Rebellious Detours: Creative Everyday Strategies of Resistance in

Four Caribbean Novels

A dissertation submitted to the Division of the Research and Advanced Studies of the

University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTORATE IN PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.)

in the department of Romance Languages and Literatures

of the College of Arts and Sciences

2012

by

Iliana Rosales-Figueroa

Master of Arts, University of Missouri (Columbia, MO, 2006)

Committee Chair: Dr. P. Valladares-Ruiz

Committee members: Dr. T. Migraine-George, Dr. M. Vialet

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Abstract

This work is a comparative analysis of four postcolonial novels by Caribbean writers that resist Western power domination and dictatorships: Texaco (1992) by Patrick Chamoiseau, Le cri des oiseaux fous (2000) by Dany Laferrière, El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998) by

Daína Chaviano, and Nuestra señora de la noche (2006) by Mayra Santos-Febres. My study incorporates authors from both the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean, signaling a shared intense critique in literature that links these authors directly to their nations’ political control. My principal task in this dissertation is the examination of characters’ creation of non-violent strategies of resistance. I argue that, even though their maneuvers do not alter the course of history in each society, they question, destabilize, and undermine the autocratic governments in which they evolve. My theoretical framework draws from a wide, trans-regional variety of critics in Spanish, French, and English. Using in particular the critical thinking developed by Michel De

Certeau and Édouard Glissant, the study explores how characters are subjects always “in motion”—in both the literal and figurative sense—who simply do not accept the physical and mental limitations imposed by the autocratic regimes, and take rebellious detours that allow them to produce their own rules that seem troublesome for some, but inspiring for others, who decide to imitate them. As a result, characters become the opposite of what their dominants had in mind: they become dynamic, flexible, and complex subjects.

Even though the literary works were written at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century, the past moment of narrativization allows me to demonstrate how political oppression is represented through situational constraints, such as racial discrimination, class distinction, and gender inequality in four distinct historical eras: The French departmentalization of Martinique in 1946, the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier who ruled iii

Haiti from 1971 to 1986, the Cuban revolution in 1959 with Fidel Castro coming to power, and finally the military rule of Puerto Rico under US officials in the first half of the twentieth century. The study of these historical events allows me to identify the treacherous conditions created by political oppression in the urban spaces of Fort-de-France, Port-au-Prince, Havana, and Ponce. These cities are labyrinthine worlds where characters feel trapped in an impossible in-between. Nonetheless, the urban spaces are also sites of creation and challenge due to their sense of fluidness, not having borders, and openness to influence and change. Since these cities are, on one hand, controlled by autocratic governments, and on the other hand, sites of creation, my research examines the ways in which characters escape and protect themselves from the incongruities and dissonances of the problematic environment, and how they create their own spaces in which they transform, adapt, and feel secure.

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Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not be complete without giving credit to those who made it possible. I would like to first thank the chair of my committee, Dr. Patricia Valladares-Ruiz, for her advice, insight, and consultations. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee for their valuable wisdom and suggestions. Everyone’s feedback proved to be very valuable in finishing this thesis. Finally, I would like to recognize the entire faculty from the

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, whose classes inspired me to explore beyond the boundaries which I thought were previously impassible.

A mis padres, porque les debo todo lo que soy,

y que a pesar de la distancia, escucho sus palabras de apoyo y de consuelo.

A mi retoño de abril, Carmen Sofía, por su sonrisa contagiosa,

sus ojos de estrella, sus ganas de vivir, pero sobre todo, por ser el pilar de mis deseos.

A mi esposo, John Carter, por caminar en este sendero de la vida junto a mí,

siempre agarrados de la mano, con amor, paciencia y comprensión.

A Dios, por encima de todos, por permitirme terminar esta etapa de la vida

y por abrirme el camino para iniciar una nueva.

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Table of contents

Introduction: A different type of war 1

Chapter I: Resistance Literature 6

Political Resistance in the Caribbean 23

Strategies of resistance 38

Chapter II: Martinique: Texaco (1992)

About the author and his novel 53

Family’s past 67

Marie-Sophie’s present 83

The art of speaking 100

Chapter III: Haiti: Le cri des oiseaux fous (2000)

About the author and his novel 110

Family’s past 121

Vieux Os’ present 132

The art of rhythm 151

Chapter IV: Cuba: El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998)

About the author and her novel 161

Claudia’s present 174

Havana’s past 193

The art of creation 201

Chapter V: Puerto Rico: Nuestra señora de la noche (2006)

About the author and her novel 210

Isabel’s past 226 vii

Isabel’s present 235

The art of negotiation 252

Conclusion 259

Bibliography 270

Introduction

A Different Type of War1

My Brothers and Sisters, because no bombs burst around us, no shells explode in our midst, no sirens scream in the stillness of our nights, no bloodied limbs are torn apart in the dust of our streets, we forget that we are a people at war. WE ARE AT WAR.

(Lovelace, “At War” 126)

The above lines are taken from the essay “At War with the System” by the Trinidadian writer Earl Lovelace. I have quoted this passage because it poses several important questions.

Exactly what type of war is the author referring to? If there are no bombs bursting around us, no sirens crying out in the night, and no bloodied limbs ripped apart on the streets, then what will we encounter in this war? And how should we best react? In these lines, Lovelace introduces a very different type of war, one that has its origins in slavery and colonialism, and one which has continued its exploitative and dehumanizing system using other repressive measures, including racial and gender inequality, political control, and class divisions.

Clearly, Lovelace raises important questions about this type of war. At the end of the essay, Lovelace encourages his “Brothers and Sisters”2 to fight against the oppressive system by reflecting on the situation at hand (128). He argues that individuals must effect change themselves—no one else will come to their rescue (128). The way individuals react in critical moments depends on their personal strengths and their environments. My thesis “Rebellious

Detours: Creative Everyday Strategies of Resistance in Four Caribbean Novels” is an attempt to analyze the ways in which writers visualize their fight against their nations’ strict government rules and the responses of their fellow inhabitants. It must be acknowledged that their literary

1 This title is inspired by Earl Lovelace’s article entitled “At War with the System.” 2 People of a nation. 2 works are not chronicles of important historical moments and political issues in their countries.

They are creations molded by their own experiences in countries where violence is not represented with bombs and bloodied limbs ripped apart on the streets, but with social and economic constraints that affect the inhabitants’ mind.

The four writers I have chosen to study were born and raised in the Caribbean. Even though two of them left their countries once they were adults—I return to the issue of exile in

Chapter I—the way they describe the challenging and complex relations between the oppressor and the oppressed is shaped by the personal experiences they had before they left their home countries. Certainly, these authors have deeply meditated (as Lovelace suggests in his essay) upon the autocratic governments in their home nations. Throughout their literary works, they creatively respond to political control by emphasizing the fact that each individual must become active in the struggle’s process in order to gain some freedom. My research is therefore primarily concerned with their characters’ actions, specifically, how they create strategies of resistance. I also aim to compare the various ways in which Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean writers from various backgrounds critically approach the topic of resistance to oppression.

It is important to clarify that I am not attempting to offer a full history of Caribbean literature on political resistance. There are already some excellent works that include detailed descriptions and analysis of authoritarian governments and literary works in this part of the world. The purpose of this research is to broaden the scope of these investigations by including novels in Spanish and French that have not yet been studied from this perspective. I do not suggest that the novels I have chosen are the only texts that adequately represent political oppression—specifically the domination and dictatorships of the Western powers—and resistance in the Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean. It is true that the texts I have chosen in 3 the chapters that follow—as I argue in more detail in Chapter I—have certain characteristics that facilitate the examination of characters’ strategies of resistance, as well as the exploration of the autocratic regimes. Yet by no means should they be treated as the only works that do so. In addition, it is necessary to mention that the way these texts are covered is one of the ways in which one could possibly read them. Due to the complexity of literary works, especially of novels, different approaches can be taken for their examinations.

My hope is that this study will encourage discussion of the ways in which societies can be at war in the way highlighted by Earl Lovelace, and what people can do in order to resist under such dire circumstances. It can be difficult to understand what characters do to resist. For this reason, it is important that we consider that the way they resist is keenly linked to their own perspective—the way they think of, sense, and conceive their surroundings. It is worth keeping in mind that such perceptions might not, of course, be constructed in the same manner as ours.

Hence, characters’ resistance strategies might sometimes be seen as irrational. These characters use what their environment offers them at certain moments in their lives, and they struggle to improve their own lives and the lives of their fellow countrymen and women. Their resistance strategies are seen as actions that other people want to imitate. They are thus viewed as role models by people in like positions. More importantly, we can all learn something about their choices toward resistance and cross-examine their similarities and differences.

In order to better understand how the characters resist their oppressors, in Chapter I, I introduce the major theories I use to examine the literary works. I first define resistance literature in some detail, using the critical theory and concepts proposed by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, Amílcar

Cabral, Frantz Fanon, and Barbara Harlow. Here I emphasize political resistance, as well other critical practices connected to this term, such as colonial discourse and psychoanalysis. In the 4 second section of Chapter I, I will briefly discuss the history of colonialism and neocolonialism in the Caribbean, specifically in Martinique, Haiti, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. I have selected the texts in the chapters that follow based on their postcolonial content and the range of issues this perspective covers. In this study, I will offer a global view of the conditions and production of resistance literature, and will provide the basis for a better understanding of this region. After examining the theoretical issues pertaining to resistance literature in general, I will outline the techniques and literary theories I use in the analysis of the four contemporary narratives. Here, I give special attention to the critical theories of Édouard Glissant, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, J.

Michael Dash, and Michel De Certeau.

In the remaining four chapters I analyze one novel each. In Chapter II, I examine Texaco

(1992) by Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique), in Chapter III I analyze Le cri des oiseaux fous

(2000) by Dany Laferrière (Haiti). I devote Chapter IV to El hombre, la hembra y el hambre

(2006) by Daína Chaviano (Cuba), and in Chapter V I explore Nuestra señora de la noche

(2006) by Mayra Santos-Febres (Puerto Rico). As the distribution suggests, the chapters are organized by the two different geopolitical and linguistic sub-regions—Francophone/Hispanic literature and French/Spanish. This does not mean, however, that the issues raised in each chapter do not overlap with other geographic or linguistic areas. On the contrary, this research aims to present a dialogue between the four chapters in order to see what can be captured. I believe that literary works, especially those dealing with political issues, can convey a critical message that their authors want to transmit to the world. Such a message echoes people’s desires for change and freedom and it symbolically represents their voices. In this work, I try to make comparisons between the content of each chapter. I introduce each chapter with a brief biographical note on the author. Before thoroughly examining the characters’ resistance, in each 5 chapter, I explore some of the theoretical materials and analysis in the field which deal with similar issues found in the novels. Each chapter ends with an analysis of another type of resistance, that of the structure of the novel. Finally, I use the points raised in each of these chapters as the subject for the last section. My conclusion will make connections and contrasts between the four chapters.

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Chapter I

Resistance Literature

When examining resistance literature in the context of this dissertation, it helps to first examine the meaning of the term “resistance” in light of this particular analysis. The objective of any type of autocratic regime, whether foreign or not, is to dominate the inhabitants of a nation through their culture, or through their tools of self-definition: via language, literature, traditions, history, religions, and so on. Political authority maintains control over and support of the armed forces, a strong bureaucracy sustained by a regime, and the formation of allegiances through various means of socialization—norms, customs, ideologies. These methods are also used as fundamental weapons of autocratic regimes to keep inhabitants subservient to their rule.

Resistance takes place when a culture of people is threatened by a repressive regime maintained by a centralized power. In Moving the Centre (1993), Kenyan novelist, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, defines resistance as the “ensemble of forces that ensure the survival of a group of people that are under exploitation and control” (79). Since there are different types of autocratic regimes— specifically colonial,3 neo-colonial,4 and postcolonial5—resistance is manifested in distinct forms. In fact, Ngũgĩ, makes a list of the five crucial elements by which people resist: “physical survival, economic survival, political survival, cultural survival, and psychological (or identity) survival” (76). According to him, physical survival is the basic mechanism of self-defense,

3 This makes reference to societies that suffered from slave trade. 4 They are former colonies that after their independence are threatened again by a new form of colonialism largely induced by a globalizing capitalism: “The concepts of ‘neo-colonial,’ ‘imperialist,’ and ‘neo-imperial’ articulate this condition of informal subjection of a sovereign state to a superpower and/or to transnational corporate priorities” (“Alien/Nation” 7). 5 For some critics, the ‘post’ in postcolonial implies an end of all forms of colonialism. In that vein, Mark Lewis Taylor mentions: “the ̔post-̕ comes now to signify not only a temporal ‘after’ but also an always ongoing quality of being, a practice and struggle poised against and moving beyond colonial and neocolonial formations wherever those formations may be found” (44). This is a cursory definition of the term postcolonial, and we will flesh it out later. But at this stage I need to note that I will refer to the term postcolonial in this dissertation to describe the continuation of colonial discourses in all its forms—that is including neo-colonial formations—, relations of power, and creation of resistances within a nation. 7 anything that includes being protected from diseases or animal attacks, for instance (76).

Physical survival also includes means like “food, clothes, and shelter;” and this, in turn, leads to economic survival, which is the production and distribution of these means (77). Physical and economic survival need to be regulated by political survival to ensure their stability in society

(77). The question of who holds that power is crucial, in that it symbolizes the guardian of the physical and economic survival of individuals (77). In this sense, society is held together by the culture acquired in the course of its struggles for economic and political survival (77). Cultural survival is what defines a society, as culture transports “the values, ethical, moral, and aesthetic” by which individuals see themselves; and thereby, they can locate their place in history and in the universe (77). This eventually leads to the psychological survival that makes reference to society’s consciousness, which is a social identity as part of a specific culture, history, and place

(77). According to Ngũgĩ, a society is free when it is in total control of all five levels of survival

(78). However, during the twentieth and twenty first centuries, some regions of the post-colonial world—such as various countries in Latin America or Africa, for example—continue witnessing the perils of the five levels of survival that Ngũgĩ describes in his work. This has been done through the implementation of dictatorships and Western domination, among other forms of neo- colonialism. Ngũgĩ comments that, in order to succeed in the survival of a region, resistance needs to be carried out at all the five levels he discusses in his work (79). To put it another way, when the structure of a society is endangered the oppressed take on different resistances— physical, economic, political, cultural, and psychological—in order to survive.

Parallel research about resistance is found in the essays of Amílcar Cabral, the leader of the Guinea-Bissau liberation movement and a major theoretician of African resistance and liberation struggles. In Return to the Source (1973), Cabral writes, “At any moment, depending 8 on internal and external factors determining the evolution of the society in question, cultural resistance (indestructible) may take on new forms (political, economic, armed) in order to fully contest foreign domination” (40). According to Cabral, resistance can take the form of cultural, political, economic, or armed struggles against discriminatory policies organized by the state, such as citizens’ and human rights’ violations, police brutality, surveillance abuse, imprisonment, torture, and even murder. These political repressions are typical features of dictatorships and Western domination. When there is political control, there are budget cuts, and as a result, there are fewer jobs and less money for citizens. In this way, the economy is tightly linked to political control; it is people from the lower class—in societies with a vertical structure—who suffer the most from this social structure. The combination of political and economic repression can lead to armed resistance depending on the degree and intensity of violence. It is interesting to see that neither Cabral nor Ngũgĩ describe political resistance as the first type of resistance. Nonetheless, if we examine this further, we will see that in Ngũgĩ’s explanation of the five levels of survival of a community, political resistance is the most important feature due to the power it holds to bring about a beneficial or detrimental effect on the physical and economic wellbeing of a society. Also, Ngũgĩ indicates that the social group that controls politics is the group that dominates wealth in a community (Ngũgĩ, Moving 128). Such a group, he adds, controls the tools of self-definition of the community, and that its desire is to make people see themselves and the world through the set of images it elaborates, an ideology whose main purpose is to form allegiance and obedience to their rule:

They want to make the entire community, and particularly that section robbed of

its wealth, see their world in their way including how to view the whole

mechanism of the production and distribution of their wealth. It can never be in 9

the interests of the section controlling the wealth, power and the instruments of

self-definition to provide the other sections with the true and correct picture of

things as they are. On the contrary, it will use any and every means of

obscurantism; of divisions; of shaking their faith in what they actually touch,

see, hear, and smell. (129)

On the basis of what has just been said, we may consider that when a resistance occurs in a community, its first target is the group with dominant political control. In this way, I employ the term “political resistance” in this dissertation to talk about the way the protagonists of four postcolonial novels resist political domination.6 Through their resistance, the characters attempt to clear up erroneous images, such as, for example, citizens’ and human rights’ violations enacted by the dominant social group. This project is structured around readings of what I argue represent critical moments in the history of resistance of the Francophone and Hispanic

Caribbean. The first novel in examine, Texaco (1992), is written in French by Patrick

Chamoiseau, and addresses the question of resistance to French assimilation. The novel explores the resistance resulting from Martinique being voted to become an overseas department of

France in 1946. The novel’s protagonist, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, suffers racism in a society that is denying her own culture. Racism is part of the oppressor’s ideology to keep controlling the nation (Ngũgĩ, Moving129). The plot revolves around a Western oil company seizing land by taking advantage of Martinique’s natural resources. Marie-Sophie decides to fight back in order to have a piece of land where she and her community deserve to live. In the second novel, Le cri

6 Two of the novels I analyze suffer from a neo-colonial form of domination: Puerto Rico, the unincorporated territory of the United States, and Martinique, an overseas region of France. In the analysis of these works, as well as in the rest, I study not only how they are politically controlled, but also their trace of linear history which is a marker of continuing colonial discourses and struggles. In this sense, all the novels are deemed as postcolonial because they described, albeit in some more than others, the history of political oppression of the islands. 10 des oiseaux fous (2000),7 also written in French by Dany Laferrière, the protagonist is victim of a lack of freedom of expression, and thus, is under surveillance by the dictatorial administration of

Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as “Baby Doc,” for a criticism he wrote against the system in a newspaper. Dany finds himself in danger of being murdered; therefore, he opts to resist the violence of the city of Port-au-Prince controlled by the bloodthirsty Duvalier’s militia the

Tontons Macoutes. The third novel El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998) written in Spanish by Daína Chaviano, takes place during the most severe stage of the economic hardship of the

“special period in times of peace,” still in force that began in Cuba in 1991. The protagonist,

Claudia, lives in a society that transmits images of foreign culture as the best means of self- definition, such as the power that the almighty dollar can offer in Cuban society. The shortage of this currency and the need for it forces Claudia, among other characters, to abandon her university profession in order to look for other ways to survive and resist in the society ruled by

Fidel Castro. The last novel, also written in Spanish, is Nuestra señora de la noche (2006) by

Mayra Santos-Febres. The novel deals with the American military promise that life would improve for the island’s poor. However, we see that the lower class continues to struggle financially. The protagonist, Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer, who is also victim of racism from the elite, is submerged in this economic abyss. She decides to get out of the hole by fighting back against the patriarchal and ethnocentric discourses of Puerto Rican society and the military system ruling the island. Although the Caribbean is linguistically different, all nations share a common background of certain types of resistance to political oppression. In this regard, two of the novels involve a Western power colonizing a Caribbean territory—Martinique and Puerto

Rico—and the other two involve a postcolonial dictatorship—Haiti and Cuba.

7 This novel is an autobiography of the Haitian writer Dany Laferrière. 11

It must be acknowledged that, in the general framework of contesting political domination, the political authority is “purely nominal” and the populace knows that they need to resist those in charge of its administration (Cabral 46). In Texaco, it is the Western oil company that plays this role, specifically those in charge of it, the local elite or békés—white descendants of original French settlers. In Le cri des oiseaux fous, Dany resists the Tontons Macoutes, the

Haitian paramilitary force created under the Duvalier regime. In El hombre, la hembra y el hambre it is the regulation of food consumption in each household, as well as the police, who by patrolling the streets, place the populace under constant surveillance. Finally, in Nuestra señora de la noche, it is the church and the male bourgeois. All these oppressors’ allies represent the privileged classes whose main job is to maintain the subordination of the populace. Since it is the citizens who are being oppressed, the resistance leader usually comes out from this group in order to represent them collectively. In Return to the Source, Amílcar Cabral states that “the liberation movement must . . . base its action in popular culture . . . the cultural of the rural and urban working masses” (47). There is no doubt that the above mentioned protagonists form part of the populace: Marie-Sophie and Isabel Luberza belong to the rural masses, whereas Dany and

Claudia belong to the working masses. However, they are not chosen as the leaders of their groups from the start; their resistance begins individually, and gradually their actions become models for others, thus creating a collectively stronger group capable of acting as a foundation for eventual change. Since the characters resort to individualism, I start examining their resistance in this way as well. What we can grasp from all this is the fact that in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, the gap that keeps people divided is getting bigger; in literary works, there is a sense of despair in that there are no internal organizations mobilized by the popular group to elect a leader and to talk openly about the struggle for liberation. The novels I analyze are 12 incisive in their observations of political control, and they exemplify that the action of a particular individual is necessary in order to create a sort of collective response from the masses.

This also indicates that people are lacking courage; the hole in which they were thrown from the beginning is becoming deeper, and getting out from underneath is immensely difficult.

Equally important to note is that when we talk about political resistance, it is also necessary to talk about everything else encompassed by the term. The importance of the relationship between political resistance and literature lies in the way the latter seeks to express the different approaches the former can be represented in reality, on a physical, economic, cultural, and psychological level. Hence, resistance literature describes the atrocities made by autocratic governments through the analysis of the socioeconomic status of its characters, their functions, and developments in society in terms of education, race, language, tradition, and most importantly, psychological tensions between the oppressed and the oppressor. For this reason, the analysis of all these features is included in this project as a way to create the foundation of the dominant politics as a whole. It is true that political repression is often effected through use of physical violence, it also occurs through mental abuse, such as racial discrimination, class distinction, and gender inequality. In this regard, Frantz Fanon’s theory of colonial discourse will be important in the analysis of the literary works in order to explore the ways autocratic governments colonize people’s minds so that they can maintain their power. Fields of postcolonialism research are intimately linked to theories of colonial discourses because the suffix “post” signifies both continuity and change of colonial dominions.8 In this way, the same story from the past is repeated in the present, albeit in a different way, making the process of invasion and control more painful to the inhabitants due to the still open wounds left from

8 In this research, I use the terms “postcolonialismˮ as well as “postcolonial” as single words rather than with the hyphen because I do not refer to them only to denote a particular historical period, but as referring to the prolongation of power control. 13 colonialism. Oppression is perpetuated in part by getting people to think that their social and economic conditions are normal. Since peoples’ modes of perception are created by those in power, they are, then, forced to look for signs of recognition to make them feel fully-human rather than feeling as though they are merely objects. In Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), philosopher Frantz Fanon states the following:9

L’homme n’est humain que dans la mesure où il veut s’imposer à un autre

homme, afin de se faire reconnaître par lui. Tant qu’il n’est pas effectivement

reconnu par l’autre, c’est cet autre qui demeure le thème de son action. C’est de

cet autre, c’est de la reconnaissance par cet autre, que dépendent sa valeur et sa

réalité humaines. C’est dans cet autre que se condense le sens de sa vie. (175-76)

In Peau noire, masques blancs, Fanon records blacks’ experiences of dependency and incompetence in a white world, drawing upon his own experiences while being educated in metropolitan France. He uses psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theory to explain blacks’ feelings of inferiority—maintained by the armory of French imperialism—who after having lost their native country, are forced to embrace the “civilized ideas” of the colonizer’s culture.

Through imitation they learn the colonizer’s language, traditions, history, religion, and cultural values. By appropriating a world so different and distant from their own, blacks feel they do not belong. They are looked at by others as an aberration due to the color of their skin. As a result, their identities are crushed. Even though Fanon’s study was originally intended to combat the oppression of blacks, as he himself comments, “Etant Antillais d’origine, nos observations et nos conclusions ne valent que pour les Antilles, — tout au moins en ce qui concerne le Noir chez luiˮ

(11); his work can be equally employed by different groups of people who struggle from any

9 Peau noire, masques blancs has been translated into English as Black Skin, White Masks.

14 form of political oppression. Indeed, Fanon’s study is not exclusive to describing the psychological damages of only blacks; it can also be utilized to describe the predicaments of various ethnic groups. Under this light, Fanon’s theory is used in the literary analysis of some of the novels in the following chapters. Specifically, his theory is used to describe the imprisonment of mind and body of black and mulatto characters as the result of oppressive environments produced by autocratic governments, as well as the struggle for cultural and political freedom.

Fanon’s second polemical book, Les damnés de la terre (1968), marks the psychological damage suffered by Algerians under the French occupation while he was working in the psychiatric department of Blida-Joinville Hospital. In the book’s opening chapter, “De la violence,” Fanon considers violence as a liberating experience compared to colonial subjugation:

“La tension musculaire du colonisé se libère périodiquement dans des explosions sanguinaires: luttes tribales, luttes de çofs, luttes entre individusˮ (19-20). The critical theorist Homi K.

Bhabha has brilliantly observed that the introduction to Fanon’s text by Jean-Paul Sartre limits the analysis of the chapter by focusing only on the topic of violence (Bhabha, “Framing” xxi).

According to Bhabha, what is important in the chapter of “De la violence” is the individual’s internal catharsis when he or she is no longer subjected to domination (xxi). Sartre’s glorification of Fanon’s topic of violence and Bhabha’s preference for the liberating experience of the subject allow me to identify where my analysis of literary works fits in. Its purpose is to show how writers have abandoned more conventional heroic resistance models against government abuse—

“use of violence”—for an exploration of new themes of social adaptation. Such writers have realized that the use of arms has not always resulted in total liberation; therefore, they have rethought the approach and replaced it with more tactical strategies of resistance. In Moving the

Centre, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o predicted that the 1990s would witness intense national liberation 15 movements and increasing demands for social change around the world (53). Hence, oppressors are opting to control the minds and hearts of the exploited and the oppressed in order to mould them in their image (53). In this dissertation, I focus specifically on the non-violent ways that characters resist new forms of autocratic governments, such as dictatorships and Western power domination. The characters focused on in this text embark on rebellious detours; rather than taking the main route that will take them to fight directly against their oppressors, they create roundabout courses that will allow them to delimit their battlefield. The structure of the rebellious detours will be discussed later, but at this point it suffices to note that in order to maintain their own space, the protagonists are social rebels involved in activities that specifically threaten political regimes, such as participating in the black market and attacking the government through media outlets—newspaper, radio, theater. Their strategies of resistance are seen as democratic expressions through which they can feel freedom. Their rebellious detours challenge the regime, but in no way do they alter the course of history. Nonetheless, they plant the seeds for a possible change in the future. The writers of the novels I analyze in this project invite people to action, they offer hope to their nation, and most importantly, they open up the future by depicting new forms of resistance. They take a critical stand against the anti-democratic character of ruling regimes through their descriptions of these political regimes. For this reason, the analysis of their literary works is important, as Frantz Fanon comments in Les damnés de la terre: “Il faut suivre pas à pas dans un pays colonisé l’émergence de l’imagination, de la création. . . . Le conteur répond par approximations successives à l’attente du peuple et chemine, apparemment solitaire, mais en réalité soutenu par l’assistance, à la recherche de modèles nouveaux . . . ˮ (170). 16

Literature routinely reflects different historical periods and examines various human concerns within these periods. In antiquity, for instance, myths and stories sometimes carried covert moral or spiritual messages. In more modern times, such messages have, at times, been transmitted into a more direct and descriptive form. In one way or another, arts and artists have come into action in order to intersperse into their creation and/or fiction real individuals’ feelings during critical situations. Using images and words, such feelings of the oppressed are collectively valued as peaceful weapons against the destructiveness of oppressive regimes. It is true that when individuals struggle against political domination not everybody is able to confront the oppressor. Here is precisely when literature becomes the suitable space where peoples and their worlds are crafted together. Hence, it introduces us to their conditions and performances so we, as readers, can attempt to understand their mental processes whereby they create strategies of resistance in order to recuperate freedom and the space of their own culture, which is being abruptly snatched from them. It is, therefore, also necessary to consider the question of how the category “resistance literature” appeared. Here, specific attention is given to Barbara Harlow’s book Resistance Literature (1987), whose research has been the main inspiration for this thesis.

In her book, Harlow analyzes resistance movements in different parts of the world, such as the

Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.10 According to Harlow, the term “resistance literature” first appeared in 1966 when the Palestinian writer and critic, Ghassan Kanafani, was describing

Palestinian literature in his study Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948-1966

(Harlow 2). It is important to clarify that Kanafani wrote his study when Palestine was being officially repressed and censored. In this vein, literature symbolized for this critic an “arena of struggle” (2). Kanafani makes a distinction between literature that has been written “under

10 Harlow’s interest in resistance movements resulted from a volume of translations of Palestinian stories by Ghassan Kanafani that she read while studying at the American University in Cairo (Harlow xix). 17 occupation” and that which has been written in “exile” (2). According to Kanafani, resistance literature needs to be completed by a researcher inside the land where the resistance movement is taking place (3). On the other hand, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, who went into exile after his release from a Kenyan prison in 1977, proposed in his article “Literature in schools” (1981) a different definition of resistance literature. Indeed, he states that in literature, two opposing categories exist: “the aesthetic of oppression and exploitation and of acquiescence with imperialism; and that of human struggle for total liberation” (Harlow 8). The special characteristics that Ngũgĩ points out in his article produce different literary analysis criteria that can be applied to any group of people. Unlike Kanafani, Ngũgĩ does not make the distinction between displaced writers and those living in a territory under political struggle. The question of the location of the writer’s battlefield is clearly not an issue for Ngũgĩ.

Like Kanafani, for Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau, the writer must be anchored spatially in the region he or she is writing about, because his/her main goal is not only to observe and describe what happens, but to be in a devoted and constant dialogue with the people living in that region. Chamoiseau comments:

Il [le conteur] ne parle pas à sa place de la collectivité dans laquelle il s’exprime,

il parle avec, il sollicite, son récit est modifié en fonction de l’auditoire, les

perceptions, les rires, les peurs vont déterminer la structure de son récit. Ainsi,

j’essaie dans mes romans d’être en observations participante ou en clarification

participante. Cela me permet de ne pas déserter le lieu, de ne pas entrer dans un

universalisme transparent hors lieu, hors culture alors que ne pas déserter ses

blessures, s’articuler sur ce qui nous appartient, tenter de percevoir ce qui est

fondamental dans les grandes mutations du monde, est selon moi la meilleure 18

attitude. (Valhodiia)

Chamoiseau’s discussion on the engaging relationship between writer and land and/or writer and society contradicts his other statement—which he makes later during the same interview—about the purpose of literature as a way to combat forms of domination. Here, he states: “Il faut absolument cultiver un imaginaire de la diversité pour échapper à l’uniformisation, à la standardisation, c’est-à-dire amener l’imaginaire à un point de vertige, et qui le laisse sur ce vertige en lui disant qu’il y a un inconnaissable, qu’il y a un obscur et qu’il nous faut apprendre à avancer dans cet obscur en évitant les grandes certitudesˮ (Valhodiia). Clearly, Chamoiseau proposes “un imaginaire de la diversité” in order to avoid being subjected to any form of control.

I personally believe that texts produced by writers from the diaspora bring diversity into the discussion of “l’imaginaire.” Since they often write from a place where freedom of expression is not an issue—although in the eyes of some people this can be interpreted as a lack of authenticity and/or cowardice—their literary creations offer, as a result, different points of views that enhance human resources in the investigation of our society because, as individuals, they are not forced to grasp the full dimension of what is happening back at home. Another important point that contributes to the issue of diversity is that the texts produced by writers from outside can often reach wider audiences than Caribbean-based authors, whose readership is limited due in great part to the political circumstances of the region. Here, Bénédicte Ledent’s passage may be helpful. Ledent has observed: “Their target audience in this field is, rather, international, mostly

North American and European. What displaced Caribbean writers do get across to them is the world-vision of a place with an early experience of modern cross-culturalism which, in the words of the Jamaican Erna Brodber, has “something to teach the world” ( 462). 19

In this dissertation, I examine two literary works written by two writers from the

Caribbean diaspora—Haitian Dany Laferrière and Cuban Daína Chaviano. Laferrière was exiled to Montreal in order to escape the Duvalier’s regime in 1976. While in exile, he wrote his autobiographical novel Le cri des oiseaux fous through which we learn how Laferrière’s father also had to leave Haiti after being persecuted by the dictatorial regime of General Paul Eugène

Magloire, and by François Duvalier, nicknamed “Papa Doc.” On the other hand, Chaviano left

Cuba in 1991 when the crisis of the “special period” was becoming unbearable. She established residence in Miami where she wrote El hombre, la hembra y el hambre. It is fair to say that in resistance literature, writers take a critical stand against the ruling regimes, and as a result, they may risk jail, exile, or even death. In Moving the Centre, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o comments that an effective writer risks damnation by the state: “Write and risk damnation. Avoid damnation and cease to be a writer” (73). Let us just look at what happened to both Kanafani and Cabral: they were “assassinated by the representatives of the imperialism they were struggling against”

(Harlow 11). A Beirut English-language newspaper wrote an obituary for Kanafani and described him as the “commando who never fired a gun” and that “his weapon was a ballpoint pen and his arena newspaper pages. And he hurt the enemy more than a column of commandos”

(11). Kanafani used the art of written words as a way to counteract oppressive forces, thereby representing the convergence’s symbolism of the peasant’s machete and gun. He found a new dynamic that has become a universal appeal to all writers who are engulfed in their nations’ disillusionment and feel the urge to set their battlefields against their oppressors. As Fanon states in Les damnés de la terre: “L’homme colonisé qui écrit pour son peuple quand il utilise le passé doit le faire dans l’intention d’ouvrir l’avenir, d’inviter à l’action, de fonder l’espoirˮ (162). 20

A look into the productions of Caribbean displaced authors—Dany Laferrière and Daína

Chaviano, who were forced to leave their home nations for political reasons—is essential to this study because they propose hope by bringing different perspectives into the creation of characters’ strategies of resistance. When these writers entered another country, their first culture came into dramatic contact with their new culture; and by “dramatic” I mean “different” from what they were used to in their native countries. Being in exile does not mean that their pasts and memories are forgotten; on the contrary, they still flow in their minds. The past and the present, then, merge into an inseparable relation where the two are closely linked. Such a duality may result in an identity crisis. In other cases, however, writers use this negative energy to explore and expand their creativity. When they do this, they represent different ways in which characters resist political control. Let me explain with an example. The protagonists in the Laferrière and

Chaviano novels—Dany and Claudia—create strategies of resistance that take place not only in the social environment in which they live, but also in their minds. This might explain the authors’ personal experiences regarding how they were displaced from their countries, in other words, the circumstances in which the novels were written. While in exile, the authors do not have spontaneous contact with the people of their homeland nor do they have natural access to their home environments. Hence, the mind becomes a substitute for what they are missing. Thus, the key concept for their characters’ strategies of resistance is “the mind.” Since these maneuvers are different from what Chamoiseau and Santos-Febres design in their novels—Marie-Sophie founds the shantytown of Texaco and Isabel la Negra builds a brothel—their analysis is crucial for this dissertation. Furthermore, taking Bénédicte Ledent’s passage on the didactic vision of writers in exile, it is necessary to point out that their love and political commitment to their region are revealed to the world through their literary works, showing that the Caribbean is not 21 just an exotic trip destination for its beautiful beaches, food, and music. Rather, it is a place where people have fought for their freedom and continue their struggle to preserve it.

Clearly, writers from the Caribbean diaspora fulfill certain functions different from those dwelling in the region. Exile does not alter the competence of diasporic writers, quite the opposite, it brings new literary visions. As a whole, the works of exiled writers enrich Caribbean literature. As it has been mentioned before, writers use their past, as well as their present in the creation of their works. It is specifically the interpretation of their past where the main purpose of resistance literature is established and defined. Whether written elsewhere or at home, the goal of resistance literature is to allow individuals to write their own history through the course of their struggles. Let us remember that mainstream history has been written by the white man, as it has been revealed before by several writers, among them we find Barbara Harlow (5) and Frantz

Fanon, who in Les damnés de la terre states the following:

Le colon fait l’histoire et sait qu’il la fait. Et parce qu’il se réfère constamment à

l’histoire de sa métropole, il indique en clair qu’il est ici le prolongement de

cette métropole. L’histoire qu’il écrit n’est donc pas l’histoire du pays qu’il

dépouille mais l’histoire de sa nation en ce qu’elle écume, viole et affame.

L’immobilité à laquelle est condamné le colonisé ne peut être remise en question

que si le colonisé décide de mettre un terme à l’histoire de la colonisation, à

l’histoire du pillage, pour faire exister l’histoire de la nation, l’histoire de la

décolonisation. (18)

On the other hand, nations write their history by means of theirs struggles. In that vein, Amílcar

Cabral said in a speech in 1970 that collective struggles for liberation are “an act of insemination upon history” (Harlow 10). In his studies, Ghassan Kanafani makes a connection between armed 22 resistance and history. He says that “armed resistance is not just the husk, but the very fruit of cultivation forcing its roots deep into the land” (10-11). How does a writer function in such situations? The demand for social transformations makes writers seize the history of their lands in order to create an imaginary battle that could help to restore their confidence and that of local inhabitants. In their literary creations, whether in poetry, drama, or fiction, writers revisit the past of their native societies as a means of understanding the political, physical, cultural, economic, and psychological constraints still in force. Such dual exploration of the past and present raises awareness of the possible challenges of the future. These writers act as “Warriors of the

Imaginary,”11—a term used by Patrick Chamoiseau to describe the function of the modern

Caribbean writer in his book Écrire en pays dominé (1997). He refers to them as “warriors” because they renew, through paradoxically peaceful weapons, the values of a region that have been destroyed by the atrocities of totalitarian regimes, such as colonialism and dictatorship, among other forms of political control. In doing this, they help their native societies to heal, at least imaginarily, the still-open wounds in peoples’ minds. In order to understand how and why the novels I will examine share the commitment to describe their nations’ pasts as a way to restore peoples’ sense of self and home, we need to look briefly at the origins of political resistance in the Caribbean basin.

11 In Écrire en pays dominé (1997), Patrick Chamoiseau says that the function of the Caribbean writer is to be a guerrier de l’imaginaire: “Je n’étais plus seulement un ‘Marqueur de paroles,’ ni même un combattant : je devenais Guerrier, avec ce que ce mot charge de concorde pacifique entre les impossibles, de gestes résolus et d’interrogation, de rires qui doutent et d’ironie rituelle, d’ossature et de fluidités, de lucidités et de croyances, d’un vouloir de chair tendre contre le formol des momies satisfaites. Guerrier de l’imaginaireˮ (274). 23

Political Resistance in the Caribbean

One of the numerous representations of political resistances that history has witnessed is the rise against slavery. A prime example of this is the French term marron or cimarrón in

Spanish that was given to those slaves who escaped from their master’s property. This is one theme in the Caribbean region that has been frequently repeated since the arrival of the colonizers in the Americas: the resistance of people against their oppressors. Equally important to note is that, for centuries, the islands of the Caribbean were under the oppression of European colonizers. Colonialism distorted and disfigured the past of the inhabitants under its control.

Nowadays, even after widespread independence, members of the lower class are still fighting for their freedom and maintenance/reconstruction of their culture. These problems continue to negatively impact human rights in the region. Indeed, in this multilingual region there are islands that have moved from the colonial to the neo-colonial and/or postcolonial stage. Mark Lewis

Taylor distinguishes three conceptual dyads that help to better understand the new forms of political oppression: “colonialism/imperialism,” “decolonization/recolonization,” and

“neocolonialism/imperialism” (42-43). Colonialism and imperialism are in dyadic relation to each other because they both subjugate other people; however, imperialism “refers more to an organized power’s drive to establish and expand its subjugating control” (42). The third dyad is similar to the first one in that neocolonialism “is the name for the political and economic reconstitution of previous colonial subjugation” (43). In the second dyad, Taylor explains that

“decolonization did not end colonial subjugation. Although certain opportunities came with independence; “ ‘re-colonization’ processes ran concurrently” (43). The forms of political control represented in the novels I will examine exemplify the modern colonial system that

Taylor mentions in his dyads. Before examining the modern colonial system, it is first important 24 to explain the historical context of each island represented through the novels. To begin,

Martinique was a French colony whose status changed in 1946 when it became an overseas department. This transformation, however, did not make Martinique free from France; it nowadays still remains a French possession, upon which it depends economically and politically.

Puerto Rico was invaded by the United States in 1898 after acting as a Spanish colony. The island became an unincorporated territory of the United States in 1950. In the same way that

Martinique is dependent upon an outside power, Puerto Rico depends on the U.S. economy and political system. In the case of Haiti, it was the first nation in Latin America to win its independence. After an interlude of American occupation, Haiti was governed by dictatorial regimes, the most violent and bloodthirsty of which was the hereditary rule of the Duvalier family. Cuba’s history parallels Haiti. After initially gaining independence from Spain in 1898, and later from an American invasion, it also suffered under the rule of autocratic regimes. In

1959, after the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro came to power to implement his authoritarian rule over the island.

Let us move from this very brief history of colonialism/decolonization/recolonization to the specific research parameters of my dissertation. I chose precisely the Caribbean because its history has shown that there is a constant need to resist enslavement, murder, and genocide. Each island shares a history of colonization, their socioeconomic contexts contain similar traits, and they all have suffered from political oppression. On the other hand, literary and cultural studies have segmented the region into Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanic subdivisions due in great part to the three primary languages: English, French, and Spanish. Since the Caribbean basin is a unique cultural hybrid, it is not just confined to one geographical area or to one language. Here, I am also talking about those writers who, by living elsewhere, expand the limits 25 of their Caribbeanness because they were born in the Caribbean and keep writing about issues pertaining to this area, thus enriching its literature in this way. As Benítez-Rojo reminds us:

“Caribbeanness will always remain beyond the horizon” (xi). Hence, my comparative study embraces two geo-political—francophone and Hispanic literature—and linguistical sub- regions—Spanish and French. It also includes two writers from the Caribbean diaspora. The goal of my analysis is not to determine which island and/or language is superior, but to study these regions as a whole and compare them in order to find similarities and differences between them historically, socially, and politically. My goal is also to determine, in the general framework of their works on the topic of political resistance, what contribution they can provide to each other.

For instance, how do the subjects resist political control? How are their identities restored? How do their strategies of resistance or empowerment come to challenge autocratic governments?

Given the fact that these islands share histories of slavery, colonialism, racial discrimination, etc., how is their past and future proposed as a way to bring healing and hope to people?

Furthermore, very little of Caribbean literary works dealing with political resistance are actually set on the islands. The stories of the novels I examine take place on the islands of Martinique,

Haiti, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. This offers a new reading for those narratives that, in the days of colonialism, showed resistance; and now in the days of new forms of oppression, are still struggling for their freedom. The content in the referenced literary works is clearly derived from the long process of struggle against oppression.

Postcolonial texts act as the best representative of the resistance that writers undertake against their colonizers. According to Alison Donnell and Sarah Lawson Welsh in The Routledge

Reader in Caribbean Literature (1996), one of the most important characteristics of Caribbean literary studies in the last decade of the twentieth century has been the consolidation of 26 postcolonial literature as a strong field of academic scholarship (438). This branch of literary studies has continued to question the issues and debates in the twenty-first century concerning domination, equality, and liberation that shape the political and literary dynamics of the postcolonial world (Donnell 3). Specifically, the term postcolonial emphasizes “both continuity and change by recognizing the continuing agency of colonial discourses as well as resistances to them” (McLeod 252). Although these novels were published between the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty first century, they all show fissures of their nations’ pasts as if they were still issues in the present. The texts become, thus, rhetorical representations of their nations’ present states. These novels depict people from the populace—from the bottom to middle class of average backgrounds, and in other cases, from the most marginal sectors, such as blacks and prostitutes—struggling in regions that were colonized and that now have been attacked by other oppressive governments, as shown in Taylor’s three conceptual dyads. They speak out against political oppression and also focus on the deconstruction of models of dominance. More importantly, these writers present portraits of Caribbean reality in viable and meaningful ways, offering to the reader a more complete picture of the environment in which they live.

Within the world of postcolonial literature, I chose the genre of the novel for my comparative analysis due to its long narrative prose. Its extension offers a representation of reality more detailed and vast, not only in their description of historical events and in the development of their characters, but in their detailed account of counter-discursive strategies to the dominant discourse as well. Helen Tiffin expresses this point best in her essay “Post-colonial

Literatures and Counter-discourse” when she mentions: “The operation of post-colonial counter discourse is dynamic, not static: it does not seek to subvert the dominant with a view to taking its place, but . . . to evolve textual strategies which continually ‘consume’ their ‘own biases’ at the 27 same time as they expose and erode those of the dominant discourse” (96). The novels I will examine explore this engagement with the panorama of labyrinthine worlds in which characters create dynamic and ongoing processes of non-violent strategies of resistance in order to escape and protect themselves from the turbulent environment imposed by the oppressive governments.

The characters’ experiences within repressive hierarchies of postcolonial encounters are character-building experiences. When it is the turn of the characters to counter the dominant discourse, the extension of the novel allows me to show how they gradually weaken—in a figurative sense—the authority of the oppressor, at the same time as they stamp their own particular style on what they do.

With these thoughts in mind, it is fair to say that in postcolonial Caribbean, there is an abundance of novels that deal with political situations. Nonetheless, few works exemplify four different aspects of political resistance that I consider relevant for exposing the rebellious detours that characters elaborate in the chosen literary works. First of all, through the use of history, characters either live in critical moments of their nation’s past, or they are familiar with it by means of an intermediary that explains how life was in past times. Yet the examination of the past is not limited to the re-creation of totalitarian regimes in historically critical moments, it also touches on the way that the inhabitants from the past resolve their problems, which in some cases, happens by imagining an ideal “pre-colonial” society. The way the past is conceived often goes together with the characters’ reflections on how the present is being handled by political regimes, and what the nation should do in order to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

Postcolonial texts, then, “display a strange transtemporal frame: [they] trace history along a simplistic epochal road (pre-colonial/colonial/postcolonial), but within the turbulence of decolonization/recolonization [they] refigure that linearity as marking a quality of continuing and 28 diverse struggles” (Taylor 44). For instance, in Texaco the protagonist narrates the arrival of her ancestors from Africa as slaves to work on plantations. She further describes their sufferings and the strategies of resistance they employed to survive. This past is transmitted to Marie-Sophie

Laborieux through her father, Esternome, in the form of oral memories. The story, then, continues to the present in which she struggles with the Western oil company, specifically with the local elite, the békés, over property rights. Le cri des oiseaux fous tells the story of the journalist, Dany, whose father had to go into exile in order to be safe from the uncontrolled violence of the dictatorship of François Duvalier. In the present, Dany is being persecuted by the regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier, and must too leave the country. The protagonist, then, recollects his father’s steps in the past through pictures and oral memories from family and friends in order to give him strength to survive in a city that was all shambles. In El hombre, la hembra y el hambre, Claudia revives the past of the island and the roots of her ancestors through her parapsychological skills by traveling to an imagined Havana of centuries earlier, where despite the abuses of colonialism, everything looks to her more colorful and vivid than in the present.

Here, she feels safer, stronger, and more confident. She takes advantage of this positive energy to keep living in the ruins of Havana of the present. Finally, the story of Nuestra señora de la noche traces the life of Isabel la Negra, from her early beginning in the barrio of San Antón in Puerto

Rico during the first decades of being under the U.S. military control, where despite the promise of prosperity and success by the dominant Americans, Puerto Rico becomes impoverished. The story continues with Isabel’s transformation into a successful business woman, where despite her success, she is harshly discriminated by the social elite. All these characters live between two cultures, that of the old, native world—transmitted to them through someone else’s memories and/or through their own living experiences—and that of the present where they struggle against 29

Western hegemonic powers and dictatorships. In one way or another, their writing of history marks a constant need to struggle. For the examination of the “transtemporal frame” in each novel, I draw from articles that illustrate the importance of invoking history in the Caribbean, such as “Monumental Time in Caribbean Literature” by Olabode Ibironke. In this article, the author studies the writing of history in the Caribbean of the oppressed as a necessary project they must go through in order to redefine their identities: “. . . the object of history is not singularly

‘the event’ but the overall context of the formation of a subject” (152). The writing of history in each novel I will examine is, in fact, an important step that all the characters decide to experience, not only to help them redefine their identities, but also to have a better understanding of their present situations.

A second characteristic of postcolonial texts is “the near ubiquity of colonizing power” practiced through diverse forms of subjugations in constructions, such as “race, class, and gender” (Taylor 44-45). These subjugations take their own articulations in the literary texts. For example, some characters live in a society that is marked by racial preferences—lighter skin is preferred to darker skin—and by deeply ingrained male-domination, where women are sexually commoditized. Many characters are also humiliated and exploited from the city’s social elite. In other cases, the characters live in places where violence, starvation by the inappropriate use of food rationing, hunger, and lack of freedom of speech, among other social constraints, became the order of the day. To study these forms of domination, my theoretical framework draws from articles that deal with issues on race, class, and gender in each particular island. Here, the emphasis falls on the theories concerned with the way subjects perceived themselves and are perceived by others. The “near ubiquity of colonizing power” operates deeply by persuading people to think and act as the colonizers. For this reason, I will also employ Frantz Fanon’s 30 colonial discourse, which was previously discussed, Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy on the encounter with the Other, represented in his book Totality and Infinity (1969), as well as Jacques

Derrida’s discussion on language, best explored in Le monolinguisme de l'autre (1996).

In order to enable us to critically examine the dynamics of the forms of domination presented in each novel, we shall discuss the main ideas and concepts raised by the above thinkers. First, according to French philosopher Levinas, man turns toward the Other in order to feel complete, to fill “the consciousness of what has been lost” within himself (33).12 The encounter with the Other would, in theory, complement one another; and through this, they would both be “reabsorbed into the unity of the system, destroying the radical alterity of the other” (35-36). This means that the subject would be accepted by the other members of the society, and more importantly, he would feel as if he belongs. In case of a separation, Levinas argues, “the same and the other would be reunited under one gaze, and the absolute distance that separates them filled in” (36). Levinas furthers his analysis by adding an important element in the relation between the subject and the Other: language. He conveys that through language, the subject needs to be able to identify himself “. . . as an ‘I,’ as a particular existent unique and autochthonous . . .” (39). Hence, the encounter with the Other is necessary to the individual in order to form his subjectivity, that is “to exist as separated” (79). In the analysis of the novels, the characters are rejected and humiliated by the gaze of the Other. The Other does not participate in the face-to-face encounter harmoniously—in the way established by Levinas— because of the pejorative belief and colonial stereotype that classify those in lower social

12 For Levinas, the Other “appears as a movement going forth from a world that is familiar to us, whatever be the yet unknown lands that bound it or that it hides from view, from an ‘at home’ [‘chez-soi’] which we inhabit, toward an alien outside-of-oneself [hors-de-soi], toward a yonder” (33). In other words, the Other for Levinas does not only refer to a person different from oneself, but also to everything beyond this, that is, other cultures, nations, etc. When the subject is negated by the gaze of the Other, implied in this dialectical relation is the idea that other cultures and nations are also negating the subject’s identity formation.

31 conditions as less human than those in the upper class. The problem with this is, without the acceptance of the Other, the subject cannot affirm or deny his/her identity. Since the character is unable to form his/her subjectivity, his/her world-view depends on the perception of the colonizer, increasing in this way, his/her subjugation to colonial power. In such subjugation, individuals are forced to speak the language of those in control.

Language, let us remember, is a tool of a nation’s self-definition; it is the way a society represents its culture and values. The importance of language resonates deeply with Fanon’s essay—Chapter I in Peau Noire—as well as in Ngũgĩ’s key assertions on Decolonising the Mind

(1986), where he writes: “Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture, at their politics and at the social production of wealth, at their entire relationship to nature and to other human beings” (16). Liberation, thus, implies a change in peoples’ language, which is a change in their minds. As Ngũgĩ’s book title suggests, subjects need to learn to decolonize their minds from the language of those in power. The work of the poststructuralist Jacques Derrida is useful here because implicit within his critique of the paradox of the mother tongue is a recognition that language not only refers to a means of communication, but also to individuals’ desire to represent their own world-view. Language houses the understandings of people’s reality. Like Fanon, and strongly influenced by Levinas’ philosophy, Derrida is also concerned with the ways people’s minds are colonized. In Le monolinguisme de l'autre, the French philosopher discusses the situation of national and linguistic belonging of the monolingual whose only language is, in fact, not his mother tongue, but a language that has been imposed, and therefore, only represents the values and assumptions of those in power: 32

Tu perçois du coup l’origine de mes souffrances, puisque cette langue les

traverse de part en part, et le lieu de mes passions, de mes désirs, de mes prières,

la vocation de mes espérances. Mais j’ai tort, j’ai tort à parler de traversée et de

lieu. Car c’est au bord du français, uniquement, ni en lui ni hors de lui, sur la

ligne introuvable de sa côte que, depuis toujours, à demeure, je me demande si

on peut aimer, jouir, prier, crever de douleur ou crever tout court dans une autre

langue ou sans rien en dire à personne, sans parler même. (14)

In this passage, Derrida illustrates how the subject is unable to possess the world expressed and implied by the language he was forced to learn and to speak. Thus, such a language does not express the way the subject sees and feels the world. The subject stops being alienated when he/she finds a point of junction between his/her feelings and the language, that is, when the subject learns to say “I”: “Il faut . . . savoir dans quelle langue je se dit, je me dis. On pense ici aussi bien au je pense, qu’au je grammatical ou linguistique, au moi ou au nous dans leur statut identificatoire, tel que le sculptent des figures culturelles, symboliques, socio-culturelles” (54).

The moment in which the subject learns to say je in all its grammatical forms is when he/she finds a new language that gives light to what is being observed and felt. It is in this transition, precisely, when he/she starts challenging the hegemonic power.13 In this way, Levinas’ and

Derrida’s theories are employed in the analysis of the novels in order to describe how the characters are controlled by those in power. In addition, this process helps us to understand how characters realize that one of the main tools that the colonizers use to keep them under total control can also be utilized to free themselves. Here, I refer to the power of language.

13 In the same line of thought, the Belgian feminist and philosopher Luce Irigaray who also received a profound influence from Levinas, studies the way a feminine subject, traditionally defined by a male-dominated society, is able to construct her world-view according to her own language. Irigaray’s exploration of the feminine intersubjectivity in her essay “When Our Lips Speak Together” (1980) is employed as well in the analysis of some of the texts. 33

Proceeding with the description of postcolonial texts, then, I would contend that its third characteristic is hinged when a literary work gives a voice to the nation’s poor to represent themselves. As a consequence of the fierce situations of political subjugation, such as race, class, and gender inequalities, transmitted to a great extent through the power of the colonizer’s language, each novel gives to the nation’s poor an opportunity to react. My examination focuses on the analysis of the characters’ actions, in specific, their creation of strategies of resistance they use to respond to the autocratic governments. The characters learn to delimit and negotiate their own physical and mental spaces of will and power in order to convey their feelings of independence and freedom. Each novel deals with different strategies of resistance, which might be seen as an intense critique from the authors to their nations’ strict government rules. My theoretical framework for this study draws specifically from Michel De Certeau’s discourse in

The Practice of Everyday Life (1984)14 and Édouard Glissant’s key concepts of resistance explored in his book L’intention poétique (1969). These two theories and their approaches to literary works will be explained in detail in the next section, but at this point it suffices to note that the purpose of looking at their works is to construct the colonized subject as an individual always “in motion.” The colonizer has always tried to describe the subaltern through “static terms.” By “static terms,” I refer to the set of values that the colonizer has imposed on the colonized, turning them into passive subjects. De Certeau’s and Glissant’s works will prove useful guides in order to show how characters are subjects who will simply not stand by and accept what is imposed on them. Rather they take rebellious detours that would allow them to produce their own rules. It is precisely in their movement—physically in the urban

14 This book was originally published in French as L’invention du quotidien in 1980; and it was translated into English four years later by Steven Rendall. 34 spaces/peripheries and psychologically in their minds—where the characters find their way to free themselves.

It must be acknowledged that in each particular strategy or negotiation utilized to redefine their identities, characters turn into hybrid individuals. Speaking on this issue, Taylor comments that postcolonial texts struggle to balance hybridity with discourses of resistance and liberation (55). To put this another way, characters’ navigation in fluid worlds—such as the temporal movements from present to past and the trajectories from urban spaces to their peripheries—needs to be crafted in such a way that “the effects of that hybridity are resistant and liberatory” (55). In this vein, the critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha, whose theoretical work is greatly based on psychoanalysis, states in his introduction to The Location of Culture (1994):

“This interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (1333). I relate my comparative analysis on rebellious detours to liberating experiences and redefinitions of the characters’ identities because the effects of their crossings of space and time make them question, destabilize, and undermine the hegemonic power. In such processes, characters become—albeit some more than others—hybrid individuals “without an assumed or imposed hierarchy.” In other words, they exist as independent from those who want to control them.

Given the importance of the liberatory process, the exploration of hybrid spaces/times constitutes one of the studies in this section.

It is difficult to understand how characters become hybrid without, at the same time, understanding that writers are hybrid too.15 As Kumkum Sangari mentions: “. . . the hybrid writer is already open to two worlds and is constructed within the national and international,

15 Here, I refer specifically to Patrick Chamoiseau, Dany Laferrière, Daína Chaviano, Mayra Santos-Febres, and also to those who represent and question the historical transition of their nations’ political control. 35 political and cultural systems of colonialism and neocolonialism. To be hybrid is to understand and question as well as to represent the pressure of such historical placement” (144). Writers understand the historical transformations in their native nations, yet they are able to become outsiders from their own cultures by taking a critical standpoint and by questioning political systems. To be hybrid means also “the ground for political analysis and change” (144). The exploration of this mechanism is what Homi K. Bhabha calls the “Third Space” where one can elude political control and “emerge as the others of our selves” (“Cultural” 209). As previously mentioned, writers have utilized their literary skills to draw attention to resistance and liberation through their novels. However, besides the elaboration of characters’ strategies of resistance, a different struggle is also perceived through the narrative techniques employed by each novel, such as the use of flashbacks and the abandon of linear order. The literary works refuse to be read in a single dimension; instead they expand the readers’ choices and interpretations by offering them a complex world that both mimics and contradicts reality. While this type of organization can also appear in other literary works, its use in the novels I will examine intrinsically emphasize the construction of strategies of resistance elaborated by the characters, the transformative spaces of the cities, and times of transition—from present to past. Writers also use their own language of struggle, which is not only shown in the plots, but also in the structures of their texts, as seen in the novels examined in this text. At first glance, Texaco might appear to be written in the traditional style of a linear narrative structure due to certain events narrated in chronological order. Nonetheless, within the novel there are different voices, flashbacks, excerpts from the characters, and even from the author who himself speaks against the political control on the island. For the author Patrick Chamoiseau, the art of speaking through written words is a way to support the resistance undertaken by the protagonist Marie-Sophie for 36 the maintenance of the shantytown of Texaco. On a different note, the structure of Le cri des oiseaux fous is also apparently linear because it is presented as if it was a journal; each section is led by a specific title and by the chronological time in which the action took place. However, an ensemble of flashbacks and different verbal tenses in each section changes the structure of the novel. These literary techniques recall the structure of the human memory, through which thoughts jump from the present to the past and to the future in indistinctive order, avoiding in this way, the psychological lingering of static events. Hence, the continuous recollection of events helps Dany resist political control. In the case of El hombre, la hembra y el hambre, the female character challenges the deeply rooted male-dominated Cuban ideology through the structure of the novel, which parallels the “Biblical Creation” as a way to question, destabilize, and undermine the patriarchal authority. The novel’s title suggests a linear biblical order—el hombre, la hembra y el hambre—where God created man, and later, the woman to serve as a companion, and where hunger is the result of Adam and Eve having eaten the forbidden fruit from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”16 Within the structure of the novel, however, the roles are altered. The female character is depicted as strong as a man; she is forced to fight for her survival and for the delimitation of her own space of lucha without the help of a man.

With this, Claudia breaks with the biblical role of women and the patriarchal mentality imposed in Cuban society. The disjointed narrative structure of Nuestra señora de la noche also uses biblical terms to call the patriarchal authority into question. It is composed not only of a great variety of different voices, but also of prayers whose main intention is to negotiate with God and the Virgin. For some characters, their only way to receive what they want is through praying.

This mechanism suggests the ongoing social gap between the populace and those in power.

16 Some biblical terms are written in capital letters because that is how they appear in the Bible. 37

Finally, the last aspect that illustrates the unveiling of rebellious detours against political dominion is through its overall cruel but realistic perspective of the future of the Caribbean region. Even though it is not explicitly shown in the texts, the four novels suggest that governments will not cease to subvert individuals. On the contrary, they show that “Peoples of the Sea”17 are witty in the way they play with the possibilities offered by the environment; they take detours to get to their goals by making use of one aspect rather than another, and by taking advantage of them in order to create their own spaces. Nonetheless, on a different angle, this mechanism seems as an invitation to those creative minds to keep writing and exploring other ways to challenge hegemonic power. Here, we can perceive a deeply rooted nationalist sentiment that is on the lookout for new literary mechanisms that could facilitate a complete political transformation on the islands. Now, we will move on to the discussion of the main ideas and concepts raised by the critical materials of Édouard Glissant and De Certeau in order to better understand the elaboration of the characters’ strategies of resistance.

17 In The Repeating Island (1996) Cuban writer Antonio Benítez-Rojo refers to Caribbean people as “Peoples of the Sea” (16). 38

Strategies of resistance

In each novel featured in this dissertation, the writers have articulated different ways in which characters resist political domination. The writers Patrick Chamoiseau and Mayra Santos-

Febres partake in the process of reappropriating one of the basic human rights that has been snatched from an individual, that of owning a property. One uses Marie-Sophie’s reports on the reconstruction of the shantytown Texaco, whereas the other uses the experiences of the popular legend of Isabel la Negra to allow exploited people to claim a piece of land where they can live.

On the other hand, Dany Laferrière and Daína Chaviano share a preoccupation that the

Caribbean individual is being invaded mentally as well as physically. The former takes advantage of his journalistic skills to describe his physical and mental movements in the city of terror, Port-au-Prince, implemented by the Duvalier regime during his last twenty four hours.

The latter employs her imagination to create a character with parapsychological skills through which she gets in contact with the Havana of her ancestors. Clearly, the battle in the four novels is over possession of the land and of the mind. All the characters are identified as social rebels because they do not accept the physical and mental limitations imposed by the autocratic regimes. They want to be heard, but their voice has been lost in the gigantic path that separates those in power from those in poverty. I wish to examine the way these characters construct their strategies, which seem troublesome for some but inspiring for those who decide to imitate them.

Thus, this study will situate itself within those theoreticians who have examined the different strategies of resistance of the oppressed against the oppressor.

In L’intention poétique, the Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant outlines four concepts in relation to resistance: Relation, opacity, detour, and counterpoetics (Britton 39

11).18 “Relation” operates on diversity, that is, on the respect and relations towards the Other as equal and as different (12). This is a dynamic, ongoing, and open-ended process, best described by the author as “a force field of possible trajectories,” where people move in a new kind of traveling (13). The emphasis on movement in relation allows individuals’ actions to result in unpredictable forms that are the crucial nodes for their liberatory experiences. A prime example of this is seen in the protagonist Isabel la Negra, who is an element of resistance because she is always in Relation to nature—the hurricane and the Portugués River for instance—and to her island’s past through her African origins. She exists “in relation” to these elements. Hence, her movements to resist become unpredictable: they follow the zig-zag course of the Portugués

River. The concept of Relation by Glissant is best illustrated through the figure and mechanism of the “rhizome” discussed at length by the French poststructuralists, Gilles Deleuze and Félix

Guattari. The rhizome, unlike the single central point of the root and the tree, is the process in which growth proliferates indistinctively from many different nodes at once (Britton 14). The flexible design of the rhizome emphasizes the multiple, lateral, circular, and open system of ramification that nature has given it. This notion conveys that resistance can be found in Relation to anything since there is not a unique and exclusive root. By “anything” I mean what is provided naturally to the subject, which can be a person, a thing, an event, even an image. What is important to note is that these multifarious varieties can operate indistinctively through time and space. Proceeding with the above example, Isabel moves in different directions in the city of

Ponce and gets in contact with people who have different and similar goals. Their concomitant

Relation opens up infinite possible trajectories not only for her, but also for those she meets

18 The concept of “Relation” is specifically used by Glissant in a capital letter in order to distinguish it from the noun “relation.” It is more accurate to talk of “Relation” as a concept of resistance due to its multifarious operations which go beyond the term “relation.” For this reason, I shall use it with a capital letter throughout this dissertation to keep this fact firmly in mind. 40 while in the past and during the present. In this way, their relation results in unpredictable forms comparable to the way the rhizome grows, sending out roots and shoots from its nodes.

Glissant’s concept of Relation and the image of the rhizome help us to illustrate and better understand characters’ continuous movement from one place to another. It is fair to say that it also helps us to imagine their construction and feeling of freedom.

Their rejection of static positions creates a network of new and multiple relationships that denote mobility in various spaces, and this in turn facilitates the traveling and interweaving from present to past and into the future. A similar line of thinking is found in the unpredictable and dynamic processes explored in The Repeating Island by the Cuban writer Antonio Benítez-Rojo

(Britton 14). According to Benítez-Rojo, these dynamic and ongoing movements repeat in the

Caribbean. He uses the term “chaos” to explain the diversity and chain of repetitions: “Chaos looks toward everything that repeats, reproduces, grows, decays, unfolds, flows, spins, vibrates, seethes” (Benítez-Rojo 3). The image of chaos depicts movement, order, and disorder. I agree with Celia M. Britton when she points out that Benítez-Rojo is more concerned than Glissant in finding common factors in the chain of repetition that would allow him to find a cultural point of specificity in the Caribbean. On the contrary, Glissant puts more emphasis on diversity and unpredictability. Although I endorse Benítez-Rojo’s view that, in the Caribbean there are certain patterns that repeat, I want to see this as a more spontaneous strategic activity open to change.

Having said this, I am interested in finding which features that are the result of the process of

Relation among the characters, are similar and/or different to the rest. Further, which features work better for each of them? How do they appear and develop throughout the narration?

Relation is connected to Glissant’s second concept of resistance: “opacity.” He writes:

“The poetics of Relation presuppose that each of us encounters the density (the opacity) of the 41

Other. The more the Other resists in his thickness or his fluidity (without restricting himself to this), the more expressive his reality becomes, and the more fruitful the relation becomes”

(Britton 18). Accepting the Other’s opacity means also accepting the Other’s difference, it is “a right not to be understood” (19). When individuals try to understand the Other, an act of aggression is committed (19). Glissant argues that opacity also means that parts of oneself are unclear to each subject, which at the same time, provokes a sense of liberation (21). When discussing the concept of opacity, it is important to remember the example of the protagonist

Claudia, who has the ability to travel to an imagined Havana of centuries earlier. Her friends do not comprehend why sometimes she looks absent-minded. In fact, the female character herself does not understand her parapsychological skills either. However, living in the past represents for her an experience that liberates her from the tension of the modern city. Claudia’s opacity is a form of resistance that allows her to keep her identity. In Peau noire, masques blancs, Frantz

Fanon writes: “La connaissance du corps est une activité uniquement négatrice. C’est une connaissance en troisième personne. Tout autour du corps règne une atmosphère d’incertitude certaineˮ (89). Like Claudia, the rest of the characters in the texts are unaware of what their bodies/minds are capable of doing, which is why they do not predict their strategies of resistance.

Rather, their actions depend on the outcome of the stress resulting from the oppressive environments. When this moment arrives they realize that the things do have more meaning than they thought it would have and it is here when they feel empowered. For example, Claudia does not know that she can travel to the past. At the beginning, she feels scared of what she can do, but later, she uses it to her advantage. In the case of the protagonist Dany, he discovers that he is able to manipulate the way he thinks. He realizes that the dictatorial regime wants the inhabitants of the city to think only about politics. Through fabricated images, people are being under 42 controlled, and the regime is becoming more powerful. Dany decides to think only about himself and not about politics. This strategy makes him feel empowered. There are also other methods in which people are controlled, such as through racism and gender inequality. Racial stereotypes make groups of people destined for specific areas of living and for holding only certain jobs.

When Isabel Luberza becomes a successful business woman, she is criticized by the elite because, as a black woman, she is only “allowed” to do minor jobs such as a maid, or a farm worker. Thanks to her opacity, Isabel’s identity cannot be read by those in power, and she takes advantage of this feature in order to succeed in life, and more importantly, to be seen by those in power. Racism takes effect insofar as it humiliates human beings and makes them feel inferior to the socially dominant. Despite the cases of racism, our protagonists fight back against these ideas of inferiority, and instead of staying in the dark, they enter the world of those who want to control them, and as a result, they are seen by them. To put it in Glissant’s words, opacity must be produced “as an unintelligible presence from within the visible presence of the colonized”

(Britton 25). In this regard, I am interested in studying how “invisible” is the process of

“opacity” before the colonizer’s eyes? Do the colonizers or those in charge of maintaining control perceive any sign of rebellious activities? Or, do all processes of “opacity” in the novels go unnoticed? If not, in what way does this affect the characters’ performances?

The next phase of Glissant’s major concepts of resistance is “detour.” Opacity can be confused with “detour,” but the basic difference between the two is that the former emphasizes ethical values and political rights, whereas the latter is more “tactical and ambiguous” (25).

Detour is a roundabout way to go through obstacles. It takes place when the enemy—in other words, those in political domination—cannot be confronted directly. This situation happens in the novels examined in this thesis. Since the characters cannot simply evade political oppression, 43 they engage in finding a way around it. Like opacity, detour is not something planned in advance

(27); quite the opposite, it is spontaneous and unexpected by the system of domination. The decision of the protagonist Marie-Sophie to live in the land where oil is extracted exemplifies the concept of detour. Throughout the story, the civil right of owning a dwelling space is denied to her and to all her family. However, she decides to build her shack in an uncommon area. Since there is far below ground an oil deposit that can explode at any minute due to constant drilling, her choice is seen as unexpected by the békés. Here, I aim to explore the question, what is beyond Marie-Sophie’s decision of living on an oil deposit? In other words, what else does she find in the quarter of Texaco besides building a place to live? How is this site important for the redefinition of her identity? In Laferrière’s novel, Dany knows he is being persecuted and is going to be murdered by the Duvalier’s militia. His detour takes the form of constant movement, walking through the streets of Port-au-Prince. Dany is so involved in going from one place to another that he does not appear afraid of his surroundings. Dany’s behavior goes “seemingly” unnoticed by the Tontons Macoutes. Another character whose movements are comparable to those of Dany is Claudia, due to her perseverance. By being a jinetera, she obstructs the monitoring of her movements by the regime of Castro. With this, the system of domination does not know how much she earns and how many gifts she receives from her clients. For these two characters, some questions I will aim to answer are: what is the process of Dany’s and Claudia’s constant movement in the city? What do they trace? What do they hope to find through their decisions? Finally, the protagonist, Isabel Luberza, becomes a successful business woman by opening a brothel where she protects prostitutes. Under these circumstances, she challenges the patriarchal and ethnocentric discourse in Puerto Rico, which is not accepting of a woman like

Isabel, from African origins, becoming an important woman in the city of Ponce. She also 44 challenges the American government by attracting the Puerto Rican soldiers that the U.S. is attempting to recruit to fight for them. Here, I am interested in exploring the symbolism behind the brothel. What does this situation mean for Isabel, her protégées, and for the elite? To sum up, for all these characters, the use of detour is not an escape from reality, but a deviation from a direct course that aims to expose the oppression of the system. By doing this, the characters are heard in a context in which their voice is comprised of actions rather than sounds. They explore and engage in different strategies of resistance. Yet, as Fanon states: “Puisque l’autre hésitait à me reconnaître, il ne restait qu’une solution: me faire connaîtreˮ (Peau noire, 93).

Our last concept in relation to resistance, according to Édouard Glissant, is called

“counterpoetics,” which is a detour composed of language sounds. It is when a language— written or spoken—is confronted with something impossible to express, and as a result, it lacks lucidity and coherence (Britton 31-32). Counterpoetics is, then, considered a type of detour because it forces the characters to find a way around a problem. An example of this is evident when Marie-Sophie’s father, Esternome, decides to go to work in Fort-de-France. He experiences the chaos of the urban space, and as a consequence, he loses the memory of the most important sites of the city. Without this memory, he is unable to survive in it because he fails to recognize the limits of the city’s space. As a way to cope, he starts producing a delirious speech.

That said, we should be clear that the concept of counterpoetics is not frequently used to expose the characters’ strategies of resistance, as we are about to see in the chapters that follow.

Nonetheless, by using the term counterpoetics in this chapter, I am marking out the terrain of another type of study. Esternome’s movements in Fort-de-France and his delirious speech, which is deemed as a detour, allow me to talk about the way the characters protect themselves from the fear and control in urban spaces. How an individual navigates in the city and how he/she utilizes 45 language are often treated separately from each other. At the same time, both have a common goal, which is production. An individual tries to move in the urban space from A to B in an efficient way. His trail produces a “route.” An individual uses language with the purpose of producing a view of his/her world, and thus, is able to communicate. With these thoughts in mind, it is fair to say that Esternome’s delirious speech is negatively associated with the urban space because he fails to communicate effectively. This makes me think about how language can be used positively in the production of characters’ strategies of resistance. To explain this debate, we shall first discuss the representation of characters’ navigation in urban spaces.

As previously mentioned, the political authority is “purely nominal” (Cabral 46); other groups of people are in charge of carrying out the job. Those in charge of an administration exert their power from the city centers and extend their control to the peripheries. The city is constituted “seemingly” in terms of their rules. Hence, detours taken by the characters are organized in accordance to their struggle with the political authority and with the incongruities and dissonance of the streets. Their resistances start in the center of the urban city, and slowly move to the furthest reaches of the perimeters. For instance, in Laferrière’s text, those responsible for maintaining total control in the streets of Port-au-Prince are the Tontons

Macoutes. Dany is aware that he is being watched by them, thereby, he pays attention to what he does in the streets of Port-au-Prince in order to avoid being captured and murdered. His life depends on his behavior in this urban space. For this reason, Dany decides to walk in the streets; he meets people, and he never tells anybody his plans of leaving the country the following morning. His movements start in the city and end in its periphery. Dany cannot take the straight path of getting to his goals. Due to the chaotic environment, he has to twist with a detour and utilize subversive tactics. My goal is to examine the representations of each of the cities in which 46 the characters evolve in order to better understand their decisions. An important question is, therefore, what do the urban spaces represent not only for the characters and/or populace, but also for the authority? The representations of the urban spaces and their dynamics are of concern to Professor J. Michael Dash who, in his book The Other America (1998), brilliantly comments:

It is difficult not to notice the importance of the street as a primal and

problematic site in modern Caribbean writing. A fundamental departure from the

world of the pastoral, the street is, in conventional sense, profoundly unpoetic. It

is the zone of the public self, the collective consciousness. The street represents

movement, chaos, and anonymity. (Dash 122-23)

I fully endorse Dash’s view that the cities not only represent a place to dwell or work, they also symbolize sites where other mechanisms are produced by their inhabitants. If fear is enacted on individuals, it is natural, then, that the space in which this happens would also absorb this feature. In this sense, the cities work as tools of the political authority to keep its power. In Les damnés de la terre, Fanon appropriately remarks: “Le colon est un exhibitionniste. Son souci de sécurité l’amène à rappeler à haute voix au colonisé que : ‘Le maître, ici, c’est moiˮ (19). The cities become the visible and tangible presence of the dominant social class’s power. In this sense, the characters in the novels evolve in urban spaces—Fort-de-France, Port-au-Prince,

Havana, and Ponce—all of which are zones of loss, alienation, pain, and death. Living in these cities, the characters frequently experience the feeling of being trapped in an impossible state of in-between.

Nevertheless, I contend that they are also sites of creation and challenge due to the way the characters resist within them. The character of Claudia for example, is able to imagine her island’s historical past while walking one day in the streets of Havana when a gigantic mass— 47 which she has never seen before in that specific place—appears before her. This enormous block becomes her entry to the imaginary site. It is my argument that the urban spaces in which the characters evolve are symbolically des villes mangroves19 because they represent both treacherous conditions and a sense of fluidity, not having borders, and openness to influence and change. According to scientists, the mangrove is depicted by its hardiness and great adaptability to the physical stress on the system, and by its stability and protection to the island. The figure of the mangrove is comparable to the notion of a “rhizome,” in the sense that the above-ground portion of the tree may be destroyed by natural threats, such as insects, fungus, etc. Yet the underground rhizome is somewhat preserved against any damages due to the strength of its multi-tiered layers of roots. Also, if part of the rhizome is cut, this piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. I relate this vegetative mechanism of the rhizome to the natural constitution of the mangrove to better illustrate the adaptability of the urban space. Violence, domination, and destruction are performed on the surface—the best visual example of this is the old ruins of

Havana—while stability and protection, which are deep underground, remain “untouchable.” At some point throughout the texts, the characters understand that there will always be threats on the soil surface, and that what really matters for their lives and for the reconstruction of their identities is to become part of nature, to understand how the roots of the cities, of their cultures, and of their pasts work in order to feel safeguarded in this environment. This means that even though these cities are labyrinthine worlds, their swampy terrain gives the characters a sense of security. The protagonists, as part of this natural environment, innately benefit from that, and create strategies of resistance that are linked to it; they transform and adapt. Under this light, the representation of the cities functions as spaces of fulfillment and disillusionment. I am especially

19 I borrowed this term from Michael Dash when he refers to “dangerous cities” in The Other America (145). 48 interested in finding out how the strategies of resistance are connected to the cities. To a certain extent, the way characters challenge hegemonic discourse depends implicitly on the structure of the urban space. For this reason, it is important to analyze how they benefit from the space as well.

One might ask, however, what happens to the subject before truly understanding the mechanism of the mangrove/rhizome of the cities. Marie-Sophie, Dany, Claudia, and Isabel practice their daily routines in a repetitive and unconscious manner while navigating urban spaces. Michel De Certeau’s book, The Practice of Everyday Life, is one of the key texts used in this study because the work examines the ways in which people unconsciously individualize and take over everything that comes across in their path, from city streets to literary works.

According to De Certeau, in the constructed space of the city in which subjects move about,

“their trajectories form unforeseeable sentences, partly unreadable paths across a space” (xviii).

Although these trajectories are elaborated in fixed constructed spaces—which in the case of the novels these are represented by the ruling of autocratic governments—they “trace out the ruses of other interests and desires that are neither determined nor captured by the systems in which they develop” (xviii). In other words, they are seemingly invisible and only obey “their own logic” (xviii). In Chapter VII “Walking in the city,” De Certeau compares the act of walking with the speech act from which he argues that walking appropriates the urban space just as the speaker appropriates language (97-98). In this vein, it can be argued that if the city is generated and ruled by governments, then walkers have the ability to create their own space within the city by taking shortcuts, tracing maps through which they link a series of intermingling lines of connections, and ultimately creating a new sort of “language.” Thus, walkers generate multifarious spaces with the power of ruling them as their own. Let us remember the case of Dany who decides to 49

walk in the city, even though it is controlled by Duvalier’s militia the Tontons Macoutes; it still becomes a space of protection for the protagonist. De Certeau furthers his study by asserting that the places being appropriated are, in reality, “presences of diverse absences. What can be seen designates what is no longer there: ‘you see, here there used to be . . . ,’ but it can no longer be seen” (108). Memory plays an important role in that it makes people tied to places (108). Even though government tries to organize the city as a unified whole,20 the urban space is an ensemble of fragments due to the destruction/reconstruction of its sites. It is the walker who unconsciously puts the pieces together—persuaded by memory. The walker deciphers and reads such fragments in order to form his/her own unified whole. Some questions I will examine are the following:

What principle does the reading/order of fragments follow in each text? What do they revise?

And why? Returning to the above example, Dany visits most notably the places that his friend

Gasner and his dad used to go in order to reconstruct and reunite the fragments of their lives, and in this way, makes sense of his own life. It is an act that appears at the beginning as something unconscious, natural. It is later in the process when it becomes rational. Dany wants to know how his father’s life was before he was forced to leave the country. Fragments in peoples’ lives are produced by autocratic regimes. They divide peoples’ personalities, cultures, and history in order to increase their control. The reading of fragments from the subject’s point of view is an essential part of combating political domination.

Once the characters are conscious of what the cities can offer them, they take advantage of that. They “rationally” delimit their own space in order to be “metaphorically speaking” on the same level as the oppressor, and thereby, attempt to challenge political authority. For the analysis of the characters’ defining of spaces, I will continue most notably with Michel De Certeau’s

20 The city is constructed following a plan that aims to benefit those in power. The constructions of buildings, their locations, their destruction, and their relocation/rebuilding function as a way to intimidate the inhabitants and to give more power to the authority. 50 theory elaborated in The Practice of Everyday Life. A definition of what he calls a strategy provides a more adequate initial schema:

The calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible

as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific

institution) can be isolated. It postulates a place that can be delimited as its own

and serves as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of

targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding

the city, objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed. As in

management, every “strategic” rationalization seeks first of all to distinguish its

“own” place, that is, the place of its own power and will, from an “environment.”

A Cartesian attitude, if you wish: it is an effort to delimit one’s own place in a

world bewitched by the invisible powers of the Other. (35-36)

These three definitions of strategy share the idea of owning a place that serves as the basis for generating relations with an exterior element from the same origins. Nevertheless, before circumscribing a place as their own, our characters make use of what Michel De Certeau calls

“tactics,” that is a calculated action in the space of the Other, “it is a maneuver “within the enemy’s field of vision” (37). This is very similar to Glissant’s previously discussed concept of detour. The difference between a tactic and a strategy is that the first one is “determined by the absence of power,” while the second one is “organized by the postulation of power” (38). To keep this confusion at bay, let us exemplify the concepts of tactics and strategies in the characters of the novels. Marie-Sophie chooses as a tactic, or detour, the oil refinery, placed on the edge of Fort-de-France, because it is within the enemy territory, in other words, it is “within the enemy’s field of vision,” to put it in De Certeau’s words. Her tactic/detour becomes a 51 strategy when her shack is built. From this point on, Marie-Sophie struggles with the maintenance and survival of her shack, and consequently, with all the other dwellings that compose the shantytown of Texaco. She is able to keep her fight because she owns a space of her own. On the other hand, Dany’s tactic/detour is to walk in Port-au-Prince and to think about himself. It is a tactic because he is doing it within Duvalier’s territory. When he walks in the city, he is appropriating “metaphorically” the space of the Other. Hence, his continuous movements in the city and the freedom of his mind allow the protagonist to delimit his space of power and will, and from this postulation of power, he is able to escape murder. Something similar happens with the character of Claudia who, after not finding a job, becomes a jinetera or a prostitute. Her tactic/detour consists of selling her body for money or goods in an environment where basic necessities—food, soap, oil, etc.—are hard to obtain. Despite the repulsion she feels towards her job, she establishes her place of power through the invisible trajectories she marks in the city to see her clients—hotels, restaurants, etc.—to get her food at her local bodega (shop), and to the dwelling space. The articulation of the spatial relationships she creates with her series of intermingling lines of connections in Havana prevents the total control of the dictatorial regime.

As a result, she feels empowered and enjoys moments of freedom. In the last novel, the property given to Isabel Luberza serves as her tactic only at the beginning, because later, when she constructs a brothel, it automatically becomes an establishment of power, in other words, a strategy. The brothel serves as the basis for generating relations with prostitutes—who are well treated and protected by Isabel—and with adversaries, such as the U.S. military and the elite of the city.

As we have seen so far, the elaboration of strategies of resistance is not an easy task to accomplish. Strategies are keenly linked to pre-established structures of power throughout the 52 urban spaces. Characters’ strategies work by poaching their own series of “rhizomatic” lines of connections—from unconscious to rational manners—which are shaped in accordance of space and time in already existent structures. By “lines of connections” I mean—somewhat reinterpreted—Glissant’s four concepts of resistance: Relation, opacity, detour, and counterpoetics. To sum up, Relation is the force that keeps everything together. Opacity and counterpoetics refer more to the individual, whereas, detour is more about actions. The use of detours—or in De Certeau’s parlance, tactics—is used in this study in terms of discussing the way that the characters circumvent the oppression of the political authority and those in charge of its administration. The city works as a zone of intimidation whose job is to maintain the subordination of its inhabitants. Nevertheless, it also symbolizes a site of creation where characters are inspired to establish their places of power. After the discussions of detours, the characters’ strategies as sites of power and will—in De Certeau’s terms—are analyzed. Indeed, it is in this field where they feel empowered and are able to maintain their resistance against autocratic governments. It is a central objective of this project to demonstrate, with the analysis of Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean novels produced during the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty first century, that these writings explore new dynamic strategies of resistance that take the form of constant flux, displacement, and are open to change and diversity.

With these strategies, the characters learn to establish their own place in repressive environments and to negotiate the physical and mental constraints in order to survive. Their strategies convey feelings of independence and freedom amidst physically and mentally oppressive environments.

53

Chapter II

Martinique: Texaco (1992)

About the author and his novel

Patrick Chamoiseau (1953) is a Martinican writer who has authored the play, Manman

Dlo contre la fée Carabosse (1982), several film scripts, tales, and novels including Texaco, which garnered the Prix Goncourt in 1992.21 He has also written non-fiction books such as Éloge de la créolité (1989) which he co-authored along with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. In his literary works, Chamoiseau is politically committed to the cultural situation of his native island,Martinique. The author often draws on the Caribbean island’s complex and divisive history to offer insights into what its people have experienced for generations. As a contemporary writer of postcolonial Martinique, Chamoiseau treats topics from slavery, colonialism, and the desire for independence, to present themes such as créolité, assimilation, alienation, and resistance, among other concepts. At the same time, he embraces the unique and inescapable features of human beings in different social, cultural, and historical contexts in

Martinique. Chamoiseau is able to successfully integrate all of these elements with an unprecedented and magical writing style that often infuses Creole expressions into his French in a vibrant, sometimes ironic and humorous way. Equally important to note is that in some of his works, the author becomes a character who witnesses and participates in the development of the plot. For instance, in his second novel, Solibo Magnifique (1988), the Martinican writer is identified, among others, as one of the witnesses and suspects for Solibo’s death as “Patrick

Chamoiseau, surnommé Chamzibié, Ti-Cham ou Oiseau de Cham, se disant ‘marqueur de paroles’, en réalité sans profession, demeurant 90 rue François-Arago” (30). In calling himself

21 As it is mentioned in Leonard Michaels’ review of the book in The New York Times Book Review (13).

54

“marqueur de paroles,” Chamoiseau encompasses all of the different aspects of a writer, who is rediscovering, in a new and different way, his native Martinique, while at the same time, actively participating in it.

I specifically chose to analyze Texaco, Chamoiseau’s third novel, because it best exemplifies his role to function as a “marqueur de paroles,” that is, as a narrator, witness, character, and transcriber within the narration. The tales of Creole life narrated in Texaco are recounted by a conteur—the chief storyteller and protagonist Marie-Sophie Laborieux—to the writer who decides to transcribe them in a book. In transcribing from oral to written text,

Chamoiseau creates a world whose existence as a whole depicts characters, who are dreaming, suffering, and resisting in order to reach their goals, from the early days of slavery until the current present. Such transcription is a complex and imaginary process as Chamoiseau himself accurately points out in the chapter “Que faire de la parole” in Écrire la parole de nuit (1994):

. . . . le passage de l’oral à l’écrit exige une zone de mystère créatif. Car il ne

s’agit pas, en fait, de passer de l’oral à l’écrit, comme on passe d’un pays à un

autre; il ne s’agit pas non plus d’écrire la parole, ou d’écrire sur un mode parlé,

ce qui serait sans intérêt majeur; il s’agit d’envisager une création artistique

capable de mobiliser la totalité qui nous est offerte, tant du point de vue de

l’oralité que de celui de l’écriture. Il s’agit de mobiliser à tout moment le génie

de la parole, le génie de l’écriture, mobiliser leurs lieux de convergence, mais

aussi leurs lieux de divergence, leurs oppositions et leurs paradoxes, conserver

à tout moment cette amplitude totale qui traverse toutes les formes de la parole,

mais qui traverse aussi tous les genres de l’écriture, du roman à la poésie, de

l’essai au théâtre. (157-58) 55

It is in joining these two essential components, Marie-Sophie’s génie de la parole and

Chamoiseau’s génie de l’écriture, that the author is able to create a complete world. More importantly, since the stories told by the main protagonist are set in a specific past, they undoubtedly bring meaningful questions into the society of the present that reveal a central view and framework of the cultural situation of the island, such as the continuous political domination over the poor. As a reactionary method, the novel’s characters in the present, embark on rebellious detours that facilitate their fight directly against their oppressors. Throughout this dynamic, Chamoiseau offers a complete, cultural and historical view of his native Martinique.

Indeed, Texaco elucidates the origins of Martinique, how the island its inhabitants know began, how the first slaves were hauled to it, and how nowadays, despite the abolition of slavery, blacks are still fighting for their freedom. The author takes heed of the lessons of the past of his

Martinique in order to compare them with its current situation. For instance, in Texaco, he depicts how the békés—the line of descent of European colonizers—tried to legitimize their

European ideology of supremacy to rule the island; how the mulattos, in order to be accepted within society, entered into a process of assimilation to French culture (when the island voted to become an overseas department of France in 1946); and how blacks who are at the bottom of the social scale resist to maintain their own Creole culture. Even though Texaco is a fictional novel, the historical landscape presented by Chamoiseau is authentic. My focus here is on the patterns of resistance strategies enumerated by some of the characters. The fact that this novel explores the past and the present history of the island allows this project to analyze the theme of resistance in a wider range, that is, to compare how the characters have struggled in the past, to how different characters continue to fight for the same rights in the present. It is because of Patrick 56

Chamoiseau’s unique style that he is considered one of the most important and influential postcolonial writers of all time.

Texaco offers a series of stories presented in a kaleidoscopic format, a succession of different fictional and factual events in constant change. One such event is the recollection of

Marie-Sophie’s grandparents, who lived on a plantation in Martinique during the 1800’s, as well as the memory of her father’s life and of her own. Through the rich stories of her family, Marie-

Sophie not only traces the joys and misfortunes of her family members, but also the complex history of Martinique: including the abolition of slavery, the increased urbanization and industrialization of the economy in the twentieth century, World Wars I and II, Aimé Césaire’s election as mayor, and the island’s departmentalization in 1946. Another event that simultaneously takes place is the fight, that Marie-Sophie undertakes in honor of her father, for the construction of the shantytown that thrives next to the oil refinery on the margins of Fort-de-

France, from which it takes its name, Texaco. Marie-Sophie begins her battle for Texaco by erecting her shack there with only a few bamboo poles and a sheet of canvas; from this moment forward, she wrestles with authorities over living in this place. The construction of her shack is a strategy of resistance that allows Marie-Sophie to stake a claim for herself and all of her family in their native home of Martinique. In marking her territory,, Marie-Sophie defines her own space not only in terms of materiality, but also in terms of power and personal will.

Chamoiseau’s creation of a macrocosm in Texaco parallels the construction of the shantytown of that name because everything in this site represents a small-scale version of a complete world. Indeed, Texaco is a small world where a sense of community is created by strong neighborly relations in which its inhabitants construct their own houses and produce their own food. It must be acknowledged that even before the publication of this novel, the area of 57

Texaco had been the subject of various critical writings and studies. In his article “Tradition et créativité: Les mangroves urbaines de Fort-de-Franceˮ (1984), Serge Letchimy researches the inhabitants’ creativity and resilience to survive in certain shantytowns on the outskirts of the

Martinican capital, Fort-de-France. He analyzes the dwelling spaces and the principle of self- sufficiency that are both prevalent in Texaco. Letchimy points out that Texaco has been marginalized by the government because it had been built, like others, on a mangrove terrain that does not offer a touristic attraction to people (98). For this reason, the inhabitants of Texaco are forced to use their creativity in order to build their own living space: “Exclus de la prise de décision et du système de production du logement, les mangroves urbaines stigmatisent, par leur créativité, le non faire public en élaborant leur propre espaceˮ (98). Similar research is conducted by Max Tanic in his article “Modes d'habiter dans un quartier populaire de Fort-de-Franceˮ

(1985). According to Tanic, two of the characteristics that define Texaco are precisely the unity and adaptability in the relationships of its people to make decisions that benefit the community as a whole as well as, the inhabitants' capacity to build their own dwelling spaces (60-61). In the article “Gens des mornes, gens des villes” (1989), author William Rolle writes: “Les mornes sont le lieu de l’agriculture vivrière, des petites exploitations familiales, du jardin-nègre ou caraïbe comme symbole de l’autosubsistance, ce ‘fouillis de végétation’ qui échappe à un regard non avertiˮ (134). With that being said, what stands out in all of these articles is Texaco’s capacity to be self-sufficient, due to the thoughtful organization of its inhabitants and to the natural environment of the mangrove that affords them the means to make their survival possible. The author, Patrick Chamoiseau, gathered these characteristics of the area of Texaco that inform his novel; which in turn became some of the most analyzed traits by other researchers after the 58 publication of this literary work. Some of the critical writings devoted thus far to Texaco’s sustainability will be mentioned in the next section of this analysis.

An example of the sustainability of this shantytown is found in “Texaco: From the Hills to the Mangrove Swamps” (1999) by Françoise duRivage. In the novel, before the construction of Texaco, Chamoiseau creates a community in the hills of Noutéka, which is considered to be a sort of a model of what Texaco will become later under the leadership of the novel’s protagonist, Marie-Sophie Laborieux. Unlike Texaco, Noutéka does not succeed as a Creole community. In her article, Françoise duRivage compares the creation of Noutéka with that of

Texaco arguing that the former failed because its inhabitants did not know the history of the hills; they were not prepared to cultivate the ground, and they were selfish in that they chose

“the pursuit of individual happiness over community well-being” (37). In Texaco, explains duRivage, the inhabitants produce their own food through the plantation of a Creole garden;22 they know the hills and learn to build their homes in harmony with nature by taking into account the slope and the terrain; finally, its inhabitants work collectively in the creation of the shantytown (38-39). DuRivage adds that Texaco “is a space inhabited by maroons, a space of resistance and survival” (39). DuRivage’s analysis of the Creole community parallels what Roy

C. Caldwell researches in his article “For a Theory of the Creole City” (2003). The difference is that Caldwell places emphasis on the spatial forms of Texaco: “Marie-Sophie’s Texaco mocks the notions of Western city-planning; its disorder escapes the spatial categories by which cities have been organized” (32). Texaco is different from Western cities in that there is no designing at all; quite the opposite rather: it is an improvised and flexible place that is open to change. It is constructed following the nature of the mangrove: it is neither land nor water but occupies a

22 Édouard Glissant argues that agriculture symbolizes the first form of resistance during slavery (Kemedjio 146). 59 liminal space in between,that, for its nature, offers a space for all sorts of animals, gardens, and people. Another article that elucidates the ways in which some people must use imagination to survive and to make ends meet in such a place is “De Ville cruelle de Mongo Beti à Texaco de

Patrick Chamoiseau: Fortification, ethnicité et Globalisation dans la ville postcolonialeˮ (2001) by Cilas Kemedjio. He writes: “La débrouillardise, tactique de survie qui remonte à l’esclavage, domine la formulation des résistance urbaines dans les villes postcoloniales africaines et antillaise, fait écho à la consommation frénétique des bourgeoisies postcolonialesˮ

(145). Here, he makes reference to the creative and self-sufficient ways in which the inhabitants of Texaco survive.. Later on in his article, Kemedjio mentions that the survival resistance is

“une forme de détour qui ruse avec l’oppressionˮ (146). These examples suggest that before the publication of Chamoiseau’s novel, most of the articles written about the quarter known as

Texaco, emphasized the techniques of survival by its inhabitants. Once the novel was published, several articles treated the same techniques of survival as strategies of resistance that call the political authority into question. Nevertheless, these prior articles do not examine the dynamic political contestation between the protagonist Marie-Sophie Laborieux who represents the island’s oppressed, and those in the dominant group represented by the békés. In this dissertation, I make use of the inhabitants’ imagination, creativity, and self-sufficiency needed in order to survive in Texaco, as a way to thoroughly analyze the characters’ rebellious detours and ways in which they challenge political authority. Furthermore, I base the characters’ capacity to resist on the natural characteristics of the mangrove provided not only by the shantytown, but also by the urban spaces. I argue that the cities of Saint-Pierre and Fort- de-France, despite their visible roles of intimidation through architecture and surveillance implemented by the autocratic regimes, can also function as mangroves that offer the necessary 60 tools of survival to their inhabitants. Richard D.E. Burton makes a comparative analysis of the space in Texaco and in Fort-de-France in Chapter V of his book Le roman marron (1997).

Here, he suggests that even though the structure of the quarter is “curviligne, poreuse, alvéolaire” and that of the city “un bloc hermétique,” (189) each place becomes “un espace mixte” because they share the same languages: Creole and French (196-97). This suggests that

Texaco and Fort-de-France participate in a dynamic relationship in which the one is part of the expression of the other and vice versa.23 Like language, other similar dynamics can be produced in these two locations. If Texaco is the embodiment of creation, then it can be argued that the same phenomenon occurs in the urban space, although perhaps not to the same degree of intensity. I argue that in the novel, the urban space of the city functions as an invitation to action where characters benefit to take an active stand against the autocratic governments through the creation of rebellious detours. The most visible rebellious detour is the construction of Marie-Sophie’s own dwelling space.

Moving beyond the mangrove and the urban spaces, Marie-Sophie’s shack also becomes a sort of building-site in itself, drawing attention not only to its own formation marked by the diverse and creative materials used in it, ranging from straw to concrete, but a location that can produce subjective experiences such as the construction of an identity. Maeve

McCusker analyzes the dynamics of power consolidated through the building of Marie-

Sophie’s shack as an evocative figure for the construction of her identity. In “No Place Like

Home? Constructing an Identity in Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco” (2003), She argues that a home acts as a guardian of the most “intimate memories” of a subject (43). Marie-Sophie’s home is thus seen endowed with her family’s memories of claiming a land on which to settle.

23 Burton writes: “Très simplement, il y a du Texaco dans l’En-ville, et de l’En-ville dans Texaco . . .ˮ (199). 61

These collective memories that were transmitted to her orally represent everything that Marie-

Sophie’s ancestors went through in the past. This memory reminds Marie-Sophie not only of her strong family ties, but also of those she has with society, specifically, the black community.24 When Marie-Sophie builds her shack, she is also embracing and reconstructing the history of her culture. Her shack thus symbolizes a repository of memories where she finds a sense of selfhood.25 Historical discursive interpretations have also been produced from the structure of the dwelling space. Such investigations focus on the analysis of the space as a building phenomenon that facilitates the writing of history. An example can be seen in the article “Monumental Time in Caribbean Literature” (2006) by Olabode Ibironke. He bases his argument on Michel Foucault’s concept of history in which the French philosopher contends that objects left from the past attain the restitution of history when they are put together in the present, in forming a totality (Ibironke 151-52). Ibironke uses Foucault’s point to argue that

Texaco is a novel that evokes the question of space—whether material or subjective—to write the history of Martinique. The central point of his argument focuses on the construction of the human dwelling space, or “habitat,” and the rapport between this space and its subject (153-

53). Since the subject represents the oppressed, the island’s poor, the narrative spaces in which he navigates symbolize sites of resistance. Chamoiseau uses the process of the construction of the Martinican hut to externalize the resistance of these spaces. In summary, Olabode

Ibironke’s article indicates that history is written from the construction of narrative spaces. A

24 In the introduction of Écrire la parole de nuit, Ralph Ludwig explains that the primary objective of collective memories is to put the individual in contact with society (16). In this way, the individual can better understand the situation in which he or she is living. In Texaco, the collective memories remind Marie-Sophie of the lives and suffering of blacks more than any other ethnic group. In Martinique, whites have a good social and economic position, whereas, mulattos occupy the middle ground, and blacks are often viewed at the bottom of the social stratus. 25 Ludwig writes: “Cette mémoire orale qui naît aux Antilles à partir du XVII siècle d’un fond de débris culturels éparpillés puis rassemblés en mosaïque par l’expérience commune d’une réalité nouvelle, est donc fondamentale pour l’identité du peuple antillaisˮ (17). Collective memories are important for the formation of an identity because through them individuals can grasp and better understand their positions and functions in society. 62 reverse interpretation appears in Jack Jordan’s article “I, We and Historical Memory in Patrick

Chamoiseau’s Texaco” (2002). In this document, the author argues that the oral history of the protagonist Marie-Sophie Laborieux makes the construction of spaces possible. In other words, it is her memory—albeit it is sometimes incoherent and blurred because it is filtered mainly through her father’s stories26—that serves as the expression and materialization of the narrative spaces: “Memory is what holds everything together” without it there is no city, no hutches, no identity (Jordan 60).

In these articles, the narrative spaces allow the appearance of a two-way dynamic of subjective and historical discursive interpretations in that the spaces facilitate the construction of identity and generate the writing of history. Furthermore, in this dynamic, the analysis of spaces offers the postulation of sites of resistance where the subject, the impoverished, becomes the protagonist of the actions. By constructing narrative spaces, the author is not only writing the history of Martinique, he is appropriating the places of the land, such as the district of Texaco, and makes subjective experiences such as feelings, beliefs, desires, or discoveries possible. My project is a continuation of the examination of Marie-Sophie’s habitat as an evocation for reclaiming her identity, that of her ancestors, and of the entire community of the quarter. What makes my research unique compared to other studies is that my analysis is from a resistance standpoint. Her shack symbolizes the struggle against political authority because within its walls, the protagonist is able to not only externalize her father’s desire of owning a home but also, to externalize her inner feelings by becoming psychologically stronger before the Other’s eyes—the békés. Here, special attention will be given to Le monolinguisme de

26 Oral memory comes from the inside of oneself: it is irrational in one’s thoughts and verbally incoherent. In the words of Patrick Chamoiseau, oral memory is a “mémoire-sable voltigée dans le paysage, dans la terre, dans des fragments de cerveaux de vieux-nègre, tout en richesse émotionnelle, en sensations, en intuitionsˮ (Éloge 38). In other words, it does not follow a structure, quite the opposite; it is created without an order, appears naturally, and is instinctive. 63 l’autre (1996), where the French philosopher Jacques Derrida states that the subject ceases to be alienated when he/she has an assertion of his/her home or language (13). With the construction of her shack, the protagonist lays down the foundation for a series of resistance strategies that challenge the hegemony of whites, such as her capacity to remain an enigma to them, the imitation of her actions by other people creating a network of positive relations, and her génie de la parole that prevents her story from falling into historical oblivion.

The central point of the protagonist’s decision to build a place of her own lies in her transition from a passive role in society to becoming an active participant in the dispute. Her decision resembles what Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant calls “detour” because it begins as an unconstrained action that aims to evade political oppressions (Britton

27). Instead of confronting the authorities directly, Marie-Sophie takes an alternative route to be heard. Coming from the same direction, in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) Michel De

Certeau calls this encounter a “tactic” because Marie-Sophie’s determination to build a shack in the oil refinery is a move “within the enemy’s field of vision” (37). It is a form of tactical mobility that “takes advantages of ‘opportunities,’ ” “it poaches in them,” and “it creates surprises in them” (37). Marie-Sophie seizes the opportunity to build her shack in enemy territory—the oil refinery—to symbolize the start of her battle for freedom against racial discrimination. This is seen as an unexpected decision by the authorities. The construction of her shack is an opportunity in the space of the Other—the békés—to take hold of what has been denied to her, to her entire family and to blacks: a small portion of land that all Martinicans have the right to own. It is within the construction of Marie-Sophie’s shack that her spontaneous resolution manifests into a bona fide strategy of resistance in which she is not only able to attain a place of her own, but also, she succeeds in threatening the békés who feel 64 intimidated because the shack is erected in their territory. In this way, she acquires a certain level of power as she physically appropriates a piece of the Other’s land. Indeed, her detour becomes a strategy of resistance since she is delimiting her own place “in a world bewitched by the invisible powers of the Other,” to put it in Michel De Certeau’s words (36). The French scholar compares this strategy of resistance to a card game by saying that “it depends both on the deal (having a good hand) and on the way one plays the cards (being a skilled card player)”

(53). With a place of her own, the protagonist learns to play the game against the békés and as a result, she receives, as we have indicated previously, a piece of land where she can live freely and reclaim her self-hood, for that of her family and for blacks, self-confidence in feeling psychologically stronger, and finally, certain power to threaten the authorities. With this armature, she places herself in a rival position that enables her to fight for her civil rights. By employing for the most part De Certeau’s and Glissant’s theories of resistance, in this chapter I focus on the contender’s actions: Marie-Sophie’s rebellious detours and strategies to fight for a place of her own. Along the way, I also take into account the other side of the counter discourse: the békés’ ability to maintain their total dominion often represented through racism, racial inequality, surveillance, and violence.

The drive behind Marie-Sophie’s tactical maneuvers to resist political control is, to a great extent, fueled by her father’s memories transmitted to her through orality. It is for this reason that the relation displayed between past and present in the novel is so important. It is true that the protagonist learns to play the game against the békés, but all of this is mostly a result of her father’s tales recounted to her during her childhood. Indeed, the desire to establish a settlement is passed on from father to daughter. These memories, including stories from her mother and her grandparents, contain many ways of establishing a kind of reliability within the 65 situations imposed on the family, such as colonization and slavery. These characters are able to thrive in such living situations by reintroducing goals and desires into them. By doing this, they manipulate the political system and enjoy life at the same time. Marie-Sophie then takes advantage of her family’s experiences in order to reclaim her selfhood and that of her ancestors and society in the present. She benefits from their use of imagination, of memory, their knowledge of nature, of how to build a dwelling, and of how to work in the city. Marie-

Sophie’s actions are akin to her family’s past performances. Here, the author is linking the past to the present and vice versa in order to establish a parallel between the two periods. The reader witnesses the lives and suffering of Marie-Sophie, as well as that of her ancestors, as if to say nothing has changed between colonial Martinique and the present. However, with Marie-

Sophie we see a change in this pattern through her choices. In the narration, she is given the opportunity to reclaim her ancestral space. The inner force that pushes her to found the shantytown of Texaco is located precisely in the recollection of her family’s legend: “. . . ma bataille pour fonder Texaco, elle me permettrait de produire pour moi-même l’énergie d’une légende” (Chamoiseau, Texaco 256). In order to better understand Marie-Sophie’s decision of building a shack in an oil refinery, we need to recall first the maneuvers employed by her ancestors to manage their lives. I would like to follow up on a few of these tricky, multiform strategies of resistance that elude order. This should lead us to elucidate which strategies of resistance from the past are incorporated in the present by Marie-Sophie in order to delimit her own space of power and will with the construction of her shack.

Finally, the last section of this chapter will deal with the final strategies of resistance that the protagonist acquires after having her own space, and after being able to confront the autocratic government. I am referring to Marie-Sophie’s ability to speak using the language of 66 the Other. She uses language to make her story of the shantytown endure through time. Her plan succeeds when the story is heard first by the architect who had plans to destroy Texaco, and later, by the author Patrick Chamoiseau, who then transcribes her memories into a written text. Like its characters, her way of speaking and the novel itself are similarly employed to resist: the former by mixing words and different intonations in her speech, the latter by rejecting the linear conventional way of a text. Despite the linear timeline of Martinique’s history and the protagonist’s ancestors, the literary work as a whole is pervaded with a series of interruptions by the protagonist, her father, the urban planner, and the author Chamoiseau, among other characters. The last section of this chapter emphasizes the strategies of resistance employed by the protagonist who communicates her story to the world, by the writer who frames the novel, and by the Martinican society that is able to attain a voice in its own history due to writers such as Chamoiseau.

67

Family’s past

As mentioned previously, the lessons for survival that Marie-Sophie receives from her father date back to the period of slavery with her grandfather Pol. Despite being a slave, Pol teaches his common-law wife, who in return teaches their only son, how to bear life by trafficking supplies, taking advantage of nature’s resources, and most importantly keeping alive the memory of their native land:

Il [Pol] lui apprit à remplacer le savon du Béké par des lianes moussantes afin de

trafiquer du savon préservé. Il lui montra comment parfumer les chemises avec

l’essence d’une graine lovée sous des feuilles pâles, ou blanchir les toiles mortes

d’une sève opaline. Il lui dévoila surtout son plaisir de mémoire pour une terre

impossible qu’il murmurait Afrique. (Chamoiseau, Texaco 55)

The excerpt clearly demonstrates a link that binds Pol to nature. His life becomes better when he exploits its components to perfume things and to bring his imagination into play in thinking about his native Africa. Because of nature, he is able to make his partner enjoy life as well.

Nature is what makes the relation between Pol and his woman possible: it is what makes their lives come together in harmony. One could say that Pol is in Relation to nature, a term noted in

Chapter I, which Glissant describes as “a force field of possible trajectories” (Britton 13). In this case, Relation is determined by the choices Pol draws on nature, which are considered modes of resistance to fight against the violence of slavery. In Chapter V of this dissertation, we will see something similar with the protagonist Isabel la Negra, and the way in which she is connected to nature, in particular with the hurricane San Felipe that destroyed Puerto Rico on September 13,

1928 (Fernández 100), and with the Portugués River that crosses the city of Ponce. Isabel is in

Relation to the hurricane and the Portugués River because she demonstrates, first of all, the 68 strength to fight for the right to be a successful woman, and secondly, that her movements can be continuous and spontaneous. In the same way that the hurricane is a natural disaster with deadly effects, Pol is in Relation to nature, not only to scent his life—as it is shown in the above quotation—but also to slaughter animals. Let me explain this with an example: as a slave, Pol is a victim of a miserable life in which he is sentenced to spend months in solitary confinement for having poisoned some cattle. Indeed, Pol is an empoisonneur that takes advantage of nature to make his master suffer. As a result, he is tortured and sentenced to death in prison. Pol, then, resorts to his imagination to escape from his sorry situation: by traveling to his native Africa in his mind, he is psychologically relieved from his pain. Through the use of his imagination, he demonstrates that, even though his body is constrained, his mind is set free. His common-law wife learns from Pol’s free thinking, and when he is dying in his cell, she decides to live her life cheerfully. She learns how to survive rough times by setting her mind free in the same way Pol did. Her ways of resisting were transmitted directly from Pol. His death did not break with the

Relation they both had towards nature, Africa, and especially to each other. Under these circumstances, it can be argued that the master’s power in the end, was not as strong as Pol’s aptitude for life, because Pol did not allow himself to suffer while dying in the prison cell, in the same way that his common-law wife did not agonize when he died : “Mais cette tristesse fut pour après, car dans le temps de l’homme [Pol] qui mourrait au cachot, elle connut une espèce du bonheur: ce goût de vivre au rire dont je [Marie-Sophie] fus l’héritière” (Chamoiseau, Texaco

56). Similarly, she passes her Relation to nature onto her son so that he too, can lead a better quality of life. Esternome continues with this principle of life and he teaches his daughter the joy of living. Without knowing her grand-parents, Marie-Sophie learns of their memories from

Esternome and subsequently, their whole family legacy and Relation remain tied, alive, and 69 strong. Indeed, when Marie-Sophie is sick, humiliated, discriminated against, and even raped by the owner of one of the houses she used to clean, she always tries to keep her joy of living up by accessing her Relation towards things, such as nature, or people who surround and love her.

It is this joy of living that pushes Esternome to desire a better life for his family. When he is a slave and working for his master, he fantasizes about having a house just like his master. The house represents a space that Esternome wants to conquer in the novel. For him, it serves as a place to dream and reclaim his selfhood. It also embodies freedom and a place of power. It is within the walls of this house that readers can trace Esternome’s quest and that of his daughter’s:

“Cette vue de la charpente détermina sans doute les tracées de sa vie, de son destin et finalement du mien [Marie-Sophie]ˮ (Chamoiseau, Texaco 60-61). In contrast to the big house, there is the prison cell in which Esternome’s father, Pol, spent his final days. The small, enclosed space of the prison is juxtaposed to the big, open master’s house: “La Grand-case s’élevait au centre des dépendances, des bâtiments et des paillotes. À partir d’elle, rayonnaient les champs, les jardins, les emblavures de café escaladant la pente des arbres au bois précieux. Elle dominait le tout, semblait tout aspirerˮ (61). The master’s house is the center of the plantation, whereas the prison is in the middle of the forest. The former rules slavery and the latter, instead of controlling, chooses to belong to a place of freedom. The desire to conquer the big house also symbolizes

Esternome’s desire to avenge his father’s torture and death. In acquiring the master’s house, he would achieve his father’s ideal, that of total freedom on the island. Esternome has the opportunity to actualize his dream when a black maroon tries to kill his master, but instead,

Esternome comes to his master’s defense and kills the attacker, and as a result, he gains his freedom. Does this mean that unlike Pol, Esternome was not in Relation to nature and his roots?

Furthermore, is that why he could not kill his master? Let us recall that Esternome grew up in the 70 master’s house, away from his father, nurturing society and nature. By not killing his master, he demonstrates some appreciation towards the landowner. Nevertheless, he is placed in an ambivalent position where his identity is not defined. I shall elaborate on this point. After this,

Esternome realizes that he can no longer stay in the master’s house, therefore, he decides to go to the city. Perhaps it is due to this big, open space of his master’s house that prevents him from maintaining any sort of balance in his life. On the contrary, his father lived for a long time in a prison cell, a small and dark closed space, where he was able to dream about his native land, thus feeling free, due to his proximity to nature perhaps. It seems that the lack of a bigger space did not prevent him from doing what he liked most. With these thoughts in mind, we might say that space is not what determines each individual’s actions, but their essences do: for Esternome, the big, master’s house represents a zone of alienation because he does not feel that he belongs there; for Pol, the small prison symbolizes his ticket to his native land because he is left there alone with his imagination to console him. Furthermore, Pol was a slave originating from Africa; and

Esternome was born on the plantation, he is considered a son of slavery—un enfant d’esclavage.

The former is assertive with what he does because he feels he still belongs to his native land,

Africa; however, the latter still needs to find his roots in the island of Martinique so he can have balance in his life. Since Esternome is no longer a slave he cannot continue to remain in his master’s house, so he opts to go to the city. Three reasons explain his departure: first, he wants to save money in order to buy his mother’s freedom; secondly, he feels that killing a black maroon to save his master’s life was sort of a betrayal to his own people, thus, he wants to find forgiveness in order to redeem himself; finally, and most importantly he is pursuing his quest for selfhood in a bigger, open space: the city of Saint-Pierre to which he feels attracted. 71

Now one might ask why he feels attracted to the city of Saint-Pierre as opposed to any other place, like the forest, for instance. The reason lies in the fact that before the total destruction of Saint-Pierre on May 8, 1902 by the volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée, it was by far the most important city in the West Indies,27 even once known as “the Paris of the Antilles”

(Ferguson 14), the “pearl of the West Indies,” and the “soul of Martinique” (Scarth 8). Saint-

Pierre was the center of intellectual, religious, social, industrial, and commercial activity, which attracted people from different backgrounds, especially from Afro-Caribbean descent, and even some from Asia-Indian origins (8). The job opportunities of the city offer Esternome the possibility of becoming more productive, to earn his own money, and to save it in order to buy his mother’s freedom. On the other hand, its density and diversity made it the ideal place for him to be in Relation with other people. In The Other America (1998) professor J. Michael Dash states that the urban space in modern Caribbean writing is the zone of “the collective consciousness” (123). For Esternome, being in the city means being in Relation to the Other, the not-him, the exterior to him, who will help him to understand the world, and consequently, his own self. In Totality and Infinity (1969), Emmanuel Levinas declares that the privileged impression of the Other’s encounter is the face-to-face, “the infinity of the other,” through which the whole presence of humanity is affirmed (213). The gaze of the Other challenges Esternome’s essence. This means that the Other’s gaze forces Esternome to address his actions, especially the murder of his master’s attacker who represents literally and figuratively the killing and the disavowel of his own people. Levinas furthers his argument by stating that the face-to-face encounter “involves a calling into question of oneself, a critical attitude which is itself produced

27 St Pierre was “a lively place, where the commercial and intellectual elite rubbed shoulders with an underclass of sailors and impoverished black laborers. The school, theater and botanic gardens were St Pierre’s pride, but there were also plenty of brothels and gambling dens. The town was home to the island’s merchants, mostly well established white families, who also controlled the sugar plantations and rum distilleries. There were elegant squares and fountains, imposing churches, and even a tramway” (Ferguson 15-16). 72 in face of the other and under his authority” (81). Esternome’s selfhood is held under the Other’s command. By accepting the Other’s existence as different to his own, Esternome hopes to overcome his guilt: “The Other remains infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign; his face in which his epiphany is produced and which appeals to me breaks with the world that can be common to us, whose virtualities are inscribed in our nature and developed by our existence”

(194). Levinas’ philosophy claims that the face-to-face encounter is the “ultimate situation” (81) that can morally bind a subject to do something.

Esternome comes to live in the city of Saint-Pierre to break his own self-contained identity through contact with the Other in order to know himself. The success of this process depends on the fraternity of the human community resulting in the welcoming of the Other’s face and the equality produced by it, as it is indicated by Levinas (214).28 Opposed to this human status, is the struggle of egocentric individualities evolving in the city of Saint-Pierre which create a sort of invisible wall that separates Esternome from the Other’s face-to-face encounter.

Contrary to Esternome’s desire, he is not welcomed in the urban space. The urban space absorbs the rise of self-centered personalities, and ends in projecting the same physical and human qualities. Here, the city becomes a character in the novel, but at the same time, it does not break with its typical qualities of a big city. Just like the master’s house, the urban space where

Esternome goes to reclaim his selfhood, is big, violent, and dangerous. Esternome decides to penetrate the urban space through his multiple skills: “il rôdait dans Saint-Pierre dans le but d’offrir ses services de charpentier – menuisier – serrurier – dépanneur – nettoyeur”

(Chamoiseau, Texaco 88). He learns very quickly that the only way to survive in the city is to do whatever one can possibly do. In order to survive, some inhabitants work hard for instance, by

28 Emmanuel Levinas writes: “Equality is produced where the Other commands the same and reveals himself to the same in responsibility; otherwise it is but an abstract idea and word” (214). This refers to human communities where people are treated and valued equal to all others. 73 selling what they plant at home in the streets, while others resort to theft. Despite his will to stay in the city and to conquer its hostilities, the strong presence of ambition and degradation within it contrasted with race and life styles, his acceptance into the city remains blocked. These brutal oppositions intimidate Esternome. The only things he can read in the city are negative figures:

“Que lire dans ces fers forgés?” (107). The representation of the city functions as a space of fulfillment—as a hard worker, he elevated himself through mechanical skills that made his survival—and disillusionment possible. The city is a place of struggle not just for Esternome, but also for all of the other blacks who feel trapped in a dead-end street by the oppression of the békés and the mulattos. I base my argument on the fact that Saint-Pierre was the residency of

“white supremacy” and was alleged to have the utmost concentration of whites of all of the West

Indies (Scarth 8). White men fathered mulatto children who tried to make their way up the world by grasping every opportunity their fathers presented to them (8). Thus, economic power was unattainable by the hands of the helpless citizens of Saint-Pierre. As Cilas Kemedjo brilliantly asserts “dans l’Europe médiéval, la ville incarne le rêve de libération;ˮ while “la ville postcoloniale est initialement porteuse du rêve d’oppression et d’exploitationˮ (136-37).

The oppression and exploitation in the postcolonial cities are due in part to the way in which they were planned since their inception as colonies. In the first chapter of La ciudad letrada (1984), entitled “la ciudad ordenada,” Ángel Rama talks about the layout of cities in the

American land. He states that the American continent was the experimental field for a new

European Baroque culture in which methodical application was executed by absolute monarchies in their New World empires (13). This consisted in applying rigid principles—“abstracción, racionalización, sistematización” (“abstraction, rationalization, and systematization”)—and opposing expressions of “particularidad, imaginación, invención local” (“particularity, 74 imagination, or invention”) (13). The lexical key that lay at the heart of urban planning was the word orden: “colocación de las cosas en el lugar que les corresponde. Concierto, buena disposición de las cosas entre sí. Regla o modo que se observa para hacer las cosas” (5).

According to Ángel Rama, the city, before being constructed, needed to be imagined in order to avoid situations that might interfere with its ordained principles (8). In the novel, the principle postulation of the city is order: the békés are the ones in power; they are the owners of all the land. They are followed by the mulattos as the only group of people who can move upwards in the social scale: “Dans l’En-ville, le temps allait trop vite. . . . Seuls les mulâtres déjà préparés savaient quel bois saisir pour appuyer-monter, entre quels vices fourrager pour crocher une vertuˮ (Chamoiseau, Texaco 156). At the bottom of the socioeconomic strata are the blacks who are either emancipated slaves or slaves and who are divided: “Les nèg-de-terre (ou nèg-en- chaînes) détestaient les Libres. Ils les enviaient aussi, louchaient sur leurs bijoux. Et ils les imitent . . .” (105). The power of the whites is concentrated in the center of the city, followed immediately by the mulattos, and leaving at last in the periphery the blacks. This was the social hierarchy desired by the planners in the past: “situaba al poder en el punto central y distribuía a su alrededor, en sucesivos círculos concéntricos, los diversos estratos sociales” (Rama 7). Even after the abolition of slavery in 1848, the city of Saint-Pierre continues under this same social hierarchy. In this respect, it is worth adding that the urban space is the expression of the big plantation’s domination of the Martinican landscape, with the slave/black obeying the master/white authority within an authoritative system represented by edifices—an architecture characteristic of white supremacy—, bureaucratic agencies, police, surveillance, etc. As Édouard

Glissant has brilliantly stated: “La maison du maître et la case du commandeur sont remplacées par des Offices, des Bureaux, des Agencesˮ (Glissant 85). The same may be said of the 75 patriarchal Casa-grande—the big, traditional, sugar plantation in times of colonialism and slavery in Brazil29—that found its expression later in the big city as the center of political authority represented through the urban landscape of government edifices, churches, police, etc.

(Freyre lxxx-lxxxii). It is clear that once the old system of colonialism expired, a similar autocratic regime replaced it in a larger residence: the city. In this way, the city becomes simultaneously past and present. Hence, even though the city is a material, open space, it is an imaginary, hermetic place as those who do not belong to the elite are denied access to any of its prosperity.

From this dissemination of the city being anchored in the past, thus impenetrable by

Esternome, he does gain, however, some benefits from it. The hostility of Saint-Pierre forces

Esternome to be creative. Let us examine how this happens. Since the city was conspired before it appeared as a material entity, the symbolic representation is similar to the building of a house.

Ultimately, it could be argued that the city is compared to the master’s house of the plantation: “.

. . que l’En-ville c’était une Grand-case. La Grand-case des Grand-cases. Même mystère. Même puissance. Esternome mon papa en fut ti-brin malade” (Chamoiseau, Texaco 107). Esternome is unable to penetrate his master’s house as well as the city. In the same way that the city is imagined before its creation, Esternome needs to reinvent, to imagine a new city within the already existing city of Saint-Pierre in order to stake a claim in it. In Chapter IV of this dissertation, we will explore how the protagonist, Claudia, imagines the city of Havana in its historical past. As opposed to the modern city in ruins, the Havana in Claudia’s mind is colorful

29 The Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre studies the formation of the Brazilian society in his Casa- Grande y Senzala (translated into English as The Masters and the Slaves), originally published in 1933, focusing on the landlords residences in sugar plantations called casa-grande or “big house,” where slavery work was mostly black, religious beliefs were strong, and where the patriarchal dominion of the master, living in the big house with his wife and kids, reaches polygamy in the Black and mulatto working class.

76 and politically uncontrolled. She imaginarily travels to this city to free herself. In Texaco, the urban planner in charge of the restoration of the barrio had understood this idea when he mentions “. . . il nous faut congédier l’Occident et réapprendre à lire: réapprendre à inventer la ville” (345). Like Claudia, Esternome does invent a city of his own as well. He remembers the advice from a Mentoh, the African sorcerer who told him, at the time of abolition, that he needed to seize what the békés have not yet taken: the hills: “. . . prendre de toute urgence ce que les békés n’avaient pas encore pris: les mornes, le sec du sud, les brumeuses hauteurs, les fonds et les ravines, puis investir ces lieux qu’ils avaient créés . . .” (74). After recalling the Mentoh’s words, Esternome decides to take to the hills with his common-law wife, Ninon, to establish a small habitation called Noutéka. In spite of the failure of this habitation as a community—we will see later how this unfurls—, what is important in this process is the creative inspiration and the innovative thinking that Esternome acquired from his experience in the city of Saint-Pierre.

In the hills, Esternome and Ninon build their shack with bamboo poles. As with most people, location, for him, is the most important factor in building a shack and he passes this on to his daughter: “calcule sur l’endroit de ta case. Le restant va bonnementˮ (Chamoiseau, Texaco

169). Marie-Sophie remembers his father’s words when it is her turn to build her shack. For the protagonist, “location” becomes her first detour to fight against political domination: she chooses the oil refinery, a “tactical location” that will challenge those in power. Proceeding with the description of Noutéka, it is important to mention that Esternome’s skills as a carpenter are of great use in the building of the shacks in the habitation, and for this, he receives the nickname of docteur-cases (173). He feels self-respect and pleasure when he is called this way because he feels self-worth. His sense of pride is illuminated in the emphasis of the personal pronoun je when he talks to his daughter: “. . . mon Esternome retrouvait son ardente vanité. De le voir 77 ainsi, gouverneur des mornes, lui qui ignorait la terre, rendait Ninon heureuse . . . mon

Esternome battait bouche dans le Je. Je ceci. Je cela. J’ai construit des cases. . . . Pour les poteaux, je prenais . . . (174). For him, “le monde était à faire. . . . Le monde est à planterˮ (173).

For Esternome, Noutéka symbolizes a natural supply network. He understands the importance of being in Relation to nature in order to be self-sufficient. Therefore, apart from building shacks, he also creates a Creole garden thanks to Ninon, whose knowledge about the ground helps him to feel confident. Just like his father Pol, Esternome takes advantage of nature’s wisdom when he decides to cultivate plantes-manger and plantes-médecine (167). By combining different plants in harmony, he is creating a Creole garden which serves as a wonderful metaphor for the society in which Martinicans often find themselves. This is the bread and butter of the Noutéka community. Esternome integrates nature into his lifestyle and he finds respite in it. In this way, the hills of Noutéka are seen as a paradise: it is a place of freedom, natural equilibrium, and creativity. However, just like in the biblical paradise, Ninon is tempted by the enemy force— which in this case is represented by the white world—, and so she leaves the Creole garden to work in a factory that is apocalyptically named, by the protagonist, une Bête-à-sept-têtes (182).

Later, she abandons Esternome and elopes with a musician. In the article “Texaco: From the

Hills to the Mangrove Swamps,” the author mentions three reasons that explain why Noutéka does not succeed as a community. First, Esternome believes that the hills have no history.

However, its history is presented by the paths created by preceding inhabitants. Secondly, the hills are seen as a small, enclosed space. When Esternome faces Ninon’s departure, he sees it as freedom escaping from him, and he feels confined. Finally, Noutéka fails as a community because the characters choose to look after themselves, instead of opting for the collective well- being of the community (duRivage 37). In summary, Esternome tries to conquer and succeed in 78 three different spaces: the plantation, “l’en-ville”—the Creole word for city—, and the hills, where he establishes the habitation of Noutéka. In all three locations he fails, but he succeeds in transmitting his stories to his daughter so she can change her present and future.

Esternome’s experiences are shaped by internal and external circumstances. His stories ruminate the knowledge of his life, his parents’ lives, and everything, and everybody surrounded by them. As Michel De Certeau discusses, memory “is a virtual philosopher’s stone!” (83). Once they are transmitted to his daughter, they develop in Marie-Sophie’s mind without possessing her. They contribute to the definition of her identity, they predict her paths, and determine her being in an open-ended way. It is in these oral memories that we can find the seeds for the foundation of Texaco: Esternome’s desire to conquer a space. When Marie-Sophie has a setback, fragments of her father’s memory come to her mind, they remind her of similar moments lived by her father or any other member of her family. Ultimately, it could be said that oral memory is used by Marie-Sophie as a mode of resistance. She uses it to ground herself in a world where violence and suffering is still omnipresent. Memory is spontaneous: it emerges little by little every time the protagonist needs it. According to Michel De Certeau, memory “develops along with relationships” (87). Marie-Sophie’s story is the culmination of the resistance of three generations: her grandparents, her parents, and herself. Here, we could add a fourth group: the community of Texaco. When Marie-Sophie meets the urban planner, she not only tells her story, but also the stories of all the inhabitants of the quarter. Thus, memory is used first as an individual mode of resistance, and then it becomes a collective weapon when used to represents

Texaco through Marie-Sophie’s words. In the novel, memories are conveyed from Pol to his common-law wife, from her to their son Esternome, from him to his daughter Marie-Sophie, and from her to the author who addresses all of us (readers) throughout the novel. Each character has 79 the role to transmit his/her own experiences. It is also not unusual for these stories, that when repeated, suffer alterations becoming more nuanced each time. On these grounds, repetition is used in order to disrupt the established order. For instance, Esternome tells his life to his daughter so that she does not make the same mistakes that he did. Marie-Sophie tells her story to the urban planner so he can understand the shantytown of Texaco, and so he can prevent its destruction. Thus, it could be said that the transmission of memory also means the transformation of thoughts, and places.

After Ninon’s departure, Esternome decides to go to the city of Fort-de-France30 where

“the seat of colonial rule” was centralized (Scarth 8). Nevertheless, when he tries to communicate his experiences to his daughter, she realizes that he does not have any memory of the city:

Une vie différente avait dû se régler dans cette ville à soldats, raide au centre

d’une mangrove, vraie niche à incendies. Reconstruite plus d’une fois, elle

n’avait de mémoire qu’un mélange de charbons et des miasmes de fièvres. Mais

j’avais beau supplier mon Esternome, Alors dis-moi cet En-ville, qu’est-ce que

tu as ressenti en arrivant dedans ? Lui, me regardait avec les yeux troublés d’une

absence de mémoire. Du Fort-de-France de son débarquement, il ne savait que

hak. Rien. Le zombi de Ninon lui flambait au cerveau. (Chamoiseau, Texaco

208)

At the time, Fort-de-France was considered a more dangerous place to live than Saint-Pierre

(Scarth 9). This might also explain why Esternome decided to go to Saint-Pierre before choosing the seat of colonial rule. Fort-de-France was hit by fire and several natural disasters—an

30 After the volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée, Saint-Pierre was just the dust of its former glorious self (Ferguson 19). 80 earthquake in 1839 and a hurricane in 1891—and even though it was restored, the city displayed signs of devastation, leaving no place for comparison with Saint-Pierre before, of course, its volcanic destruction (9). The following statement bears witness to this fact: “Reconstruite plus d’une fois, elle n’avait de mémoire qu’un mélange de charbons et des miasmes de fièvresˮ

(Chamoiseau, Texaco 208). The unpleasant existence of the city traumatized Esternome. Without memory of Fort-de-France, the city is not real for Esternome; and if it does not exist, then, he cannot survive in it because he does not know the limits of the city’s space, such as where to go to build houses, sell food, etc. Hence, in order to survive in such a place it is necessary to create a memory of it. What Esternome tells Marie-Sophie about Fort-de-France are only words that do not make sense. His delirious speech is accompanied with the ghostly presence of his woman,

Ninon. In analyzing the theme of delirious speech, I will use Glissant’s last theoretical concept of resistance called “counterpoetics,” which is essentially a type of detour—as noted in Chapter I— composed of irrational language to confront something impossible in order to express verbally

(Britton 31-32). It is considered a detour because it appears spontaneously: it creates surprises where no one expects them. His delirious speech is considered a detour also because it intends to avoid direct confrontation with the rigorous presence of the city. The unfriendly attitude of Fort- de-France makes him feel as if he is not a part of it.31 He experiences the chaos of the urban space provoking his inability to mingle with its people. Therefore, instead of describing the way things really are in the urban space—which is hard to express also due to the visible isolation in which individuals are submerged in the city—Esternome prefers to alter the words and the syntax of his sentences to avoid its true representation. By avoiding real representation of the

31 Before Texaco, Patrick Chamoiseau had already expressed the cold atmosphere of Fort-de-France in his novel Chroniques des sept misères (1986) through some of its characters, especially the character of Héloïse who describes it as a cruel city "dans son air de négresse déguisée, bien loin de l’harmonie paisible des bourgs. . . . des touffes de maisons contrariées par des rues très droitesˮ (37). 81 city, he is negating its existence. The alienation of Martinicans and the delirious speech as a way to confront it are best explained in Le discours antillais (1997):

. . . nous nous trouvons en présence d’une société à un tel point aliéné . . . la

menace se précise d’une disparition pure et simple de la collectivité

martiniquaise en tant que complexe original ne laissant en place qu’une

collectivité d’individus dominés, qui n’entretiendraient que cette relation de

dépendance à l’autre, ne partageraient ni un mode approprié de relation au

monde, ni à plus forte raison une réflexion quelconque sur cette relation. . . .

cette aliénation est ‘vécue’ de manière directe au niveau des motivations . . . et

de manière traumatique au niveau du comportement instinctuel . . . le délire

verbal . . . est une des tentatives ‘anormales’ . . . pour résoudre ces

contradictions. . . . (Glissant 627-28)

The state of alienation in this society features two important elements to highlight: one is the lack of relation among people and the other, is the delirious speech as a way to confront it. Those who show signs of irrational behavior—in Glissant’s words—are the first ones to react against the oppressive situation (654). Esternome’s delirious speech is apparently irrational because it is senseless. On the other hand, it is rational insofar as his “abnormal behavior” expresses his unconformity to the situation. Unlike in Saint-Pierre, Esternome spends less time trying to adapt himself—through working—in the city of Fort-de-France. On the contrary, he chooses to use the imagery of Ninon in the form of a zombie, and his incomprehensive speech to move around the oppression of the city. From this, we see that the relation of oppression between the city and

Esternome is unbalanced and unstable because his reactions are unpredictable. This indirect mode of resistance allows Esternome to navigate freely in the city. 82

Eventually, Esternome finds another woman with whom he gets involved and from their union our protagonist is born. It is his common-law wife, Idomenée, who helps him to heal and to create a memory of the city. The action of “telling” thus opens some exits; it allows Esternome to leave and return when he needs to without having to use Ninon’s ghostly presence. By narrating, that is, by imposing a memory on the city, the place becomes believable in the eyes and ears of Marie-Sophie. Indeed, it is through Idomenée that Marie-Sophie learns about Fort- de-France. Esternome keeps memories from Saint-Pierre to himself; similarly his common-law wife does this with Fort-de-France. Moreover, the whole family chooses to live in the periphery and work in the city. The only special place for them is their shack located outside the city. It is only in this place where the family feels safe. Due to the lack of jobs, Esternome must learn to survive in the urban space by selling food prepared by Idomenée. At this moment, the bustling city of Fort-de-France is suffering from the consequences of World War II: there are no jobs, and some people choose to steal to eat, while others create little gardens in their yards. The place where Esternome’s shack is settled is eventually sold and demolished by the government; he is then forced to take his family to a rented place. In this way, Esternome reveals that he is absorbed by the hostility of the city; his actions seem to accept the subordinate position of the lower class. Rather than continuing to create something of his own—like what he did in

Noutéka—, it appears that he cannot overcome his past failures, so, he settles for surviving in the city by selling food in the streets and by moving from one place to another. Esternome’s desire to have a place of his own to reclaim his selfhood is lost while living in the margins of Fort-de-

France. The only person who can continue and accomplish his dreams, is his daughter, Marie-

Sophie.

83

Marie-Sophie’s present

Later on, when her parents die, Marie-Sophie is thrust into the streets, without any choice but to face the labyrinthine world of the city by herself: “Echouée dans Fort-de-France comme lui l’avait été dans l’antan de Saint-Pierre, je devais, au bout de ses échecs, sans autre choix possible, tenter à mon tour de pénétrer l’En-ville” (Chamoiseau, Texaco 258). She tries to read this space by making it coherent and knowable. Just like her ancestors, she draws on her imagination and survival skills to survive in the urban space. Like her father, Marie-Sophie puts herself to work through a number of different jobs—as a maid in a store, as a housecleaner, selling food in the streets—in the city so she can remain in it: “. . . je me mis à errer de maison en maison, de patronne en patronne” (289). Marie-Sophie’s trajectory can be traced in a spiral way as she moves very quickly from one place to another. She also chooses to traffic things in order to receive more money. During this time, she learns to read and write as well. Despite her desire to stay in the urban space and to follow her father’s footsteps, she feels that she cannot intrinsically be part of it. She suffers from racism, she is humiliated, treated as a slave, and psychologically and physically abused by men. However, in the midst of all of this violence, she is mesmerized by the bewitching world of the city such as the diversity of the people in the streets, the influence of many countries and cultures, and in particular, the beautiful sound of the

French language, among other things. She attends a political meeting in which the spokesperson is discussing how beneficial the assimilation of Martinique to France will be for the island, and she agrees with everything he says because she is moved by the sound of the language, and not because she understood what was being said. In Le discours antillais, Édouard Glissant stresses the fact that the Martinican society is drawn to French culture;32 and he proceeds to mention that

32 For Glissant, being alienated means “perte de personnalité, consommation culturelle non accompagnée de créativité, substituts dérisoires : folklore dévitalisé, etc. ˮ (Glissant 656-57). 84 the French language is one of the elements that most fascinates Martinicans: “La formule, le procédé aliènent le contenu. ‘Parler français’ est plus important que dire quelque chose” (657-

58). Marie-Sophie is mesmerized by the eloquence of the French language which makes her leave the meaning of its words behind. The French language appears before her as a fluent and elegant power of expressing emotions. On the other hand, since language is considered a tool of self-definition in a culture, the French language also appears as a cultural aggression; first off, because it is not her language—she neither speaks it nor understands it—and secondly, it is the language of the Other representing its autocratic power. As a result, she feels that she does not belong to the society of Fort-de-France; she lives in it, but she does not fit in it. Her dwelling space is thus different from the location of her identity.

In Le monolinguisme de l'autre, Jacques Derrida describes a personal experience and hacks the absolute monolingualism demanded by imperial power. In the sentence: “Je n’ai qu’une langue, ce n’est pas la mienneˮ (13), he believes a nation has the right to education in one’s native language. He pronounces these words to discuss the power relations between the dominant group and the subordinate in the politics of assimilation. According to him, monolinguism turns into the individual’s dwelling: “Je suis monolingue. Mon monolinguisme demeure, et je l’appelle ma demeure, et je le res-sens comme tel, j’y reste et je l’habite. Il m’habiteˮ (13). It is true that the character of Marie-Sophie is absorbed by the city. Moreover, she becomes mired in the eloquence of the French language, however, she realizes that the language spoken by the elite is not hers and in consequence, she refuses to accept it as part of her identity, as her form of dwelling. Her way to resist is through her body. She starts talking nonsense, the same behavior her father experienced when he arrived in Fort-de-France. It seems that her mental state allows her to not think about the real world and the ways in which she is 85 humiliated by people who are in a better position economically and who feel superior to her. She finds herself in trouble and she takes refuge in the vocalization of sounds and/or separate words rather than in the complex system of signs for communication that consists in encoding and decoding information. Glissant explains that the delirious speech is a consequence of the fascination that Martinicans have towards the eloquence of French language (657). The delirious speech alludes to the attraction of the eloquence of the French language. One can conclude from this that even though irrational language is considered a type of detour in Glissant’s words

(Britton 31-32), it is still an element of cultural alienation, since Marie-Sophie finds herself confined within its boundaries because it does not allow her to express herself freely. She needs to disentangle herself from the murky intertwining daily behaviors of the city, in order to be at a safe distance and to be able to read the urban space. The problem lies in the fact that she has not yet found the answer to her problems that could guide her to find a solution. Until now, her body and mind have only reacted against the cultural imposition of French language and culture. We shall see shortly how she achieves her self-hood.

Fortunately a Mentoh, an African sorcerer, named Papa Totone who lives in the tuft next to the oil company Texaco, is able to cure her.33 It could be said that this Mentoh symbolizes her grandfather Pol; both know the secrets of nature and how to use them whether in a beneficial or detrimental manner. On these grounds, Papa Totone is the protagonist’s spiritual guide; he is the reincarnation of her family’s wisdom.34 Marie-Sophie has not yet discovered this and, once she

33 A Mentoh is considered a marron or cimarrón in Spanish: unlike those slaves who escaped from their master’s properties and sought shelter in the hills, a Mentoh is a free man with a mysterious power who lives at the plantation (Chancé 55). He is mysterious because he can either heal or destroy what comes his way. And also, he is considered in the Creole community as a great conteur; somebody who has the ability to transmit oral memories about the past to the new generations through the magic of his parole (55). Since, the Mentoh is a free man living in the midst of oppression with the power to change certain things; he represents a symbol of resistance. 34 I employ the term “spiritual guide” in this dissertation to talk about knowledgeable individuals who in certain way are in contact with the nation’s past and/or with the protagonist’s family history, and who counsels the main character in his/her moments of misery. Another spiritual guide that stands out in the character’s development 86 recovers from her illness, she decides to live with her boyfriend Nelta in the outskirts of the city, while working in the urban space like her father used to do. She is determined to follow in her father’s footsteps: “Je me raccrochais au souvenir de mon cher Esternome avec l’idée de rebrousser sa trajectoireˮ (Chamoiseau, Texaco 289). It is while working in the city and living with her boyfriend whenMarie-Sophie has the desire to build her own shack: “Je me mis à regarder autour de moi: je disposais d’un assez de monnaie pour m’acheter une charpente et du fibrociment. Mais plus une fente n’était libre sur le Morne Abélard” (351). This desire of having a place of her own symbolizes the foundations and/or return to her roots and those of her family’s. Marie-Sophie’s obsession for a hut mirrors her father’s obsession about owning a place in which to live, in order to reclaim his selfhood. Time as a measuring system disappears; the gap between father and daughter fuses together and both become one person, one desire. A shack is the material realization to attain self-definition by which Marie-Sophie will turn into a unique individual, different from the rest, who form part of the French alienation. In her own space, she wants to feel encouraged to speak her own language and not the language of her “neocolonial” master. In this vein, Derrida writes :

Quelle que soit l’histoire d’un retour à soi ou chez soi, dans la ‘case’ du chez-soi

(chez, c’est la casa), quoi qu’il en soit d’une odyssée ou d’un Bildungsroman, de

quelque façon que s’affabule une constitution du soi, de l’autos, de l’ipse, on se

figure toujours que celui ou celle qui écrit doit savoir déjà dire je. En tout cas la

modalité identificatrice doit être déjà ou désormais assurée : assurée de la langue

et dans sa langue. Il faut, pense-t-on, que soit résolue la question de l’unité de la

langue, et donné l’Un de la langue au sens strict ou au sens large – un sens large

appears in Chapter IV in this dissertation: Muba, a black woman with two hundred years of age who accompanies Claudia in her moments of suffering. 87

qu’on étirera jusqu’à y comprendre tous les modèles et toutes les modalités

identificatoires, tous les pôles de projection imaginaire de la culture sociales.

Chaque région s’y trouve représentée en configuration, la politique, la religion,

les arts, la poésie et les belles-lettres, la littérature au sens étroit (moderne). Il

faut déjà savoir dans quelle langue je se dit, je me dis. On pense ici aussi bien au

je pense, qu’au je grammatical ou linguistique, au moi ou au nous dans leur statut

identificatoire, tel que le sculptent des figures culturelles, symboliques,

socioculturelles. (53-54)

With a house of her own, the protagonist will put together the tools that define her, such as her

Creole language, family traditions, history, etc. In these walls, language plays a relevant role because she needs it in order to express her emotions. The collection of these elements will form her totality. Then, according to the above passage, the schema will be as follows: “dans la ‘case’ du chez-soi . . . s’affabule une constitution du soi. . . . la modalité identificatrice doit être déjà ou désormais assurée : assurée de la langue et dans sa langueˮ (53). In other words, Marie-Sophie must be able to pronounce her totality—her je—, using her own language—not the language of the master—, in her own dwelling. The space of human dwelling becomes the focal point for

Marie-Sophie’s pursuit in life. It is read as a positive illustration of self-realization. What happens hereafter will define the struggle against the autocratic government, whether her actions will be heard or not. What is real up to this moment is that within all the stories told by

Esternome, the possession of a Martinican hut is what is retained in Marie-Sophie’s mind, it is the driving motivation in her life. From here forward, the novel could properly appear as the history of Martinican shacks and the birth of the shantytown of Texaco. The protagonist’s desire to own a place in which to live freely crescendos throughout the continuation of the novel. Her 88 obsession to possess a roof is not only to delimit a habitable space, but also, to own a private property, which for her means having the same rights as the békés, since they are the only ones who own land on the island. This event defines then, the condition of being Martinican. As was previously remarked, Esternome was looking for a place to lay down his roots; it is now his daughter who is searching to accomplish the same dream.

Before her dream is actualized, the shack where Marie-Sophie and Nelta live is burnt to the ground, and as a consequence, our protagonist falls sick one more time. She is taken once again to Papa Totone’s shack so he can care for her. This place is essentially a safety zone in which the protagonist can escape and protect herself from the incongruities and dissonances of the urban space. The elevated position of the Mentoh’s place puts Marie-Sophie at a distance from the city. It transforms the violent world of the urban space into a text before her eyes. It allows her to read it, “to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god” as Michel de Certeau would say (92). By doing this, she detaches herself from the oppressive environment of the urban space, and she unties the knot that was keeping her attached to it. This allows her to see things more clearly. Even though at this point the site of the future Texaco shantytown is but thickets and mangrove, she realizes that Texaco is the humane side of what the city lacks: she feels good in Texaco because she can read it, and more importantly, she is included in it/feels part of it. For the békés, it is just a place where they can extract oil. For her, it is more than that: it is an enigmatic site that unfolds painful stories from the past, a place where the maroons had settled themselves in escaping from the tyranny of their masters, and a place where her grandfather Pol used to go to find nature’s wisdom. This symbolization is encysted in Marie-Sophie’s mind, and she becomes tied to it. In this place haunted by the past, she will be born again in order to assert the natural rights to liberty of the poor and powerless. Clearly, the protagonist’s mind 89 becomes the collective consciousness of the marginalized inhabitants of Martinique. The excerpt that follows is stated by the urban planner to the author. This is meant to show that he, as well as the protagonist, realizes that Texaco is the reflection of the fragmented and rapidly shifted life in the city, but without its constructions. Since it is born from the city, Texaco is basically the perfect place to start all over again:

L’urbain est une violence. La ville s’étale de violence en violence. Ses équilibres

sont des violences. Dans la ville créole, la violence frappe plus qu’ailleurs.

D’abord, parce qu’autour d’elle règne l’attentat (esclavage, colonisation,

racisme) mais surtout parce que cette ville est vide, sans usine, sans industrie, qui

pourrait absorber les nouveaux flux. Elle attire mais ne propose rien sinon sa

résistance comme le fit Fort-de-France après l’anéantissement de Saint-Pierre.

Le Quartier Texaco naît de la violence. Alors pourquoi s’étonner de ses

cicatrices et de sa face de guerre ? L’urbaniste créole, par-dessus l’insalubre, doit

devenir voyant. (Chamoiseau, Texaco 192)

At the end of the excerpt, the urban planner states that “l’urbaniste créole . . . doit devenir voyant” in order to understand the structure of Texaco. The same advice was given to Marie-

Sophie by the Mentoh while she was staying in his shack. Hence, she turns into a voyante: she learns to listen to the noises of the city, and to smell the oil of the refinery. She absorbs and releases these elements from her mind: “La gasoline t’offre son berceau . . .” (377). She puts them in harmony with the environment, and by doing this, Texaco becomes an attractive place for her because she feels safe and comfortable in it. From this point of view, the shantytown of

Texaco is born from the city and from one of its industries, the Western oil company itself.

However, even though the quarter comes from these two elements, it is the antithesis of them; it 90 is the resistance to domination, as is underlined by the urban planner. Marie-Sophie understands the value of the land where the békés extract oil, and reclaims her ancestral space by installing a shack following her father’s teaching:

Sur la pente, comme mon Esternome me l’avait enseigné, je plantai mes quatre

bambous que j’entourai de toiles. Puis, je pris soin de sarcler mon espace. . . . Je

traversai Texaco sous les yeux soupçonneux de Mano Castrador (il crut me

reconnaître à cause du sourire-crabe que j’eus en le voyant) et je me rendis au

Morne Abélard d’où je revins avec Carlo, Pè-Soltène et quelques autres. Ils me

transportèrent trois feuilles de tôle rouillée. Nous les posâmes au-dessus de mon

carré de toiles afin de parer le soleil. . . . Et c’est ainsi que j’eus ma case. C’était

rien, juste un paré-soleil, mais c’était mon ancrage dans l’En-ville. J’entrais moi-

même direct dans ce très vieux combat. (380-81)

A “detour” which is one of Glissant’s main theoretical concepts concerning the topic of resistance explains this complex maneuver of Marie-Sophie’s reaction of spontaneously building a dwelling in the oil refinery. As noted in Chapter I, a detour “is essentially an indirect mode of resistance that ‘gets around’ obstacles rather than confronting them head on . . .” (Britton 25). It is a rebellious detour because the protagonist is using, as her site of resistance, the land of the

Other. This is a roundabout course that will allow her to fight against the oppressors. Marie-

Sophie’s decision threatens the political regime because without their land, the békés cannot continue to cultivate their wicked, abiding, white, Eurocentric authority that for centuries endeavored oppression against members of the most marginal groups, and that still continues to prevail in the land, this time through oil drilling. In this vein, Glissant states that the real oppression of the Martinicans is not by the settlers on the island, who, with the burst of the 91 sugarcane market “became economically and politically dependent on metropolitan France, but by the French government itself”:

[The detour] is the ultimate resort of a population whose domination by an Other

is concealed: it then must search elsewhere for the principle of domination,

which is not evident in the country itself: because the system of domination… is

not directly tangible. . . . If the enemy cannot be attacked directly, the confusion

is such that opposition is not coherent and organized; it is not even entirely

conscious. Thus the detour is itself marked with the alienation it is trying to

combat. It is both an evasion of the real situation and an obstinate effort to find a

way around it. (Britton 25-26)

Much of this indirect political attack that has occurred within a member of a racial subordinate group and those in power is compounded by the fact that Marie-Sophie is a woman. The patriarchal, white male, Eurocentric authority wants to be the only master on the island, and exclusively where the oil refinery is, because it is the nucleus of their power. They do not wish to share the dominion with a black individual, worse yet with a black woman. Public polemics have demonstrated that racial issues are implicated in gender politics. Black women’s capabilities are often shaped and limited to certain social positions: “burdens of illiteracy, responsibility of child care, poverty, lack of job skills, and passive discrimination” (Crenshaw 249). Thus, for the white male, it is hard to accept that a black woman has the ability to challenge his power in such a way.

For Marie-Sophie is a double-edged challenge because on the one hand, it is her duty to fight for the integrity of black culture represented by her male ancestors—her grandfather Pol and her father Esternome—and on the other hand, as a woman, she needs to demonstrate her abilities to construct and empower a political struggle that would be capable to threaten authority. This in 92 turn raises a question about how the protagonist is able to launch the offensive. I shall further explain this. As I have argued elsewhere, Marie-Sophie became ill twice because she did not accept the language of the Other as her own, and because she felt that she did not belong to the urban space of Fort-de-France. My understanding of her body is hampered by not one, but two injurious experiences. First, her encounter with the urban space; the ways other people read her and responded to her, whose views—as a woman of color and as a member of a marginalized or excluded group—marked her physically, making her body sick. Secondly, due to constant rapes and abortions, her body was denied the kind of sexual freedom that men in the patriarchal system enjoy, and what is worse, was subjected to the absence of fertility. Misogyny “seeks to dehumanize women through restrictive definitions of what their ‘true’ role supposedly is and in making sure they are confined to it” (Holland 240). With the construction of her shack, she is consciously regarded as one body, physically and psychologically in balance. The lack of biological production and the refusal of being accepted as part of the city are compensated by the creation of a dwelling of her own. In this space, her body of color and mind attain an expression of safety, belonging, and liberty. I must go back to Le monolinguisme de l’autre, where Jacques

Derrida states that the alienated subject has no assertion of his/her home or language with a settled order that would secure its perception of belonging (13). Marie-Sophie finds her dwelling and its sense of existence when she builds her shack. It is a detour that allows her to claim her identity, while at the same time affording her a privileged position of being capable to struggle against the political authority.

Her capabilities to fight against the autocratic government bring me to my next point in this analysis: the tactical location of her shack. The place—oil refinery—in which Marie-Sophie settles, symbolizes a site of power; with this action she is positioning herself “metaphorically” on 93 the same level as the békés. It is an attempt to disavow the white world insofar as Marie-Sophie’s position poses a threat to the dominion of the békés. Édouard Glissant states in L’intention poétique that “the colonial subject’s desire is not to escape the master’s gaze, but to participate in the scopic exchange on equal terms” (Britton 23). Here, I am speaking just in symbolical terms because Marie-Sophie’s position with regards to the békés is not exactly on equal terms since she belongs to the lower class. Frantz Fanon states that the master is “an exhibitionist” (Les damnés

19); his desire is to be seen as he alone is the only master. In the times of slavery, visual extravagance was presented through the use of ostentatious colonial clothes and architecture as a strategy of intimidation (Britton 22). The immediate strategy of intimidation employed by the békés against Marie-Sophie and the others is the Western oil company itself: it is big and dangerous. The acres of land used in the oil industry and the gigantic machinery used for drilling create an intentional fear which would cause anyone to feel frightened. Oil drilling on land comes with risks as well. In a spill accident thousands of gallons of oil can gush out from broken pipelines injuring and killing humans and destroying nature. This scene of fear produced by the oil company to keep its dominion in the area vanishes when Marie-Sophie builds her dwelling in this same space. Indeed, with the battle over property rights starting with the construction of the shack, the relation between exhibitionism and intimidation is broken; the békés are no longer seen as the only masters because Marie-Sophie is no longer intimidated by them. In this evocation, her detour becomes a strategy because she owns a space of will and power of her own, erected in a deliberate location. Michel De Certeau states that a strategy is “the calculation

(or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power can be isolated” (35-36). The delimitation of Marie-Sophie’s place as her own serves as the basis for upcoming power relations between her and the landowners.35

35 Another strategy of intimidation employed by the békés is their lack of being visible. The only time the 94

Aside from the tactical position of her shack, another mechanism of resistance is necessary to maintain the power relations in her battlefield. Here, I am referring to a strategy that is not visible, that unlike her shack, cannot be perceived openly by the Other. Another of

Glissant’s main theoretical concepts concerning the topic of resistance is “opacity”—as discussed in Chapter I. Marie-Sophie’s decision to live on the property of the oil refinery is rejected by the békés who believe that she should live where all the other blacks have their shacks, on the margins of the city. The békés believe that Marie-Sophie’s way of life needs to be controlled in the same way their industries are, that is, operated by them. They do not accept her opacity, her right to be different, her right “not to be understood.” As a result, Marie-Sophie’s shack is dismantled several times, but it is reconstructed by her again and again. She is fined, imprisoned, and she gets robbed. It is this consistency that keeps her on one side of the battlefield against the békés, making her stronger every time. Let us remember that for Glissant, opacity means also that “parts of myself are obscure and incomprehensible to me” (21).

Accepting this fact means that Marie-Sophie’s personality cannot be read by the békés. It is the békés’ exhibitionism—displayed through acres of land, gigantic machinery for drilling, and the hazardous effects of crude oil—that fuels Marie-Sophie’s desire for opacity. In other words, since “the colonizer’s power depends to a large extent on surveillance,” (21) in the way outlined by Glissant, he can only control what he can see. If he cannot see Marie-Sophie’s intentions, then he cannot manipulate her. She builds her shack in a place that is, in the first place, very dangerous because it could explode at any time, due to the high concentrations of oil; and secondly, it has the deep smell of this natural resource is embedded in the air and in the ground.

béké is seen by our protagonist is after building her shack and resisting along with the rest of the community the destruction of the quarter of Texaco. The béké realizes that Marie-Sophie is the leader of the group, and it is at this moment, when he comes face to face with her in order to talk about the situation of the quarter. With this, a new form of power relation between the béké and Marie-Sophie is created. In this relation, the female protagonist is recognized by the Other as a powerful individual. 95

For the békés this is not only a sign of rebelliousness, but also an incomprehensible, and unexpected action. On the contrary, for Marie-Sophie it is a natural procedure. Thanks to the

Mentoh, she learns to accept and bring into consonance the deep smell of the oil, as well as, the disturbing noises of the city: “Je retrouvai mon esprit, Je perçus d’un coup sa trop grande solitude. Je me mis à écouter l’En-ville, à mieux vivre l’odeur de gazolineˮ (Chamoiseau, Texaco

378). The oil and the noises of the city merge together, to be part of her environment. She embraces these elements, rather than rejecting them and just like her shack, the oil, and the noises provide her for her, a home.

On these grounds, we can argue that Marie-Sophie is a marronniste moderne because she goes to the hills, builds her shack where the oil refinery is situated, struggles with the békés over rights to live there, and uses her creativity to be in tune with nature. The resistance is not so much a question of physical strength, but of the mind and of staying perpetually positive. To proceed in this discussion, it would be wise to recall Richard D. E. Burton’s passage in Le roman marron: “le marronniste est en harmonie avec son environnement. Il développe en lui une force intérieure qui se manifeste dans sa créativité énigmatiqueˮ (23). Since the times of colonization, the hills—les mornes—was the preferred place of resistance for maroons—esclaves fugitifs— who fled the plantations. In his book, Burton distinguishes two types of marronage: le grand marronnage, the kind where the fugitives flee to the hills; and le petit marronnage, where the maroons make their way to the city and then transform into djobeurs36 and driveurs (51-63).

According to Burton, “le seul authentique marronnage est le grand marronnage, surtout le marronnage des mornes; le petit marronnage et le marronnage urbain ont leur importance, mais, moralement sinon statistiquement, ils restent, en somme, secondairesˮ (59-60). The marronnage

36 Some characters in Chronique des sept misères (1986) are djobeurs, in other words, maroons whose abilities of improvisation, adaptation, and continuous corporeal movements help them to survive within the merciless space of Fort-de-France (15-16). 96 des mornes is seen to be more important because it is the first form of resistance carried out by the black slaves in the history of Martinique. A more modern version of this rebellious detour against oppression has been explored by writers and artists, such as the painter and poet René

Louise from Martinique who has elaborated essays on the marronnisme moderne. According to him, le grand marronnage “peut se pratiquer non seulement dans les sous-bois et sur les mornes de la Martinique mais n’importe oùˮ (Burton 23). Marie-Sophie is then, a marronniste moderne because she chooses a unique place to live, the Western oil company called Texaco. The first forms of marronnage may have lost the sense of heroic deed created by the slaves who escaped from their masters’ dominions, but they still wield, especially in the developing world, enormous moral influence over individuals who are searching for a space of freedom. Unquestionably, like in the old times, this freedom is yet located in nature. In Société et modernité (1994), André

Lucrèce argues : “J’ajoute que ce qui singularise le Marron et le rend irréductible c’est qu’il crée son espace et son temps. Or, s’agissant de l’espace, autant la préoccupation du Marron était d’être abrité par l’ombre de la forêt . . . autant aujourd’hui la préoccupation de chacun est d’être

à découvertˮ (90). For Marie-Sophie the creation of a domestic space close to nature implicates safety. In addition to this, living near nature helps to maintain Marie-Sophie’s enigmatic personality unreadable by the békés, in the same way that her grandfather Pol lived in the forest and used its secrets to fight against his master.

This act is imitated by other people; as a result, the quarter is born. From this point on,

Marie-Sophie fights for the maintenance and survival of her shack, and consequently, for all the other dwellings that compose the shantytown of Texaco with the support of its people. Marie-

Sophie’s shack is juxtaposed to the big open house of the master of the plantation. She is symbolically commandeering the house of the békés for whom her ancestors used to work. Thus 97 the past is blurred with the present. Texaco is the opposite of the plantation; Marie-Sophie’s domestic space is not placed on a higher level in regards to all the other shacks—like with the master’s house—it lies next to them in harmony. In this way, Texaco becomes the central focus of Esternome’s and Marie-Sophie’s desires. All the other inhabitants also feel that the oil refinery is ironically a safety zone for them. The network created by them in moving, talking, and intersecting with other people creates a strong tie within the group. The békés send people to destroy their domestic spaces several times, and with the same pieces of materials from the destruction they are constantly being made and remade. By converting the used and unwanted materials into new products to build theirs shacks, the people of Texaco get involved in a process of recycling in order to prevent waste that can damage the environment. The notion that Texaco conveys is found in the collective relation of its inhabitants. Texaco is a place of exchange and communication. It is a mangrove swamp. Like the roots of the trees in a mangrove, people’s activities spread out in many directions, intersecting, crossing, setting foundations in the lives of their neighbors. We can see this at the beginning of the novel when the narrator Marie-Sophie talks about the lives of several inhabitants of the quarter before talking about herself. This is quite the contrary with Noutéka, where people were only concerned with their own problems instead of the well-being of the group. The collective spirit and the freedom they have in Texaco allow them to be creative: they plant a Creole garden and they build their shacks taking into account the slope and the terrain. One could say that Texaco is the Garden of Eden, but also, its antithesis, as the water from the swamp in the low quarters infiltrates under the homes and rots their foundations. As a result, garbage is accumulated, attracting insects and menacing the population with disease. According to scientists, the mangrove forest is a fusion of both land and water. It initially seems hostile to life, but it is actually a cradle for one of nature’s most 98 productive ecosystems, such as crabs, fish, crayfish, etc. It is this interstitial space that allows

Texaco to be open to influence and change;, for it can be a dangerous place due to its oil storage, but it can also serve as a safety zone thanks to its people.

The resilience that characterizes Texaco is also found in the evolution of their domestic spaces. Before the novel starts, there is a chronology table titled “Repères chronologiques de nos

élans pour conquérir la ville”—“Milestones In Our Attempt to Conquer the City”—in which

Chamoiseau writes the history of Martinique around the material texture of the Martinican home:

The Age of Longhouses and Ajoupas, the Age of Straw, the Age of Crate Wood, the Age of

Asbestos, and the Age of Concrete. The fact that the materials that are used to build the domestic spaces change, means that the site of the quarter is open to influence and evolution. The transformation of the shacks is akin to the characteristics of the mangrove which according to scientists is depicted by its hardiness and great adaptability to the physical stress of the land. One more feature about the mangrove is that it provides stability and protection to its inhabitants. The construction of Texaco takes place after the departmentalization of Martinique in 1946.

Martinicans were promised the same rights as French citizens, yet they continued to struggle for equality and recognition. Nevertheless, with the constructions of their shacks, people are reclaiming their citizenship on the island, thus feeling like they are part of the land that saw them grow up. Eventually, the government recognizes the collective effort of the people to make

Texaco a good place to live, and they receive electricity, water, and roads. Their entry into modernity, nevertheless, does not represent a discontinuous process with the past. As we have previously seen, for the inhabitants of Texaco, their improvement in life in the present is continuous with the past, which is represented by them building according to the slope and the terrain, and by focusing on the well-being of the community. Since the shantytown experiences 99 modernity as a proliferation of alternatives that tend to repeat its traditions, it forms a hybrid community. The academic and anthropologist Néstor García Canclini argues that some traditional cultures have survived their entry to modernity because they have restructured and adapted their practices and knowledge into the new circumstances of today’s world (200). Marie-

Sophie is worried about the future of Texaco because her entire life and the lives of her fellow people are built in this place. In order to keep their culture alive, she records her knowledge through written words. However, she fears that Texaco will die in her notebooks, and if writing means death, then, this shantytown will forever remain incomplete; always being reconstructed in the same way that its shacks are rebuilt every time with different materials—from ajoupas to straw, crate wood, asbestos, and concrete. Consequently, this would allow for the loss of their culture so to prevent the death of the quarter, she decides to tell its story. This demonstrates how much her life is tied to the construction of the city of Texaco, her connection between her shack and her essence in-the-world, and her relation to the other inhabitants of the quarter. She talks about Texaco, so it does not die. It was Esternome who gave her this advice: “Toutes les mémoires, répondait-il. Même celles que transportent le vent et les silences la nuit. Il faut parler, raconter, raconter les histoires et vivre les légendesˮ (Chamoiseau, Texaco 228). The same way that Esternome saves the memory of Saint Pierre, and Idomenée saves the memory of Fort de

France, their daughter keeps alive the existence of Texaco through the use of her words.

100

The art of speaking

For Marie-Sophie, telling the story of the construction of Texaco to the urban planner means the refusal of its historical oblivion. We have explored in the last sections how the protagonist is able to fight for her civil rights through the construction of a dwelling in the space of the Other. We have also remarked how she progressively becomes recognized due to having her own space. It is at this point that it becomes necessary to talk about the space of the narrative, which just like Marie-Sophie’s actions, is considered a strategy of resistance that aims to challenge the traditional style of linear narrative structure. While the textual space of the novel is chronological because it depends on the linearization process that goes from the protagonist’s ancestors’ history to present day, the narrative space of the story is not confined to any restrictions and it moves freely within the temporal shifts of narrative development. Indeed, the first type of resistance that appears in the beginning of the novel is its refusal of a linear narrative structure. The novel is Marie-Sophie’s story that she tells to the author Patrick Chamoiseau. She is the primary narrator of the text. What she says is transmitted by her father Esternome, whose tales are not linear narratives, but fragmented stories: “Il n’avait jamais raconté son histoire de manière linéaire. Il avançait en tracée tournoyante, sorte de bois-flot chevauchant des raz de souvenirsˮ (Chamoiseau, Texaco 256). Within this frame, the narrative structure unfolds several layers. First, there is the story that Marie-Sophie tells about an urban planner who arrives to survey the shantytown as part of an urban renewal project. She then, repeats her story to the author who transcribes it into the form of a novel. Secondly, there is the break in the narration of excerpts from the urban planner’s letters to Chamoiseau, excerpts from the author himself, and excerpts from Marie Sophie’s notes, in which there are testimonies of her father Esternome and of other characters. Clearly, several characters speak under, over, and through Marie-Sophie’s 101 voice, and her voice is brought to us through that of Chamoiseau. Even though, several voices intervene in the structure of the text, that of Marie-Sophie’s stands out from everybody else’s. As the leader of Texaco, her parole is a collective strategy through which the desire for the construction of the quarter is expressed. The force of her narration is understood by herself when she is in front of the urban planner. Upon arriving in Texaco, the employee, who had plans to raze the shantytown, is struck by a stone and he is immediately taken to Marie-Sophie’s house, so she can take care of him. She then, manipulates the event and turns it into an opportunity for her to tell her story:

Il [urban planner] n’avait pas trouvé quoi dire et s’était appliqué à terminer son

verre. Alors, j’inspirai profond: j’avais soudain compris que c’était moi, autour

de cette table et d’un pauvre rhum vieux, avec pour seule arme la persuasion de

ma parole, qui devrais mener seule – à mon âge – la décisive bataille pour la

survie de Texaco. (41)

In the encounter with the urban planner, Marie-Sophie uses her parole as a mode of resistance in order to turn the employee away from his plans. She captivates and seduces his attention; and as a result, the architect listens to her story. In doing this, Marie-Sophie inverts the position of the addressee: the urban planner who had arrived to raze Texaco converts to the cause of the quarter. Marie-Sophie is concerned with the transmission of her story through the persuasion of her word, rather than the circumstances that provoked her to tell it the architect beingstruck by a stone. It is important to note that Marie-Sophie feels self-confident because she is in her territory, in her own home, and from this place she is controlling the event through her voice. She is following the advice given by Papa Totone who told her to find her parole in order to be strong and survive. For him, la parole seizes and balances the human core: “C’est quoi La 102

Parole? Si elle te porte, c’est La Parole. Si elle te porte seulement et sans une illusion. Qui tient parole-qui-porte tient La Parole. Il peut tout faire. C’est plus que force” (374). La Parole is more than just the simple act of talking, it is to feel one’s own words: “Réchauffe ta parole avant de la dire. Parle dans ton cœur. Savoir parler c’est savoir retenir la parole. Parler vraiment c’est d’abord astiquer du silence. Le vrai silence est un endroit de La Parole” (376). The reason people talk is, in the first place, to deliver a message. However, the message can be lost in the process of communication if it is not assertive in tone. Papa Totone recommends that Marie-

Sophie speaks from her heart when she wants to convey a message; in this way people would pay attention and realize how emotionally invested the speaker is in the situation. To speak from the heart makes the message reverberate on a more approachable level. Another piece of advice to Marie-Sophie from Papa Totone was to find a secret name to fight for, a name that nobody knows and that can be shouted in the silence of the heart to regain courage (376). Marie-Sophie gives the name Texaco to her fight. Her struggle against the békés makes the bitter experience lacking of a name. For her, to name is an indication that the relationship between herself and the white world is present. Texaco is not only a place of resistance, but also a name that serves for the symbolic relationship with the Other. The békés were the first ones to name the oil company this way; Marie-Sophie takes the same designation to represent her battle. The title Texaco was given by the white supremacy and the protagonist is using it to subvert those in power. Keeping the same name in the language of the Other means the rejection of the images of its past—

Martinican history and her family history—and the appropriation of a new history ready to be expressed in her own words. This is how the culture of resistance for liberation of the powerless receives the name of Texaco. Let us now explore how the writing of this history is structured in the novel. 103

Under Marie-Sophie’s secret name, she recounts her story before the architect who is referred to as “the Christ,” though it is not explicitly mentioned why. It could be said that he arrives to this district when despair takes control of the inhabitants and violence is provoked by the police; in other words, when life seems hard to manage. Another interpretation could be that he is there to pass judgment on the shantytown insofar as it will either be destroyed or saved. In front of him, Marie-Sophie begins a sort of “confession.” The narrative structure of the novel refers to different stages described in the bible. The first part is called Annonciation and it is when the urban planner arrives to Texaco and listens to the story of its foundation by Marie-

Sophie. In biblical terms, it refers to the time when the archangel Gabriel, the bearer of good news, arrives to Mary’s house to communicate to her that she is pregnant. The urban planner symbolizes a modern version of the archangel Gabriel since Marie-Sophie gives him notice of the creation of Texaco, and he transmits her message to the author and to the government that wants to demolish the area. It is through him that Marie-Sophie’s message is able to penetrate the world outside the district. The biblical passage has been inflected here to indicate the beginnings of a new history. In the same way that Jesus came to the earth to save everyone and to preach his word, the biblical reference at the beginning of the novel suggests that what is about to happen in the next four hundred and fifty pages is the explanation of the origins of Martinican history: how people were exploited, oppressed, dominated, and how they are resisting to change the course of the future. This first part announces the truth—like the Bible whose reliability does not accept error—about the historical development of the poor on the island. The same thing happens with the novels analyzed in Chapters IV and V, though they are structured in different ways, they all employ biblical designations to make their plot foundations strong and believable before the reader’s eyes, but most importantly, before the oppressor’s eyes, who for years wrote only one 104 side of history, that of his own. It is now time to enter into the other side of history- the kind engendered by memory. We all know that what the Bible says has not changed as time has gone by, and this is because the nature of mankind has not changed either. Hence, the biblical allusions used in literature also involve a call for re-evaluation at the individual and/or collective level; they discuss areas that represent nothing new. Past events repeat in the present with different shapes and names, but in the end, it is just a big chain of events that affect—either positively or negatively—men.

The second part of the novel is called Le sermon de Marie-Sophie Laborieux which is divided into two other big sections: Table première: Autour de Saint-Pierre, and Table deuxième: Autour de Fort-de-France. In the first book, Marie-Sophie recounts the life of her father, his dreams, his success, and his disappointments. The purpose of this is to sow the seeds for the foundation of the shantytown, Texaco. In the second book, Marie-Sophie narrates her life and the path she takes for the building of Texaco. These two sections relate on the one hand, the origin of the quarter, and on the other hand, its establishment. Following the biblical style, one could say that the first book belongs to the Christian Old Testament because it emphasizes the historical and prophetic nature of the arrival of the Messiah. The Old Testament is seen as preparation for the New Testament. The second book then would belong to the New Testament which consists of a series of narratives of the life, teachings, and death of Jesus in the same way that Marie-Sophie describes her childhood, her fight against the békés, and her teaching of resistance to other people. Moreover, the structure and division of the novel is executed into different ages that contain the different materials used in the Martinican homes: The Age of

Longhouses and Ajoupas (Temps de carbet et d’ajoupas), The Age of Straw (Temps de paille),

The Age of Crate Wood (Temps de bois-caisse), The Age of Asbestos (Temps de fibrocement), 105 and The Age of Concrete (Temps Béton). These different symbolic representations—the Bible and the materials of Martinican shacks—are visible stages that by association represent the development of Martinique’s history whose internal power is driven by the art of speaking mastered by Marie-Sophie. Here, I will use Michel De Certeau’s notion of the art of speaking which according to him “is an art of thinking and operating” (79). Indeed, Marie-Sophie’s narration involves a lot of thinking and operation: the religious representation in the layout of the novel indicates that her story has not only an origin, but also a development, and this idea is emphasized with the different materials used in the Martinican homes, from a primitive shelter with a thatched roof to a strong concrete house. She moves from the verbal field to the field of non-linguistic actions. Insofar as she draws the traces from the past to the present, her art of speaking becomes stronger and more solid.

The last book of the novel is called Résurrection. In this section, it is the author who takes up the voice. In my view, this is the second climax of the novel after the building of Marie-

Sophie’s shack, because when everything appears to be dead—“La Doum était morte: il n’y avait rien à faire” (Chamoiseau, Texaco 492)—, when there is no voice—“les conteurs s’étaient tus un

à un” (492)—, when there is a lack of imagination—“Les peuples n’étaient plus menacés par la botte, l’épée, le fusil ou les dominations bancaires de l’Être occidental, mais par l’érosion . . . de leur imaginaire” (493), the author finds Marie-Sophie who revives all this through her telling of the story of Texaco:

L’informatrice parlait d’une voix lente, ou parfois très rapide. Elle mélangeait le

créole et le français, le mot vulgaire, le mot précieux, le mot oublié, le mot

nouveau . . . comme si à tout moment elle mobilisait (ou récapitulait) ses

langues. Elle avait des périodes de voix-pas-claire comme certains grands 106

conteurs. Dans ces moments-là, ses phrases tourbillonnaient au rythme du délire,

et je n’y comprenais hak: il ne me restait qu’à m’abandonner (débarrasse de ma

raison) à cet enchantement hypnotique. (494)

The protagonist’s interactions with dissimilar spaces—urban space and the quarter—and with people from different socioeconomic strata—the békés and the community of Texaco—produced a hybrid behavior whose mental organization is far from being “ordered.” To further explain this,

I will return to what Ángel Rama argues in his analysis about the layout of the cities in which he states that the methodical application executed in the American continent was the word orden

(5). Cities needed to be planned following a determined order. Individuals were also

“determined” to carry out certain responsibilities. On the surface, Marie-Sophie is a straightforward allegory of the social and economic position of blacks in the urban planning; she belongs to the lower class, thus, she is poor and uneducated. This might explain why her way of speaking, as we notice in the above excerpt, is pervaded with different linguistic jargons, her ideas are not well thought-out, and the tone of her voice seems unstable. Clearly, economic, social, and linguistic differences are based on racial discrimination. A closer look reveals, however, that Marie-Sophie is the antithesis of the urban and social planning executed in the

New World. It is her spontaneity, repetition, and changes in her voice that alters the established order, and which makes the resistance of Texaco possible, because without order, its history cannot be controlled/destroyed by the Other. Marie-Sophie tells her story to Chamoiseau—time makes her forget things, but with the help of her writing she did when she was young, she succeeds in her narration—and Chamoiseau transcribes it into written form following the inconsistent nature of the storyteller’s form of speaking. In the process of writing, Chamoiseau adds other textual elements, such as flashbacks, excerpts from other characters, etc., to create a 107 sense of totality in the novel. The global vision of the novel and its refusal of linearity serve as a form of continuity of Marie-Sophie’s battle against the authorities. As the author puts it at the end of the novel, it needs to be “chanté quelque part, dans l’écoute des générations à venir . . . jusqu’à notre pleine autorité” (498). Since a global vision of the society is necessary to thwart the increasing accumulation of power in small sectors (Canclini 25), the novel offers a voice to

Martinican society through the construction of the shacks because it is with this that Texaco is reclaimed from the oil company, becoming a dwelling for its people who had dreamt of a place to live. Marie-Sophie dies from old age, her body dies, but her global pensée remains on the tireless hours of narration she spent before the urban planner and with the author, and in the numerous pages written by him. After her death, Texaco is renovated, but not in accordance to its logic, but to the city’s logic: “La mairie avait acheté l’espace de la compagnie pétrolière, et organisait les cases selon leur propre logique” (497). The city is in the process of absorbing

Texaco’s magic, and the last strategy of resistance employed by Marie-Sophie is her narration that is presented in the form of a novel thanks to the author Chamoiseau. The novel is the resurrection of the protagonist’s battle converted into letters.

Thanks to her family’s transmission of oral memories, Marie-Sophie learns to fight against the békés, how to survive in the urban space, how to make them sweat, and how to manipulate events in order to turn them into opportunities in which she can express herself and become self-possessed. She chooses between alternatives that she would have otherwise not chosen if she did not have such a wealth of oral information from her ancestors. It is precisely this repository of knowledge from the past that also helps the protagonists in the novels analyzed in the other chapters. In all of these cases, the past is reconstructed in the reality in which the subject is functioning. It is manipulated in order to better comprehend the present. In the case of 108

Marie-Sophie, she manages her alternatives well; she proceeds to leave the urban space and builds her shack in an oil refinery. With a place of her own she is able to reconstruct her identity.

Also, the construction of a dwelling space in the enemy’s territory is seen by other people as a rebellious detour that challenges political control. Thus, they imitate Marie-Sophie’s actions, and eventually the quarter of Texaco is built. Unlike the urban space, Texaco has a sense of community where everybody helps one another whenever needed. These events provide Marie-

Sophie with the strength to continue her family’s tradition: she becomes a conteuse and tells, this time, the story of Texaco. Her story would not have been heard or understood by neither the urban planner nor Chamoiseau, if she would have chosen “silence” as one of her alternatives.

Even though her ideas are not well organized, her message is there. Patrick Chamoiseau had the task to organize it. Hence, Texaco can be read as a long poem that expresses a battle and a resistance, all this through the spoken word of its narrator Marie-Sophie. When her tenuous words are heard, everything else emerges. In other words, when she tells her story to the urban planner and to the author, the latter transmits it to us in the form of a novel, where, everything that happened to her, to her family, and to Martinique starts making sense. At first glance the story appears confusing, especially If we had only read the section about the construction of

Texaco. However, when the protagonist explains her life, and the lives of others surrounded by her, things become clearer. The structure of the novel also follows this nonlinear organization. It is necessary to finish reading the novel in order to understand the protagonist’s development. At the end, it is precisely her story on paper, that we have in our hands; the final strategy of resistance.

In the first pages of the novel, Esternome says to his daughter that the békés invented le cachot—the cell—, and he refuses to describe it arguing that when one talks about something, 109 existence is given to it: “Permets-moi de ne pas te décrire le cachot car tu comprends, Marie-

Sophie, disait mon papa, il ne faut pas illustrer ces choses-là, afin de laisser à ceux qui les ont construites la charge de leur existenceˮ (51). Since Marie-Sophie is the founder of Texaco, she feels responsible for its survival. By talking about the district, its people, her family’s life, and herself, Marie-Sophie is giving them existence through her words. In them, we can find the answer to the Mentoh’s question: “Dans l’En-ville, on ne voit plus les békés. Alors comment les frapper ? Il n’y a plus de Grand-case, alors d’où marronner ? (376-77). As it was discussed in this chapter, as well as in Chapter I, those in power are nominal. Let us remember that Marie-

Sophie only came face-to-face with a béké one time. There is a connection between this and the rest of the novels treated in this dissertation: the protagonists come face-to-face very little with those who manage power. Those who have political control owe their power, to a certain extent, to the inhabitants of their nation, who believe what the political authority tells them to: people can only obey or follow orders, but not reason. Such belief makes clear why subjects are never seen as active individuals in autocratic governments. Our protagonists, however, are able to uncover the techniques of oppression by ignoring such techniques of those in totalitarian control.

In Chapter III, we will examine how the protagonist Dany decides to ignore the political control in the city of Port-au-Prince by only thinking and talking about his personal life. He listens to peoples’ stories in order to reconstruct his father’s past. He remembers himself in another world—when he was a child living with his father. Even though he lives in the dangerous city of

Port-au-Prince, he is able to free his mind. Like Pol, Marie-Sophie’s grandfather, Dany resorts to his imagination to escape from the strict surveillance of the urban space. Instead of traveling to

Africa in his mind, he travels to an “in-between” dimension where reality does not meet imagination. Dany’s strategy of resistance will be further analyzed in the following chapter. 110

Chapter III

Haiti: Le cri des oiseaux fous (2000)37

About the author and his novel

Dany Laferrière was born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, where he worked as a journalist before moving to Canada in order to escape the Duvalier regime in 1976. He is the author of several short stories, articles, film scripts, and novels, including L’énigme du retour (2009), which was awarded the prestigious Prix Médicis.38 In some of his literary works, the Haitian-

Canadian writer revisits the past of his native island, where Haitians are able to face their lives and examine their still-open wounds in order to find a cure that could heal them (Coates 916). In an interview, the writer mentioned that Haitians are very proud of their history—they won their independence as part of a long, violent, but successful slave revolt in 1804—and that their passion for that moment makes them live in the past (916). Laferrière manages to integrate

Haitians’ concern on the question of their past and identity in his works, while at the same time he proposes a different and renovated present to them. He often exemplifies this process of change through stories about himself, his family, his friends, and the powerless, with a detailed landscape of the environment, in particular, the political situation of the island during the

Duvalier era. L’énigme du retour, for instance, deals with the death of his father and the return to his native country after thirty-three years of living in exile. Even though Laferrière recounts moments in the past, the main focus of the novel is the process through which the character renovates his spirit: he becomes reacquainted with his family, his friends, his people, and his

37 This novel forms part of a collection of other literary works that Dany Laferrière describes as “l’autobiographie américaine” due to its autobiographical content that serves as the foundation of his works (Vasile 40-43). 38 Dany Laferrière is considered to be the second writer from Quebec to receive the Prix Médicis. Forty- three years before Laferrière, Marie-Claire Blais received this important award in 1966 for her novel Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965) (Paré). According to Laferrière, L’énigme du retour—which is the continuation of Le cri des oiseaux fous—also forms part of his “autobiographie américaine” (Paré).

111 roots. As the author explains in his own words, this novel explores “l’exil, la figure du père et aussi un voyage presque mystique au cœur du pays natal” (Saint-Éloi). Finally, Laferrière’s approach to writing ranges from a journalistic style—prose that presents the information in brief and well-organized segments—to a more traditional narrative structure. No matter which style the author has chosen to write to his audience, he often uses aesthetic figures to evoke emotive responses, and he employs devices such as ambiguity, symbolism, and irony to create multiple interpretations of his works.

Among all his literary works, I chose to analyze specifically Le cri des oiseaux fous because, by assuming the “I” of the narrator, Dany Laferrière recreates for us, in great detail, the vicissitudes he encounters as a journalist during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc.” In addition to this, the protagonist makes a link to the past by retracing his parents’ lives, especially that of his father who was persecuted by the dictatorial regime of

General Paul Eugène Magloire, and later by François Duvalier, nicknamed “Papa Doc.” Thus, the novel presents the Duvalier family, father and son, running Haiti like a fiefdom for nearly thirty years; and the Laferrière family, father and son, separated by the unbridled brutality of the dictatorships. In his search for his identity, the protagonist exhibits the social and political obstacles that undo deep ties in the relationships between Haitians. In the protagonist’s case, for instance, the fact that his father had to go into exile for his own safety, and that the narrator was only three years old when this happened, lead him to an acute sense of disorientation and chaos.

The relationship with his father became paralyzed in the past since those were the last moments that they shared. The quest for a relationship with his father reemerges in the present once

Dany—known also as Vieux Os—is an adult working for a magazine. Due to his frequent 112 offensive writings against the government, he learns his life is in danger. He is forced to go into exile, thus repeating his father’s destiny.

Le cri des oiseaux fous differs from Texaco (1992) by Patrick Chamoiseau in the way that it depicts only one era of Haitian history. Let us remember that Texaco spans the whole history of Martinique since its early beginnings as a slave island until the day after becoming an overseas department of France in 1946. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the Duvalier regime portrayed in Laferrière’s novel is one of the bloodiest periods that has ever crushed the island of

Haiti. The Haitian literature that the inhabitants of this island have learnt at school has been from before the 1940s because the government does not want them to get too close to the Duvalier era

(Dash, Roundtable 194). As a contemporary writer, Dany Laferrière delves into the Duvaliers’ dictatorship and visits the past to produce a story that, first, makes him feel closer to his native

Haiti and, second, weaves all Haitians together with the political threads of forms of resistance and domination. Further, the story is one that can be read by everybody on the island. What is more important is that, in the process of writing and creating, Laferrière does not get crushed by his island’s past; on the contrary, he learns from it and makes the protagonist return to the present to face his difficulties of the moment. It is true that the novel is based to a large extent on the omnipresent era of the Duvaliers’ dictatorship, but the fundamental dimension of the novel lies in the performance of its characters who find rebellious detours, such as the constant movement of the protagonist, who wanders the city of Port-au-Prince, or the fearless broadcasting of anti-Duvalier messages by Ézéquiel, one of his friends. This is another reason that Le cri des oiseaux fous was chosen to be analyzed in this dissertation. The human condition in the present of the protagonist Vieux Os parallels his father’s remembered past, and in these 113 two temporal directions, characters are intent primarily on seeking a form of escape that could save them from the totalitarian regime of the Duvaliers.

In order to put the analysis of this novel into better perspective, it is necessary to mention that Dany Laferrière is a Haitian writer from the Diaspora.39 He has published all his works abroad. He went into exile in Montreal, and he now shares his residency between this city and

Miami (Delas 88). A look into the production of a Caribbean writer who has settled somewhere else is essential to this study because it brings a broader perspective into the analysis. This dissertation is a comparative analysis of four postcolonial Caribbean novels; hence, an examination of a diasporic literary representation of political domination and strategies of resistance offers alternative lenses for describing the way Caribbean writers use their imaginations to create their works within a transnational context. Aside from Laferrière’s novel, another literary work studied in this project that was also written and published abroad is El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998) by the Cuban writer Daína Chaviano, which is analyzed in Chapter IV. Being in exile is what transformed Dany Laferrière into a Haitian writer. As the author himself has pointed out, “D’être exilé permet d’écrire sans concession et sans la peur.

L’exil m’a aidé à dire ce que je pense, et m’a donné la possibilité de parler à un autre paysˮ

(Bordeleau 10). In a new country, he learned to write with freedom, with no constraints of hiding any feelings of social or political protest. What is remarkable about Le cri des oiseaux fous is that it is not totally fiction; it is actually an autobiography. This man truly lived in Haiti during the

Duvalier oppression. In his autobiographical novel, he narrates the most important event of his life, which is his departure from Haiti.40 He is direct and provocative because he is not writing

39 Other well-known Haitian writers from the Diaspora are Louis-Philippe Dalembert and Edwidge Danticat. 40 Dany Laferrière has mentioned that the departure from Haiti is considered the most important event of his life (Coates 911). 114 from the interior of his island; he writes from abroad with the interior of his soul. In “Waging the

War from the Outside,” the scholar Bénédicte Ledent discusses the functions that writers from the Caribbean Diaspora can fulfill in their texts, and his exact words are that “they too can be regarded as ‘warriors of the imaginary’ ” (457). Among many other postmodern writers, Dany

Laferrière is regarded as a “warrior of the imaginary” because he uses writing as a weapon: he employs his skill of imagination as a writer to transcend his behavior, speech, and thoughts and turn them into an alter ego who, by playing the role of the protagonist, describes things as they truly are.41 When literature is used as a weapon and as an instrument of freedom, “la première raison d’être de l’écrivain, c’est de dire que le roi est nuˮ (Bordeleau 9).

Few literary analyses have been done on Le cri des oiseaux fous; most of the research about Laferrière’s works centers on some of his other novels and concerns the topic of sexuality.

This is due to the publication in Montreal of his first novel, Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer (1985), where he sets out to provoke and condemn the negative images and sexual stereotypes that have stultified blacks’ existence. Laferrière’s novel cuts like a double-edged sword and indicts stereotypical concepts invented by whites who promoted the notion of the oversexed black male slave during slavery, an image that still continues in today’s world. With the publication of his first novel, the author also indicts the preconceived idea that

Haitian writers discuss in their works only their culture, origins, and history.42 In this regard, the author writes in another of his novels, “Toujours la même connerie. Les gens doivent écrire sur leur coin d’origine. J’écris sur ce qui se passe aujourd’hui là où je visˮ (Laferrière, Cette grenade

41 Dany is an alter ego of the author because his behavior represents that of his creator. Since both have the same name, in order to do this literary analysis more clearly, every time I refer to the autobiographical protagonist I will use the nickname “Vieux Os” which is the affectionate name he is called by his mother, Tante René, and friends in the novel; and when I refer to the author, I will call him by his name, Dany Laferrière, or simply Laferrière. 42 With the publication of his first novel in Montreal, Haitians declared that Laferrière “does not write like a Haitian: from his novel, you can’t even tell he is a Haitian” (Ruprecht 254). 115

15). The fact that Laferrière does not talk about his origins in his most of his novels does not mean that he is renouncing his roots. Ironically, researchers have given more attention to the topic of the sexually insatiable black man in novels, such as Eroshima (1987) and Cette grenade dans la main du jeune nègre est-elle une arme ou un fruit? (1993).

One article in particular that analyzes Le cri des oiseaux fous as a whole was written by

Jana Evans Braziel and entitled “Duvalierism, Development, State Violence, and Duvalierism without Duvalier.ˮ I would like to bring it into this discussion because it deals with Laferrière’s diasporic literary representation of political violence in Haiti under the Duvalier regime and the military police, the Tontons Macoutes. Through the outline of Laferrière’s scorching critiques of

Duvalierist acts of terror, Braziel demonstrates that the continued forms of state-violence marked by sexual sadism were totally ignored by international humanitarian organizations and by the

Central Intelligence Agency, which supported the regime because of its leader’s anti-Castro position (189). In the second half of her article, she analyzes Laferrière’s novel in the historical- cultural moment of its publication: the Lavalasian context of the late 1990s with its political and economical failures under its leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (189). Braziel, thus, draws parallelisms between the Duvalier era and the 1990s of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas, focusing on the governments’ abuse of power in both temporal directions. In Braziel’s words, Laferrière’s novel is “a meditation on present and past, on late Duvalierism and late Lavalasianism, on Baby

Doc and Père-turned-Président Aristide” (190). I agree with the bidirectional analysis of the past and present elaborated by Jana Braziel entirely. In this chapter, I also read Le cri des oiseaux fous with an eye simultaneously to the past and to the present. Nonetheless, instead of focusing on the acts of state-violence, I center on the way the protagonist and other characters resist and escape the totalitarian abuse of power. In the same way that Dany Laferrière decries Duvalierist 116 acts of violence, he also underscores the rebellious detours that help characters to avoid torture and murder. Contrary to the autocratic regime’s methods of torture, the rebellious detours are non-violent and more civilian discourses that give a voice to the powerless and that challenge the absolute power of the regime.

One might ask now: why did the author choose less warlike strategies of resistance to challenge Duvalier’s dominion? Or, even better, why did the author choose to publish his autobiographical novel, whose events take place in 1976, in the year 2000 twenty-four years after the event?43 Jana Braziel argues that, with the publication of his novel in 2000, Laferrière not only indicts the Duvalier’s acts of violence and torture, but also the failures of Aristide’s Fanmi

Lavalas. I agree entirely with Braziel’s statement because I believe that, despite the past moment of narrativization, the novel is also linked to the present moment of its publication; nonetheless, I also think, in accordance with Laferrière’s writing style, that another reason might explain the long wait of twenty-four years to publish his novel. Laferrière mentioned in an interview that his interest in writing lies more in the dynamic and spontaneous nature of life than in the teaching of important events (Vasile 31). The danger of living in the urban space of Port-au-Prince during the Duvalier regime forced the young Laferrière to move to his grandmother’s house in Petit-

Goâve in different moments of his life in order to be safe on the island (33). Since he left Haiti, he has been traveling from Montreal to Miami frequently (33). It seems that the constant traveling and movement is a synonym for freedom to him (33). His autobiographical refraction in the novel adopts the same characteristics of the author: his constant movements in the city of

Port-au-Prince make him feel free and, therefore, protected from the chaos of the environment.

Vieux Os knows he must be careful while walking in the streets of the city. According to him, most Haitians think about politics all the time. He decides, then, to be different and not engage in

43 I took this question from Braziel’s analysis of the novel (190). 117 such conversations. His strategy of resistance consists of delimiting his own place in the urban space ruled by those involved in managing the totalitarian regime—Tontons Macoutes, administrators, bureaucrats, officers, executers, etc.44—by walking in the dangerous city and thinking only about himself:

Je suis un individualiste-né. Et fier de l’être. C’est ma dernière cartouche contre

le pouvoir. Ne penser qu’à moi. Ah! J’y tiens à ce droit. Mon ultime refuge. Mon

dernier carré de résistance. Je ne laisserai personne pénétrer ici. Il leur faudra

venir me combattre sur mon propre terrain. Pour m’avoir, il leur faudra détruire

mon essence. Mon être intime. Mon intériorité profonde. Ils ne m’auront pas à la

surface. . . . (Laferrière, Le cri 105-06)

Vieux Os’ constant walking combined with other rebellious detours, such as his individualism and his will against psychological control and power, offer a possible escape from the Duvaliers’ forms of state-violence, as well as a possible means through which his human condition is transcended. On these grounds, Vieux Os defines his own place in the enemy territory symbolized by the city of Port-au-Prince. As a result, he feels powerful. In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel De Certeau says that a strategy is “an effort to delimit one’s own place in a world bewitched by the invisible powers of the Other” (36). This place is not physical—like the construction of Marie-Sophie’s shack in the oil refinery in Texaco or the building of Isabel’s brothel, which is treated in Chapter V—but immaterial. As pointed out in the above passage, this place is the protagonist’s mind and body. On a similar note, let us mention that the character of

Claudia in Chapter IV also uses her own body to mark her invisible space of power and will in

44 As noted in Chapter I, Amílcar Cabral explains that the political authority is “purely nominal” and that, in order to contest political domination, the populace needs to resist those making up the totalitarian regime (46). The protagonist Vieux Os never encounters Baby Doc; instead, he faces those in charge of instilling fear in the Haitian people. 118 the enemy territory of Havana. My concern in the following chapter, then, is to analyze

Laferrière’s diasporic literary representation of strategies of resistance in some of the novel’s characters as seen through the lens of a writer whose deep desire is the acquisition of freedom for him and his people in despair. I offer in this chapter an alternative reading of act of walking by the protagonist, whose first intention is to escape from the political oppressions in the urban space. In this case, I employ the concept of “detour” by the Martinican writer and philosopher

Édouard Glissant because it starts as a spontaneous action that aims to evade political oppressions (Britton 27). Vieux Os’ detour becomes strategic when he covers the whole city on foot. I compare his act of walking with Michel De Certeau’s speech act. By being in constant movement, Vieux Os is able to express in a non-verbal manner his political protest against the regime. I also argue that the urban space of Port-au-Prince, despite its violence, offers Vieux Os the necessary tools to achieve his goals. I call it a “mangrove” because it offers a space for all sorts of ecosystems which, in this case, are represented, on one hand, by the autocratic government and, on the other hand, by those against their dominion.

I have three primary purposes in this chapter. First, I reconstruct the protagonist’s recollection of his father’s life. The retrospective glance of the journalist is presented in the book as homage to his father and to all those people who, like him, had to leave their country and go into exile so they would not be killed. The protagonist’s recollection of his father’s life is presented in pieces because of the abrupt break of his departure when the protagonist was just a little boy. The loss of his progenitor’s references leads Vieux Os to wander in the urban space and to meet people who knew his father very well. Here, the protagonist subconsciously enters a psychological process through which he contends with the Other’s state of mind. For this analysis, I will employ the concept of the face-to-face encounter described in Totality and 119

Infinity (1969) by Levinas, whose concept suggests “a calling into question of oneself” (81). The face-to-face encounters in the streets of Port-au-Prince with those who knew his father obliges

Vieux Os to open himself, thereby breaking his self-contained set of thoughts that describe him, and ultimately be able to put together most of the broken pieces of his father’s life. The retrospection of the father’s life is the vehicle to comprehend his own decision of leaving the country and his entire family.

Second, I discuss the protagonist’s strategy of resistance that helps him to cope with the oppressive environment in which he is living. How does he use his mind and his body in the streets of Port-au-Prince? This is one of the questions treated in this segment that will be analyzed with the help of some theoreticians, such as Glissant and De Certeau. In addition, the journalist’s friends play an important role in this study as well. Even though Vieux Os is an individualist, his friends’ manipulations of power relationships compose a network whose purpose is to help each other. For this reason, the second section also discusses briefly some of the protagonist’s friends’ strategies of resistance, their positions, functions, and the systems of dependencies to which they are attached. For instance, one of his friends, Ézéquiel, works for a radio station in which he broadcasts anti-government messages. He is also a playwright who often critiques the Duvalier regime through his works. Ézéquiel’s goal is to combat the system using what he knows how to do. This is the purpose of some of the characters in the novel: by working alone or in small groups, they create a powerful network where everybody indirectly depends on the others. I also study the urban space of Port-au-Prince because it is the setting where the characters’ actions take place. Behind the parallelism of father and son going into exile, the writer shows us the oppressive environment of the city of Port-au-Prince imposed by the Duvaliers: a fast-paced space where people are either murdered, or profess indifference and 120 mistrust in order to not be killed. There seems to be no unity, but the encounters with family, friends, and other people play an important role in the creation of Vieux Os’ way to resist the oppression. Here, a particular attention is given to Michael J. Dash’s The Other America (1998), where he analyzes the role of the urban space in Caribbean writing.

Finally, the structure of the novel also indirectly alludes to resistance. For this reason, I dedicate the last section of this chapter to its analysis. It is apparently linear because it is organized like a newspaper with headlines and times. The novel begins by describing Vieux Os’ last twenty-four hours in the city and ends with one scene ten years later in Montreal, where he learns of the death of his father. There is an evident spatial displacement in these two moments of the narration. Together, the constant use of flashbacks and temporal leaps in each section of the novel recalls the structure of the human memory through which thoughts jump from past to present and to future in indistinctive order. One more important fact to mention is that the historical context and the author’s life’s circumstances narrated in Le cri des oiseaux fous belong to the year 1976, but the novel was published twenty-four years after this. It would be too naïve to think that there is no reason behind such literary choices. The evidence shows that Laferrière’s technique is flexible, which suggests his ability as a writer to make choices without following a determined pattern. This style makes the author and his alter ego feel free; they cannot be controlled due to their constant jumps and movements in time and space. For all this, I draw a parallelism between the novel’s structure and a performing jazz musician, who is able to encompass a wide range of elements that include, among other things, improvisation and interaction, and who is open to different musical possibilities.

121

Family’s past

In Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau, Marie-Sophie’s father, Esternome, plays an active role in the novel. However, in Le cri des oiseaux fous, the protagonist’s father, better known as

Windsor K.,45 does not have a voice in the story; his life is transmitted to us through other people’s narrations. Unlike Esternome, Windsor K. did not directly communicate his experiences to his son because the protagonist was very young when his father left the country to live in a non-specified place for fear of reprisal from the dictatorship. It is primarily through Vieux Os’ mother’s memories that the protagonist manages to reconstruct a voice that depicts his progenitor’s life. Through her, we learn that Vieux Os is very similar to his father: “L’affaire est que je ressemble beaucoup à mon père et, parfois, j’ai l’impression que ma mère éprouve certaines difficultés à faire la différence entre lui et moi. Je suis le portrait craché de mon père et pas uniquement sur le plan physique. Ma mère me l’a souvent répété d’ailleurs” (Laferrière, Le cri 12). In his mother’s eyes, Vieux Os could pass for his father not only in physical terms, but also in other characteristics, as is noted in the passage. Vieux Os has the same name and the same tone of voice as his father. He is told that his father’s voice was strong and penetrating. But for the journalist, this voice is just a vague sound: “C’est une voix forte, muscle, tout en grondements. . . . Des années plus tard, j’ai vainement cherché cette voix. . . . Je n’ai jamais vraiment entendu la voix de mon père. Je ne pouvais que l’imaginer en épiant le visage aux lueurs changeantes de ma mère” (17-18). Through his mother, the protagonist attempts to grasp his father’s voice. When he was little, Vieux Os tried incessantly to listen to his father’s voice when he was talking to his wife on the phone, but his mother always refused to give the phone to her son. Though she never explained her reasons, we later learn through Vieux Os’ observations

45 The complete name of the father was Windsor Kléber Laferrière. His son, the author Dany Laferrière, was baptized as “Windsor Klébert Laferrière fils.” It was his godmother who called him “Dany” (Coates 918).

122 of Windsor K.’s voice that his tone had changed—he had an accent. The accent is the most evident mark that speaks of “exile.” One can learn a language and speak it fluidly, but the accent will always reveal the real national and linguistic origins of the individual. Windsor K. was an intellectual man who spoke several languages, and this accumulation made him speak his mother tongue, Creole, with a strange accent that his wife did not recognize. The accent in his voice complicated his sense of belonging to his origins: Haiti and his own language.

Windsor’s accent resonates deeply with some of Jacques Derrida’s key assertions in Le monolinguisme de l'autre. The French philosopher discusses the situation of the monolingual whose only language is not his mother tongue, along with the sense of national and linguistic belonging. As discussed in Chapters I and II, Derrida’s critique of the paradox of the mother tongue is when he affirms that the individual learns a language that he or she does not fully comprehend nor master (13). Windsor K. does have a mother tongue, but the fact that he speaks it with an accent means that it does not belong to him. In other words, he does not have a language of his own; instead, he speaks not only one but several languages of the Other. This is precisely Derrida’s definition of Le monolinguisme de l'autre: “de toute façon on ne parle qu’une langue, et on ne l’a pasˮ (70).46 Even the mother tongue is the language of the Other:

Même en parlant créole, mon père ne parvenait pas à se délester de cet étrange

accent qui est le résultat d’une accumulation d’accents différents. Sans le savoir,

il avait attrapé un accent mortel, comme d’autres attrapent une maladie

infectueuse. Ce fut la fin. Mon père était devenu un étranger pour ma mère. . . .

Ils n’étaient plus sur la même longueur d’onde. La voix, c’était la dernière chose

46This is an autobiographical definition of the Francophone Jew born in Algeria who, during the Second World War, personally experienced the linguistic alienation of languages along with “la terreur politique et historique” (Derrida 48). 123

qui leur restait. . . . La folle dérive de mon père commença à cet instant précis.

Mon père n’avait plus aucun repère dans le monde. (Laferrière, Le cri 45)

We notice in the passage that the accent Windsor K. had is qualified as “accent mortel” and

“maladie infectueuse.” Later, Vieux Os points out that, because of this accent, his father “n’avait plus aucun repère dans le monde.ˮ “Exile” not only means being forcibly banished from one’s homeland, it also comes along with the abrupt loss of points of reference and feelings of belonging. It is associated with the body as well, as Derrida reveals: “L’accent signale un corps à corps avec la langue en général, il dit plus que l’accentuationˮ (78). Also, as Pablo Urbanyi has appropriately mentioned, “Emigration and exile are, like cancer, incurable illnesses” (132). Such associations of the accent with the body are only metaphorical because nobody, as far as I am aware, changes his/her accent when he/she suffers from an incurable illness. It seems that his accent is a curse that suggests that Windsor K. will disappear completely very soon from his family’s life. The protagonist’s mother has perceived this; she noticed that her husband’s voice was unclear, that it had turned into a shadowy sound. She knew something bad was about to happen in her family. This may explain why she refused to give the phone to her son: she did not want Vieux Os to feel confused because he would not have recognized his father’s voice and would have considered him a foreigner. She wanted him to envisage his father the way she remembered him before he left the country.

Nonetheless, the problem lies precisely in that Vieux Os cannot remember his father’s appearance and his voice; therefore, he feels confused anyway. For our journalist, the external traits—the physical appearance, the name, and the voice—do not mean much. These characteristics do not help him know his father better; they simply offer him a blurred sketch of

Windsor K.’s personality that lacks substance. For Vieux Os, his father is just a soft blanket of 124 mist meandering in his life and l’exil is what describes this feeling best: “L’exil est pire que la mort pour celui qui reste. L’exilé reste vivant bien qu’il ne possède aucun poids physique dans le monde réel. Plus de corps, plus d’odeur. Des traits de plus en plus vagues. . . . Voilà l’absence.

Rien de concret. Tout est toujours ambigu, jamais définitif ” (Laferrière 13-14). While in exile,

Windsor K. becomes an unknown to his family. He no longer lives in his home; he does not share his life with his wife and son. The longer he stays away, the longer he remains a distant, unidentified figure impossible to trace back and forth in time. As the above excerpt suggests, an imaginary spatial distance exists that separates the protagonist from his father and, ultimately, from his selfhood as well. Vieux Os spends a fair amount of time, thinking about his father, who lives somehow in an “in-between” space that interrupts constantly the present of his son. This

“in-between” dimension is neither the past nor the present because the father is still alive, yet impossible to locate. Instead, the father lives in a liminal zone of unstructured and suspended time, where action freely explores the lines of time. Vieux Os must establish a sort of connection between this space and his present in order to renew his identity so he can face the difficulties of the moment.

The articulations of “in-between” spaces that facilitate the birth of a new identity are the grounds on which the critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha locates an agency of elaborating strategies of selfhood. In the introduction to Locations of Culture (1994), he analyzes the way the main characters of some literary works, such as Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison and My Son’s

Story (1990) by Nadine Gordimer, are able to transcend or move beyond the interstices that at first glance seem problematic and confusing. Eventually, however, the transcendence becomes a search for memory and an affirmation of self:

Being in the “beyond,” then, is to inhabit an intervening space, as any dictionary 125

will tell you. But to dwell “in the beyond” is also . . . to be part of a revisionary

time, a return to the present to redescribe our cultural contemporaneity; to

reinscribe our human, historic commonality; to touch the future on its hither

side. In that sense, then, the intervening space “beyond” becomes a space of

intervention in the here and now. (Bhabha, “Locations” 1336)

With this passage, I can demonstrate that Windsor’s dwelling ‘in the beyond” in turn triggers

Vieux Os’ revisionary energy to plunge into his father’s past. Ultimately, his examination of his father’s past will let him analyze his situation in the dangerous city of Port-au-Prince and create strategies of resistance that could help him to cope with the situation, which will be treated in the second section of this chapter. For the protagonist, then, the “beyond” becomes a space where he can negotiate his priorities in life: it makes him wonder if it is worth leaving the country in order to not be murdered, while leaving behind a suffering mother who will have lost both her husband and her son under the two Duvalier regimes. The “beyond” is the memory of the fugitive father, his personality, the things he could not say, the questions he could not ask of his son, of himself, and so on. The “beyond” facilitates the exchange of ideas between Windsor’s memory and Vieux

Os. This dimension in the social world renews and innovates Vieux Os’ personality because he recognizes himself in the projection of his father. With all this, it is clear that l’exil defines the pain that Vieux Os and his mother have endured during the twenty years Windsor K. has been absent. It is also true that this event throws Vieux Os into a state of confusion, since his father left when he was only a child and he does not remember him. Nonetheless, Windsor’s exile symbolizes an imaginary passage where Vieux Os can bond with his father and his past and, thus, be able not only to reconstruct his progenitor’s personality but also to reclaim his own 126 selfhood. The purpose of the “beyond” is to enable the character to obtain knowledge and affirmation of self. The content of this “in-between” space will be further analyzed below.

Windsor K. became a stranger to his family. However, to his friends and the people of

Port-au-Prince he was a very popular and intellectual man. He taught history at a high school, and he was passionate about it, which everyone admired. Windsor K. captivated people, especially women, due to his knowledge, his strong presence, and his speaking skills. His knowledge granted him political authority in public discourse. The respect he gained led him to become one of the leaders of a group of young idealists determined to change the course of the country. The group was named “Le peuple souverain,” and they were aggressive: “Ils terrorisaient les bureaucrates, les ronds-de-cuir, les députés, les sénateurs, les ministres ventripotents, enfin, tous ceux qui, à nos yeux, n’étaient pas des accélérateurs de progrès”

(Laferrière, Le cri 149). With the help of others, Windsor K. created this private group to fight against the regime of Paul Eugène Magloire. As a result, he was persecuted and thrown into prison by government officers. During Magloire’s rule, Haiti achieved a comparative degree of modernization as roads and public works were built. However, Magloire was very fond of having an ostentatious social life, and, as a result, money was spent on parties, social events, and ceremonies. Playboy images were projected, and Haiti became a favorite vacation spot for

American and European tourists. To protect his presidency, Magloire’s regime deprived citizens of their civil liberties, and those who protested and went on strike were jailed (Rotberg 105). The end of the dictatorial regime of Magloire led to a succession of provisional governments in Haiti, after which François Duvalier, nicknamed “Papa Doc,” became president from 1957 until his death in 1971. To the Americans, François Duvalier was expected to usher the republic into a brave and bold new world of democracy (Rotberg 106). Instead, turmoil and chaos racked Haiti. 127

His plan for ruling the country was not oriented in social justice, economic development, and modernization. On the contrary, “Duvalier was consecrated to the gods of destruction, brutality, and sadism” (106). He sought to crush any spirit of independence and constructive thought. His goal was to be, by all means, above the state and the law. This is why he even declared himself president ad vitam aeternam. During the Duvalier regime, Windsor K. tried to continue with his group of subversives. His beliefs of disapproval against the terror implemented by the new dictator of the republic put his family at risk. He was forced then, like many other inhabitants, to leave the country to escape death.

He went into exile, leaving behind his wife and his son, who was only three years old.

The only way of communication he kept alive with his wife was through phone calls. However, even this fell apart when she learned that the government officers were going to capture her son, which condemned Windsor K. to further exile, since he could no longer talk to his wife. Being in contact with an exile meant having the dictator as your enemy: “Avec Papa Doc au pouvoir, il est périlleux de garder contact avec un exilé. L’exilé est l’ennemi personnel de Duvalier. Et

Duvalier, c’est l’État” (Laferrière, Le cri 46-47). With no communication at all, Windsor K. disappeared from his wife’s and son’s lives completely. The protagonist grew up without his father on his side. Unlike his father, Vieux Os was not a popular man, but rather a solitary individual. This personality will be reflected later on in the way he fights against the autocratic regime. We shall be returning to this issue in the next section, but it is important right now to say that Windsor K. had many friends in the government that helped his family to survive during his absence. One of these old friends is the colonel who tells Windsor K.’s wife that his son, the journalist, is on the list of enemies of the government. Thanks to this man, Vieux Os receives the 128 passport needed in order to leave the country. The colonel and the mother are the only two other people who know about Vieux Os’ sudden departure:

Malgré cette vie monacale, ma mère aurait pu avoir des problèmes avec les

sbires du régime si mon père n’avait pas quelques amis haut placés dans le

gouvernement (notamment ce colonel César, un vrai tueur, qui a procuré à ma

mère le passeport confidentiel qui me permettra de sortir de ce piège à rats) qui

nous protégeaient discrètement. (46)

Besides having friends in the government, Windsor K. had other friends spread out in many places. He was a man who was easy to be spotted for everybody except for his family. Hence, it is not only the mother’s memories that unlock time and offer information to construct the protagonist’s father, but also people who knew Windsor K. These are the memories that are located in the “beyond,” the imaginary passage I was discussing earlier, the place where the son comes into contact with the father’s past.

Unlike Marie-Sophie who receives stories directly from her father, Vieux Os must listen to Others to know them: “Ce n’est pas un très grand exploit puisque tous les habitants de cette ville ont connu mon père et que je lui ressemble beaucoup. . . . Chaque personne que je croise . . . me raconte une histoire à propos de mon père. C’était un homme . . . facilement repérable” (148).

In the protagonist’s intrinsic and necessary relation with the Other, we glimpse what Emmanuel

Levinas has described in Totality and Infinity (1969), the face-to-face encounter which involves a self-criticism that “can be a discovery of one’s weakness or a discovery of one’s unworthiness— either as a consciousness of failure or as a consciousness of guilt” (83). This means that the face- to-face encounter with those who knew his father will make Vieux Os know himself better.

Knowing will dictate the protagonist’s movements: it can make him abandon his search, or it can 129 make his drive to it stronger. The key for the renewal of Vieux Os’ selfhood is located under the

Other’s presence. Levinas furthers his discussion by highlighting that the success with the

Other’s encounter depends also on the fraternity and values of individuals, features that are demonstrated by the welcoming of the Other (214). Unlike the struggle of egocentric individualities evolving in the urban space of Saint-Pierre in Chapter II, there is a group of people in Port-au-Prince who, like Windsor K., dissented from the destructive, brutal, and sadistic ways of the Duvalier regime and help Vieux Os with the construction of his father’s past.

This group shares one similarity: they were punished with the same whip of exile and its consequences:

Nous formons une génération de fils qui n’ont pas connu leur père et c’est ce qui

nous relie les uns aux autres. Je ne me souviens pas du visage de mon père. Je

regarde s’éloigner le père de Gasner. Son père et lui ont la même nuque. Ma

mère dit que mon père et moi avons les mêmes mains. Nuque, mains. Des

morceaux. Peut-on reconstruire un père avec une paire de mains et des anecdotes

recueillies ça et là ? (Laferrière, Le cri 87)

Vieux Os is able to reconstruct his father’s past by walking in the city of Port-au-Prince and meeting some of his father’s friends as well as their sons—whose testimonies seek to heal the absence of a father figure—and enemies. This collective group forms a network of relationships that are, at first glance, not easily spotted in the streets, but as Vieux Os moves in the city, his father’s friends emerge from their hideouts and their tales unfold. One reason that might explain the welcoming attitude of these subjects is that, unlike the character of Esternome, our protagonist was born in Port-au-Prince. In addition, he is the son of one of the leaders of political protest. Esternome, however, comes from the exterior; therefore, his relation with the Other in 130

Saint-Pierre and Fort-de-France is more complicated and leads to total rejection. Vieux Os finds acceptance and aid, but it emerges gradually, and the reconstruction of Windsor’s life is, thus, presented in brief and concise pieces of information that appear throughout the novel. Even though Vieux Os does not possess all the pieces of the puzzle, he is able to reconstruct most of his father’s identity thanks to the stories told by these people.

Vieux Os gets to experience what his progenitor had to go through before going into exile. Our protagonist works for a magazine and frequently attacks the government in his writings. After his co-worker, Gasner, is murdered by a pro-government militia, Vieux Os learns that he is next and must go into exile, thus repeating his father’s destiny. Gasner’s father was a friend of Vieux Os’ father. Gasner’s father had to leave the country just like Windsor K. Gasner and Vieux Os’ common backgrounds help the latter to understand that there are other young people without father figures. Vieux Os manages to see his father through the eyes and tales of

Others. All these people who are connected in one way or another to Vieux Os’ life form what

Édouard Glissant conceives as Relation, a “system whose elements are engaged in a radically nonhierarchical free play of interrelatedness” (Britton 11). It is a Relation of equality in which each individual looks out for the collective interest of the group. They get in contact with Vieux

Os—albeit in an unusual situation—to build Windsor’s life. On these grounds, despite being in exile, Windsor K. exists “in relation” to a network of multiple connections with those who constitute it. Relation is a mode of resistance because the connections among individuals bring

Windsor K. back to Haiti, at least metaphorically.

I argue that Windsor K. fills in the “in-between” space that separated him from his son; in this manner, he plays symbolically his role as a father through a network of friends who either knew him directly, like the colonel, or knew him indirectly, like Gasner, and who get in contact 131 in one way or another with the protagonist. Through walking in the city in search of possible stories about his father, Vieux Os exorcises the guilt of the absence of a father figure. The resentment that exists at the beginning of the novel toward his father shuts down at the end.

However, of more innovative significance is the fact that, in this “in-between” space, the protagonist’s personality is shaped in a hybrid form due to the different tales he hears about his father. Bhabha declares, “This interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (“Locations” 1333). Expressing much the same idea, Glissant writes that hybridity questions identity, “in which it is the relation to the Other that determines the self, but in an open-ended way” (Britton 17). Through his father’s past, Vieux Os is able to express the reason for his own actions. Like the main character in Texaco, who gained confidence through her father’s tales, Vieux Os feels free to decide what is best for him because the dominion of the autocratic government cannot intervene in the “beyond.” Consequently, his actions, mental and physical, in the streets of Port-au-Prince will reflect the fluidness and indeterminacy of the liminal zone. Vieux Os takes advantage of this process and then grabs control of his actions, and although his tone of disappointment at going suddenly into exile is reflected throughout the narration, he starts building a strategy of resistance. The next section will analyze the protagonist’s strategy of resistance against the Duvalier regime.

132

Vieux Os’ present

In the novel, Windsor K. wanted to be a journalist. His son follows this dream and becomes a journalist working for a magazine. Despite the threat against free expression by the autocratic Duvalier regime, Vieux Os frequently attacks indirectly the political situation of Haiti in his writings. He dips his quill into reality and constructs his political protest. Besides his work as a journalist, he also likes thinking and organizing words in his free time. Through both styles of writing, he feels freedom. He becomes immersed in the world of words, and he calls himself a

“chasseur des mots:” “Tous mes amis se battent, avec raison, contre le pouvoir, tandis que moi

(un chasseur de mots), j’ai l’impression de flotter comme une feuille légère et étourdie sur une mer de sang et de boue. Je me sens si calmeˮ (Laferrière, Le cri 70). Writing becomes a strong force that moves the writer from one idea-location to another. He keeps himself symbolically in movement whether at work or in his free time. As a result, he is busy and is able to forget momentarily the insidious environment in which he is living which is depicted in the passage as

“une mer de sang et de boue.” In an interview, Laferrière mentioned that it was a hard task to write in a language in which he felt free; therefore, before starting writing, he decided to start knowing himself first (196). He declares, “I had to question myself to free myself . . . and begin to write, to get out of history, out of literature, out of the schema of literature to return to something more natural” (197). His desire for writing and for being different from other Haitian writers caused Laferrière to evaluate himself. Laferrière’s inner examinations reverberate in

Patrick Chamoiseau’s Écrire en pays dominé (1997), in which the Martinican writer evokes his love of books and especially of writing and states that all strategy of resistance starts from the inside. To combat oppression, he suggests starting the resistance within one self:

Je soupçonnais que toute domination (la silencieuse plus encore) germe et se 133

développe à l’intérieur même de ce que l’on est. Qu’insidieuse, elle neutralise les

expressions les plus intimes des peuples dominés. Que toute résistance devait se

situer résolument là, en face d’elle, et déserter les illusions des vieux modes de

bataille. Il me fallait alors interroger mon écriture, longer ses dynamiques,

suspecter les conditions de son jaillissement et déceler l’influence qu’exerce sur

elle la domination-qui-ne-se-voit-plus. Mais comment? (Chamoiseau 21)

In the passage, Chamoiseau reveals the answer to his own question. In order to construct a strategy of resistance, it is necessary to examine one’s own writing. The fact that Vieux Os is in constant mental creation in which words occupy the center of everything helps him to be provocative in what he does at work. Le cri des oiseaux fous is a metafictional text because

Laferrière’s writing style is characterized by verbal provocation, as was well indicated by Alvina

Ruprecht in “L'amérique c'est moi” (253). She states, “Laferrière’s writing produces an extremely insecure and borderless space symbolized by the way language inevitably calls everything into question . . .” (255). Laferrière’s weapon is writing because, by calling everything into question, he not only attacks the political system, but he is also able to free himself, challenging the political system in this way as well. A similar effect happens for Vieux

Os, the person associated with Laferrière. Considered from this angle, character and author act as

“warriors of the imaginary” (Chamoiseau 274) because they use writing to attack dictatorship and ultimately to renew Haitian values.

Vieux Os’ friend and co-worker, Gasner, executes the same principle as well. He frees himself from the oppressive situation of the dictatorship by attacking it in his writing. Vieux Os and Gasner enjoy what they do because their jobs provide an escape regardless of the risks they contain. Ézéquiel, who is another friend of the main character, works in a radio station. Besides 134 this, he also likes to perform. He has the chance to be Créon, the villain who symbolizes the dictator Baby Doc, in the play Antigone. His performance is applauded by the audience. As an actor, Ézéquiel deeply analyzes the motivations and emotions of the character in order to personify him with psychological realism and emotional authenticity. Most importantly, he recalls emotions and reactions from his own life and uses them to identify with the character being portrayed. Ézéquiel does not have anything in common with the villain he is portraying, but this does not prevent him from having the opportunity to release his anger toward Baby Doc while he is performing. In this framework, Ézéquiel is symbolically resisting from the inside and uses, like his friend, the power of words. Vieux Os, Gasner, and Ézéquiel use their jobs as detours, which Glissant defines as “an indirect mode of resistance that ‘gets around’ obstacles rather than confronting them head on . . .” (Britton 25). The Tontons Macoutes, administrators, and officers are so numerous in Port-au-Prince that it becomes difficult to attack them directly; therefore, these characters opt to confront the enemy through what they do best, their professions. A few lines further on, Glissant adds that “the detour is not a freely chosen, rationally planned autonomous act of opposition, but neither is it simply an evasion” (27). The characters express their political protest using the tools that their work environment offers them.

By taking advantage of the radio, theatre, and magazine, our characters are able to transmit their disapproval of the regime to a large number of Haitians. They enjoy doing their jobs; they feel powerful and ultimately protected from the outside cruel environment.

However, the feeling of being safe in their jobs is only temporary. After work, they have to face the outside world. When François Duvalier died in 1971, his son Jean-Claude Duvalier succeeded him as the dictatorial ruler of Haiti. With him, the reign of terror expanded to daylight: 135

Papa Doc. . . . Ses hommes opéraient plutôt la nuit, se confondant avec les

démons intimes qui hantaient nos pires cauchemars. Alors que Baby Doc, en

homme moderne, entende régner le jour. Il installe une terreur diurne, moins

pesante, plus bureaucratique, plus acceptable surtout pour les organismes

humanitaires, qui vont de ce pas donner enfin le signal pour que l’argent entre.

(Laferrière, Le cri 287)

Baby Doc implemented killing during the day. Vieux Os and his friends are at risk of being killed no matter the time of the day due to their criticism of the government. Gasner is the first to end up tortured and murdered by the Tontons Macoutes during the day. His body was thrown on the beach. After this incident, Vieux Os learns that he is next and must go into exile. He has only twenty-four hours left in Haiti before taking a plane to Montreal. He decides to spend this time walking in the city. Walking in Port-au-Prince was what Gasner loved to do the most. As a journalist, Gasner would spend a lot of his time in the streets. He would go everywhere to collect and disseminate information about current events. He loved to talk with people, and this made him a very popular person. Indeed, everybody knew him and loved him—except, of course, for members of the government. Faced with Gasner’s death and his own imminent exhile, Vieux Os undertakes his friend’s favorite pastime and walks through the city to collect information about the murder. Since Gasner was a man of the people, Vieux Os, as a journalist, needs to go to the city to meet those who were in contact with his friend before his death. He wants to know the reasons behind Gasner’s pleasure of walking in the dangerous streets of Port-au-Prince. His action challenges the autocratic regime because he is entering its territory.

It is fair to say that for Vieux Os—as for anyone else in his position, being out there in the streets of Port-au-Prince after discovering that he was next to be murdered—the journey is 136 not an easy one to accomplish due to the treacherous conditions of the city. The urban space is depicted by distinct names, all negative, throughout the novel, such as: “piège à rats” (46), “la tanière de la bête” (47), “la jungle du peintre Philippe-Auguste Salnave” (60), “une forêt” (159), and “une ville terrorisée” (202). Port-au-Prince is designated with distinct metaphors that are frightful. If I may coin a comparison here, these names as a whole create a sort of complex labyrinth created so cunningly that it becomes difficult for the protagonist to navigate through it.

He is involved in this spatial and cultural designation where he needs to find, figuratively, the right path to fight against the Minotaur as well as the Ariadne’s thread that could help him find his way out. In the novel, the Minotaur is represented by the Tontons Macoutes—Militia of

National Security Volunteers—whose feathered symbol is la pintade—the guinea fowl. This

Haitian paramilitary force created under the Duvaliers was in charge of getting rid of any opposition to the regime at night or even in broad daylight. The name Tonton Macoute comes from Haitian Creole mythology and refers to a boogeyman who wandered the streets to kidnap children who stayed out too late at night. The inhabitants of Haiti were cautious in the streets for fear of these “animals.” The author’s creative description of the urban space leads me to associate it with the role of the city in Caribbean writing that Michael J. Dash proposes in

Chapter V of his book The Other America (1998). He writes, “The street becomes a scene of open existential possibilities, of a new pathway to errancy and the marvelous” (123). By using metaphors and allegories to describe the real danger of the streets of Port-au-Prince, Laferrière creates a marvelous world in which his alter ego becomes, to a certain extent, a hero. Since it symbolizes a marvelous world, the reader, then, cannot be completely certain if the main character’s choices are the right ones. Laferrière’s style creates suspense, and it is not until the 137 reader finishes the novel that he/she will know for sure if the protagonist’s options were the correct ones.

Just like the mythical hero Theseus in the labyrinth, Vieux Os is alone in his errancy through the streets of Port-au-Prince. He is alone because no one is trusted. Our protagonist even declares at one point that he does not have a lot of friends because there are “trop de requins dans la rade, trop de léopards dans les bosquets, trop de tontons macoutes dans les bars. . . . Mieux vaux ne pas avoir trop d’amis, donc” (Laferrière, Le cri 225). Those who speak out against

Duvalier, even in a minor matter, disappear immediately and are never seen again. For this reason, when Gasner died, the city was seized by silence. No one wanted to talk about it for fear of being heard by any of the Tontons Macoutes: “personne ne commente la nouvelle, ce qui est totalement anormal dans un pays où le moindre fait divers est passé au peigne fin. Simplement un silence assourdissant” (23). Because of the level of danger, Vieux Os prefers not to say anything about his sudden departure. According to Robert I. Rotberg, the majority of Haitians shares the attitude of rivalry, suspicion, and intrigue (100). They do not trust each other due to sharing a cast of mind that appeared in slavery and that is still latent nowadays: “The first

Haitians were rootless, lacking any bonds common to them all except revolution. They were originally of many tribes and languages of Africa, and thus lacked the cement of a shared culture, religion, language. . . . Haitians went directly from slavery to independence . . .” (100-01). There was not any type of cooperation when Haitians were colonial subjects. They learned to be submissive to authority and they acquired the ability to cope under stress (101). This behavior is reflected somehow in the book: the characters work for themselves either individually or in very small groups, but never in a big mass. Our protagonist is one example of a lonely soul. On many occasions, he is referred to as a loup solitaire (Laferrière, Le cri 65) and as an individualiste-né 138

(105). For Vieux Os, the fact of being alone means being in his comfort zone: “je me retrouve dans ma situation préférée: seul” (40). Being alone also symbolizes the life that most Haitians experience on the island. They share the same politics of freedom and discourses of disagreement with the way the Duvalier regime rule the island. I contend that Vieux Os’ wandering of the streets contains the feelings of each inhabitant of the island. He symbolizes the collective.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the streets of Port-au-Prince are frightful—but only to the foreigner’s eyes. For its inhabitants, extreme actions of cruelty—torture and death by the

Tontons Macoutes—and brutal contrasts of social status—the poor are poorer while the rich are richer—are ordinary scenes of their everyday life. However, this does not mean that people can freely move in the urban space. On the contrary, it is a dangerous journey that not everybody is ready to take. For Vieux Os, this is a way to honor his friend Gasner because walking in the streets is what he loved the most. Walking also allows the protagonist to explore his inner feelings toward the absence of his father in his life. Let us remember that it is in the streets of the urban space that he meets at random some of his father’s friends who tell distinct tales about him. Finally, the most important consequence of being a pedestrian in his own city is that he protects himself from being captured and killed before leaving the country. At first glance, this statement is completely irrational: Vieux Os walks in the turmoil of the urban space in order to be protected from it? We can respond to this with another question: Is it true that the calmest place in a tropical cyclone is the eye of a storm? Yes and yes. However, Vieux Os risks touching the eyewall of the storm, the point with the most severe weather, while walking in the city. He is aware of this, and he knows that it is extremely important that he watch his steps. 139

Some characters need to distance themselves in order to analyze the dangerous situation of the urban space. This happens to the main character of Texaco, Marie-Sophie, who looks down upon the city of Fort-de-France from the top of a hill, as if she were a “solar Eye, looking down like a God,” to use Michel De Certeau’s words (92). The way one can analyze something varies from mind to mind. Keeping a distance from the object is simply an optical strategy. For

Vieux Os, walking in the unsafe streets of Port-au-Prince is his way to examine it. Since he has only twenty-four hours left in the city, being close to this object of study is the fastest way for him to get what he wants. Walking is an ordinary practice of the city, and the practitioners make use of spaces that are not visible to the ordinary eye (Certeau 93). One of these spaces refers to the speech act: “The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered” (97). It has three functions: it appropriates the urban space, just as the speaker appropriates the language, it acts-out the place, just as the speech act is “an acoustic acting-out of language;” and it includes relations in the form of movements, just as speech implies contracts between its speakers (97-98). We can say that, by moving continuously, Vieux

Os is appropriating metaphorically the urban space. When he walks in the jungle of the city, he is entering the dominion of the Other, and he represents a threat to Baby Doc’s control. The protagonist takes the place of an intruder. The military regime uses the Tontons Macoutes to intimidate the intruder. In order to be safe, Vieux Os needs, then, to act as if he were not hiding anything. In other words, he must show to his enemy that he is not an intruder, but another member of the animal kingdom. The protagonist manipulates the system, and as a result, he creates relationships that could help him to survive in the environment.

Let us now apply the above phenomenon to a passage of the novel. In the segment called

“La mariée était en rouge,” our journalist’s journey is jeopardized by a government spy in the 140 hotel King Salomon Star, a place where all the members of the government meet. In this place, aside from drinking and enjoying the company of women, the officers torture people in a special room. King Salomon Star is the cave of the beast. This was one of the places that Gasner often converged upon to recollect information for his writings: “Me voilà, ici, cette nuit, sans Gasner.

J’entre au King Salomon Star en pensant à lui. Je veux vraiment savoir ce qui pouvait l’intéresser ici” (Laferrière, Le cri 268). Vieux Os has literally accessed the dominion of the Other. He is an intruder because he does not belong to this group. He tries to behave normally, but unfortunately he is recognized by one of the spies of the regime. This spy works undercover as a guard in the radio station where Ézéquiel, one of the protagonist’s friends, works. The guard saw Vieux Os when he went to meet his friend earlier that night:

Brusquement, je me sens épié. Mon corps a reçu le message avant mon cerveau.

Quand cela vous arrive dans une jungle, cela indique que vous êtes en très grand

danger. J’avais baissé ma garde, à cause de la scène. . . .

GARDIEN. Je t’ai déjà vu, toi.

VIEUX OS. Moi ?

GARDIEN. Oui, toi. . . . Tout à l’heure, à la station de radio. Tu étais avec

Ézéquiel.

Il rit. Un rire de coyote. . . .

GARDIEN. T’inquiète pas, tu vas venir avec moi. . . .

Le gardien me prend par le col et m’emmène avec lui. (289-91)

In this moment, Vieux Os touches the eyewall of the storm. He is about to accompany the guard to Fort-Dimanche, a dungeon of death where nobody leaves unless he is a supporter of the government. To his surprise, a man nicknamed le frère-de-la-nuit, one of Gasner’s friends, 141 appears in front of the guard and tells him that if Vieux Os was in the radio station, it was because he was following his orders of keeping an eye on Ézéquiel. The guard argues with him.

Hence, le frère-de-la-nuit challenges the guard by telling him that the instructions came from above, from Mme Max, the supreme head of the Tontons Macoutes who was known for her torture skills. The guard, then, had to stop taking Vieux Os to the prison. What saved the journalist from dying was the relationship he created with le frère-de-la-nuit when he went to his shack right after Gasner died. Gasner told Vieux Os that, if something happened to him, he needed to go and see le frère-de-la-nuit immediately. Vieux Os knew that this strange person meddled in murky jobs, but he never thought that one day he was going to be saved by him.

Behind Vieux Os’ act of walking lies a pedestrian speech act whose principal goal is to avoid being captured, tortured, and killed. Thanks to his movement of going to le frère-de-la-nuit’s shack before entering King Salomon Star, Vieux Os was able to escape the cave of the beast without a single scratch.

The event in King Salomon Star happened at 4:27 in the morning. I consider this event one of the most crucial moments of the story because the outcome of it determines, to a large extent, the protagonist’s fate. Fortunately, Vieux Os walked away from the place unscathed. The most acute moments he lives in the streets occur precisely at night when, if I may coin a phrase, the animals come out and chase. It is at night when, for some, the most decisive moments in one’s life come together. As the protagonist says in a certain moment, “Tous les événements importants d’une vie peuvent se retrouver concentrés dans une seule nuit. L’amour, la mort, l’éxil. Et pour veiller sur ce trio infernal: le doux visage de l’amitié. Gasner, mon ami. Sans sa mort, je n’aurais pas eu le courage d’affronter le Cerbèreˮ (124-25). In these lines, the author

Laferrière uses the Greek animal figure of the Cerbère to depict the ferocious Tontons Macoutes. 142

To proceed in analyzing the urban space in Caribbean writing, we would be wise to quote a passage from the poet Brouard, who noted that “the only real world was that of the night, with its capacity to render the familiar strange and shocking” (Dash, The Other 123). Michael Dash contributes to the poet’s use of the streets of Port-au-Prince in his works by saying that such effects are possible in nocturnal Port-au-Prince due to its “bizarre juxtaposition of the archaic, the sordid, the mysterious, and the dilapidated” (123). Everything can happen in the hybrid place of Port-au-Prince, where the old and new fuse together. In this manner, the nature of the urban space in Laferrière’s novel is not fixed but flexible and unstable. I argue that this city is a mangrove because, on one hand, it facilitates creativity—albeit under pressure—in Vieux Os and others who, like the main character, are against the autocratic government, and on the other hand, it shows the real nature of the urban space to be that of the bloodthirsty Tontons Macoutes trying to chase new prey each night. The good and bad live in the same place, but they do not cohabit harmoniously; on the contrary, each fights to keep its own place.

In this changeable space, Vieux Os must think ahead of the possible disjunctures and ambiguities that can take place in it in order to not be harmed. Listen to the modernist critic

Marshall Berman when he discusses the individual’s self formation and the “moving chaos” of urban life:

The man in the modern street, thrown into this maelstrom, is driven back on his

own resources—often on resources he never knew he had—and forced to stretch

them desperately in order to survive. In order to cross the moving chaos he must

attune and adapt himself to its moves, must learn not merely to keep up with it

but stay at least a step ahead. He must become adept at . . . sudden abrupt, jagged

twists and shifts—not only with his legs and his body, but with his mind and 143

sensibility as well. (Dash, The Other 133)

As Berman points out in the passage, the individual must use not only his body but his mind, too.

Indeed, in Laferrière’s novel, the protagonist’s mode of resistance is not only to be in movement physically, but psychologically as well. In the segment named “Le mouvement perpétuel,” he utters, “Mon esprit vagabonde. Mon corps aussi. Je bouge sans arrêt, la plupart du temps pour revenir au même endroit. J’ai l’impression que si je reste constamment en mouvement, j’échapperai à la douleur . . . physique et mentale” (Laferrière, Le cri 77-78). According to

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), thinking is also a metaphor for moving. They consider the mind as a body, thinking as the action of moving, and reason as a force (236). From this perspective, when Vieux Os is not walking—when he is sitting on a bench, or when he is at the radio station with his friend Ézéquiel or in the hospital room with his friend François—he is still in movement in his mind. Reason is, thus, seen as a strong force that moves the thinker from one idea-location to another. Vieux Os uses his reason as a mode of resistance. This leads me to what Chamoiseau states about resistance in Écrire en pays dominé.

According to him, it must come from the inside (21). For Vieux Os, “thinkingˮ is his combat:

“Le seul espace disponible est celui qu’occupe mon corps. . . . L’espace du corps. Il ne me reste qu’à plonger dans mon corps, dans ma chair, dans mon esprit pour retrouver mon être intime”

(Laferrière, Le cri 114). This strategy consists of thinking about everything, except politics, which is the government’s favorite subject. On these grounds, Vieux Os is making a selection of what he is going to think about. Like a walker who chooses from a number of possible places to go, Vieux Os, when stationary, chooses from a number of possible ideas to think about as well.

He remembers his friend Gasner, his father, his mother, and his love life, among other topics. If we take the idea that reason is the force that moves the thinker to another location, then we can 144 argue that Vieux Os is in complete movement even when he is not moving his feet. Our protagonist is in danger whenever he stops thinking. Let us take the excerpt one more time from the hotel King Salomon Star. The guard recognized the journalist while he was watching a scene of a woman wearing a wedding dress. As Vieux Os points out in the passage, “J’avais baissé ma garde, à cause de la scène” (289). Being unable to think means being unable to move, and if he is not moving, then he is easy prey in the jungle. In order to survive, he must manipulate the physical and psychological space; in other words, he needs to select from a variety of options the physical spaces he will traverse, those he will skip, and the ideas he will place in his mind.

Practices of space correspond to manipulations (De Certeau 100).

In addition to this, thinking means “perceiving” (Lakoff 238). Vieux Os gets to know physical spaces by walking. For instance, he learns the way some members of the government interact while he is in the King Salomon Star hotel. It is commonly assumed that everyday experiences are perceived through the eyes. However, Vieux Os can also perceive objects when he is thinking. Hence, thinking is seeing:

This implication is that you can know a scene better by taking many viewpoints.

Metaphorically, someone who has only one perspective on the world may be

ignorant of things that are hidden from that perspective. Closeness matters as

well. To know something, you need to be close enough to see the details, but not

so close that you can’t make out the overall shape of things. (239)

When our protagonist is not walking, he is sometimes sitting on a bench or somewhere else.

From these locations, he can see only certain things. Some things may be hidden from his view, and small details may be invisible. But when he thinks, certain things become visible. He is using the ability of thinking to perceive things. In the segment named “L’état des choses,” Vieux 145

Os is walking fast and, at the same time, he is thinking about his friend Ézéquiel, who is in danger because he is going out with the wife of a colonel. Vieux Os is very worried for his friend and so immersed in the problem that it wears him out. Thus, he stops walking and sits down to relax. At this point, he starts thinking about his situation carefully. His stationary position allows the journalist to realize that he is completely alone in the city: “Je m’assois au coin de la rue, dans le caniveau. Un mince filet d’eau . . . m’apaise. . . . je suis seul dans ce quartier du centre ville. Dans le silence absolu, je tends l’oreille” (Laferrière, Le cri 200). Thanks to changing his position—from walking to sitting—he was able to see his situation from a different perspective.

Being alone in the city means that our passerby needs to be even more alert.

As we have noticed, the changing of perspective allows Vieux Os to loosen up a little bit, preparing him in this way for his next step. Not everything he thinks about is negative. There are positive thoughts in his mind as well. For instance, in the same segment of “L’état des choses,”

Vieux Os starts dreaming about Gasner’s life: “Un enchaînement d’événements positifs, ça me plairait bien. Par exemple, Gasner n’a été que grièvement blessé, il est à l’hôpital . . .” (201). He dreams that his friend is not dead, but simply hurt. This gives Vieux Os a temporary happiness, and it allows him to clean his mind. In this same dream, he also refers to Lisa, the woman of his life: “En allant voir Gasner, je trouve Lisa à son chevet. Près du corps de Gasner inconscient, je déclare mon amour à Lisa qui me répond qu’elle attendait ce moment depuis longtemps. Nous nous embrassons. . . . Sur ce, Gasner, ouvre les yeux et sourit . . .” (201). The climax of this dream is precisely when he thinks that he is kissing Lisa. All this is, as we have said, just a dream. It is not part of real life: Gasner is dead, and Lisa will not be with our protagonist. Still, the succession of images, sounds, and emotions that Vieux Os’ mind experiences during his journey in the city helps him to cope with the stress: “Le rêve a précédé le sommeil. Cela arrive 146 quand on est obligé de marcher seul dans les rues désertes d’une ville terrorisée. Il ne vous reste plus qu’à rêver” (202). His dreams serve as an adaptive function for survival. Vivid visualization in Vieux Os’ mind contributes to his mental detoxification. His dreams are ideas that he can select and play with. For George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, ideas are manipulable objects (240).

Thus, there is an emotional selection: some ideas are rejected by the mind as useless, while others may be seen as valuable and retained. Continuing with the passage above, Vieux Os is thinking about his friend Gasner because he misses him. Also, Gasner is the cause of the protagonist’s movement in the city. If Gasner was alive, Vieux Os would be spending time with

Lisa. One topic brings about another one and so on.

After having compared the pedestrian process to the art of thinking, we can bring both of them back down to the direction of linguistic formations that I was referring to earlier. Walking and thinking create a story that is fragmented, made of gaps, lapses, and allusions. “To walk is to lack a place” (De Certeau 103). Vieux Os walks to certain places because he has the urge to feel like he belongs to the city. He is desperate because he has little time left before leaving the country forever and for this reason, amongst other things, he throws himself to the streets of

Port-au-Prince. We can say the same thing about the act of thinking. For example, if Vieux Os thinks about Lisa and Gasner, it is because he needs them: neither Lisa nor Gasner is in his life as he would have liked. The former ignores him and the latter is dead. In the same way that our journalist selects the ideas in his mind, he also chooses the spaces he visits. While doing this, he is fragmenting the components of the city because he is neither visiting everything, nor thinking about everything. Some of the most important places he visits are the hospital to see Gasner’s body, the brothel Brise-de-mer, where he likes to talk to Mercedes and Fifine, the theatre of the city to see the play Antigone, the bench on which he talks with Barthelmy César, a friend of his 147 father, the hotel King Salomon Star, and the airport. In each of these spaces, our journalist collects pieces of information about his friend Gasner and his father Windsor K. In addition to this, Vieux Os also creates new paths. For example, although it is not specified in the text, he arrives to the conclusion that Gasner loved walking in the streets of Port-au-Prince because he felt empowered. Gasner was addicted to dangerous activities for the adrenaline rush. The release of adrenaline in his body is employed as a stress response. By walking in the streets, Vieux Os experiences in flesh what Gasner used to feel every time he visited dangerous places, such as the hotel King Salomon Star. In the segment “La nuit fatale,” Vieux Os admits the following:

Je viens de comprendre: j’avais besoin d’être au bord du gouffre pour devenir

un homme. La nuit de toutes les initiations. . . . J’ai conscience d’être, au moins

pour cette nuit, l’élément pivotant de la ville. Tout vibre autour de moi. Un

grand vent emporte tout sur son passage: hommes, plantes, bêtes. Partout on

crie, on pleure, on hurle. Je marche tranquillement au centre du tumulte.

(Laferrière, Le cri 125)

In this statement, Vieux Os’ words transmit the message that he is self-assured. Now, let us look at the protagonist’s reaction at the beginning of the novel after learning of Gasner’s death:

Je viens de me séparer d’un groupe de copains avec qui j’ai contribué, d’une

certaine manière, ces dernières années, à changer le visage de la presse haïtienne.

J’applaudis leur tempérament, mais je suis trop lâche pour me précipiter sans

analyse préalable dans ce qui est visiblement un piège à rats. Qui nous dit que le

massacre est terminé? (32)

Without a doubt, there is a change in his personality. In the phrase, “je suis trop lâche,” Vieux Os shows weakness. Besides, he points out that he needs to study the situation before doing 148 something. The question at the bottom of the passage suggests that our protagonist is afraid of what might happen to him. On the contrary, in the previous excerpt, Vieux Os feels confident of his actions. The statement, “Je marche tranquillement au centre du tumulte,” is strong, and it reclaims a presence. The adverb tranquillement indicates he is undisturbed by strife. No matter how awful the situation is outside, he is untouchable. Vieux Os ends up walking in the streets in the same way that Gasner used to do it. The building of his confidence in the space of the

Other—the city—means empowerment for him. Vieux Os’ actions become a strategy of resistance because he is able to delimit his own space in “the invisible powers of the Other” (De

Certeau 36) and ultimately is able to navigate freely in the streets of Port-au-Prince. By being in constant movement, Vieux Os is able to express in a non-verbal manner his political protest against the regime. As was explained in Chapters I and II, the desire of the oppressed is to be on an equal level with the oppressor (Britton 23). Vieux Os is aware that in twenty-four hours, he will escape from the country to never come back, but before doing it, he wants to play his last card. The city of Port-au-Prince symbolizes a site of power; by traversing it, Vieux Os is positioning himself, metaphorically, on the same level as the members of the dictatorial regime.

He knows he will not be able to disavow Baby Doc’s power from the city, but his position challenges in a certain way the regime. Vieux Os is not an intruder in the jungle anymore. He turns into a tigre capable of surviving by himself: “C’est la première fois de ma vie que je prends l’avion. Que va devenir ce jeune tigre efflanqué, habitué à se débrouiller dans la pire jungle de la

Caraïbe, maintenant qu’il va vivre dans un tel confort ?” (Laferrière, Le cri 315). This passage forms part of the last segment, named “Un dieu m’ouvre la barrière.” Here, Vieux Os manages to take the plane to go to Montreal without any problem. 149

It is important to highlight that Vieux Os challenges the political system in two ways: first, through his anti-government writing while working at the magazine; and second, through his mental and physical movements along the streets of Port-au-Prince. Since the urban space is projected as a mangrove and a marvelous world, where everything is possible, the main character assumes the role of the mythical and solitary hero who is able to navigate freely in the jungle and walk away from its predators unscathed. While moving in different directions, physically and mentally, our journalist creates a network of relations that has neither beginning nor end: “Dès qu’on a initié le premier mouvement, on est en orbite pour ne plus atterrir. C’est la loi du mouvement perpétuel” (163). Vieux Os has powerful relations with his friends, people who are acquainted with these, and also with his father’s friends. This notion of relations is linked to the philosophical concept of the “rhizome” developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. As noted in Chapter I, the rhizome “proliferates randomly from many different nodes at once”

(Britton 14). Expressing much the same idea, I locate Glissant with his concept of Relation, a system whose elements are intertwined in a nonhierarchical order (Britton 11). Vieux Os’ movement in the city is presented as a map with no specific origin and with a wide array of connections. Once the protagonist is walking in the streets, he understands why his father, as well as other people like him, went into exile; he comprehends the pain that his father and the rest are suffering living away from their native land and their families. It seems that the past of all these people has not changed in the present. The stress of knowing that he has only twenty- four hours left in the city makes him want to reclaim his space and the Others’ space in the city before taking the plane to Canada. In the same way that his father and one of his best friends disappeared suddenly from the protagonist’s life, he realizes that he, too, will disappear suddenly from the lives of many people, some of them friends and more importantly his mother, but he 150 wants to leave his footprints in the streets of Port-au-Prince. By intersecting places and people, he understands the sense of empowerment that his friend Gasner used to feel each time he would walk in the streets. The question that haunts us now is: how is this sense of empowerment reflected in the structure of the novel? At this time, let us turn to the analysis of it in the next section.

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The art of rhythm

Le cri des oiseaux fous is journalistic in style. Every action of the protagonist is presented orderly in a certain number of brief, concise sections, each bearing a short title like so many little segments in a newspaper. The content of each section is factual and contains straightforward information. This offers to the reader a stable perspective of what is being narrated. Like a newspaper that is divided into diverse sections, such as news of local and national events, entertainment, sports, and advertising, the novel contains countless layers of allusions, dialogues, parodies, and monologues with a non-specified order. The wide variety of material in the novel causes disorder and, thus, confusion to the reader. Such variation also creates a sort of rhythm.

Let me explain with an example. In the opening section called “La tasse blanche” (Laferrière, Le cri 11-12), the protagonist narrates a contemplative moment of his mother with her white cup.

He then jumps to the second section called “L’exil” (12-15), in which the protagonist tells the story of his father being in exile. The second section has no apparent relation with the first one.

Nonetheless, the third section called “La raison du pouvoir” (15-17) is the continuation of the first section because it talks about the dialogue between Vieux Os and his mother. This literary design repeats throughout the novel. The organization of most of Laferrière’s works has been discussed by Alvina Ruprecht, who observes that Laferrière employs “techniques of improvisation related to jazz composition” (Ruprecht 260). According to her, the Haitian-

Canadian author cuts, mixes, and integrates different situations throughout most of his literary works “in repetitious rhythms and sound patterns” (260). Although she does not analyze a specific work by Laferrière, I contend that such a jazz-related phenomenon occurs in Le cri des oiseaux fous. I shall explain this further. The long list of different headlines in each section, the openness of their multiple interpretations, and the grammatical manner of narrating each allude 152 to improvisation, which is clearly one of the key elements of jazz. Besides, it is known that a jazz performer never plays the same composition exactly the same way twice. Like a skilled performer, Laferrière has a special relationship to spontaneity in that he describes each section and character’s action in individual ways, never repeating the same style. Let us analyze some fragments of the novel to understand the jazz-related phenomenon in the novel.

For instance, in the fragment “Antigone” (Laferrière, Le cri 132- 43), the main character appears without previous warning in a theatre, where his friend Ézéquiel is replacing another actor to play the role of the villain. The protagonist/narrator emphasizes the fact that Ézéquiel had only a few hours to learn his lines. Such an unexpected performance from the character mirrors the individuality and key element of improvisation of the performing jazz musician.

Besides, it brings attention not only to the crowd in the theatre, but also to the external spectators, the readers. Ézéquiel’s eloquence also contributes to the good reception of the crowd.

As a group, the spectators interact with the individual voice and performance of the actor because they see their lives reflected through his performance. His extraordinary performance is welcomed by a standing ovation. Laferrière calls this section “Antigone” because he refers to the

Greek tragedy by Sophocles adapted into Creole and presented in the context of Haitian culture by the Haitian writer and journalist Félix Morisseau-Leroy. Here, the author’s intention is to make a comparison to the dictatorship in which the protagonist is living. This comparison makes the reader feel embroiled in a universe where imagination meets the representation of reality. For example, in the tragedy by Morisseau-Leroy, Créon, the chief from a rural area, symbolizes the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier because he has the right to kill without having to be accountable to anyone. The female protagonist Antigone decides to give her life in order to have the right to say

“no” to the chief to whom she had demanded her brother’s body to bury. Antigone’s brother 153 symbolizes Vieux Os’ friend, Gasner, and the young woman’s behavior represents the disapproving reaction of the Haitian community to the decisions of their dictator: “Je crois que c’est notre réponse à l’assassinat de Gasner. Le pouvoir s’attendait à nous voir baisser les bras.

On voulait nous terroriser, nous faire peur, nous désespérer totalement. Antigone répond à notre place” (134). In the tragedy, not only is it Antigone who faces Créon, but her son, Hémon, does as well. My interpretation of this section is that the author is using the Creole adaptation of the

Greek tragedy, first, to respond to the single-minded and ruthless regime in which Haitians are living and, second, to create a sort of group interaction in the audience. When the protagonist says, “Antigone répond à notre place,” this shows that Haitians have little faith in themselves and that they need an external element, which in this case is the Greek tragedy, to support their political protest. Given Haiti’s tragic history of corruption and dictators, the author uses a Greek tragedy to show visually that transformation is possible with every rebellious action that each individual commits against the autocratic government, in the same way that Antigone rebels against Créon. The tragedy Antigone depicts the current Haitian situation of individuals fighting against the regime and makes the crowd feel identified and motivated with its representation.

Another segment where improvisation and group interaction play an important role is the one entitled “Les chiens de l’enfer” (203-15). Here, the protagonist/narrator depicts the confrontation he has with a group of stray dogs. Like humans, the city’s stray dogs learn to adapt in difficult situations in order to get food and shelter where they can be safe from other predators.

When our protagonist feels threatened by the canines, he opts to behave like them by walking in four legs in order to go unnoticed: “Je me mets à quatre pattes au moment où l’attaque allait être donnée contre moi. Étonnement. Léger movement de recul de leur part” (209). Vieux Os’ spontaneous reaction is unexpected for the dogs, and this is precisely what saves his life. He 154 decides to interact with them by behaving like they do, and for this reason, he is accepted in the group. Even though it is not specified in the text, these dogs can fairly represent the government officers—les Tontons Macoutes. In the time of slavery, French colonists trained dogs to chase black maroons in order to bring them back to their plantations. During the Duvalier regime, officers were instructed to remove and still potential dissidents and opposition of any kind.

Vieux Os is not attacked and killed by the officers in his last twenty-four hours spent in Haiti because he knows how to manage himself. His impulsive movements in the urban space are fearless and so natural that he never shows any signs of his true plans to leave the country. With the representation of the Greek tragedy Antigone mentioned before and the behavior of the stray dogs, we notice that the author is also worried about the allusions or insinuations to which these terms can refer. In other words, Antigone is not only the brave young woman who faces up the rural chief, but she also represents the desired uprising of the Haitian community. “Les chiens de l’enfer” does not refer only to the stray dogs of the Haitian urban city, but also to the cruel officers that wander the streets in search of new prey. This unique way of calling each segment indicates an equally unique way of naming things. Just like Vieux Os manages to survive in the streets of Port-au-Prince without directly confronting his enemies, each segment’s heading follows the same rhythm. They discuss different situations, and they allude to different things with a special relation to spontaneity and creativity. By doing this, the author puts emphasis on what is behind each symbolic title just like the jazz musician puts emphasis on his unique live performance.

Jazz rhythm also has a special relationship to time. As a reader, besides being confronted by a double representation of reality—the one that is read through the lines and the one that is in between lines—the display of the time placed next to the headings allows us to gauge the 155 urgency of “upcoming” events. Indeed, the time allows us to visualize the order of events that are coming up, such as the protagonist’s plan of going into exile, which we know is going to happen, though we ignore how he will do it. As we all recognize, time involves motion: there is a past, a present, and a future. In the headings, the spatial schema applies to the present. However, the action in it utterly defies normal time and space by bringing the past, the present, and diverse spaces together within one single narration. For instance, the segment “La photo” begins at 4:12 pm (Laferrière, Le cri 55), and even though this spatial schema determines something that happens in the present, there is a sequence of events moving past and forward, events that refer either to the distant past or to a more recent past. In this segment, our protagonist is looking at a picture of his father, who is accompanied by two other people. Vieux Os then remembers a conversation he had in the past with his mother about this picture. She told her son that the picture was taken in Croix-des-Bouquets, a city in the West Department of Haiti, where his father was hiding from the military ruler at the time, Paul Eugène Magloire. Hence, she moved to the moment when her husband returned home and to the moment he escaped from the police.

This last event occurred when he was at home with his wife and his son, who was just a young child, and the police came to arrest him. Luckily, he was faster than the patrol, and he escaped.

This event is located in a further past because it happened after the picture was taken. The schema is as follows: the present is Vieux Os looking at the picture at 4:12 pm, which is the time written next to the heading; he then moves to the past, when he narrates the dialogue he had with his mother about the picture of his father. Finally, his mother moves from this past to a further moment. Thus, we can argue that the time displayed in the headings is stationary; it serves as a reference point for the events preceding and following. The purpose of this time-moving frame is to enable the main character—and, of course, the readers—to obtain knowledge well beyond his 156 normal experiential purview. By looking at the picture, Vieux Os learns more things about his father. An object helps him to remember a conversation he had with his mother and how the woman narrated the way his father escaped from the police. The action in this segment, as well as in the rest, freely explores the boundaries of time and space.

In Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson discuss the concept of time using metaphors such as motion and space, along with a landscape you move over or away from.

According to them, we cannot think about time without using metaphors (166). In their space- time metaphor, “any locations you are moving toward must exist, as must the past locations that you have already gone over. In short, it is an entailment of this metaphor that the past and the future exist at the present” (159). Their concept of time being present at any moment makes me think again to the metaphor of rhythm that one can find in jazz music, in the way that creativity, individual voice, group interaction, time, spontaneity, and originality all fuse together in the performance. They all exist separately; each of them is revealed at a certain pace during the performance to produce a unique song. Proceeding with the concept of time, Vieux Os is very fond of it; there is even a section in the novel, a monologue, to be exact, entitled “Le temps”

(Laferrière, Le cri 143), where he explains his own definition of time. At the beginning of this segment, the protagonist wishes to see Lisa for at least ten seconds, and he struggles with this because he realizes that he is running out of time. Thus, he stops for a moment in order to find a solution for his problem:

Assieds-toi sur ce banc. Fais le vide dans ta tête. D’accord, mais je n’ai pas

beaucoup de temps à ma disposition. Cela n’a rien à voir avec le temps. C’est

surtout une question de rythme. . . . Tu sais, le jazz. . . . Improvisation. Laisse

aller les choses. Hier encore, j’avais tout mon temps. Mais tu as toujours tout ton 157

temps. Non, c’est faux, mon temps est compté, cette nuit. . . . Tu connais ce

papillon qui ne vit que vingt-quatre heures ? Oui. Eh bien, ses vingt-quatre

durent plus longtemps que certaines vies humaines de soixante-dix ans. . . . Le

temps n’existe pas. . . . Je n’ai qu’une nuit pour tout faire. Alors, ne fais rien.

(144)

Vieux Os concludes that the concept of time does not exist because it is always present. If he needs time to see Lisa, then he does not need to force the situation; on the contrary, he needs to loosen up and find the rhythm within himself. Improvisation is the key element of it. Children are natural jazz musicians because they have the ability to see time without restrictions. Since they have not been bombarded by the rules of time in the adult world, they act without thinking.

When Vieux Os was a child, he was asked by the police where his father was, and he responded,

“Papa, il reviendra hier. . . . Je suis très heureux d’avoir confondu l’officier en mélangeant les temps. Le futur et le passé entremêlés. C’est exactement ça, ma conception du présent” (58). For our protagonist, the present is then the combination of the past and the future. This explains why the time displayed in the headings indicates only the present. Even though the events in the headings are organized chronologically throughout the story, they are not linear because each segment goes back to the past, to a more recent past, and to the future in order to narrate certain events that occurred to Vieux Os in different moments of his life. Unlike the city, time is an intangible space in which the journalist moves freely in different directions. In the city, we notice that Vieux Os returns several times to the same places, such as the bench and the brothel Brise- de-mer. Our protagonist moves back and forth in these places. In the time displayed in the headings, he does the same thing: he narrates events in the past, in the present, and in the future at random order. 158

Now, the question is: why does the alter ego of Laferrière do that? The specific time located next to the headings gives us an orientation to the moment of his actions. Nonetheless, within each section, the protagonist behaves like a jazz musician who moves back and forth in time (and space) and uses improvisation and interaction in order to not be controlled and to produce an original song. Hence, the other characters in the novel, the Duvalier regime, and even we, the readers, do not know his movements in advance. This makes us conclude that the protagonist is playing with all these elements for his own purposes. There is no question that this play-oriented nature of the style of the novel—each segment’s title and time—agrees with the way our protagonist moves in the urban space and how he manages to survive in it. By moving back and forth in the time-line, and by having headings with multiple interpretations, the author and protagonist are showing their desire for freedom.

We have seen how rhythm is present in the structure of the novel. Clearly, Le cris des oiseaux fous is composed of an ingenious narrative skeleton. The headings are allusive and open to multiple interpretations. Most of the titles make reference explicitly or indirectly to a person, place, or event. It is left to the reader to make the connection. Time is play-oriented as well. It is stationary when shown next to the headings, but it is in constant movement inside each segment of the novel. Time is an imaginary space, where our protagonist feels free because he moves back and forth as many times as he wants. In the city of Port-au-Prince, Vieux Os also learns to improvise and to follow his steps with rhythm. This happens when he is forced to go into exile due to his criticism of the dictatorial regime. Despise his regret at suddenly leaving the only land that saw him grow up and the woman who brought him into this world and raised him, he decides to leave his footprints in the city in honor of those people who, like him, had to leave their families and go into exile. The last twenty-four hours in Haiti symbolize a breaking point in 159 his life. In this big and dangerous place whose purpose is to intimidate its inhabitants, Vieux Os manages to survive before taking the plane to Montreal. A constant suspense seizes the attention of the reader because the outcome of his success is not unveiled until the end of the story. By being in movement incessantly—walking and thinking—Vieux Os is able to define his own place in enemy territory. This place is the protagonist’s mind and body. As a consequence, he feels powerful. At the time of his journey, Vieux Os behaves as a journalist: he collects information about his friend Gasner’s death and about his father’s life. For every step forward the protagonist takes, time moves in reverse sequence to narrate events that happened in the past.

Later, these events fluctuate back to the present and bring knowledge to the main character. He, then, makes a selection of everything he sees, hears, and thinks. He chooses which places to visit and who to meet, except for his father’s friends, who appear randomly during his journey in the city, and the Tontons Macoutes, who are in different locations in the urban space waiting to chase their prey. With all this, Vieux Os challenges the regime because he demonstrates that, even in the most crucial moment of his life, he cannot be controlled by them. Athough he leaves in exile, he knows he took control of his mind and body in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

It is in this line of vision that, in Chapter IV, we will examine how the female protagonist of El hombre, la hembra y el hambre is also forced to leave her native country, although her circumstances are quite different from those of our journalist. Claudia decides to leave Cuba because she knows that if she chooses to stay, she and her son will die of hunger. The lack of food and other basic necessities is what the Castro regime employs to keep their totalitarian control on the people. Like Vieux Os, Claudia’s liberatory experience lies in her mind and in her body, as well as in her ability to move constantly in the streets of Havana. Walking in this urban 160 space allows her to discover, to learn, to listen, and to engage in a communicative process with

Cuba’s past and ancestors. It is in the streets that she is able to travel to a different world where she does not feel oppressed and where she is able to collect information about the island’s past.

Rather than hearing oral memories from others—like Marie-Sophie and Vieux Os—Claudia testifies how life was in the past with her own eyes thanks to her psychic abilities. It is also important to note that Isabel Luberza, the female protagonist in Chapter V, is likewise a faithful witness to the past; although she does not possess parapsychological abilities, she does experience the social intricacies of Puerto Rico’s past. In one case or the other, their communication with their past provides them with a critical understanding of the world in which they are being oppressed. In order to further understand how and why this happens, we need to examine first Claudia’s strategy of resistance.

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Chapter IV

Cuba: El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998)47

About the author and her novel

A new generation of Cuban authors in exile, shaped by the ideas of the Cuban

Revolution, emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century. This generation denounces the failures of the Cuban Revolution. It is important to note that before Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, Cuba experienced a social and economic disequilibrium. Unemployment, the exploitation of social groups, and the increasing economic domination of the United States in

Cuba occurred under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (Victoria 223). Thus, the

Castro Revolution was awaited by Cubans as a political revolution and it was successful because it overthrew the Batista regime from power. It also became a socioeconomic revolution in that food was rationed, homes distributed, voluntary work organized, and the black market and prostitution were fought (233). Other extensive socioeconomic changes included the improvement of healthcare services and education (De Vos 30). However, the arrival of the

Castro regime signaled, to a certain extent, a return to old patterns: elections were eliminated, and any counter-revolutionary activity was sanctioned, among other suppressive measures (233).

The Cuban writer Daína Chaviano (1957)48 belongs to this generation. She grew up during the total social and economic transformation of Cuban society. She witnessed the achievements of the socialist regime, as well as its inefficiencies and inequalities. In her literary works, which include several science fiction and fantasy books, she assumes the role of the speaker of the people and reclaims the native land by rescuing its history, the events that are worth being

47 It won Spain’s Premio Azorín in 1998 for Best Novel, which was subsequently published by Planeta Editores. Its original title, Paraíso maldito, was mentioned in Ezequiel Molto’s report of her winning the Premio Azorín (6). 48 Daína Chaviano left Cuba in 1991 and established residence in Miami where she wrote her novel. 162 remembered instead of the terrible things that according to her, are taught in Cuba: “Cuando a un pueblo se le niega su pasado, se le mutila, odia su presente y no tiene fe en el futuro. Eso es lo que me sucedió a mi generación, lo que me sucedió a mí . . . (Sanz 52). In the series “La Habana oculta,” which is composed of El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998), Casa de juegos (1999),

Gata encerrada (2001), and La isla de los amores infinitos (2006), Chaviano’s main concern is the exploration of Cuba’s history, its past and present and how these two can change the future of the island (Fernández 71). In this series, as well as in the rest of her literary works, her style is described as a mix of magical and/or fantastic genres and a high degree of symbolism, with deep layers of realism.

I specifically chose to analyze the first novel of the series49 in this chapter because it takes the reader into another dimension through the parapsychological skills of Claudia,50 the female protagonist, who immerses herself into an imagined Havana of earlier centuries. This is something very rare to find in Cuban novels of the last decade of the twentieth century. The protagonist’s memory testifies to the importance of having this past in order to overcome the difficulties in her present and future. While in the past, Claudia feels as safe as she was in the womb of her mother: “Claudia se sentía como si hubiera regresado al vientre de su madre.

Segura de que nadie las veía . . .” (Chaviano, El hombre 274). Her memory becomes a symbol of hope for her and the younger generation, which does not know the way people lived in harmony and in prosperity in the past because that way of living has been destroyed by man and nature. In addition to this, the members of the older generation are slowly forgetting its past because they are old and because they are selling their family treasures to the government so that they can eat

49 El hombre, la hembra y el hambre appears as the first novel of the series “La Habana oculta,” but it was, in fact the third novel written by the author; the first was Gata encerrada, and the second was Casa de juegos (Fernández 72). 50 Claudia’s parapsychological skills are her psychic abilities to interact with an environment that does not exist in her real life, in which she experiences death encounters, memory regression, and reincarnation. 163 better. Chaviano’s novel affirms and validates a country in conflict by showing that it does have a past, even if its inhabitants cannot remember that past. What also makes this novel interesting is the fact that it discusses how Cubans find a way to make something out of nothing in order to survive each day. It specifically focuses on the economic activities of the self-employed, such as trafficking and prostitution. It is difficult to estimate how many people are engaged in this sort of work, but it is obviously a large number. As an exiled Cuban writer, Daína Chaviano studies this island’s reality while expressing her hopes for freedom and democracy for her fellow countrymen fiercely at the same time. It is from a distance that the author feels the urge to tell about the smallest details with care. As Madeline Cámara writes in her review, Chaviano’s novel is “un rito de iniciación hacia la libertad de crear sin censura, de reflexionar sobre su país y su

época . . .” (181).

Indeed, in El hombre, la hembra y el hambre, a great interest in recuperating the island’s history is shown. Here, the author denounces the contradictions of the ideals of the Cuban

Revolution, which increased during the crisis of 1990s. In this novel, Daína Chaviano provides an in-depth, readable text of the “special period in times of peace,” the years of economic hardship, still in force, which began in Cuba in 1992. The Cuban economy had been teetering on the brink of ruin, which was brought about by the withdrawal of Soviet subsidies and the U.S. trade embargo. The novel takes place at its most severe stage, in the early-to-mid 1990s. This

“special period” brought about sharp reductions in the availability of all basic necessities, including food, oil, soap, kerosene, and medicines, in the rationed market (Cabezas 84). It also attracted more injustices into the system: those in charge of distribution had everything, while the rest were dying of hunger. The period radically transformed not only the Cuban economy but also its people, who were and still are being forced to look for other ways to survive. The 164 protagonists of Chaviano’s book have all graduated from Cuban Universities, but they cannot practice their professions due to the island’s economic crisis. Instead, some of them are involved in the black market, while others practice prostitution. In this way, she illustrates the failure of the Cuban Revolution. During the “special period,” the number of traffickers in the black market and jineteras, women who exchange a range of favors, including sexual ones, for money from tourists, escalates. The impetus for Chaviano’s book is a desire to understand the island by exploring how the characters manage to survive in a socialist Cuba that is not providing the basic necessities to its inhabitants so that they can live there. “Dollars,” or fulas, as Cubans say, are what can buy food, but they are very hard to find. The need for them grows faster than the growth of legal jobs. In fact, at the time the novel was written, the possession of dollars was illegal.51 Cubans were forced to do whatever they could to get them, even if it meant being imprisoned: “Andar con dólares. ¿Sabes que te pueden meter preso?” (Chaviano, El hombre 28).

Controversially, Daína Chaviano wrote El hombre, la hembra y el hambre after leaving

Cuba in 1991 to establish residence in Miami, when the crisis of the “special period” was just sprouting on the island. This subjective scenario allows me to identify where this particular novel fits in my dissertation. Its purpose is to offer a perspective of the writer’s whole experience in

Havana that targets political domination and some of the most confusing and contradictory but critical aspects of the “special period.” At the same time, since it was written in exile, it sheds new light on the ways Cubans survive and resist. One might ask how Chaviano wrote a novel about this historical crisis if she was living outside the island during its most severe phase.

51 Private ownership and the circulation of the U.S. dollar was prohibited for Cubans until 1994 (Fusco 164). “Dollars were held, nevertheless, and circulated clandestinely from 1960 to 1993” (Ritter 101). In 1994, as the free circulation of the American dollar was established, the “convertible peso” was introduced, which had the same purpose as the dollar. The introduction of this new coin was a “means of replacing a portion of the circulating dollars, thereby capturing the seigniorage” (104). Cuba, thus, has two general economies, a dollar economy and a peso economy. 165

According to the author, she was able to write this novel, firstly, because her memories about the event were still fresh, and secondly, because she was able to collect exhaustive information about the Cuban crisis from Miami:

De todos modos, aunque las tres primeras novelas de la serie nacen de mi

experiencia habanera, si no hubiera llegado a Miami jamás habría podido

escribirlas. Desde mis estudios esotéricos hasta los sabores de las frutas,

pasando por la reconstrucción de monumentos arquitectónicos de La Habana, la

cantidad de información que pude recuperar o adquirir sobre mi país en Miami

es algo que jamás hubiera logrado viviendo en la isla. (Fernández 75)

In the same way that Dany Laferrière was transformed into a Haitian writer once he went into exile to Montreal, Daína Chaviano left her native land, and it was precisely by doing this that she found her path to becoming a Cuban writer.52 Ever since that time, she consistently engages in the political situation of the island in her writings. It is said that people who migrate to other countries are often perceived as fluid and open to adapting to any situation. This does not mean, however, that migrants consider their home countries as something simply left behind. Quite the opposite, it becomes an imaginary place that always accompanies them in their minds wherever they go. For this reason, it is important for me to observe, in this dissertation, how writers from the exodus—Laferrière and Chaviano exclusively—construct imaginary homelands and strategies of resistance that allow their characters to survive during periods of political and socioeconomic crisis. It is precisely the writers’ fluidity to adapt to any situation that makes their

52 Another female Cuban author from the same generation as Daína Chaviano who has also succeeded in exile and writes with a witness’s authority about post-Soviet Cuba is Zoé Valdés (1959). Two of her most powerful representations of Cuban society are the novels La nada cotidiana (1995) which received the prize Liberatur Preis, and Te di la vida entera (1996), which was finalist for the prize Planeta (Rosales 7). 166 imagination able to transcend their current place of residence and to reaffirm their ties with their national culture as a means of unifying their fragmented nations.

Few works have been written on Chaviano’s novel. In the essay “El presente y el futuro:

Transgresión del presente en la novela El hombre, la hembra y el hambre de la escritora cubana

Daína Chaviano,” Venko Kanev argues that the novel exhibits Cubans’ disappointment in the failure of expectations in the Cuban Revolution to manifest. Kanev highlights the fact that the purpose of Chaviano’s text is to show the frustrations, in particular, of her own generation, who believed in Castro’s Revolution and whose dreams were destroyed with the dearth of resources during the “special period” (59-60). According to Kanev, since the Miami-based Daína Chaviano belongs to this generation, in other words, since she witnessed the formation of the Castro regime and its failure, she feels the right to criticize it and to offer possible solutions to the critical situation in Cuban society (60). Kanev’s work is useful here because it gives us a glimpse of Chaviano’s point of view. It also exposes a detailed description of Chaviano’s generation by pointing out the discrepancy between reality and discourse. There is another work that also places an emphasis on Cubans’ disillusionment, which is “ ‘Esta isla se vende’: proyecciones desde el exilio de una generación ¿desilusionada?” by the scholar Yvette Sánchez, who examines, in general, the topics that Cuban writers in exile have treated in their literary works that they have created in the last decade of the twentieth century. These fluctuate between diverse utopist representations and dystopian ones. In the first category, there are texts that approach the island as a mystic place lost in time, in which memory is obtained through spatial representations and a desire to recuperate the Cuban territory by naming places, streets, plazas, etc. (Sánchez 169). Moreover, there are productions that depict the island as the Promised Land, with notions of idyllic places, innocence, and tropicality (175). The dystopic representations are 167 located in the novels that evoke a pessimistic reality, such as persecution, prison, and death, under which the characters are in constant surveillance by state security (168). El hombre, la hembra y el hambre by Daína Chaviano resumes these two types of representations because on one hand, it describes an Old Havana now in ruins, with its inhabitants in despair, seeking to survive, and on the other hand, the main character’s retrospectives take her to colonial Havana, where everything is filled with life and color.

In addition to the study of Chaviano’s generation and its disillusionment regarding the

Cuban Revolution, great attention was also given to the linguistic description of Cuba’s “special period.” The dissertation called “Fiction(s) of Cuba in Literary Economies of the 1990s: Buying in or Selling out?” analyzes Chaviano’s novel in its second chapter. The author Esther Whitfield demonstrates that El hombre, la hembra y el hambre acts as a lexicon that translates the local vocabulary for non-Cuban visitors, teaching them about the epoch of the island’s “special period.” Whitfield discusses the characters’ experiences in Havana, whose interactions are motivated by monetary exchange. Her study examines two other Cuban novels whose textual metaphors also point to the dollar-driven intentions of the characters. These literary works are

Zoé Valdés’ Te di la vida entera (1996) and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’ Trilogía sucia de la Habana

(1998). Two years after writing her thesis, the scholar Esther Whitfield rewrote the second chapter of her dissertation and published the following article: “The Novel as Cuban Lexicon:

Bargaining Bilinguals in Daína Chaviano’s El hombre, la hembra y el hambre.” Here, the author focuses specifically on the vocabulary used by the characters as part of a process of bilingualism in order to define their island’s “special period.” Whitfield takes the novel as if it were a guidebook to Cuba’s recent history and a trip into its linguistic landscape. For her, an imagined dictionary is inscribed in the novel, which helps educate those who are unfamiliar with the period 168

(Whitfield 194). She then proceeds to analyze some of the most important vocabulary words. She starts with the title itself and moves to its text by exploring the words marked by italics or inverted commas. Whitfield places emphasis on the meaning of every single word, in other words, on the concepts behind them. Her work is significant for this chapter because when I talk about the structure of Chaviano’s novel, I make particular reference to what the terms in its title denote. I argue that the novel’s title gives a hint as to what is going to happen throughout the novel. El hombre and la hembra are united in frequently experiencing the physical sensation of desiring food all the time, el hambre. Nevertheless, the fact that these two human beings are identified even before the novel begins indicates that despite being united in being hungry, they are also isolated in society. Thus, they need to find their own strategies of survival and their own food individually. This is exactly what happens in the novel and in its organization. Indeed, women and men have their own voices, and each of them is responsible for making ends meet.

Even though God created man and woman so that they can accompany each other, Chaviano’s novel shows us their individualism in the struggle for liberation.

The study of concepts is also present, although in a different way, in “Las significaciones del paisaje y el espacio en El hombre, la hembra y el hambre de Daína Chaviano” by Venko

Kanev. Here, the author envisages the city of Havana as one of the main protagonists in

Chaviano’s novel. Thus, he describes Cuba’s “special period” through a study of Havana’s urban spaces and landscapes. He analyzes the streets and buildings of the Havana of the 90’s as compared to the imagined capital of earlier centuries—specifically the pre-Columbian, conquest, and colonial times—which is transmitted to us through Claudia’s parapsychological skills. For

Kanev, the inhabitants of the island also belong to the human landscape of Havana (838). He analyzes them in groups, such as the way people form a line to buy food, for instance. It seems 169 that for the author, the existence of individuals is diffused and absorbed by the intimidating presence of the urban space of the city. Individuals’ actions become static because they form a part of the space and landscape. Kanev’s study is a collective view that includes the buildings, spaces, and people of a problematic present that is explained by reference to a safe past. In this chapter, I study some of the most relevant survival actions of the protagonists in accordance with the critical environment of Cuba’s capital. Here, the key is the scope of the action, in particular, the rebellious detours elaborated on by the main characters. This action is determined by the urban spaces in which the characters evolve. It is true that the city wants to absorb people’s personalities through the Castro regime. Nevertheless, characters rebel against this by reclaiming their own identity and space. For this reason, I analyze the protagonists’ actions and the space in which they develop separately, yet simultaneously, because one depends on the other and vice versa. Equally important to note is the decadent state of some of Havana’s buildings. In Kanev’s article, there is not a discussion of this issue. Part of my study is an examination of the way in which Havana’s crumbling architecture not only intimidates the performance of the characters, but also helps our protagonist, Claudia, to reaffirm her identity. “The deterioration and collapse of buildings in Havana’s old quarters” does not create historical ruins; they “fall into the category of ‘urban decay,’ ” because they are inhabited and left without routine maintenance

(Whitifield, “The Ruined City” 133). Despite being described in this way, Havana’s neglected spaces stand as the evidence that the past—albeit, a recent past—exists within them and that these buildings once looked as good as new. In this way, their decaying layers symbolize a door to temporal dimensions. Claudia is able to read Havana’s ruins and travel to an imagined Havana of centuries earlier. 170

I came across one article that explicitly analyzes Claudia’s choice to become a jinetera.

Raúl Rosales Herrera investigates and compares, in “El contradiscurso erótico en La nada cotidiana de Zoé Valdés y El hombre, la hembra y el hambre de Daína Chaviano,” the erotic discourses of the female protagonists Yocandra and Claudia/la Mora as acts of resistance.53 The author argues that these characters use the privacy of their bodies to reach a level of autonomy in the midst of the political, economical, and social turmoil of Havana: “Su única vía de escape y de resistencia es el autorreconocimiento femenino, el descubrimiento de una capacidad erótica contraria a los paradigmas pasivos y represivos dictados desde arriba, en efecto, una resistencia activa desde sus cuerpos y con sus cuerpos” (13). Rosales Herrera claims that Claudia/la Mora’s level of autonomy becomes restricted when she starts selling her body to tourists for money: “Sin embargo, Claudia/la Mora ahora reconoce que su jineterismo ha comprometido y pervertido la poca libertad que tenía a su alcance. Su postura pasiva se ha intensificado y su ilusoria liberación es ahora una constante asfixia, convirtiéndose así la resistencia en castigo” (21). I also recognize, as the author clearly indicates in this quotation, that the act of prostitution condemns women by exposing them to physical and emotional health consequences. This is one of the reasons that

Claudia/la Mora decides to flee the country at the end of the novel, because her stressful situation as a jinetera becomes unbearable. Nevertheless, I also think that it is important to highlight the fact that while she is in this business, she can satisfy her hunger thanks to the items of food and other basic necessities provided by her clients. The widespread scarcity of food in the island is accompanied by malnutrition, starvation, and an increased mortality rate. The satisfaction of feeling full and the awareness of having her own food, without being controlled by the regime, are greater than the trauma and depression she experiences through prostitution. Claudia’s act of

53 Female prostitutes are known by various names. As a jinetera, Claudia is known by her clients as la Mora. 171 resistance implies the ability to take action by shaping and controlling her emotions. This act is considered a rebellious deviation from the norm, where the ability to make choices has become difficult or impossible. In this dissertation, I study her strategy of resistance, including the moment she gains freedom and autonomy from the Castro regime.

My concerns in this chapter center on the way some characters manage to survive under the political oppression represented in the novel by the constant surveillance by the state security, as well as the constraints on legal jobs and the lack of basic necessities, such as food, oil, and shampoo. In the first section, I propose examining the different ways these characters make ends meet or find a way to make something out of nothing. Most of the characters are professionals, but due to their low incomes and inability to support an entire household, they are forced to abandon—although some are fired from their jobs for political circumstances—their university professions and take on minor jobs, such as trafficking in the black market and prostitution. Their decisions are also the products of both the inefficiency of the regime and racial and sexual inequality. These and other limitations will be examined in order to better comprehend the characters’ work choices. I am interested in the way strategies of resistance come to be formulated by the characters, in particular by the protagonist named Claudia. The character Claudia becomes a jinetera after being fired from her job at the Museum of Fine Arts.

The Cuban term for this type of activity is jineterismo, with those participating defined as jineteras (females) or jineteros (males). Jineteras consider “prostitution” to be a denigrating activity. On the contrary, the concept jinetera or jinetero is, for them, more closely related to the concept of “fighters” or sex workers (Elizalde 26). This is precisely how the concept jinetera is applied in the novel. Taking this into account, I propose to analyze the way Claudia delimits her fighting space or lucha to survive the economic hardships of Cuba’s “special period” and how 172 she challenges the regime by deploying her female body. For this analysis, I will employ the work of the theoreticians Michel De Certeau and Édouard Glissant. Her decision, however, comes with collateral damages, such as an identity crisis. She studied in order to get a good job, not to become a jinetera. This unforeseeable option causes her existential obstacles, such as despair, pain, guilt, and regret. I will study her existence as a feminine subject trying to survive in a world shaped by a phallogocentric regime. Here specific attention is given to the works of

Belgian philosopher Luce Irigaray’s and of the critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha.

Since the characters evolve in the city of Havana, I study, in the second section of this chapter, this urban space in order to better understand their actions. The treacherous conditions created by political oppression and also by the effects of the blockade, in which all trade links with the USA were dramatically terminated, creating immediate shortages of all consumer goods and food, cause the city of Havana to be depicted as an ocean in which the characters experience the feeling of being trapped: “La brisa semejaba un denso tejido donde los seres humanos se movían como peces atrapados en una red. Un olor a cloro helado colmaba la atmósfera”

(Chaviano, El hombre 211). Even though Havana is a difficult place to live, some of the characters, like Claudia, find meaning and hope in its ruins and decaying nature. The reading of these sites allows our protagonist to explore its past, which unlike the present, is a safe and vibrant place to which she wishes and expects to return. This past influences the way she thinks about the problematic present. She benefits from its successes, and this helps her in creating strategies of resistance. Her alternative view of the present is seen as natural, organic, and based on elements of the past. Claudia’s visions of colonial Havana will be examined, in particular, the contrast of the present with the past, their ties, and how they influence Claudia’s decisions. This comparison is necessary for the protagonist in order for her to understand what she is going 173 through and ultimately propose, though perhaps not explicitly, a future that makes sense and is worth pursuing.

An alternative reading of the city’s ruined landscape is treated in the final section of this chapter. I explore its association with the Bible, especially with the Book of Genesis and

Revelation. I argue that the author plays the role of God, she creates “man” and “woman”— represented by Rubén, Gilberto, and Claudia—and places them in Havana’s city, which is depicted as the aftermath of the lost paradise. In order to survive, men and women fight to find food on their own. Alongside this pessimistic vision, the author refutes some precepts of Cuban patriarchal society, which first appear in the novel’s title, and continue throughout its structure.

After having tried to make ends meet to remain in this place, the characters realize that Havana will perpetually be lost. This message is “revealed” to them when they drift through the unlit streets of an almost empty Havana and reach El Malecón to see a massive number of people trying to escape in raft crossings. Also, it is in this place that Claudia previously experienced her first psychic vision. In the layout of the novel, the author creates a unique way for the characters to resist the socialist state and its patriarchal precepts.

174

Claudia’s present

El hombre, la hembra y el hambre starts with a conversation between two men: Rubén, who studied painting in the Superior Institute of Art, and Gilberto, who studied economics. They are both professionals, but like many others, they do not work in what they studied. Instead, they have other minor jobs. Rubén used to be an art professor and an active member of a magazine.

He got fired for promoting and running an article about the store “la casa de oro,” where Cubans traded their family treasures to the government in exchange for some money. Now, Rubén is an artisan who buys leather pieces in the black market and turns them into art. He sells his works in an open-air market, particularly the one near the cathedral in Old Havana, where most tourists visit: “Ahora que hago carteras vivo mejor que antes. Y sobre todo, tengo fulas . . .” (Chaviano,

El hombre 60). His friend Gilberto was working as an economist, but he was forced to resign due to the inability of his low income to support his family. He is now a butcher: “Ahora tengo carne extra para mis chamacos y vendo el sobrante en la bolsa negra. Le saco unos cuantos dólares, y con eso me voy a las diplotiendas y consigo varias cosas, desde aceite hasta champú” (33). Their new jobs make Rubén and Gilberto feel a little bit better in the middle of the turbulent environment, and more importantly, they provide them with dollars or fulas, with which they can buy products in the black market. They can also have the “luxury” of eating in paladares, a costly alternative to regular restaurants (Álvarez 2).54 Even though the prices in these eateries are considerably cheaper than the dollars-only tourist restaurants, the price of a meal in the paladares is still considered expensive to most Cubans, so only a small portion of the population attends these places, and they only do so after saving for a long time (Farah 28). Rubén and

54 Paladares are not accessible to most Cubans because of their cost. They charge their customers in dollars or in Cuban pesos. These eateries are, however, an alternative option to Cuba’s food scarcity (Álvarez 2-3). Paladares, named after a restaurant chain in a Brazilian soap opera, are restaurants located in homes, which were legalized, albeit within strict limits, after dollars became legal (Farah A.28). 175

Gilberto could no longer make a living with their professions. They challenge the Cuban system by having illegal private businesses. The evident disproportion between the income of highly educated people—an art professor and an economist—and that of an artisan and a butcher raises serious questions as to whether studying in a university is worth pursuing in Cuba. In her text,

Daína Chaviano points out that highly educated individuals are not valuable on the island.

Rubén, Gilberto, and most of the other characters constantly express their dissatisfaction with having spent time on their careers. They realize that no matter what they do in order to survive, they will always be subjected to close scrutiny by the government. They then decide to risk it all and make the best of their abilities. Rubén engages in activities not covered by government permits; and Gilberto sells meat without declaring it to be a part of his business. Any independent practice threatens the state’s control over the economy, and as a precautionary measure, the government continuously launches clean-up campaigns, without any prior warning, in people’s houses in search of illegal activities. As a result, many people land in jail (Fusco

162). Despite the risk of landing in jail, people put their lives on the line so that they can live a little bit better. We see this in the text when Rubén is arrested by state security and spends two years in prison for carrying twenty dollars: “Estuve dos años preso, aunque solo me encontraron encima veinte dólares. Menos mal que yo guardaba el dinero en un escondite que había inventado. Allí tenía como quinientos fulas (Chaviano, El hombre 108).

Rubén and Gilberto are not the only ones who switch careers. Claudia studied Art history, and used to work in the Museum of Fine Arts. Like Rubén, she got fired as well, in her case, for having protested against the sale of paintings that were considered national treasures. Rubén and

Gilberto are Claudia’s two lovers. The truth is that neither one, in fact, knows that they love the same woman until the finale. Claudia has a son with Rubén after he is imprisoned. With another 176 mouth to feed, Claudia experiences a lot of problems finding a job. Unlike Rubén and Gilberto, she is a woman, a single mother with a son, to be precise. The jobs available for her are very curtailed and demanding. Weighing her options for earning money, she concludes that either she sells her body or she and her son will die of hunger. According to data on Cuban public health, in the worst moments of the 1990s crisis, community groups were organized in order to “ensure that prioritized groups—pregnant women, children, and the elderly—had access to basic food and milk” (De Vos 31).55 The implementation of this practical solution was not, in many cases, sufficient. At least in Claudia’s case, this did not prevent her decline into prostitution: she becomes a jinetera, a woman who sells favors to male tourists. Daína Chaviano is playing with the stereotype that in a male-dominated society, women without a male companion are often labeled putas. The author is also pointing out that in this society, women are at a disadvantage.

The options offered to them are not enough, and they are objectified and commoditized.

Claudia’s friend Elena studied history, and like her friend, she is a jinetera as well. Instead of producing, Claudia and Elena work now in the area of servicing. An art historian and a historian choose to be prostitutes. Undoubtedly, this represents a parody of a failed economy. In the 1950s prostitution was deeply rooted due to the emergence of tourism and the widespread dominion of the Mafia (Fusco 153). One of the first moves by the Revolution was to change the international reputation of Cuba as a whorehouse (150). The government provided hundreds of Cuban prostitutes with jobs as clerks, bus drivers, and waitresses (153). Their emancipation from sex exploitation was “evidence that the Revolution had eradicated the corruption and immorality associated with capitalism” (153). Sex for sale has reappeared in today’s island. Some scholars

55 This information is taken from research performed by a group of social science specialists, specifically experts on public health issues, in order to disseminate data about the health system of the Philippines, Palestine, and Cuba and increase awareness of people’s health. The main purpose of such research is to educate and empower people to participate in their community in order to ensure “adequate government policies to address health inequities and assert the right to health” (De Vos 2). 177 have argued that this is a sign of the failure of socialism (Fusco 153, Cabezas 81). This explains why some people generalize Cuba’s situation by stating that no one comes here for its beaches, but for “rum, cigars and la mulata” (Fusco 152). Cuba has promoted itself to the outside as a sex tourist paradise since 1993 (152).

One further important aspect of the female characters is that they are both mulatas.

Throughout Cuba’s history, mulatas were labeled as the mistresses of white men. An old adage of the Caribbean plantation proves this mentality: “white women were for marrying, black women were for work, and mulatas were for sex (Fusco 155). Let us mention the novel Cecilia

Valdés which was written in 1839 by the Cuban Cirilo Villaverde, in which the female protagonist is a young and beautiful mulata, Cecilia Valdés, who is the lover of Leonardo de

Gamboa, the son of a powerful land magnate and slave trader. The importance of this work and

Chaviano’s decision to use a mulata in her novel instead of a white or a black woman to act as a prostitute in the plot—regardless of the fact that there are now jineteras of any skin color— reveals that the interaction of classes and races in Cuban society has not changed and discredits the notion of the revolutionary ideal of racial equality among Cubans. This also shows that in order to understand the racial dynamics during the nineties in Cuba, it is necessary to look back at its past. Fidel Castro’s dialogue on the race issue ended in 1962, when he declared it officially solved (Sawyer 60). It is true that the Revolution brought into play several structural changes— such as the elimination of private schools and the implementation of literacy programs and education for all—that helped to improve the status of blacks; nonetheless, blacks are still underrepresented in the highest levels of the government and party, whereas whites remain largely in power (69). The crisis of the “special period in times of peace” meant greater racial inequality for Cuba because there was no money to expand job opportunities for women, blacks, 178 and mixed-raced people (75).56 Only those minorities who had relatives abroad and could receive remittances from them and those who appeared to have better looks and could work in tourism could receive dollars, buy more food, and live a little better (76). In this way, tourism and remittances became highly desirable among most Cubans. As for the rest of the population, they could obtain dollars only through black market activities, such as “prostitution and the illegal sale of goods” (76). Most of our characters belong to this last category. It is assumed, then, that career differences are defined by race and sexual inequality. Rubén and Gilberto are involved in the illegal sale of goods, whereas Claudia and Elena, since they are women, work as jineteras.

We might, however, want to think about where Claudia is positioning herself with her choice to become a jinetera. In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel De Certeau has formulated that writing has a new way of functioning that consists of placing the body under the law of writing (139). Law is usually written in books, but in times of crisis, as observed by De Certeau,

“paper is no longer enough for the law, and it writes itself again on the bodies themselves” (140).

In other words, law is inscribed on bodies; law is what defines them by transforming them into

“tables of the law, into living tableaux of rules and customs, into actors in the drama organized by a social order” (139).57 If we metaphorically scrutinize the political, social, and economical situation in which Cubans live, we can say that this system has marked people’s bodies as instruments that keep them within the limits of its power. The first two methods used by the

56 A year before the collapse of the Soviet empire and the cessation of Soviet subsidies, speeches on racism were made by the Castro regime, stating “neither racial discrimination nor discrimination due to sex” existed on the island (Sawyer 74). After Cuba was hit by economic austerity, Castro announced: “The correction of historic injustice cannot be left to spontaneity. It is not enough to establish laws on equality and expect total equality. It has to be promoted in mass organizations, in party youth. . . . We cannot expect women, blacks, mixed-race people to be promoted spontaneously. . . . We need to straighten out what history has twisted” (quoted in Sawyer 74-75). With such words, Castro is justifying himself regarding the racial and gender inequality among Cubans. For him, the crisis interrupted any type of job opportunities that would have benefited minorities, and therefore, facilitated their integration into society. With the crisis, racial and gender equality was considered an issue that was put aside by the Castro regime. 57 Michel De Certeau exemplifies the act of writing on a body by using Kafka’s story In the Penal Colony, where the purpose of the machine is to engrave the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin before letting him die. He, thus, clarifies that Kafka’s machine has taken less violent forms in the present (143). 179

Castro regime are racial and sexual inequality. Since tourism was a large part of the Cuban economy, the regime allowed those who appeared to have a “better presence” to work in this sector as a means of regulating the Cuban economy. This resulted, as it was previously discussed, in the growth of racial and sexual inequality. Another instrument is food rationing, which was officially established in Cuba in 1962, with the distribution of one libreta de abastecimientos to regulate the distribution of basic foods and materials to each Cuban citizen

(Álvarez 2). The problem with this system is that a person cannot be fed with the rationed items for the entire month (5). For those who can afford it, foods can be purchased in other outlets, where prices are much higher (5). Hence, the populace is dying of hunger because there is not enough to eat. Moreover, the use of ration books also has the purpose of monitoring the citizens’ movements; they serve, in fact, as a kind of food-based census by means of which people’s movements can be recorded.58 Through food rationing, Claudia’s body and that of the other characters are marked by and under the control of the Castro regime. Another instrument through which law maintains its hold on bodies is constraining what individuals can do. When Cuba entered its “special period,” the populace was deprived of certain pastimes, such as reading

(Strausfeld 11).59 In the novel, Claudia frequently expresses her pleasure in reading books. Due to her economic situation, she cannot afford to buy them. Thus, she asks her clients to bring her not only food and other basic items, but also books: “—Es que no pide alhajas ni ropa; solo una pelas de vez en cuando… y libros. . . . Y mira qué libros: Kundera, Mujica Lainez, este tío peruano del Vargas . . .” (Chaviano, El hombre 230). Books are filled with many moments, and as she reads through the pages, Claudia can feel her freedom, travel to places, and explode her

58 Jorge I. Domínguez discusses “the need for a ration card and the close regulation of controlled employment and reduced short-term geographic mobility and long-term migration. The weight of the state over the individual was correspondingly increased” (205). 59 In the “special period” the price of paper was so high that the country decided not to spend money on this (Strausfeld 11). 180 imagination. Walking is another of the most basic and common pastime for some individuals, but during this time of crisis, it became a convenient mode of transportation to most Cubans due to critical fuel shortages. The lack of vehicles made people walk to school, to work, etc. Walking is what takes most Cubans everywhere.60 Nevertheless, Cubans are not allowed to walk in certain areas of their own country. In fact, the finest resources to visit in the island are assigned to foreigners with money (Fusco 163) or to those Cubans who can work in these sites. This statement is perceived in the following excerpt through Rubén’s voice: “Y si no eres extranjero, no eres persona. Te conviertes en un ciudadano de quinta categoría. No puedes entrar a casi ningún sitio, a menos que tengas los puñeteros dólares. Ni siquiera tus playas son tuyas. Dime,

¿no es para pegarse un tiro?” (Chaviano, El hombre 61). The rest of the residents are limited to wandering in Havana’s quarters, where one can see many deteriorated buildings. With all these limitations on Cubans, the human mind is marked and the body is physically controlled by the government. Once bodies are marked by the name of the law, says De Certeau, they are affected with pain, and they turn into “a symbol of the Other, something said, called, named” (140). The printed setting indicates the writing of something that only the law can decipher (140). In other words, individuals belong to the government, which manipulates them for its own advantage.

Since bodies belong to the law, they are silenced and concealed because they are being repressed. Thus, Claudia does not have control of her own body. She suffers, first of all, from hunger because the quotas of food are not supplied at the time they are due and in the quantities specified: “Arroz, sólo me dieron la mitad de la cuota del mes pasado, porque la de éste todavía no ha venido” (Chaviano, El hombre 46). Second of all, Claudia was not recognized for her work as an art historian in the Museum of Fine Arts. She was fired from this place for speaking up

60 Bicycling is another popular means of transportation. Bicycles were brought from China into Cuba (Sánchez 170-71). 181 against the government’s actions. After this incident, Claudia became invisible to the productive corpus. She could not find a job, and she was in constant surveillance by the socialist state:

“Siempre hay un ojo que te ve…” Big Brother is watching you” (227). She was punished and marked by the law. After this, her female power of reproduction becomes the essential and exclusive action in Cuban society. Indeed, Claudia, as a woman, is restricted to performing certain social functions and not others, such as the role of reproduction. She has a son with

Rubén. Her biological function is utilized as a way to exclude “women” from the phallocentric economy. With a son to support her possibilities of finding a job decline greatly. With no job, then, there is no money, and with no money, no food can be bought on the black market as an alternative to product shortages. Claudia suffers from “hunger.” Hunger in Chaviano’s novel does not represent only the lack of food; it goes beyond this to symbolize the abundance of nothing: no jobs, no love, no hope, and no future. The government’s power depends on these forms of control.

According to Édouard Glissant, there are two forms of power, which are “surveillance and intimidation, seeing and being seen” (Britton 22). Claudia uses the only weapon available to her: her own body, which she can see and feel. By selling her body for sex, she is freeing herself from the scars imprinted on her skin. She takes control of her own body. As Chaviano points out in an interview, “El Eros se convierte en un arma para sobrevivir . . .” (Fernández 77). This does not mean, however, that I think prostitution is a way to attain freedom in all cases. Undoubtedly, it is a shortcut to a better economic life, but with lots of mental and physical risks. It is intrinsically harmful and traumatic. In most cases, prostitutes’ self-images are destroyed because their bodies are being sexually objectified by men. This is exactly what Raúl Rosales Herrera argues in his article. According to him, before becoming a jinetera, Claudia’s eroticism 182 emancipates her because performing the sexual act is the only time she feels truly free. When she sells her body for money, however, it shifts into her own prison (Rosales 21). This means that by receiving money in exchange of sex, the Other takes over her body. Eroticism in prostitution metamorphoses into possession by the Other. He possesses what he is paying for, like when one buys something at the market, for instance, the item bought becomes one’s property. In our protagonist’s circumstances, however, jineterismo suggests a different reading of eroticism than the rigorously phallocentric mentality. In “When Our Lips Speak Together” (1980), philosopher

Luce Irigaray refutes the idea that eroticism implies the appropriation of the female body during a sex exchange. She explains that those who typically demarcate differences between men and women in a society, dictate their roles and functions in it, and reinforce centuries-old attitudes and customs are men. The author predicts a failure in society because she recognizes that, for a long time, individuals have only spoken their (male) language: “If we continue to speak the same language to each other, we will reproduce the same story. Begin the same stories all over again.

Don’t you feel it?” (Irigaray 69). In her article, Irigaray draws attention to the way men assume one role after another and imitate “one master after another,” following his “face, form, and language,” depending on the power each holds (73). Irigaray’s work is useful here because implicit within her conceptualization of male domination is a recognition that women cannot be possessed by men regardless of their rules: “You are not within me. I do not contain you or retain you in my stomach, my arms, or my head. Nor in my memory, my mind, or my language. You are just there, like my skin” (77). Men do not know the female body. Thus, they cannot control it. Eroticism in a sexual act denies the appropriation of the female body as form of monetary exchange. Claudia’s knowledge of her body protects her from turning into the Other’s property.

Indeed, her clients cannot possess her body; they are there, they exist because they pay for her 183 services, but in no way do they take control over her. Her body belongs only to her, it is the only place she can be independent. Claudia works on her own; she is not managed by chulos, or pimps. She ceases to be a part of the body politic61 in order to become an individual body of flesh and bones that only she can feel and control. Returning to De Certeau, he writes that the body can be repaired and educated. In line with this reading, the following passage shows Claudia’s enthusiasm at having her own business:

Era como vivir en el capitalismo. Qué maravilla: ser independiente, trabajar a

cambio de dólares y, por si fuera poco, ganar más por cada jornada adicional. Ya

no tendría que hacer trabajo ‘voluntario’ a cambio de nada. Así era un gusto. Así

era un placer la vida de proletaria. Así valía la pena sobrecumplir las metas, ser

jinetera vanguardia; pero no a cambio de medallitas de latón, ni de diplomas

hechos en papel cartucho, sino a cambio de artículos para vivir, de comida para

matar su hambre vieja como la misma revolución que la había creado.

(Chaviano, El hombre 220)

As a jinetera, Claudia becomes autonomous with respect to the socialist system: she decides when to work and with whom to be. Now, Claudia cannot be monitored, because her clients show up unexpectedly with bags of food, soaps, shampoos, and even books to fulfill her desire to read. Besides this, she receives dollars, and she has access to fancy clothes and to restricted areas where Cubans are not allowed to go to dance and eat. Despite the constant surveillance of the police, she visits these tourists-only assigned areas without being arrested, thanks to her clients who escort and defend her against police harassment. All this takes place

61 A body politic is a body marked by the law (De Certeau 142). 184 within the government’s dominions. Her business is out of the regime’s hands.62 From this perspective, Claudia’s new job is empowering and gives self-confidence. Michel De Certeau states that a strategy is “an effort to delimit one’s own place in a world bewitched by the invisible powers of the Other” (36). A strategy is “the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power can be isolated”

(35-36). With a new job and with the power to negotiate without being punished by the government, Claudia delimits her own space in Havana. She is a jinetera or luchadora,63 someone struggling to survive the economic austerity of Cuba’s “special period:” “Ahora todos venden su alma al diablo o al mejor postor con tal de conseguir un jabón o un viaje al extranjero.

No importa el fin ni los medios; no importa si el acuerdo se hace entre sábanas o en un bar. Hay quienes se acuestan a cambio de un bisté; y los hay que entregan informes a cambio de una casa, de un auto . . .” (Chaviano, El hombre 122-23). Here, Claudia defends herself by comparing her situation to that of other Cubans. The end justifies the means, and being a jinetera is seen as being somebody who fights or lucha in order to live better and to get a little bit more, like anybody else. The number of objects and amount that Claudia earns is unknown to the state; women like her do not pay dues to them, and this is exactly what bothers the system. Claudia learns to play the game against the socialist state. Her new transformation poses a threat to its dominion. Claudia and her friend Elena are not the only jineteras; there are many other women who practice this service: “Encontré a centenares como yo que aparentaban acatar las órdenes

62 In Kafka’s story In the Penal Colony, the officer who is the machine’s operator, and who could very well represent the government, realizes that this will be the machine’s last use; he frees the condemned and uses the machine on himself, which carves the sentence “Be Just” on his back. However, the machine malfunctions, and it kills the Officer (219-226). We can take this scene as a metaphor to describe what the socialist system in Cuba is facing in regards to jineteras, traffickers, and other sources of self-employments. The system’s sons are the ones destroying it. 63 The term la lucha, the struggle, has been historically associated with the “Cuban Communist resistance stance against U.S. political and economic imperialism” (Marrero 238). 185 para luego violarlas a espaldas de la autoridad. Lobitos disfrazados de ovejas: en eso nos transformamos” (Chaviano, El hombre 296-97).

The government wants to be the only master in the island; they do not want to share power with anybody and anything else. Our characters are able to escape from the socialist state’s control—in most cases, only temporarily because Rubén was thrown in prison for carrying dollars—by exercising their inventive thinking. In a documentary shot in Cuba in the spring of 1994, citizens were asked how they survive in the island, and they all said either luchando or inventando.64 What drives Rubén, Gilberto, Claudia, and Elena to do what they do is their ability to see new possibilities through the use of their imagination. A tangible example that will serve to illustrate this statement is the food inventions that Claudia and her friend Nubia discuss in the text. One of these inventions is picadillo de cáscara de plátano, which is made of the skin of plátano macho, a type of plantain, instead of meat: “Otro gran invento es el picadillo de cáscara de plátano. Aquí sale a relucir, una vez más, el genio del cubano, capaz de transformar los desechos de frutas tropicales en comida reciclable . . . (102). The government cannot control their imagination; therefore, what the characters do is usually unforeseeable by the socialist state. Based on this, we can argue that the characters are life inventors because they play, explore, and experiment with the different tools offered by each character’s realm in order to survive. In addition to the power of the mind, el señor dólar is also attempting to disavow the government’s control of the island. The almighty dollar makes an artisan, a butcher, and jineteras earn more than a highly educated person. Their self-employment jobs appear, thus, as strategies of resistance to cope with the painful economic consequences of the island’s socialism.

Inventar is a synonym for transformar, and these terms are for Claudia, as for the rest, a means by which to articulate her existence in the problematic environment in which she evolves.

64 ¡Luchando! Cuba’s Struggle to Survive. Directed and written by Russell Porter. 186

Her choice to be a jinetera is a fabrication needed for physical survival. Now, in order to maintain her own space of power, an inner need is required. As a jinetera, she faces an identity conflict. When Claudia offers her body to tourists, she adopts a new name, Mora. At home, in front of her son and her friends, she is Claudia, but in the tourists’ areas, she is Mora. The same thing happens with her friend Elena, who is known by her clients as “Sissi.” At the beginning, everything goes well for Claudia. Using a different name helps her to keep a distance between her job and her personal life. Adopting a new name is something that jineteras usually do. A reason that might explain their choice is that this avoids, albeit in most cases momentarily, being exposed to the social humiliation that goes with being a prostitute. By adopting a new name, a sort of human dignity remains. Another reason to not reveal their real name is that this creates mystery accompanied by sexual fantasy because the names chosen are usually exotic and rare.

These two reasons reflect the dominion of phallocentric mentalities. By taking another name,

Claudia adopts the words of men, and as a result, her identity is divided. She has two names. She lives two lives, one during the day and the other at night. Even though she has control of her own body, her new name is created in order to follow the Other’s rules and please them. It is at this moment that the situation becomes unbearable for Claudia. Irigaray states in her essay regarding the language of men:

How can I say it? That we are women from the start. That we do not need to be

produced by them, named by them, made sacred or profane by them. That this

has always already happened, without their labors. And that their history

constitutes the locus of our exile. It’s not that we have our own territory, but that

their nation, family, home, and discourse imprison us in enclosures where we

can no longer move-or live as ‘we.’ Their property is our exile. (Irigaray 74) 187

Claudia’s identity crisis is the result of obeying the rules imposed by society. Irigaray furthers her discussion and highlights that the key for a woman’s renewal is to find a voice or language of her own that will help her to become a complete person again (76). Such a voice needs to be different from the one that is presently imposed on her. Since the cause of her identity crisis originated in the present, the past must provide her with the necessary tools that will help in her transformation. Hence, this language, based on elements of the past, needs to be natural and organic. In the novel, the past is seen as pure and untouched by men and by the phallocentric society of the present. Except for Claudia, nobody talks about the island’s past, because it is something that has been erased in the present. As an art historian, Claudia realizes the importance of recuperating the culture of her ancestors, not only for her and her own generation, but for future generations so that they can find the key to solving their problems. In this past, she hopes to find answers in order to understand the world of the present, allowing her to reclaim her selfhood and be born again:

El mundo nos olvidó, y olvidó lo que éramos antes. Sólo algunos viejos parecen

recordarlo. Los jóvenes tratamos de imaginar cómo sería el espíritu de esta

otrora ciudad de maravillas, pero es difícil reconstruir semejante gloria a partir

de unas ruinas. Por eso nos volvemos visionarios, arqueólogos del alma; nos

convertimos en druidas contra el olvido; intentamos rescatar la memoria perdida,

no mediante películas—las imágenes anteriores a nuestro nacimiento se guardan

en bóvedas secretas—, sino a través de fotos y revistas amarillentas. Pero

sospecho que se trata de una meta imposible. . . . Nadie, ni siquiera quienes

continúan visitando la isla como si se tratara de una meca, se atreven a repetir los

antiguos mantras: fin de la prostitución, de la pobreza, de las castas, de la 188

discriminación, de los privilegios. . . . Nadie quiere reconocer que el sueño se

perdió. . . . (Chaviano, El hombre 125-26)

Unlike the main characters in Texaco (1992) and Le cri des oiseaux fous (2000),

Claudia’s genealogy is unknown. Cubans’ ancestors play the role of their families. Like every person, she wants to know what happened to her family. Since the past is seen through “fotos y revistas amarillentas,” the only way to know the real facts of it and meet its people is by traveling to Havana’s origins. Some might think Claudia uses her imagination to do it, but Daína

Chaviano goes beyond that. She is very clear in this matter when she points out that her female character possesses some special psychic abilities. Such gifts grant her the ability to travel to her roots, the womb that gave her life. She creates her own universe by traveling to Cuba’s historical past. Further discussion of this subject will occur in the next section, but at this point, it suffices to note that in order to maintain her own space of power in the Castro regime, Claudia professes an ability to perceive information regarding the island’s history that has been hidden for years and must be to be awakened so that it does not get lost forever. The past of a nation cannot be erased from its inhabitants’ minds, because it serves as a guide, as an example of how things should or should not be done in the present and in the future. Thus, the question of the future is fundamental because it can either posit the continuation of the present into the future or the rejection of the present and the return of the past. The latter option means hope for Claudia and for her people.

Her psychic activities led our protagonist to be absent-minded in front of people. It is as if her mind is wandering somewhere else. There is a sense of disorientation produced by her psychic trips, and Claudia looks “confused” in front of her friends. People around her do not understand her behavior, and she is very often labeled as someone “different” than the rest: 189

“Porque, eso sí, mucho estudio que tenía, mucha historia del arte y mucho marxismo, pero ésa

[Claudia] era más espiritista que Allan Kardec. Así mismo como te lo cuento. Siempre estaba viendo cosas que nadie más veía…, No, no estaba loca ni histérica” (16-17). Claudia hides her psychic abilities because people like her—“religious believers, gays, and blacks with strong cultural or Black Power beliefs”—were considered “threats” and “signs of weakness” to Cuban unity, and therefore, they “were targeted by the security forces of the regime” (Sawyer 66).

“Conformity to the doctrine of the revolution and the Western rationalist tradition was demanded” (66). Under such circumstances, Claudia’s psychic phenomena could not be exposed openly. She kept them a secret. She would only talk about it with her friend Úrsula, who, like her, professes to have the same ability of the mind. This “in-between” space, the here and there of her spatial displacements, provides the place to reclaim her selfhood. On these grounds, the work of the critical theorist Homi K. Bhabha will be useful because he studies the articulations produced in spatial interstices in which the subject negotiates her selfhood. Bhabha calls the

“beyond” “the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion”

(“Locations” 1332). Bhabha furthers his discussion by adding that the subject, while dwelling in such “in-between” spaces, is in such constant “exploratory, restless movement” that he/she becomes mentally disorientated (1332). Once the subject is aware of his/her position—“of race, gender, generation, institutional location, geopolitical local, [or] sexual orientation”—in society, his/her identity can be claimed (1332). In Chapter III, we saw how the protagonist in Le cri des oiseaux fous suffered from a similar mental state; he plunges into his father’s past, enters into the

“beyond,” and returns to the present to redescribe his father’s decisions and understand his own resolution to leave Haiti, family, and friends. Likewise, despite Claudia’s sense of disorientation, 190 she is able to move from present to past in search of Havana’s historical memory; she comes into contact with its architecture, landscapes, important cultural events, and people. She becomes

“part of a revisionary time,” to put it in Bhabha’s words (1336). Such information is used to question the political, social, and economic conditions of the island’s present, and more importantly, she avoids the destruction of herself and, in return, affirms her identity.

Bhabha’s sense of the disorientation produced by the spatial interstices parallels one of

Édouard Glissant’s main theoretical concepts of resistance: “opacity.” According to Glissant,

“opacity” applies to oneself: “Opacity means . . . that parts of myself are obscure and incomprehensible to me; accepting this fact means that I can give up the insistence on the transparent unity of the whole self—this, Glissant argues, is a liberating experience” (Britton 21).

Claudia’s internal drive brings up remembrances from the past that she is unable to read. The following passage shows, through our protagonist’s words, how confused she feels about what is happening to her: “¿Por qué crees que me está ocurriendo esto?” (Chaviano, El hombre 203).

Nevertheless, even though she does not entirely comprehend her psychic travels to an imagined

Havana initially, she finds herself in an exceptional position because she is able to perceive what the rest of the people cannot. She is an art historian interested in the historical development of objects of art, which include paintings, sculptures, architecture, and decorative pieces. The fact that she can visualize all this together in her native island represents a liberating experience for her:

La realidad se le antojaba una deformación de todas sus vivencias anteriores,

sobre todo ahora que el pasado despertaba a cada momento para mostrarle

imágenes insólitas: la magnificencia de las mansiones, la belleza virgen y

primigenia de su ciudad, la esperanzada vida de sus pobladores, el enjambre de 191

negros y mulatos libertos, incluso de esclavos, que estudiaban artes manuales…

Era un milagro. Saber que existió una Habana así le producía un tibio alborozo

en el pecho, como si aún fuera posible soñar con el futuro. (206)

It is important to note that such liberating experiences produced by the dynamics of Claudia’s strategies of selfhood belong exclusively to her. Thus, Glissant argues that understanding an individual is an act of aggression because the Other is constructed as “an object of knowledge”

(Britton 19). Claudia is safe insofar as nobody tries to penetrate and discover her true persona.

Here, let us remember that in Chapter II, Marie-Sophie also feels protected thanks to her

“opacity.” The békés cannot understand her choice to build a shack on an oil refinery property.

Hence, “opacity” means also the inability of the Other to understand the subaltern (20). Claudia’s consciousness is opaque in that it cannot be “read” not only by the people around her but also by the ruling groups. She cannot be arrested by the police for experiencing parapsychological practices—since it defies Cuban unity—because her “opacity” functions as a device for camouflaging her within reality. Being absent-minded signifies a defense mechanism. By giving

Claudia the diagnostic of not being understood by people around her, she feels protected.

Pursuing Claudia’s explorations of the island’s past—that is, getting to know how

Havana was and how its inhabitants used to live and interact—reveal a further sense in which

Claudia’s opacity resists the austere measures of the government. To sum up, her resistance is a complex conscious and unconscious dynamic, which is derived, on one hand, from the image she projects as a jinetera and, on the other hand, from her parapsychological abilities to travel to

Havana’s past. Now, our investigation will move to the analysis of Claudia’s visions and the contrasts between colonial Havana and today’s city in order to comprehend in what way the urban space allows expressions of fluidity and change. Such analysis will provide a better 192 understanding of Claudia’s last decision to risk her life by crossing the shark-infested ocean in a makeshift raft.

193

Havana’s past

At the outset, I will start this section by discussing one of the two epigraphs taken from

Milan Kundera’s book, El libro de la risa y el olvido, which appears at the beginning of

Chaviano’s novel:

Para liquidar a las naciones . . . lo primero que se hace es quitarles la memoria.

Se destruyen sus libros, su cultura, su historia. Y luego viene alguien y les

escribe otros libros, les da otra cultura y les inventa otra historia. Entonces la

nación comienza lentamente a olvidar lo que es y lo que ha sido. Y el mundo

circundante lo olvida aún mucho antes. (8)

This book symbolizes a mirror in which Daína Chaviano is looking at herself. It is also a window that enables the author to focus her attention in the direction of oppression. Kundera’s book intertwines historical moments—the history of Prague (Czechoslovakia) and communism—with a world of fantasies, sex, and eroticism. The use of this epigraph as the introduction of

Chaviano’s novel lays out the repertoire of traits attached to the Cuban nation that are used by the author in her text. These traits relate to the themes of history, politics, economics, and Cuban identity. The statement: “la nación comienza lentamente a olvidar lo que es y lo que ha sido” creates a vision of the complexities pertaining to the “special period.” The epigraph functions as a metaphor for the Cuban reality. This is exemplified by the experiences of the characters in the novel, whose lives remain in an abyss of loss, separation, and isolation. They move through an

Old Havana now in ruins. The decadent façades of the buildings have been destroyed by the ravages of time. This, along with the scarcity of food and other vital daily necessities, makes the characters feel as if they were also in the process of being extinguished. Even the water from

Havana Bay contributes to the petrified appearance of this part of the island: “Gilberto y la 194 esfinge [Claudia] se quedaron contemplando las aguas de la bahía más contaminada del mundo”

(Chaviano, El hombre 38).65 Controversially, Havana’s urban decay creates both meaning and hope for our protagonist. In Cuban Currency: The Dollar and “Special Period” Fiction (2008),

Esther Whitfield analyzes, in Chapter V, the different paradigms of “urban decay” in Havana.

She writes that Havana’s dilapidated buildings “tell the story of a revolutionary project whose triumph and idealism were once, like the buildings themselves, intact . . .” (135). Central to the state of terminal disrepair of the city’s buildings is fact that they stand as evidence of the utopian dreams that were proclaimed and promised at the beginning of the Cuban Revolution. As a result, the structure and surface of Havana’s ruins generate a sort of nostalgia, which in return, as

Whitfield points out, brings out signs of hope (139). Such exasperating scenery becomes a destination for Claudia, who hopes for the recuperation of its past and for its reconstruction, albeit only in her mind. Chaviano’s novel proposes a way of escaping a Havana in ruins by allowing new expressions of an imagined city that is produced by the same decaying nature of the island’s surroundings. This is done via the parapsychological abilities of the protagonist, who travels to her island’s historical past. The only footprints left by the past are the ruins in the city, and they need to be read by someone who cannot only find their meaning but also transfer the information to the inhabitants of the island and, in this manner, make them understand their link to the past. This is much the same job that an archeologist would do. Without the past, there is no hope for the future, as Claudia says: “Para tener fe en el futuro, uno necesitaba de su pasado; pero su pasado le había sido escamoteado, reprimido y alterado” (Chaviano, El hombre 186).

In her retrospective visions, Claudia is led by her own mediumistic abilities. In others, however, she has three spectral entities who accompany her: Muba, el Indio, and Onolorio. Muba

65 Havana Bay is classified by the United Nations Development Program “as one of the ten most polluted bodies of water in the world.” From a biological perspective, Havana Bay is considered by experts as “practically dead,” due to pollution that flows directly into it (Falcoff 154-55). 195 is her primary guide. She is the only black character in the novel and over two hundred years of age. Her presence calms Claudia down and makes her feel at peace and secure. She serves as a spiritual guide who appears before Claudia in her moments of despair. Muba’s presence suggests that the past is in people’s lives, but it is not verbalized to everybody. The fact that she is only a vision suggests that this past is in the process of being erased from people’s minds. Muba symbolizes a powerful symbol of Afro-Cuban culture pride. When we look at Afro-Cuban culture, we notice that their authentic representations of religion, dance, and music have been shifted to synthetic representations as a way to market them as Cuban attractions (Sawyer 127).

Their authentic representations were banned and “not considered to be an active part of Cuban national development following the revolution” (65). Even though Afro-Cuban expressions have been somehow tolerated and accepted by the regime, the problem with this is that its culture is seen as something “primitive, backward, [and] anachronistic, not as a living, breathing culture and struggle that define[s]” them as people (127). Muba’s role as a spiritual guide, who shows herself only to Claudia, parallels the limited access to the real Afro-Cuban culture in the island.

On the other hand, Muba’s character also makes us think about the position that blacks occupy in

Cuban society and the way they face inclusionary discrimination. They exist, but just like Muba, they are invisible to most Cubans. Blacks are at a serious disadvantage in areas such as tourism—where buena presencia is a precondition to getting a job—and self-employment services.66 Indeed, the characters who earn dollars throughout the novel are all mulatos. This is an attack at the presumption that manifestations of racism became socially unacceptable and

“solved” after 1959 (Falcoff 195). It is important to note also that the other two ghostly spirits that accompany Claudia in her visions, el Indio and Onolorio (a mulatto misogynist with a

66 Mark Falcoff states that the onset of the “special period” and the legalization of dollars on the island has widened the economic gap between white and black Cubans. He points out that blacks are underrepresented in tourism, the only dynamic sector of the Cuban economy (195). 196

Chinese background), embrace the deeply rooted cultural heritage of the island. Their appearances throughout the text are not as frequent as those of Muba. With these thoughts in mind, it is fair to say that multiracial Cuba is consciously externalized by the author, a move that recognizes how the society was formed and, that in many ways, how multiracial Cuba will continue to be invisible and marginalized. The author’s dialogue on the issue of cultural plurality in the island embraces the whole series of “La Habana oculta.” For instance, the complete story of Onolorio is found in La isla de los amores infinitos, whereas Muba has a similar role as a spiritual guide in Gata encerrada (Fernández 72). It is clear that Chaviano’s coverage is about giving a voice to the different ethnicities that form Cuba. Nevertheless, this voice, as we have seen in the eerie roles played by Muba, el Indio, and Onolorio, is still weak.

In her first visit to the city’s past, Claudia is guided by Muba, which is reminiscent of

Virgil guiding Dante in his journey to the underworld, but this time, instead of entering to hell, they move into a Havana that is full of life. In eight scenes or vignettes, they cover the former physiognomy of the city on foot. Here, Claudia walks freely, forgetting the restrictions of the government that forbid her to enter certain areas. It is her turn to be a “foreigner” who can go to places outside her usual environment.67 Her first vision appears when she is sitting at El

Malecón’s seawall contemplating nightfall, and when she decides to head back to the city, she comes up against an enormous, seemingly endless mass: “Miró de nuevo el alto muro de piedra que se extendía a lo largo de ese descampado: una mole gigantesca que parecía no tener fin . . .”

(Chaviano, El hombre 165). This gigantic mass is what divides the present from the past, recognizing the impossibility of communication between the two. It evokes the passage of time, and functions like “Sesame” from the folktale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It is there for

67 A popular joke in Havana during the nineties was that the ambition of many Cubans was to be either a foreigner or a tourist (Falcoff 141). A foreigner or a tourist would have a lot more freedom to do and to go anywhere they want than the Cubans have. 197

Claudia every time she enters into the other world. Once Sesame opens, a magical world lies before our protagonist’s eyes. Here, Claudia witnesses abundant information about the walls, the streets, and the colonial buildings. Besides these tangible elements, what she is most attracted to is its people and the atmosphere they create, which is very different from what she was accustomed to during the “special period.” In colonial times, she realizes that the residents used to live in better harmony than in the present. There is, in fact, a remarkable irony in Claudia’s perception once it is mentioned that Cuban colonial society, at the time, was divided along color and class lines and that native laborers and slaves imported from Africa suffered from the

Spaniards’ cruelty and mistreatment. Neither a native nor a black slave would have agreed with

Claudia’s observations. Chaviano’s objective would seem to indicate that Cubans in the “special period” are suffering even more than what their ancestors did in the past. It becomes clear that the past has been mythicized by the author. Nevertheless, the idea of returning to “Cuba’s paradise,” where everything seems to be in “harmony,” leads the protagonist to think about the mistakes that Cuba and its leaders have made. Cuba’s past is seen as the starting point for a new beginning for the island and its people. Such a feeling is perceived constantly by our protagonist, who as a spectator, cannot grasp the reflected images, but can only see and feel them:

Claudia tenía miedo, pero al mismo tiempo respiraba con emocionado placer el

aire límpido, el aroma a dulce de coco y a zumo de piña—olores que apenas

recordaba ya—, y descubría una belleza salvaje e impoluta en aquel trozo de

ciudad a medio construir. También se fijó en los escasos paseantes que se

movían por la explanada. Todos—negros, blancos o mulatos, vestidos con ropas

humildes o lujosas, a caballo o en calesa—se movían con aire desenvuelto y

despreocupado. Trató de descubrir, a la escasa luz de los faroles de gas, algún 198

rasgo de sigilio o cautela; y no lo logró. Eso la dejó más pasmada aún. En

aquella marea de ademanes desfachatados no descubrió irritación, angustia o

miedo: los tres sentimientos que más abundaban en La Habana que ella conocía.

Era evidente que el ánimo de la colonia era otro. (184)

In this passage, we notice a colonial past that has not yet been eclipsed by the ravages of time and human actions. In the present, however, Havana is compared to an ocean (211), an insane institute (229), hell (232), and even a zoo (252). In this urban space, “irritation,”

“distress,” and “fear” are the characteristics of everyday life. In the past, this behavior does not exist. This shows how Cubans’ development is working going backwards from the present to past instead of from the present to the future. Furthermore, the excerpt above also explains the reason behind Claudia’s retrospective visions. Unlike the protagonists in Texaco and Le cri des oiseaux fous—that is, Marie-Sophie and Dany—the main character in Chaviano’s novel does not have a family background that can help her to succeed in life. The only piece of information that is transmitted to us is that her parents are dead. Thus, since she is an art historian, she resorts to her island’s historical past to find that needed support. What does motivate Claudia’s visions?

Her desire to have her own past does. History functions as a “family unit,” or an “umbilical cord” that attaches her to earth, which is represented by the city in this case. She collects fragments of important events, for instance, the arrival of European colonizers, peoples’ celebrations, such as Carnival, and a bloody but brave battle by the inhabitants to defend their territory against the invading Europeans. Claudia admires the strength that unifies the old populace of the city, and she benefits from it to overcome her problems in the present. Her attitude consists of keeping her resistance strong and not letting the government defeat her. 199

In the past, Claudia’s itinerary is not rectilinear, but marvelously woven into the narrative itself. The fragments appear in a random order, with irregular gaps between them. The successive events that take place in her journey into the past constitute, as we have seen, more than just a “geographical map,” but a “history book.”68 We can compare Claudia’s retrospective historical visions of Old Havana with a “tour,” in particular if Claudia is considered to be a

“tourist”—as we discussed previously—insofar as she visits a lot of places without being confronted by the socialist state. The tour to all these places and historical events means the colonization of their spaces for her, as Michel De Certeau would put it (121). When a tourist visits a city, he/she tries to visit and engage into most of its important sites in order to promote an active understanding of the specific features of a place. A tourist imaginatively “appropriates” the spaces visited. Like a tourist, Claudia keeps information regarding the places, events, and people from the past in her mind and brings them back to the present. This is more of a metaphor in that she transfers what she saw and learnt in the past into the present. As a result, Claudia feels self-confident because she owns her past. She decides to leave the island once she has a past of human, lasting stories that will always remain in her mind: “Entonces supo que aquel pasado, aunque desaparecido, siempre seguiría junto a ella, invisible como Muba, aunque capaz de hacerle notar su presencia pese a cualquier realidad” (Chaviano, El hombre 279). Equally important to note is that by leaving her nation, Claudia will be able to transmit the Cuban history she encountered in her psychic trips to other nations and cultures, in other words, the past that has been left behind by the regime that people all around the world need to know.

Claudia’s visions of the past demonstrate that Havana has a history. Here, she feels as safe as she was again in the womb of her mother (274). In her retrospective visions, she metaphorically returns to the origins of life, where life was given and created. It is in this place

68 I borrowed this term from Michel De Certeau (120). 200 that she finds a link of hope, an inner force that makes her see things differently in the present.

The past in Claudia’s visions also symbolizes hope for her generation. In the same way that the author shows that Havana had an origin, and that it was created in a very different way than it is shown in Claudia’s present, the novel is organized following the same biblical idea. In the next section, I will discuss the structure of the novel, and I will describe its links with the ideas of creation, origin, and hope for Cubans. I will also examine the way in which the narration resists itself within the structure of the novel through the decisions of Rubén, Gilberto, and Claudia.

201

The art of creation

The style of the novel is in association with biblical Creation, in particular with the Book of Genesis, which in Greek means “birth” or “origin.” Let us start with the title: El hombre, la hembra y el hambre. Genesis centers on the birth of el hombre created by God out of the “dust of the ground,” and la mujer—Chaviano uses la hembra “female” instead, whose spelling is very close to el hombre and el hambre—was created from the rib of the first man (The Holy Bible,

Gen. 2:7-22). Chaviano does not only use the nouns el hombre and la hembra to form alliteration with the word la hembra; she also made this choice, I believe, to demonstrate the situation of

“women” in Cuban society. In today’s world, the most common use of the word “female” as a noun—not as an adjective—refers to lower animals or when writing scientifically. When one is talking about a female human, the most appropriate noun is “woman” or its plural version

“women.” Likewise, when one is talking about a male human, the correct nouns are “man” and/or “men.” By using “female” in the title, the author is expressing the current, demeaning position of “women” in contrast to “men” in a society of supposed “official equality.” In the title,

Chaviano is simulating the way Cuban society continues to be eminently patriarchal, allowing irony to emphasize the contradictions between the life conditions achieved by women during the revolutionary period and the seeming reversal of these achievements in the 1990s crisis. Unlike the title, in the plot, however, special attention is paid to the female characters in order to thwart the demeaning position of women given by society. Let us explain this further. First, the author,

Daína Chaviano, plays the role of a creator, and as such, she places man and woman as the central characters in her text. The novel is narrated from two separate yet intertwined perspectives: the men—represented through the voices of Rubén and Gilberto—and the woman—represented by Claudia. Each of them presents a definitive voice; they re-write silenced 202 male and female voices by giving them the right to narrate from their own points of view. This style of narration offers a balanced angle on the events. They appear in the form of a monologue—sometimes directed inwards, other times directed toward a silent interlocutor.

Second, it seems on the surface that the masculine voices outnumber the female voices.

Nevertheless, it is the woman who is the most important communicator with the readers and the main character in this novel. Indeed, it is all about Claudia, the art historian forced by poverty to be in communion with spirits in order to know her past and to be a jinetera so that her son can eat. She tells much of the text in the first person. The predominance of the female voice points to the empowerment of woman. The term la hembra is positioned in second place in Chaviano’s title. She is the second human being that God created, but in the narration, it is she who takes the most important role. Topics controlled predominantly by men, like the way God first created man and then woman, are described from a feminine point of view in the structure of El hombre, la hembra y el hambre. The author refutes the precepts of the Cuban patriarchal society and offers clear evidence that women are struggling even more than men due to their life conditions.

Continuing with the Book of Genesis, God saw that it was not good for man to be alone.

For this reason, he made a suitable helper that the first man called “Woman” because “she was taken out of man.” When this creation took place, God said: “Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (The Holy Bible, Gen. 2:23-

24). In Chaviano’s novel, there are two men, Rubén and Gilberto, who are in love with Claudia, but neither of them are able to provide for her. Rubén and Claudia have a son, and it is the she who struggles alone to survive in the oppressive environment along with her little boy. All the other female characters in the novel appear without a male companion as well. This includes

Claudia’s two best friends, Nubia, a single woman, and Úrsula, a nun. Here, I agree with Esther 203

Whitfield’s perception of this issue when she writes: “El hombre is the emptiest of three empty signs in Chaviano’s title . . . the novel teaches us the creative power of negativity and necessity.

There are no men to speak of in this novel . . .” (195). Daína Chaviano creates a woman who is able to survive after being abandoned in a devastated society ruled by men who are not strong enough to provide for their women. Great attention is given to individual voice and self- exploration: men and women are divided and left alone to create their own strategies of resistance, rather than becoming “one flesh.” One more time, we see how the male and female characters resist the precepts of the Cuban patriarchal society.

As far as el hambre is concerned, its presence also has a Biblical explanation. While in the Garden of Eden, man and woman ate from the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of

Good and Evil. As a consequence, God expelled the couple from the garden in order to deny them access to the Tree of Life, which would have bestowed immortality onto them. God cursed the snake for having tempted the couple and told Adam and Eve that they would suffer on Earth, the former sweating to find food and the latter giving birth and being subservient to the first man

(The Holy Bible, Gen. 3:14-24). In Chaviano’s novel, man and woman are bound by the spoken sense of pain and suffering within their journeys, which are juxtaposed by the collective state of despair of all Cubans during the “special period.” Indeed, the female and male narrative discourses share a sense of desperation to survive in a society in which social values and morals have been inverted because of the regime imposed by Fidel Castro. They are connected to a sense of loss pertaining to their identities. They are spiritually hungry and in search of salvation.

They fluctuate in an abyss of stagnation, where they need to do whatever they can to survive. In this sense, Havana’s city is translated as the aftermath of the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The urban decay of Havana’s 204 quarters with its crumbling buildings contributes to this image. The aftermath of the Fall of

Adam and Eve is experienced by Rubén, Gilberto, and Claudia, whose struggle and resistance in

Havana is not primarily due of Adam’s and Eve’s original sin, but to the autocratic dominion of the Castro regime. It seems that the city will be perpetually cursed because of this. In the aftermath of the Fall of Man, men and women fight constantly to find food so that they can fulfill their physical hunger. It is el hambre that drives the characters to do what they do. Rubén and

Gilberto work in the black market, and Claudia works as a jinetera: “Así comienza nuestro génesis: En el principio fue el Hambre, y Su espíritu se deslizó sobre la superficie de los campos devastados, y fue el año treinta y cinco de Su advenimiento” (Chaviano, El hombre 41).69 For our characters, el hambre is at the beginning of life on earth. It is the physical and spiritual aspect of pain and suffering. With this, the title should be read backwards, putting el hambre first because it is at the origin of the world: “La más evidente es el hambre física. . . . Es peor el hambre spiritual. . . . Estamos ansiosos por devorar a Dios” (54).

In the narration, the female character seems to be the seed of the island’s salvation. With her mediumistic abilities to travel to Cuba’s origins, Claudia sows hope for the nation by receiving the knowledge of the past that has been “erased” by the government and “forgotten” by the inhabitants. As the writer appropriately explains in an interview: “Por su estado espiritual, más centrado en los demás y en lo que la rodea, la mujer es capaz de percibir las cosas que el hombre no ve” (Piña 75). Where does Claudia’s personality come from? According to Jewish folklore, the first man’s wife was Lilith rather than Eve. The legend says that Lilith left Adam and the Garden of Eden after she refused to become subservient to him and after she mated with the archangel Samuel. In Hebrew, Lilith derives from “night,” and it means simply “nocturnal.”

Other uses of Lilith include “spirits,” “female night being/demon,” and “lady air” (Kitto 834). In

69 It refers to the thirty-five years of Castro’s rule. 205

Chaviano’s novel, Claudia becomes the modern version of Lilith who is created by the author to represent the spiritual world. Claudia is the goddess of the night. She is described in the literary text as “caníbal,” “devoradora,” “antropófaga,” “shamana,” and “cazadora” (Chaviano, El hombre 41). In Chapter III, we examined how the protagonist Dany also experiences the most acute moments of his life at night in the streets of Port-au-Prince. In this sense, Dany and

Claudia are regarded as sort of nocturnal creatures. In one scene, she is even described as mujer- loba: “. . . mujer-loba que sale de noche en busca de víctimas mientras intenta redescubrir su espíritu, o al menos sus recovecos” (297). The woman depicted through these adjectives equates to the “strange woman,” whose mind cannot be read by people around her and whose territory is delimited by assuming a seductive nocturnal personality as a jinetera with supernatural abilities.

Unlike the men in Chaviano’s novel, Claudia goes out at night to work in order to bring home food to feed her kid.

Let us now analyze the table of contents of the novel. Since men and women are two individual and separate discourses—but at the same time interlaced because they come from the same creator, according to the Bible—the narration becomes fragmented due to its different perspectives. Rubén’s and Gilberto’s own stories, along with Claudia’s visions and double life, are fragmented. This style of narration is connected with the scorching picture of the devastated state of Havana in terms of its politics and its urban space. The political system and the city are fragmented. The former is not providing enough for Cubans: there are no jobs, no money, and no food. The latter includes some places to which only tourists are allowed access, leaving what is not desired or inspiring to Cubans. Each story is in pieces. It is up to the readers to collect information and to reach conclusions. The narrative continuously jumps between the three storylines of Rubén, Gilberto, and Claudia. The novel opens with a “prelude” whose first phrase 206 announces Claudia’s entrance to the story: “Ella no lo sabe, pero su vida está a punto de cambiar” (11). The reader is confused regarding this first part because the character it is referring to is not specified. When the novel is about to end, the prelude is repeated, and it is here that the reader realizes that the whole narration is a cycle. This type of layout is the only literary figure that is not fragmented in the novel. The circularity in the text, with this connection between beginning and closing, does not, however, deny the characters’ evolutions. We witness the progression of each member of the triangular relationship. However, what this circular structure insists on establishing is a relationship between architectural ruins and the autocratic regime that will convince Cubans that their country is perpetually lost. This might explain why Rubén,

Gilberto, and Claudia board, at the end, a makeshift raft in order to escape from the soundless battlefield of Havana. They have confronted an autocratic regime rather than armies. Like the protagonist Dany in Le cri des oiseaux fous, Chaviano’s characters realize that they are survivors of the city’s devastation, and before they too are destroyed completely, they decide to leave the island. Their trajectory of moving towards the ocean also suggests the intention to escape from the circle that the author deliberately generated for the characters. The characters resist the structure of the novel and ultimately escape from it.

There is one last issue related to the organization of the chapters in Chaviano’s novel and the Bible that I want to address. The novel is divided in six parts, subdivided in turn into short chapters, with a prelude at the beginning and an interlude in the middle. Each of the six parts concludes with a short philosophic meditation: “Donde la imaginación es el pan del alma,”

“Donde se revelan ciertos secretos culinarios,” “Donde el amor se nutre de cualquier espejismo,”

“Donde se ve que Dios también baila la rumba,” “Donde nadie sabe a qué atenerse,” and “Donde todos los miedos se confunden.” Here, the author insists on the relationship between God and the 207 individual. There is a connection between these subtitles woven into the narration and the title of the book. Together they convey relevant messages, such as the re-evaluation of people’s lives, explicitly Cubans’ lives in the problematic present of Havana. Another related issue is the fact that the first part of the novel, called macho y hembra los creó, equates to the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament. Both refer to the creation of the world/the storyline. The first three parts of the novel introduce its characters’ lives, their encounters with people, and the socialist government. Therefore, we can compare it to the Old Testament. The last part of Chaviano’s novel receives the name of los ángeles caníbales, and it is closely connected with the Book of the Revelation in the New Testament. Both literary divisions are marked by visionary experiences or journeys involving vivid symbolism. In the last part of Chaviano’s novel, the three characters’ decision to leave the country and the true identity of Claudia/la Mora are

“revealed.” Claudia understands that the past will always remain inside her. Thus, she decides to go somewhere else in order to transmit her knowledge to the world and start a new beginning.

Likewise, in Chapter II, we analyzed the fact that the beginning of Texaco, which is also part of the end of the story, represents, in biblical terms, a new beginning for the protagonist, Marie-

Sophie Laborieux, who tells her story to the urban planner in order to save and preserve the quarter of Texaco. In this view, it is “revealed” to these two female characters—Marie-Sophie and Claudia—that their new mission is to become “messengers” for the culture and preservation of their nations. The biblical reference inflected in the analysis of the circular structure of these two novels suggests that Rubén, Gilberto, and Claudia survive their trip, even though it is not specified in the text whether they die or not in the makeshift raft they take in the direction of the ocean.70 It is assumed that there is a place of hope beyond the sea. There, the female character can transmit the truth about Cuba to the world.

70 In La isla de los amores infinitos, Chaviano’s last novel of her series “La Habana oculta,” we discover 208

There is a lot of symbolism in El hombre, la hembra y el hambre. The title stresses the impact of its words. Behind these first words, we see in the novel that there is a purposeful commentary on the status of the citizens of Havana living under the rhetoric of the “special period.” Daína Chaviano is positioning herself as the sole creator/God of the novel, like any other author, with the difference being that she is externalizing this fact before we even begin to read the novel. In this environment hombres and mujeres struggle or luchan to survive in an urban space that represents a socialist paradise for tourists, but hell, or rather the aftermath of the

Fall of Man, for its inhabitants. In such a dual fragmentation, the characters fight back against the political system by participating in the black market and in prostitution. The protagonist

Claudia launches her attack on the socialist state by choosing to be a jinetera. Her self-employed service is out of government control. She uses her body to free herself and to be empowered. As a result, she becomes an independent heroic provider for her and for her little boy, showing the failures of an ailing macho society. As a jinetera, she becomes a “fighter” who delimits her space of lucha and power in the heavily touristic city of Havana. Besides presenting this widespread mechanism among women during the nineties, the author shows the disruptive consequences of

Claudia’s actions. As a jinetera, she is forced to carry on two lives, and in her struggle to keep them functioning, she suffers an identity crisis. Claudia finds meaning and hope in the decaying layers of Havana’s ruins. They represent the passage of time, in which she immerses herself into an imagined Havana of centuries earlier. Her psychic abilities establish a symbolic leitmotif representative of freedom during this time of chaos, which nobody else, not even the government, can understand. The individual and spiritual world inside her provides the catharsis

that Claudia did survive her trip in the makeshift raft from Cuba to Miami. We also learn that Claudia continues having psychic abilities, as is shown in the next passage: “-Sé que te asustaste la otra noche cuando te dije que andabas con muertos –le dijo Claudia sin levantar la vista-, pero no tienes por qué preocuparte. Los tuyos no son como los míos” (Chaviano, La isla 216). 209 necessary for daily survival. To sum up, Claudia’s resistance is a complex conscious—being a jinetera—and unconscious—her parapsychological abilities—dynamic. Finally, rather than offering a specific conclusion at the end of the novel, Chaviano allows for reflection by bringing together the three characters in a makeshift raft. At their meeting site, the author once more positions herself as a God watching over them. The encounters of the characters—hombre and hembra—suggest that they share an unbreakable past connection. Given this shared experience, they need to remain together to keep fighting back against political control in Cuba from another place.

In our last novel, which we are about to see in Chapter V, a female subject is also assumed to negotiate daily survival, this time in a patriarchal/traditional Puerto Rican society.

While Claudia’s strategy of resistance rests on selling her female body to tourists and on escaping to a Havana of centuries earlier, the resistance negotiation for Isabel Luberza lies in her black female body, as the owner of a brothel, and in all the prostitutes who, by selling their bodies, form a strategic alliance of solidarity with her. Isabel struggles in a society biased by gender and racial inequality. Therefore, she uses the invisibility of her black female body as an advantage for her resistance. She brings other women who have suffered from racism and sexual inequality to her brothel, and together they create a dialogue of female body to female body that challenges the social barriers of the island. This sort of community among women might explain why Isabel Luberza does not leave her native country in the way that Claudia does. Let us remember that Marie-Sophie also creates the quarter of Texaco as a group of cooperation, the women being the most important members. Does this imply that it is necessary for women to have a sense of belonging to a community in order to stay in their native lands? Before arriving at any conclusion, let us further examine Isabel’s strategy of resistance in the following chapter. 210

Chapter V

Puerto Rico: Nuestra señora de la noche (2006)71

About the author and her novel

Mayra Santos-Febres (1966) was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and she is the author of several collections of poems, including Anamú y manigua (1991), El orden escapado (1991), and

Tercer mundo (2000).72 In addition to her poetry, she has written essays, novels, and short stories, such as Pez de vidrio (1994) and Oso Blanco (1996), among others. In her literary works, the African-Puerto Rican female writer portrays marginalized sections of the island’s population, such as transvestites, as in her first novel Sirena Selena vestida de pena,73 and solitary women and prostitutes, as shown in her third novel Nuestra Señora de la noche. Certainly, Santos-Febres has drawn inspiration from figures that have been repressed and subordinated by society. She perceives and transcribes in her texts their specific sensibility and gives them the opportunity to redefine their identities. What makes this writer different from other Puerto Rican authors is that she does not focus all her energy on victimizing the subject or on denouncing the social injustices committed towards the island’s poor—racial distinction, poverty, and so on. Rather, she gives the subjects a way to liberate themselves from the social, political, and economical repressions in order to unveil their full personalities as human beings, showing that they can dream, feel, and love like anyone else. For instance, the main character in Sirena Selena vestida de pena is a transvestite who uses the limits of his/her body, and especially his/her voice by singing boleros, as sites of negotiation that allow him/her to gain force in the struggle to

71 In 2006, it was first finalist for the X Primavera Award, which is announced by Espasa Calpe publishing and promoted by Ámbito Cultural (Torres 342). 72 Her works have been translated into several languages, and some of them have been awarded literary prizes (Torres 341). 73 This work was published in 2000 and was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Award for novels in 2001 (Torres 340). 211 overcome poverty and recognition from the Other: “Ya en la cima, Sirena gira sobre sus talons. .

. . Se aclara la garganta y sonríe en sesgo malicioso. . . . Abre la boca sin soltar un solo sonido. . .

. Y canta” (Santos, Sirena 170). It is in this line of vision that the female protagonist in Nuestra señora de la noche, Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer, better known as “Isabel la Negra,” also uses the limits of the body—albeit in a different way than Sirena Selena—as an intermediate location, where constant negotiations occur, allowing her to gain a place in society. Indeed, Isabel Luberza struggles in a fragmented society biased toward distinctions of race, class, and economic power where she moves from the bottom of the socioeconomic scale into the upper echelons of society through the construction of a brothel. Such preoccupation with reclaiming the invisibility of the most marginalized groups of Puerto Rican society is characterized by a highly poetic prose and by a plethora of hidden meanings, which leave the reader with several interpretative levels.

I chose to analyze Nuestra señora de la noche because Mayra Santos-Febres perceives, transmits, and reclaims in this novel the unfair and unresolved political, social, and economical status of blacks—especially women—in Puerto Rico that has taken root since the island’s past.

In order to better comprehend this statement, it is necessary to look through Puerto Rico’s history and literature. In 1898, after four hundred years as a colonial possession, Spain lost control of

Puerto Rico and formally ceded it to the United States. This marked the beginning of another stage of colonialism, this time under American control. During the first years of this new rule, the legal status of the islanders was ambiguous. It was not until the passage of the Jones Act in

1917 that Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship (Malavet 38).74 The passage of this act also disclosed Congress’s definition of the islanders, who were “mostly of African descent” and,

74 The approval of the Jones Act made Puerto Ricans eligible for the military draft. As such, many were drafted into the American armed forces, but at the same time, “they are not allowed meaningful participation in the political process at the national level, because they are not permitted to vote for the president of the United States and their only congressional representation is a nonvoting representative in the House” (Malavet 47). 212 therefore, considered “an inferior race” (42). Even though Puerto Rico was legitimately formed, their citizenship was viewed as “second class” due to their African origins (42). As a result, the

African element was judged as something negative to the development of Puerto Rico’s political, economic, and social structure. Descendants of the former African slaves were subject to racial discrimination in many domains. In literature, for instance, writers such as the Puerto Rican author Antonio Salvador Pedreira (1899-1939) contributed to this discrimination. In his

Insularismo (1934), he mentioned that the arrival of Africans created “uno de los magnos problemas raciales que arrancará más tarde viriles protestas y esfuerzos incansables a nuestra gestante conciencia colectiva. El elemento español funda nuestro pueblo y se funde con las demás razas. De esta fusión parte nuestra confusión” (28). What Pedreira is pointing out in this excerpt is that the Spanish are a superior race; they are the founders of Puerto Rico. Blacks, on the other hand, besides belonging at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, only added confusion to the island’s social organization. This confusion was translated into pejorative attitudes toward blacks, such as an emphasis on describing their bodies and their sexuality, rather than according them full human status. Indeed, discourses that allow expressions of the body and desire dominated the literary sphere (Díaz 31). For instance, in 1937, Luis Palés Matos (1898-

1959) published his poem “Majestad Negra,” in which he describes the black female body as something erotic: “Culipandeando la negra avanza, y de su inmensa grupa resbalan meneos cachondos que el congo cuaja en ríos de azúcar y de melaza” (114-15). In the poem, Palés inscribes in a ceaseless rhythm the seduction and eroticism incarnate in the parts of the black female body, which makes explicit the sexual stereotype of blacks. Blacks have also been represented through a heart-rending and precarious poverty in which they are destined to live forever, rather than rendering them with better living conditions. An example of this is the short 213 story “En el fondo del caño hay un negrito” (1954) by José Luis González in which a black couple is condemned to live in a poor swampy terrain far from civilization.

Mayra Santos-Febres has conceived the literary expression of her predecessors—the descriptions of the body and the meager living conditions of blacks—as a search for a free and authentic national space. Hence, in Nuestra señora de la noche, she employs a black woman with the capability to resist and to overcome political and social oppression. In the novel, Santos-

Febres makes reference to the thorny long-standing relationship between the United States and

Puerto Rico that began in the twentieth century.75 Contrary to the American promise that life would improve for the island’s poor, the lower class continues to struggle financially. This national discourse serves as the background of Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer’s life. Most of the story takes place in the 1930s and 1940s, when the movement in Puerto Rico to end U.S. control was very strong. In order to survive, “Isabel la Negra” cleans houses, but her income is not enough for her to live on. She even tries to open a tailor shop, but it fails due to lack of business.

Eventually, she opens a brothel to make a living: she accommodates prostitutes from the streets who were victims of sexual harassment and sexual exploitation from the police. Isabel offers them more stable housing and a safer place to do their job. At the same time, she gains money and access to social agency through their bodies insofar as the brothel becomes one of the busiest places in town. Despite society’s scorn for reaping economic benefits from illegal prostitution,

Isabel gives back to help Puerto Rico’s lowest class by donating money to different charities.

I chose this novel because the protagonist was inspired by the Puerto Rican legend of

“Isabel la Negra.” Santos-Febres chronicles the social ascent of this woman, a brothel owner and madam who, as an eight-year-old girl, worked as a maid in one of the richest houses in the city.

75 Puerto Rico is an “unincorporated territory” of the United States since 1898 and has been impacted by an intense penetration by American culture rarely equaled in other Latin American countries (Duany 248). 214

Certainly, the main character of this novel is played by a black woman taken from one of the most marginalized popular sectors—prostitution—rather than local elites. The writer approaches an imagined Puerto Rican nation through the construction of Isabel Luberza’s myth in an attempt to reconstitute the island’s past. The writer Manuel Ramos Otero (1948-1990) believed that popular mythology is “the real dreamland and heartland of the Puerto Rican national unconscious” (Mullen 95). Furthermore, Santos-Febres constructs symbolic boundaries between the brothel owner’s past and that of Puerto Rico with the island’s reality. By conflating this character’s self with the colonial body of Puerto Rico, the author has set out to liberate her racial and social identity. According to Edward Mullen, the image of the black woman is used in

Hispanic letters as “a liberating force in a repressive society” (95). However, it is also true that

Luberza’s status as a black woman and a brothel owner places her unquestionably in vulnerable situations. Santos-Febres offers her a space in which she is able to break through the barriers imposed by society. With this, the author attempts to show, among other things, that even though

Puerto Rico continues to be a colonial state at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it displays a strong cultural identity that has not been assimilated into the U.S. orbit. It is a country with its own emblematic/problematic representations at the popular level.

Before Mayra Santos-Febres, other Puerto Rican contemporary filmmakers and authors were also exhorted to creatively weave a space for this mythical woman. A movie called Isabel la Negra was produced by Efraín López Neris in 1979 (Hernández 34). Among the writers, we find Rosario Ferré (1938) with the tale “Cuando las mujeres quieren a los hombres” (1975) and

Manuel Ramos Otero with “La última plena que bailó Luberza” (1979).76 In short, Rosario Ferré sets out to deconstruct the constitution of “woman.” Throughout the whole short story, the

76 These two short stories were first published in the Journal Zona de carga y descarga in 1975 after the real Isabel Luberza’s death and were later reprinted in short-story collections by each author (Simonovis 66). 215 female protagonist is projected as a victim who suffers because she was never truly loved by the man of her life; instead, she was exploited by his wealth and power. In this text, Isabel Luberza appears as a young lady and as a sexual object, from which she identifies herself as part of the dregs of society: “. . . yo no soy más que Isabel la Negra, la escoria de la humanidad . . .” (Ferré

366). On the other hand, in Ramos Otero’s tale, the female character is portrayed as an old lady who dies in the middle of corruption and moral deterioration. Indeed, Ramos Otero narrates the events of Isabel Luberza’s last day of life. Ramos’ short story ends with the Lord’s Prayer, through which the character of Isabel asks for forgiveness because she knows she is going to die very soon: “Perdona nuestras deudas así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores que no quiero soñar . . . que yo me muero que no quiero saber cómo me muero yo no quiero morir . . . ni soñarme que me muero que la noche tiene gracias luminosas que lo sé que me voy a morir . . .”

(66-67). While both tales derive from the same base text—reports from the popular press concerning the death of a well-known prostitute—Ferré approaches the character from her young and sensual appearance, whereas Ramos does it from her physical and moral decadence. One point of conjunction in both short stories is the continuation of the long literary tradition linked to the glorification/rejection of the island’s black population, especially in terms of the black body.77 The writers condemn Isabel la Negra not only for her deeds as a female prostitute, but also for her black skin, without really giving her a chance to defend herself.

There is a remarkable moral value hierarchy based on skin color rather than class which favors individuals near the white end of the color continuum. Since blacks occupy the bottom of

77 In the article “Mujeres afrodescendientes y derechos humanos,” Ana Irma Rivera Lassén states, “Desde muy temprano, en nuestro sistema educativo aprendemos que nuestro pueblo es la mezcla de tres razas: de personas blancas (España), de personas indígenas (la sociedad taína) y de personas negras (África). Se nos enseña que es la mezcla de estas razas y de lo que culturalmente aportó cada una, lo que conforma la nacionalidad puertorriqueña. Es decir que, supuestamente, una verdadera persona puertorriqueña no debería verse ni muy blanca, ni muy negra, ni muy indígena. Lo que aparenta ser una aceptación de la mezcla de razas realmente se convierte en una invisibilización de las mismas. Es la parte negra de las tres culturas y razas que conforman la nacionalidad puertorriqueña la menos apreciada y la más invisibilizada” (280-81). 216 the Puerto Rican pyramid and their upper mobility is quite restricted, the protagonist’s achievements are not fully explored; instead, greater attention is given to her misfortunes. For

Ferré and Ramos, the account of oppression itself leaves the subject trapped inescapably in the oppressive system created by society to the extent that the feminine subjects in both tales are oppressed within themselves, too. Let us explain this further. In Ramos’ text, Isabel la Negra is a deathlike old woman compared to “la Viuda de los arácnidos” (52), who eavesdrops behind the doors of the brothel’s rooms to hear the groans of pleasure made by the young prostitutes in order to feel young, alive, and desired again. Isabel la Negra lives through the young bodies of her employees and their sexuality and eroticism:

La noche es buena con 20 cuartitos ocupados a la vez y 20 muchachas cuyo

aliento corre aprisa y 20 hombres a los que no se les para el alma piensa Frau

Luberza mientras pega el oído. . . . Todo lo siente Frau Luberza. . . . Se viste con

el cuerpo de la Mirtelina. . . . Se desviste. . . . Por eso siente Frau Luberza. El

corazón le late como órgano de iglesia. . . . (64-65)

By contrast, in Ferré’s short story, Isabel Luberza hides her own suffering through the dual split of her identity into the honorable wife—with white skin—and the mistress—a black prostitute, owner of the busiest brothel of Ponce:

Porque nosotras, Isabel Luberza e Isabel la Negra, en nuestra pasión por ti,

Ambrosio, desde el comienzo de los siglos, nos habíamos estado acercando, nos

habíamos estado santificando la una a la otra sin darnos cuenta, purificándonos

de todo aquello que nos definía. A una como prostituta y a otra como dama de

sociedad. (359) 217

It becomes clear that these two feminine figures are in search of their opposites in order to forget, albeit momentarily, the discordant features of reality, such as racial and gender discrimination: the deathlike old woman is desperately on the lookout to hear the sexual groans from young women, whereas the young and sensual Isabel Luberza finds her antithesis in herself. The problem with this is that their search on the expressions produced by their bodies stresses racism and negates any other definition of their blackness. This argument connects with Mayra Santos-

Febres’ critique on the way racism is portrayed through the black body:

Si tan solo buscamos el significado de “lo negro” en el cuerpo (color,

sensualidad, fuerza, violencia, amenaza, vigor, danza) y no nos fijamos en la

construcción histórica de esa definición biológica de lo negro, cometemos el

error de crear nuevas racializaciones exclusivistas, nuevas modalidades de un

racismo que vuelva a definir lo negro como irracional, primitivo, atemporal,

ahistórico, indefinible a través de la palabra y el conocimiento, amenazante. (La

raza 165)

Mayra Santos-Febres haunts the contested space in which the black body is represented as something “irracional, primitivo, atemporal, ahistórico, indefinible” by giving it another definition. She represents strikingly the same form of popular culture that was used in the tales by Rosario Ferré and Ramos Otero, but this time from the inside, thus humanizing and individualizing the black experience. Santos-Febres speaks of Isabel la Negra as a woman full of passion and ambition, who finds her way out from the oppressive system that is sunken in the inequality between a rich bourgeoisie and a city filled with poverty. She gets involved in power transactions with forces which have traditionally repressed large sectors of society, such as the church and the male bourgeois. She is humiliated by them, but in any moment, she refuses to 218 victimize herself. Rather, she becomes stronger. Her social improvement is a consequence of her breaking the law for her own benefit. It is equally important to note that in Santos-Febres’ novel,

Isabel Luberza is not a prostitute—despite the fact that she is considered as such by the elite class—as she is depicted in Ferré’s and Ramos’ tales; instead, she is a business woman who builds the most popular brothel in the town of San Antón, one of the districts of Ponce, which is viewed as the second largest city of Puerto Rico. The brothel is called Elizabeth’s Dancing Place.

Here, one can find several prostitutes who used to work on the streets and, consequently, were raped and assaulted by the police. Its walls represent a safe place similar to the shantytown of

Texaco because the women feel safe in it. Furthermore, Isabel Luberza is respected and in control inside of its walls, much like how the citizens of Texaco admire Marie-Sophie Laborieux, which was discussed in Chapter II. For the people who really know her, she is a caring person.

Nonetheless, in the eyes of the rest of the populace, she is an immoral woman. Isabel Luberza earns money, albeit illegally, and a certain respect from society through the donations she gives to the convent of Carmelites and to the orphanage. By giving back to help Puerto Rico’s lowest class, Isabel la Negra becomes an important member of the district of San Antón and of the city of Ponce.

Few studies have been written on Nuestra señora de la noche. The journalist and writer

Carmen Dolores Hernández wrote a review of the novel called “Un juego de espejos.” Here, the emphasis falls on the way Santos-Febres creates a network of relationships associated with a mirror of oppositions: rich vs. poor, good girls vs. bad girls, legal businesses vs. illegal businesses, and the juxtaposition between the past and the present (34). According to Hernández, this dynamic structure has the goal to spur on the reader’s curiosity (34). The reader is engaged with the way the protagonist is constructed, which takes shape in a series of intertwined events, 219 leaving aside the negativity produced by the black body. A similar complex organization is exposed in “El sujeto caribeño o la seducción de la alteridad en Nuestra señora de la noche de

Mayra Santos-Febres” in which Isabel’s identity is discussed as a product from the combination of multiple aspects of her life, such as her childhood, adolescence, and the influence upon her from La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre and Luisa Capetillo, one of Puerto Rico’s most famous labor organizers who fought for workers’ and women’s rights. Its author, Rosario Méndez

Panedas, writes, “La identidad que nos ofrece Santos-Febres es plural, variable, diversa, alejándose y acercándose en el vaivén de su vida a la Virgen, y a la Madama, a Luisa Capetillo, a

Ochún y a otras mujeres que en el Caribe crecen en familias alternas y han logrado ejercer su poder desde la marginalidad” (6). The plural dimension implicit in the construction of the protagonist’s identity treated in the analyses of Hernández and Méndez differs from the dual perspective fabricated by the black body proposed in the short stories by Manuel Ramos Otero and Rosario Ferré, previously discussed. For Hernández and Méndez, the construction of the female protagonist’s identity and her surroundings are multidimensional. This overview of works allows me to identify where my analysis on Santos-Febres’ novel fits in. Its purpose is to study the most transcendent fragments that constitute Isabel Luberza’s personality and that help her to formulate strategies of resistance, such as the contrast of the past with the present, and the spaces in which she evolves, specifically the city of Ponce and the brothel. Everything is in relation to everything else. Nevertheless, not everything has an equal degree of relevance. For this reason, I focus only on those elements that are important for her empowerment. Hence, I will make reference in my analysis to the two short stories on Isabel Luberza produced by Rosario Ferré and Ramos Otero as a way to delimit and comprehend the protagonist’s complexity and her actions. 220

There is another issue hovering in the shadows here, which I will explore. Not all that happens to Isabel Luberza depends on the elements and influences around her, but also on her personal attitude toward facing problems. In that vein, Carmen Dolores Hernández also stresses in her review that few Puerto Rican novels discuss the way that strategies of resistance come to be formulated where, in spite of the system of preference and privilege which favors the upper echelons of society, characters from the least privileged brackets fight for their freedom: “No son muchas las obras literarias contemporáneas que en un Puerto Rico convencido de la ficción de que tal cosa no existe ya han incidido precisamente en este punto: la lucha de una persona . . .”

(34). This argument connects with another strand on the same issue. Juan Pablo Rivera writes in his article “Lenguas madrinas: Nuestra señora de la noche y el bilingüismo de Sirena Selena” that what predominates in this novel is the art of negotiation of the characters (5). He mentions that Isabel Luberza is the best negotiator in the text (5). According to the critic, there are other characters who, like her, bargain for individual or collective advantage. The negotiation occurs not only in businesses, but also in personal situations of everyday life. For instance, the illiterate character of Doña Montserrate is not able to read a letter from her godson; nevertheless, she is not prevented from knowing what he says (5). In addition to this, Juan Pablo Rivera plays with the words lenguas madrinas in the title of his article. Through this game, he centers his analysis of the two Santos-Febres’ novels on the lack of maternal figures and on the lack/abundance of language. First, the godmothers take the position usually reserved for a mother, that of influence or power to elicit emotions. Second, the spoken language compensates for the lack of other systems of communication, such as reading. Proceeding with the above example, Montserrate learns what the letter says through spoken language by asking someone else to read the letter for her (5). In short, for Pablo Rivera, the use of godmothers and language functions to support the 221 characters’ lives by providing them tools to help with their everyday situations. Hernández’ review and Rivera’s article show a shared concern with the way Isabel survives in the city, as a woman who fights and negotiates for her goals.

A more recent study on the novel Nuestra señora de la noche has moved in the direction of demonstrating how the Afro-Puerto Rican prostitute Isabel la Negra negotiates and challenges representations of gender, sexuality, and race and class distinctions in the space of prostitution, the brothel. In the last chapter of his dissertation, “House, Factory, Beauty Salon, Brothel: Space,

Gender and Sexuality in Puerto Rican Literature and Film,” Radost A. Rangelova analyzes the distribution and function of this space in relation to the issues of gender and sexuality of the protagonist, and examines how it constructs an alternative Puerto Rican imaginary. His detailed study offers descriptions of the house, its rooms, hallways, kitchen, and the power relations within the configuration of this space that are presented in the work of Rosario Ferré, Manuel

Ramos Otero, Efraín López Neris, and Mayra Santos-Febres. Rangelova’s discussion of the numerous ways to negotiate in the space of prostitution offers important insights into the problematic intersection of gender, class, and power. Under this light, my analysis embraces a broader field. Besides the examination of the brothel, my study focuses on the way that Isabel

Luberza, among other characters such as the prostitutes, evolves, negotiates, and, ultimately, resists in the urban space of Ponce under U.S. control in the first half of the twentieth century.

This city is the first space that Isabel gets to know. The brothel is a creation from it, and from here on, she is in continuous contact with both spaces. For this reason, it is necessary to keep these two ends of the chain in play at the same time—the urban space and the brothel.

My study focuses specifically on the protagonist’s resistance to political domination. It must be acknowledged that in the first decades of U.S. domination, the island was sunk into a 222 state of confusion. Puerto Rico was a colony under the absolute control of U.S. officials

(Fernández 112). It was also in utter devastation due to natural disasters that destroyed houses, main crops, and large industries, such as sugar, tobacco, and fruit (100). The island was also at a historical economical crossroads due, among other things, to the U.S. military expropriation of the island’s best lands (150-51).78 All this resulted in the impoverishment and desperation of the island and of its inhabitants: there were no jobs available, people were starving, and strikes/riots became the order of the Puerto Rican day (116). This overview of the social and economic conditions of Puerto Rico offers an interpretative framework of center-periphery relations between the United States and the island. Puerto Ricans were identified as inferior and placed at the mercy of the United States’ definition and representation. This arrangement intrinsically stresses the absolute power of the United States over the island. As the critical theorist Homi K.

Bhabha has accurately observed, “. . . the persistent ‘neo-colonial’ relations within the ‘new’ world order and the multinational division of labor . . . enables the authentication of histories of exploitation and the evolution of strategies of resistance” (“Locations” 1335). Certainly, the

United States was immersed in its own problems, such as the Great Depression and the two

World Wars, that pushed aside Puerto Rico’s welfare. The islanders questioned and resisted unjust authority. They felt that they needed to fight for their human right to be free from the U.S. dominion (Fernández 112). Mayra Santos-Febres situates her novel in this historical context of

Puerto Rico in a very subtle way and positions a black female subject within it. The author is allowing the participation of a black woman in the building of Puerto Rican society. This is especially important since blacks were regarded as the element brought into the island—after the

78 Abes Fortas writes that “the island depended on sugar, yet ‘not only’ did the Navy acquire most of the sugar lands but it acquired the best of the sugar lands. Since the acquisition of these lands by the Navy there has been no cultivation of sugar cane and no means, therefore, whereby the civilian population of the island could sustain itself” (Fernández 151). 223 disappearance of the indigenous—to work in the fields that “interrumpió una total asimilación del elemento europeo hispánico, elemento asegurador del progreso y el desarrollo esencial de lo nacional puertorriqueño. Es a partir de esa ‘interrupción,’ que se detiene el natural proceso de maduración del país” (Santos, La raza 154). Since then, blacks’ allegiance to Puerto Rico’s nation has been stated as questionable. With Nuestra señora de la noche, Mayra Santos-Febres embarks on the literary process to take the Puerto Rican society out of its historical stagnation, or to heal Puerto Rico from what she calls “la enfermedad en que se ha convertido” (154). Santos-

Febres neither victimizes Isabel la Negra and the other characters who, like her, belong to the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, nor does she denounce openly the social injustices committed to them. She gives to the island’s poor the opportunity to represent themselves and to ultimately realize that, in spite of the different emphasis that society places on issues like race and power, they share a common interest in the defense and the implementation of the same rights: respect, protection from violence, and freedom. By giving values and strength to the island’s poor, she enables them to overcome their difficulties. This project focuses on the ways in which some characters manage to survive under such political oppression through the examination of their strategies of resistance.

The study takes as a starting point the analysis of Isabel Luberza’s past. She was abandoned by her mother when she was a little girl. At the age of eight, she started working as a maid in one of the richest houses in the city. In section one, I will discuss Isabel’s childhood and its connections with the island of Puerto Rico in terms of its history, departing from and joining the theoretical proposals of the social critic José Luis González in his work El país de cuatro pisos (1989) and the literary critic Édouard Glissant in his concept of “Relation.” This analysis will offer important insights into Luberza’s life before becoming one of the most 224 powerful, respected, and feared women in the city. Section two analyzes how some characters, specifically the protagonist Isabel la Negra and her protegées, create different strategies of resistance to overcome oppression. Here, I will emphasize the construction/location of the brothel because, for these characters, this factor symbolizes their military strategy to fight against U.S. occupancy and against social discrimination. During the process of this strategy,

Isabel challenges not only the government, but also the patriarchal/traditional image of Puerto

Rican society. I will center on how Isabel negotiates and delimits her space to express her beliefs of independence and freedom giving special attention to the theories of Jacques Derrida,

Frantz Fanon, Luce Irigaray, Édouard Glissant, and Michel De Certeau. It is necessary to remark that, during the first years of the American invasion, it was considered a grave felony to talk or show signs of independence and to fight for the liberation of the island.79 Therefore,

Isabel proposes an alternative way—a nonviolent strategy—to communicate her feelings without being thrown into the prison. In this way, it is also important to study the barrio of San

Antón—where the brothel Elizabeth’s Dancing Place is located—and the city of Ponce. This urban space is marginalized and imprinted by the political oppression of U.S. control, and its racial and social distinctions are made by the upper class. Its configurations underline the fundamental flaw in Puerto Rico’s status: the lack of openly discussing independence sentiments. By analyzing this site, we will see how Isabel manages to survive and evolve in it.

Finally, it is also important to register the fact that the context of the novel’s production—the struggles of Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer—is as crucial as the exploration of the structure of the novel, partly because the organization is linked to Isabel’s strategy of resistance within which she defines herself. Hence, section three examines the structure of the novel,

79 On June 11, 1948, the Ley de la Mordaza—Gag Law—was officially passed by the Puerto Rican legislature. The law made it illegal to display any action of independence, such as displaying the Puerto Rican flag, singing patriotic songs, and talking about or fighting for the liberation of the island (Fernández 177-78). 225 demonstrating how it respects the shape of its story. In the same way that the characters in

Nuestra señora de la noche try to find a way over an obstacle, the configuration of the novel is linked to a form of negotiation, in this case, through a sequence of “prayers.” The introductions to the chapters are prayers addressed to God/Jesus and the Virgin as pleas for receiving help that could change their social and economic conditions. Some female characters do not possess

Isabel’s strong personality; they do not dare to open a space, such as the brothel, where they can openly fight for their beliefs, and thus, they look for other ways to negotiate their tactics of survival.

226

Isabel’s past

According to the novel, Isabel was born on the day Puerto Rico was impacted by a powerful hurricane. Even though the exact date of this natural disaster is not indicated in the text, it is believed that it refers to San Felipe, the most powerful hurricane ever recorded, that hit the island on September 13, 1928, thirty years after it became a U.S. colony.80 People were affected, and houses, lands, and industries were devastated by the hurricane disaster (Fernández 100).

Some people would think that having a baby during such a merciless hurricane would curse the little one and make him/her a victim for the rest of his/her life, while others would consider the newborn as someone capable of facing problems courageously. It is true, however, that the conditions in which Isabel was born are omens of what her life will become when she gets older.

The intensity and strength that the hurricane carried when it hit the island represent the same force that Isabel carries within herself during her childhood until becoming one of the most powerful, respected, and feared women of the city of Ponce: “Tú naciste el mismísimo día de la tormenta. Por eso negrita, es que a ti hay que tenerte respeto. Cuando naciste, se desbordó el

Portugués. Tumbó cosechas y casas. Hasta los americanos tuvieron que refugiarse en los zaguanes de ladrillo del pueblo. Hubo hambruna por meses” (Santos, Nuestra 49). The above excerpt announces that the intensity of the hurricane was of such magnitude that it made the

Portugués River burst its banks. The presence of this river is of great importance in Isabel’s life as well; thus, its analysis is essential in this study. The river goes through the urban space of

Ponce, zig-zagging from the north—where it has its origins—to the south and draining into the

Caribbean Sea after running for several kilometers (Suárez V. 1). In its crossing, the Portugués

River receives the names of the sub-barrios it traverses, and the locals call the river by the name

80 The rain was of such magnitude that “scientists refused to believe their instruments: it was difficult to accept that in less than two days the central mountain region tried to absorb thirty inches of rain . . .” (Fernández 99). 227 of such places: Cedro, Nuez, Moscada, and Tibes (Suárez F. 25). This is how the Portugués

River receives other unofficial local names from which it is formally known. The way the

Portugués River moves through the city refers to Isabel’s life. She was abandoned by her mother when she was still a baby. At the age of eight, she is sent to work as a servant for a local aristocratic family of the city. After being fired by the lady of the house, who saw her husband trying to rape Isabel, she works in a tailor shop. S even tries to open one, but it has to close due to lack of business. The political atmosphere heats up, and she enters into selling black market booze in order to make her living. Eventually, she opens a brothel. By working in different places and moving from one place to another, Isabel zig-zags in the urban space and makes connections with people and with the land. Before draining into the Caribbean Sea, the Portugués

River is just a narrow body of water (compared to the ocean) that goes through the city of Ponce.

Likewise, before becoming a central person in the history of the city of Ponce, Isabel had to wander around in the urban space and adapt to its different shapes.

Isabel’s first experiences in the city of Ponce serve as the beginning of her future. This preliminary and explorative state is linked to her land, in other words, to her island’s past. There are two traces that might explain this statement. First, Isabel was born on the day Puerto Rico was hit with one of the most powerful hurricanes in its history. It can be argued that it is the natural disaster that gives birth to Isabel. Under this circumstance, she becomes the messenger of her island’s past. In the case of El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998), Claudia travels to her island’s historical past through her parapsychological abilities. There, the protagonist escapes to an imagined city in order to find expressions of hope that make her forget momentarily the problematic environment of the urban space of Havana in which she is living. She attempts to recover or inscribe an idealized past—such as the colonial times—despite its real significance as 228 a site of Spain’s cruelty and mistreatment of Cuba’s poor. The past in Nuestra señora de la noche is negotiated differently—not as a static glorified and organic phase reproduced by fragmented sets of narrated experiences, but as a complete life experienced by the main character without temporal interruptions. In other words, Isabel Luberza lives in Puerto Rico’s own past.

The African-Puerto Rican female writer places her protagonist in one of the most crucial historical moments that the island has gone through. With this, the writer recollects the past of her ancestors. It is a past endured and seen through the eyes of a mythical person—Isabel

Luberza Oppenheimer—who is taken from the populace. That said, the symbolism behind the zig-zag movement of the Portugués River indicates Isabel’s drawing of her agenda. In this sense,

Isabel’s jobs represent the different directions she needs to take in order to get where she needs to go. The presence of this river will be discussed more extensively in the next section, but at this point, it suffices to note that this body of water is what makes the protagonist flow, not only in the intersections of her life, but also in the most crucial moments of her island. This means that if the hurricane brought life to Isabel, it is the Portugués River that makes her run into the veins of the city and its inhabitants. Her childhood represents not only her past but also Puerto Rico’s past. This might sound awkward, but let us remember that, just as for Chaviano’s main character, there is no place for reason in the construction of identities. Here, I am making reference to

Claudia’s psychic abilities.

Another mark that can explain the idea that Isabel la Negra serves as the recovery of

Puerto Rican’s memory is founded in the color of her skin: she is black. The Puerto Rican essayist José Luis González gives a glimpse in his work El país de cuatro pisos (1989) of the social and political structure of his society.81 According to his interpretation, the island is

81 The first version of El país de cuatro pisos (The Fourth-Storeyed Country) was published in the Mexican journal Plural in 1979 (González 9). 229 described through the classification and explanation of a four-story building. The first one, he argues, is the coexistence of different cultures, from which the most common is the popular culture because it was the first group to appear in the island. This culture is composed of Tainos,

Africans, and Spanish; as the author points out, it is the second group from this list that has the most solid floor with deep roots in the island (19). González’ thesis is vested in the fact that

Africans were brought to the island as slaves, and they settled down in this land to become the first Puerto Ricans—los negros criollos (20-21). José Luis González recognizes the importance of the African presence in the Latino community. This importance is not only ethnic, but also cultural, social, and political. It is cultural and social because the white peasants—los jíbaros— imitated the way of dressing and talking, among other things, of Africans (21). It is also political because the island’s poor, a majority of African origin, did not agree with independence: as the first inhabitants of this land, they refused to “volver a los tiempos de España,” whereas the upper class—composed of a majority of European descent (Spanish, Corsicans, Mallorcans, etc.)— wanted independence from the United States (35). Right when the classes were showing signs of integration, says González, a second floor stood in its way at the end of the 19th century with two migratory waves, the second of which imposed colonization in the mountainous area of the country (22-23). The most affected classes, as usual, were the natives from the island. The first two floors that González proposes establish a discontinuity in the social stratification in Puerto

Rico. On one hand, the Africans—as well as the white peasants known as jíbaros—appear as the first Puerto Rican people, and according to the social critic, they see the island as their nation. On the other hand, the rich criollos and Europeans, who came to the island to impose a second colonization, wanted a nation where they could keep having total control of the island. Since the latter were more powerful, they started to clear the land of blacks and jíbaros; as a result, a 230 social, racial, and cultural white homogeneity was created in the island (25).82 Before the two social groups could merge into the formation of one nation, a third floor was imposed on them: the U.S. invasion in 1898 (26).83 The American government made use of some important stances to control Puerto Rico, such as the visible discord among its social classes, the belief that this region needed to be protected from the primitive, irrational, and disorganized ideas supposedly originating from blacks, and the assumption that, with the arrival of Americans, progress was on its way (Santos, La raza 159-60). As a result, black Puerto Ricans were repudiated and seen as incapable of participating in the organization of their own island. Isabel’s life takes place in this timeframe. Her presence in the novel makes us think unquestionably about the situation of

Puerto Ricans of African descent.

Mayra Santos-Febres recognizes the importance of the African heritage in Puerto Rico in all her works, as José Luis González shows, too, in his theoretical appraisal of Puerto Rican culture. It is an important fact that cannot be ignored in Puerto Rico’s past and current present.

The few things the novel lets us know about Isabel’s African genealogy is that her mother, María

Oppenheimer, had to give her to Maruca so she could take care of her. The baby was forty days old, and María needed to go back to work (Santos, Nuestra 50). María gave one dollar every month for one year to Maruca for her service (50). After this, Isabel’s mother disappeared from her life, and Maruca had to be the maternal figure in Isabel’s life, so she would not be on the streets. Isabel is raised by this kindly godmother until her early teenage years. María

Oppenheimer was also abandoned when she was forty days old by her mother, who was a migrant worker: “. . . le nació en el barrio San Antón a una negra inglesa que se vino de las islas

82 This homogeneity is different from other Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean islands, where blacks are the predominant race (González 25). 83 According to González, Puerto Rico is living currently on the fourth floor, which is the failure of its expansionist development (38-39). 231 detrás de su hombre a cortar caña. La mujer se hizo bracera y siguió la ruta de las zafras. No pudo seguir criando. A María Oppenheimer la regalaron a los cuarenta días de nacida” (47).

Here, we find a hopeless repetition of the mothers’ destinies concerning their daughters. Isabel’s linear genealogical time-span is derived from a family composed of single mothers who were forced to abandon their babies because they had to work. Isabel, too, gets pregnant by a man who only uses her, and she gives her baby up for adoption so she can work. Isabel’s life is parallel to her island’s history: Puerto Rico is a broken and divided family. Let us look at the description used by the writer José Luis González when he opens his essay: “Empezaré, entonces, afirmando mi acuerdo con la idea, sostenida por numerosos sociólogos, de que en el seno de toda sociedad dividida en clases coexisten dos culturas: la cultura de los opresores y la cultura de los oprimidos” (13). Isabel and her ancestors did not have a place in society because they had to move from one place to another in order to survive. They live in a “sociedad dividida,” according to González. But, what is worst is the fact that, due to their circumstances, they had to abandon their babies. It appears these women are cursed and destined to be always alone without a family.

Palmira N. Ríos González mentions in her article “¿Majestad negra? Raza, género y desigualdad social” that people from African origins are denigrated and expelled from having a legitimate space in the nation (159). If they do not have a space, then African descendants become invisible. Both Rosario Ferré and Manuel Ramos Otero have convincingly represented this point in their tales on Isabel Luberza. The former depicts a lonely Isabel, who by suffering deeply from the death of her lover, Ambrosio, becomes crazy: “Había oído decir que Isabel

Luberza estaba loca, que desde la muerte de Ambrosio se había encerrado en su casa y no había vuelto a salir jamás . . .” (Ferré 363). Without her male companion, the female subject is nobody.

The appearance of her individuality becomes absent because every time she reveals something 232 about herself, she always includes different facets of Ambrosio’s life. Hence, she hides behind the male figure who, despite not actively participating in the text because he is already dead, becomes the dominant voice due to the detailed description of his personality by Isabel Luberza.

Without this self-voice, the female character appears as somebody inactive, nonsensical, and, thus, invisible. Ramos’ tale describes the last hours—not even twenty-four hours—of Isabel’s life. This time recounts the protagonist’s existence by revealing that, despite her wealth—this is shown from the start when she gives a lot of money for charity to Monsignor—she is accompanied only by her assistant Miseria, whose name also alludes to “misery:” “¡Qué calor insoportable! Si la Miseria se diera cuenta de mi sofocación y me diera unos pasesitos de Agua

Florida” (56-57). Here, the writer is playing with the double sense of the noun miseria. First,

Isabel wishes her assistant, named Miseria, could do something to alleviate her suffocation from the heat. The second and most important meaning of the noun is the fact that Isabel is living in such a miserable life that she is begging for mercy. This last connotation also suggests that Isabel is alone. Such emphasis on the noun miseria devalues the description of the female character. In both cases, the protagonist’s development ends inevitably in her invisibility. José Luis Gonzalez, whose work on Puerto Rican cultural self-definition based on four historical floors has been exemplary for this analysis, has also focused on the harsh reality experienced by blacks in the island through his short story “En el fondo del caño hay un negrito” from his collection En este lado (1954). In this text, a black couple loses their only baby, named Melodía, who dies accidentally in the inlet Martín Peña. Their house is located in one of the poorest areas, in a swampy terrain that can be seen from the top of a bridge. The location of their dwelling clearly represents their lower position in the socioeconomic brackets:

Luego miró hacia arriba, hacia el puente y la carretera. . . . El hombre sonrió 233

viendo cómo desde casi todos los vehículos alguien miraba con extrañeza hacia

la casucha enclavada en medio de aquel brazo de mar: el “caño” sobre cuyas

márgenes pantanosas había ido creciendo hacía años el arrabal. Ese alguien por

lo general empezaba a mirar la casucha cuando el automóvil, o la guagua o el

camión, llegaba a la mitad del puente, y después seguía mirando, volteando

gradualmente la cabeza hasta que el automóvil, o la guagua o el camión, tomaba

la curva allá adelante. (González, “En el fondo” 11-12 )

Their baby dies when he dives deep into the water in search of the other negrito who, in reality, is his own image reflected on the water. The manner of his death represents—contrary to the baby’s name, Melodía—a deeper misery of African heritage: their only descendant is lost in the depths of the water. Water here alludes to Puerto Rican society.

In this vein, Mayra Santos-Febres proposes a literary solution to the invisibility of

African descendants.84 She takes a mythical person who embodies the African culture to play the most important role in her novel. Furthermore, Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer is brought into the island by a powerful hurricane to represent Puerto Rico’s roots. Indeed, besides giving her a space in her literary creation, the writer offers the protagonist the opportunity to reconstitute her past and that of her island by using its own elements. Here, we find the first empowering tool of resistance against social and political oppression. Isabel invokes the strength of her ancestors through the natural elements of the hurricane, the river, and African origin. This argument places

Isabel irrevocably in a balanced state with her land inspiring her to struggle in order to achieve change in the future. This strategy of resistance in Isabel’s existence reproduces what the literary

84 In her article “La raza en la cultura puertorriqueña,” Mayra Santos-Febres states that the invisibility of blacks is the result of “invisibilización sistemática de la historia, la presencia y la cultura negra en Puerto Rico, desplazamiento de lo negro al resto del Caribe, folklorización atemporal y el entronque de sus definiciones en el cuerpo, y, por último, plantar lo negro en el límite de lo conocible” (170). 234 critic Édouard Glissant understands, as noted in Chapter I, as “Relation.” Puerto Rico’s colonial status forced very different societies into contact—Tainos, Africans, and Spanish—and, hence, relation to each other, albeit in a violent and unequal way. In the long term, Glissant argues, this relation causes conflicts and tensions to the unity of the West (Britton 12). The West, whose attempt is to remain master of the region, is forced, then, to participate in Relation (12). Since

Isabel represents her island’s past, she exists “in relation” to the Other, regardless of the position she occupies as a black female at the bottom of the social scale. Her ties with the past are greater than the color/class pyramid of the island’s social structure. To a certain extent, her conditions bring diversity within the Puerto Rican society. Diversity is what leads to Relation and, as

Glissant has famously pointed out, “Relation operates within a totality based on diversity rather than unity” (12). Furthermore, Relation is an open-ended dynamic process always susceptible to change (13). Glissant’s concept might explain Isabel’s continuous zig-zag movement in the city of Ponce that parallels the course of the Portugués River. Her vitality negates the limited physical movements in the short stories by Rosario Ferré and Manuel Ramos Otero, whose protagonists spend most of their time in the closed space of the brothel. Finally, Relation also emphasizes unpredictable processes, such as the connection that exists between Isabel’s birth and the hurricane San Felipe.85 What our protagonist needs to do now is to realize that she can move from being a passive element of resistance to an active element of resistance. The moment has come to describe and analyze Isabel’s strategy of resistance. The tricky question is whether, in fact, Isabel la Negra succeeds in her plans of becoming visible in Puerto Rican society. Is she able to run through the veins of the city of Ponce like the imagery of the Portugués River? This interrogation will be examined in the next section.

85 A similar use of unpredictability is applied in Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s The Repeating Island, whose aim is to find dynamics, the rhythms that show the incoherent, heterogeneous nature of everyday life (Britton 14). 235

Isabel’s present

While working with Don Antón, the tailor of the city of Ponce, Isabel meets Fernando

Fornaris, the son of a foreign prosperous import/export merchant who is known in the city for his illegitimate sons. Later, Isabel becomes entangled with this prominent bachelor, and she gets pregnant. She decides to give her child up for adoption. With this action, she falls in the vindictive trap that her female ancestors created: these women questioned their male partners’ loyalty and realized they were alone in their path towards motherhood; thus, they opted to break this new stage in their lives by abandoning their children. One might ask: Could it have been better for the protagonist to keep her child, in order to interrupt the old chain of prejudices and start building a new family? This question can most usefully be answered by examining the case of what Fernando Fornaris’ family has done in the past. As is mentioned above, many illegitimate sons in the city of Ponce are descendants of the Fornaris’ family. Isabel realizes that

Fernando Fornaris only used her to please his sexual appetite and that he was never going to marry her. Instead, he gets married to Cristina Rangel, a rich, white woman. Isabel is rejected for her dark skin. This observation points out the pejorative attitude toward the black woman: She is only used as an erotic symbol rather than being conceived of and recognized as a human being.

By giving her child away, Isabel is freeing herself from the psychological abuse practiced by

Fernando. She wants to feel that she, too, is a human being and not a sexual object that can be thrown away at any moment. Furthermore, by giving her child away, Isabel is also freeing herself from her ties to Fernando Fornaris because she will not see his physical features reflected on the baby’s body.

Isabel Luberza receives from Fernando Fornaris some land in exchange for her silence about what happened between the two: “La Negra extendió la mano, tomó el título, recorriéndolo 236 con los dedos. ‘Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer’ leía; ‘proprietaria hasta el lindero que colinda por un lado con las fincas de la familia Fornarís . . .’ estipulaba. Ahora era dueña de una propiedad”

(Santos, Nuestra 259). Isabel uses this land to reclaim her identity. The land that she receives is located near the Fornaris’ farm, close to one of the most powerful families in the city. It is here where Isabel’s struggle for a liberated and independent life comes to a climax. The most important word in this high point of tension is “building:” it is the one word that materializes

Isabel’s desire for settling down, yet it enables her to be in a better position on the island. In

Puerto Rico, foreigners owned the land; they controlled it and used it for their own benefit. The main cause of misery was the displacement of Puerto Rican landowners, as a result of the political system imposed by the North Americans (Fernández 112). It is crucial here to indicate that, by having a place on her own, Isabel would show to Puerto Rican society—characterized by patriarchal and racist beliefs—that blacks, and especially women, are active members of the construction of the nation. Let us remember that, during the first decades of the twentieth century, issues on race dominated the political discussions between the United States and the island to the extent that, when American citizenship was given to Puerto Ricans, Congress made a distinction among “mainstream” Americans and people from the island: “En otras palabras, el conceder la ciudadanía norteamericana a los ‘nativos’ de la isla no cambió en nada -para los puertorriqueños o para Puerto Rico- la situación colonial” (Jiménez 79-80). As a result, only those who were educated and belong to the top of the color/race pyramid of the social structure could take the few political spaces given by the Americans (80). Therefore, owning a piece of land, back then, meant a real privilege for a black woman. It symbolized a ladder that could help her to move up the social scale. Isabel knows this, and she wants that to happen as fast as possible. For this reason, she decides to build not an ordinary business, but a brothel to bring 237 controversy to the city and to attract the attention of its inhabitants. Having a brothel in a deeply ingrained male-dominated society where the black woman is seen in no better place than in bed means a sexual revolution. There is, of course, another issue here to which we will have to return, such as the exploitative business fueled by poverty, in which women, for fear of being harmed and humiliated on the streets, prefer to be in a safer place. Whether the brothel is safer or not, let us leave aside this point to discuss it later. What is important to mention here is that, since blacks, and especially women, were considered invisible in this ingrained culture, Isabel chooses to make a drastic change—the construction of a brothel—so their message can be heard:

We are here, and we are part of Puerto Rico. Isabel Luberza accommodates prostitutes who are in the streets and who are usually mistreated by the government in her brothel. She sees in these women what the rest cannot perceive; she realizes that they use their bodies as a negotiation to fight oppression.86 For this reason, Isabel decides to support them so they can continue their battle in a better place. For the island’s poor, Isabel becomes a leader, the authentic mouthpiece of the region. Under this frame, the image of the black woman who owns a business serves to metaphorically decolonize Puerto Rico from its racial prejudices and from the U.S. colonization.

She functions as a signifier of the emerging nation in times of U.S. occupation. Her position calls the American ideology—that blacks were incapable of leading organizations—into question.

There are no jobs available, and people are starving. A black woman offers a safe place to some women where they can work and get remunerated without being persecuted and humiliated by the police:

86 In her article “La raza en la cultura puertorriqueña,” Mayra Santos-Febres writes the following: “La danza, el canto, la sensualidad del cuerpo no son sino respuestas de supervivencia que los afroantillanos hemos tenido que desarrollar a lo largo de la historia. Son una estrategia de negociación con la opresión y un rescate de la tradición musical, religiosa y oral de base africana a la que se le confieren nuevos usos y sentidos” (167). No matter how the body is used, its movements/postures function as non-verbal communication. In this way, the body sends and interprets messages through it. Ultimately, such movements are used as “estrategia de negociación con la oppression,” as Santos points out in the passage. 238

La mayoría eran mujeres. Algún que otro hombre caminaba por la calle hacia el

baile. . . . Las más llamativas eran las putas. Tenían temple. . . . Bravas yeguas

alebrestadas. Tenían que serlo. Andar sola de noche en aquellos días era motivo

suficiente para que la policía acusara a cualquiera de ‘solicitud deshonesta’. Peor

si eran ‘de profesión desconocida’. Se las llevaban al Hospital de Damas y allí

las encerraban hasta por año y medio, sin celebrar juicio ni levantar cargos ni

permitir visitas familiares. (Santos, Nuestra 181-82)

With the construction of the brothel, Isabel offers a solution to the lack of jobs to a small section of the population. Yet, it is a solution that the government was not able to provide. In other words, through the construction of a brothel, Isabel manipulates the power relationships she has and, along with the prostitutes, makes herself visible before the eyes of the Other. Such an attitude is viewed as a moral insult as well as a menace to those in power insofar as the profits from the brothel make Isabel move into the upper echelons of society. It is clearly a remarkable exception for somebody like her. Since so few people have made it, her ostentatious business place and her name become well known in the city: “. . . el Elizabeth’s era lugar tan frecuentado.

Aquello era otra dimension” (32). With this, Isabel imitates one of the characteristics of the master: his exhibitionism. Let us remember here again what we examined in Chapters I and II:

Frantz Fanon’s statement about the master whose greatest desire is to be seen only as an authoritative figure (Les damnés 19). During slavery, visual extravagance was presented through the use of ostentatious colonial clothes and architecture as a strategy of intimidation (Britton 22).

Isabel’s strategy of intimidation is the brothel itself. Her negotiations reproduce, in the same way, what Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant mentioned in L’intention poétique: “the colonial subject’s desire is not to escape the master’s gaze, but to participate in the 239 scopic exchange on equal terms” (Britton 23). Isabel, too, becomes “an exhibitionist” in order to be seen at the same level as the Other and, thus, to be able to question, destabilize, and undermine its authority. The brothel symbolizes a site of power because its construction poses a threat to the absolute dominion of the United States and those in charge of executing its orders in

Puerto Rico. By reuniting prostitutes in a big salon close to one of the most powerful families of the city, Isabel creates a basis for political action in a phallogocentric society. Americans wanted to be the only masters on the island, and as Ronald Fernández comments, Puerto Rico’s development was inextricably linked to the United States’ development, which placed the island under the “absolute control” of U.S. officials (112).

Let us recall once again that Michel De Certeau states that a strategy is “an effort to delimit one’s own place in a world bewitched by the invisible powers of the Other” (36). Isabel

Luberza builds her brothel in enemy territory—land that was owned by foreigners—to symbolize the beginning of her battle for freedom against racial discrimination and total control from the

U.S. military. The construction of her brothel in the space of the Other gives her strength, which enables the protagonist to release her contained interior power into a more tactical project.

Besides helping prostitutes, one other impetus for building a brothel is precisely to challenge the hegemony of the Americans. During World War I, the government of the United States established in Puerto Rico a military department for purposes of defense because the island was considered a strategic point in the Caribbean (Fernández 139). Isabel takes advantage of this military occupation of the island’s best lands to attract the attention of Puerto Ricans and

American soldiers. On one hand, the island offered its young men to the army. This explains why the police persecuted prostitutes. They thought that these women were holding the soldiers back:

“Pues por eso mismo es que nos la están poniendo difícil, porque según los guardias nosotras les 240 sonsacamos a los muchachos que los americanos quieren reclutar para la guerra” (Santos,

Nuestra 182). If North America was fighting in World War I, then Puerto Rico was also at war insofar as the former depended on the Puerto Rican soldiers to help them. Puerto Rican young men were told that their “country”—that is, the United States—needed them to fight. On the island, the soldiers’ families that were kissing their loved ones goodbye and seeing them off into planes or boats were also experiencing the same war, but doing so on the home front. In this vein, Isabel, as part of the populace, felt as well that she was fighting a war, but a different one.

Isabel felt she could emerge out of everyday life and taste a kind of personal freedom that was also socially legitimized in the national cause. Her strategy of resistance consisted of recruiting soldiers, primarily Americans, who were sent to the base in Puerto Rico. If the United States was conducting military recruitment on the island for its own benefit and purposes, regardless of

Puerto Ricans’ interests, then Isabel was doing it as well for Elizabeth’s Dancing Place. That said, Isabel’s purposes were, first, to bring diversity into the brothel: “Al Elizabeth’s Dancing

Place entraba todo el mundo, no había miramientos de edad, color, procedencia o pecas en la piel” (25). By doing this, she is showing to Puerto Rican society that, in her brothel, there are no ethnic, linguistic, or racial prejudices against people: Everybody is welcome, and violence is not accepted. Furthermore, not only did soldiers attend the brothel, but also the most important people of the city of Ponce. Second, she is demonstrating to the American government that their soldiers spend time and money in a brothel where most of the prostitutes are black women. This is ironic if we think about how blacks were portrayed by Americans when the invasion occurred:

They were considered “primitive,” and from this idea, the American government proclaimed themselves as the “gobierno militar protector” (“protective military government”) that would bring “razón, moral, orden” (“reason, moral values, order”) to Puerto Rico (Santos, La raza 160). 241

To a certain extent, Isabel Luberza is playing the same game, but with different tools. Her brothel attracts American soldiers, and through this, the American belief about blacks is contradictory. If blacks were primitives as they argued, then American soldiers would not attend the brothel. In the same way that the United States benefits from Puerto Rico’s best lands, Isabel takes advantage of its soldiers, and, of course, its money. The increased number of American soldiers in the island’s lands is reflected in the brothel’s success:

La estrategia militar de los nuevos amos estaba resultándole en negocio redondo.

Cada vez llegaban más soldados a las bases, a Loosey Points, al Campamento

Santiago. Y todos iban a parar al Elizabeth’s Dancing Place. No más llevaba

cuatro años con el local abierto, que ya se levantaba sólido. Dejaba ganancias.

Contaba con Leonor. Levantó una casona para ellas dos, con servicio y jardines,

diseñada por el famoso arquitecto Necodoma. Además, mandó ensanchar el local

que levantó en San Antón. En la tierra que era de ella. De ella sola. Cicatriz de su

vientre.

DEMETRIO. Además, Isabel, los muchachos de don Pedro se visten como los

nazis, camisas negras en vez de marrones. . . . Dicen que la pobreza se

acabará cuando salgamos de los americanos.

ISABEL. Pues yo necesito sus centavos.

DEMETRIO. Tú también estás jugando con fuego. Ese local es muy visible,

Isabel.

ISABEL. Cada cual tiene que dar su batalla. (Santos, Nuestra 309)

Under these circumstances, Isabel is able to play her cards because the construction of her brothel was a “calculated action” in the space of the Other. Not only is Isabel’s business 242 located close to the Fornaris’ house, she lays the foundations of Elizabeth’s Dancing Place on a second strategic place: the Portugués River’s banks. This river is historically significant for the city of Ponce, which had its origins on its banks. In the first years of the island’s colonization, the first Spanish families settled down on the banks of the Jacaguas River and established what is now known as the city of Ponce (Suárez F. 3). Later, this group searched for a safer place to live, and they settled down on the fertile plains of a river called Barayama (now Portugués River) (3).

The banks of the Portugués River offered a safe place to the first Spanish families of Puerto

Rico. In the same way, this river offered Isabel a secure site where she could build her brothel:

“El Elizabeth’s quedaba justo a la ribera del Portugués, en un terreno aledaño a las fincas de la familia” (Santos, Nuestra 31). The action of building a house on the Portugués River’s banks indicates the materialization of Isabel’s roots in the city of Ponce and in the island. Rather than moving in different directions, she finds stability in a safe place and lets Puerto Rico’s past move into her so she can start doing something to reclaim her selfhood, and that of those in need in the present. Living and working in this area means a constant interpenetration of the island’s past.

Inside Elizabeth’s Dancing Place is where Isabel can connect to her history—through the land and the Portugués River—and where she can feel safe and protected, accompanied by other women who, like her, have been repudiated for their dark skin. It is clear that the construction of the brothel constitutes for Isabel the articulation of a new identity because she is able to situate in one place all the elements that define her as a black woman. In this respect, as we discussed in

Chapters I and II, Jacques Derrida has brilliantly observed, “Quelle que soit l’histoire d’un retour

à soi ou chez soi, dans la ‘case’ du chez-soi (chez, c’est la casa) . . . de quelque façon que s’affabule une constitution du soi, de l’autos, de l’ipse, on se figure toujours que celui ou celle qui écrit doit savoir déjà dire jeˮ (53). The subject, he argues, stops being alienated when he/she 243 has an assertion of his/her home or language (13). Isabel stops being alienated because she has found in the brothel a space she can call home. She connects with the land where it is built and with the women who work there. The redefinition of her identity revolves around the brothel and the need to fill it up with the rehabilitation of empowering elements that are intrinsically part of her, such as the healing of her motherhood. Hence, in its walls, she learns to mend her life. Isabel not only adopts a little boy, but she also recuperates the son she abandoned when she was young and immature and extends her help to him. Isabel is offered a chance to subvert her African ancestors’ destinies, that of always ending up alone without a family.

The protagonist’s point of connection to the land and to those around her, as well as her feelings of being protected, are completely invisible to the racial, economical, and political differentiations from outside Elizabeth’s Dancing Place. What the city of Ponce sees is a black/prostitute woman who owns a brothel. This is the way she is read by the outsiders. The urban space of Ponce is against Isabel and her protégées. It is important to remember that the brothel is located in San Antón, a barrio in the city of Ponce positioned in its periphery— although today Barrio San Antón is totally enclosed within the city’s limits. Every time Isabel goes to the city, it is to negotiate with high-ranking political and religious officials about the status of her brothel. The government and the church want to shut down Elizabeth’s Dancing

Place. Thus, Isabel needs to go there very often in order to deal with the officials. The city is the site where a wide range of negotiations occur. Here, I am talking about negotiations concerning money, of course, but also concerning, in particular, the construction of black female identity. It is true that, for Isabel and for those accompanying her, being present in the urban space is not considered a pleasant activity; however, it is necessary for their existence. First, it is not enjoyable because degradation and opposition among races, classes, and gender are spread out 244 before their eyes. They witness and experience racial intolerance. According to a census on

Puerto Rico’s population from 1899-1950, black women were hired “en posiciones menos prestigiosas o remuneradas que a sus contrapartes blancas e incluso eran excluidas en su totalidad de algunas ocupaciones que contrataban mujeres” (Ríos 162). The refusal to occupy certain job positions might explain why some black women chose prostitution. Among those female workers who were hired in low-paying positions were children between the ages of 10 and 14 who worked as washerwomen and/or in domestic service (164).87 Isabel was a servant when she was only eight years old, and in spite of her age, she experienced discrimination. Now, as an adult, even though she owns a business and she belongs to the upper class—in other words, despite the visibility given to her by money—she is still victim of racial prejudices. Her visibility in the social echelons is negated by le regard of the Other. Her female friends are also discriminated against in the same way, although, in their case, for being prostitutes. The following excerpt tells the moment when Isabel and her protégées attend church and are stared at scornfully by the people surrounding them:

Lo único que buscaba ahora era salir de aquella iglesia a toda prisa. Pero afueran

continuaban las miradas. La muchedumbre de feligreses se partía en dos para

dejarla pasar. La peste era ella, una plaga. Las mujeres tomaron del brazo a sus

maridos, apretándolos fuerte. Los maridos se dejaban conducir sin mirarla a la

cara. El señor Tous, Villanúa, Méndez Vigo el comerciante. Todos visitaban al

Elizabeth’s. ‘Isabel, gusto en verla.’ La saludaban al entrar. Y ese domingo de

misa la negaron, adentro la negaron, afuera en la plaza la negaban. (Santos,

87 During the first half of the twentieth century, job opportunities were subjected to racial dynamics as well as constraints of gender and class; it was not until the nineties that the extent of this issue was recognized (Ríos 163). 245

Nuestra 313-14)

It is true that Isabel progresses through the novel from object to subject: from being invisible to becoming visible. For the elite of the urban space of Ponce, this visibility means being the abject, the undesirable. Isabel is seen as the authentic mouthpiece of the subordinated masses; those within the dominant power structure will attempt to divert her energy. The crowd’s reaction toward Isabel and the other women is defined as an optical strategy to keep them aloof from becoming part of the society. They want to control Isabel’s and her friends’ tools of self- definition by looking at them with disdain. One might observe here that, by being negated by le regard, Mayra Santos-Febres is resorting to the philosophical move that in form resembles what the Martinican philosopher Frantz Fanon mentions in Peau noire, masques blancs (1952):

“L’homme n’est humain que dans la mesure où il veut s’imposer à un autre homme, afin de se faire reconnaître par lui. Tant qu’il n’est pas effectivement reconnu par l’autre, c’est cet autre qui demeure le thème de son actionˮ (175-76). Isabel and the prostitutes from the brothel keep going to the city, not because they enjoy people’s cruel treatments of them, but because they hope to be recognized as human beings in the eyes of the Other. It is a necessary process that they must go through, yet it is undesirable.

It might appear that the process of being demeaned by le regard of the Other does not evoke a response from Isabel and her group. Quite the opposite, in fact, their response is an exploration that goes beyond le regard; it is their total immersion in their own negation, which is situated in the limits of their bodies. They use their black bodies to mark trajectories in the city.

Their response is speechless and located in their physical movements. Michel De Certeau’s work is useful here because implicit within his conceptualization of strategies of resistance in everyday life is a recognition that the act of walking parallels a speech act. According to him, walking is a 246 process of appropriation of the urban space in the same way that a speaker takes on language to express his/her feelings (97-98). Considered from this angle, it can be said that Isabel and her protégées walk in the city of Ponce in order to appropriate the space of power of the Other, albeit momentarily, where they were once and continue to be humiliated by the upper class. The enunciatory operations, says Michel De Certeau, executed through walking are “of an unlimited diversity” and, thus, they “cannot be reduced to their graphic trail” (99). This means that, on a simple level, Isabel goes to the city of Ponce to negotiate her business’ safety; however, a second motive behind Isabel’s trip is the desire to be seen regardless of the reactions this might create.

Like Vieux Os in Chapter III, Isabel Luberza and her friends also manipulate the urban system, this time by walking in it and by enunciating her desire to affirm her identity with le regard of the Other. The crowd does not accept Isabel’s opacity—Glissant’s second theoretical concept concerning the topic of resistance—her right to be different, her right not to be understood.

Isabel’s decision to own a business, and in particular a brothel, as a black woman is not accepted by the elite in Ponce, who think that she should live in the same way all the other blacks and lower class live, which is in poverty. As a result, Isabel is regarded with disdain by the Other.

Still, Isabel does not let this stop what she does. On the contrary, it is her consistency of keeping her business up and of going to the city of Ponce that keeps her on one side of the battlefield against society, making her stronger every time.

The writer Mayra Santos-Febres refutes the way that Isabel and her friends are treated by the crowd. The purpose of this scene is to bring social awareness to the invisibility of blacks, especially of women, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and still in force in today’s

Puerto Rico. In the article “La raza en la cultura puertorriqueña,” Mayra Santos-Febres recognizes the black female’s negation by the society as a sickness in the Puerto Rican identity: 247

“Me parece que la supuesta enfermedad que aqueja a la identidad puertorriqueña no está en la presencia negra sino en su negación” (170). Santos-Febres’ protagonist is subjected to disdainful gestures by society to reproduce the social division, still latent, in Puerto Rico. If we go back in time, we will see that this social division is what caused the U.S. invasion in 1898. Americans took advantage of the internal problems between the two social classes—jornaleros y hacendada—to implement their control (162). Under this circumstance, the writer is proposing that the solution to the American control of the island is found among its populace. If blacks are accepted as active members of the nation and classes are integrated, Puerto Rico will then be seen as a unified country. In this way, it will be harder for the American government to penetrate and separate the social structures of society. The unification of its inhabitants is vital for the island’s freedom.

Through the inhabitants’ aggressive reactions, Isabel is intertwined in the murky atmosphere of the city. Fortunately, she does not live in this area; thus, she is able to keep a distance between the city and her own dwelling. Speaking on the issue, Michel De Certeau states that, in order to understand the urban space, it is necessary that the individual disentangles himself/herself from the daily behaviors within it (93). In the same way that Marie-Sophie disentangles herself from the oppressive behaviors of Fort-de-France and decides to live in

Texaco, Isabel, too, lives in the periphery of the city of Ponce. This does not mean, however, that

Isabel does not get confused every time she visits Ponce. When she was younger and used to work in it, Isabel moved from one place to another. Being in constant movement was for her a way to escape the social oppression of the people’s eyes. It is precisely this reaction from the city’s people that made Isabel desire to experience another space: its periphery. San Antón is located on the periphery of Ponce, just as, for Marie Sophie, the neighborhood of Texaco is on 248 the outskirts of Fort-de-France. Any place that puts the subject at a distance from the city makes the urban space readable, according to Michel De Certeau (92). Being in Elizabeth’s Dancing

Place puts Isabel and her protégées at a distance from the city of Ponce, making the urban space readable. From this point, Isabel can perceive the city of Ponce as a place accessible only to those with money, those who are able to build and create businesses that make the social and economical gaps even wider for the lower class: “Pero así era como ahora se lograban las fortunas en estas tierras. Con cemento” (Santos, Nuestra 320). It is the scene where uprisings are the order of the day: “El pueblo entero estaba oscurecido, como en toque de queda. Afuera, los policías se apostaban en cada esquina. La guerra se había desatado en las calles” (311).88 It is a place where Puerto Ricans are drafted to go to war so that they can have U.S. citizenship.89 It is a space where the government builds churches to comfort disabled people: “El pueblo se cundía de paralíticos, lisiados, locos. . . . Las carreteras rurales se llenaban de iglesitas pentecostales gritando aleluya contra el viento. Pero . . . ¿Qué hacer para afianzar aún más los amarres del control?” (312). With all this, the city of Ponce functions as a place of various kinds of negative interferences that are in constant movement, and it is from the brothel that all this can be seen.

The brothel functions as the antithesis of the urban space of Ponce. Here, every evening is a carnival of fun, a place of public revelry involving alcoholic drinks, music, dancing, and, of course, women:

La gente reía alto, bebía libre en ese lugar con aire a diván mullido, a sitial sin

ojos pero repleto de manos y pieles y de bullicio que camuflaba las palabras

88 This excerpt makes reference to the Ponce massacre. Ronald Fernández writes, “On March 21, 1937, a group of Nationalists tried to march in Ponce. Police stopped them and minutes later nineteen people were dead, over one hundred wounded. Reporting for the American Civil Liberties Union, Arthur Garfield Hays said that the ‘facts show that the affair of March 21st in Ponce was a massacre’ ” (131). 89 Puerto Ricans were collectively made U.S. citizens in 1917; instead of giving them any rights, this resulted in the centralization of all meaningful power in the hands of U.S. colonial administrators (Fernández 71). 249

dichas sin reparo. . . . Era otra dimensión, distinta y alegre; parecida a los

carnavales donde las parejas de enamorados caminan de manos hasta las carpas

de juegos y los señores tertulian recostados en las vitrinas. . . . Era otra la alegría

del Elizabeth’s. Una alegría derramada pero consciente de su existencia casi

imposible. Era una alegría de regalo con sonrisas de regalo, con mujeres tan

diversas como uno las pudiera imaginar, prestas a hablar y a regalar su presencia

la noche entera, a oír atentas y a mirar profundo a los ojos. . . . (33)

As the passage indicates, the brothel is a “sitial sin ojos:” there are no eyes that humiliate people because, in this place, everybody is considered equal. Instead, eyes are used by women to awaken desire in men: “mujeres . . . a oír atentas y a mirar profundo a los ojos.” The problem with any carnival atmosphere is that its entertainment is temporary, and it always involves elements of a circus conveyed by the use of masquerades. This observation makes us intrinsically reflect on whether the women working in the brothel are content with their roles, or whether they are just pretending and, in reality, they feel exploited by Isabel, but prefer not to do anything about it because they realize that the conditions on the streets are worse than in the brothel itself. In other words, is the brothel different from the sexual harassment and sexual exploitation from the police? It is fair to assume that the brothel in Santos-Febres’ novel is portrayed as a safer place to work in than the streets of the urban city because its main protagonist does not force and/or humiliate the prostitutes. Nonetheless, in the short stories of

Rosario Ferré and Ramos Otero, women are humiliated and imprisoned in those brothels. Let me explain with an example. In Ferré’s tale, Isabel is sexually exploited by Ambrosio, who keeps her trapped and working for years in the brothel: “Al entrar en la casa no pude evitar pensar en ti,

Ambrosio, en cómo me tuviste encerrada durante tantos años en aquel rancho de tablones con 250 techo de zinc, condenada a pasarme los días sacándole los quesos a los niñitos ricos, a los hijos de tus amigos que tú me traías . . .” (365). In Ramos’ tale, it is Isabel who forces the women from the brothel to have sex with men regardless of their age as a sort of payment for everything she has done for them: “. . . por eso los grititos sofocados de la Providencia que tiene que aprender de alguna manera a pagarme con horas de trabajo todo lo que he hecho por ella. . . . el techo que le he dado. La ropa y la comida. Aunque no puedo pagarle por ser menor de edad” (66). In

Nuestra señora de la noche, Isabel treats the prostitutes with kindness; as a result, her compassion makes the brothel a more attractive and safer location than the streets of Ponce.

However, one might ask now: if Isabel is depicted as a merciful person, why did she not offer to these prostitutes other occupational alternatives that could have been provided by education, for instance, in order to get out of prostitution? The thing is that Isabel did not possess material wealth prior to bringing the women to her brothel; therefore, she could not offer them a better option. Furthermore, most of the jobs—except for the ones badly paid—were available to only white women (Ríos 162). Although it is not specified in the text, it is evident that Isabel’s protégées feel ashamed and stigmatized for their prostitution. One can imagine that they would like to have the same options in life that white women have, such as a decent job. One of the primary stumbling blocks to get out of prostitution is the lack of opportunities available for these women, particularly in a deeply ingrained patriarchal nation. Since opportunities for education and fair labor are limited for them, they make their presence by protesting within their own bodies in a brothel that is managed by a woman. They direct le regard of the Other by liberating their bodies in the carnival atmosphere of the brothel. It should be also taken into consideration that their negotiation refuses the idea that their bodies become the property of men. In “When

Our Lips Speak Together” (1980), philosopher Luce Irigaray declares that women cannot be 251 controlled by men despite their rules: “You are not within me. I do not contain you or retain you in my stomach, my arms, or my head. Nor in my memory, my mind, or my language. You are just there, like my skin” (77). The clients of Elizabeth’s Dancing Place pay for sex, but they do not own the female bodies because what these women are doing is sort of a protest against the patriarchal society. In such a protest, they are using their bodies—like Claudia in Chapter IV—as tools of resistance; therefore, they cannot be possessed by those they are fighting against. While organizing a march, Demetrio, one of Isabel’s friends, once told our protagonist, “Lo que nos queda a los pobres es el acto de negociación” (Santos, Nuestra 308). Negotiation is a natural rhythm that people bring into existence, applying it in whatever they do. Each character negotiates in different ways in order to survive. It symbolizes a sort of liberation that sometimes works out in a positive way—like the upward mobility of our protagonist—while in others, the outcome is negative—like the case of people dying in manifestations. The structure of the novel follows, as well, the style of negotiation that is present in the content. This point will be examined briefly.

252

The art of negotiation

As a whole, we have studied that the structures of all the novels analyzed in this dissertation refuse a linear narrative format. It has been argued that they represent a type of resistance to the traditional organization that stands out in the first pages of each text. Like

Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau and El hombre, la hembra y el hambre by Daína Chaviano, the structure of Nuestra señora de la noche also revisits different religious concepts to render visible the patriarchal beliefs of Puerto Rican society. In the short story “La última plena que bailó

Luberza,” Manuel Ramos Otero intersperses his text with prayers and references to Saints in the

Catholic repertoire and in the Yoruba belief. These prayers are recited by the protagonist Isabel

Luberza as a sort of redemption for her sins. In Mayra Santos-Febres’ novel, unlike Ramos

Otero, the writer places the prayers in the voices of secondary characters that need a different way to negotiate their suffering in order to pacify it. What these secondary characters have in common is that they are women. This observation must be read as an allegory of a male- dominated society, given that the prayers are not placed in male characters but in women— which, at the same time, is directly linked to the female subordination. The structure of Nuestra señora de la noche is read in terms of the socially committed writer who identifies a simple clear-cut solution to the problem of phallogocentric oppression: “praying.” For Santos-Febres,

Isabel’s method of negotiation, however, is more practical and tangible because it is elaborated through the building of the brothel and the donations given by her to the orphanage. It is necessary to remark that Isabel does pray to the Virgin, but she does not focus all her time in doing it. The character of Isabel appeals to collective identity as she takes elements from different national figures. As Rosarios Méndez Panedas has attentively observed in her article,

“Isabelita construye su identidad. . . . Escuchando e identificándose con esa otra, u otras que hay 253 en ella, que la seducen y que la permiten cambiar su destino, tomar las riendas de su vida y conseguir sus deseos.” (Méndez). Among those national figures with which she identifies are La

Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre and Luisa Capetillo. From the former, Isabel imitates her charitable mission, whereas from the latter, she imitates the courage to fight for her rights and ideals. Such personality does not occur in other female characters who simply are not capable of building a brothel like Isabel, for instance, in order to fight for their own goals. They feel intimidated by the deeply ingrained male-dominated society; thus, they prefer to negotiate their freedom using more individual and private methods. This is done through multiple prayers— addressed to God and most of the time to the Virgin—that can be read as the characters speak, sometimes melancholically and other times aggressively. Indeed, in this novel, the chapters are alternated with normal sequences told by Isabel Luberza and a narrator, along with sequences of prayer by other characters who tell the story from their own perspective. These characters are

Doña Montserrate and Cristina Rangel, the two most important women in Isabel’s transition to adulthood. The former is the woman who takes care of the baby that Isabel had with Fernando

Fornarís and decided to abandon, while the latter is the woman Fernando Fornarís marries.

The writer Mayra Santos-Febres is immersing the discourses of these characters into the novel in order to give another dimension to the story of the legendary Isabel la Negra and to show that there are other women who negotiate at different levels. Without these complementary sections, Isabel’s profile would be flat. Since the narrator’s knowledge is restricted in the novel, the characters’ interventions add important information to the construction of the protagonist.

Hence, they are part of Isabel’s journey. The interventions are categorized under the belief system of the Rosary, litanies, and religious stories, such as the Three Marys and the legend of

Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre, known as Cachita, which is also the term used in 254

Santos-Febres’ novel. The purpose of the Rosary and the religious stories is, in general, to keep in memory certain principal events or mysteries in the history of human salvation and, specifically, to thank and praise God for them. In the case of the novel, the characters use these prayers to negotiate with God/Jesus and the Virgin. They constitute an act that mean exactly what they intend. For instance, Doña Montserrate always asks Jesus and the Virgin two things: to have more money in order to live in better conditions, and to protect and guide her godson

Roberto—the son of Isabel and Fernando Fornarís—whom she has raised and loved as her own child. Her desire for money and her desperation for her godson’s well-being exceed spiritual and moral sense: “Te aconsejo que me atiendas. De madera eres y facilito se puede volcar una vela. .

. . Yo que tú, cumplo con los pedidos desta vieja. Yo que tú, me callo la boca ya. . . . Yo que tú, recuerdo que mi lugar es servir. Sisisisisisí, guarda al Hijo. Por los siglos de los siglos, amén

Jesús” (Santos, Nuestra 197). Rather than a prayer, what Doña Montserrate is doing sounds more like an insult. In her prayer, she threatens to burn the crucifix if Jesus does not do what she is asking for. In her mind, however, it is a negotiation, albeit an unfair and absurd one. She is an uneducated person who used to be a prostitute before taking care of el nene, Roberto’s nickname.

In addition to this, she is black. This character represents what Isabel Luberza could have been if she had not built her business. Cristina Rangel, on the other hand, symbolizes the other side of the coin. She is an educated person who belongs to the upper class. In her prayers, she asks the

Virgin Mary to make Fernando Fornarís—her husband—fall in love with her, and to make him forget Isabel Luberza and the son these two had together:

Pero yo soy la imagen de tu semejanza. Para eso fui parida y concebida, para ser

como tú y como mi madre. . . . Aquí estoy, fermentándome en este vaso de

cristal en que se me ha convertido la carne. ¿Este es el gozo que me deparas? . . . 255

Detén el tiempo, Madre de la Misericordia. . . . Que no se aparte de mí. Vivir al

lado del Amado es todo lo que aguanta este empobrecido corazón. . . . Tú la que

me abandonaste a mi suerte, escúchame. . . . Concédeme esta última petición.

Me la debes. (116-18)

Despite the melancholic tone in Cristina’s words, she is also blackmailing the Virgin. For

Cristina, this is her way to negotiate. Cristina says that she was raised following the Virgin’s image; thus, she deserves to receive what she is asking for in her prayer. Cristina represents the self-sacrificing traditional woman in a patriarchal society. Cristina Rangel and Doña Montserrate are the two extreme prototypical sides of a character—the poor, black woman versus the rich, white woman. Their two points of view emphasize the problems of society: distinctions of race, class, and economic power. For them, whether poor or rich, “praying” is their way to negotiate and to get what they want. Isabel la Negra positions herself in the middle of the two because, as a woman, too, she prefers to negotiate and to resist domination in a more visible way by building a brothel, rather than letting Others control her. In this regard, Mayra Santos-Febres states in her article “La raza en la cultura puertorriqueña” that a way to consolidate Puerto Rican identity is to put in the center what needs to be in the center; this is la cultura antillana (170). The writer succeeds in elaborating an internally focalized narrative in terms of its content and its structure, where the center of attention is above all the protagonist Isabel Luberza. The interventions of

Cristina Rangel and Doña Montserrate are displayed as fragments of a totality, similar to a game of chess, where every piece plays a role with the most important move being “the check.”

According to Michel De Certeau, this way of outlining a text is similar to everyday tactics because it involves a form of intelligence capable of immersing different moves in one place (80-

81). 256

The sequences of prayers throughout the novel are like parts of a machine that Doña

Montserrate and Cristina Rangel switch on and off to see if they work for them. This style makes the structure of the novel look a little heavy-handed at times, and it throws the reader off-guard because the reader’s ability to make sense of events in the novel is always countered by the spontaneous appearance of the prayers. In addition to this, in most of the prayers, the name of the speaker is unknown. It is true that, as in most literary works, it is important to read the whole narration in order to understand the correct order of events. In this novel, such a procedure is necessary to know which character is speaking in each of the religious sections. The function of these intertextual references is to provoke confusion. Sometimes it might appear that the prayers come from Isabel’s mouth. Although it is not the case, it can be interpreted this way. There is clearly a resistance from the characters to be recognized by the readers as individuals with specific names. Instead, they engage in an act that could be described as a collective act of resistance. Their anonymity might be because their prayers are supposed to be, above all, confidential: It is a negotiation between God/the Virgin and the female character. Nevertheless, the fact that the characters are not identified from the start also suggests their anxiety and fear of what the readers might think of them; thus, they prefer to be in a group rather than alone. The readers, in this case, symbolize the Otherness. Doña Montserrate, as a black and poor woman, is condemned to live in a hideout because she is raising the son of the rich Fernando Fornaris.

Meanwhile, Cristina Rangel, as a white and rich woman, is condemned to live in a big house and be a submissive wife, who must ignore her husband’s love affairs. These women are obviously not content with their situations, but they are afraid of what new rules the Other might impose on them. They live imprisoned in their own bodies and dwellings. This idea is stressed by the circularity of the novel, the connection between beginning and closing. The structure of the novel 257 allows for the imprisonment for some characters. Isabel rebels against this organization. We can see this from the beginning of the text. Indeed, the book opens with the section called

Revelación, where Isabel Luberza makes her appearance as a distinguished and respectable business woman in a celebration organized by the Red Cross. The text starts with the new image and identity of Isabel rather than with her poor living conditions. From here on, it goes back to

Isabel’s origins. The circularity in the novel and the multiple religious sections within it do not, however, deny Isabel’s progression. To the contrary, they contribute to her development, making the protagonist a marvelously constructed character.

As an African-Puerto Rican female writer, Mayra Santos-Febres debunks the dominant

Puerto Rican patriarchal paradigm supported by the American government in their relegation of black women to invisibility in social, economic, and politic domains. Her novel represents a change of the literary works on the mythical figure, Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer, created in the

1970s by Rosario Ferré and Manuel Ramos Otero. Santos-Febres appropriates and alters the female character portrayed in Ferré’s and Ramos’ with a new identity and representation.

Nuestra señora de la noche draws attention to the black female body, stressing the importance of her performativity. It is Isabel la Negra who connects with Puerto Rico’s history and, thus, with its people, in particular, with the marginalized. After overcoming many obstacles, she makes her presence felt in the government and in the patriarchal/traditional Puerto Rican society with the building of her brothel, Elizabeth’s Dancing Place. She negotiates and delimits her space of power by constructing her brothel in a very tactical location: close to the house of Fernando

Fornaris, the son of a prosperous foreign import/export merchant, and on the Portugués River’s banks, where the city of Ponce was originally founded. From this position, the brothel gains acute relevance when it becomes one of the most popular public entertainment spaces of the 258 region, and when it makes Isabel Luberza a wealthy black woman. Under these circumstances, the elite feels menaced because of the sudden upward mobility of a black woman through illegal sexual practices. With this scene, Santos-Febres criticizes the deeply ingrained male-dominated

Puerto Rico and points out its dishonesty, since people from the upper class attend the brothel.

Isabel and her protégées are, then, humiliated by le regard of the elite in the urban space. Their presence is viewed as unacceptable by those in power. Isabel and her group respond to their act by walking and appropriating—in a figurative sense—the city.

The city of Ponce is a closed, hermetic space, imprinted by the political oppression of

U.S. control. The racial and social distinctions made by its upper class result in the marginalization of the city’s poor, creating an atmosphere in which their movement is restricted and even unwelcomed in certain parts. Isabel and the prostitutes manage to enter in this space and leave it, without being entangled in le regard of the Other. This is due to the fact that they have another space, the brothel, which is located far from the center of the city, where they can reflect upon their actions. Certainly, in the brothel, individuals interact and complement each other, making their collective struggle stronger. In spite of the pejorative stigmas of the brothel, this clearly alludes to the binary opposition of the city. Not all the female characters, however, are able to negotiate their survival in the same way. Doña Montserrate and Cristina Rangel perform a sequence of “prayers” addressed to God/Jesus and the Virgin as a way to question, destabilize, and undermine the patriarchal authority. Throughout her novel, Santos-Febres lays out different ways for the characters to overcome obstacles that differentiate this work from that of other writers, especially Rosario Ferré and Manuel Ramos Otero.

259

Conclusion

Throughout the analysis of the four novels we have noticed that all of the main characters portray ordinary people of various occupational backgrounds: Marie-Sophie is the founder and leader of Texaco, Dany, better known as Vieux Os, is a journalist, Claudia is an Art historian who becomes a jinetera, and Isabel Luberza, alias “Isabel la Negra” for the color of her skin and for her risk-taking nature, is a brothel owner.90 Also, they exemplify different nationalities

(Martinican, Haitian, Cuban, and Puerto Rican), races, and gender. In conjunction with their social diversity, their forms of liberation vary as well. Broadly speaking, each of them achieves a certain level of freedom while living in political oppression. Their strategies of resistance in conflicted areas have provided me with the overall understanding that freedom is accessible to all, no matter how distinct subjects are. At least momentarily, the characters are able to free themselves from political oppression. From this unique and collective view, a dialogue is born among the writers (Patrick Chamoiseau, Dany Laferrière, Daína Chaviano, and Mayra Santos-

Febres) through their artistic expressions of the Caribbean world. The connection and exchange of their narratives in this project convey a message of hope for those individuals who want changes in the political systems of their countries by welcoming them to a new, liberating, and creative beginning.91 Contrary to the ideology that political change and liberation were only

90 All of the novels belong to the literary genre of bildungsroman because they focus on the psychological and moral development of the main characters. Two of the novels—Texaco and Nuestra señora de la noche—center on the protagonist’s growth from youth to adulthood. Although the two others—Le cri des oiseaux fous and El hombre, la hembra y el hambre—do not show this transitional phase, the character change is extremely important as well. In the four novels, the protagonists go out into the real world looking for answers and experiences that could help them avoid political oppression. At the beginning, Marie-Sophie appears as a fragile little girl who begins working as a maid in a store, as a housecleaner, and doing other minor jobs until turning into the founder and leader of Texaco. Likewise, Isabel Luberza begins working as a maid in a rich house, and later, works in a tailor shop among other occupations before becoming a brothel owner. 91 In “Welcoming Each Other” (1998), Earl Lovelace proposes to find a way to welcome people from the Caribbean “into a New World of new, liberating, and creative relationships,” where they can free their sense of second-classness, and more importantly, where they can feel a sense of belonging (167). I believe that in the four novels analyzed in this dissertation, writers set their characters free by making them part of their nations’ history, and by creating a new beginning for them. In two of the novels, this new beginning is presented within the 260 possible by inciting people to an armed insurgency, the rebellions against the autocratic authorities depicted in the novels are recognized as non-violent resistances. The characters are still putting themselves in danger. They risk losing their homes and livelihoods. Furthermore, they are placing themselves, their families and friends in danger. They could be killed or arrested. Nonetheless, these ordinary characters decide to confront the everyday problems prevalent in the environments where they live. If they fail they are destined to become another forgotten victim in their struggle. However, our protagonists take advantage of this moment to poach on the enemy’s territory. Their rebellions are based on tactical and spontaneous detours that unconsciously and consciously appear as they go deep into their surrounding environments, that is, as they better understand their milieu. Two of the characters are able to escape and tell their stories while the two others become leaders and inspire other ordinary citizens around them in their fight for freedom.

The fundamental question, however, is how characters are able to recognize the elements that facilitate their correlative liberatory process. The account of their ancestors’ journey functions as fertile sources of survival and resistance that helps them to understand their milieu better. In this way, characters identify and compare the complexities of their reality with that of their ancestors; and ultimately, make their own conclusions. The contact with their families’ past is triggered mainly by oral memory—best exemplified in Marie-Sophie’s and Vieux Os’ stories—and by the recount of the history of their native lands, which is best carried in Claudia’s body with her psychic abilities, and in the body of Isabel, who represents the bearer of one of the most crucial times in Puerto Rico’s history.92 In these terms, memory and history represent two

characters’—Marie-Sophie Laborieux and Isabel Luberza—own countries; while in the two others, it is reflected outside the Caribbean—Vieux Os and Claudia. 92 The body for Claudia and Isabel becomes an individual expression of power for themselves. The power of freely traveling to Havana’s past is within Claudia’s body. Isabel’s body becomes, too, an instrument of control 261 key concepts through which the main characters come to comprehend that previous generations in their countries have also suffered from political oppression. Together, they all constitute a chain of individual and collective struggles keenly linked to today’s present.

As a corollary to the identification of previous models of resistance, the protagonists realize, thanks to their great sensitivity, that their struggle needs to be authentic, in other words, reconstructed from the past that is behind them, and thus, articulated into new strategies of resistance. Location becomes the first element taken into account in this reconstruction. For this reason, Marie-Sophie decides to settle in the hills, rather than in Saint-Pierre or in Fort-de-

France, where her ancestors were not accepted by the values of society. Similarly, Isabel Luberza opens her brothel in the periphery of Ponce—the barrio of San Antón—due to racism and gender inequalities by the elite towards blacks in the urban space. Vieux Os and Claudia, however, decide to remain within the limits of Port-au-Prince and Havana because of their social and economic circumstances: the former has only twenty four hours before he leaves for Montreal, while, the latter, is forced to work as a jinetera in the urban space, in order to earn more so she can feed her only child. They both confront the danger of living in the cities, and realize that coexistence is their only available option: Vieux Os pretends to be indifferent to the violence of the Duvalier regime; and Claudia pretends to comply with Castro’s autocratic regime.

All the protagonists recognize that by doing things quite differently from what their ancestors did and what the dominants had in mind, they are able to free themselves whether they live within the urban space or in its periphery. In the strategic points properly located by the characters, they understand the true capabilities of their minds and bodies, as well as what the environments in their everyday life can offer them. In this way, each protagonist becomes a

when she takes a firsthand account of a Puerto Rico that has been impoverished due to natural disasters and U.S. military expropriation of its best lands by living in it. 262 dynamic, flexible, and complex individual because they navigate openly from one place to another. As noted in previous chapters, those who are in control want the inhabitants of their nations to live, suffer, and above all, obey their norms, customs, and ideologies so they can keep their power over them. Individuals find themselves as objects rather than subjects of their own history. Our protagonists, however, create their own worlds that differ from the reality in which they live by taking what is available to them and using them for their own purposes. Production, in its broad sense, is the second element carried out by our protagonists. By production here I mean everything that a human being can produce or create: ideas, language, houses, etc. To paraphrase the French sociologist Henri Lefebvre, production is the language of human beings because by creating something material or immaterial, individuals gain a place in the environment in which they live and interact (41).93 In this way, our protagonists become the subjects of their own history. For Marie-Sophie, it is the building of her dwelling space on the property of an oil refinery; and consequently, the creation of the quarter of Texaco. This sort of group based community contrasts with the self-centered form of life in Fort-de-France. For

Vieux Os, it is the repossession of his mind by thinking about him. His thoughts which are composed mainly of memories from his father, mother, and of the woman he is in love with differ from the terror and absurdity of the city of Port-au-Prince. For Claudia, it is her psychic abilities that allow her to travel to an imagined Havana of centuries earlier, where everything is full of color and life compared to the decadent appearance of the city’s ruins in the present. And finally, for Isabel Luberza, it is her upward mobility as a successful businesswoman with the

93 In La pensée marxiste et la ville (1978), Lefebvre mentions that the urban space—and to a lesser extent, the countryside since it is absorbed by the city—is a place of “metamorphoses et des rencontres, l’espace théâtral qui mêle l’illusoire et le réel, qui simule l’appropriation (où l’appropriation apparaissant comme aliénation . . . ˮ(33). In order to break with this sort of degradation and brutalization of human beings, individuals must produce/create something (43). By producing, they ensure a positive self-image, their sense of victimhood is restored, and hence, they begin to plan their lives in a more benefitial manner. 263 building of her brothel. Since she is a black woman, her brothel represents the antithesis of the white male-dominated Puerto Rican ideology.

The process of mental and material constructions in strategic locations is networked somehow with other characters who share similar objectives. Our rebels are not part of a highly organized movement. At first sight, their rebellious detours start individually, and later, they become collective, accentuating their resistance and, thus, making their reality easier to cope with for everybody. In regards to collective resistance, a twofold approach is observed. First, for

Marie-Sophie and Isabel Luberza, their network of resistance and alliance is built as a collective group located in one mutual area. The initial impulse of this type of organization is that characters agree on goals together and work as a team to achieve these goals. Indeed, the community of Texaco symbolizes a network because all its members are in the same battle against the békés over property rights. Similarly, “Elizabeth’s Dancing Place” represents a network for Isabel Luberza along with the prostitutes to aide in the fight against racial and gender inequalities in the patriarchal Puerto Rican society. On the other hand, the second approach of collective resistance is read, figuratively, as dots scattered on a map. Here, the network of resistance is located randomly in different parts of the urban city. Since government control is greater in the cities than in the peripheries, subjects delimit their fighting zones in an arbitrary manner so that they would be better protected. In Le cri des oiseaux fous, for instance, the protagonist’s spontaneous movements throughout Port-au-Prince helps us to see other cases of resistance, such as that of his friend Ézéquiel who works for a radio station in which he broadcasts anti-government messages, and who is also a theater actor whose works often critique the Duvalier regime. In addition to this, the telling of Vieux Os’ father’s life opens another network of resistance, this time that of men who through their rebellions against the regime were 264 forced to go into exile. And finally, El hombre, la hembra y el hambre focuses on the world of self-employed economic activities, such as trafficking—Rubén and Gilberto—and prostitution—

Claudia and Elena—, of university educated youth that were forced to abandon their professions in order to survive in a society ruled by Fidel Castro. In these last two novels, the abundance of different subject positions spread out in the cities aims at misleading the authority failing to keep its total control over all of them at the same time. Contrary to the quarter of Texaco and the brothel where the whole group is concentrated in one fixed place, in Laferrière’s and Chaviano’s novels, we notice that when the authority catches one rebel subject, this gives the others a little bit more time to plan their resistance and survive. Let us exemplify this with Gasner’s death, which gives Vieux Os the opportunity to plan his trip to Montreal. In other words, thanks to the death of Gasner, Vieux Os learns that he is next to be killed. Thus, he is able to plan his survival and resistance in Port-au-Prince for twenty four hours, and leave the country without being killed or thrown into prison.

Equally important to note is that in the first figure of collective resistance—Texaco and the brothel—the strongest and majority members are women. In the second figure, however, men preponderate. With this, it seems that women tend to take a leading role in helping other women in need. Women provide higher support to other women in their own community. Furthermore, they prefer working in bigger groups than men do. Nevertheless, men tend to value more their independence and self-reliance while chasing their own goals. They oppose external influences that could interfere with their interests, such as Vieux Os who chooses not to say a word about his trip to Montreal to any of his friends, or such as Gilberto who does not reveal the tricks of being a butcher, that is the ways in which he can sell less meat for more money. Their individuality is the primary importance in the struggle for liberation. Claudia tried to affiliate 265 with Rubén in the black market, but due to political reprisals from the government, they are both forced to take different roads. And when Claudia has her son, she does not receive help from

Rubén. She finds a little bit of support on and off from other women, but most of the time, she struggles to survive and resist on her own. Using this observation, we might conclude that it is not only the fact that in Le cri des oiseaux fous and in El hombre, la hembra y el hambre, most of the main characters are men, and that they prefer to exercise their individuality; but that they also live in urban spaces. Even though Port-au-Prince and Havana function as sites of creation, the danger of living within them does not allow individuals to form bigger alliances with others. It is true that they are networked with same objectives, but they are in reality divided among them.

Humans’ greater desire is to feel that they belong to a place. Humans are social individuals, and where there is a lack of a support system, a person feels isolated and wishes to go to another place where he/she can be welcomed. This might explain why Vieux Os and Claudia choose to leave Haiti and Cuba, one by taking a plane to Montreal and the other by crossing the ocean in a makeshift raft. The fact of the matter is that they could not find a strong support system among people in the urban spaces. Their individuality made them feel isolated, and as a consequence, they left their countries in search for another place, another beginning, where they can be part of a community. This makes us think about Marie-Sophie and Isabel’s decisions to stay in their countries. Are their networks with other women enough to have chosen this type of life? Or, is there another element that could have reinforced their decisions?

Each of these two figures of collective resistance is organized according to the environment in which the main characters are living. We notice that those who live in the periphery enjoy a little bit more freedom than those living within the urban spaces where political control is intensified. Marie-Sophie and Isabel Luberza find support not only among 266 women, but also on what nature can offer them. Indeed, in Chamoiseau’s and Santos’ novels, nature plays a more important role than in the other two. For instance, the quarter of Texaco is built in accordance to its slope and terrain. For this community, being in harmony with nature is as important as the constructions of their dwelling spaces and their vegetable gardens. The idea is that if people are good with the natural environment, nature will be good to them in return. It gratifies them by offering means for their sustainability. Luberza’s brothel, on the other hand, is also built in accordance with the Portugués River. It was built on its banks, in the same way that the city of Ponce was originally settled. The river was seen as a safe place for the first settlers of

Ponce. Isabel Luberza takes this same connotation of the river to build her brothel. Also, the river’s movement which zig-zags through the urban space from north to south symbolizes fluidity, flexibility, and dynamism. Isabel’s life resembles the Portugués River’s movement. She is in constant motion, sliding from her brothel to the urban space and vice versa in order to deal with the authority. She is always open to changes. Marie-Sophie and Isabel Luberza find extra support in nature. The fact that Texaco and the brothel are built on strategic locations in accordance with nature allows Marie-Sophie, Isabel, and their networks to keep a distance between their dwelling spaces and the cities, facilitating in this way, a more natural perspective of how things really are around them. On one hand, this distance makes them automatically exempt from constant control; as a consequence, they enjoy a little bit more freedom than those who live within the cities. On the other hand, the distance also provides them with more knowledge on how to negotiate with the authority. Negotiations in the novels, mainly in Texaco and Nuestra señora de la noche, are constant dialogues between the protagonists and those in political control who rather than aiming at compromise, are always trying to gain advantage over their own interests. Those in power prefer to deal with the situations in unfair manners. In 267

Texaco for instance, the shacks of Marie-Sophie and others are dismantled several times by the local government as a way to force them to leave the oil refinery. Amidst such destruction, people of the quarter strike back by rebuilding their shacks as many times as possible. The negotiations for Marie-Sophie and Isabel Luberza are long processes that take them years to see accomplished due to the mental and physical energy employed. In this way, nature provides

Marie-Sophie, Isabel Luberza, and the rest with the necessary elements to plan, resist, and negotiate against political control for so many years. They are, indeed, very good negotiators who are always willing to communicate in an effective manner. This is explored in more detail in the last two sections of Chapter II “The art of speaking,” and of Chapter V “The art of negotiation.”

It is clear that the goals of Marie-Sophie and Isabel Luberza are achieved. We cannot witness the same in Vieux Os and in Claudia because they are only in their twenties when they leave their countries; and more importantly, the novels end immediately after their departures.

Nonetheless, we do witness their fast thinking, spontaneous creativity, and ability to deal with the political, social, and economic severity within the cities. They come to understand that their negotiations must be more tactical. They engage in a dialogue with the buildings and ruins condemned to obscurity in the urban spaces. They discover shortcuts in the streets of Port-au-

Prince and Havana through which they are able to uncover the different hidden meanings. Since they do not have the apparent distance from the city that Marie-Sophie and Isabel Luberza have by living in the periphery; they create a comparable distance in their inner feelings in order to detach from their daily routines and see what the rest cannot perceive with their eyes. Vieux Os finds it in the voices of his father, mother, lovers, and friends from the past and present. Claudia finds it in her imaginary travels to Havana’s other historical times.. These maneuvers, however, 268 do not provide them with enough distance to detach completely from the murky environment of the streets. Hence, they cannot form strong alliances with other people, as it has been noted previously, and they end up going into exile. For them, the United States and Canada represent light, reason, and civilization, in other words, salvation. From these places, they will undoubtedly acquire a distance in order to see their countries from another point of view. The association of Vieux Os’ and Claudia’s exiles to Canada and the United States suggests higher moral and social values upheld in the West. Let us remember, here, that this representation of the

West is made by two writers from the Caribbean diaspora. Clearly, Laferrière and Chaviano privilege the West. What is interesting is that they also privilege the deep analysis of Caribbean cities’ streets. In their novels, Port-au-Prince and Havana are represented as malignant forces. In

Le cri des oiseaux fous, it is referred to as“piège à rats,” (46) “la tanière de la bête,” (47) “la jungle du peintre Philippe-Auguste Salnave,” (60) “une forêt,” (159) “une ville terrorisée,” (202).

In El hombre, la hembra y el hambre, it is depicted as “asilo de locos,” (229) “infierno,” (232)

“viacrucis” (291). Despite these fatal representations, existential possibilities are formed in the urban spaces. Cities push more intensively the protagonists’ exploration of their unconsciousness. A little less menacing urban space is represented in Chamoiseau’s and Santos’ novels. These focus more on the protagonists’ acquisitions of occupational skills that would help them grow as individuals. It seems with this that these two writers value more the relationships among people in their cultures. Since they reside in the Caribbean, they challenge more the assumptions produced by the West, by organizing solid networks of strategies of resistance in the islands in their literary works. Overall, the representations of Fort-de-France and Ponce are seen a little less pessimistic and violent than that of Port-au-Prince and Havana. 269

To sum up, we can detect some patterns of asymmetrical oppositions underpinning the landscape and the state through which strategies of resistance are formulated: periphery vs. urban space, individuality vs. collectivity, Caribbean vs. the West. All these terms are associated negatively with the political control exercised in the urban spaces. It is clear that more creations and rhythm are produced in the cities. It is also why the last two sections of Chapter III and IV are called “The art of rhythm” and “The art of creation.” This observation makes me question the possible ways through which subjects in rural spaces could creatively achieve moments of freedom. Are there similarities and/or differences in the strategies of resistance employed in the urban areas versus the rural ones? This is a question that needs further analysis, which I would like to explore in the future.

270

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