SOURCE: “Alurista's Flight to Aztlán: A Study in Poetic Effectiveness,” in Missions in Conflict: Essays on U.S.-Mexican Relations and Chicano Culture, Gunter Narr Verlag, 1986, pp. 123-31.

In the following essay, Grandjeat argues that Alurista's poetry is more strongly spiritual than political.

Alurista's work has been acknowledged both by critics and readers of Chicano poetry as an outstanding landmark. “A seminal figure,” according to Tomás Ybarra,¹ he is considered by many as “the poet laureate of Aztlán.”² But fame never comes alone: he has also been one of the most controversial Chicano writers. Indeed, while everybody has hailed the breakthrough he has achieved from a linguistic point of view, his ideology has stirred up much heated debate; especially among political activists. I think such a debate is often irrelevant, if understandable, and I would like to offer a reading which does not stress the...