49 pages • 1 hour read
Under The Feet Of Jesus
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Themes
The Uncertainty of Life on the Margins of Society
Perhaps more than anything else, Under the Feet of Jesus is about the instability of migrant workers’ lives. Estrella and her family lead a precarious existence, never certain of how they will meet their expenses. At times, it’s a struggle even to afford food, particularly in the years after Petra’s husband leaves but before she takes up with Perfecto. As Estrella puts it, “She remembered every job was not enough wage, every uncertainty rested on one certainty: food” (14).
Of course, the uncertainties of poverty aren’t unique to piscadores in particular. In other ways, however, the life of a migrant laborer is uniquely unstable. For one, agricultural work is unusually dependent on circumstances beyond any worker’s control—in particular, favorable weather conditions. In addition, the job by definition requires workers to be constantly on the move, traveling wherever there are crops that need to be harvested. Home is therefore an elusive concept for most of Viramontes’s characters; Alejo at least has a grandmother in Texas he plans to return to, but for Perfecto, memories of the canyon he considers home are so distant and dreamlike that they seem more of an ideal than a real location. Petra’s children, meanwhile, have never really known a lasting home, though they hope to one day; towards the end of the novel, Ricky suggests that the money from the barn might allow them to “stay in one place,” not knowing that Perfecto plans to use it to leave (154).
The fact that so many of the piscadores are also immigrants further contributes to the uncertainties of their position. Although Alejo, Estrella, and the other children all seem to have been born in the United States, their legal status as citizens is ultimately less important than the way they are perceived; as Petra tells her daughter, there’s “no sense telling La Migra [she’s] lived here all [her] life” (62). The family’s ethnicity, combined with the fact that Petra and Perfecto speak little English, reinforce society’s perception of them as foreigners living outside the law. Ultimately, this becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy by limiting the migrants’ opportunities for “honest” work; Alejo and Gumecindo, for instance, are forced to supplement their income by stealing crops to sell in the market.
Other attempts to cope with the precariousness of life are, if not strictly illegal, still unrecognized by society at-large. This is particularly true of the barter economy that so many of the migrants rely on, trading goods or services they have for those they need. This system works up to a point; Perfecto, for instance, is able to “buy” a ten-pound bag of beans by repairing a store owner’s toilet. When the family tries to pay for Alejo’s clinic visit similarly, however, they run into obstacles: when Estrella asks whether Perfecto can fix the cement outside the clinic, the nurse responds, “I only work here. I’m real sorry […] I couldn’t say” (145). In effect, the family is encountering the fact that “mainstream,” middle-class American society simply doesn’t recognize the tools migrants use to survive, like bartering, as legitimate. This, in turn, speaks to what is perhaps the greatest source of instability in the piscadores’ lives: the fact that they’re simply invisible and voiceless to society at-large. Although the work they do for that society is essential, it isn’t obvious to the people who buy the food picked by migrants in grocery stores. In the face of this kind of indifference, it becomes difficult for the migrants to maintain a stable sense of identity, much less achieve anything else.
Viramontes presents few solutions to this problem, at least in the traditional sense of the word; most of the characters’ attempts to anchor their lives in something stable and unchanging (for instance, religion) ultimately prove inadequate. Instead, Viramontes suggests that people like the family she depicts must learn to take each moment as it comes, and find whatever happiness they can in it. This is one reason why the novel celebrates Estrella’s physicality; because she lives largely in her body and in the present, she can find fulfillment even in relatively simple physical pleasures.
The Exploitation of Migrant Workers
Although it overlaps with the piscadores’ precarious position in society, the exploitation migrant workers suffer is also central enough to Under the Feet of Jesus to constitute a theme in and of itself. It isn’t simply that these laborers are underpaid, though their poverty is certainly a concern to Viramontes; as Petra notes, the work they do for society is absolutely essential, since they literally provide the food that ends up on American tables. And yet the migrants not only struggle to make ends meet, but never even receive any acknowledgment of their importance to the country. As a result, Perfecto is actually taken aback when Estrella thanks him for all he has done for Alejo:
He had given this country his all, and in this land that used his bones for kindling, in this land that never once in the thirty years he lived and worked, never once said thank you, this young woman who could be his granddaughter had said the words with such honest gratitude, he was struck by how deeply these words touched him (155).
This passage, however, also touches on another (and perhaps even worse) aspect of the piscadores’ exploitation: the fact that they themselves are treated as a resource. This is what Perfecto means when he describes himself as “kindling,” but Viramontes more commonly makes the same point with the symbolism surrounding oil. As Alejo explains to Estrella at one point, the oil that powers American cars (and therefore facilitates the system of migrant labor) comes from the fossilized bones of prehistoric animals and plants. In a very literal sense, American society therefore relies on death to fuel itself, and Viramontes uses this fact to criticize the ways in which it similarly destroys the health and bodies of migrant workers to produce food. The labor alone is physically demanding, and the heat often makes it dangerous: “Later that same week, two piscadores fainted. The portable radio with a thunderbolt of twisted wire hanger for an antenna sizzled a report of 109 degrees Fahrenheit” (83).
Above all, however, it’s the constant exposure to toxic pesticides that Viramontes critiques. The central crisis in the novel revolves around the sickness Alejo develops after being sprayed by a crop duster, but less dramatic forms of exposure are equally deadly: Under the Feet of Jesus is full of references to cancer, birth defects, and stillbirths, all of which are at least partly caused by the chemicals that flow into the labor camps’ water supplies. Ultimately, Viramontes suggests that America views people like Estrella and her family as expendable and replaceable. This is partly due to racism and classism, but it also stems from the nature of the work itself. Because workers are constantly on the move, there is always a new labor pool available, and there is little incentive to view one season’s workers as unique and valuable individuals: “Last names were plentiful and easily forgotten because they changed with the crops and the seasons and the state lines” (28).
Coming of Age as a Chicana
Although it details the private thoughts and feelings of several different characters, Under the Feet of Jesus is at its core a story about Estrella’s journey towards adulthood; Estrella is 13 when the novel begins, and has her first romantic experiences over the course of the story. In this broad sense, Estrella’s adolescence is similar to that of any other teenager. In other respects, however, Estrella’s growth is inseparable from experiences that are more unique to her, and that relate to issues of class, ethnicity, and gender. In other words, Under the Feet of Jesus is specifically a Chicana coming-of-age story.
This becomes especially clear in the sections detailing Petra’s attitude towards her daughters’ adolescence. For Petra, there isn’t much to celebrate about Estrella’s impending adulthood. For one thing, she’s aware that Estrella has already had to grow up sooner than many other children her age, helping to support her family and care for her younger siblings: “She wanted her children to stay innocent and honest, wanted them to be as content as when they first arrived somewhere; but she forced them to be older for their own safety” (40).
In other words, for people living on the edge of poverty, maturity is simply something that’s necessary for survival, and therefore a sad reminder of their circumstances. Womanhood is also a largely unpleasant experience in Petra’s mind. Her first period was a traumatic event, and she’s similarly anxious about Estrella beginning to menstruate. For Petra, who has been repeatedly victimized by men and sexism, gaining the ability to become pregnant simply marks another way in which she is not in control of her life; her mother threw her out when she became pregnant out of wedlock, her husband later abandoned her to raise her children alone, and repeated pregnancies have damaged her body in much the same way that fieldwork has. Consequently, Petra fears that Estrella’s experiences of womanhood will be similar, and reacts suspiciously towards her daughter’s developing relationship with Alejo.
However, Petra’s views are ultimately not shared by her daughter, or by the novel itself. Arguably, in fact, much of Petra’s attitude towards womanhood is a byproduct of the same forms of oppression the piscadores more generally suffer from. For instance, Viramontes depicts Christianity as largely patriarchal in nature; Perfecto’s ex, Mercedes, fell pregnant because the church refused to “school[] her in the ritual of birthing […] to know the ceremonies would be to know demons and heathens” (80). Furthermore, since Christianity was brought to Mexico by European imperialism, it is also implicated in the racism and classism that characterize the economy of migrant labor.
In other words, while the challenges of sexism, poverty, and racism are real, they aren’t inevitable in the way that characters like Petra seem to believe. For Estrella, then, the major challenge in coming of age is finding a way to live fully in spite of those oppressive forces. In practice, this means that Estrella embraces her physicality and sexuality in a way that women like Petra are too frightened to do; for instance, Estrella ignores her mother’s warnings about the dangers of the eclipse and shares a romantic moment with Alejo. In addition to providing pleasure and fulfillment in and of itself, Estrella’s willingness to trust her feelings for Alejo also give her a clarity and courage that the other characters in the novel lack, ultimately allowing her to challenge the system that would simply let him die. In other words, Under the Feet of Jesus suggests that for Estrella to truly come of age, she has to learn to find strength in the aspects of her identity—her gender, her ethnicity—that have been most denigrated.
Where To Place One’s Trust
In the absence of any official support or recognition by society as a whole, the characters in Under the Feet of Jesus try to find alternate people and institutions to place their trust in. In many cases, they turn to one another for support, creating a kind of safety net amongst themselves; Petra, for instance, cares for Alejo when he becomes sick because she understands that her own children, under similar circumstances, would have no one to seek help from except other piscadores. However, there are limits to how much the workers are willing to do for one another, in part because resources are so scarce. What’s more, loyalty to one’s fellow workers sometimes clashes with loyalty to even tighter-knit communities—for instance, one’s family. In fact, Estrella’s family was forced to leave the last labor camp they lived in because of just this kind of conflict:
Estrella would have to tell [Petra] about the fight and the mother would sit outside the tarpaulin tent with aching varicose veins and wait for Big Mac to drive up and tell them to move on for their own good on account of he wasn’t responsible for harm or bodily affliction caused by the devil-sucking vengeful Devridges. Migrant families are tight, he would say, you ought to know. They look out for their own (36).
Even families, however, may not provide unconditional support. This is particularly true for the novel’s female characters, who are repeatedly let down and betrayed by their husbands and romantic partners. After Petra’s husband leaves, she enters a relationship with Perfecto—a man whose very name “describe[s] a job well done” (25). Ironically, however, Perfecto proves just as unreliable as Estrella’s father, both because he is considering leaving and because, as he grows older, he grows less able to provide leadership in moments of crisis.
Realizing this, Petra eventually turns to yet another potential source of comfort: “Trust me, she remembered Perfecto saying, but the only trust she had now was in Jesucristo” (164). In fact, Petra relies throughout the novel on her Christian faith to see her through difficult circumstances, but even this ultimately proves to be hollow. For one, Viramontes suggests that religion is often used to justify oppressive practices; when Petra’s mother turns her out for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, she “blessed her with a kiss on her forehead, then slammed the door shut so final, it never opened again” (164). At an even more basic level, however, religion is simply inadequate in the face of the family’s mounting problems; after returning from the hospital, Petra kneels before her altar, but finds “her own prayers turned into soot above her” (166).
For Petra, there is no choice at this point but to fool herself into thinking that Perfecto can “fix” the situation (169). The novel itself, however, proposes a different solution: to the extent that faith in anything is possible given the precariousness of the migrants’ lives, Viramontes suggests that it must be faith in oneself. This is why it’s Estrella who emerges as the hero of the novel; she acts quickly and decisively on her intuitions—as Petra puts it, there is “no holding back the will of [Estrella’s] body” (164). Estrella also generally stands by her gut reactions afterwards, demonstrating her faith in her own convictions; when Alejo says she shouldn’t have threatened the nurse for his sake, Estrella remains convinced that she was in the right. As the novel ends, Estrella’s faith in herself is presented as the sole hope the family has going forwards.
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