UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Women Rewriting The
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Women Rewriting the Nation: Gendered Violence in Colombian Narratives (1950-2004) A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Annie Mendoza Committee in charge: Professor Milos Kokotovic, Co-Chair Professor Sara Johnson, Co-Chair Professor Jaime Concha Professor Rosemary M. George Professor Nancy Postero Professor Laurence E. Prescott 2010 Copyright Annie Mendoza, 2010 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Annie Mendoza is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2010 iii DEDICATION I would like to thank my dissertation committee: Professor Milos Kokotovic, Professor Sara Johnson, Professor Jaime Concha, Professor Rosemary M. George, Professor Nancy Postero, and Professor Laurence E. Prescott for their support during my research process. I especially thank Professors Kokotovic and Johnson, without whose advice, guidance, and editing I would not have been able to complete my doctoral research. I also thank my parents Aicardo and Ana Luisa Mendoza, and my sister Tina Mendoza- Kolacz for their lifetime of encouragement towards my academic pursuits. You have taught me the value of education, and for that I am eternally grateful. I also would like to thank Eduardo Navas for his undying support—creatively and morally—during the process of my dissertation writing. I could not have completed this project without you. This project is dedicated to our son, Óscar Eduardo, who will be born within months of my doctoral defense, and who served as my inspiration during the last phase of the writing process. iv EPIGRAPH Me reconocí en ella y dijimos ser barricada. Salimos cabalgando en nuestros deseos para ser mujer futuro para ser mujer mañana. Yvonne-América Truque v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………… iii Dedication………………………………………………………………….. iv Epigraph……………………………………………………………………. v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………... vi Vita…………………………………………………………………………. vii Abstract…………………………………………………………………….. ix Introduction………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One ………………………….………..…………………………… 28 Novel, Patriarchy, and Ideology: The novela de La Violencia and El Cristo de espaldas Chapter Two ……….………………………………………………………. 54 A Space for Feminist Depictions of Colombia’s Violence: Reexamining the Masacre de las Bananeras Chapter Three …………………………………………….……………….. 101 Colombian Female Novelists Re-write La Violencia Chapter Four …………………………………………….………………… 139 Representing the City Space in Late Twentieth-Century Colombia: Urban Violence, Drugs, and Literature Conclusion …………………………………………….………………….. 184 Bibliography ………………………………………….…………………… 188 vi VITA EDUCATION: 2010 Doctor of Philosophy, Literature University of California, San Diego 2001 Master of Arts, Latin American Literature and Spanish Language University of Miami 1998 Bachelor of Arts, Spanish Literature and Language Marquette University ACADEMIC POSITIONS: 2009 Instructor: “Nation and Identity in the Caribbean” Department of Literature University of California, San Diego 2008 – 2009 Visiting Scholar School of Visual Arts The Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania 2007 – 2008 Teaching Assistant: Third World Studies Literatures from the Indian Subcontinent, Africa, and China Thurgood Marshall College University of California, San Diego 2008 Teaching Assistant: “La Isla Que Se Repite” Department of Literature University of California, San Diego 2004 – 2007 Teaching Assistant: Literatures in Spanish Department of Literature University of California, San Diego 2001 – 2004 Lecturer: Spanish Language Department of Modern Languages University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida vii 2003 – 2004 Lecturer: English as a Second Language and Spanish Language Department of ESL and Foreign Languages Miami Dade College, Miami, Florida 1999 – 2001 Teaching Assistant: Spanish Language Department of Modern Languages University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida AWARDS: Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego, 2009-2010 Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities (HACU) Travel Award, 2007 - 2008 Summer Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowships, Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, University of California, San Diego, Summer 2006 FIELDS OF INTEREST: 19 th and 20 th Century Latin American Literature Caribbean and Brazilian Literature U.S. Latino Literature Afro-Latin American and Black Diaspora Literature Language Teaching Methodology, Heritage Language Learning viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Women Rewriting the Nation: Gendered Violence in Colombian Narratives (1950-2004) by Annie Mendoza Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2010 Professor Milos Kokotovic, Co-Chair Professor Sara Johnson, Co-Chair This dissertation is an analysis of Colombian feminist novels inspired by three interrelated historical periods: the 1928 massacre of striking union workers on the Caribbean coast, the mid-century era known as La Violencia in which Liberals and Conservatives engaged in an unofficial civil-war played out in the nation's Andean region, and finally the Drug Wars of the 1980s which took place in Colombia's urban centers. My examination reveals how, throughout the course of the past six decades, Colombian female writers disengaged slowly from predominant literary productions by bringing attention to the types of violence that women have endured as a result of state- ix sponsored hostility. I argue that since the 1960s female novelists have been situated at the forefront of Colombia’s literary production as they portray the specific challenges of women in a nation plagued by successive cycles of violence. More importantly, they bring attention to the specific types of violence that women have endured as a result of state-sponsored hostility: loss of shelter and stability, domestic abuse, savage gendered aggression such as the killing of pregnant women, and sexual violence including incest and exploitation in the form of prostitution. I argue that these feminist narrations expose how each new cycle of violence in Colombia is intertwined with previous generations of hostility, as well as the resultant tragic outcomes that women continue to face, including lack of access to land, education, protection, and security. In addition to its literary value, my project aims to further this collective effort of establishing commonalities between and amongst Latin American feminist narratives as they relate to history and culture. Using gender as a category of analysis, this project provides insight into how feminist novels on violence are inclined towards contesting patriarchal power structures in times of conflict. These cultural productions highlight how women challenge not only the limitations to their participation in the public sphere, but also their subordinate position within the national identity. x Introduction Representations of national violence generally focus on the erosion of society based on the breakdown of relations among masculine agencies. Cultural critics like Mary Louise Pratt have made substantial contributions in this area in regards to Latin American literature. Pratt discusses the construction and ongoing endorsement of gendered violence in a society in which aggressors are usually conceived as masculine, while victims are feminine. In Spanish this is represented linguistically in the gender of the word victim for both female and male subjects: la víctima .1 Pratt exposes how representations of violence are intimately linked to hierarchical social and sexual codes when she affirms “la violencia entre hombres se lee lógicamente como ruptura del contrato social. La violencia entre hombre y mujer, por contraste, se lee como afirmación o actuación del contrato sexual, o como evidencia de su poder excesivo” (93). 2 Throughout my dissertation I make reference to Pratt and other literary critics to argue that literature has historically been used as a vehicle to represent the disintegration of social codes between men and women, in direct relation to the concept of threat to the national identity that occurs in the face of political hostility. Taking examples from Latin American literature, we see that national identity as constructed by male subjects is a tradition set in place since the emergence of foundational post-colonial texts from the nineteenth century. For this reason, literary representations of violence, in historical terms, have often failed to include the agency of women, along with other gendered or racialized groups that have challenged power 1 Mary Louise Pratt, “Tres incendios y dos mujeres extraviadas: El imaginario novelístico frente al nuevo contrato social” in Espacio urbano, comunicación y violencia en América Latina . Ed. Mabel Moraña. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2002. 91-105. 2 Pratt bases her discussion of sexual codes on Carol Pateman’s The Sexual Contract (1988). 1 2 relations, defined in accordance to political unrest . In terms of Colombia, representations of women are primarily constructed according to hierarchical power relations based on the sexual code that Pratt discusses in relation to Latin American literature. Literary representations by women emerging from the middle of the twentieth century onward, on the other hand, have been specifically inclined to contest power structures