Maria Ruiz de Burton
Encyclopedia
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).
Ruiz de Burton's work is considered to be a precursor to Chicano literature
, giving the perspective of the conquered Mexican population that, despite being granted full rights of citizenship by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
, was a subordinated and marginalized national minority. Her background provided her a critical distance from the New England Protestant culture into which she was brought by her marriage to her husband, a powerful and influential Protestant Union Army General. Her life took her from coast to coast in the United States, which provided her with opportunity for first-hand observation of the U.S., its westward expansion, the American Civil War
, and its aftermath. This vantage point and her status as a woman provided her with both an insider's and outsider's perspective on issues of ethnicity, power, gender, class, and race.
. 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 along the 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.
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 Californio
s 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 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
.
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.
and was the first novel to be written in English by a Mexican living in the United States. The book was published in 1872 by J.B. Lippincott in Philadelphia without the author's name on the title page, but was registered at the Library of Congress under the names of H.S. Burton and Mrs. Henry S. Burton. The book reflects Ruiz de Burton's ambiguous position between the Californio elite and the Anglo-Saxon majority of the United States as it details the struggles of a Mexican-American girl born in Indian captivity, Lola, in an American society obsessed with class, religion, race and gender. "The novel scrutinizes the pettiness and racism of a Northern Abolitionist family and discourses on issues of democracy, liberalism, women's suffrage, imperialism, political opportunism, and religious hypocrisy."
After its publication, Who Would Have Thought It? remained relatively unnoticed for over one hundred years in American literary studies, demonstrating Ruiz de Burton's exclusion from American literary history and more broadly the marginal importance that Mexican-Americans were considered to have in American history. The book was also excluded from popular American literature because of its depiction of American culture and morals as hypocritical. Ruiz de Burton's work was caught between her identity in both the Californian elite and as a California native, and likewise her novel was not welcomed by either American literary studies nor Chicana literary studies.
A cooperative scholarly group called Recovering the United States Hispanic Literary Heritage Project brought Who Would Have Thought It? to public notice in the late twentieth century. This group was created in 1990 and its main goal is to recover literary texts by Hispanic writers and obtain narratives of their lives since the sixteenth century through sources such as memoirs, prose, fiction, poetry and histories. These scholars describe Ruiz de Burton's work "as an object lesson in the complexities and contradictions of resurrecting literary history".
"C. Loyal," an abbreviated form of "Ciudadano Leal," or "Loyal Citizen," a conventional method of closing official letters in nineteenth century Mexico. She used this name to symbolize her Mexican loyalties, to provide indeterminacy of her gender, and to criticize the American political system. This novel adopts the narrative perspective of a conquered Californio population that is a "capable, cultured, even heroic people who were unjustly deterritorialized, economically strangled, liguistically oppressed, and politically marginalized" despite the stipulations of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
of 1848, in which the United States agreed to respect the rights of Mexicans and Spanish citizens who were subsumed into the United States. The story of The Squatter and the Don fictionally documents the many Californio families that lost their land due to squatters and litigation. The novel demonstrates how the burden of proof of land ownership fell not on the US government, nor on the squatters who settled on the land, but on the Californio landowners.
"The Squatter and the Don" is a historical romance that details not only the repercussions of the Land Act of 1851
after the US invasion of California but the rapid rise of the railroad monopoly in the state. The novel's plot, which roughly covers the period from 1872 to 1885, traces the trials and tribulations of ill-fated lovers from a Hispanic family and an Anglo family. The narrative builds on the tension between Californios of Mexican descent and the invading Anglo squatters by focusing on two families: the Alamars, the Californio owners of a massive ranch in the San Diego area, and the Darrells, one of the numerous squatter families on the Alamar ranch.
The novel focuses on the demise of a heroic society (the aristocratic Californios), but differs from other nineteenth century romances in that it is not written from the perspective of the conquerors, portraying a "backwards" people constrained by an outmoded order and unable to cope in the modern state. On the contrary, "The Squatter and the Don" is written from the perspective of the conquered, questioning whether the new order indeed brought progress to California, and if so, at what cost considering the immorality of the invaders: the squatters, the monopolists, the corrupt political leaders, and their legislation. Ultimately, the victims in the book are not only the Californios, but the squatters, the city of San Diego, and the entire California population, subject to the tyranny of the railroad monopoly in collusion with Congress and the state government.
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 California 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.
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.
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."
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 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 Ruiz de 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 Ruiz de 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 dispossession. 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".
Who Would Have Thought It?
María Ruiz de Burton's Who Would Have Thought It? was the first novel to be written in English by a Mexican living in the United States. After a long period in which Ruiz de Burton's work was almost completely unknown, the novel was rediscovered by critics interested in the history of Chicano...
(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).
Ruiz de Burton's work is considered to be a precursor to Chicano literature
Chicano literature
Chicano literature is the literature written by Mexican Americans in the United States. Although its origins can be traced back to the sixteenth century, the bulk of Chicano literature dates from after 1848, when the USA annexed large parts of what had been Mexico in the wake of the...
, giving the perspective of the conquered Mexican population that, despite being granted full rights of citizenship by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican-American War on February 2, 1848...
, was a subordinated and marginalized national minority. Her background provided her a critical distance from the New England Protestant culture into which she was brought by her marriage to her husband, a powerful and influential Protestant Union Army General. Her life took her from coast to coast in the United States, which provided her with opportunity for first-hand observation of the U.S., its westward expansion, the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, and its aftermath. This vantage point and her status as a woman provided her with both an insider's and outsider's perspective on issues of ethnicity, power, gender, class, and race.
Early life
María Amparo Ruiz was born on July 3, 1832 in the Mexican state of Baja California SurBaja California Sur
Baja California Sur , is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state on October 8, 1974, the area was known as the South Territory of Baja California. It has an area of , or 3.57% of the land mass of Mexico and comprises...
. The precise location of her birth is unknown but is usually given as either Loreto
Loreto, Baja California Sur
Loreto was the first Spanish settlement on the Baja California Peninsula. It served as the capital of Las Californias from 1697 to 1777, and is the current seat of the municipality of Loreto in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur...
or La Paz
La Paz, Baja California Sur
La Paz is the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur and an important regional commercial center. The city had a 2010 census population of 215,178 persons, but its metropolitan population is somewhat larger because of surrounding towns like el Centenario, el Zacatal and San Pedro...
. Her grandfather, Jose Manuel Ruiz, commanded the Mexican troops along the northern frontier in Baja California
Baja California
Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North...
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
Ensenada, Baja California
Ensenada is a coastal city in Mexico and the third-largest city in Baja California. It is located south of San Diego on the Baja California Peninsula. The city is locally referred to as La Cenicienta del Pacífico, or, The Cinderella of the Pacific...
region. His brother, Francisco Ruiz, was commandate of the Presidio of San Diego
Presidio of San Diego
El Presidio Reál de San Diego is an historical fort established on May 14, 1769, by Commandant Pedro Fages for Spain. It was the first permanent European settlement on the Pacific Coast of the United States. As the first of the presidios and Spanish missions in California, it was the base of...
.
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
Alta California
Alta California was a province and territory in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and later a territory and department in independent Mexico. The territory was created in 1769 out of the northern part of the former province of Las Californias, and consisted of the modern American states of 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
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...
and became American citizens.
Marriage
Ruiz de Burton and Burton found it difficult to plan their wedding. They belonged to different religions; she was CatholicRoman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
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
Governor of California
The Governor of California is the chief executive of the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual State of the State addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced...
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 Californio
Californio
Californio is a term used to identify a Spanish-speaking Catholic people, regardless of race, born in California before 1848...
s 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
Mission San Diego de Alcalá
Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, in San Diego, California, was the first Franciscan mission in the Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. It was founded in 1769 by Spanish friar Junípero Serra in an area long inhabited by the Kumeyaay Indians...
. 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 Rancho Jamul
Rancho Jamul
Rancho Jamul was a Mexican land grant in present day San Diego County, California given in 1831 by Governor Manuel Victoria to Pío Pico. The grant extended from present day Jamul southeast to Dulzura.-History:...
, 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
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
to aid the Union Army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
toward the end of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. 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
Isthmus of Panama
The Isthmus of Panama, also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien, is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It contains the country of Panama and the Panama Canal...
. Over the next ten years, they lived in Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Washington D.C., Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
and Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, as Ruiz de Burton's husband was transferred from post to post.
The Union captured Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg is an independent city in Virginia, United States located on the Appomattox River and south of the state capital city of Richmond. The city's population was 32,420 as of 2010, predominantly of African-American ethnicity...
in 1865. Burton was assigned to assist with Reconstruction of the city. He contracted malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
there and for the next five years suffered recurrent attacks of the illness. Burton died on April 4, 1869 of apoplexy
Apoplexy
Apoplexy is a medical term, which can be used to describe 'bleeding' in a stroke . Without further specification, it is rather outdated in use. Today it is used only for specific conditions, such as pituitary apoplexy and ovarian apoplexy. In common speech, it is used non-medically to mean a state...
resulting from the malarial attacks, in Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...
.
Later life
In 1870, after her husband's burial at West Point, Ruiz de Burton returned to Rancho Jamul in San Diego, spending the rest of her life in lawsuits trying to keep the title to Rancho Jamul while also working on 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?
Who Would Have Thought It?
María Ruiz de Burton's Who Would Have Thought It? was the first novel to be written in English by a Mexican living in the United States. After a long period in which Ruiz de Burton's work was almost completely unknown, the novel was rediscovered by critics interested in the history of Chicano...
, 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
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
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). She is considered to be the first Mexican-American author and the first Mexican-American author to write in English.Who Would Have Thought It?
Who Would Have Thought It? is an historical romanceHistorical romance
Historical romance is a subgenre of two literary genres, the romance novel and the historical novel.-Definition:Historical romance is set before World War II...
and was the first novel to be written in English by a Mexican living in the United States. The book was published in 1872 by J.B. Lippincott in Philadelphia without the author's name on the title page, but was registered at the Library of Congress under the names of H.S. Burton and Mrs. Henry S. Burton. The book reflects Ruiz de Burton's ambiguous position between the Californio elite and the Anglo-Saxon majority of the United States as it details the struggles of a Mexican-American girl born in Indian captivity, Lola, in an American society obsessed with class, religion, race and gender. "The novel scrutinizes the pettiness and racism of a Northern Abolitionist family and discourses on issues of democracy, liberalism, women's suffrage, imperialism, political opportunism, and religious hypocrisy."
After its publication, Who Would Have Thought It? remained relatively unnoticed for over one hundred years in American literary studies, demonstrating Ruiz de Burton's exclusion from American literary history and more broadly the marginal importance that Mexican-Americans were considered to have in American history. The book was also excluded from popular American literature because of its depiction of American culture and morals as hypocritical. Ruiz de Burton's work was caught between her identity in both the Californian elite and as a California native, and likewise her novel was not welcomed by either American literary studies nor Chicana literary studies.
A cooperative scholarly group called Recovering the United States Hispanic Literary Heritage Project brought Who Would Have Thought It? to public notice in the late twentieth century. This group was created in 1990 and its main goal is to recover literary texts by Hispanic writers and obtain narratives of their lives since the sixteenth century through sources such as memoirs, prose, fiction, poetry and histories. These scholars describe Ruiz de Burton's work "as an object lesson in the complexities and contradictions of resurrecting literary history".
The Squatter and the Don
The Squatter and the Don is Ruiz de Burton's most famous literary piece. It was published anonymously under the pen namePen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
"C. Loyal," an abbreviated form of "Ciudadano Leal," or "Loyal Citizen," a conventional method of closing official letters in nineteenth century Mexico. She used this name to symbolize her Mexican loyalties, to provide indeterminacy of her gender, and to criticize the American political system. This novel adopts the narrative perspective of a conquered Californio population that is a "capable, cultured, even heroic people who were unjustly deterritorialized, economically strangled, liguistically oppressed, and politically marginalized" despite the stipulations of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican-American War on February 2, 1848...
of 1848, in which the United States agreed to respect the rights of Mexicans and Spanish citizens who were subsumed into the United States. The story of The Squatter and the Don fictionally documents the many Californio families that lost their land due to squatters and litigation. The novel demonstrates how the burden of proof of land ownership fell not on the US government, nor on the squatters who settled on the land, but on the Californio landowners.
"The Squatter and the Don" is a historical romance that details not only the repercussions of the Land Act of 1851
Public Land Commission
The Public Land Commission, a former agency of the United States government, was created following the admission of California as a state in 1850 . The Commission's purpose was to determine the validity of prior Spanish and Mexican land grants in California.California Senator William M...
after the US invasion of California but the rapid rise of the railroad monopoly in the state. The novel's plot, which roughly covers the period from 1872 to 1885, traces the trials and tribulations of ill-fated lovers from a Hispanic family and an Anglo family. The narrative builds on the tension between Californios of Mexican descent and the invading Anglo squatters by focusing on two families: the Alamars, the Californio owners of a massive ranch in the San Diego area, and the Darrells, one of the numerous squatter families on the Alamar ranch.
The novel focuses on the demise of a heroic society (the aristocratic Californios), but differs from other nineteenth century romances in that it is not written from the perspective of the conquerors, portraying a "backwards" people constrained by an outmoded order and unable to cope in the modern state. On the contrary, "The Squatter and the Don" is written from the perspective of the conquered, questioning whether the new order indeed brought progress to California, and if so, at what cost considering the immorality of the invaders: the squatters, the monopolists, the corrupt political leaders, and their legislation. Ultimately, the victims in the book are not only the Californios, but the squatters, the city of San Diego, and the entire California population, subject to the tyranny of the railroad monopoly in collusion with Congress and the state government.
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
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
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
Hidalgo (Spanish nobility)
A hidalgo or fidalgo is a member of the Spanish and Portuguese nobility. In popular usage it has come to mean the non-titled nobility. Hidalgos were exempt from paying taxes, but did not necessarily own real property...
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
Alta California
Alta California was a province and territory in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and later a territory and department in independent Mexico. The territory was created in 1769 out of the northern part of the former province of Las Californias, and consisted of the modern American states of California,...
that allowed it to be easily taken by the United States. Don Quixote then is a California 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 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 Ruiz de 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 Ruiz de 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 dispossession. 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".