Max(imiano) Martinez | Biography

Max Martínez's short stories, which focus on those who exploit others, are often brutal yet just as often compassionate in their portrayals of human needs and failings. He does not subordinate his art to political ideology. His concern for style and structure, for the infinite shades of meaning in language, makes him a writer who looks for human beings beneath stereotypes. His protagonists are usually men and women who struggle to know themselves and to understand others in a vain and desperate attempt to survive with some dignity in an inhospitable, unjust world.

Maximiano Martínez was born in Gonzales, Texas. He has led a varied life which has included farm and ranch work while living with his uncle in Gonzales County and a period with the U.S. Navy. He attended St. Mary's University and East Texas State University, earning an M.A. from the latter in 1972. He taught creative writing at the University of Houston from 1977 to 1982.

Martínez's most famous story, although perhaps not his best, is the novelette Faustino , first published by Caracol as a special issue in January 1977, and later included in his collection The Adventures of the Chicano Kid and Other Stories (1982). Faustino is notorious for its raw, almost oppressively explicit sexual descriptions, the violence of which is perhaps justified as a metaphor for the main theme of physical and psychological exploitation. The central character is Faustino, a simple, almost primeval figure of a man whose distorted relationships with his Anglo boss, Buster Crane, with young Mrs. Crane, and with his own wife María are explored in excruciatingly vivid detail. Racial tension is implicit in the setting, a South Texas ranch owned by Anglos who exploit Faustino's natural attachment to the land where he was born. This obvious Anglo-versus-Chicano theme is complicated by sexual conflicts in the development of relationships between Buster and Mrs. Crane and Faustino and María. Faustino's manhood is inextricably tied to his sexual prowess. Unable to respond emotionally to a crudely blatant seduction attempt by the voracious, sex-starved Mrs. Crane, he rushes home to have intercourse with his wife, fully expecting in this way to bolster his faltering self-image. Impotence with María so threatens the only dignity and pride Faustino possesses that he rapes and beats her. The ambiguities in the situation are richly suggestive. At first glance the impotent Anglo rancher and his sexually aggressive wife compare unfavorably to the virile Faustino and the sensitive María. The aborted encounter with Mrs. Crane, in which Faustino becomes a surrogate for the impotent rancher, is a victory for Faustino against the attempted exploitation of his body by the aggressive Mrs. Crane. On another level, his impotence is a loss of face for him; if he had been confident about anything, it was his sexual prowess. With the rape and beating, the central theme of exploitation assumes an added dimension of perversity which extends beyond superficial racial stereotype.

The theme of aggressive users who impose their values and standards on others is one of the basic concerns in Martínez's fiction. In "Doctor Castillo" and "Portal," for example, marital exploitation is a central issue. The wealthy Doctor Castillo, secure in his male role of provider, condescendingly thinks of his wife as oversexed, "reading entirely too many grocery store magazines which contained the latest information on sexual responses and techniques." He is unable to recognize his wife's need to live her life as something other than an appendage to his. The destruction of their bedroom during a hurricane signals the end of their mechanical relationship. When Susan Castillo disappears, her husband's search for her is perfunctory, and he soon falls back into his dull, orderly routine. The central concern of emotional and sexual exploitation is fully explored in their confrontation ten years later, at which time Castillo's lack of self-awareness, his smug arrogance, his sexual exploitation of his secretary, and his inability to think of anything but his own ordered existence are contrasted with Susan Castillo's new life as a real woman rather than the failed ideal wife Castillo had created to fulfill his preconceived notions. In "Portal" Martínez's treatment of the theme of marital exploitation is less elaborately philosophical and more compassionate, perhaps because of his choice of a less conspicuously biased central character. The observer of disharmony between Marta and Eduardo Macías is Jerónimo Portal (Eduardo's father-in-law), through whose perceptive and sensitive consciousness the process of Eduardo's struggle to survive with dignity and his ultimate suicide are filtered and evaluated. Portal's daughter, Marta, becomes the predator--a female counterpart of Doctor Castillo--who victimizes her husband in trying to force him to live up to her standards: "she's always been very good about convincing [Eduardo] that what she wants [he] wants."

The collection's most dramatic example of the tragedy that an aggressive breach of respect can unleash occurs in "Doña Petra." The story is a familiar one--a young Chicano is shot by Texas Rangers in a careless show of authority. Doña Petra's life is filled with humility and gentle love for her only son. She finds the strength to confront his murderer, and in the final scene of the story, shocking in its stark and ugly racism, she reveals dignity and determination in killing him.

Two stories in The Adventures of the Chicano Kid are Western stories with Chicano heroes. The title story, subtitled "A Dime Novel," is a parody of an Old West saloon shoot-out, told with wit and humor and sprinkled with liberal comments and exhortations to "Dear Reader." The story follows the traditional, racist Western theme of the straight-shooting hero and the "greasy Meskin" villain except that the roles are reversed and thus ridiculed. The hero is the Chicano Kid, a "true, stout-hearted knight of the desert" who "has journeyed far and wide rooting out the evil lurking in the hearts of men." The villain is an Anglo with the improbable name of Alf Brisket, "the scurrilous scourge of the Southwest." The story "La Tacuachera," describes the events leading up to a confrontation between a Chicano hero, Chango, and an Anglo bully, Ambrose Tench, in a local bar. The abyss separating their two cultures is established in the name of the bar, which is known by the Anglos as Pleasant Hill Tavern. The Chicanos, however, "mindful of some legendary or mythical occurrence ... referred to it as La Tacuachera." Martínez examines the interaction between the two cultures and the gradually changing patterns of discrimination as evidenced in the progressive encroachment by Chicanos into a traditionally Anglo stronghold. In the shared family environment of the tavern social rituals of discrimination are rigidly observed; even the rare fights adhere strictly to the segregated seating arrangements. Martínez deftly conveys the reality and irrationality of the ingrained, unspoken laws which erect invisible barriers between human beings. "La Tacuachera" is the story of one small yet significant breach in that invisible wall. The confrontation between Chango and Ambrose Tench effectively dissipates some of the misconceptions. The story does not end with a regular shoot-out. Chango uses laughter instead of violence, and his victory involves a psychological blow against discrimination. In 1988 Martínez produced a novel, Schoolland, about a Mexican-American family living in Texas during the 1950s.

Although his creative work has generated little criticism, Martínez is widely known for his uncompromising stance on the nature and quality of Chicano literature. In his review of Below the Summit (1976), a novel by Joseph Torres-Metzgar, published in the April 1977 issue of Caracol, he says that the work "is not properly a Chicano novel because it is anti-Chicano in perspective, in execution, and in intention." Although he elaborates on the defects of the novel, Martínez's notion of an anti-Chicano perspective and his insistence on the required presence of "chicanismo" to justify the label of Chicano literature suggest arbitrary limitation. More balanced is his claim that "much of Chicano literature is unartistic in terms of aesthetics." In an article in De Colores (1977), "Prolegomena for a Study of Chicano Literature," he calls for works that "display a sensitivity, a technical mastery, a universality, which deserve consideration as the output of a specific culture, but which ... [make] significant statements ... extending far beyond the barrio." His article "Chicano Literature and the Critic" (Rayas, November-December 1978) chastises Chicano authors for their lack of education and for attempting to isolate themselves from the Western cultural tradition to which they belong. "This cultural elitism," he claims, "is nothing more than pure ... laziness." He also points out that in avoiding so-called contamination with gringo thought, Chicano critics have cut themselves off from a rich European source of critical theory which could well be adapted to analyze and explicate Chicano writings.