The Dreamer

Mexican movie legend Pedro Infante would be 87 years old were he alive today. Forty years ago, he was killed in a plane crash, at the height of his career. But his popularity, in Mexico and around the world, has not waned. Thousands of fans make a pilgrimage to El Panteón Jardín in Mexico City on the anniversary of his death on April 15. Fan clubs and film festivals occur regularly, and even a casual look on the Internet reveals hundreds of Web sites dedicated to him. Comparisons to Valentino, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Sinatra, Cary Grant, and even John F. Kennedy are invoked when trying to explain the appeal of Infante. None of these comparisons really reaches to the depths of his mark on an entire generation of moviegoers during and long after La epoca de oro del cine Mexicano, or the Golden Age of Mexican film of the 1930s and Forties.

The titles of Infante's films, like many of the films of the era, are noble, sweeping, and passionate, titles like Cuando habla el corazón, Viva mi desgracia, Cuando lloran las valientes, El enamorado, and Cuidado con el amor. Infante played comedic and dramatic roles with equal flair, and many of his films featured his haunting singing. His movies are nearly always about honor, class, loyalty, anguish, glory, and desires of the heart against all odds.

The grand spirit of the Infante films is the backdrop for a new novel by Denise Chávez, Loving Pedro Infante (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24). Tere Ávila is Chávez's protagonist, a woman living a very different life from the screen lives and loves of her beloved Infante. Tere lives in Cabritoville, N.M., a dusty town where thirtysomething Tere is secretary of the Pedro Infante Fan Club. Divorced and working as a teacher's aide at an elementary school, she is hopelessly in love with Lucio Valadez, who happens to be married. What Tere's real-life affair lacks in true romance and hope, she finds in her beloved Pedro Infante. Her struggle to realize the difference between fantasy and reality, real life and the movies, is what drives the book to its bittersweet conclusion.

Austin Chronicle: The other day when I was telling someone about you, I accidentally turned you into a Tejana. You're really from New Mexico, but you have a Texas connection, right?

Denise Chávez: I grew up in Las Cruces, but my mom is from the Presidio area. As a girl, I spent summers with relatives in the Big Bend area. When I'm in Texas, I'm Tejana!

AC: How did you come to use Pedro Infante and his movies as the backdrop for Loving Pedro Infante?

DC: I grew up with Pedro Infante movies. My mom used to take us to the Mexican movies at El Colón Theater in El Paso. Las Cruces is only about 40 miles from El Paso. Inside [El Colón] ... you could laugh, dream, and scheme. And when you sat in El Colón watching a Pedro Infante movie, everything was possible. Little did I know I'd be using the Pedro Infante movies to write this book.

AC: But what is it about him?

DC: He was -- and is -- a legend. He was a very talented actor ... he was handsome, he could sing ... he played every man. He made women and men sigh! He made films for all of us. Each of them was distinct and part of the great legacy of our antepasados/our ancestors, whose stories are our own. When he died, it was like when JFK died here. There are stories that he's really still alive. Some say the left side of his face was mutilated [in the plane crash] and he now lives in the Sierra Nevadas. Others say he was having an affair with the President of Mexico's mistress and ... he had to go in to hiding. The stories go on and on. They're similar to the myth of Elvis. There's something in us that lives for myths. And besides that, the movies are just so much fun. I use the movies as a backdrop to explain cycles of behavior in the book; to talk about the difference between the illusion of love and the reality of love.

AC: In the beginning, I was impatient with Tere and her obsession with a relationship that has no future. But it's easy to be critical when you're on the outside.

DC: That was a problem: how to make her likeable and not pathetic. But at the same time, how many of us have been in that situation, when you loved the wrong person? It's like being drunk on life, being in that, "What the hell am I doing?" place. La vida, it's crazy but I love it.

AC: I love it that you tell the story about the commitment between two friends, Irma ("La Wirms") and Tere.

DC: I think of them as the Chicana Lucille Ball and Ethel Mertz. Irma doesn't like Tere's choices, and they have their differences, but Irma is Tere's comadre. The one who stands on the side as you wreak havoc with your life but still loves you.

AC: Other people have called this book "raw" and "raunchy," but I think of it as proudly rasquache. In the same way Dorothy Allison embraces her poor, white roots, you allow your characters to say things related to class and especially the female body that are cultural no-nos. Was writing this book daring for you?

DC: It was, exactly for those reasons. There's always someone who finds discomfort with how women talk about their bodies. I wanted to give readers an understanding of a 30-year-old woman on the make. But it's more than that. It's [Tere] deciding how she wants to live her life.

AC: You capture the other characters so hilariously in the fan club minutes interspersed throughout the book. Here is one of my favorite entries from the club treasurer's report:

Sista Rocha counted $24.59, which she pulled out from her brassiere. Things are at an all-time low. Former treasurer Onelia González-Johnson's son, Del Wayne, got into her purse and stole the membership dues to support his cocaine habit. We wish Onelia the best of luck in her new job in Amarillo, Texas. We were sad to hear that Del Wayne was sent to La Tuna Penitentiary. ... A motion was passed by Catalina Lugo that Sista Rocha open a bank account as soon as possible. It was seconded by Francisca Urdialez, who wants to be called Pancha from now on.

DC: You have to have the humor or else it's just too much. The first version I turned in was too dark. I call it the espresso version; this is the latte version. I'm hoping that the humor together with the grittiness will populate a place that seems real.

AC: Let's talk about the las girlfriends mantle that's been draped around you, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Julia Alvarez. Do you worry about being packaged as one of the queens of Latina literature?

DC: Sandra has said this before. There are lots of las girlfriends out there, other writers working very hard. It's not just us. You keep [writing] because you believe in the stories, you believe in the characters. We're more than the hype. The appreciation of multicultural literature, of women's literature, has come a long way. There's so much good writing, very passionate writing. It's a good time to be a woman.