invasion of her country. Alternatively, her marriage could be seen or simply as opening otherwise blocked doors into the workings of the US, thus subverting the power struggle. While the marriage did not bring Ruiz de Burton any specific power or property, it did offer a new social status and opportunities that were previously out of reach to her as a Mexican woman. As Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita see it, "While birth gave María Ruíz de Burton a sense of family, regional, and national identity, migration and marriage determined citizenship, social status, and access to a variety of social strategies in the United States" Although Ruíz de Burton was not shy to take full advantage of these insider connections over the course of her life, it is clear that she often found herself in contradictory positions, and simultaneously holding opposing views, while attempting to balance her heritage with her ideals.

Ruiz de Burton gave birth to her first child, Nellie, on July 4, 1850. Two years later, the family moved to San Diego, where Burton commanded the Army post at Mission San Diego de Alcala. Ruiz de Burton and her husband were a popular couple in San Diego, and Ruiz de Burton started a small theatre company to feature soldier-actors. In 1853, the couple bought a ranch, called Rancho Jamul, outside San Diego. The couple homesteaded the ranch on March 3, 1854 with their daughter, and Ruiz de Burton's mother and brother. Their second child, a son, was born later that year on November 24.

In 1859, Burton was sent to the East Coast to aid the Union Army toward the end of the American Civil War. Ruiz de Burton and their two children accompanied the Captain there. On August 2, 1859, they left for Fort Monroe, Virginia on a steamer via the Isthmus of Panama. Over the next ten years, they lived in Rhode Island, New York, Washington D.C., Delaware and Virginia, as Ruiz de Burton's husband was transferred from post to post.

The Union captured Petersburg, Virginia in 1865. Burton was assigned to assist with Reconstruction of the city. He contracted malaria there and for the next five years suffered recurrent attacks of the illness. Burton died on April 4, 1869 of apoplexy resulting from the malarial attacks, in Newport, Rhode Island.

Later life

In 1870, after her husband's burial at West Point, Ruiz de Burton returned to Rancho Jamul in San Diego and spent the rest of her life in lawsuits trying to keep the title to Rancho Jamul and also began her writing career. While the Burtons bought Rancho Jamul in the 1850s, the deed of purchase did not come through until the 1870s. As a result of the long and extensive litigation process, squatters settled onto parts of the ranch. However, the ranch was never without the presence of a member of the Burton family even when they moved east with Henry. Finally, in 1875 Ruiz de Burton received the land grant, but after years fighting legally over the land it was very heavily mortgaged. Ruiz de Burton then had no choice but to apply for a homestead as an alternative which granted her only 986.6 hectares of land. Even after this small victory in 1887, the government still fought with her over the land for the next two years, which ultimately remained in her name.

Ruiz de Burton was an enterprising woman and engaged in various business dealings and entrepreneurial activities during this period in her life. In 1869, soon after she returned to the West Coast, Ruiz de Burton formed the Jamul Portland Cement Manufacturing Company with her son Henry and other financial backers. The company produced cement with lime produced from the limestone present in Rancho Jamul. The company closed in 1891. In the early 1870s, she continued living on Rancho Jamul where she ran cattle, grew wheat, barley, and castor beans, and rented the wildflowered hillsides to beekeepers.

During this latter part of her life, Ruiz de Burton published two novels and one major play. Who Would Have Thought It?, her first novel, was published in 1872, Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts: Taken From Cervantes' Novel of That Name a play, was published and first performed in San Francisco in 1876, and The Squatter and the Don, her second novel, was published in 1885.

The lawsuits surrounding Ruiz de Burton's land claims occupied her until her death. She travelled continually on business connected to the various lawsuits she was involved in, and was in Chicago at the time of her death on August 12, 1895, when she succumbed to gastric fever. Her body was returned to San Diego for burial, where it was interred at Calvary Catholic Cemetery.

Literary career

Ruiz de Burton published two novels in her lifetime: Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) and The Squatter and the Don (1885).

Who Would Have Thought It?

Main article: Who Would Have Thought It?

Who Would Have Thought It? was published under the name Mrs. Henry S. Burton in order to conceal her identity as a Spanish woman whose first language was not English. This novel deals with the Civil War in a very sardonic manner. In Who Would Have Thought It? a Presbyterian minister and the wife of one of his friends engage in a love affair that in the context of the Civil War illuminates the hypocrisy and racism of this Northern abolitionist family. A quick synopsis of the book tells one that it is a satirical novel based on her observations and experiences of the New England culture and society.

The Squatter and the Don

The Squatter and the Don is her most famous literary piece. It was published anonymously under the pen name "C. Loyal," an abbreviated form of "Ciudadano Leal," or "Loyal Citizen," a conventional method of closing official letters in nineteenth century Mexico. She uses this name to symbolize her Mexican loyalties and to criticize the American political system. This work of fiction adopts the narrative perspective of a conquered Mexican population that feels exploited and inferior to Americans, despite the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848. The story of The Squatter and the Don fictionally documents the many Californio families that lost their land due to squatters and litigation, something with which Ruiz de Burton had first hand experience.

Theatre career

Ruiz de Burton is credited with the authorship and publication of one play, entitled Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts, Taken from Cervantes' Novel of That Name, published in San Francisco, CA in 1876. The playwright is listed as Mrs. H.S. Burton. Ruiz de Burton was likely also the author of a number of plays performed at the Mission San Diego by US Army soldiers under the command of her husband.

Many scholars interpret Ruiz de Burton's rewriting Cervantes' novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha, as an effort to reclaim her cultural heritage on California lands. Ruiz de Burton spent roughly the last twenty years of her life fighting legal battles to assert her right to her family's land in California, but her efforts proved to be futile in the face of the American concept of Manifest Destiny which gave legitimacy to the squatters who had settled on her lands and the racism towards non-white residents in the US.

In the novel, Don Quixote pursues a life of knight errantry, roaming the land seeking chivalrous adventures in an attempt to maintain the culture of his nostalgia. Many scholars read Quixote's character in Ruiz de Burton's play as being the author herself, a California Hidalgo out to defend the fading culture of the Hacienda life. The play concludes with Quixote defeated and shamed, conquered by jokesters who profess aristocratic lineage.

Some scholars consider the play to be a reenactment of the mismanagement by the Spanish of Alta California that allowed it to be easily taken by the United States. Don Quixote then is a Califonia Hidalgo, transformed into a Mexican American, who rides through stolen lands believing he is a Spanish saviour with the duty to redress the wrongs of his people. The final defeat and imprisonment of Don Quixote at the hands of the jokesters is a symbolic death to Ruiz de Burton's aristocratic heritage and her land rights.

Major Themes

María Ruiz de Burton has a few consistent themes running through her major works. These are the subordination of race, gender, and class. Class, gender, and race are all intertwined to illustrate the cultural constraints on women and how they should submit or be rejected. It also demonstrates the construction of the upper class and how chicanos are viewed. In her two princicpal works both major families are wealthy and have some sort of problem pertaining to finances.

Writing Herself Into Fiction

It is widely considered that Ruiz de Burton's own life was a well-mined source for her fiction. The Squatter and the Don was inspired directly by her own experiences in the disputes over her land claims, and sought to contest official American histories of the conquest of California. The story targets squatters who attempted to claim the land that had previously been granted to Californios by the Mexican and Spanish governments, as well as corruption in the US judicial and legislative systems. Ruiz de Burton spent the last 23 years of her life engaged in legal battles to assert her claim of right to land that she and her husband had received in a grant before the Civil War. After her husbands death, Ruiz de Burton returned to her ranch only to find it occupied by numerous squatters whom she could never successfully force to leave through the US judicial system, treatment that she considered to be unfair and biased.

In Who Would Have Thought It?, the experience of Lola Medina, the supposed protagonist of the story, mirrors many aspects of Ruiz de Burton's own life. The character of Lola is a daughter of an aristocratic Spanish family from Mexico, who is adopted by a respected New England doctor and taken to the East Coast. Lola is well educated, perfectly fluent in Spanish and English, good mannered, yet disrespected by the doctor's protestant, white family and friends. Lola is ostracized due to her appearances. As a child her skin had been tinted to disguise her as an Indian, setting her apart from the very white ruling New England class. The doctor however, attempts to vouch for her, because he knows the truth of her background, and explains that she is not in fact "other" as her appearance suggests, but rather has "pure Spanish blood" of potentially royal lineage and deserves to be treated with due respect. In the conclusion of the novel, Lola Medina is sent away to Mexico to be with her family, suggesting that despite her belief and the belief of the educated doctor that she has legitimate right to be in the US, her true place is not there, but in Mexico. In Ruiz de Burtons own life, she was married young to a respected East Coast protestant man, yet always felt herself to be an outsider in New England, despite her education, wealth, and European lineage. Her appearance and name always gave her away.

In her theater production, Don Quixote de la Mancha, the character of Don Quixote is seen by many scholars to be a stand-in for Ruiz de Burton herself. Quixote is interpreted as a California Hidalgo who has been tricked and conquered by jokesters (standing in for squatters) who faked having aristocratic lineage. Don Quixote's character is transformed from a Hidalgo into a Mexican-American, who rides through stolen lands believing that he is a Spanish savior who must right the wrongs that have injured his people and end the enchantment imposed by the occupiers. In the conclusion, Quixote is deemed a criminal, and ends up a displaced Californio, disgraced, lower-class, and with no one to defend him. Additionally, a manuscript of the play that Ruiz de Burton gave to a book collector has an inscription that reads: "A souvenir from Don Quixote the Author." Because of Ruiz de Burtons wit and use of satire in her writing, it is believable that she was intentionally making a statement with this inscription. In Ruiz de Burton's own experience, she spent much of her adult life defending her aristocratic lineage despite her poverty and second-class citizenry on lands that have become American through the actions of rogue squatters. The enchantment of Don Quixote's land is that Ruiz de Burton is no longer an aristocrat, but an impoverished woman.

Criticism of the US

Ruiz de Burton is very critical of the United States in her fiction, both objectively and in relation to her native Mexico. She accuses the US of childishly holding on to a provincial mentality, maintaining that Europe still sets the standard for cultural judgment.. In The Squatter and the Don, the characters Clarence and Hubert discuss wines from California, which appears to be patronizing criticism of California from Northeasterners, but, according to Anne Elizabeth Goldman, is in fact more of a criticism of the provincial sensibilities maintained by Bostonians. Like the Norval sisters in Who Would Have Thought It? who travel to Europe to learn good taste, Clarence notes this mentality saying "Don't you know I like some of our California wines quite as well as the imported, if not better? I suppose I ought to be ashamed to admit it, thus showing my taste is not cultivated...I think sooner or later our wines will be better liked, better appreciated." Hubert responds: "I think so too, but for the present it is the fashion to cry down our native wines and extol the imported. When foreigners come to California to tell us that we can make good wines, that we have soils in which to grow the best grapes, then we will believe it, not before."

Ruiz de Burton is critical of US foreign policy in her fiction, accusing it of imperialist and hegemonic tendencies, contradictory to its intentions and foundation. In 1823, US President James Monroe delivered a statement declaring the US foreign policy regarding the Western Hemisphere henceforth, which became later known as the Monroe Doctrine. His message declared that the Western Hemisphere's move toward democracy and away from monarchy was inevitable and that the United States would usher in that transformation and protect any country in the Americas from future colonization by any European powers. This Doctrine remained virtually ignored in US politics until President James Polk told Congress in 1845 that "The American system of government is entirely different from that of Europe...a system of self-government which seems natural to our soil and which will ever resist foreign interference". However, the character Don Felipe in The Squatter and the Don says "Of course the ideas of this continent are different from those of Europe, be we all know that such would not be the case if the influence of the United States did not prevail with such despotic sway over the minds of the leading men of the Hispanic American republics. If it were not for this terrible, this fatal influence - which will eventually destroy us- the Mexicans, instead of seeing anything objectionable in the proposed change, would be proud to hail a prince who, after all, has some sore of claim to this land, and who will cut us loose from the leading strings of the United States."

Political Ideals

Although María Ruiz de Burton's novels are politically charged it is hard to analyze specific aspects of her political ideals with any level of certainty. Therefore analyzing her characters is one way to take a step into how Ruiz de Burton felt about the political situations happening during her lifetime. There is a conflict in her novels where there is support for individuality, political freedom, and equality for women, while the novel is vague in its judgement of democracy for mass politics.

In order to make any claims as to the political ideals that Mrs. Burton held one would have to draw parallels from her novels to the political and social turmoil during her lifetime. Readers of Who Would Have Thought It? are able to draw some of her cultural politics from the book. The satirical style of Who Would Have Thought It? demonstrates her unhappiness with the current institutions of the American lifestyle through a Mexican perspective. Religion and morality are two abstractions she criticizes in this book. She parodies the Protestant's belief that they are the official religion of the United States of America.

As well as critiquing religion, she also evaluates other aspects of American culture. Her commentary is aimed at disentangling the anglo-american contradictions in their society in view of the Mexican American. "Her use of satire and parody unmasks the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and displays the hypocrisy among New Englanders who espouse piety and condemn the South's alliance with slavery, yet demonstrate the opposite through their actions". Here in Who Would Have Thought It? she battles against the Anglo-American culture in order to illustrate the injustices and violations committed on their part against her own heritage.

However, this her books touch on many other political issues, such as gender equality. The issue of land ownership by women is brought up in her book The Squatter and the Don. At the time, Mexican and Spanish law allowed women to have rights to property and wealth. However, this was not then common practice in the United States. One gathers that Mrs. Burton did not take too kindly to being refused an entitlement to land. This is because women were not considered equal according to U.S. law and by custom. This was combined with the marked prejudice against Mexicans at the time to become a major issue for Mrs. Burton.

"As a romantic racialist/romantic feminist strategy of vindicating groups exploited on the basis of region, race, culture, class, or gender, sentimentalism links gender politics to racial caste politics."

Another issue pertaining to land ownership is brought up in "The Squatter and the Don." Primarily land dispossession of the Hispanic Californians. Because she was a Californian ranchero this book is an example of her victimization. The novel was a tool to sway public opinion on her behalf. This was a daunting task because of the audience for whom she had to write. "...Ruiz de Burton had to write in English to address a mainly English-speaking readership, but she also had to incorporate some Spanish to be truthful to her characters and settings. Her efforts resulted in one of the first published examples of Spanish-English code mixing in American Literature". Doing this helped Mrs. Burton open her ideals to a broader market, thus helping cast her beliefs about land litigation to the very people from who she felt victimized. She was trying to cajole *(convince? or cajole into doing something?)* the Anglo majority of the unfair conduct towards the top-tiered Californians.

Some critics claim that Ruiz de Burton "sympathized with the defeated Confederacy, seeing in the South's defeat a mirror of the defeat of Mexico in 1848, and in Reconstruction, a clear imposition of Yankee hegemony on the Southern states" Ruiz de Burton was not alone in California in her expressions of sympathy towards the Confederacy. In the 1850s, Mexican Americans were a majority in Los Angeles, the city was considered a pro-slavery and Democratic town. One can see Ruiz de Burton's identification with the fallen Confederacy in chapter III of The Squatter and the Don. Here, Ruiz de Burton references a term conceived by white southerners, "carpet baggers," used to hinder northerners from moving to the South during the Reconstruction era of the United States. Indeed, The Squatter and the Don depicts "political views that emerge from this liberalism as naive, weak, and ineffectual in defending Mexican interests against "Yankee" aggression. This weakness is often figured by the physical illness of male Californio characters..." Ruiz de Burton believed that the U.S. government and especially the judicial system do not in fact serve the people in the United States, but rather, the interests of capital and those who control Congress.

Again Ruiz de Burton criticizes anglo-American aristocrats through her book The Squatter and the Don. The novel describes the account of Californio aristocrats being reduced to common laborers through dispossesion. This can be read as a parallel to the "loss of Ruiz de Burton's landed status subverted her own class and racial positioning within post-Reconstruction U.S. society".

María Ruíz de Burton's unique position as an insider (and consequently an outsider) on both sides of the US/Mexican border afforded her an ideal perspective from which to view the political tempest taking place between the two nations. She would always see the rising hegemony of the Anglo-American cultural, economic, and political spheres from a Latin-American frame of reference, but she was uniquely able to penetrate that same dominant society and manipulate its system to serve her purposes. Her anti-imperialist ideals were made all the more potent by her understanding of and interaction with the United States. By stripping down and criticizing the complex organization of US policy, she learned that those very constructs could be used as a key component in playing their game. Ruíz de Burton was an extraordinary woman in her time, because she was able to assume different, and often opposing identities to suit her needs. Her position as an insider granted her access to the same political, legal and economic system that she critiques in her literature, while still managing to maintain the standpoint of a distrustful "other".

List of works

• Burton, Mrs. H S (1872), Who Would Have Thought It? A Novel ..., Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., OCLC 16651194. Republished as Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo (1995), Sánchez, Rosaura; Pita, Beatrice (eds.), Who Would Have Thought It?, Houston: Arte Público, pp. vii–lxv, ISBN 978-1558850811.
• Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo (1885), The Squatter and the Don: A Novel Descriptive of Contemporary Occurrences in California, San Francisco: S. Carson & Co., OCLC 4323620. Republished as Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo (1992), Sánchez, Rosaura; Pita, Beatrice (eds.), The Squatter and the Don, Houston: Arte Público Press, ISBN 978-1558850552.
• Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo (2001), Sànchez, Rosaura; Pita, Beatrice (eds.), Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruiz De Burton, Houston, TX: Arte Público, ISBN 978-1558853287.

References

• Aldama, Arturo (2002), "See How I am Received: Nationalism, Race, and Gender in Who Would Have Thought it?", Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0253340146, retrieved 2008-11-09.

• Aleman, Jesse, "Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton", Heath Anthology of American Literature, University of New Mexico, retrieved 2008-11-9 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help).

• Aranda Jr., José F. (September 1998), "Contradictory Impulses: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Resistance Theory, and the Politics of Chicano/a Studies", American Literature, 70 (3): 551–579{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).

• Crawford, Kathleen (1984), "María Amparo Ruiz Burton: The General's Lady", Journal of San Diego History, 30 (3), retrieved 2008-11-09.

• de la Luz Montes, Amelia María (2004), ""Mine Is The Mission to Redress": the New Order of Knight-Errantry in Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts", in de la Luz Montes, Amelia María; Goldman, Anne E. (eds.), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 206–224, ISBN 978-0803232341.

• de la Luz Montes, Amelia María; Goldman, Anne E., eds. (2004), "Chronology of Events in the Life of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton", María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 245–246, ISBN 978-0803232341.

• Fisher, Beth (2004), ""Precarious Performances: Ruiz de Burton's Theatrical Vision of the Gilded Age of Female Consumer"", in de la Luz Montes, Amelia María; Goldman, Anne E. (eds.), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 187–205, ISBN 978-0803232341 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help).

• Goldman, Anne E. (November 1994), "Review of The Squatter and the Don", MELUS, 19 (3): 129–131, retrieved 2008-10-26{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (JSTOR subscription required for online access.)

• Goldman, Anne E. (2004), "Beasts in the Jungle", in de la Luz Montes, Amelia María; Goldman, Anne E. (eds.), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 75–94, ISBN 978-0803232341.

• Luis-Brown, David (December 1997), "'White Slaves' and the 'Arrogant Mestiza': Reconfiguring Whiteness in The Squatter and the Don and Ramona", American Literature, 69 (4): 813–839, retrieved 2008-10-26{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). (JSTOR subscription required for online access.)

• Moyna, María Irene (2008), "Portrayals of Spanish in 19th-century American Prose: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don", Language and Literature, 17 (3): 235–252, retrieved 2008-10-26.

• Murphy, Gretchen (2004), "A Europeanized New World", in de la Luz Montes, Amelia María (ed.), Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, New York: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 135–152, ISBN 0-8032-3234-9.

• Pérez, Vincent (2006), Remembering the Hacienda: History and Memory in the Mexican American Southwest, Texas A&M University Press, ISBN 978-1585445462.

• Tuttle, Jennifer S. (2004), ""The Symptoms of Conquest: Race, Class, and the Nervous Body in The Squatter and the Don"", in de la Luz Montes, Amelia María; Goldman, Anne E. (eds.), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 206–224, ISBN 978-0803232341.