Ultima Article by Carol Mitchell

Carol Mitchell

SOURCE: Mitchell, Carol. "Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima: Folk Culture in Literature." Critique 22, no. 1 (1980): 55-64.

[In the following essay, Mitchell discusses the amalgam of folk culture and religion in Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima.]

In Bless Me, Ultima (1972) Rudolfo Anaya draws a vivid picture of traditional rural Spanish-American culture of the recent past, and through his characters, especially the folk figures of the curandera and the bruja, he takes the reader into that traditional society where the sacred and secular worlds are closely intertwined—a world that is different from the largely secular contemporary urban society of most readers. In order to understand and appreciate the novel, one needs to pay particular attention to four different aspects of traditional culture: la familiaand the roles of children, adults, and the aged; the conflicts in a traditional patriarchal family between the roles of women and men; the roles of and attitudes toward the curandera and the bruja; and the close ties between the sacred and secular life in traditional society.

Bless Me, Ultima is a novel that is particularly insightful in its depiction of several aspects of the traditional Spanish-American family in New Mexico. The term "Spanish-American" is appropriate because like many New Mexicans the family has been living in the area for a number of generations. The Marez side of the family traces itself back to the conquistadores and the Luna side back to a priest, either Spanish or Mexican, who established a colony under a land grant early in the colonization of New Mexico. While the contemporary Lunas find their Luna ancestor priest a bit of an embarrassment, the practice of padres having one or more wives was widespread in the New World until 1851.¹ The story takes place at the end of World War II in eastern New Mexico, mainly in Guadalupe, a small town where both Anglos and Hispanos live. The Luna-Marez family seems relatively unaffected by Anglo-American attitudes and ways of life. A few culture conflicts occur, as when the three older sons return home from the war and are no longer satisfied with rural life, but such conflicts are a very minor theme; the major one involves the conflicts of individuals in a traditional rural folk culture and one character's conflicts within himself as he grows up in this culture.

The main character is Tony Marez, age six at the beginning of the novel. With the help and guidance of the curandera Ultima, Tony learns how to cope with the existence of sin and evil. The plot involves a series of episodes that are significant in Tony's growth: he sees two men die violently; he learns about nature—the river, the llano, and the farm at Las Pasturas; he welcomes the return of his idolized older brothers and sadly sees them depart again; he participates with Ultima in curing his uncle from the curse of a bruja and in lifting another curse that is affecting a family friend; he takes his first communion; and, finally, he sees Ultima die. During the process of Tony's growth, the influence of traditional culture on a particular individual is examined.

Tony's immediate family consists of his parents, three older brothers about twenty years old, and two sisters who are two or three years older than he. During his sixth year the old woman Ultima, la Grande, comes to live with them. She is not related to them, but they feel a responsibility for her since she was the midwife for Tony's mother during his birth and the births of his brothers and sisters. Additionally, it is not right for an old woman to have to live alone: Tony's mother says, "we cannot let her live her last days in loneliness," and his father replies, "No, it is not the way of our people."² They briefly consider whether or not they should bring a curandera into their home because of the effect her reputation would have on the children, a reputation gained because she could not only heal people but also lift curses laid by brujas: "And because a curandera had this power she was misunderstood and often suspected of practicing witchcraft herself" (4). They decide that she can only be good for the children; besides, "it was the custom to provide for the old and the sick. There was always room in the safety and warmth of la familia for one more person, be that person stranger or friend" (4). So for the period of the novel, three generations live together.

By observing these three age groups, we learn of the traditional attitudes toward their roles. 

Reverence for the old and respect for their wisdom are shown as well as the feeling of responsibility for the old who, after all, brought up the younger generation. Old age seems to be a time of rest, a lightening of the load of day-to-day responsibilities. Ultima still helps around the house with the children and the daily chores, but these are the primary responsibility of the mother, and she still acts occasionally in her magical role of curandera, when no one else can effect a cure, but she no longer goes out regularly for illnesses or births. The middle generation, Tony's parents, bear the heaviest load for the welfare of the family. Tony's father is primarily concerned with being the breadwinner, and although he takes some responsibility for Tony's welfare, we never see him interacting with his daughters. Tony's mother has the main responsibility for raising the children and running the household. She sees that the children learn their catechism and attend school; she is most often shown in the kitchen and sometimes sewing. The older brothers have already left home and seem to have few responsibilities within the family. They return to visit and help out a little; although their parents would like them to return to the family home and find work in the neighborhood, they are restless and drawn to the city. The two girls hardly appear in the novel; they play dolls and giggle, they go to school and help their mother a little, but they really are never shown interacting with the other characters. The life of the young boy is shown the most extensively; by the age of six he is clearing rocks away for a garden for his mother. We see him interacting with his teachers and friends at school, his priest at catechism class, his parents, and Ultima. He has plenty of time during the summer to play along the river and in the country around. His primary responsibility is to do well in school so that he will bring respect to the family.

Through Anaya's description we learn the different role expectations for females and males, but we see the conflict between female and male primarily on the symbolic level. On the literal level, the conflict between husband and wife is caused more by their own characters than by the roles they play. However, through these two personalities and their respective family ideals, the conflict between feminine and masculine values is portrayed; and through the androgynous character of Ultima, a solution is suggested. Mr. Marez is a descendent of the conquistadores who crossed the sea and became men of the llano: they loved the wide open spaces of the sea and the llano, the wild freedom of the wind and the sun, and they became the vaqueros; they loved drinking, storytelling, and horses and were exuberant, restless wanderers. Mrs. Luna-Marez is the descendent of farmers who depend on the phases of the moon and who are quietly in touch with the rhythms of nature. Their innate character involves being tied to the land rather than roaming over it, and their extended family lives together farming the same land rather than separated like the Marez family in their restless wandering. Finally, because the founder of the Lunas was a priest, the Catholic religion and the education required for the priesthood are more important to the Lunas than to the Marezes.

The conflict between feminine and masculine is also shown on the religious level. God, the father, is omniscient and omnipotent—the Old Testament deity who can seem harsh because he has justice without mercy: "Perhaps that is why God could not forgive, He was too much like man" (131). He is a deity who because of his power and perfection seems very distant from human beings and their everyday weaknesses and imperfections. On the other hand, the Virgin Mary, who is not omniscient nor omnipotent, understands humans and their weaknesses and loves them anyway. Because she is female, she can plead with God and intercede for mercy on the behalf of humans.

God was not always forgiving. He made laws to follow and if you broke them you were punished. The Virgin always forgave.

God had power. He spoke and the thunder echoed through the skies.

The Virgin was full of quiet and peaceful love….

But he was a giant man, and she was a woman. She could go to him and ask Him to forgive you. Her voice was sweet and gentle and with the help of her son they could persuade the powerful father to change his mind. (42)

Anaya shows the effect of this male/female conflict on Tony, who is being torn between the ideals and desires of his parents who have different expectations for him. The mother's goal for her son is clear; she wants him to become a priest or, if that is impossible, a farmer. The father's goal for Tony is not so clear, but he does not want him to become a priest or a farmer, rather something more in keeping with the men of his own family. Furthermore, Tony is being torn by his religious doubts about a harsh God who seems to allow so much evil in the world.

Ultima, who is in some ways the archetypal earth mother, attempts to lead Tony to some middle way between the extremes of his parents and the female/male tensions. Despite being the archetypal female, she is really androgynous. She has had no husband or children, although she has been a mother figure to many. Because her age exempts her from normal female/male role expectations and because she is a curandera, she has power that a woman would not normally have. She has been active in the public world as well as the private household in ways not usually accepted for women in traditional patriarchal societies. (At least partially because of such power and public role, she is accused of being a bruja.) Finally, she is a devout Catholic like the Lunas, but also devout in her love of the wind, the sun, and the llano like the Marezes. Because she personally combines many of the qualities of both female and male, of Luna and Marez, she acts as a mediating influence on the family and as a moderating influence in Tony's life:

From my mother I had learned that man is of the earth, that his clay feet are part of the ground that nourishes him, and that it is this inextricable mixture that gives man his measure of safety and security. Because man plants in the earth he believes in the miracles of birth, and he provides a home for his family, and he builds a church to preserve his faith and the soul that is bound to his flesh, his clay. But from my father and Ultima I had learned that the greater immortality is in the freedom of man, and that freedom is best nourished by the noble expanse of land and air and pure, white sky….

"There is power here, a power that can fill a man with satisfaction," my father said.

"And there is faith here," Ultima added, "a faith in the reason for nature being, evolving, growing—" (217, 220)

But Ultima, like the others, is more than female archetype, androgynous symbol, or curandera; she is a human being, an individual in society. She is an individual who has learned to understand and love her society and its members and to accept the bad along with the good. Tony, too, is an individual, and he is just learning about himself, his family, and his society. At times he is disillusioned by the wickedness he sees, and at times he feels that he can satisfy only the desires of one of his parents, but not both; as a result of Ultima's guidance, he may be able to find a middle path.

Anaya uses the curandera and the bruja to show the traditional ties between the sacred and secular worlds. Ultima, the curandera, is the most important figure in Tony's life during the three years from ages six to nine; she is his teacher, counselor, and friend. She seems to be known throughout the area as a midwife and herb doctor who learned her skills from a renowned healer, "the flying man of Las Pasturas." She is respected as "una mujer que no ha pecado" (30), a woman who has not sinned, but she is also feared by others who call her hechicera, white witch, and even bruja, black witch. She is wise in her knowledge of nature, humanity, and the supernatural and seems to be a devout Catholic—although some conflict arises between the church and her magic: "The priest at El Puerto did not want the people to place much faith in the powers of la curandera. He wanted the mercy and faith of the church to be the villagers' only guiding light" (90).

Ultima, like the other traditional folk healers of Western cultures, uses botanical medicines, faith healing, psychological practices, and magical rituals. She has practical knowledge of the curing properties of certain herbs, and she knows when to harvest and how to cure them. She believes that the natural world is also a spiritual world, so she tells Tony when he is helping her to collect herbs that he should "speak to the plant and tell it why we pulled it from its home in the earth" (36). In her curing she uses such plants as yerba del manso, oregano, osha, manzanilla, and atole(the sacred blue corn meal of the Pueblo Indians). Not only does she use Catholic prayers, but she may also use other prayers to the spirit world, possibly to spirits known to the Indians. Such practice would be consonant with our knowledge of curandismosince it derives from both Spanish and Indian healing traditions. She also uses what she calls "the magic beyond evil, the magic that endures forever" (88), which includes incantations and rituals as well as the more clearly described imitative magic of sticking pins into clay dolls in order to kill the evil witches. Unlike the curanderas of some areas who do not accept payment for cures or who only accept donations after the cure, Ultima requires the payment of forty dollars in silver for the curing of someone who has been cursed, the payment agreed on in advance. Ultima, then, combines botanical, psychological, and faith curing with magic, but magic is used only when the source of the illness is magical.

Ultima acts in her role of curandera or hechicera three different times in the novel. Lucas, Tony's uncle, was bewitched by brujasbecause he chased them away from where they were dancing; they placed a curse on him that was causing him to waste away, and even the city doctors and the priest had been powerless to cure him. Before agreeing to effect the magical cure needed for Lucas' illness, Ultima warns his family about the consequences in the natural world of tampering with the supernatural:

You must understand that when anybody, bruja or curandera, priest or sinner, tampers with the fate of a man that sometimes a chain of events is set into motion over which no one will have ultimate control. You must be willing to accept this responsibility. (80)

Before beginning her cure, she goes to Tenorio, the father of the brujas and a brujo himself, to attempt to have the curse lifted so that she will not have to turn the daughters' own curse upon them, but her visit is of no avail. The cure, involving herbs steeped in a mixture of kerosene and water, atole, and chanted prayers, lasts for three days. Tony acts as Ultima's helper during the cure, and his strength is magically used to strengthen his uncle. Toward the end of the cure, Ultima makes clay figurines of the three witches and then sticks pins in them. Finally, both Tony and his uncle vomit out the poison, and Lucas is on the road to recovery.

Although the cure involved magical practices, it could be explained by the skeptical reader as a psychological cure. The skeptic would believe that Lucas became ill because he feared the witches, that because he believed that witchcraft was the cause of his illness, he also believed that only magic could cure him (hence the inability of the doctors and priest to cure him), that Ultima's reputation as curandera and hechicera makes her the only one whom Lucas will have faith in to effect his cure, that Lucas receives psychological support, especially through Tony, as well as monetary support from his family—itself often important in curing psychological illnesses, and that the herbs Ultima gives to Lucas may also have some curative value. Ultima's cure is described only through Tony's eyes, and Anaya does not insist that the reader accept everything that Tony believes as literal fact. Clearly, however, all the family believe that only Ultima's magic cured Lucas.

The second cure Ultima performs is on Tony. During a snowstorm Tony chances on a fight between Tenorio, the brujo,and Narciso, a kind old man, and sees Narciso shot. Later, Narciso dies in Tony's arms, and the boy gives confession to him. Naturally, the incident causes Tony considerable emotional upheaval. As the result of chill from the snowstorm and the emotional trauma, Tony develops pneumonia. For the physical part of his illness, Ultima rubs him with an ointment of Vicks mixed with herbs and gives him a cool liquid to drink, and the doctor from town treats him. Ultima alone treats Tony's feverish nightmares by staying at his side and reassuring him. Her curing this time is almost entirely psychological; no magic is used because the illness does not have a magical cause. Although Tony realizes Ultima's important part in his cure, Anaya does not insist that only Ultima cured him.

The third cure involves the lifting of another curse, one laid by Tenorio on three ghosts or bultos who then disturb the Tellez family. Although the family members are not yet sick, they cannot eat or sleep because the bultos are causing pots and pans to fly against the wall, dishes to jump when people try to eat from them, and stones to fall on the house from the sky. Once again, the priest has been unable to do anything. Ultima realizes that the curse is on the ghosts rather than on the family and that the ghosts are those of three Indians who died on the ranch two generations earlier and were not buried properly. The brujo's curse has awakened them and caused them to do wrong. The cure, then, involves laying these spirits to rest. Ultima has a rectangular platform erected with the four posts in each of the four directions—similar to some Indian burials. During a whole day she chants and in the evening brings out three bundles which are placed on the platform. Tony wonders if these are the remains of the Indians, and it is not clear whether they are or not. Then the platform is burned. The description of Ultima at the cremation again ties her practice of curandismo with Indian practices for she seems like an Indian woman with her long braids falling over her shoulders and a bright sash at her waist, and Tony feels "she had performed this ceremony in some distant past" (223).

Again the skeptic could explain the curse and cure in psychological terms as perhaps mass hallucination, but Anaya makes clear here that the reader should not use that explanation, for the flying dishes and falling rocks are experienced not only by the Tellez family but by Tony's skeptical father as well. The reality of the curse and cure, though seen through Tony's eyes, is insisted on by Anaya by showing the father's skepticism. Throughout the novel, Anaya gradually tries to bring the reader to an understanding and acceptance of the way the curandera and others in the natural, secular world affect and are affected by the supernatural, sacred world. From early in the novel where Ultima teaches Tony to speak to the spirits of the plants and to listen to the voices and rhythms of nature, through the curses and their cures, and finally to the climax of the novel when Tenorio shoots Ultima's "familiar," the owl, and Ultima almost immediately dies, Anaya shows the close ties of the sacred and secular, the supernatural and natural worlds. Improper acts in the natural world have their repercussions in both the natural and supernatural worlds.

The brujas, too, help tie these worlds together. The actions of the four black witches, Tenorio and his three daughters, unlike Ultima's, are only reported; we do not see them practicing their magic. Tenorio is a tavern keeper and a barber, and on occasion his barbering can be dangerous to his clients—Tenorio's daughters took some of Lucas' hair to use in placing their curse on him. The daughters are all bad tempered and ugly, "too ugly to make men happy" (91), and although we learn little about the daughters, Tenorio is shown as a troublemaker in the village and the murderer of Narciso. In a close-knit traditional society, the troublemakers and the dissatisfied are sometimes labeled witches, for their unhappiness would cause them to envy and hate others and, therefore, be willing and desirous of causing others pain and trouble.

The description of the brujas, like that of the curandera,conforms to the traditional pattern for witches in Christian societies. They sell their souls to the devil; they have black masses and a sabbat of sorts; they read the Black Book; they stir up horrible concoctions of such things as blood of bats, entrails of toads, and blood of roosters; they use incantations and magical words; and, of course, they can perform image magic. They can change into animals, especially coyotes, and also into balls of fire—two forms that are found in Southwest Indian beliefs as well as Spanish-American beliefs. Witches cannot pass by a cross, nor can they stand the sight of it, and the names "Christ" and "Mary" hurt their ears. They can be killed in their own bodies or in their animal shapes by shooting them with bullets etched with a cross.

Although we see the bruja and the curandera both performing magic, Ultima uses her magic only for what she and the reader perceive as good. Her killing of three people is considered justifiable since they are brujas. Twice Ultima is accused of being a bruja, but in one incident the mob is satisfied that she is not, for it thinks she walks under a cross, and in the other she does not flinch when a cross is held up in front of her. Throughout the novel, good magic is shown to conquer evil magic, but magic must be fought with magic, and the Catholic religious rituals cannot take the place of the ancient magic. One must remember, however, that using magic to tamper with fate as it affects the natural order of things may bring undesired and unexpected consequences.

Anaya shows considerable love for and understanding of the traditional rural Spanish-American society of the Southwest United States. However, his love of these people does not lead him to romanticize their traditional way of life, for he describes the harsh along with the pleasant realities of that life. Bless Me, Ultima helps to give contemporary urban Americans, both Hispanos and Anglos, a better understanding of and respect for traditional peoples and their beliefs in the spiritual nature of the world we live in.

Notes

1. Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1949), p. 70.

2. Rudolfo A. Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima (Berkeley: Quinto Sol Publications, 1972), p. 3. Subsequent references are to this edition