FALSE DOCUMENTS GLOBAL LATIN/O AMERICAS Frederick Luis Aldama and Lourdes Torres, Series Editors FALSE DOCUMENTS
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FALSE DOCUMENTS GLOBAL LATIN/O AMERICAS Frederick Luis Aldama and Lourdes Torres, Series Editors FALSE DOCUMENTS INTER-AMERICAN CULTURAL HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND THE LOST DECADE (1975–1992) Frans Weiser THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2020 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Weiser, Frans, author. Title: False documents : inter-American cultural history, literature, and the lost decade (1975–1992) / Frans Weiser. Description: Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, 2020. | Series: Global Latin/o Americas | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Examines the work of writers and journalists from Hispanic America, Brazil, and the US from the 1970s to 1990s who appropriated history as a tool for repositioning democracies in a hemispheric context in order to expose how governments controlled and misrepresented events”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019041117 | ISBN 9780814214367 (cloth) | ISBN 9780814277737 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Latin American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. | American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. | Literature and history—Latin America—History—20th century. | Literature and history—United States—History— 20th century. | Comparative literature—Latin American and American. | Comparative literature—American and Latin American. | Latin America—Historiography. | United States—Historiography. Classification: LCC PQ7082.N7 W42 2020 | DDC 809/.897—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041117 Cover design by Laurence J. Nozik Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION The Ends of History and “American” Studies 1 CHAPTER 1 Interdependent Methods: Postwar Cultural History, Historical Literature, and False Documents 27 CHAPTER 2 History’s Return: Literary Revisionism in North America, Hispanic America, and Brazil during the Lost Decade 47 CHAPTER 3 The Ends of Argentine Democracy: The False Memoir(s) and Cultural Hybridity behind Tomás Eloy Martínez’s The Perón Novel 73 CHAPTER 4 The “Dialectics” of Feminist Caribbean History: Laura Antillano, José Martí, and the Venezuelan Lost Decade 97 CHAPTER 5 History at the Periphery: Postdictatorial Literature and the Abandoned Generation of Ana Maria Machado’s Tropical Sun of Liberty 125 vi • CONTENTS CHAPTER 6 Allegorizing Brazilian History: Silviano Santiago’s In Liberty, Invisible Texts, and Ideological Patrols 149 CHAPTER 7 The Many Deaths of Che Guevara: Jay Cantor’s Anxiety of Origins and the Limits of Transnationalism 173 CHAPTER 8 Renewing History? John Updike’s Critique of Cultural Studies and the Two Americas in Memories of the Ford Administration 195 POSTSCRIPT Fake News and the New Lost Decade 217 Works Cited 221 Index 235 ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1 Juan Perón on the front cover of the Panorama 1970 special edition 75 FIGURE 2 The cover of COPRE’s 1987 special issue of Estado & Reforma 99 FIGURE 3 “Cli-ché,” part of D*Face’s 2007 collection “Eyecons” 183 FIGURE 4 Time Magazine’s 1974 cover on President Ford and the economic crisis 198 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IT HAS BEEN almost a decade since the seeds of this project first took root, and I have many people to thank for not getting lost along the way. Earl Fitz is not only the trailblazer of Inter-American studies, but he is also a generous mentor to young scholars who work in and across comparative fields. Luiz Valente, who took a chance on including an unknown graduate student on his MLA panel many years ago, offered responses to early chapter drafts, but even more importantly, has offered friendship over the years. While participating in the Futures of American Studies Institute, John Carlos Rowe kindly offered to correspond and provide suggestions, while Winfried Fluck furnished honest feedback regarding the project’s intended American Studies audiences. Luci- ano Tosta likewise offered helpful encouragement during moments of self- doubt. In addition to Kristen Elias Rowley’s editorial interest, I would like to thank the press readers who offered insightful commentary and suggestions for improving the clarity of the entire manuscript’s historical and disciplinary discussions. At the University of Georgia, Richard Gordon made himself available to provide advice at many junctures, and his support offered through the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute has helped inform my academic trajectory in numerous professional contexts. The Willson Center for the Humanities is a vital resource; its assistance via a Research Fellowship gave me crucial time to finish key theoretical chapters of the project, while the Sarah ix x • ACKNOWledgments Moss Fellowship first put me in conversation with Inter-American programs at European institutions in Austria and Germany. Additionally, Peter O’Neill, from Comparative Literature, and John Inscoe, from History, have patiently mentored me in both official and unofficial capacities. I have interrupted this project on multiple occasions to pursue new lines of inquiry, only to discover how important these detours would be for formu- lating my scholarly and philosophical foundations. It was during a postdoc- toral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh that I was first truly introduced to the purchase of Latin American cultural studies, and where my interest in historiography began to assume Brazilian dimensions. Access to the collec- tions and archives at Indiana University’s Lilly Library, through its Everett Helm Fellowship, and the Organization of American States’ Columbus Memo- rial Library was beneficial in the final stages of revising the book. At the Uni- versity of Massachusetts Amherst, I also owe a debt of gratitude to Daphne Patai, whose acerbic criticism has no doubt shaped my research and meth- odology more than any other mentor. Additionally, David Lenson and Luis Marentes reminded me that, in the midst of bureaucracy, academia could still be pleasurable and rewarding, while Bill Moebius provided many forms of institutional support. Speaking of institutional assistance, I am indebted to the work of both librarians and administrators. This includes the collaboration of Laura Shed- enhelm on Latin American funding proposals and the industriousness of Cindy Flomm at the University of Georgia’s Interlibrary Loan Department, as well as the advocacy of Jill Talmadge and Martha Babendrier in Compara- tive Literature. Martin Kagel, Jean Martin-Williams, Robert Moser, and Ben Ehlers have also encouraged me with academic opportunities that have led to domestic and international partnerships. Finally, I owe the most to those outside the academy: to Hermine and Stephen Weiser for their patience and acceptance over so many years, to Jim Weiser for his angry letters to the editor, to Emile Wessels for the dreams of books and music, to Cecília Rodrigues for companionship across the travails of academia and the world, and to Marcel for the valuable reminder(s) of what the most important project in life is. INTRODUCTION The Ends of History and “American” Studies TASKED BY new US President Richard Nixon with surveying the failure of the Alliance for Progress to stimulate economic development in Latin Amer- ica, Nelson Rockefeller and his team conducted interviews with government officials across twenty participating countries, yet also witnessed frustrated citizens’ public demonstrations at various stops. The resulting document, The Rockefeller Report on the Americas (1969), predicts multiple challenges dur- ing the 1970s to Washington’s long-standing hemispheric paternalism, includ- ing increased authoritarianism, general unrest with the changes wrought by accelerated modernization, and growing nationalist sentiment fueled by the desire to be free of US hegemony. While he advises against further attempts to improve infrastructure through developmental democracy, Rockefeller also directs criticism inward, claiming US media representatives’ ignorance of their southern neighbors as a continued obstacle to cooperation. To com- bat this, he exhorts the president to promote the circulation of “journalists, teachers, intellectuals, writers, musicians, artists, and other representatives of the United States to other American republics” (Report 139). In this regard, Rockefeller reprises a balancing act that dated back to World War II, when as head of the Office of Inter-American Affairs he championed cultural diplo- macy as an instrument of advancing US democratic ideals and shoring up regional partnerships, at the same time acting as an economic advisor to gov- 1 2 • Introduction ernments attempting to limit the negative impacts of wartime inflation across the hemisphere.1 If Rockefeller’s formula for winning Latin American hearts and minds was not unique, neither was it unilateral. In her history of Hispanic American cultural responses to the Cold War, Jean Franco details how the CIA covertly subsidized multiple journals that internationally circulated regional authors’ work, in theory to support an anticommunist agenda (Decline and Fall 30–35). Yet, as Deborah Cohn has also shown, the Center for Inter-American Rela- tions began promoting Latin American cultural production within the United States in 1963 via public affairs initiatives and literary