Pilgrims in Aztlan

Pilgrims in Aztlan Summary | Part 1 pp. 1 - 42 Summary

Pilgrims in Aztlbn is Miguel Myndez's exploration of the world of Chicanos, split between the United States and Mexico. Written in 1968, this work explores the social, political, and human aspects of the lives of Chicanos from many backgrounds, from farm workers, laborers, and prostitutes to the newly wealthy and powerful. The book follows interwoven tales of many Chicanos, switching from scene to scene, back and forth in time and place, sometimes not naming the characters, until slowly it builds a full picture of Chicano life in the 1960s.

Loreto, an old Yaqui Indian man, sets out with a bucket of water to make his living on the streets, washing cars for whatever people will pay him. Rain is coming, perhaps cooling but perhaps overbearing, washing everything away. Life, for Loreto, is a painful struggle. He is poor, dirty, and broken, but he conducts himself with pride.

Loreto runs into a well-dressed, wealthy couple on their way to church. The woman tries to give Loreto money, but he declines to take charity. The man is enraged at Loreto for this. The man made his money as a corrupt politician, and he used his wife's sexual favors to gain position. His wife is a former prostitute, while he is a former soldier who has lost control of his bowels because of the horse he rode in war. Both are now regular church-goers and spend their days preening their appearance.

On another day, Loreto runs into Malguerida, meaning the unloved, who offers him money to go to the drugstore, but his look of pride makes her pull back. She is aggressive and harsh, and so she has no friends although she is beautiful. Her bad temper is because of her lot in life as a whore.

At that time, the Yaqui has had no food for three days. Several little kids have taken one of Loreto's spots, and people give them money just because they are poor children, even though they don't do a good job washing cars. Loreto, desperate with hunger, finally yells at the kids to leave. He is so hungry that he washes a man named Tony Baby's car without asking him first, getting the man to give him twenty-five cents.

Tony Baby is a white man - a gringo - who haunts the nightclubs. He owns a string of restaurants that his grandmother grew, relying on underpaid illegal immigrant labor, who she would sometimes turn over to the authorities to avoid paying at all. Tony Baby married a woman who is frigid and only loves her cat, so he comforts himself in the nightclubs across the border.

The city entices people to all their human weaknesses: drinking, marijuana, drugs of all sorts, and of course, prostitution. The city will comfort you with all this, but only if you have the money to pay.

The scene is a bar. Men drink and talk about their plans. They make lewd jokes about the "big worm" in the tequila. The bartender is the lackey, giving the men whatever they want, but complaining to himself in his thoughts. The men discuss why people come out to drink, to find themselves and escape reality. One man, a sociologist, theorizes that drinkers love themselves and hate themselves at the same time.

The story switches back to the kids who took Loreto's spot for washing cars. Chalito, the thinnest of the kids, believes that by washing cars he could pull his family out of poverty. He gets soaked with water doing the job, and then he walks home in the wind. His illness starts with a cough and progresses until he is deathly ill. Because he is poor, no doctor or hospital will attend to him. His father, Lencho Garcia y del Valle, cannot find him help. They give him cinnamon tea and aspirin, and rub his chest with Vicks. They bury him in a blue coffin with white wings on it.

Back at the bar, a man greets his friend Chuquito, mentioning that he was a champion at picking in the fields in the U.S. Chuquito, though, is too old for hard labor now. He spends his time drinking. His wife left and his kids are picking watermelon and lettuce. Chuquito talks about his feelings of shame, saying that in the U.S., "You're nothing but a greaser, a spick, and then you come over here and you're nothing but a pocho" (p. 20). Still, the American military can take you off to fight their wars. The bartender cuts Chuquito off when Chuquito loses his temper and screams and swears at him.

The story switches back to Loreto. He is old and strange, and all he has left is his dignity. He barely gets by on money from washing cars or watching them while their owners drink and carouse. There are other crazy people in the city, trying to make their way on nothing. Kite is a fat and dirty man with huge and swollen feet. He is afraid of barbers and his beard is unruly and filthy. He ties dozens of tails to his clothes, and he walks the streets when the wind blows, pursued by children who pull off his tails as they fly in the wind. Ruperta the madwoman digs through garbage cans for food and wears a bride's veil. She carries herself with the elegance of a ballerina. The city is full of beggars and pimps.

The scene changes to a different time and place in Loreto's life. A general is talking to an officer. Their enemy has captured the only waterhole nearby. The general sends fifty men to break up the enemy, though he knows he's sending them to their death. Only four men survive: Tadeo Rosas, Loudmouth Beto, Loreto Maldonado the Yaqui, and Chayo Cuamea, also a Yaqui, who is the only one to survive without a scratch. Chayo Cuamea thinks of a woman, his love.

The story moves across the border, to a cotton field in the States. It is Chuco's first day picking cotton. He is small, but agile and full of energy. He picks 500 pounds of cotton in a single day. He picks cotton in Marana, Arizona, and he is the champion in the field. He has been a champion picker of grapes, tomatoes, and eggplants, and now he is a champion of cotton picking and carries himself with pride. He goes to a whorehouse and gets into a fight with a girl's lover. Chuco's companion, the narrator, carries Chuco home, bruised and bleeding. They separate, Chuco to grape fields in California and the narrator to work construction in Phoenix.

Ten years later, the narrator runs into Chuco in Aztlan, in downtown Los Angeles. Chuco is squatting on the sidewalk, imitating a sign showing a sleeping Mexican. Passersby talk about how lazy Mexicans are, and how they only drink and sleep. Chuco says, of the sleeping Mexican in the sign, "The fellow was the harvest champion, you know. He's there because he's all tired out with no one to help him. . . " (p. 28). The police come and cart Chuco away.

Tony Baby becomes the focus of the story again. He has to work hard while his grandmother is alive. She sells chile dogs, and since they are such a success, she must hire workers. She hires wetbacks because they are the cheapest workers she can find. She pays them four dollars a day plus a dozen hot dogs. They work ten hours a day without stopping. She likes to think of herself as a charitable woman, giving work and money to these poor unfortunate Mexicans.

Tony's grandmother takes a dislike to one of her workers, Choro, from Imuris, Sonora, Mexico, because he knocks over a pot of beans and causes her to slip. Because the boss dislikes him, he begins to speak out about how she can only think of money. Meanwhile, Tony Baby works wheeling around hot dogs in a moveable refrigerator. He sexually harasses the cooks and expresses his feelings toward his grandmother by an obscene gesture.

Choro organizes a strike, and the old woman holds up the workers' salaries for a month before calling the authorities on them. By the time of her death, the old woman has a chain of food stands. Tony Baby becomes wealthy by inheriting her business, but he can't buy the love of his wife and ends up sating himself at whorehouses.

The old Yaqui sits in the street, snoring and dreaming of the past, while amused by the tourists passing by. He remembers his childhood friend, Little Jes's of Bethlehem, who performs miracles. He dreams of Little Jes's. Batepi Buitimea has thorns stuck in his foot that no one can remove, but Jes's merely touches him and the thorns fall out. Jes's is born in Bethlehem because his parents are in the mountains in Bacatete, escaping the dictator Diaz. They arrive in Bethlehem on the back of a burro, and Jes's is born almost immediately. He seems to speak Nahuatl and Mayan as well as Yaqui, and he speaks Spanish perfectly. He even seems to speak ancient tongues, and from a distance he seems to float. He is miraculous.

The story returns to Chuco, the champion picker. To be a champion, you have to break your back. Chuco has two competitors, another Mexican named Pelele and a black man. At the end of a day of competition, Chuco comes back feverish and wakes up raving. He picks 612 pounds of cotton in a day. Others look at him with admiration, while Pelele grumbles that he mixes stones with his cotton, despite the weight man's disagreement.

The story again changes, telling of Don and Dosa de Cocuch, the wealthy couple Loreto ran into before. This couple is rich, but they cannot be accepted into society. Don Mario de Cocuch is coarse and crude, and it is easy to see that he has spent his life around horses and picked up the attributes of a horse. Mrs. Cocuch is more elegant than her husband, but like him, she shows her past. In her case, she has a bad habit of chewing gum, picked up in her days as a prostitute. They are outcast by society for their uncouth habits, no matter how much money they have. In turn, the Cocuches turn bitter against society. Both are miserable, longing for the past, but neither will admit it.

The scene switches to Chuco and the cotton fields, where men are talking. One talks about marrying a girl he knows. Another complains about the sweat. They discuss where they will move to next, perhaps picking lettuce. They say that the Chicano foremen are worse than the white bosses are. Construction is worse, one of them says. Another man says he works in the canneries in the winter, because he can't stand the cold. They argue about who will cook, and then decide that they should stop talking or "we won't earn a cent" (p. 38).

Loreto sees so many men in the city waiting to cross over the border. It is hunger that drives them, not the promise of money or wealth. Many die on the road to the border, but their hunger drives them on, desperately. "They are hungry, their children are hungry, their women are hungry, with a hunger of the ages, a rabid hunger. . . " (p. 39). The border patrol will arrest them, jail and mistreat them, but the employers who hire them are never touched. Loreto hears the stories of suffering, of impoverished men and women and children. They are all alike, repeated over and over until no one has any sympathy for them.