challenging our dreams

8/8/2019 Challenging Our Dreams

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CHALLENGING OUR DREAMS: ANTONIO MACHADO, THE ROAD, AND THE DREAMKeynote presentation at the LULAC Council 8003 Annual Scholarship Event, Western NewMexico University, July 31, 2010

By Felipe de Ortego y GascaScholar in Residence and Chair of the Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies,Western New Mexico University

n that grand soliloquy of Hamlet, after his to be or not to be introduction, he pondersthe question: to sleep, perchance to dream, ay there s the rub, meaning: how are weto know what dreams may come when we sleep? It seems to me that much of human-

kind spend their lives sleeping I mean going about their lives asleep at the wheel, so tospeak, somnambulant day after day, letting life slip by them, afraid or unwilling to dream,that is, afraid or unwilling to dream the dream of a tomorrow-in-the-morning or of somedistant day in the future. And yet that s an essential dream we must all dream as we facethe future, trying to determine our stake in that future. Otherwise we are always buffetedby the vicissitudes of life, always at the effect of life rather than at cause in life that is, al-ways in control of our lives.

But it s not enough just to dream for dreams are just velleities, wishful thinking. How totranslate our dreams into realities: that s the challenge. Dreams do not sui generis by them-selves become our future. It s not enough to know that each of us can become what we

want to become. Those are empty words. Repeating that mantra to our children:mi jo/mi ja you can be whatever you want to be is misleading unless we add pero tienes

que prepararte /you have to be prepared, to do what is required to be what you want to be.

In an incisive poem, the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875-1939) wrote: caminante, nohay camino. Se hace el camino al andar traveler, there is no road. The road is con-structed step by step.

Step by step, that s how the roads of futures are constructed. No magic wand takes us fromhere to there, no red shoes like Dorothy s, no time machine, no Scottie to beam us up. Four

hundred years ago in The Tempest (1610), Shakespeare s Prospero opines: we are such stuff / as dreams are made on, and our little life / is rounded with a sleep. We are indeed such stuff as dreams are made on. No hay futuro sin los sueos there is no future without dreams butour little life need not be rounded only with a sleep, that is, brief as our lives may be we neednot end them in a sleep, T.S. Eliot notwithstanding, we can end them with a bang, not a whimper.We must not be beguiled by the pessimism of Calderon de la Barca that la vida es sueo y los

sueos sueos son , that life is a dream and dreams are but dreams. Dreams are the stuff of life.

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Strange how the road has become the popular metaphor for the trajectory of life. In Englishliterature, there are references to dream of the rood that date back to the 7 th century. We dontknow who but we know when. In the literature of antiquity, of ages past, there are countlessreferences to the road and the dream. The road takes us always to perdition or salvationto hellor the hill, to that shining emblematic city of the future. But the metaphor of the road and thedream poses a dilemma when we reach a fork in the road of life. Robert Frost helps us surmountthat dilemma with his poem The Road Not Taken:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, just as fair,Having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing there,Had worn them really bout the same.

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

And II took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Life will posemany such dilemmas for us. How can we know with any certainty which road to take? We cantknow that. What we do know is that we are faced with a choice. And, more often than not, thechoice can make all the difference. We must have the courage to choose.

With a sigh, now ages hence, and apologies to Robert Frost, let me tell you a story. In 1969 Iwas a teaching fellow in the English Department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquer-que. After 4 years of summer doctoral work at UNM, I had taken my comprehensive doctoralexamination and had written three chapters of a dissertation on Chaucer. That fall Louis Brans-


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ford, newly appointed director of Chicano Studies at UNM, first such program in the state, askedme to organize a class on Chicano literature which I did with gusto. What I didnt know was thatorganizing and teaching that class would change my life. After that experience, at the start of theSpring semester in 1970, I went to Joe Zavadil, head of the English Department, to tell him Iwanted to change my dissertation topic. His jaw dropped and he looked at me as if I was crazy.

You what? he bellowed.

I repeated my intention to which he shook his head, saying Youre almost finished withyour dissertation on Chaucer.

I know, I said, but I want to change my dissertation topic to one in Chicano literature. Ihad chosen a Chaucer dissertation because I had written a Masters thesis on Hamlet, identified

by the renowned Shakespearean scholar Haldeen Braddy as the most provocative in a century of Hamlet studies. But knowing so little about Chicano literature I wanted to know more. I alreadyknew about Chaucer and Shakespeare. Why had no one in the schools I went to taught me theliterature of my people? Why after 122 years were we not in the textbooks?

Acknowledging my intention, Joe Zavadil said shaking his head, Ill approve the change, but youll have to find 3 faculty members for a new committee.

I did. I found 3 of the newest members of the department (all younger than me) who agreed to bea committee for my new dissertation topic. Scant as it was, I was the only one with any expe-rience with the topic but, as it turned out, I had organized and taught the first course in Chicanoliterature in the country. And now there I was raring to write a dissertation on Chicano literatureabout which I had a lot to learn.

As it turned out, my dissertation on Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (University of New Mexico 1971) was the first study in the field. I delayed earning the doctorate by about ayear. What I didnt know until much later was that I was the first Mexican American to earn thePh.D. in English at the University of New Mexico; and would be only the fifth Mexican Ameri-can in the country with that degree. Today there are more than a hundred. Still not many.

That decision transformed my life. I went on to frame the production of Chicano literature as a

Chicano Renaissance within a timeline of Mexican American literature that stretched from1848 to 1970. My essay on the The Chicano Renaissance (cited as the most seminal in thefield) was published in the Journal of Social Casework in May of 1971. It may seems strange to

publish a work on literature in a journal of social work. In 1971 few peopleespecially editorsof literary journalscared about or knew anything about Chicano literature.


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In the words of Antonio Machado, my road to Chicano literature was constructed one step at atime. Importantly, oftentimes we dont know in advance who or what we will become. The roadmay lead us to that destination or discovery. For me, coming to that fork in the road in 1970, theroad not taken was the Chaucer road. I took the one less traveled, and that has made all the dif-ference.

To our emerging scholars whom we honor tonight with scholarshipsgathered by nickels anddimes from bingos and enchilada sales by mothers and fathers, abuelos and abuelas, viejitos andviejitas who want the best for their children and grandchildrenI say challenge your dreams.Con ganas se realizan . With determination, make them a reality. Si, se puede! Como deca Cesar Chavez, as Cesar Chavez would say.

In closing let me reveal that I only completed one year of high school. I never got a GED. Withonly one year of high school, but having served in the Marine Corps during World War II, theUniversity of Pittsburgh admitted me as a provisional GI Bill student in 1948. Later, in 1952, asan ROTC student at Pitt, I was commissioned a 2 nd Lt in the Air Force Reserve. I served subse-quently 9 years in the active Air Force, exiting as a Reserve Major. All together, I served 12years in the U.S. military: during World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the early Vietnam Era.Todavia no termino con el camino . Willy Nelson and I are both still on the road.

Gracias y que Dios los bendiga!

Copyright 2010 by the author. All rights reserved.

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