In The Mark of Zorro, Don Diego is an aristocrat, but he is far more democratic than the Scarlet Pimpernel. Most of the oppressed people that he defends or avenges are poor, mainly Indians or padres who have been robbed or beaten. The only aristocrats that we see being oppressed are the Pulidos, who have been impoverished by the wrath of the governor after they antagonized him. Zorro, of course, helps them, particularly because he is in love with Señor Pulido’s daughter Lolita.
Yet he is not entirely democratic. In the Zorro stories, McCulley’s characters lay great importance upon a person’s being of excellent blood. We are frequently reminded that the Vegas themselves are of the finest blood. Her being so is one of the reasons his father wishes Don Diego to marry Lolita Pulido. The issue of blood comes up eighteen times in McCulley’s The Mark of Zorro and numerous times in subsequent Zorro narratives. But what does blood mean? Except for the Indians (“natives,” McCulley usually calls them), everyone in the novel is Hispanic. In actuality, many Spaniards of pure sangre azul had been born in Mexico, the population of which was so intermixed that by the eighteenth century it had devised an official casta system to define social, and thus economic, status, distinguish supposed subgroups from those of pure Spanish background, and identify various divisions among the racially mixed population. Paintings were made to illustrate the racial combinations. Casta lines were fairly fluid, but status was defined by limpieza de sangre, from the pure-blooded Spaniard on down through Indian, Mexican, African, and Arab.8 The insistence on pure Spanish blood is thus something of a fantasy. McCulley was probably not aware of the official casta status, but he follows the formula whereby most heroes and heroines of romantic fiction are aristocrats. Though there were Spaniards who made their way to California, usually via Mexico, many of the hacienderos were Mexican or, after the missions were secularized, Indian.
The opening title cards to Fairbanks’s 1925 sequel Don Q, Son of Zorro, put the whole issue of noble, meaning “pure” Spanish blood, quite bluntly. “In the long chain of noble names—warriors, conquerors, statesmen—whose brilliant lives are written in the story of Spanish conquest, the name of De Vega stands well to the fore. A De Vega stood with Balboa when he discovered the Pacific. A De Vega fought with Pizarro in the conquest of Peru. On ‘The Night of Tears,’ when Cortés drenched the new world with the best blood of old Spain, a young De Vega died in armor. Though the home of the De Vegas has long been on California soil, the eldest son of each new generation returns to Spain for a period of travel and study.” Of course McCulley did not write this and may have been more sensitive to the tragic aspects of the conquest of Mexico and Peru. But the fact remains that the Vegas continually boast of their being of the best blood. The aristocratic “De” was not added until the second film; it was dropped in the 1940 The Mark of Zorro but reappeared as “de la Vega” in Disney’s Zorro and subsequent films.
In Zorro’s world, being of excellent blood also means that a man should be virile, dashing, athletic—qualities that Don Diego Vega seems to lack. “The hidalgo blood which coursed his veins never seemed to set Don Diego afire. He did not join other young caballeros in their feverish adventures but read poetry and cultivated roses, which made men decide that he was nothing but a fop and a spineless jellyfish.”9 On the other hand, having noble blood does not just mean having an aristocratic heritage; it also signifies behaving honorably, demonstrating noblesse oblige. As Fray Marcos tells Don Fernando in McCulley’s The Caballero, “High birth and power bring many obligations and responsibilities to the one who possesses them.... Persecution and oppression are deplorable things which call for the swift attention of those high in the land.”10 Knowing this turns Don Diego Vega into Zorro, but some hidalgos are ruthless and dishonorable. Captain Ramón claims to have good blood, but he is a knave who repeatedly tries to force himself sexually upon Lolita Pulido, who accuses him of lacking “gentle blood,” despite his ancestry.11 In The Sword of Zorro, the pirate Barbados tells his lieutenant, “Pirates and rogues we may be, but we can take lessons in villainy from some of the gentry who bear the names of caballeros, but have foul blood in their veins.”12 To save Diego from being tortured to death, Lolita will promise to wed Captain Ramón but will stab herself after the ceremony to escape a dishonorable marriage. “The blood of the Pulidos tells me to do that!”13
In the Mexican casta paintings, only a Spaniard can carry a sword, the symbol of aristocracy. Thus when a murderous hidalgo says of Zorro, “were I sure he was of proper blood, I’d cross blades with him and carve out his heart,” Zorro replies, “My blood is better than your own, Carlos Martinez.” 14 The masked man repeatedly has to assure someone he is about to fight that his blood is better. Sometimes, he says he is demeaning himself when he duels with someone who does not have noble blood.
Occasionally, someone who lacks a noble blood line can demonstrate nobility of character. In The Sword of Zorro, the crew of a trading schooner give their lives to try to rescue Lolita; all are killed by the pirates. When the pirates plan to slowly roast Don Audre Ruiz at the stake, Sergeant Gonzales volunteers to take his place, whereupon Don Audre replies, “Whatever your birth and station, you are now, in my estimation, a caballero and a brave man.”15
Lest pride in one’s aristocratic lineage become arrogance, McCulley provides an antidote in The Caballero. In this novel, set in “the very early 1800s, Don Fernando Venegas begins as an elegant, arrogant snob, ”glancing down upon this world from beneath drooping lids as though the very best of it was unworthy of his consideration.“16 Attacked by a cruel and corrupt nouveau riche, he outfences the man and kills him. The governor calls it self-defense, but Fray Marcos says Don Fernando could have merely wounded his opponent but instead killed with malice in his heart. His sin “must be washed away by humility, broken pride, anguish.” Father Marcos therefore imposes a penance upon this hidalgo ”who feels that few men are his equal, who knows nothing of the trials and sufferings of those he deems lesser men.“17 Don Fernando confesses that he hardly ever gave the peons a thought. Now for three months, he is to become one of them, to give up his name, exchange his rich apparel for rags, and labor, eat vile food, and sleep on the earth as the lowly do, submitting with humility to being despised, kicked, or even lashed by the highborn.18
At first, Don Fernando is horrified, looking at the peon he must become “as human scum ... a snake which crawls the ground with his belly in the dust,” a biblical symbol of the fallen Satan.19 Meanwhile, he will be accompanied by a peon named Pedro, who will advise him regarding his speech and actions. He must always abase himself before aristocrats, never look them directly in the face, for if he forgets and speaks or acts with pride, he risks flogging or even being hanged. The peons are treated like untouchables (the villain actually calls them “unmentionables”), and the novel is filled with grim details. The Mark of Zorro is often vague on the details of injustice, while The Caballero is quite explicit. But this harsh penance is for Don Fernando’s redemption. “Before it ends,” says Fray Marcos, “may your heart be softened toward other men. May you learn that there can be honor and loyalty, trust and love even among the lowest of the low.”20 These things, he does eventually learn. “He knew that after this, whenever he looked at a peon or native, he would be looking at a human being, with feelings and emotions, and not at a clod. He would be just thereafter in all things.”21 When his penance is over and he reemerges as Don Fernando, he is a sadder, wiser, and stronger man. Though The Caballero did not appear in book form until 1947, it was originally serialized in 1936, during the heart of the Great Depression. McCulley might well have had the dust bowl migrants in mind when he wrote of the contempt and oppression heaped upon the peons.
By the time McCulley was writing his California novels, the past he drew upon had already been somewhat mythologized, and he contributed to the myth. Since works of historical fiction and drama necessarily are influenced by three different time frames—the time about which they were written, the era during which they wer
e written, and the time in which they are experienced—it is often difficult to assess their presentation of events. In The Mark of Zorro, the layers of history and myth are especially convoluted, and have been constantly reinterpreted on film through more than eighty years of profound demographic change in southern California.
The Mark of Zorro is set in a complex period of California history and was written when what historian Carey McWilliams called the “Spanish Fantasy Past”22 was being exploited by civic boosters, especially in Los Angeles. McCulley, writing about a California past which had already become idealized, blended the period of the missions and of the haciendas and rancheros, and thus the periods of Spanish and Mexican rule. Essentially, he created a classic myth of the Spanish Fantasy Past, the past of dark-eyed senoritas and dashing caballeros, fiestas and bailes, hacienda hospitality, and a serene state of existence, blessed by saintly friars and happy Indians dwelling in picturesque missions. As a promotional history of Los Angeles claims, “Here dwelt ease and plenty and the glory of untrammeled freedom. Here romance reigned supreme.... Here was to be found Spanish life at its flood-tide.”23 The reality was often quite different.
The Spanish government, in order to establish a claim on the potentially lucrative Pacific coast, which was also being explored by the English and Russians, established military posts (presidios) and missions in Alta California, the first of which was San Diego de Alcalá, July 16, 1769. (There was no presidio in Los Angeles, but McCulley needed one for his narrative and put it there.) At first, only the officers could afford to bring their wives and families. The enlisted men found wives among the Indian women, which eventually resulted in a generation of mestizos. In order to establish a more permanent colony, since Spaniards were reluctant to leave Spain or Mexico for a distant frontier, the Spanish government granted amnesty to prisoners if they would settle in Alta California. Some were hardworking people glad of a second chance; some continued their lawless activities. So there were indeed in Alta California all the elements of the myth: a “pure Spanish blood” aristocracy, a subliminal middle class with varying levels of intermarriage, the peons and Indians, on whose backs was created the wealth, be it of mission, hacienda, or rancho, and a bandido element. The bandido became a submyth of the romantic outlaw working on behalf of the poor, with or without a political agenda. The most enduring and useful legacy of Spain was agricultural methods sustainable in an arid land, techniques for raising cattle and sheep, mining expertise, and legal practices, particularly concerning water rights and the concept of community property.24
It is unclear whether the evil governors residing in the Monterey of Zorro’s day were Spanish or Mexican, but of the governors during the years between Mexican independence, which came in 1821, and conquest by the United States in 1848, “Only one of these failed to have a revolution or two during his term of office.”25 Beginning in 1834 the missions were secularized by decrees of the governors. In theory, the land was to become the property of the mission Indians. In practice, since for the most part they were completely ignorant of concepts of deeds and legal ownership (and were by and large not officially enlightened about these matters), the Indians were swindled, and the vast mission estates became the property of rancheros, who raised cattle, or hacienderos, who engaged in agriculture. In an arid country, vast acreage was required, especially for grazing cattle, and water rights themselves were a complex legal specialty.
Between the beginning of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1846 and statehood in 1850, there was “really no government,” and thus the era was an unprecedented period of lawlessness and violent crime, including numerous lynchings, almost all of Mexicans and Indians.26 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had guaranteed the rights of the Californios, conferring automatic citizenship upon those who chose not to return to Mexico. But with statehood, the Californio hacienderos and rancheros were required to establish legal title to their lands, and in the process most of their vast holdings passed into Anglo hands. Unlike the United States’ other acquisitions in the name of Manifest Destiny, California was not a vast space populated by savages, but a quite civilized land which had passed from Spain to Mexico without losing its own sense of national identity. For the Californios, the arrival of the Anglos was a conquest, and their adjustment to being part of the United States was vastly different from that of immigrants from other countries.27 Thus there was some basis in actuality for romanticizing preconquest California, from the nostalgic perpsective of the losing side in a war.
By the time McCulley came to California in 1908, this involved and often ugly history had been thoroughly romanticized, “evoking a past that never existed to cast some glamour on an equally unreal today.”28 The credit (or blame) was largely due to Helen Hunt Jackson, who, after writing A Century of Dishonor in defense of the Indians, came to California, discovered the missions, and inspired their restoration, largely through her novel Ramona. Ramona romanticizes the Indian heroine and hero, the missions, and the haciendas while attacking bigotry toward Indians and their exploitation. Published in 1884, Ramona became incredibly popular, was “translated into all known languages,”29 and its version of mission life came to be accepted as fact. A version of the Ramona drama was first performed in Los Angeles in 1905. It continues to be performed each spring in Hemet, California. It was filmed four times, with Mary Pickford (1910), Adda Gleason (1916), Dolores del Rio (1928), and Loretta Young (1936) in the title role.
In 1894, Los Angeles had begun La Fiesta, a celebration with a parade including caballeros on horseback, señoras, señoritas, authentic Indians imported from Yuma, Arizona, and Chinese dragons, all brought to a halt by a combination of objections to the accompanying rowdiness and tensions leading to the Spanish-American War in 1898.30 In addition, the Spanish Fantasy Past colored the advertisements for real estate, designed to lure Easterners to settle in Los Angeles, and “mission” architecture sprawled over the landscape. Significantly, the fantasy ignored the culture of Mexico and the Mexicans, who were employed, for the most part, in menial jobs, such as making bricks for this fantasy architecture under conditions little better, or possibly worse, than peonage.31
Opening in 1911 and running into the 1930s, John Steven McGroarty’s The Mission Play, depicting California history from the conquistadores to the death of its hero, Junipero Serra, was performed at the Mission San Gabriel, where Zorro’s friend Fray Felipe had presided. It was such a huge hit that people traveled clear across the country and even from overseas to see it and claimed it was better than the Oberammergau Passion Play. McGroarty, who became poet laureate of California, gave perhaps the ultimate romanticization of the Spanish Fantasy Past, writing that “it was around the old missions that the colorful social life of the early Spanish inhabitants centered. Song and laughter filled the sunny mornings. There was feasting and music, the strum of guitars and the click of castanets under the low hanging moons. Toil was easy and the burden of existence light. It was a sheer utopia.”32
McCulley knew better: Don Diego frequently observes that “These be turbulent times.” One of Zorro’s chief activities is helping the Indians and punishing those who abuse them. They in turn help him, several times rescuing him from imprisonment and possible hanging. He also helps the oppressed padres (even though the secularization of the missions did not begin until 1834, and Zorro is usually placed in the 1820s). McCulley fails to connect the abuse of Indians with the missions, where, in fact, they were forced labor, supervised by soldiers and flogged if they ran away or tried to go to another mission.33 In Captain Fly-by-Night, he blames the soldiers’ “license and cruelty,” which “had done much to make the Indians dissatisfied and undo the work of the frailes.”34 McGroarty sentimentalizes history and demeans the Indians, claiming that the Franciscan missionaries “took an idle race and put it to work—a useless race that they made useful in the world ... a heathen race that they lifted up into the great white glory of God.” He calls the missionaries “the patient and loving teachers” of the Indians.35 But
more Indians died than were born under the harshness of mission life, which was, as McWilliams points out, “a nightmare for the Indians.”36
McCulley, Fairbanks, and his wife Mary Pickford must have been aware of the constant presence of Spanish Fantasy California in everything from architecture and Los Angeles boosterism to real-estate advertising. They might possibly have seen either The Mission Play or Ramona or both. Thousands of schoolchildren were taken in groups to The Mission Play, among whom could have been Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Tyrone Power, the 1940 Zorro, was saturated with The Mission Play. His father (also named Tyrone Power) played Father Serra in the 1917 season, and his mother, Patia Power, played the heroine of Act III for years.37 He himself was in it for five seasons, playing a variety of children. “Master Tyrone Power,” then ten years old, appears in the 1924 program credits as “Juanito, an Indian boy,” who sings “La Golondrina.”38 Power would certainly have grown up steeped in the Spanish Fantasy Past, as would filmmakers of Fairbanks’s and Power’s generations. It is not surprising, then, to find the colorful and glamorous elements of this past in The Mark of Zorro and the film versions.
The most recent and literary elaboration on the Zorro story is Isabel Allende’s novel, provisionally titled Zorro: The Legend Begins, published in the summer of 2005. Allende, asking herself how Diego became Zorro, created the first twenty years of his life from 1795 to 1815, with a new perspective on Diego’s years in Spain, where he would have been exposed to the ideals of the rights of man exported by the French Revolution, despite the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s occupation of Spain.39
Zorro also is part of the bandido tradition, most closely associated with the possibly mythical Joaquin Murrieta and the historical Tiburcio Vasquez.40 As well as these local California legendary figures, Zorro is an American version of Robin Hood and similar heroes whose stories blend fiction and history, thus moving Zorro into the timeless realm of legend. The original story takes place in the Romantic era, but, more important, Zorro as Diego adds an element of poetry and sensuality, and as Zorro the element of sexuality, to the traditional Western hero. Not all Western heroes are, as D. H. Lawrence said of Cooper’s Deerslayer, “hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer,”41 but in the Western genre the hero and villain more often than not share these characteristics. What distinguishes Zorro is a gallantry, a code of ethics, a romantic sensibility, and most significant, a command of language and a keen intelligence and wit.
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