María Amparo Ruiz de Burton is among the best-remembered authors of the nineteenth-century Mexican-American literature. Fully bilingual, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton was the first Mexican American author in the United States to write novels in English. She authored books that challenged conventional genres, including Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don.
Background
Ethnicity:
Maria Amparo Ruiz was born into an aristocratic Latino family on the Baja peninsula in Mexico.
As residents of Baja California for many years María's family became closely intertwined with the major events and problems of the era. Even the date and location of María's birth have been thrown into doubt by the events in Baja California. A large flood in 1829 swept through the town of Loreto, forcing the government to move the capital to La Paz. La Paz never had many records due to Indian uprisings and subsequent abandonment of the mission in 1734 and again in 1748. The few records left after the flood in Loreto now joined the sparse mission records stored in La Paz. However, many of the numerous revolutions and political changes caused a large part of the baptismal records to be lost over the next several years. The takeover of La Paz in 1848 by American troops seriously damaged the remaining records.
At the close of the the Mexican-American War (1845-48), María Amparo took advantage of the terms of the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo to move to Alta California with her mother, where the two became American citizens.
Career
Despite her financial and legal entanglements, Ruiz de Burton found time to begin a literary career in the 1870s, publishing two novels for an English-speaking audience. Both books critique the dominant Anglo society and express Ruiz de Burton's resentment over the discrimination and racism experienced by many Latinos residing within the United States. Her first novel, Who Would Have Thought It? (1872), which denounces what she viewed as the hypocritical sanctimoniousness of New England culture, was published anonymously, probably because its biting satire of Congregationalist religion, of abolitionism, and even of President Lincoln made it controversial. In 1885, Ruiz de Burton turned her attention to the situation in California in The Squatter and the Don, a fictional account of the land struggles experienced by many Californio families after U.S. annexation. The book is a historical novel about the relationship between Mercedes Alamar, the beautiful daughter of an aristocratic Californio family, and Clarence Darrell, an American who is affiliated with the Anglo squatters trying to claim the Alamar family's land. Chronicling the demise of the feudal Spanish rancho system in California, the novel questions whether the imposition of American monopoly capitalism (depicted in a scathing critique of the railroad industry) is an improvement over the old way of life. Because Ruiz de Burton writes from the perspective of the conquered Californio population, her work serves as an important corrective to Anglo writers' often celebratory, imperialist narratives of western expansion. Although Ruiz de Burton's work is not free from racist stereotypes--she portrays poor white squatters, Jews, African Americans, Indians, and the Chinese in racist terms--it does provide a unique perspective on crucial issues of race, class, gender, and power in nineteenth-century America.
Politics
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.