Daniel Schreiner

The Once and Future Chicano – World

Literatures Between Intra-History and
Utopian Vision: An Interview with Alejandro
Morales¹
We don’t have to write about the great heroes of our time, we can write about simple people
who are very powerful in their own way.²
– Alejandro Morales

The socio-critical prose and the literary techniques of the Californian writer and
scholar Alejandro Morales are unique within the canon of Mexican American lit-
erature of the last decades. Morales’s style and variety of themes differs signifi-
cantly from other contemporary Chicana/o authors, influenced as it is by his ed-
ucation in Latin and world literatures at U.S. universities. Writers of the Latin
American Boom such as Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpent-
ier, and Jorge Luis Borges, as well as North American and European authors such
as James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Theodore Dreiser, had a deep impact on
Morales’s storytelling. Despite of his socio-critical preference for themes that
deal with questions of immigration, commemorative culture, worker rights, bor-
ders, religion, feminism, and transculturation, Morales never was an activist of
the Chicano movimiento. Within the U.S. university system, he rather chooses to
influence the (Mexican‐)American discourse of social and cultural participation
as a teacher and writer. Being positioned more or less outside the mystic-Marxist-
Chicano nationalist discourse, Morales hence must be considered as an impor-
tant international author of contemporary world literature who masters various
techniques of style and narration. Morales’s stories go beyond the Mexican
American realm with references to world history and art. Often Morales applies
intra-history approaches and elements of biographic metafiction that enable him
to create his very own historical style of narration, documenting and explaining
history in everyday lives. Combining magical realism and a very morbid visual
technique of wording in the tradition of the German poet and physician Gottfried
Benn, Morales’s novels turn out to be fabulous portraits of society, or fables of

 Interview conducted June 10 – 11, 2015 in Irvine, California.

 Yves Charles Grandjeat and Alfonso Rodríguez, “Interview with Chicano Writer Alejandro Mo-
rales,” Confluencia, 7.1 (1991): 113.

https://doi.org/9783110532913-010
172 Daniel Schreiner

the present, evolving plots along utopian ideas and discussing the future of the
Americas.
Alejandro Morales was born in 1944 and grew up in the Simons Brick Com-
pany town of Montebello, California, the youngest son of the Mexican immigrant
couple Delfino Morales and Juana Contreras. Exposed to early gang experiences,
Morales wrote his first fragments of literature during high school. Those stories
would later become his first novel, Caras viejas y vino Nuevo. Morales earned his
B.A. from California State University, Los Angeles and started working as a teach-
er at a Claremont high school for some years before he moved to the U.S. East
Coast to start a doctoral program in Latin American literature at Rutgers Univer-
sity. In the early 1970s, Morales could not find a publisher who was interested in
Caras viejas y vino nuevo; not even the just-founded Chicano publishing house
Quinto Sol in Berkeley was interested because the novel drew a negative and vi-
olent picture of life in the Mexican American barrio. Literary scholar Francisco
Lomelí, who translated Caras viejas y vino Nuevo into English, figured that Mo-
rales belonged with Ron Arias or Isabella Ríos to an “isolated generation,”
whose authors had a stronger aesthetic than political approach as Chicano liter-
ature evolved out of the late 1960s.³ When Morales moved to Mexico City to con-
duct research at the Centro de Estudos Literarios at the Autonomous University
of Mexico (UNAM), he met agents of La Editorial Joaquín Moritz, one of the most
important Mexican publishing houses, who distributed also the work of Octavio
Paz, José Agustín, Elena Garro, Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Vicente Leñero, and Rosario
Castellanos. After his return to the United States, Morales started working as a
professor of Spanish literature and Chicano culture at the University of Califor-
nia, Irvine (UCI), a position he holds to this day. Although he has various duties
at UCI and a very engaging and caring teaching style, Morales always finds the
time to work on his novels, which has drawn worldwide attention from scholars.
With La verdad sin voz (1979), Reto en el paraíso (1983), The Brick People
(1988), The Rag Doll Plagues (1992), Waiting to Happen (2001), The Captain of

 “In the novel, the authors cultivate a distinctive narrative voice while opting for more literary
and less explicit social concerns. Alejandro Morales in Caras viejas y vino nuevo […] shatters de-
corum in terms of language and imagery while offering a devastating depiction of a hard-core
barrio. It is quite obvious why Quinto Sol did not accept the manuscript for the infernal ambi-
ence and brutal characters lack any semblance of idealism. This x-ray view of both environment
and persons probes into effects more than causes, but the amplifications of the latter certainly
confirm the origins of violence internalized through the process of victimization. The work, then,
in its totality embodies a profound look into how a people are reduced to an infra-human level.”
Francisco Lomelí, “Contemporary Chicano Literature, 1959 – 1990,” in Handbook of Hispanic Cul-
ture in the United States: Literature and Art, ed. Francisco Lomelí (Houston: Arte Público P, 1993):
98.
 The Once and Future Chicano 173

All These Men of Death (2008), River of Angels (2014), and Little Nation (2014),
Morales wrote various novels in Spanish or English, unique in their style and
elaboration.
In 2013, Stanford University acquired Morales’s papers to create an Alejan-
dro Morales archive. Morales currently is working on a novel, Rainbow of Colors,
which does not focus on the Mexican American experience. Instead, Rainbow of
Colors is based upon the letters of Morales’s father-in-law, who lived and worked
in Japan for the quarter-century leading up to the Second World War, and his
friendship with a French artist, Paul Jacoulet, who became a master of Japanese
woodblock prints.

Interview

D.S.: How would you explain the following terms of self-identification and which
one do you prefer: Latino, Chicano, Hispanic, Mexican-American?

A.M.: The Latino population of the United States is heterogeneous; there isn’t
any one term that can explain its racial and ethnic diversity. There is no one def-
inition or explanation of these terms. Everybody has a version of what they
mean. I am not partial to any one of the terms that attempt to define people
and culture. I am not into defining culture, because culture is constantly chang-
ing. It is like language, constantly changing. I am all of these terms. But there are
people, like some politicians, who see me and think wetback, beaner, illegal alien
rapist and other pejorative terms. I am also all of that too, at least in the eyes of
folks who hold negative attitudes toward Mexicans, Central Americans, and
other Latino groups. Today it seems that a lot of writers do not want to be called
Chicano. Well, I started as a Chicano writer and that is what I am. But I am also
an American writer. I definitely do not like the terms or labels that place me in a
niche, that categorize me. In terms of my writing, it has been identified as Chi-
cano, historical, historiographic metafiction, intra historical, speculative, magi-
cal realism, fantastic, science fiction, ethnic, dystopian, biographical – and you
can add many more terms and labels to the list. I am guilty.
I do not like to be called a historical writer because I write about every-day
Mexicanos and Anglo-Americans and about other racial and ethnic groups living
and struggling to make a life. So I do not like literary labels, nor the ethnic labels
to identify me, whether it be negative, derogatory or positive terms.
I feel writers should write about whatever interests them, and they should
not feel bound by labels, agents or publishing houses or readers. Authors should
be free to write about whatever they want to explore. My writing transcends the
174 Daniel Schreiner

limitations of literary terms and ethnic identity labels and goes beyond my per-
sonal experience to address existential questions. I hope that my works have
something to say to readers worldwide.

D.S.: Does it matter if you speak Spanish or English, since Spanish was also an
earlier enforced language of the colonial system?

A.M.: Spanish is definitely very important and part of our identity, although it
was imposed as the colonial language. It is still part of who we are. It is part
of us. Spanish is spoken everywhere in the United States today. It is a major lan-
guage. Consider L.A. [Los Angeles]. Some of the biggest TV stations broadcast in
Spanish. You go and dial through your radio and you run into a variety of Span-
ish radio stations. Big companies, big industries.
What is happening? I am referring here to studies done by sociologists, ex-
perts who studied the process of migration. The first generation coming in, they
speak Spanish. You always speak the language of your origin. You come from
Germany and you speak German; your father and mother speak German. The sec-
ond generation – because of their education in English – will slowly begin to
lose their first language. In reference to Spanish speakers, you see that process
of slowly being deterritorialized from using one’s first language.
By the third generation – according to these studies – most of the Spanish-
speakers are losing the language. By the fourth, they’ve lost that language and
are predominantly English-speaking. That is what is happening here. But since
we have large groups of recent immigrants, you still have Spanish being spoken
and being preserved. I am hoping myself that we would become a bilingual na-
tion just like some European countries. In Switzerland, for example, two or three
languages are spoken there. But we are not that way. Americans in general think
we have to be monolingual. Being bi- or multilingual is a great advantage.
As far as literature is concerned, I started writing in Spanish. Then I started
to write more in English because I wanted to reach a much larger public. But
some people question that and ask me why I stopped writing in Spanish, al-
though I have not. I have a collection of short stories in Spanish, Pequeña
Nación, which was translated into English, Little Nation. However, most of my
books, after my third book, were in English. You can see the transition from
Spanish to English in a book called Reto en el paraíso, which is a completely bi-
lingual book, and by bilingual I mean that the main narration is in Spanish. The
characters who speak English, speak English; the characters who speak Spanish,
speak Spanish. I do not change that. Most people have a tendency to speak
Spanish and then English or vice versa. I think this novel is one of the best
 The Once and Future Chicano 175

I’ve written. The novel reflects the linguistic reality that exists in Southern Cali-
fornia. I hope more scholars study and write about this book.

D.S.: Most of your books focus on an intra-historic approach dealing with region-
al, economic and political development connected to the life of the people. What
is it that attracts you to this kind of narration and storytelling? What do you say
if you are called a chronicler of the ordinary people?

A.M.: The idea comes from a Spanish philosopher by the name of Miguel de Un-
amuno, who talks about la intra-historia, and what he means by that is not the
history of the powerful kings and generals, popes and presidents, or wealthy en-
trepreneurs. He was interested in the history of the ordinary person in Spain who
anonymously supported and bolstered these men in their national and interna-
tional endeavors. Although I have wealthy characters in my books, even the
wealthy people in my novel River of Angels have lived a real intra-history life.
In that book the Rivers family is from poor origins, but the Keller family is
from the very rich Philadelphia 500, very wealthy people who always had finan-
cial backing. The book offers an intra-historical view of what was going on in
L.A. during the first three decades of the twentieth century. This is what really
fascinates me: the untold story, the untold story of individuals you know. The
work, the sacrifice and everyday life issues of unrecognized ordinary people
are the essence of the collective community. This is Unamuno’s idea of intra-his-
tory. I understand intra-history as a metaphor for the unrecorded hidden history
of the generations that came before us. This is not to say that I don’t focus on the
life of successful wealthy powerful individuals. Yet these characters’ story is al-
ways related to the lives of the workers who were the foundation of their success.
This is what I am digging for, a jewel: an individual, a family to reveal their
story to the world. I write and research at the Huntington Library, looking
through family documents and personal papers of wealthy Los Angeles families.
I hope to find hidden stories of the workers, ordinary people who maintained the
family estate or labored in the family business. I want to find that Mexican doc-
tor, Mexican accountant, that uncommon Mexican professional and create an
intra-historical perspective of their life, dedication, contribution in comparison
to the wealthy Euro-Anglo bosses.

D.S.: Your detailed descriptions of human decay, illness, pain and death, which
can be found in most of your books, appear to me in opposition to the “White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant” antiseptic approach of trying to ignore the facts of Va-
nitas within our own life period. Your descriptions furthermore remind me of the
slaughtered lamb at the cross, Jesus. But as in the salvific history there is also
176 Daniel Schreiner

always hope in your story. Can you explain your associations towards your fas-
cination of the body?

A.M.: [laughs] Tough questions you ask me! I do not really have an answer. I just
write, and I create monstrous characters and horrific scenes. I can talk about the
inspiration for a few. For example, The Rag Doll Plagues was inspired by a lec-
ture given by Professor John J. Tepaske, a historian, about the medical and health
conditions in Mexico City in the eighteenth century. It was most likely the year
1779, as rumors of revolution were circulating, and in the Caribbean black slaves
were overrunning their plantation owners. There were reports of slaughter and
rapes of whites and this affected the Crown to such a point that the king feared
losing control over the colonies. Mexico City was in a terrible state and the res-
idents there were suffering such a lethal plague that the king sent a doctor
named Gregorio Revueltas to stop the plague and improve conditions in the
heart of the New World colony. Professor Tepaske described the actual condi-
tions of Mexico City and talked about El Protomedicato, the Spanish institution
that Dr. Revueltas represented, that controlled all medical practices, medical
training, and pharmaceutical care, everything that had to do with medicine
and illness and treatment. With vivid detail he related surgical scenes from
what the chroniclers had written about efforts to stop the disease from consum-
ing the body. These scenes and treatments struck me in such a powerful way.
After Tepaske’s lecture I could not escape the images. At that time I was writing
Book II of The Brick People. I could not let go of the images. I sat down to con-
tinue the second part of The Brick People, but instead of (doing) that I began to
write The Rag Doll Plagues. My character, who is also Revueltas in The Brick Peo-
ple, finds himself in 1779 Mexico City. My character wanted to go back to the
times and to the places that Tepaske had spoken of. This is how the story started.
I wrote the first part of the book, wrote it fast – it just came rapidly to my mind.

D.S.: Bosch?

A.M.: Yes, Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings are inspirational. I also have a book or
two which describe with photographs how the women were killed in Juarez and
even before then. My wife and I spent about a year in Mexico City and I read the
newspapers and magazines that reported terrifying killings and the birth of mon-
sters in Juarez and, for example, a niño monstro in Vera Cruz, and they had these
violent horribly terrifying photographs. I mean the brutality just struck me. When
I was a kid, I witnessed pretty ugly violence inflicted on the body, men dying of
alcohol or drugs. One time I was playing in a parking lot and we saw a car, and
this man was sitting in the car. He was not moving at all so we were afraid to
 The Once and Future Chicano 177

open the door. But we did, and the stench was horrible, and I knew he was dead.
The guy was dead. Another time an alcoholic man, I remember his name, Atila-
no. He came back from the hospital, but his liver was already gone, so he was
bleeding from the lower colon. I remember walking down by where these men
hung out, and he was still drinking. When I was walking by I saw him standing
up screaming and all his backside was a drench of blood. He died. Another time,
I was in the seventh grade or so, I walked into the barrio store and found the
store owner on the floor, his face and arms blue. So, I mean, images like that,
I saw these things myself. There were others dealing with overdoses of drugs, vi-
cious fights and stabbings.

D.S.: So your writing is like a therapy to get rid of the pictures?

A.M.: If you are saying that creative activity is a kind of mental illness, then I
don’t want to be cured. I just want to continue to write. It’s no therapeutic
cure for me because I keep creating them.

D.S.: Were you in one of the U.S. wars, since you were born in the early 1940s?

A.M.: I did everything legally possible to stay out of Vietnam. A lot of my buddies
went to Vietnam, but you know a lot of this stuff is based on images in paintings,
in photographs or in distant memories that struck me. You know the book Wait-
ing to Happen? Book I of the Heterotopian Trilogy is about a monster; it is about
the terrible, horrible things that occurred in Mexico during the Salinas regime.
President Salinas. This is the beginning of all the violence. This is the beginning
of the drug violence, the beginning of the horrible violence in Mexico. Book II
takes places in Orange County, California. The main character is a highly magical
woman, well educated. Throughout the book a series of atrocities and odd things
occur. The second book takes place in Orange County because she is forced to
leave Mexico. She is in danger because she is an ilusa, and I explain the concept
of ilusa in one of the chapters. But this woman comes to Orange County and gets
established here. She has friends here whom she met at Princeton and Harvard.
She was born into a wealthy Mexican family that sent their children to the best
U.S. schools. Anyway, in the second book, in Orange County, she sees terrible
things here, too. Book III of the trilogy is set in the future and is based on differ-
ent demographics, information and my imagination foreseeing how Mexico and
the United States borderlands will look in almost 100 years.
You see these images start with my first book, Barrio on the Edge, with im-
ages of violence, of rape. This book which I wrote in high school also contains
a lot of violent and brutal scenes. Violence and sexuality. Barrio on the Edge. Vi-
178 Daniel Schreiner

olence. Sexuality. I saw all of these things when I was a kid. In my first novel
there is a woman, who is also an alcoholic, abused by drunken men who do out-
rageous things to her. She never left them: after she was taken away by her fam-
ily, she came back to that same corner, to those men who gave her wine. When I
would see her, she smiled, she seemed happy. This is something I grew up with.

D.S.: Are you a religious or a spiritual person? Have you ever experienced magic-
alike moments and events like those that occur in your book River of Angels after
the disappearance of Toypurina? Are these only elements of a Mexican-style
magical realism, which play around with stereotypical literary motifs and sujets,
or do they originate from a deeper spiritual personal world view?

A.M.: Well, I believe and think that spirituality is very important to the Latino
community. I think it’s important to all communities, but it seems to be ex-
pressed more so in the Latino community, where they believe in miracles and
pray to saints and go to church. There are two kinds of spiritualties. There is a
religious spirituality and there is a secular spirituality, and I think both do ap-
pear in my work. The religious spirituality is about tradition and rituals and
based on a holy book. The secular spirituality is really about how you react to
certain situations, okay? How do you react to a person who is homeless, who
is asking for money, for example? If you give him money because you feel some-
thing for this guy or woman, then this is your secular spirituality. It’s about kind-
ness to other people and animals and the earth. And secular spirituality is in all
matters of daily life, how you approach and react to certain situations, events, or
people.
I visit different churches, go to synagogues and mosques to experience how
people worship. I believe in miracles, angels, spirits, devil, and unknown energy,
supernatural powers, things like curanderismo. I was cured by a curandera, doña
Marcelina, when I was a kid. My dad was cured by the same curandera. These
things are not odd to me, since I lived them. Spirits and ghosts – I believe in
those things. I believe for example, there is a term, ah, there is memory,
human memory that doesn’t depend on human consciousness. Toni Morrison’s
Beloved, magnificent book, explains the term re-memory. A re-memory does
not depend on human consciousness. A re-memory is the energy of what is
left behind from a dramatic powerful event. It is the energy of the event that re-
mains in the place where it occurred. And it has the power to affect us, the power
to affect human life beyond the particular energy. It constantly creates its own
energy and people can sense that, hear it, maybe see it without knowing what
it is. So this is what a re-memory is. It exists independently from human con-
sciousness.
 The Once and Future Chicano 179

D.S.: What are your literary influences?

A.M.: My influence … I was trained mainly in the modern Latin American narra-
tive. I studied twentieth-century Mexican writers and Latin American writers. I
read novels, writers from the Latin American Boom, the new novel and modern-
ist vanguard, like Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario
Vargas Llosa. I also read Juan Rulfo, Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Angel Asturias, and
Jorge Luis Borges. When I was an undergraduate at Cal State L.A. I read Hemi-
ngway, Dreiser, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe.
There were all these impossible crazy experimentations that avant-garde ar-
tists and musicians and writers did, people like Picasso, and writers like Pablo
Neruda and today people like Elena Poniatowska and Carmen Boullosa. All of
these writers had a deep impact on my work, maybe because of the way they
wrote. They combined all sorts of ideas, like the idea of totality. Carlos Fuentes
wrote a novel called The Death of Artemio Cruz. It’s written in three voices: yo, tú,
él. But the three voices are the same person. Yo is the first person, the very in-
timate present, tú is the personal historical past and él is the historical context
of his life. It’s all combined.
Also, writers like Borges and Cortázar experimented with time and space.
Those are just a few to name … And of course twentieth-century American writ-
ers I studied as an undergraduate. But I must say that my literary heritage and
what I am and my position being a Chicano … the American writers, Native
American, South American and European writers have in one way or the other
affected my work.
Mexico is a country that treasures and has fallen in love with its magical
women. My writing has been inspired by the magic and power of the following
women: Coatlicue, Coyolxauhqui, La Llorona, Malinali Tenepal-Doña Marina-La
Malinche, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, Las Ilusas, Doña
Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez or La Corregidora, La Soldadera, Jesusa Palancares,
Juana Contreras Morales, María Sabinas, Frida Kahlo, Helena Poniatowska, Car-
men Boullosa, Cristina Rivera-Garza.

D.S.: Looking back on the Chicano Movimiento. How do you rate their impact on
Mexican-American cultural and political participation in comparison to the
union work César Chávez stands for? How did you think about concepts of Aztlán
or the ideology of mestizo as José Vasconcelos was supporting?

A.M.: All of that was happening in the three years of 1968 to 1970. The Chicano
moratorium was in 1971. Rohde and I were back East… Rohde was pregnant. We
have two children: one is Gregory and the other one is Alessandra. We were at
180 Daniel Schreiner

Rutgers University in New Jersey. I was really not participating in the movimiento.
But we did participate in César Chávez’s [United Farm Workers] boycott. We came
back later to California, and I started working at UCI in 1974.
I did not participate directly in the Chicano movement. I was more involved
in what was happening on campus, because back east it was not Chicanos but
Puerto Ricans and Dominicans over-taking the street. The Young Lords in New
York City, the Puerto Rican groups, the Black Panthers were the activists who
took over Columbia University and demanded what we Chicanos were demand-
ing on the West Coast. You see, all these groups from the Civil Rights Movement
followed examples, either non-violence from Martin Luther King or more vio-
lence from Malcolm X. So, a lot of these groups, like The Young Lords and the
Black Panther Party, were more confrontational. We heard of César Chávez,
sure, and when we came back to California in 1974, we supported César Chávez
and the boycott. And we would not buy grapes that didn’t have the black eagle,
the symbol which represented the union. So we respected that. Let me add one
more thought: I followed the Chicano movement philosophically and politically.
What they experienced, I experienced; what they felt, I felt; what they wanted, I
wanted; what they believed, I believed. I felt Chicano then, and today I feel even
more Chicano.

D.S.: What do you think about racial categories like Caucasian, Hispanic in docu-
ments or surveys like the census?

A.M.: Yeah, the census asked for this.

D.S.: What is your opinion about it?

A.M.: I personally think these questions are asked to keep track of demograph-
ics. We live in a panoptic society of constant surveillance by institutions – educa-
tional, medical, religious, legal, economic – that monitor and require a certain
kind of behavior and that record your life history. It’s part of constant surveil-
lance and monitoring of parts of your life: the financial status, the psychological
status of your life. Where do you live? Which school did you go to? What is the
highest grade of education you got? Somebody wants to know all about you, and
it’s getting worse.

D.S.: While we are witnessing the Arabellion and a political Islam that is filling
the gap the communist promise of social justice has left, we also can see an up-
surge of nationalism within Europe, which blames the refugee and Muslim for its
internal problems. At the same time, more and more people in Europe and other
 The Once and Future Chicano 181

parts of the world are criticizing the neoliberal economic world order implement-
ed by the United States. Is that a discussion in the United States outside academ-
ia and media?

A.M.: Yes, I think there is a discussion going on, from family discussions to com-
munity discussions. People are concerned. People talk usually about what they
see in the media. What is going on in the Middle East? This is one of the big dis-
cussions. The fear of attacks here in the U.S. – this is definitely a constant fear
since 9/11, the towers being attacked and destroyed. The other side of this would
be the economic support, what I mentioned the other day. How are we involved
in these particular countries? Some people question why we have to be there;
they question why we are still in Iraq, although we supposedly are out of
there already, and the billions and billions it is costing us to be in these coun-
tries?
George Bush – as I understand it – had a domestic budget, but the war budg-
et that he separated from the national budget cost us billions to finance the Iraq
War. That unnecessary war added to the national debt. People are concerned
about how we spend money in the U.S. In addition to the national debt, they
are concerned about jobs being offshored to Asia, Europe, Latin America. Polit-
ical parties have lost the ability and desire to compromise on health care, mili-
tary spending, education, immigration, trade. The parties are so restrictive, set
against each other that nothing gets done. Political parties have stifled the free-
dom to compromise in America’s political arena. This judgment is reflected in the
American people who have reached a saturation point with their elected con-
gressional representatives’ failure to pass bills for the greater good of the coun-
try. Constituents are suffering a malaise of political helplessness that has boiled
over into anger, hatred, and ugly rhetoric that has revealed long-standing re-
pressed systemic nativist attitudes of intolerance and racism toward ethnic, ra-
cial, and religious populations.

D.S.: Last question: How will the United States look 50 years from now? What do
you wish for?

A.M.: The last part of The Rag Doll Plagues offers a version of the future. I will
give you a brief overview. What will happen is that the borders will disappear.
No longer will there be borders between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. We will
have major roads going north and south connecting Canada to Mexico. In The
Rag Doll Plagues one of these travel ways is the LAMEX Corridor connecting Mex-
ico City to L.A. We already have a borderless economy. We have billions and bil-
lions of dollars crossing every day into the U.S., Canada and Mexico. What is
182 Daniel Schreiner

today known as the borderlands will become the central financial and transpor-
tation hub of the Triple Alliance between Canada, the United States and Mexico/
Central America. This will have a lot of economic impact. The standard of living
in Mexico will rise. The same will happen in the center of the U.S. borderlands.
Mexico City will no longer be the economic hope of poor Mexicans or Central
Americans; it will become a transition point to the cities further north in the bor-
derlands.
Look at the statistics of the population of the U.S.A.: 55 million Latinos. It
will grow in 2050 to 75 million Latinos, some say even more, to 90 million by
2075. What is going to happen is that you’ll have over 90 million Latinos living
in the U.S., a lot of them right here near the border. In close proximity to the Mex-
ico-U.S. border, cities like Monterey, Chihuahua, Hermosillo, Ensenada will be-
come bigger and bigger. These cities will attract migrants from the south and
the north, eventually developing into cosmopolitan centers.
Water will be a key factor. There will be desalination plants along the coast.
We already have them, but we don’t use them. In Mexico there was a lot of pro-
test, especially in the Gulf of Cortez, since they pumped the salt back into the
ocean and this was affecting the whales, so the plants were shut down. Now
they reactivated some of these plants in Baja California. This water will go
into the desert, to the cities in Northern Mexico that I mentioned. And what
did we do in Las Vegas, creating this big city in the middle of the desert? We
brought water from the North for L.A. and connected the Colorado River.
Water will be the big issue of the twenty-first century. But once you have
water in this area you are going to develop its agriculture and business and
housing. They say 45 million to 50 million Latinos, mainly Mexican, will be living
on the Mexican side of the borderlands. You will have possibly 150 million Lat-
inos living north and south within this borderland area. The borders will go away
because of environmental, energy, security, and economic reasons.
The armies of the U.S., I believe, will no longer be composed of U.S. soldiers.
The majority of the armed forces of the Triple Alliance will be recruited from
Mexico and from Central America, and possibly from South America. The milita-
ry will constitute legions, divisions of Mexican, Central and South American re-
cruits and volunteers.
This speculation of the future in is in The Rag Doll Plagues. We are going to
have issues with computers. Computers are memory banks that will accumulate
information on individuals. Computers will have millions and millions and mil-
lions of details of who you are, what you are, what your body is, what your DNA
is, data on your health, how you think, everything! Eventually, computers will
not be able to store and securely handle big data clusters that will eventually en-
ergize, mutate, break free in search of larger, more powerful computer systems.
 The Once and Future Chicano 183

In The Rag Doll Plagues these computer ghosts – a new form of being – are able
to travel through time and space and have an impact on the lives of human be-
ings.

Thank you for the interview and for considering my work.