Introduction to Latin American fiction

By Madeleine WIGHTMAN

[Part 2]

The decades of the 1960s and 1970s were a time of great political turmoil all over Latin America, in a political and diplomatic climate strongly influenced by the dynamics of the Cold War. This climate formed the background for the work of the writers of the Latin American Boom, and defined the context in which their sometimes radical ideas had to operate.

The Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent US attempt to thwart it can be seen as the start of this period.

Boom versus post-Boom novels

Boom novels are essentially modernist novels. They treat time as nonlinear, often use more than one perspective or narrative voice and feature a great number of new words or phrases and puns.

Another notable characteristic of the Boom is the questioning of regional as well as national identity and an awareness of worldwide economic and ideological issues.

Boom literature breaks down the barriers between the fantastical and the mundane, transforming this mixture into a new reality. It does this primarily by the use of Magical Realism.

The Boom can be distinguished by daring and experimental novels, such as Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963) that were frequently published in Spain and quickly translated into English. Yet, the Boom's defining novel is arguably Gabriel García Márquez's “One hundred years of solitude written in 1967.

Post-boom contemporary authors however, preferred to set their novels against the backdrop and in the context of contemporary society and popularised political writing. Post-Boom novels represent, at least in its mainstream, a reinstatement of the 'reader-friendly' text that subordinates experimentation and self-consciousness to the communication of political messages and the treatment of themes relating to everyday life, such as popular culture and human love. ‘

The Post-Boom' and 'The Transition', point to the differences between the Boom and the Post-Boom (pessimism, irony, detachment, stylistic complexity giving way to greater openness, referentially and political engagement), it is important to recognise the Post-Boom represents a change of emphasis rather than a new departure. While Boom writing survived the advent of the Post-Boom, so the Post-Boom found its earliest expression (in Jose Agustin's Gazapo (1965) during the infancy of the Boom itself. Another example is Manuel Puig’s 1972 “The kiss of the Spider Woman”which was later made into a film.

Given this background, even rough periodization is difficult, and since the Post-Boom embraces both the largely documentary testimonial novel and Boom-type self-conscious fiction, any attempt at characterization can be only very general. Anothere well known post-Boom novelists in Latin American include Elena Poniatowska, famous for 'Querido Diego', which translates as “Dear Diego”, which are journalistic style non-fiction chronicles. The real task is to try to outline some of the main characteristics of the Post-Boom as we see them at present. It helps to recognize that to some extent the Post-Boom is a reaction against the Boom on for three main reasons :-

I. over elitism and consequently a failure to attract readers

2. too much of an emphasis on cosmopolitanism and universality at the expense of the contemporary Latin America

3. over emphasis on narrative technique, on the "mystery" of reality, and on the possible inability of language to express it. Many Boom novels used magical realism in a way that was often inaccessible to the masses

Magical realist novels that we associate predominantly with the Boom typically present unreal, fantastical events as though they are mundane. Conversely mundane events are often presented as though they are unreal. Plots, while often based on real experiences, incorporate strange, fantastic, and legendary elements, mythical peoples, speculative settings, and characters who, while plausible, could also be unreal, and combine the true, the imaginary, and the nonexistent in such a way that they are difficult to separate. However not all Boom novels use magical realism. Some authors were satisfied with simply breaking away from traditional narrative structures.

Rayuela

Julio Cortazar’s ‘Rayuela’ which was written in 1963 and falls firmly into the category of a Boom novel is one such example. Rayuela means Hopscotch in English, which is very apt, given the structure of the novel. Written in an episodic, snapshot manner, the novel has 155 chapters, the last 99 being designated as "expendable." The book can be read either in direct sequence from chapter 1 to 56, which, Cortázar writes, the reader can do "with a clean conscience", or by skipping randomly through the entire set of 155 chapters-except chapter 55-according to a table provided by the author that leaves the reader, finally, in an infinite loop between the last two chapters in the sequence. There are several other ways to read the novel, such as reading only the odd or even pages, or choosing chapters in completely random order. Some of the "expendable" chapters fill in gaps in the main story, while others add information about the characters or record the aesthetic and literary speculations of a writer named Morelli (arguably a stand-in for the author) who makes a brief appearance in the narrative. The novel is an example of multiple endings. Yet I digress slightly and will now focus on Marquez’s ‘One hundred years of solitude’.

Solitude

The narrative traces seven generations of the Buendía Family The Founding patriarch of the City of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía believes that this city, surrounded by water exists and so whilst on a journey with his wife to find a better life, he invents Mocondo according to his perceptions. Soon after its foundation, Macondo becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events that involve the generations of the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic, largely self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, a hurricane destroys Macondo, due to the cyclical turmoil inherent to Macondo. At story’s end, a Buendía man deciphers an encrypted, secret message that generations of Buendía family men had failed to decipher. The secret message informed the recipient of every fortune and misfortune lived by the Buendía Family generations.

The whole novel is dreamy and other worldly and a dominant theme is the inevitable and inescapable repetition of history and of family names. The protagonists are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel, characters are visited by ghosts, which are symbols of the past and of the haunting nature it has over Macondo. The ghosts and the displaced repetition that they evoke are, in fact, firmly grounded in the particular development of Latin American history. Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías were always alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions. The clear inference is that much of modern Latin American society is alienated from its cultural and ethnic roots.

Fate

The fate of Macondo is also both doomed and predetermined by its very existence. Fatalism is a metaphor for the particular part that ideology has played in maintaining historical dependence. It locks the interpretation of Latin American history into certain patterns that deny alternative possibilities.The narrative seems to confirm fatalism in order to illustrate the feeling of entrapment that ideology can create.

The novel is one of a number of texts that "Latin American culture has created to understand itself". In this sense, the novel can be conceived as a linear archive. This archive narrates the story of a Latin America discovered by European explorers, which had its historical entity developed by the printing press. The Archive is a symbol of the literature that is the foundation of Latin American history and also a decoding instrument. The keeper of the historical archive in the novel, represents both the whimsical and the literary.

I mentioned earlier that “The house of the spirits” is frequently compared to ”'One hundred years of solitude' and it is clear that Allende does indeed owe Marquez a great debt. The latter chronicles the lives of three generations of the same family who live in Chile. In both novels, Latin American history is explored through the medium of a lengthy family saga and many parallels can be drawn between characters in both novels. What is different is that 'The house of the spirits' refers unequivocally to a specific reality, whereas 'One hundred years of solitude' offers allegorical glimpses of reality from the refuge of patent unreality. However, both novels are magically realist, with characters lives being punctuated by fantastic and improbable events. Post boom contemporary authors generally broke with the tendency towards the use of magical realism.

They also preferred to set their novels against the backdrop and in the context of contemporary society and popularised political writing, making it more accessible to the masses. Yet some popular post boom authors such as Isabel Allende traded on the success of the magical realism which characterised much of the Boom genre. In “The House of the spirits”, Allende makes unmistakeable references to 20th century Chile. The saga of the Trueba family does not only represent the Chilean experience but takes place within a modern Chilean context and is shaped by it. Hence there is a greater realism about the more recent novel.

Fortunes

The story documents the fortunes of the the del Valle and Trueba family, focusing mainly on Clara and Rosa del Valle who are the daughters of Severo and Novea del Valle. Their youngest daughter, Clara, has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary of her life. Using her physic abilities, Clara predicts a death in the family. Shortly after this her sister Rosa the Beautiful dies, breaking the heart of Esteban Trueba who is the main male character and whose life provides a narrative backbone to the novel. He is deeply in love with the mermaid-like, green-haired Rosa and has been toiling in the mines to earn a suitable fortune so that he can support her. Following her death he eventually marries Clara and after their wedding, his dreamy, passive wife finds happiness in developing her psychic powers and spirits, artists, and mediums flock to the Truebas' big house in the city. Clara's world may also represent the indigenous population of Latin America, with the implication that the native people are deeply mysterious and unknowable to the European conquistadors.

Clara gives birth to a daughter named Blanca. As a young woman she befriends a boy named Pedro Tercero who lives near the family hacienda in the countryside at Tres Marias that Esteban Trueba inherited from his family and made his fortune improving. Pedro Tercero and Blanca eventually become lovers. Life runs smoothly until Pedro Tercero is banished from the hacienda by Esteban, on account of his revolutionary communist/socialist ideas. Clara spends her time teaching and helping peasant children and Blanca is sent to a convent school. Eventually Blanca fakes an illness so that she can return to the hacienda and be close to Pedro Tercero. She subsequently gives birth to their daughter, Alba, although Esteben tried to force his daughter to marry a French Count named Jean de Satigny.

Clairvoyant

It is significant that one of the main characters, whose diaries the text is based upon, is named Clara, translating as 'Clear' and 'Claire'. Not only is she clairvoyant but her name implies that there is a need for clarity in naming individuals within the family and perhaps also in finding a new identity for Latin American countries. This is an important difference from “One hundred years of solitude” which endlessly repeats family names. In “The house of the spirits”there is a clear evolution. The names Nivea, Clara, Blanca and Alba are more or less synonyms and yet they are distinctively different. There also seems to be an evolution from Nivea which means snow-white, through to Alba which means brightest white in Latin and Dawn in Spanish.

The character Alba herself does also represent the dawn of a new social and political beginning and is key to the search for an authentic, contemporary Latin American identity. She is the bridge between the passive, oppressed peasants (who the other women in the family represent) and her grandfather, Esteban Trueba, who represents the European conquistadors and the old patriarchal system. This is highlighted at the beginning of the novel, when Esteban rapes Panchia Garcia, a reference to the plundered lands and indigenous population that has effectively been violated by European Conquistadors.

As the novel progresses, Esteban becomes isolated from every member of his family except for Alba, whom he is very fond of. He has a tense relationship with his daughter Blanca but shows genuine love and devotion to his granddaughter. He runs as a senator for the Conservative Party but is nervous about whether or not he will win. Clara informs him that "those who have always won will win again" and this becomes his motto. This suggests a feeling in Chile and Latin America as a whole that oppressive, patriarchal dictatorships will always win.

Revolutionary

When she is older, Blanca's daughter Alba attends a local college where she meets Miguel, a revolutionary and out of love for him she involves herself in student protests against the conservative government. After the victory of the People's Party (a socialist movement), Alba celebrates with Miguel. Fearing a Communist dictatorship, Esteban Trueba and his fellow politicians plan a military coup against the socialist government. However, when the military coup is set into action, the military men relish their power and grow out of control. Esteban's gentle son Jaime is viciously and pointlessly killed by power-driven soldiers along with many others. This brings about a radical change in his attitude and character as a direct result of watching those who possess power spiralling out of control, which mirrors the contemporary political situation in Latin America during the 1970s and 80s. The House of the spirits was written in 1982.

Isabel Allende’s work also offers a female perspective on reality, which also helped popularise it to the masses. Though Esteban Trueba provides a narrative backbone to the novel, the patriarchy that he engenders provides a counterpoint to the attitudes and behaviours of the female characters. Not only do they represent increasing independence with each new generation, they also show women's integration in the class struggle. Nivea is a suffragette yet well off and not at all in touch with the working classes. Her daughter Clara defies her husband, shunning domestic duties as well as wearing feminine clothes and jewellery.

Then her daughter Blanca stands up to her father, has a child out of wedlock and a lasting love affair with a peasant leader and revolutionary singer. She is taken away, imprisoned and beaten and it is this which moves Esteban Trueba to seek to protect his daughter and her revolutionary lover from the patriarchal authorities.

If Trueba represents the European conquistadors and both his daughter and granddaughter (who subsequently joins a student political movement and ends up in a shanty town) represent the women and ordinary people, Trueba’s move towards supporting them represents a recognition that there needs to be a real change to the system.

The combination of optimism and political realism in the novel is a key pointer in much post-boom fiction. The pessimism and abstract contemplation found in many Boom novels, such as Marquez’s “One hundred years of solitude” is on the wane and the post-boom novel, is popularised making it accessible to the masses. “The house of the spirits” as with other post-Boom novels, focuses directly on Latin America's political tragedies in a direct and meaningful way, thus offering hope for the future.