Magdalena, Streeby, and International Race Romance

I’ve chosen to revisit Shelley Streeby’s thoughts on international race romance (in the context of war literature) in light of Ned Buntline’s Magdalena, The Beautiful Mexican Maid. A Story of Buena Vista.

In American Sensations, Streeby notes that “International romances between U.S. soldiers and elite Mexican women” (like between Brackett and Magdalena) “were often represented in the popular literature as a benign form of imperial conquest or as an alternative to it: the romance plots of a good deal of cheap war fiction were echoed by contemporary calls to conquer Mexico by ‘whitening’ it through transnational heterosexual unions” (64). In the case of Magdalena, I think that their relationship serves more as an alternative to imperial conquest, though it most certainly works to “whiten” both Magdalena and her family.

We can see the “whitening” power of Brackett and Magdalena’s union in the passage I selected. Toward the end of the novel, as Magdalena is watching the battle from afar and rooting for her husband, she and her father have the following conversation:

“A strange transformation has love worked in your heart, my daughter!” said Don Ignatio. “A few days since and on bended knees you would have prayed for the success of the Mexican arms, now you seem only to fear for the defeat of the Americans!”

“It is true my father, but when I wedded him, I became an American. We are not Mexicans. Spain alone has a right to our allegiance. Why should we hope for the Mexicans to conquer in this battle? That this now quiet city should be filled with troops of rude and licentious men, who respect no law and are governed by no principles?” (Buntline 96-7)

The heterosexual US/Mexico union in this text works as an alternative to imperial conquest because it erases the “Mexican maid” Magdalena of her Mexican identity altogether. The most interesting part of that transformation is that not only she, but her father and sister are included in this whitening. And despite the fact that until recently the Valdezes were Mexican, and the fact that we have seen honorable behavior from Mexicans like General Vazquez, here the Mexican is painted as only a copy of Alfrede. And though earlier in the text she was identifying with the Mexican nation (calling Brackett her “foe”), the union with an American erases this national allegiance and will only admit allegiance to America and Spain. This remembrance of Spain is odd, but I think it does two things. First, it reminds us of both Magdalena’s and Brackett’s “high birth” because Valdez was “one of the proudest names in Spain” (67). This validates their union socially and racially, and is another reason why Magdalena might find it so easy to shrug off her Mexican identity. Second, aligning the US with Spain validates the conquest of Mexico––equating the US with knights, power, and high culture and Mexico with a “mongrel race” (Streeby quoting Lippard 55).

Streeby notes that “efforts to forget or redescribe the project of empire-building are often attempts to ward off evidence showing that U.S. expansion is not peaceful, non-aggressive, benignly republican, or directed toward an inexhaustible wilderness” (58). Though there are definitely battles detailed in Buntline’s text, the most interesting battle is the one between Brackett and Alfrede. The US soldier gallantly saves the high-born Spanish lady from a Mexican rogue (and rapist/murderer), and this union erases her Mexican identity. But I don’t think Buntline is optimistic about this type of union working. In the end, it doesn’t matter that the US and Mexico are united in a marriage that erases the unwanted Mexican identity because the physical and practical reality of war overpowers that union. In the end, the Mexican cannot simply be married away––it must be destroyed.