Julio G. Arce, who wrote as Jorge Ulica, was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco. He was the son of a prominent surgeon, Fortunato G. Arce. Although he studied pharmacy he had a preference for journalism. He founded two student newspapers, El hijo del progreso (Child of Progress) at fourteen and El amigo del pueblo (Friend of the People) while in pharmacy school. After completing his studies he and a friend opened a drugstore in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. There he actively participated, as contributor and editor, in local newspapers and founded the literary review Bohemia Sinaloense. Eventually he moved to Culiacán, Sinaloa, where he married and found much support for his journalistic endeavors, principally with the local government's newspaper, El Occidental. His government affiliation helped him secure several public offices as well as a position as Spanish language instructor at the Instituto Rosales.
In 1901 Arce organized a small newspaper, Mefistófeles, and with it introduced journalism to Culiacán. By 1909 he was editor of the influential Culiacán paper El diario del pacifico (Pacific Diary), which he used as an organ of the counterrevolution. Political conflicts that evolved from his advocacy forced Arce to flee. He sought refuge in Guadalajara, where, along with other political refugees, he started El diario de occidente (Occidental Diary) as well as "La asociación de la prensa unida" (United Press Association), which provided protection for incarcerated journalists. Arce himself spent two-and-a-half months in jail and was released as a result of political pressure from his colleagues. However, fear for his life forced him to flee the country.
In October of 1915 Arce arrived in San Francisco, California, with his second wife and five children. He soon integrated himself into the Latino community, where he found many other Mexican political exiles. Within a month he was working for the then one-year-old San Francisco newspaper La crónica. By November 1915 he became editor of the newspaper and in 1919 its sole proprietor under its new name, Hispano-América. According to his own account, his objective was to document the news "sin ligas ni compromisos connadie, juzgando imparcialmente personalidades y eventos" (without ties or commitments to anyone, judging personalities and events impartially). Both Juan Rodríguez (La Palabra, Spring 1980) and Oscar Treviño (Caminos, February 1981), in their brief studies on Arce's journalism, assert that he became an influential cultural and political figure who used his newspaper as a forum for the Spanish-speaking community of the Bay Area.
Under the title "Crónica diabólica," Arce, using the pseudonym Jorge Ulica, wrote short narrative sketches of daily events in the San Francisco area. As is characteristic in the costumbrista (local color) style of writing, Ulica narrates in the first person an array of anecdotal incidents. Unlike other literary forms published in south-western Spanish newspapers during the 1920s--which included mostly European literature in translation--Ulica's prose pieces comment on the social and cultural concerns of the San Francisco Latino community, concerns such as the U.S. political and judicial system, U.S. fashions, social institutions, cultural values, customs, and the Latino community's relationship with these.
The various levels of Mexican assimilation into the dominant Anglo-American culture and life-style, or failure to adapt adequately to it, are objects of Ulica's satire. Evident manifestations of social change as a result of U.S. economic and political hegemony--endorsement of eugenic studies, massive immigration to the United States, emergence of unofficial linguistic and cultural expressions, and the woman suffrage movement--are all depicted from the perspective of a middle-class Mexican immigrant who maintains the distant stance of an outside observer; at times, of a participating visitor. For example, in "No vote pero me botaron" (I Didn't Vote But I Was Booted Out) and "Mesican Wine," Ulica caricatures the U.S. political and judicial practices as nonthreatening. American philanthropists and pseudoscientists are satirized in "Touch-Down extraordinario," "Así se escribe nuestra historia!" (Our History Is Written This Way!), and "El Palacio de las Tribus Peregrinantes"El Palacio de las Tribus Peregrinantes"" (The Palace of the Pilgrimaging Tribes) for their pretentious and insubstantial goodwill toward and knowledge about the U.S. Latino community.
Ulica takes aim at Mexican immigrants also, commenting humorously and critically on the various ways they deal with their new environment. He jeers at the propensity of lower-class immigrants to take advantage of others and their inability to fit into the new social ambience and to perform well, as in "No estamos bastante aptos" (We Are Not Apt Enough), "Los 'parladores de Spanish'" (The Spanish Speakers), and "Por no hablar 'English'" (For Not Speaking English). Middle-class Mexican women are ridiculed for their inclination to ape American ways. They are depicted readily assimilating the new fashions, customs, foods, and language and accused of trading in their husbands for American ones, as narrated in "Como hacer surprise-parties" (How to Make Surprise Parties), "Repatriación gratuita" (Gratuitous Repatriation), and "Sobre el arte culinario" (On the Art of Cooking). One of Ulica's common objects of mockery is the attempt by women to exercise their civil rights, revealing his hostility to the changing role of women in society. "Arriba las faldas" (Up with Skirts) and "Inacia y Mengildo" are sketches in which he pans women's whimsical yet malicious attempts to take advantage of men. In "Do You Speak Pocho" Ulica especially pokes fun at the preposterous misuse of the English language by such women. He defines the term pocho as "Un revoltijo, cada día más enredado, de palabras españolas, vocablos ingleses, expresiones populares y terrible 'slang'" (a jumble, every day more confusing, of Spanish and English words, popular expressions, and terrible slang), mocks the inappropriate use of both standard Spanish and standard English language by Mexican-Americans, and satirizes the misunderstandings that arise.
Although there is contempt, or at least apprehension, on Ulica's part for the use of pocho as a means of communication, he uses it and experiments with it to create humor for his audience--most probably literate, male, and middle-class--who used both languages interchangeably and were confronted daily with similar linguistic phenomena. Part of his humor is derived from the incongruities that develop from the narrator's role as a middle-class Mexican exile. It may be surmised that the audience for which he was writing would be the ones to derive the most humor from his satire.
Critical reception of the 1982 collection of Ulica's Crónicas diabólicas has been mixed. This has been primarily due to the fact that, since recovery and republishing of his Crónicas have been directly linked to efforts in establishing a Chicano literary tradition, a debate has arisen regarding his place within that tradition. Chicano literary historians such as Luis Leal, Charles Tatum, and Rodríguez consider the recovery of Ulica's prose pieces as representing an important link in the development of Chicano narrative. In "El florecimiento de la literatura chicana" (1977) Rodríguez refers to the pieces as true jewels and to Ulica as a master. In "Narrativa chicana: viejas y nuevas tendencias" (1985), Leal regards the sketches as rich prose. Tatum (Revista Chicano-Riqueña , Winter 1981) asserts that Ulica, along with other writers like him, should "figure prominently in any future reconstruction of Chicano literary history." Some critical response has been adverse. In his review of the Crónicas diabólicas ( Revista Chicano-Riqueña, Spring 1985), Arthur Ramírez seriously questions whether Ulica's columns are in fact literature, Chicano, and humorous, calling them "journalistic and pedestrian," marked by "unhumorous broad farce," and produced by someone who displays "a curious ambivalence toward Americans and Mexican Americans."
Given the biographical data there is on Arce and the treatment in his Crónicas of the Mexican community in the United States, it is clear that he was a Mexican journalist and a political exile who wrote from that perspective. Arce as Ulica does not view himself as part of an oppressed minority, and his short satirical pieces reveal more insights about his ideological position than they do about the community he is depicting and satirizing. His influence on the Mexican community as a creative writer and journalist has barely been explored, as may be seen in Treviño's 1981 article in Caminos, "Julio G. Arce: un pionero" (A Pioneer). Placing Ulica in a Chicano literary tradition raises important questions of identity, affiliation, and influence which need to be addressed. As further studies objectively elucidate the complex and dynamic sociohistorical factors which gave rise to the intellectual and literary presence of the oppressed Chicano minority at the turn of the century, it will become possible to precisely situate writers such as Arce in the framework of tradition.
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