E3W Literature | University of Texas

Ana Castillo
The Guardians: A Novel
Random House, 2007
211 pages
$24.95

Reviewed by Christina Garcia

Ana Castillo’s newest work, The Guardians, A Novel (2007), adds to a growing number of works concerned with depicting life on the US-Mexico border, such as Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway: A True Story (2004), and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (2005). Such narratives of the border, that address issues such as labor and migration, reflect larger shifts in contemporary discourses regarding the nation-state and its boundaries. The passage of NAFTA in 1994, followed by the events of September 11, 2001, would position the US-Mexico border, and the undocumented migrants who cross it, as central to the anxieties of a nation-state straining to define its geo-political boundaries. The lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants have consequently been reduced to the markings of legal status through popular rhetorical narratives that erase and displace their voices and experiences. Chicana/o Studies, and Ethnic Studies more generally, have long been driven by the impulse to reveal the presences and voices of marginalized communities, whose histories have largely been left out of national narratives. Castillo’s latest novel attempts to carry that impulse of humanization and revelation to the US-Mexico border.

Centered in the New Mexican desert, where the author now makes her home, The Guardians: A Novel, is told through the voices of four central characters: Regina, a struggling widow in her fifties who gained US-residency through marriage and works as a teacher’s aid; Gabo, her sixteen-year-old, religiously passionate, and undocumented nephew; Miguel, a Chicano activist-schoolteacher who helps Regina search for her missing migrant brother, Rafael (Gabo’s father); and Milton, Miguel’s WWII-veteran grandfather, who is half-blind and hard-of-hearing and has a strong sense of social justice.

While a text like The Devil’s Highway: A True Story imagines and reconstructs the migrant crossing experience, Ana Castillo takes an alternate approach of imagining the lives of those who await the arrival of their loved ones, and the communities of support that are created in the process. The story begins with the red-headed Regina, who has settled on the US side of the border, where she subsidizes the veteran benefits she receives as a widow with her job as a teacher’s aid and various business ventures. Though Regina has failed to convince her migrant brother, Rafael, to permanently settle with her in the US, she has convinced him to entrust his son, Gabo, to her guardianship for the sake of his protection and education. Through Regina’s earlier childhood memories, and Gabo’s more recent ones, we are given insight into the experiences and traumas of undocumented migration. We learn that Gabo has lost his mother to the violence that women are especially vulnerable to through the human trafficking market that rules over the border alongside narcotics rings. His older sister has also long disappeared, and from the story’s opening, his father, Rafael, seems to be at the mercy of a ring of human smugglers. As Regina and Gabo anxiously await Rafael, they make a series of crossings back and forth over the border and in the surrounding border towns, investigating the few clues they have available.

In this process, they both develop a relationship with Miguel, a history teacher who researches the “dirty wars” of Latin America and is a long-time community activist, especially in regards to the environmental pollution along the border caused by large corporations. As Miguel becomes embroiled in the search for Rafael, partly due to political convictions, and partly motivated by his romantic interest in Regina, he provides the audience with insights into the ongoing political history of the US-Mexico border and the webs of corruption that operate there. As Miguel’s grandfather, Milton, also becomes involved in the search for Rafael, he too becomes a sort of guardian for young Gabo, whose intense spiritual rigor is mysterious and even troubling for many of those around him. Half-blind Milton can clearly see the figurative “halo” above Gabo’s head, even as the youth becomes increasingly involved with local gang-members who claim to have information about his missing father. Together, these four characters become a makeshift “family” in search of spiritual healing and answers about life and death.

The Guardians, A Novel marks an important contribution to border literature, addressing critical topics such as femicide, the role of migrant labor in the US economy, environmental discrimination, community activism, and the consequences of narcotics and human trafficking. However, Castillo’s multiple narrators divide the text in such a way that limits the strength of their interactions with one another. Further, Castillo tends to draw flattened depictions of gang members and coyotes, failing to bring them the same humanization and compassion she strives for in her central characters. While Castillo’s narrative voice may be variously appreciated, her novel certainly carries forth the imperatives and traditions of Chicano/a Studies, and Ethnic Studies more generally.