The Space of Disease in Alejandro Morales’s The Captain of All These Men of Death

Abstract

Throughout US history, American society has always taken a very peculiar and uniform stance with regard to spatiality. If we look back at the westward expansion of the colonies, the fact remains that any aspects or individuals that are not wanted for the modern and progressive agenda are discarded, rejected, or “swept under the rug.” Such is the case with the Native Americans who were destroyed and had their civilizations decimated and relegated to a few Indian reservations. The black slaves of the South also were kept in small enclaves away from the white “masters.” If we jump forward in time and space, in southern California, that unwanted human—the Mexican—was reserved spaces away from White American society, away from the dominant style of living. Alejandro Morales’s most recent novel The Captain of All These Men of Death explores what in Foucauldian thought is called “heterotopias.” However, the novel not only integrates the individuals who live in those marginal places denominated as “the barrio” in East Los Angeles; Morales also explores the peculiar heterotopia of the diseased: the sanatorium or clinic. The fear of disease and contagion relegates these individuals into secluded spaces away from the general population. The “excavation” of this particular space is carried out through the eyes of the protagonist, Roberto Contreras, a survivor of tuberculosis. Through him we are able to contrast two main types of spaces: utopian and heterotopian space. His experiences allow us to perceive a space that leans more toward a state of crisis and deviance than the classic utopian state. The purpose of this essay is to “excavate” the dialectic between utopia and heterotopia in the sanatorium and the dynamic forces between space and power that take place.