Rewriting Trujillo, Reconstructing a Nation: Dominican

The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School The Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese REWRITING TRUJILLO, RECONSTRUCTING A NATION: DOMINICAN HISTORY IN NOVELS BY MARCIO VELOZ MAGGIOLO, ANDRÉS L. MATEO, VIRIATO SENCIÓN, AND MARIO VARGAS LLOSA A Thesis in Spanish By Andrew B. Wolff © 2006 Andrew B. Wolff Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2006 ii The thesis of Andrew B. Wolff was reviewed and approved* by the following Aníbal González-Pérez Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee Priscilla Meléndez Professor of Spanish Julia Cuervo-Hewitt Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Thomas O. Beebee Professor of Comparative Literature and German William R. Blue Professor of Spanish Interim Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii Abstract Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship over the Dominican Republic had a profound effect on the country’s literary tradition. Between the years of 1930 and 1961, Trujillo carefully positioned himself at the center of all things Dominican— including the island’s cultural and intellectual discourse. From the beginning of Trujillo’s political career, the dictator’s team of spin-doctors, carefully selected from among the Dominican intelligentsia systematically, exploited the media, poetry, prose narrative, and even popular music to construct a public persona that would eventually grow to mythological proportions. Given the trujillato’s notorious use of literature in mythologizing Trujillo, it is hardly surprising that, in the years immediately following his death, Dominican writers would also employ narrative in their efforts to de/re-mythologize him. The present study examines how four prominent novelists—Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Andrés L. Mateo, Viriato Sención, and Mario Vargas Llosa—use literature to reexamine and rewrite Trujillo’s 30-year rule over the Dominican Republic. These writers also typify the evolution of the Dominican novel over the last 40 years. Like other Latin American “dictator novels,” the texts studied here—which include De abril en adelante (1975), La balada de Alfonsina Bairán (1985), Los que falsificaron la firma de Dios (1992) and La fiesta del chivo—call attention to both the hegemonic processes that empower and the rhetorical structures that help to shore up authoritarian rule. Building upon the ideas of Ross Chambers, René Girard, Roberto González Echevarría and others, this thesis examines how these writers’ works iv attempt to create “room for maneuver” between the discourse of dictatorship and the dictatorship of narrative convention. My primary assertion is that the rhetorical “free space” created by oppositional texts, when inserted into the dictator’s system of signification, creates the potential for readers’ desires to be shifted away from the dictator and toward a dissenting (frequently the narrative) voice. While large-scale social change brought about via readers reading novels such as those studied here is unlikely, these works chip away at the dictator’s power structure by targeting and changing his constituency one reader at a time. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction. Rewriting Trujillo, Reconstructing a Nation; History and 1 Fiction in Novels by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Andrés L. Mateo, Viriato Sención, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Notes 86 Chapter II. Text As Artifact, Narrative as Archaeology in Three Novels by 109 Marcio Veloz Maggiolo Notes 166 Chapter III. Historical Reflection and Literary Self-Consciousness in the 170 Novels of Andrés L. Mateo Notes 206 Chapter IV. Trapping Imposters: Narration and Authority in Los que 211 falsificaron la firma de Dios Notes 256 Chapter V. Fictional History: Vargas Llosa’s La fiesta del chivo 262 Notes 302 Conclusion. Trujillo is Dead… and We Have Killed Him 312 Works Cited 323 vi Acknowledgements I would like to express appreciation to many people for their support as I have written this thesis. First, to Dr. Aníbal González-Pérez for his patience and encouragement throughout the writing process. Also, to Drs. Margaret Lyday and Russell Cluff for their candid assessments of my writing and helpful feedback on matters of content. To Drs. Priscilla Meléndez, Julia Cuervo-Hewitt, and Tom Beebee for serving on the committee and for their helpful insight, suggestions, and comments that have helped to polish and refine my efforts. To my colleagues at PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose friendly prodding helped keep me focused on my task and engaged in my work. To my Dominican friends, both in the United States and in the Dominican Republic, whose stories and personal experiences helped to fuel my interests in Trujillo and the Dominican novel. Finally, to my wife, Annette, and children Kayla, Alexa, Ryan, and Joshua who have both supported me and lovingly endured during the many years that I worked to finish this study. vii “En la literatura es bello no sólo lo bello sino también lo feo, lo asqueroso, lo monstruoso, y si no lo es, no hay literatura ni obra de arte, eso es lo que caracteriza a la literatura como algo distinto de las ciencias sociales. Un libro de historia o un reportaje sobre una dictadura muestra lo feo como feo, una obra de arte no puede hacerlo porque dejaría de ser tal, ya que carecería de ese poder de hechizar que debe tener la obra de arte para que le demos a la ficción una autenticidad y una verdad.” —Mario Vargas Llosa in Excelsior, 5/17/2000 Introduction: Rewriting Trujillo, Reconstructing a Nation: Modern Dominican History in Novels by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Andrés L. Mateo, Viriato Sención, and Mario Vargas Llosa “[La verdad histórica] no es lo que sucedió; es lo During his lifetime, Trujillo was compared with que juzgamos que sucedió.”—Pierre Ménard lightning, the mountain-top, the sun, the eagle, (Borges, “Pierre Ménard, Autor del Quixote”) volcanic lava, Pegasus, Plato, and God. He was the object of frenetic praise and adoration that verged on megalomania. Trujillo statues, busts, and “I love it when they call me a dictator here! That monuments were erected throughout the country; they can say it freely refutes it. This was not the parks, streets, towns, and mountains were named in case under a real dictatorship like the Duvaliers’” his honor; and parades were staged and special —Jean-Bertrand Aristide, cited by Tim Padgett in masses said for him. Signs and mottoes—“Trujillo “The Once and Current President,” Time 5/7/2001. Forever,” at village pumps, “Trujillo Gives Us Drink,” and in the hospitals, “Trujillo Cures Us”— hailed the dictator. Some cynic remarked that it was “No hay peligro en seguirme.”—Rafael Leonidas surprising that God’s name appeared first on the Trujillo, campaign during the presidential election famous neon sign, “God and Trujillo” which hung of 1930. (Balaguer, Memorias de un cortesano en la over the harbor of the capital. When he appeared in “Era de Trujillo 46). public, Dominicans learned to remove their hats, place them over their hearts, and bow their heads. Professional propagandists—public relations firms in New York, lobbyists in Washington, and many other paid agents—championed his regime. (Wiarda, The Dominican Republic: A Nation in Transition 45) In one of the relatively few critical studies of Dominican literature published in mainstream scholarly journals, Neil Larson wonders, “¿Cómo narrar el trujillato?”1 To be sure, this question is the obsession of the majority of the novels published in the Dominican Republic since the early 1960s. Decades after two carloads of gunmen put an end to Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina’s dictatorship over the “cradle of the Americas” (1930-1961), both el generalísimo and his successor, Doctor Joaquín Balaguer (d. 14 July 2002) remain conspicuously present in the Dominican novel. 2 Like other “dictator novels”2 from within the Latin American literary tradition, contemporary Dominican texts regularly call attention to the parallels between narrative and the rhetorical processes and structures that both empowered the dictator and helped provide continuing support for his authoritarian rule—support that eventually allowed Trujillo’s administration to become “probably the strongest and most absolute dictatorship ever established in Latin America” (Wiarda 34). Starting with the premise that dictatorships exploit the narrative process to authorize their governments, these texts then impose upon their constituents “authorized” readings of the text of government, and finally endeavor to constrain reader response. Dominican writers have used the mirror of the text to reveal and exploit a certain “room for maneuver” that exists within the narrative process to battle the rhetoric of the dictatorship. Dominican dictator narratives repeat, inscribe, parody, and to some extent even rewrite the historical record, calling into question writing’s ability to represent historical events faithfully and problematizing the social conventions that grant “history” the exclusive privilege of educating future audiences about the trujillato. Their objective is to influence readers, to transform their opinions—and perhaps manipulate their actions—so as to minimize the chances that a dictator like Trujillo will again rise to power. In the end, however, these texts which propose to “debunk” the dictatorship inevitably do just the opposite, adding to the accretive master narrative that defines Dominican history, Dominican culture, and Dominican identity. In a way, these dictator novels create narrative “palimpsests” of the island’s recent history.3 As these Dominican dictator novels are read, the distinctions between 3 historical fact and fiction become blurred until the two are so mixed up and interwoven in readers’ minds that the factual elements in the story become contaminated and, in the purest sense, irrecuperably lost. While many textual commentators have written about how palimpsests can demonstrate how subsequent editions of texts have mistakenly hidden, misinterpreted, or inappropriately colored the original text, I suggest that the writers studied in the following chapters—Marcio Veloz Maggiolo (Santo Domingo, 1936), Andrés L.

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