Allende's hybrid Caped Crusader
Zorro
By Isabel Allende
Translated, from the Spanish, by Margaret Sayers Peden
HarperCollins, 390 pp., $25.95
To keep herself in demand, Isabel Allende produces on average a book every 15 months -- mostly adult fiction, although she has tried her hand at autobiography and New Age recipe books and, as of late, young adult literature. Her interests in the oppressed and her liberal views remain the same since her auspicious debut novel, ''The House of the Spirits," published in Spanish in 1982. But her focus has changed and so has her artistry. She no longer sets her plots in Chile, where her family comes from. (She was born in Peru and is a relative of the martyred Socialist president Salvador Allende.) Her fiction has also mutated from being merely derivative to becoming a model in consummate melodrama.
Allende's new novel, ''Zorro," is set in California from 1790 to 1815. It exploits the franchise around a mysterious personage, Don Diego de la Vega, a kind of superhero avant la lettre with an aristocratic upbringing, who eventually hides behind an antifaz -- a carnival mask -- in his quest to defend the defenseless. But he has a double ethnic heritage: His mother is a Shoshone warrior. His hybrid ancestry becomes destiny.
In his childhood de la Vega witnesses atrocities committed against Native Americans. He is raised along with Bernardo, his wet-nurse's son. Their class differences open his eyes to the injustices around him. De la Vega travels to Catalonia in his adolescence as the Napoleonic regime is in a state of decay. Soon he becomes a fencing master. He is then recruited by Manuel Escalante to be a member of a secret society called La Justicia. This makes him a crossbreed of Robin Hood and Che Guevara. His manliness and swordsmanship -- his sword is called Justine -- become legendary. Eventually, de la Vega returns to the New World, where he fights injustice. His escapades are told 30 years later by Isabel de Romeu, whose sister won de la Vega's romantic heart over her.
There are a number of mythical Southwestern bandidos making a return of late. Among them is Gregorio Cortez, who in 1911 killed a sheriff in self-defense and was then hunted by 600 Texas Rangers across 450 miles. Cortez is the subject of the classic book ''With His Pistol in His Hand" by Américo Paredes and a valuable independent film directed by Robert M. Young. Another outlaw is Oscar Zeta Acosta, the rowdy Chicano lawyer who accompanied Hunter S. Thompson in ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." And Joaquín Murieta, an outlaw during the Gold Rush on whom Pablo Neruda based a play and Richard Rodriguez used for an essay. But they pale in comparison to Zorro: He has flair, upperclassmanship, and a type of hyperkinetic drive perfect for page-turners.
It is no secret that over the years he's come across many a moonstruck lover. But none is better matched than Allende herself. She reimagines his cloak-and-dagger adventures as if he was the only true Latin spitfire. Indeed, Allende is -- to the best of my knowledge -- the first female author to try her hand at this subject. Zorro's earliest literary manifestation dates back to 1919, when a police reporter from Illinois, Johnston McCulley, published a series of pulp adventures on one Diego de la Vega, a dandy-turned-redeemer. Others quickly banked on the idea, including Hollywood, where McCulley's book was adapted into a movie with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Tyrone Power. Since the beginning there were similarities between Zorro and the Lone Ranger.
These have been emphasized in subsequent screen versions, sequels to the sequels, remakes, and a handful of Sunday TV shows. Gorgeous actors have played the role, from Alain Delon to George Hamilton and, most recently, the interloper Antonio Banderas.
I'm told that nine out of 10 of Allende's readers are females between the ages of 15 and 35, educated yet decidedly liberal in their politics. She used to enchant them with magical realistic concoctions. But she is now the master of Nuevo Latino fiction, spicing her characters with multicultural ingredients and more than a bit of sex spiced throughout. Emotions are always overwrought. Courage is always at stake but never in question. Affection is expressed in either tender fashion or verging on the lachrymose. The dialogue is more syrupy than a Vermont maple tree in season. ''I want to have a little fun," says de la Vega to a score of drunks punching each other while chasing women. ''Do any of you dare to fight me?" He then adds: ''One at a time, please. I will begin with the one who has my medallion; then I will whip each of you, one by one. How does that sound?"
Ay, caramba! I guess every age has the superheroes it deserves.
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five-College 40th Anniversary Professor at Amherst College. His latest books are ''Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion" and the four-volume Encyclopedia Latina. 
