We here at La Bloga take special pleasure when a
writer we cover receives an honor for her or his literary achievements. So,
when I found out that Manuel Luis Martinez’s novel Los
Duros was selected as a finalist
for the Texas Institute of
Letters Best Book of 2014, I smiled. Last year, I ran an interview with
Martinez about his wonderful book. In honor of this news, I’ve decided to “reprint”
that interview for today’s post. Here it is:
Three questions for Manuel Luis Martinez regarding his
novel, Los Duros
Manuel
Luis Martinez is a writer and Professor of American and Chicano
literature at The Ohio State University in Columbus. He is the author of
the novels Crossing (1998), Drift (2003), and Day
of the Dead (2010). His most recent novel is Los Duros published
by Floricanto Press. Martinez offers a tough, succinct, and honest depiction of
the people who struggle through poverty and bigotry in this California desert
community. This is an important book, one that required the talents of a writer
such as Martinez to succeed as a work of literature. The author agreed to
answer a few questions about his latest literary endeavor.
DANIEL OLIVAS: Could you talk a little about the community of
Los Duros in the Mojave Desert and the reasons you set this novel there.
MANUEL LUIS MARTINEZ: A friend of mine from San Antonio, Felipe
Vargas, a graduate student in education, began a program in Thermal, California
about ten years ago. He asked me to come out and teach creative writing to a
group of kids living in dire poverty in the colonias of the Mojave Desert. He
told me that it would change the way I saw the world. I had worked with migrant
populations before in Indiana and California. I grew up an impoverished kid in
San Antonio. My grandparents were migrant workers. So I didn’t expect to see
anything earth-shattering.
But my friend was right.
Perhaps because Thermal, California is surrounded by such concentrated wealth,
the juxtaposition of dire poverty and conspicuous affluence absolutely
clarifies the effects of inequality in this country. Working with these kids in
these communities humanizes the abstract debates about how this nation treats
immigrants and its poor. It’s not just about material poverty. I witnessed the
death of hope and aspiration.
The students I worked with
lived in terrible conditions, in colonias without running water, electricity,
without police protection, medical care, in the midst of toxins and pollution
and sewage. Add to this, the reality of having to live in the shadows because
of the fear of deportation. These are anxieties of which the vast majority of
Americans have no experience. When you see the squalor and contempt with which
these children have to live side by side with the immense luxury and
entitlement of the area, there is no other conclusion to be drawn: this nation
is guilty of human rights violations. We are exploiting the most vulnerable for
their labor while throwing their children to the dogs. Politically, we hide
behind terms like “illegal” and “border security” and “amnesty,” while ignoring
the plight of the children caught up in a system predicated on the assault of
hope. The system doesn’t just use these people, it crushes them. It’s designed
to do this.
I wanted to write a book
in which I depicted these conditions by foregrounding the Mojave and the
Coachella area. It’s an unforgiving place. Water is scarce and the environment
is brutal. To survive you have to be tough or rich. I wanted to depict the
breaking point. By that I mean, the combination of poverty, ignorance,
exclusion, racism, and invisibility that bring even the toughest of these kids
to the brutal realization that there is no future for them. I saw it firsthand.
Kids who were extremely bright and hard working, full of hope and
determination, who came to the end of the road because there was no place for
them left to go. College closed off, legitimate jobs closed off, citizenship
closed off. The Salton Sea became the symbol for the plight of these children:
a beautiful fresh water lake surrounded by desert being polluted by the runoff
of toxins and pesticides until nothing can live in the water and the birds and
fish die.
Los Duros, the colonia
which is itself a kind of main character in this novel, is the equivalent of
the Salton Sea. A fragile space of life and potential surrounded by hostile
elements that ultimately choke off the life force. It’s tragic.
DO: Juan, the long-absent father, and Guillermo, the
idealist teacher, create a taut wire of tension toward Juan’s son who is known
as Banger. Why did you decide to create this triangle in the already difficult
terrain of a community staggered by poverty and bigotry?
MLM: I wanted to present Banger with the illusion of
alternatives. The father and the teacher are both trying to give Banger the
benefit of their experience. They are both of them idealistic and world-worn,
but they’ve learned different lessons. Each hopes that Banger will use their
guidance to navigate the near-impossible terrain. Metaphorically speaking, they
understand that the desert is the desert. It is dangerous and unforgiving. You
aren’t going to change that environment. So there is only one way out and that
is to cross it, to get through. The pessimistic side of me sees the political
and social realities as near-impossible to change. So what’s left to do? This
is Banger’s dilemma. I wanted to suggest that both of the men in Banger’s life
have something to give him, something vital to his survival. But I also needed
to show that neither man has any more of an idea as to what to do in the face
of so much misery than do the kids caught up in the grinding system. If Banger
is at the apex of a triangle of relationships and possible outcomes, we find
that the triangle ultimately collapses. There is no triangle. There is only a
line.
DO: The suffering of your characters is extreme. Was
it difficult to use their lives as the core of your narrative?
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