Introduction to Latin American fiction

by Madeleine WIGHTMAN

Part 3

I mentioned in Parts 1 and 2 of this article how post-boom contemporary authors preferred to set their novels against the backdrop and in the context of contemporary society and popularised political writing and we have looked at Allende’s work as an example of this.

I will now examine a couple of films that I have already mentioned and that you may already be familiar with. These started out as post-boom novels but were later made into films, making their political and social message accessible to the masses.

Manuel Puig's 'The Kiss of the Spider Woman', which was published in Spanish and English in 1976, was made into a film in 1985. It has previously been described by critics as a classic show-piece to demonstrate the 'new novel’.

Puig himself said "The book is very much about the Argentina of 1973. There was ideological repression and social repression. I wanted to put those things together. The rightist government was suspicious of any leftist ideology and the leftists were puritanical in the sexual area.

A scene from the movie

The repression was expressed in different ways. What I mainly wanted to talk about was the possibility of people changing."Stylistically it clearly demonstrates the advantages of new genres over the old-style traditional realism.

The Kiss of the Spider Woman

Two prisoners, Luis and Valentín share a cell in a Buenos Aires Prison. Molina, an effeminate and openly homosexual window-dresser, is in jail for "corruption of a minor," while Valentín is a political prisoner who is part of a revolutionary group trying to overthrow the government. Molina recounts five films that he has seen to Valentin in order for them both to forget their situation.

Puig uses intertextuality (telling a story within a story) to introduce the political theme of authority and power which is intrinsic to the novel. Molina's way of telling film narratives are authoritarian and repressive as they force their own point of view upon the reader. However, the novel itself as a whole frees the reader to form his or her own interpretation.

The novel's form is unusual in that there is no traditional narrative voice, one of the primary features of fiction. It is written in large part as dialogue, without any indication of who is speaking, except for a dash (-) to show a change of speaker. The novel is mainly written as a stream of consciousness and what is not written in this way or as a dialogue is written as government documentation.

The conversations that the characters engage in, when not focused on the moment at hand are focused on films that Molina has seen, which act as a form of escape from their environment. There is therefore a main plot with five subplots.

These subplots are films presented as mini stories which comprise much of the novel. The author includes a long series of footnotes on the psychoanalytic theory of homosexuality. These act largely as a mini representation of Puig's political intention in bringing about a more objective view of homosexuality.

Valentin, the Marxist protagonist, has risked his life and willingly endured torture for a political cause and his example helps transform his cell-mate into a citizen and as someone who will eventually re-enter society.

Molina's love of aesthetics and cultural life teaches Valentin that escapism can have a powerfully Utopian purpose in life and that escapism has the potential to be just as subversive and meaningful as political activity.

In the middle of the novel the reader discovers that Molina is actually a spy that is sent to Valentin's jail to befriend him and try to extract information about his organization. Molina gets provisions from the outside for his cooperation with the officials which he shares with Valentin.

It is through his acts of kindness to Valentin that the two fall into a romance and briefly become lovers. The emotional and sexual union of the two men signifies in a very real way Puig's belief that in order to be effective, politics should relate to real life and not be purely theoretical. The notion spider woman being trapped in her own web seems to symbolise that we are all trapped in our own realities.

'The kiss' signifies liberation from this trap in that we can freely dwell in reality and fantasies providing a bridge between the two and ultimately provide meaning. The 1985 film version is a very example of post-Boom popular fiction during a time where the issues it presented were very sensitive to the public, giving it a high degree of popularity at the time it was screened.

'The Kiss of the Spiderwoman' then is an excellent example of post-Boom fiction, since it breaks with traditional narrative styles and experiments with new ways of telling a story. It employs some of the techniques used by Boom, such as magical realism, or in this case, the stream of consciousness and the recounting of stories within the story.

However, the novel and the film have a very explicit political message within contemporary society, made accessible and popular for the masses by the 'new narrative' styles.

Like Water for Chocolate

The other example is Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel ‘Like water for Chocolate’ which was subsequently made into a film in 1992. The English translation of the novel 'Like water for chocolate' and sub-titled film were equally successful in the United States and the film was the largest grossing foreign film ever up to that point.

The novel follows the story of a young girl named Tita who longs her entire life to marry her lover, Pedro, but can never have him because of her mother's upholding of the family tradition of the youngest daughter not marrying but taking care of her mother until the day she dies.

Tita is only able to express herself when she cooks. Esquivel’s novel falls very much into the post-Boom, yet she traded on the success of the use of Magical Realism associated with the Boom.

Here the magical realist episodes are intrinsic to the development of the story, which is at the same time rooted in real Mexican society in 1910 and takes the viewer through the Mexican revolution right up to 1938.

The narrator is Tita's great-niece and the story is set in northern Mexico. The novel's 12 chapters, written one per month in diary/instalment form relate details from over two decades of Tita's life, beginning in 1910 when she is fifteen years old and ending with her death at thirty-nine. Each chapter includes a recipe that Tita prepares for her family during this period.

The story begins with Tita’s mother’s refusal to allow her to marry Pedro, the man she loves. Mama Elena offers Pedro Rosaura's hand instead since she is the eldest daughter.

To the dismay of his father, Pedro accepts simply to be closer to Tita. When Tita finds an excuse to not attend Rosaura's engagement party, Mama Elena forces Tita to prepare the wedding banquet as punishment.

Yet Tita puts all her desire for Pedro into the cooking and as the wedding guests eat the cake, they are overcome by an "intoxication" which causes intense longing for their true love. Tita perpetually channels her frustrated desires into the creation of delicious meals that often have strange, magical effects on her family.

A scene from the movie

The novel is typical of the post-Boom genre of writing, as the magical realist episodes are intrinsic to the development of the story, which is at the same time rooted in real Mexican society in 1910 where the story begins.

Magical realism is also used to provoke a sense of national identity through popular culture by the use of Tita's mestizo cooking and the physical reactions of those who consume her food.

Her violent attacks and ultimate revenge on Rosaura, who eventually dies of 'serious digestive problems' following a spate of particularly vicious, jealous rows between the sisters. Gertrudis, Tita's other sister, elopes with a soldier involved in the Revolution, which symbolises a desire for change in both domestic and political spheres. When a rose given to her secretly by Pedro, Tita uses it to vent her unexpressed passion through a pre-Hispanic recipe - 'Quail in Rose Petal Sauce'.

Feminine representation

All the female characters in 'Like Water for Chocolate' are battling for liberation in one way or other. This also includes Tita's tyrannical mother Doña Elena, who herself represents both the oppressive patriarchal system and the traditions which incarcerate Tita.

However, it transpires that Doña Elena was also frustrated by a loveless marriage to Tita's father and that Gertrudis is the result of an affair with a 'Mulatto' (indigenous Latin American man) While on the surface 'Like Water for Chocolate' appears to be a progressive narrative that celebrates women's willingness to break from tradition, a closer reading reveals that real change is stifled.

Feminine power is derived from the preparation of food and through fulfilling other traditional roles such as marriage and motherhood but it is essentially the masculine gaze and agency which determine the course of the novel. Pedro's decision to marry Rosaura and the implication that Tita will only find liberation and redemption through marriage after Mama Elena's death are examples of this.

There is no possibility for Tita to define herself outside traditional feminine roles. In creating the female-centered cast of characters, Esquivel creates a world in which although men are physically present only occasionally, the legacy of sexism and the confinement of women to the domestic sphere persist.

Esquivel does not offer her readers the vision of Utopian sisterhood but an insight into the way women are restricted by standards of societal propriety perpetuated by other women. Although a medium for self-expression, the culinary 'mestizo' culture that represents both femininity and Mexican national identity, it still occurs within the context of traditional, patriarchal structures.

This suggests that for woman and for Mexican society itself, which has an identity so deeply rooted in tradition, true liberation is an illusory ideal, yet one well worth striving for.

Conclusion

To conclude, despite the radical nature of both form and content of the boom and post boom phases of Latin American literature, we are finally left with an uneasy perception that the patriarchal system continues to impose limits on the revolutionary aspirations of the movement’s authors and readers.

The only way that these aspirations can find expression is within in a magical dimension, which is separate from the concrete constriction of day to day life.

They are perhaps unattainable ideals beyond the confines of practical experience, whose beauty entices and enchants.

Yet maybe the genuine assimilation of pre-Columbian traditions with modern life within a society which serves the indigenous, mestizo (or Latino) inhabitants of Latin America in a fair and equitable way will continue to be a work in progress, always a little out of reach.