# ...y no se lo tragó la tierra

Part of a series on :
Chicanos and Mexican Americans :
Terms
Identity
Chola/o
La Raza
Pachuca
Pachuco
Pinta/o
Xicanx
Concepts
Anti-Mexican sentiment :
History
Early-American Period
Josefa Segovia
Las Gorras Blancas
Mexican–American War
Mutualista
San Elizario Salt War
Sonoratown
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Pre-Chicano Movement
1917 Bath riots
Bisbee Deportation
Bloody Christmas
Bracero program
California agricultural strikes
Cantaloupe strike of 1928
Citrus Strike of 1936
La Matanza
Mexican Repatriation
Operation Wetback
Plan de San Diego
Porvenir Massacre
Sleepy Lagoon trial
Zoot Suit Riots
Chicano Movement
Aztlán
Black-brown unity
Brown Berets
Católicos por La Raza
Centro Cultural
Chicanismo
Chicano Moratorium
Colegio César Chávez
CFMN
Conferencia de Mujeres
CRP
East L.A. walkouts
Hijas de Cuauhtémoc
Huelga schools
Land grant struggle
Las Adelitas de Aztlán
Los Siete de la Raza
Los Seis de Boulder
MANA
MAYO
MEChA
Occupation of Catalina Island
PCUN
Plan Espiritual de Aztlán
Plan de Santa Bárbara
Quinto Sol
Raza Unida Party
United Farm Workers
Post-Chicano Period
1985–1987 cannery strike
1992 Drywall Strike
2019 El Paso shooting
Abolish ICE
Arizona SB 1070
Castro 2020
Chicano Art Exhibit
DACA
Great American Boycott
IRCA
Farah strike
Justice for Janitors
Murder of Selena
Proposition 187
South Central Farm :
Culture
Language
Abrazos, no balazos
Caló
Chicano English
Chicano names
Órale
Food
New Mexican cuisine
Tex-Mex cuisine
Mexican-American cuisine
Music
Chicano rap
Chicano rock
Chicano soul
Tejano music
Symbols
Cal-Style VW
Homies
Lowrider
Lowrider bicycle
Mexican-American folklore
Pancho Claus
Zoot suit :
Literature
Literature
Chicana literature
Chicano literature
Chicano poetry
Autobiographical
Always Running
Living Up the Street
Who Would Have Thought It?
Novels
Bless Me, Ultima
Caballero
Desert Blood
From This Wicked Patch of Dust
Mexican WhiteBoy
The Dirty Girls Social Club
The House on Mango Street
The Rain God
The Revolt of the Cockroach People
So Far from God
Under the Feet of Jesus
...y no se lo tragó la tierra
Poetry and Short Stories
Emplumada
I Am Joaquin
Moment of Silence
Pensamiento Serpentino
The Moths :
Chicano studies
Fields
Chicana feminism
Chicanafuturism
Organizations
MAS Programs, Tucson
NACCS
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center
Texts
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Brown, Not White
The Church in the Barrio
This Bridge Called My Back
Theory
Barrioization
Coyolxauhqui imperative
Gringo justice
Nahui Ollin
Nepantla
New tribalism
Rasquachismo
Spiritual activism
Vergüenza
Youth control complex :
Visual art
Visual Art
Chicana art
Chicano art
Chicano cinema
Paño
Tortilla art
Art Collectives
Asco
Culture Clash
East Los Streetscapers
Los Four
Mujeres Muralistas
Teatro Campesino
Royal Chicano Air Force
Art organizations
Centro de Arte Público
Galería de la Raza
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
Precita Eyes
Self Help Graphics & Art
Locations
Balmy Alley
Chicano Park
Estrada Courts
Great Wall of Los Angeles :
Law
Supreme Court cases
Botiller v. Dominguez
Hernandez v. Texas
San Antonio I.S.D. v. Rodriguez
Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co.
U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce
Plyler v. Doe
Medellín v. Texas
Flores-Figueroa v. U.S.
Leal Garcia v. Texas
Mendez v. Westminster
Bernal v. Fainter
Perez v. Brownell
DHS v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal.
Federal Court cases
Madrigal v. Quilligan :
Population
Population by City
Arizona (Tucson)
California (Los Angeles)
Illinois (Chicago)
Michigan (Detroit)
Nebraska (Omaha)
Texas
Dallas–Fort Worth
Houston
Multiethnic
Blaxicans
Californios
Nuevomexicanos
Tejanos
Indigenous Mexican Americans
Punjabi Mexican Americans :
Lists
Chicano films
Chicano poets
Chicano rappers
Mexican Americans
Writers
Bibliography :
United States portal
Category
Index :
vte :
...y no se lo tragó la tierra is a 1971 Tomás Rivera novel, most recently translated to English as ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. It is made up of fourteen short stories and thirteen vignettes. The novel presents stories that center around a community of South Texan Mexican American migrant farm workers during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The novel begins with the short story "A Lost Year", in which an unnamed male protagonist cannot seem to remember what occurred during the previous year. The stories and vignettes that follow are fragmented, lack chronology and lack consistency in characters. The last short story, "Under the House", ties all of these stories together by presenting them as the memories of the male protagonist, who seems to become empowered by the act of remembering. The novel won the Premio Quinto Sol prize for literature in 1970 and has since been adapted into a movie.

## Background
### Background and publication

Rivera said he had trouble getting his works published at first, and said some of his manuscripts were probably rejected because he was Chicano. Rivera sent manuscripts everywhere and he said he received "thousands" of rejections before winning the Quinto Sol award and publishing his novel the subsequent year.

### Editions

Rivera, Tomás (1971) ...y no se lo tragó la tierra/...And the Earth Did Not Part. Trans by Herminio Rios, Berkeley: Quinto Sol.
Rivera, Tomás (1977) ...y no se lo tragó la tierra/...And the Earth Did Not Part. Trans by Herminio Rios, Berkeley: Justa Publications.
Rivera, Tomás (1987) ...y no se lo tragó la tierra/ ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (English and Spanish edition). Translated by Evangelina Vigil-Piñón. Houston: Arte Publico Press.
Rivera, Tomás (1992) ...y no se lo tragó la tierra/ ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (English and Spanish edition). Translated by Evangelina Vigil-Piñón. Houston: Arte Publico Press.
Rivera, Tomás (2012) ...y no se lo tragó la tierra. Edition and Introduction by Julio Ramos and Gustavo Buenrostro, Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor.

## Main themes
### Social change

Many of the short stories in Rivera's novel reveal harrowing conditions that Mexican American migrant workers faced, and thus could be seen as a work that calls for social change to provide better working conditions for Mexican American migrant workers. In the short story "The Children Couldn't Wait", for example, a little migrant worker boy is shot to death by the farm boss for taking what the boss thought was too many breaks to drink water. Additionally, in "The Little Burnt Victims", two small children of migrant workers are burned to death in an accidental fire when they are left alone in their house. The parents were discouraged from bringing their children to the fields with them and thus had been forced to leave them at home alone. In this way, problems with working conditions for migrant workers are made clear in many of the stories. Furthermore, in "It's That It Hurts", the difficulty of getting a quality education for migrant farm worker children is stressed. In the story, a boy gets in trouble for hitting another student back, and knows that he will be expelled. The other boys at school call him "Mex" and make fun of him, and the principal justifies expelling him by saying, "...they could [sic] care less if I expel him...they need him in the fields". The racism the boy faces at school—both from children and adults—therefore hinders his ability to get a quality education. The stories thus expose dire conditions for Mexican American migrant workers and may be seen as a work that calls for structural changes to occur.

### Disillusionment with Mexican American folk Catholicism

In many of the novel's short stories, the young male protagonist becomes disillusioned with aspects of Folk Catholicism. In "A Silvery Night", for instance, the boy decides that he will call the devil late at night, but the devil never shows up, even after the boy curses him. He therefore realizes that there is no devil. Similarly, in the short story "...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him", the boy—angry that his close kin are suffering even though they are good people—curses God, but nothing happens to him as a consequence. In fact, the next day his father and brother are getting over his sickness and the weather is less harsh for working. The developments in these two short stories and in others, as well, point to an overall theme in the novel of a sense of disillusionment with religion. The protagonist seems to embrace rationalist, individualist thinking.

### Community building

However, in a chapter in his book Dancing with the Devil, José E. Limón argues that the novel does not in fact celebrate the protagonist's rationalist individualist thinking, and in fact associates him with the devil. Limón makes the point that in order for the boy in the novel to embrace rationality, he must put down and deem backwards his Mexican American culture's folk Catholicism. The boy therefore may be portrayed as the "real" devil in the story. In fact, Limón points out that in "Silvery Night", the boy actually puts on a devil's mask, and that in the story "...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him", the mother says she is afraid that the devil's blood runs through the boy already. Limón therefore suggests that the novel argues for the importance of a communal identity rather than an individualist one. This argument is supported by the fact that the novel brings together a myriad of voices from the Mexican American migrant worker community through the male protagonist's remembering and retelling of the stories, and by the fact that in the last short story the boy states that, "I would like to see all of the people together. And then, if I had great big arms, I could embrace them all."

## Latin American edition

Julio Ramos and Gustavo Buenrostro edited the first Latin American edition of Tomás Rivera's novel ...y no se lo tragó la tierra (1971). Ramos and Buenrostro's edition of Tierra inaugurated a collection of Mexican Literature in Argentina. In their extensive introduction, Ramos and Buenrostro argue that Rivera's outstanding fictionalization of memory resists the tendency to aestheticize and heroize the figure of the farm worker; which was a common practice of social realism during the decades of 1930 and 1940. In their introduction, Ramos and Buenrostro coin the notion of "lenguas sin estado (languages without state)". They also establish a connection between Tomás Rivera, Juan Rulfo, Octavio Paz, and other literatures from the Borderlands. Additionally, the Latin American edition of Tierra includes numerous unpublished materials that show the relationship between Rivera and the editors of the foundational publishing house Quinto Sol. These materials also illustrate the genesis of the novel.