Although only a few of Miguel Méndez’s works have been translated into English, his writing impressed enough English-speaking, literary personages to win him a teaching position at a university. Not only that, it won him an honorary college degree. Although his writing is not well known to the general non-Hispanic population in the United States, the Hispanic community admires him as one of the finest, contemporary writers.

Méndez’s novel Pilgrims in Aztlán was published around the same time that Mexican-American youths were beginning to organize a political movement whose basic premise was the resistance of enculturation. The students were refusing to give up their use of the Spanish language in school. They were rebelling against American history texts in which Christopher Columbus for instance, was honored as the person who discovered America. Also at this time, the symbol of Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Aztec people, was a rallying point for the students who were searching for a cultural identity. A reawakening need for symbols of their traditions found a home in this mythical symbol. This symbol seems to have arisen from some deep, collective passion and was found in the title of many literary works at the time. Méndez’s book was one of the first. The symbol helped to unite the Hispanic community, and Méndez’s book furthered the concept.

For these and other reasons, most critics view Méndez’s book as a landmark in Hispanic literature. Oscar U. Somoza in “The Mexican Element in the Fiction of Miguel Méndez,” says that with this novel Méndez “solidified his position as an outstanding representative of Chicano literary expression.” Somoza adds that Méndez “emerges as a proponent of a deep moral approach toward socio-economic issues.” Roland Walter, writing in the Americas Review calls Méndez’s novel “a sociological document of high aesthetic standard.”

Pilgrims in Aztlán, says Juan D. Bruce-Novoa in his “Miguel Méndez: Voices of Silence,” is a story about the poor who have, without Méndez, no voice. He also admits that Méndez’s book is hard to read. It is complicated by a fractured timeline and complex structure. It is a novel that “waits for someone capable of listening to and actualizing the voices.” Despite its challenging style “the strong reader, the faithful, persistent reader will prove himself in the arduous reading by understanding Méndez’s real message.” That message waits for the reader at the end of the book, and like a rite of passage, says Bruce-Novoa, the reader must make his way through.

The book is a “wealth of oral tradition,” continues Bruce-Novoa, and

Méndez achieves the purpose of converting the oral tradition into fixed images: Méndez creates a synthesis of the voices of the poor and a written text that can compete in complexity and beauty with contemporary literature.

One of Méndez’s deepest concerns is the loss of oral tradition in the Mexican-American culture. Because the younger generations are losing their language, the gap between their generation and the generation of their grandparents is widening. Since oral tradition is handed down from the older generation to the younger one, the oral stories of the older generation are being lost.

Although there is agreement that Méndez’s text requires an active reader who is willing to record the names behind the voices and keep track of the histories behind the names, most critics also support Bruce-Novoa’s statement that “what seduces us is not simply what is said [in Méndez’s novel], but how it is said.” Méndez’s use of metaphor and his poetic appreciation of language makes the pilgrimage from the first page to the last well worth the effort.