Jose Eduardo Limon

Limón’s cultural criticism focuses on the eroticization of Greater Mexico by the United States and how that has manifested itself in various forms since the early nineteenth century. Multiple perspectives on Mexican-American relations are explored and analyzed using varied cultural and academic examples. Impressively, Limón does it convincingly and seamlessly, tying things together quite neatly at the end. Each example he used strongly substantiated his points, which were mostly moderate, though often idyllic. His own ideology plays a role in his analysis, but I believe his clarity and forthrightness about these sociopolitical beliefs allow the reader to differentiate between what is astute criticism and what may be a hopeful rendering. I must also admit that most of his cultural examples hold special import and weight for me, including his film selections of High Noon, Giant, and Lone Star, his critique of Katherine Anne Porter, as well as his comparison of the work of Cormac McCarthy to the music of Selena. Unlike other authors that have attempted similar academic gymnastics, all of these examples seemed quite relevant to me, keenly displaying the pervasiveness of his cultural findings.

His contention is that Greater Mexico (as well as the U.S. South) was eroticized by the emerging capitalist North of the United States, thereby making it a dangerous foil to the conservative Protestant industrial cultural image cultivated by the dominant U.S. paradigm. This sensual identity was embraced and elaborated upon by both the U.S. South and Greater Mexico in order to define an oppositional identity to the invasive North, but ironically the South eventually modernized itself and eroticized their austral neighbors. Focusing on the interactions of American (particularly Southern) and Mexican cultures in Texas, the largest border state between the two countries, Limón traces concurrent intellectual and artistic developments in the region that eventually move away from a misogynistic identity and point towards a more culturally blended “pure relationship.”

The reader’s reaction is shaped by his careful rendering of the argument and somewhat moderate response to its implication, usually finding a middle ground between previous criticisms that seem to overlook the subtleties of a particular example (such as the Dozens or Lone Star) and analysis that is nostalgic or simply uncritical. Limón is highly successful at utilizing various sources and disciplines to support his articulate argument. Difficulty only arises when heavy psychoanalytical jargon or cultural theory is used to analyze a particular example, but I admit that his use was typically merited and never audacious. Also, when carefully read, his arguments were rendered clearly and logically without linguistic hoops to jump through for the sake of pretension. By using extremely recent cultural examples at the time of writing, Limón doesn’t have the benefit of seeing how some of his examples played out. Cormac McCarthy finished his Border Trilogy shortly after American Encounters was published, allowing us to know what actually happened to John Grady Cole: he falls in love with a forbidden Mexican prostitute and loses his life to a seedy Mexican underworld male. I would be interested to see Limón’s interpretation of this turn of events for his “hopeful and utopian” glimpse of the future through Cole (and, in turn, McCarthy).

From a critical perspective, this book reinforces the idea that the South merely represents a social trope in which regions can be marginalized through eroticization or other means of social distancing. The similarities between Greater Mexico and the Southern United States are striking. It seems that the same terms that a Southerner would use to describe his uniqueness would be used by a Mexican or Mexican-American to do the same. Both would claim a strong sense of family, place, religion, defeat, pride, chivalry, connection with the land, etc. Whether these traits are true or not is not the point, so much as they would be claimed by both cultures. Also, how the North was both repulsed and intrigued by the South mirrors how the larger United States is both repulsed and intrigued by Mexico, evidenced by Limón’s erotic Mexican woman stereotype. We are intrigued by Mexico (as the North is with the South), romanticizing and eroticizing it, yet forbidding ourselves from commingling in equality—or engaging in Limón’s “pure relationship.” This may be changing, as it is between the South and the North, but the erasure of eroticization is slow in coming, both for the South and Mexico. The main point I see is that the South is not unique or singular. It is a Jungian archetype, something universally present in societies throughout time, though the South would like to think of itself as a prototype—the original pattern. As with all places, there are particularities that don’t transfer—not all regions are going to have a biracial preoccupation, or a historical connection to a civil war, or a romantic nostalgia for agriculture, but understanding how the South was and is currently regionalized is to understand how other cultures are also marginalized by the dominant paradigm.

Limón goes further to claim that “intellectuals can also project their inherited cultural distortions of the sexual and the erotic and in so doing may both express and shape the antiprogressive stance of the larger polity," which is disconcerting to say the least. Often unintentionally, scholars perpetuate common cultural biases. Unfortunately, these biases oftentimes prove more damaging because of the weight accorded to academics as objective experts. Limón proves clearly that even those attempting objectivity are typically victims of their time and place. We want to be the liberators of cultural prejudices, not the victims. It seems that taking Limón’s approach of admitting bias when it’s known and acknowledging the potential for unforeseen bias within one’s own work is the best way currently available to at least mitigate the possible future damage of ideological appropriation.… (lisätietoja)