illustrator: Joseph Daniel Fiedler
Cinco Puntos Press, 2001
grades 3-5
Mexican
Hayes’s
story is a revision of a European variant of “The Faithful Servant,” and also
draws on versions from New Mexico. In this telling, which appears to be set in
colonial Mexico, a wealthy man bets his ranch that his foreman is so honest
that he could not tell a lie. In order to win the bet, the beautiful daughter
of the other rancher conspires to seduce the foreman into stealing all the
apples from his employer’s “manzano real”—“royal apple tree”—and lying about
how the apples disappeared. Foreman steals the apples yet maintains his integrity,
foreman and daughter fall in love, ranch is lost but remains in the family, and
everyone celebrates.
Rather than
enhancing the story, Hayes’s “literary treatment”—assigning names to the
characters, softening the plot, and inserting a lot of dialogue to “carry the
narrative and clarify the characters’ motivations”—raises questions about the
story’s cultural content:
• Why does the rancher’s
daughter demand that the foreman strip the apple tree and bring all its fruit
to her? It would have made more sense had she demanded that a prized animal be
slaughtered and its meat brought to her. But in “softening” the story so as to
avoid the scene of an animal’s being butchered, Hayes erases the story’s
cultural logic.
• Why would the
foreman agree to pick all the apples? Even if he were in love with the
rancher’s daughter, he’d know that a whole wagonload of apples would benefit
nobody. They’d spoil before they were consumed.
• Why would
wealthy Mexican ranchers care so much about apples? Among apple aficionados,
there might be some competition, but not to this extent.
• Why would a
wealthy rancher’s daughter fall in love with the foreman, and continue to
conspire against him?
• Why does the
rancher’s daughter, an upper-class colonial Mexican woman, appear as a “barefoot
seductress” in every illustration of her: inside, outside, even at her own
party? Besides “gang girlfriends,” this is a common Hollywood stereotype of
Latinas.
• Finally, in
the English text, the rancher wants to know who picked his apples: “Some fool
picked them?” And the honest foreman begins to explain: “The father of the fool
is my father’s father’s son.” But in the Spanish text, he says, “El abuelo de
ladrón es papá de mi papá” (The thief’s grandfather is my father’s father). This
is totally different. Why is he a “fool” in one language and a “thief” in the
other?
Fiedler’s oil
paintings, on a palette of bejeweled earth-toned colors, are darkly depressing.
Especially so is the one of the worried rancher riding away after having bet
his ranch. It reminds me of James Earle Fraser’s 1915 iconic sculpture, “The
End of the Trail,” in which a dejected Indian guy slumps over his equally
dejected horse. I mean, really depressing.
Had Hayes
decided against a contrived “literary treatment,” infusing his version with
culturally logical content instead—and way fewer words and dialogue—Juan
Verdades: The Man Who Couldn’t Tell a Lie / El hombre que no sabía mentir
could have been an entertaining story. As it stands, it’s not recommended.
—María
Cárdenas
(published 3/5/14)
(published 3/5/14)
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