THE OTHER IN THE OTHER: USING THE STORIES OF QUINCE DUNCAN TO TEACH COSTA RICAN CULTURE AND HISTORY IN THE SPANISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM ____________________________________________________________ By JERRY KINNEY ______________________________________________________________ A THESIS Submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of Creighton University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of Liberal Studies ___________________________________ Omaha, NE August 6, 2016 Kinney ii ABSTRACT Many intermediate Spanish foreign language teachers are currently “teaching culture” as a series of facts that are added to lessons sporadically when time allows. Research shows that high school-level Spanish teachers predominately focus on teaching grammatical structures and vocabulary because this is what textbooks and exams, including the National Spanish Exam, emphasize. This thesis argues that by reading and discussing the short stories of the Costa Rican writer Quince Duncan, students will be able to learn about the country’s history and culture from the perspectives of his characters while, also, still learning grammar and vocabulary. Duncan’s characters are members of the country’s minority West Indian community and have been left out of the nation’s dominant historical narrative, la leyenda blanca. By examining the non-dominate culture through these characters and their lives, the idea of a national culture will be problematized and students will learn for than just factual knowledge. This thesis provides teachers with materials to teach about Costa Rica’s historical events through the lens Duncan's stories provide. Students can become aware of the ways in which people at the margins and centers of a society view each other and interact and also begin to consider these interactions in their own cultures. Along with a detailed summary of four of Duncan’s stories, are lists of key vocabulary, historical background summaries, teaching suggestions, and discussion questions that will allow teachers to insert these stories into existing curricula. Kinney iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very thankful to the many professors who helped me conceive and create this thesis. Specifically, I would like to thank Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta for his detailed feedback, guidance, and willingness to spend over two years on this project. I am also deeply indebted to my two thesis readers, Dr. Claudia García and Dr. Patrick Murray, as well as to Dr. Ngwarsungu Chiwengo and Dr. Richard White for their inspiring courses that helped me better understand the world. Finally, I want to thank Mr. Quince Duncan for taking the time to respond to my interview questions. Kinney iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION….……………………………………..………………………….……………………………..1 CHAPTER 1--The Danger of The Single Story………………………………..………………….….22 CHAPTER 2—Teaching With Stories: Costa Rican History and Literature……………..36 CHAPTER 3—Living In Limón: “Una canción en la madrugada”/”Dawn’s Song”……………………………………………………………………………………………………....75 CHAPTER 4—Fighting In Limón: “Un regalo para la abuela”/ “A Gift for Grandma”…………………………………………………………………………………………………….….…96 CHAPTER 5—Playing In Limón: “El partido/ “Go-o-o-o-al!”..............................................112 CHAPTER 6—Working In Limón: “La leyenda de José Gordon”/ “The Legend of Joe Gordon”………………………………………………………………………………………………………….127 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………………………….153 APPENDIX—An Interview with Quince Duncan………………………………………………..157 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………………………………162 Kinney v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 1. A conceptual model of the Standards' 3 P's…………………………………………….p. 11 Fig. 2. Las Bolas stone spheres near the Terraba River in Southeastern Costa Rica created by the Diquís People between 500-1000 A.D…………………………………….….p. 42 Fig. 3. African tripod. This artifact was found in Limón Province and was created between 300-800 A.D…………………………………………………………………………………..…p. 43 Fig. 4. A map of the colonial division in the Caribbean………………………………………p. 45 Fig. 5. Tomás Povedano de Arcos (1847-1943), Rescate de Dulcehé (before 1941). Oil panting depicting the Spanish Governor Coronado returning a young woman, Dulcehé, to her brother, the cacique Corrohore, after her anduction by a rival tribe. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……...p. 46 Fig. 6. A map showing the cities of San José and Alajuela…………………………………..p. 50 Fig. 7. Much of Costa Rica's coffee was shipped to Europe from the port of Puntarenas……………………………………………………………………………………………………..p. 54 Fig. 8. Detail of the mural "Alegoría del café y el banano" by the Italian artist Aleardo Villa that hand in Costa Rica's National Theater……………………………………………….p. 56 Fig. 9. Coffee collectors in Costa Rica at the end of the 19th century…………………...p. 57 Fig. 10. Statue of Juan Santamaría in Alajuela, Costa Rica. Santamaría set fire to a building during a battle with William Walker’s forces saving many Coast Ricans. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………p. 58 Fig. 11. Basilica of the Virgen of Los Angeles in Cartago, Costa Rica…………………...p. 60 Fig. 12. Carlos Luis Fallas's 1941 novel Mamita Yunai about the challenges working for United Fruit………………………………………………………………………………………………p. 64 Fig. 13. Costa Rica’s Limón Province is highlighted in red………………………………....p. 77 Kinney vi Fig. 14. Workers hauling banana by mule in the early 1900’s…………………………....p. 80 Fig. 15. A Costa Rican banana plantation in the early 1900's……………………………..p. 83 Fig. 16. A Limonese family photographed near the end of the 19th century……….p. 87 Fig. 17. A Calypso band in Limón……………………………………………………………………..p. 89 Fig. 18. A Costa Rican passenger train in 1910…………………………………………………p. 96 Fig. 19. Map of Costa Rica's Provinces……………………………………………………………...p. 99 Fig. 20. A twenty colón coin…………………………………………………………………………..p. 100 Fig. 21. A cartoon published in Diario de Costa Rican in 1923………………………...p. 109 Fig. 22. Joel Campbell (left) celebrates after scoring the first goal for the Costa Rican national team in their 2014 World Cup match against Uruguay………………………p. 119 Fig. 23. El Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica opened in 2011 and replaced the original national stadium that was built in 1924. The Costa Rican National Soccer Team plays its home games in this stadium…………………………………………………………….p. 122 Fig. 24. Map of Costa Rica's Atlantic Zone showing the railway that connected Puerto Limón with the exiting line……………………………………………………………………………p. 129 Fig. 25. Workers in Costa Rican cutting bananas from trees……………………………p. 130 Fig. 26. Marcus Garvey in 1924……………………………………………………………………...p. 136 Fig. 27. Jamaican Banana workers in 1894……………………………………………………..p. 139 Fig. 28. A Oklahoman mother and her children photographed in 1936 during the Great Depression………………………………………………………………………………………….p. 149 Kinney 1 INTRODUCTION I first read Quince Duncan’s short story “Una canción en la madrugada” for an Advanced Spanish Composition class that I was taking as a part of my Masters in Language Teaching graduate program. I enrolled in this course to improve as a high school Spanish teacher, but I was not prepared for the doubt that Duncan’s story would create in my mind regarding the manner in which I was “teaching culture.” Reflecting upon these doubts, I realized that the ways in which I was teaching about cultures and other peoples was flawed. I was offering students fun facts and trivia instead of teaching them to develop an intercultural competence that would allow them to understand culture, how it is created and experienced, and to be able to work, live, and interact with people from different parts of the world (or even in different parts of the world). By reading and studying Duncan I learned that immigrants from all over the Caribbean and their descendants played a significant role in Costa Rica’s development. Through his stories and the research they inspired, I learned that during the last three decades of nineteenth century, immigrants, predominately Jamaican in nationality, were recruited to Costa Rica to construct a railroad that could carry coffee from plantations in the Central Valley to the Caribbean coast. Initially, these immigrants saw themselves as temporary workers and that the majority planned to return to Jamaica once the project was completed. This mindset of temporality led these immigrants to preserve their home cultures by continuing to speak English and by continuing to practice their Anglican faith. They resisted assimilation so as to make their transition back to Jamaica smoother and to Kinney 2 maintain an identity living so far away. The Costa Rican government also believed the immigrants would return home once the project was completed and tolerated the immigrants but did not work to integrate them into society. They saw the immigrants as a temporary problem they needed to endure for the country’s financial benefit. However, even before the railroad was finished, fruit producers, including the companies that would later form the United Fruit Company, seeking to take advantage of the large immigrant workforce, offered the immigrants jobs in the burgeoning banana industry and a majority of the immigrants stayed in Costa Rica. The American and British entrepreneurs who led these companies favored Jamaican workers because of their ability to speak English and their willingness to endure the difficult working conditions. The country’s first banana plantations were located in the virtually uninhabited Limón Province along the Atlantic Coast. Laws prevented immigrants from inhabiting other pars