Mexican Gothic: Colonization Produces a Hostile Household

     Mexican Gothic (pub. 2020) is a "reimagining of a classic gothic suspense novel" written by Mexican-Canadian author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It is set in 1950's Mexico, after Mexico's independence from Spain and Mexico's revolutionary war. After Mexico's independence from Spain, the ruling and higher classes that mainly consisted of criollo's/ Spanish-blooded people were the ones who mainly benefited from this newly gained independence. Mexico's revolution came about when the half-Spanish, half-Indigenous people, called "mestizos", who made up the majority of Mexico's population, rose up with the belief that because they were the ones who were actually worked and laboring over the land, they should benefit from it and acquire wealth over it as well. There was a desire to topple over lingering influences of Spanish colonizing practices from these higher classes and begin to implement newer and fairer ways of living. Mexico before this revolution was also under a 30-year dictatorship under Mexican president Porfirio Diaz, who would largely favor the higher classes. This historical background is what sets the stage for our novel, and some of these specific sentiments bleed into the very fabric of the English family that inhabits our household of focus: High Place. 

     The novel takes place in the fictional small town of "El Triunfo". Moreno-Garcia was inspired by the real-life town of "Real del Monte" located in Hidalgo, Mexico for it. This is a town located in the mountains of Mexico, where a lot of mines were created due to the earth's abundance of Silver and Obsidian. The Spanish colonists exploited this resource, using Indigenous labor and slavery for it, making these mines a place of violence and exploitation. After the revolution, mining companies began to settle into Mexico and this region, with the British coming into Real del Monte, according to Moreno-Garcia. The English's influence then earned the town the nickname of "Little Cornwall". In addition to English architectural influences, Real del Monte has an English cemetery, with all of its tombstone "all oriented towards England (minus one") (Moreno-Garcia, Culturefly). 

     In Mexican Gothic, our protagonist, CDMX socialite Noemi Taboada, is sent down by her father after they receive a concerning letter from her cousin Catalina. Catalina has married an English man, Virgil Doyle, and has gone to live with him in his family manor, High Place. The house sits in the mountains above "El Triunfo", and upon her arrival into the town Noemi describes it as having "the musty air of a place that had withered away. The houses were colorful, yes, but the color was peeling from most of the walls..." (pg. 17). Noemi goes on to observe how this "was not that unusual. Many formerly thriving mining sites that had extracted silver and gold during the Colonia interrupted their operations once the War of Independence broke out. Later on, the English and the French were welcomed during the tranquil Porfiriato, their pockets growing fat with mineral riches. But the revolution had ended this second boom... Yet the Doyle's lingered in this land, when many others had long gone" (17-18). With the revolution ending these unfair and violent forced-labor practices that mining companies in El Triunfo had employed, the main source of income for the Doyle family, owners of a mine, stopped coming in. Now, all the family is left with is their house, High Place, its cemetery, and its abandoned mine. The house is hidden away from the town, all the way in the mountains, keeping itself separate from the town. This is a theme that continues on with the ways of living of the Doyle's as well: they bring in their own English doctor, they do not go into the town, and they do not speak Spanish at all, save for one family member who Noemi befriends. There is a refusal to assimilate into the country the Doyle's have settled into, even if they have been settled into it for generations now. The Doyle's might have colonized the land, but there is a fighting refusal to let it have any rebounding effect on them. The Doyle family keeps to themselves as a result and the grand patriarch of the family, Howard Doyle, is someone who is into eugenics and keen on racial purity, as he discusses with Noemi. They do their best to keep alive their English side. This is also something that is reflected by the very architecture of High Place: "It was so odd! It looked absolutely Victorian in construction, with its broken shingles, elaborate ornamentation, and dirty bay windows" (20). The house is very English and grand, but here we can also observe how, like El Triunfo, it is dirty, fading, decaying. The house seems to be collapsing under the weight of the fading legacy it contains, despite its own pretenses and appearances of grandness-- "The house loomed over them like a great, quiet gargoyle. It might have been foreboding, evoking images of ghosts and haunted places, if it had not seemed so tired, slats missing from a couple of shutters, the ebony porch groaning as they made their way up the steps to the door... It's the abandoned shell of a snail, she told herself..." (20-21). 

     There is something that is rotting and decaying inside High Place, Noemi notes immediately. She is an outsider, like her cousin Catalina. No one in the Doyle family comments on the things Noemi finds unusual about the house, or certain ways that the house seems to be "behaving" either. Catalina, her cousin, is deemed by the Doyle family as "ill", once she seems to catch one the sinister undergoing's of the household. She writes in her letter to the family that "this house is sick with rot, stinks of decay, brims with every evil and cruel sentiment" (7). One Noemi begins to stay and sleep at High Place, her dreams are invaded with visions of a ghostly woman who points at Noemi. She also begins to feel as if there is something lurking in the walls of High Place, something "strange lurking behind the wallpaper" (57). High Place is alive in these dreams: "The wallpaper was peeling, revealing underneath sickly organs instead of brick or wooden boards. Veins and arteries clogged with secret excesses" (116). The house invades Noemi, and these visions are violent, hostile to her like the rest of the family is. It is something that can also be observed with how she is racialized by them, with her darker skin and hair given to her by her Mestiza heritage. The house is not a place for people like her, so unlike the Doyle's both physically and mentally. Nevertheless, these visions begin to lead Noemi towards something dark and mysterious that lurks inside the very makings of the house. There are rules everyone most follow in High Place, restricting and isolating, forcing a strict order that must be obeyed. Howar Doyle's customs shape the nature of the family, and him and the house reflect one another, and Noemi begins to uncover just how connected they are to each other. The violence the Doyle family employed on the Indigenous and Mexican laborers who worked on their mines is something that they are unable to escape-- the past literally comes back to haunt the Doyle's and topple their legacy. It is built into the very foundation of High Place:"This house had been built atop bones. And no one had noticed such an atrocity, rows and rows of people streaming into the house, into the mine, and never leaving" (244). The previous benefits that colonialism had afforded to the Doyle's prior to the revolution no longer worked, and so the family turns to more sinister and desperate solutions. But the products of these two colonizing forces that have built over one another circle back around to seek retribution and to right the ways in which they have been wronged by their oppressors. The only way to really put an end to it is to end the very existence of High Place-- not just as a physical place, but to the legacy the family has built. 

By: Angelica Olivo

References

Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. Mexican Gothic. Del Rey, 2020. 

"The Mexican Revolution: November 20th, 1910." edsitement.neh.gov, The Mexican Revolution: November 20th, 1910 | NEH-Edsitement 

Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. "Silvia Moreno-Garcia on the real life town that inspired Mexican Gothic". Culturefly, Silvia Moreno-Garcia on the real life town that inspired Mexican Gothic - Culturefly