disintegration of community in Luis Humberto crosthwaite's el gran pretender, The

Studies in the Literary Imagination, Spring 2000 by Hernandez, Mark A

Luis Humberto Crosthwaite (b. 1962) is a novelist and short story writer from Tijuana, Baja California. To date, he has published two novels, El gran pretender (1992) and La luna siempre sera un amor dificil (1994); a testimony, Lo que estd en mi corazon (1994); and three collections of short stories, Marcela y el rey al fin juntos (1988), Mujeres con traje de bano caminan solitarias por las playas de su llanto (1990), and No quiero escribir no quiero (1994). El gran pretender presents the history of the cholo community in Tijuana and narrates the rise and fall of the novel's protagonist, El Saico. The term cholo refers specifically to a member of a social group that is a contemporary extension of the pachuco. According to Octavio Paz in his essay "El pachuco" (El laberinto de soledad), the pachuco was found in both east Los Angeles and Mexico City; manifested a Latino counter-culture that incorporated particular styles of clothing, language, and music; and understood itself as an alternative identity to the status quo (Paz qtd. in Lamb 13 n. 5). The term cholo speaks specifically to the affirmation of an identity based on communal beliefs that unify diverse, typically lower-class individuals into enclaves that also have specific means of expressing individuality through dress, language, material artifacts, and music (Lamb 13 n. 5).

El gran pretender contains forty-three brief "chapters," ranging from one to three pages in length, that comprise a community's nostalgic recollections. In his study of the novel, Jeffrey Lamb convincingly argues that the communal voice is a mixture of known and unknown narrators who comment on, through direct and indirect speech, the happenings of the barrio (19 n. 12). This narrative fragmentation with interpolated story lines, presented by multiple voices and non-linear discourse, is an attempt to textually represent extratextual fragmentation (14). The technique of using multiple narrative voices provides for an understanding of a community's plurality; at the same time, the community often speaks as one: at times, it acts as a reflective chorus; at others, it forms a singular voice that furthers the various plots and creates a seemingly contradictory, homogeneous identity (14). As Lamb has noted, this non-linear, non-chronological narrative presents three distinct temporal moments: the 1980s, the present; the late 60s and early 70s, when the principal action of the story occurs; and the SOs, a point in the past referred to only from the vantage point of the 1960s. We are presented with a moment in the generational cycle from each of these periods, by which it becomes clear that each generation longs for the stability of the previous social order (16).

El gran pretender's narrator laments the loss of the traditional barrio way of life twenty years after the arrest and imprisonment of El Saico and other cholos for the assault and attempted murder of el Johnny, a college student and the son of an influential, San Diego politician. The story also recounts El Saico's conflicted relationship with his wife, La China, and his affair with a younger woman, La Fabricia; the intermittent police harassment of the cholo community, especially after the date rape of a nonconformist chola named La Cristina and the assault of El Johnny; and the chola community's ostracization of La Cristina for her decision to better herself outside of the community.

Lamb argues that women have been assigned certain roles within society, any deviation from which can have serious repercussions (18). In El gran pretender, the barrio is the setting for this patriarchal hierarchy; as a result, the alternatives for women are limited. Their senses of self and social mobility-that is, their ability to go beyond the confines of the barrio into new geographic and ideological areas-is greatly restricted (18). The text offers few solutions for women's subjugation.

After the narrative voice alerts the reader that the community has ruptured, it introduces the auto mechanic El Saico who, despite his lack of socioeconomic standing, nevertheless exhibits a strong sense of self with his predilection for markers of distinction and taste. The beer Tecate en caguama is his benchmark for excellence, and he regards all other brands as "agua de jicama" (13). As for tuna, he eats only that processed in Ensenada or in El Sauzal de Rodriguez, Baja California (13).2 He disdains the romantic and sentimental music of Mexican singer Jose Jose and that of Spanish balladeers Julio Iglesias and Camilo Sesto (25). He favors the U.S.-made automobile Ford Galaxy over European ones, which he regards as "una mierda" (25). His philosophy about life is summed up in the following words of the narrator: "El que no pistea anda mal, al que no le gustan las viejas anda mal, el que no escucha a Los Platters anda mal" ("Whoever doesn't drink is crazy; whoever doesn't like women is crazy; whoever doesn't listen to The Platters is crazy"; 14). El Saico sees life as a dog-eat-dog world, a world where married men are meant to philander and North American doo-wop music reigns supreme. The music of the Platters, especially their hits "Smoke gets in your eyes" and "The Great Pretender," captures both the gregariousness and solitude of El Saico's life in that, while the narrator regards him as the leader of the cholo community, El Saico remains alienated from his nuclear family and committed to a series of unfulfilling sexual conquests.