Chicanonautica: Joaquin . . . Joaquin . . . Do You Read?

by Ernest Hogan

Writing while Chicano. It’s a problema. Especially if you’re writing about Chicanos. Write what you know, they say, but if you’re not part of the dominant culture, but one that’s misunderstood and goes against the corporate mythology . . .

We don’t fit into the parameters of what Western Civilization in the last century has come to call “realism.” So, we get magic and other realisms. We are too complicated. So, I make my Chicano weird shit into sci-fi, and Scott Russell Duncan’s novel is “metafiction.”

Duncan is a Chicano. So am I. Yeah, there we go being complicated again. How can such things be? As my grandmother once put it, “Sometimes the soldiers would come into the village, and take the girls away on their horses, and then they would be their wives.”

I get sick of explaining myself, but then that’s the whole point.

Then throw in history, folklore, and literature . . . 

This is why Duncan’s novel Old California Strikes Back is so complicated. There’s a lot of his personal experience that would anger racists and disturb liberals, then there's Joaquin Murrietta, who’s legend is the beginning of the Chicano identity, though some Anglo scholars want to write him off as a racist serial killer. His head floating in a jar being put on display by California Ranger Harry Love seems like something out of an over-the-top, surrealistic spaghetti western. It is our heritage. Where we come from, and the mess that is our situation as we hurtle into the year 2025.

The book goes from slices of life, to a wildly imaginative journey to the heart of the California/Chicano dream/nightmare. It’s a wild ride, and hilarious.

And there are Star Trek references.

It may scare some folks but brings a special joy to my born-in-Eastlos heart.

And it’s all an important part of United States of Norteamericano culture, tambien. Joaquin’s legend was popular. Novelist Johnston McCulley whitewashed him (a lot of Anglos can’t tell Hispanic from Latinoid from Indigenous) into Zorro, a rich, Spanish landowner to make him appealing to the readers of early pulp magazines. Later we got a further whitewashed, no longer Hispanic version in urban millionaire Batman. 

It all goes back to Joaquin.

He’s also the prototype for the bandido/bad hombre that a certain felon/president is promising to get rid of in a mass deportation/ethnic cleansing.

The world needs Old California Strikes Back. It’s funny and enlightening–Chicano reality in all its complicated glory. 

I often wonder, would a Chicano be allowed to write the Great American Novel?

Could it be about Joaquin Murrietta?

I just hope it’s not coming too late.

Ernest Hogan, the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, is planning on running amok in the year 2025. Stay tuned for details . . .