Tomás Rivera

Tomás Rivera (1935-1984) is one of the most beloved figures in Chicano literature. Besides authoring a pioneering novel, ... y no se lo tragó la tierra /... And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, and other important shorter works, Rivera was a tireless organizer and popularizer of the Chicano literary movement. Through numerous speeches, essays and formal presentations, as well as through collaborations in small magazines and correspondence with writers around the country, he proclaimed the need for a literature of the Chicano people, he outlined the parameters of such a literature and he offered encouragement and publishing opportunities to younger writers.

Rivera was born and raised in Crystal City, Texas, as the son of Mexican immigrants who became seasonal farmworkers in the migrant stream to the Midwest. Despite the disruptions of migrant labor, Rivera was able to finish high school and, with his parents’ encouragement, only work the fields in the summer months in order to attend college. After continuing his education and earning his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Oklahoma in 1969, his rise in academia was meteoric: just ten years later he was appointed chancellor of the University of California at Riverside. He had held this position for five years when he died of a sudden heart attack in 1984.

Rivera’s most important contribution as a writer has been his novel,... y no se lo tragó la tierra. The inter-related stories that made up the novel are tied together by the central character who is trying to remember and understand his experiences and those of his family. As such, the novel takes on two levels: the first, in which the adolescent searches for his identity in society and the universe and, the second, an ordering of the Chicano experience and the social and psychological forces that condition it.

“First Communion” is one of the central triad of narratives in... y no se lo tragó la tierra. After the adolescent protagonist has confronted God, the Devil and fatalism from within the context of folklore, family and religion, in “First Communion” the adolescent remembers the events leading up to his initiation into the body of the Catholic faithful and into adult society.

“Las Salamandras / The Salamanders,” written in Spanish and later rewritten in English by Rivera, is one of his most touchingly poetic and profound explorations of the heart of darkness. Like much of... y nose lo tragó la tierra, “The Salamanders” is inspired in the migrant labor experience. The story explores alienation and dislocation in the concrete experience of a family looking for work and in the metaphysical struggle with death symbolized by the killing of the salamanders.