… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him
TOMÁS RIVERA
1971

INTRODUCTION

Originally published in Spanish as … y no se lo tragó la tierra,… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him is a seminal work of Chicano literature and one of the first books in the emerging literature of Mexican Americans. Its success made author Tomás Rivera a leading figure in this genre. Written in 1967 and 1968, the book was awarded the premiere Quinto Sol Prize for literature in 1970…. Y no se lo tragó la tierra was first published in 1971 in a bilingual edition, with an English translation by Herminio Ríos. A later translation by Evangelina Vigil-Piñón, first published in 1988, is considered the definitive English version.

From its first publication,… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him has been praised by critics for its depiction of the harsh life of migrant agricultural workers in the United States, its sense of realism that had previously not been a part of Chicano literature, and its innovative literary form. Rivera was himself the son of migrant workers and a migrant worker himself until he completed junior college. Drawing on his background and own experiences, he explores many aspects of this lifestyle and how it affects those directly involved.

Set after World War II, from about 1945 to 1955, the stories and vignettes that make up … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him show the racism and discrimination Chicano migrant workers encountered, even among their peers. Rivera explores the effects of economic and social injustice. While there is much suffering and uncertainty in many of the stories, Rivera also emphasizes the resilience and determination of the migrant workers. Religion and faith play important roles in their lives as do family and community. In addition, Rivera underscores the importance of education as a means of liberation for farm workers and their children. Several stories in the book are specifically about education, unsurprising considering the author's primary career was working at various universities as an instructor, professor, and administrator.

Critics agree about the strength of the stories Rivera tells in … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. In Book Report, Sherry York claims "while [the stories] seem simple, they are powerful tales that portray a dignity in the face of adversity." However, there is critical division over whether the book is a collection of related short stories or a novel. The stories are tied together by a young male narrator who is trying to understand who he is and remember things he does not necessarily completely understand, culminating in the last story of the book, "Under the House." Many of the stories are subjective, involve characters that change from story to story, and lack a definite chronology. A number of them function as anecdotal glimpses into opinions, mentalities, and lives of migrant workers and their families while revealing deeper concerns.

Whether … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him is a collection of short stories or a novel, most critics believe it reveals the realities of Chicano social history. Some of them see it as political, but Luis Leal, writing in Dictionary of Literary Biography, believes, "Rivera transcended the political. He had a deep sympathy and respect for humanity, especially for the migrant workers from whom he drew his inspiration to write and work building a better society in the Americas."

PLOT SUMMARY

The Lost Year

… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him opens with the introduction of the recurring, unnamed young male character in the book. He is trying to come to terms with a lost year, including when and how it began. He is falling asleep, not sure if he is awake or dreaming, and experiences a flood of memories and images.

Vignette 1

Every night he drank the glass of water his mother put under his bed for the spirits. Though he thought about telling her at one point, he decided to do so when he was an adult.

BIOGRAPHY

TOMÁS RIVERA

Rivera was born in Texas in Crystal City, Texas, on December 22, 1935, to Mexican parents who immigrated to the United States and worked as migrant farm workers. Though he was raised migrating between agricultural locations in Texas and the Midwest, he graduated from high school and went on to college. Rivera earned his bachelor's degree in English from Southwest Texas State College in 1958. After finding it difficult to obtain work as a high school teacher because of his race, Rivera returned to Southwest Texas for his master's degree in education, graduating in 1964. In 1969, he earned his Ph.D. in Spanish literature from the University of Oklahoma.

While working as a college instructor and publishing some stories and poems in the late 1960s, Rivera wrote his first book,… y no se lo tragó la tierra (… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him) (1971). The success of the book cemented his place as a leading Chicano author. While Rivera continued to write short stories, poetry, and essays in the 1970s, he focused more on his career, which had shifted to college administration where he felt he could be more influential. In 1979, he was named the president of chancellor of the University of California, Riverside. He held this position until his death on May 16, 1984, in Fontana, California.

The Children Couldn't Wait

It is unusually hot for early April. Their boss only brings them a bucket of water twice a day, but it not enough. Though the adult workers can wait, the children generally cannot and take to drinking from a tank for the cattle. They pretended to be relieving themselves nearby to disguise their frequent breaks for water, but the boss caught on. He does not want them to do drink this water because they are being paid by the hour and drinking the water takes away from the labor. Because one child in particular would drink regularly from the tank, the boss decides to scare him. He shoots at the child when he drinks there, but he accidentally hits the child in the head and kills him. Workers talking about him well after the incident report that he began drinking, lost his ranch, and tried to kill himself. One says, "I think he did go crazy. You've seen the likes of him nowadays. He looks like a beggar." Another replies, "Sure, but that's 'cause he doesn't have any more money."

Vignette 2

A group is gathered to consult a medium who is in a trance. A mother worries about her son, Julianito, who is in the military overseas. She has recently been told that he has been missing in action. The medium assures her that he will becoming back soon.

A Prayer

A mother is praying for the safe return from her son in Korea for the third Sunday in a row. She begs God, Virgin Mary, and other Catholic saints for their assistance. She asks, "Shield his body, cover his head, cover the eyes of the Communists and the Koreans and the Chinese so they cannot see him, so they won't kill him." The mother promises to give her own heart if he returns to her alive.

Vignette 3

Two migrant workers are talking. One worker asks the other if he is going to Utah, in part because he does not believe such a place exists and he does not trust the contractor. The first worker tells him that though he has not been there, he believes it is near Japan.

It's That It Hurts

This first-person story focuses on a child from a migrant family in the North walking home from school. He has just been expelled for hitting a white boy who taunted him, and hit him first. He is worried about telling his family what happened because education is important to them. He is sure he will be beaten. He thinks about a number of things, including how he dislikes how the schools treat him, humiliating him at times. The school nurses have forced him to strip naked to be inspected for lice, although he knows why they feel like they do about members of his community:

On Sundays they sit out in front of the chicken coops picking lice from each other's heads. And the gringos, passing by in their cars, looking and pointing at them. Dad is right when he says that they look like monkeys in the zoo.

It is also not the first fight he has gotten into at school, but the first one was broken up without incident. He worries about his future, as his father wants him to be a telephone operator like he saw once in a movie. He debates about how to explain his school troubles to his parents, thinking, "It's that it hurts and it's embarrassing at the same time."

Vignette 4

One child asks another, "Why do y'all go to school so much?" The student tells him his father makes him go in case there is an opportunity. The first one tells him not to worry about such things because "The poor can't get poorer."

Hand in His Pocket

This first-person story focuses on a young boy who stays with Don Laíto and Doña Bone, acquaintances of his family, while he completes the last three weeks of school. The couple is popular with migrants and whites alike, selling food, clothes, and toys, then giving away what they cannot sell. The couple is nice to him at first, feeding him well but with rotten meat that made him sick.

While there, he has to sleep in an overstuffed storage room, which makes him uncomfortable. As he stays with them, he learns where some of this stuff comes from: They steal things downtown. Though his father paid his room and board, the couple wants him to steal flour, but he refuses because it is wrong. As he is put to work in the yard, more is demanded of him and his food grows worse.

He also sees an old "wetback" without family connections going into the house who visits Doña Bone while Don Laíto is away, and always pays her for services. The boy is not allowed inside when the wetback is inside with Bone. One day, The couple makes him dig what they tell him will be a small cellar. That night when he goes to bed, he finds the body of the wetback in his room, and "The old couple burst into laughter." The couple makes him help them bury the dead man. When his parents come for him a few weeks later, he recalls:

Don Laíto and Doña Bone squeezed me and told me in loud voices, so that Dad could hear, not to say anything or they would tell the police. Then they started laughing and I noticed that Dad had taken it as a joke.

They later send him the dead man's ring, which he carries with him.

Vignette 5

The boy decides to get a haircut before going to a movie, but the barbers at the shop near the theater refuse to serve him. He is told by the barber "That he couldn't cut his hair." They even shoo him from in front of the theater, at which point he goes home to find his father.

A Silvery Night

A boy is enthralled by the idea of the devil. One night, in defiance of his parents, he stays awake while everyone in his family goes to sleep. Leaving just before midnight, he walks to a knoll and tries to summon the devil. Though he tries every verbal trick he can think of, nothing happens. When he goes to sleep that night he comes to a conclusion: "Those who summon the devil went crazy, not because the devil appeared, but just the opposite, because he didn't appear."

Vignette 6

A Protestant minister comes to the farm and tells the migrant worker men that another man will come out to them to teach them manual skills, primarily carpentry. Learning the skills will free them from fieldwork. When a man comes two weeks later, he has the minister's wife with him and the pair does not teach any skills to the laborers. The couple later run off together.

And the Earth Did Not Devour Him

The eldest son of a farm labor family is angry because of the illnesses that have devastated his family. First his aunt and uncle die from tuberculosis, and his father suffers from severe sunstroke working in the fields. His father might die from the illness. The son prays to God for assistance, but he grows frustrated and furious when God does not intervene. While his mother still believes God will help, the son is not so sure. He tells his mother, "I tell you, God could care less about the poor."

Because his mother stays home to take care of his father, the son is in charge of his siblings as they work in the fields. He tells them the plan for the working but escaping from the worst heat of the day, emphasizing that they should stop if they feel faint. In the heat of afternoon, the youngest boy gets sunstroke symptoms. The son worries about his little brother dying as he carries him to the house. He curses God aloud, then worries that the earth will swallow him for the sacrilege he has just committed. Nothing happens, a fact that gives him a sense of peace that night. Both his father and brother start to improve by morning, and, "He thought of telling his mother, but decided to keep it secret. All he told her was that the earth did not devour anyone, nor did the sun."

Vignette 7

A paralyzed grandfather asks one of his visiting grandsons what he wanted most in life. The grandson says for the ten years to pass immediately so he will know what will happen in his life when he is older. "The grandfather told him he was very stupid and cut off the conversation," and the grandson only understands his grandfather's words when he is an adult.

First Communion

A first-person male narrator looks back at the day of his First Communion, and can recall every detail. He could not sleep the night before the event because he was trying to remember all his sins to confess beforehand. He recalls, "The real truth was that we practiced a lot telling our sins, but the real truth was that I didn't understand a lot of things."

He remembers getting up early that day and going to church earlier than his mother anticipated. When he arrived at church, it was closed. As he walked around the church, he saw a couple having sex on the floor of the cleaners next door. He remembers, "I couldn't get my mind off of what I had seen. I realized then that maybe those were the sins we committed with our hands."

Back at church, he felt guilty, believing he committed a sin of the flesh. When he went to confession, he told the priest two hundred sins, but not what he had seen at the cleaners. After the ceremony, he went home and saw things had changed. He saw the adults, including his parents, naked and laughing. He left the house as soon as he could, though his relatives found it to be disrespectful, and ran to a thicket. While thinking, he found he enjoyed remembering what he saw and that his world had not changed.

Vignette 8

The boy tears a button off his shirt when his teacher needs one for a class project. His action surprises her because of his poverty, and "She didn't know whether he did this to be helpful, to feel like he belonged or out of love for her." She is especially amazed by "the intensity of the child's desire."

The Little Burnt Victims

The five members of the García family, parents, two young sons, and a young daughter, come home from seeing a movie about boxing. The father, Efraín, is inspired to turn his children into boxers, hoping one might be a champion. He buys boxing gloves and rubs a little alcohol on their chests like the boxers in the movie. On Monday, the parents go and work in the fields, leaving their sleeping children home. Don Efraí tells his wife, "I love my children so much, like you…. I was thinking about how much they also like to play with us."

That morning, field workers see flames coming from near the farm. The Garcías' shack family home is on fire, and only the oldest son survives the blaze. He had put the boxing gloves on his young siblings and rubbed alcohol on their chest. When he made them food, the kerosene tank exploded, young ones caught on fire and the blaze quickly spread. The gloves survive the fire.

Vignette 9

Before a wedding, the groom and his father decorate the bride's family's backyard. They put water down on the soil so that dust will not blow when people dance under the canvas tent. After the couple is married in the church, the couple walks down the street with their godparents and children announce their approach.

The Night the Lights Went Out

One night, the lights go out in a town for no obvious reason. There had been a dance, which ended when the electricity went out. The next day, people talk about what happened.

Ramón was in love with Juanita. Before she traveled to Minnesota to work in the fields with her family, she promised to marry him and not see anyone else while she was away. She spent time with another boy there, a "smooth talker" named Ramiro from San Antonio, while telling Ramón that she was faithful. His friends who were there told him what was going on.

Ramón was devastated by the news and began drinking. He vowed that when they were together again, he would take her away with him. Juanita rationalized her behavior because she was just talking to Ramiro and she still loved Ramón. She went to a dance with Ramiro, and she danced with him the whole night and promised to see him again when they returned south.

Ramón confronted her when she came back, and they broke off their relationship. He told her not to dance with anyone if she was planning to go to the dance that night. Juanita went with some of her friends and when Ramón arrived, she danced with the first boy she saw. She then argued with Ramón, who threatened to kill himself. He left, and the lights blacked out. He had gone to a nearby power plant and held on to a transformer, where the power workers found him. Others agreed that it was because they were so in love.

Vignette 10

There is an accident on the freeway in which a white woman who is driving drunk hits a truck transporting field workers early in the morning. Immediately, a number of workers are thrown from the truck and the rest become trapped inside as it catches on fire. Sixteen people die in the accident.

The Night Before Christmas

As Christmas nears, Doña María wants to buy her children presents. Her husband would bring them candies and nuts, and when they asked for toys, she always told them to wait until January 6, the day of the Magi: "Why don't you wait until the day of the Reyes Magos. That's when the toys really arrive." These gifts never come, and she always reassured them that they were good children.

Because her husband works long hours at a restaurant, she has to go a few blocks by herself to buy the toys. She is afraid to do so, having previously gotten lost in Wilmar, Minnesota, because she never goes anywhere by herself. Doña María is determined to make this Christmas special.

The next day, she starts walking to the store. Once downtown, her ears are ringing. She wants to go back but feels caught up in the crowd. She finally finds the store, which is also crowded, and feels disoriented. She finds some presents, puts them in a bag, and walks to the exit. Outside, she is accused of theft and collapses.

At jail, her husband takes care of things with the help of a notary public. They explain about her anxiety attacks, and she is freed. Doña María worries that she will be forced to go to the mental hospital and they will lose everything. Her husband reassures her and tells her to stay home from now on, and wants to tell the children there is no Santa Claus so they will not bother her about it. He agrees to maintain the myth of the Magi, saying, "I suppose it's always best to have hope." Their children overhear this conversation and do not say anything when presents do not show up in January.

Vignette 11

For five dollars each, a priest blesses the cars of workers before the travel north to work. With the money he makes, he is able to travel home to Spain to visit his family. He puts postcards of a modern Spanish church by the entrance of his parish, suggesting that they could have a nicer church. He does not understand why people deface the images.

The Portrait

A portrait salesman from San Antonio works a neighborhood. He sells a package with an enlargement and a wood frame for thirty dollars. Don Mateo and his wife have only one picture of their son who died in the Korean War. They buy the package and let the salesman take the picture. When the salesman does not return in a month, they become suspicious. Some children playing in the tunnels after a heavy rain finds the salesman's suitcase full of damaged and destroyed pictures, including their son's. Don Mateo goes to San Antonio to find the swindler who took advantage of him and his neighbors. When Don Mateo finds the salesman, he confronts him and demands he complete the work. The salesman does so from memory. Though Don Mateo does not remember what his son looks like anymore, he is sure the resulting portrait looks like him.

Vignette 12

Some people talk about Figueroa, who has just gotten out of prison but is ill with an odd sickness. Figueroa went to jail because he was involved with a seventeen-year-old white girl who came with him from Wisconsin. They believe that a white person turned him in and he had no one defending him. They expect he "won't last a year" because of his "strange disease."

When We Arrive

A truck carrying migrant workers breaks down at four o'clock in the morning. Inside the truck, the workers think about what has been happening to them and what they plan to do in the future. One man hopes to buy a car so his family can travel in more comfort while another worries about work and debt. One likes the driver, while the driver plans to drop them off with the growers and letting the workers find their own way back to Texas. He thinks, "Each one to fend for himself." Together, they focus on what they will do when they arrive at the destination as dawn breaks.

Vignette 13

The boy remembers Bartolo, a poet who incorporates the names of locals in his work. He sells his poems in December when people return home from working in the north with cash. Bartolo tells the people to read them aloud "because the spoken word was the seed of love in the darkness."

Under the House

The boy hides under a house instead of going to school. While he enjoys it at first, the fleas that are soon biting him move. As he lies there, he remembers things his father said about events involving himself and others. Included are bits of information about some of the tales in … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him such as the night the lights went out and Doña María's attack. He thinks, "I would like to see all of the people together. And then, if I had great big arms, I could embrace them all…. I think today what I wanted to do was recall this past year. And that's just one year."

He is jerked into the present when children from the house start throwing rocks at him. Their mother pushes at him with boards. They do not know who it is until he comes out from under the house. The mother thinks he might be mentally incapacitated like his mother, but he is content and sure that he still has everything.

THEMES

Education

Throughout … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, Rivera emphasizes the importance of education as a means to a better life, a bedrock principle of so many American dreams. Though "Hand in His Pocket" is not exclusively about education, the reason the protagonist is staying with the fiendish Don Laíto and Doña Bone for three weeks is to finish the school year. The narrator says, "All that my parents wanted was for me to finish school so I could find me some job that wasn't so hard."

The fourth vignette of the book focuses exclusively on school in similar terms. In a dialogue between two young Latinos, one asks the other the reason for his or her regular attendance at school. The reply underscores education as an opening: "My Dad says it's to prepare us. He says that someday there's an opportunity, maybe they'll give it to us." Vignette 8 looks at education from a teacher's point of view when a poor boy removes a button from what she believes is his only shirt for a school poster. She is deeply moved by the gesture of her enthusiastic student.

The loss of an educational opportunity can be devastating. In "It's That It Hurts," the young male protagonist has been thrown out of school for hitting a white student who hit him first. While the protagonist does not like the discrimination he faces, he is more immediately concerned with how he is going to explain his expulsion to his parents. They want him to finish school so he can become a telephone operator and lead a better life. Walking home, the boy tries to think of how to explain what happened and how he must live with the disappointment of his extended family.

Racism

Rivera also catalogs many forms of discrimination his Latino and Latina characters face in their every day life and work. The central character in "It's That It Hurts" talks about several incidents at school in which he is treated poorly because of his race and migrant status. He recounts to his parents one particularly embarrassing incident in which he is forced to strip naked in front of the school nurse to be checked for lice. When the migrant workers' children enter schools in the North, they are always checked for lice, which humiliates them.

Later in this same story, Rivera outlines more explicitly stereotypical generalizations. The central character says that he was picked on for being Mexican, with one student saying to him "I don't like Mexicans because they steal." Even the fight that gets him expelled was started by this white boy, who hits him without warning. One school administrator says of the protagonists' people, "they could care less if I expel him … They need him in the fields."

Not all the incidents of poor treatment are accepted quietly. Another act of discrimination is the focus of Vignette 5: refusal of service. A young man of indeterminate age goes to a barbershop to get his hair cut before seeing a movie. The barbers ignore him, then tell him that they could not his hair. The racism continues after he is told to leave the barbershop. One barber told him to leave again when he waited outside for the theater to open. Unlike the young character in "It's That It Hurts," this one is not afraid to tell his father what happened. Likewise, when a portrait salesman hustles a whole Spanish-speaking neighborhood in "The Portrait," Rivera shows one man, Don Mateo, going after him and getting the picture of his only son, which he had already paid for. The characters' resistance to second-class treatment is a part of their striving for something better in life.

Survival

In … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, many characters do what they have to survive their circumstances in ways big and small. These stories generally focus on work and the effects of conditions of migrant labor on their families. In "The Children Couldn't Wait," for example, the children of the migrant workers on the ranch do what they must to get the water they need. The boss of the ranch will only allow them to drink water twice a day, though it is extremely hot, to ensure their productivity. The children start sneaking drinks from a tank for cattle to get enough water to drink. While this defiance ultimately leads to the death of one of the children, the boss who kills the youngster suffers for his actions. The boss loses status, livelihood, and sanity for going to extremes to deny people water.

Not every act of survival leads to a balanced outcome in Rivera's book. In "The Little Burnt Victims," Don Efraín and Doña Chona are a migrant couple with three young children. They are forced to leave their children alone while they work in the fields. They worry about their children's safety, but this work is their only means of survival. Don Efraín's enthusiasm for boxing as a potential means of a better life literally goes up in smoke as the children's imitation of his actions leads to a fire. Two of the children die in the blaze, and the family grieves for the loss caused, Rivera implies, by their life circumstances.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Chicano Farm Workers in the 1940s and 1950s

… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him is set after World War II, reflecting the period when the author lived the life of a child of migrant farm workers. Millions of Mexican Americans came to the United States during and after World War II to work as farm laborers. Though a significant number were illegal immigrants, many stayed in America and made it their home. In the early 1950s, the U.S. government tried to curb the immigration though the federal program called Operation Wetback. This program called for several coordinated agencies to find and deport illegal Mexican immigrants. Many Chicanos, both legal and illegal immigrants, settled in urban environments, often in barrios (Spanish-speaking enclaves).

Many Chicanos continued to work as migrant farm laborers in the 1940s and 1950s. Picking crops was an intense labor process involving many long hours of hard, back-breaking work. Workers were put in direct contact with pesticides and pesticide-laden crops, which could lead to health problems. Not every grower provided sanitary water and/or living quarters. The conditions under which migrant farm workers lived and labored were often appalling and contributed to continued, deep poverty. Some farmers treated their migrant farm laborers well, but others treated them poorly or devised reasons to not pay them at all. Another reason for their poverty was federal legislation. During the New Deal, legislation passed such as the Wagner Act and federal farm programs benefited farmers who owned their land. Migratory farm workers were but one category of laborers who were not covered by minimum wage or Social Security requirements, leaving them with little federal wage protection or long-term support.

Chicano Labor Movement

When Rivera was writing his book, primarily from 1967 to 1968, Chicano labor struggles were a leading social issue in the United States. Influenced by the black civil rights and Black Power movements, many Hispanics became politically active. One of the best-known Chicano activists was César Chávez, who was the son of farm workers and who worked as a produce picker himself as a teenager. While the migrant farm workers had tried to organize a union in the 1920s and each decade afterward, it was not until Chávez became a leader in the movement in the 1960s that victories were achieved.

Chávez was a head of what became the United Farm Workers union, which was the first Hispanic-led group to garner attention on a massive scale. This union wanted to organize farm workers, making their plight the center of national attention. One of Chávez's first labor successes came in 1965. He led a strike against grape growers while demanding higher wages for grape pickers. Chávez also encouraged Americans to boycott grapes as a means of supporting the union. The strike lasted for five years, leading to a federal inquiry, and a victory for the union. The United Farm Workers achieved other victories in the early 1970s via strikes and boycotts, winning higher wages for workers who were employed by certain other growers. Chávez's political activities with the United Farm Workers also led to the founding of other farm worker unions and more marches in support of the rights of farm workers.

Farm workers were not the only politically active Hispanic Americans in this time period. Chicano activists seized land in northern New Mexico. In cities like Los Angeles and Denver, urban Chicano movements were organized. National meetings of Chicano students were held in Denver in 1969 and 1970, which led to a number of publications that emphasized cultural nationalism. A group with militant leanings called the Brown Berets worked to feed preschoolers. They also taught Chicano studies and raised the cultural and political consciousness of older Chicano students.

Crystal City, Texas

In the1960s, Rivera's native Crystal City, Texas, was the focal point of several important incidents of Mexican American politics. The majority of the population in the city was Latino, many of whom were migratory farm workers who went to the Midwest to harvest crops every year. In 1963, the Chicano majority won five seats on the city council and held this majority for five years. This political victory helped start the Chicano movement of political and social activism. A few years later, Crystal City saw the founding of La Raza Unida, a radical political party led by Mexican Americans. In 1969, the party won a majority of offices in Crystal City and the surrounding Zavala County, taking over from a white minority population. Eventually, La Raza Unida established local power bases throughout the Southwest and California.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him has been recognized as a significant piece of Hispanic American literature since it was published in a bilingual edition in 1971. Writing in the Modern Language Journal, William H. González calls it "One of the outstanding examples of this new literature," referring to Chicano literature. The critic goes on to claim that "This book is a summary of the past, a living present, and a base for the future of Chicano literature."

By 1988, when another translation of the book was published,… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him was called "a classic Chicano novel" by Booklist. Believing this translation, by Evangelina Vigil-Piñón, is superior to the 1971 version by Herminio Ríos, Carl R. Shirley in Western American Literature writes, "This book is a landmark in Chicano letters, one of the best and most famous, and it should be read by anyone hoping to learn the least bit about the field."

Among other things, critics of … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him comment on how Rivera drew his characters and depicted their often difficult circumstances. Ralph F. Grajeda of Hispania explains, "Throughout the book some tension is created between the opposing values of resignation and rebellion as the people are shown enduring the repetitive hardships of the present, and as they anticipate their future." Similarly, Doñaldo W. Urioste, in his essay "The Child's Process of Alienation in Tomas Rivera's … y no se lo trago la tierra," claims,

If … Rivera's explicit objective was to critically document migrant life, he has indeed been successful. By the novel's end not only have we been made aware of that existence with its many degradations, but we are also in a position to make critical judgments about the different forces that have caused and perpetuated such oppressive conditions.

Rivera's unique narrative technique also garnered critical attention. Don Graham of Texas Monthly asserts "the work owes more to James Joyce than to realistic American novels that deal with similar material—a people dispossessed of land and forced to take to the road to earn a living." Graham is one critic who weighed into the debate over whether … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him is a collection of short stories or a novel, arguing for the former. Writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Luis Leal explains: "The fragmented structure of Rivera's novel has led some critics (Daniel P. Testa and Juan Rodríguez, for example) to consider the work as a collection of short stories, yet there are unifying elements." Leal is one of many critics who regards the book as a novel.

In addition,… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him is also praised for its dialogue. In Voice of Youth Advocates, Delia A. Culberson reviews a Spanish edition of the book and finds Rivera's use of language inspiring. She says, "With dialogue rich in idiomatic expressions and popular slang, Rivera's powerful prose brings to life memorable characters." She also believes of the book as a whole, "this enlightening, unforgettable book conveys a feeling of great spiritual strength, an innate zest for life, and the constant hope of a better tomorrow."

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

… And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him (1995) is an adaptation of the classic work of Chicano fiction … y no se lo tragó la tierra (… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him). Directed and written by Severo Perez, the adaptation stars Jose Alcala, Rose Portillo, and Marco Rodríguez. Originally filmed for KPBS-TV (San Diego, California) and aired on American Playhouse, the work was eventually released as a film…. And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him is available on VHS from Kino International.

SOURCES

Culberson, Delia A., Review of … y no se lo trago la tierra, in Voice of Youth Advocates, Vol. 19, June 1996, p. 104.

González, William H., Review of … y no se lo trago la tierra, in The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 57, No. 4, April 1973, p. 229.

Graham, Don, "Don Graham's Texas Classics," in Texas Monthly, Vol. 29, No. 3, March 2001, p. 26.

Grajeda, Ralph F., "Tomás Rivera's … y no se lo tragó la tierra: Discovery and Appropriation of the Chicano Past," in Hispania, Vol. 62, No. 1, March 1979, pp. 71-81.

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Urioste, Donaldo W., "The Child's Process of Alienation in Tomas Rivera's … y no se lo trago la tierra," in The Chicano Struggle: Analyses of Past and Present Efforts, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1984, pp. 178-91.

York, Sherry, Review of … y no se lo trago la tierra, in Book Report, Vol. 15, No. 2, September-October 1996, p. 45.