Sueños y Pesadillas de Trabajadores Rurales Migrantes en Tres Novelas Chicanas: …Y No Se Lo Tragó La Tierra, Barefoot Heart y Under the Feet of Jesus
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to determine the way in which Chicano novels…y no se lo tragó la tierra de Tomás Rivera, Barefoot Heart de Elva Treviño Hart y Under the Feet of Jesus de Helena María Viramontes, deconstruct the American Dream through its positioning in the face of assimilation, a condition without equanimity to achieve it. This study examines the main motivations of the constant search of rural migrant workers, based on the reality they face while moving following the harvests of the southwestern United States. The three authors reflect critically on the way that agro-business in the United States has been nourished by Mexican and Mexican-American immigrant labor, while keeping it marginalized through its power structures. Agribusiness in the United States is postulated in the three novels as an oppressive structure that creates barriers to socioeconomic mobility not only of Mexican immigrant agricultural workers and Mexican-American migrants but also for their future generations. The study of the three novels is contextualized in the debate on the sociology of assimilation and its implications for migrants. This, over a century of interceptions of the times of great economic growth of agriculture in the United States with large migratory flows of Mexicans to the agricultural fields of the southwest of the country. In addition, the concept of the American Dream and its interactions with the migrants of the stories are studied.
The three authors propose to redefine cultural relations by answering the assimilation and producing and affirming forms of relationships that strengthen the democratic processes and human rights on which the nation has been strengthened. The three novels emerge as examples of counter narratives that question assimilationist hegemony and demystify the American Dream,
while producing and affirming the historical cultural contribution of the Hispanic community in the United States.
Subject
AsimilaciónSueño Americano
literatura chicana
mexicanos
mexicoamericanos
trabajadores rurales
migrantes
cultura.
Citation
Donato Molina, Maria Consuelo (2018). Sueños y Pesadillas de Trabajadores Rurales Migrantes en Tres Novelas Chicanas: …Y No Se Lo Tragó La Tierra, Barefoot Heart y Under the Feet of Jesus. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /174076.