The Squatter and the Don reflects two main dynamics that are developed according to the thread of the story. These dynamics are: love and the law.
The story begins by talking about the Darrell family, and how Mr. and Mrs. Darrell fell in love and later on get married. However, immediately after introducing the love story, political matters, specifically those related to the legal system, come to the story as well. The story then begins to refers us in a more historic way to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and how this phenomenon represented a concern for the negotiations and economy of the Darrell family. As the story continues, we find more characters such as the Alamar family. The book portrays them as a family full of color and live, and optimistic; despite the fact they have lost many of their cattle as a consequence of the economic, political and legal constraints of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Later on, we see how the characters become more and more interrelated between each other, and specifically we come to center our attention to the romance between Clearance (son of the Darrell family) and Mercedes (daughter of the Alamar family). It is as if the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo has come to join this two families for a reason. Or, we can see it as a way in which these characters use the legal and political issues around them to forge their own love stories. Or is it that love comes out of nothing but destiny?
The book certainly plays a lot with these two dynamics around the story. We see how romance is usually intertwined with the law issues that both families have to handle due to the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty. We also see how these legal issues become problematic for the lives of both families, interfering in their economy and in their love life. These complex legal problems even come to impose a label on each family, accordingly to how each one relates to the Treaty. In other words, one is the Squatter and other is the Don.
This complex ambivalence and shifts between the dynamics of love and the law, even makes look this story as in the border between fantasy and reality; being fantasy more in accordance with the love dynamic, and reality more related with the law one.
Pamela Chavez (19417161)
Yes, absolutely, the book is very much about the relationship between love and law. I would only add that it is also about the role of money (finance), which can both make love possible and (through bribery) distort and corrupt the law. Money can (apparently) make fantasies come true, but money (or even a lack of money) can also be the brute reality that makes fantasies impossible.
Hi Pamela,
Great post! The ways in which love and law interact in this novel are pretty interesting – it seems like there is always something going on between the two, always some sort of conflict. Of course, like we talked about in class, everything revolves around money. This novel forced me to recognize just how much a relationship with money can affect other relationships. It seems that majority of the characters, especially Clarence, believe that money can indeed buy happiness.
Hey Pamela! In you post I found it interesting how you mention that love could’ve been forged between characters using the legal and political circumstances around them. Just thinking about these concepts individually, Love and Law, I would think that one has nothing to do with the other. When we look closely at them they are interrelated. Both Clarence and the Alamar family have the same understanding of the law, and then Clarence falls in love with Mercedes. There isn’t a cross, yet, between the actual “squatters” and the “Don”. We could argue that this is a marriage that serves to bond the power and wealth of both Clarence and Don Mariano. Thinking about this legistively, we could even add that the Law is above Love, for it is what facilitates it. Only with Don Mariano’s approval could Clarence declare his love. Out of obedience to her mother, Mercedes keeps silent. Both acts done out of respect for formalities, done out of rationality versus passion. In this novel the “head” comes before the heart, Law comes before Love.
Really interesting post Pamela! I really liked how you pointed out the fact that the story joins the characters and their lives through the law and through love as well. Normally one would not relate these two things together. The law that has brought many issues to the Alamar family has also led them to meeting Mr. Darrell and his son Clarence. As you have pointed out it is quite interesting how the law plays an important role in both families and helps in creating connections within the two families this being shown in the love interest between Clarence and Mercedes. The law has brought together two families that would normally never have to coexist together.