Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Latin American Literature European Languages and Literatures 1991 Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America Diana Taylor Dartmouth College Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Taylor, Diana, "Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America" (1991). Latin American Literature. 6. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_latin_american_literature/6 THEATRE OF CRISIS This page intentionally left blank THEATRE OF CRJI§JI§ Drama and Politics in Latin America DiANA TAYLOR THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright© 1991 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0336 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Diana. Theatre of crisis : drama and politics in Latin America I Diana Taylor. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8131-5497-8 I. Spanish American drama-20th century-History and criticism. 2. Politics and literature-Latin America. I. Title. PQ7082.D7T36 1990 862-dc20 90-12555 This book is printed on acid To ERIC and our children ALEXEI and MARINA This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface IX Introduction 1 1. Theatre and Crisis: The Making of Latin American Drama 22 2. Theatre and Revolution: Jose Triana 64 3. Theatre and Terror: Griselda Gambaro 96 4. Theatre and Transculturation: Emilio Carballido 148 5. Destroying the Evidence: Enrique Buenaventura 181 6. Conflation and Crisis: Egon Wolff 204 Closing Remarks 221 Notes 225 Bibliography 251 Index 271 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE Latin American theatre is a relatively unknown field. In order to expand critical awareness of it outside Latin America, I have written this study in English, translating the quotations from the Spanish originals when suit able translations have not been available. Moreover, instead of referring to original editions of texts and plays that may be inaccessible to North American readers, I have chosen to cite easily obtainable editions. "Every word," according to Merleau-Ponty, "whether we know it or not, is always a word with someone." This book reflects many such words, words with Laurence Davies, Murray Krieger, Beatriz Pastor, Virginia Swain, George Woodyard, and Susanne Zantop, among others. I thank them all. Nancy Davies, of Dartmouth's Humanities Computing Center, came to my rescue repeatedly. I am grateful for her expertise and good humor. As always, the Baker Library staff, Luis Villar, Patricia Carter, and Marianne Hraibi, have done the possible and impossible to help me. Dartmouth College generously provided a Faculty Fellowship that enabled me to work on the manuscript. And I owe a very special thanks to my family, the Taylors and the Manheimers, for their encouragement and support. Fi nally, my deepest gratitude to my husband, Eric Manheimer, who makes it all worthwhile. This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION THEATRE has played an active role in the continuing colonization of Latin America since the Spaniards used plays to Christianize and colonize the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the sixteenth century. Marfa Sten, in Viday muertedel teatro Ndhuat/(14), affirms that "theatre was for the spiritual conquest of Mexico what horses and gunpowder were for the military conquest." I For the conquerors and colonizers, theatre was a potent tool in manipulating a population already accustomed to spectacle. Moreover, theatre provided one more stage on which the vanquished were forced to participate in the drama of their own defeat. In 1599, for example, according to Jose Juan Arrom's theatre history (32), the Jesuits used cadavers of native Americans to portray the dead in their staging of the final judgment. The end of a colony did not signal the end of colonialism. Latin America remained, economically a,nd culturally, the impoverished and peripheral "other" to the defining European and American "self." Colo nialism became internalized, victimizing Latin Americans by means of their own self-hatred. This virulent sense of inferiority has been themat ized by major modern plays such as Rodolfo Usigli's El gesticulador (1937), Celestino Gorostiza's El color de nuestro pie/ (1952), and Francisco Arrivf's Vejigantes (1958). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, for reasons proposed throughout this study, several kinds of theatrical activity in Latin America underwent a widespread process of revision, becoming quantitatively different from earlier and generally isolated attempts at forging a con structive native identity. From that time to the present, much Latin American theatre has turned its powers of investigation on itself, both to examine its role in cultural domination and to reshape itself into an instrument of decolonization, a "theatre of the oppressed." z To understand theatre's role in the panoramic drama of oppression, one must analyze the relationship between theatrical performances and the wider uses and abuses of social spectacle. The Conquest did not simply replace the "pagan" productions with indoctrinary Christian plays. 2 Theatre of Crisis The Conquest toppled various highly ritualized "theatre states," indige nous societies such as the Nahua, the Inca, and the Mayan, in which spectacle provided the vital link between the social and cosmic orders.3 These societies differed from secular ones in that spectacle for them was not simply part of a larger social whole. Rather, these societies considered themselves viable only insofar as their spectacles were capable of harmo nizing their material existence with the supernatural powers governing them. Hence spectacle was not a representation of power or a legitimation of power. Spectacle was power. Unlike the society that was to conquer them, these societies did not use spectacle to bolster or justify their violence and warfare but rather the opposite; their war and violence were necessary to fuel their spectacle. They believed that captives were essential for ritual sacrifice; the sacrificial blood fortified the gods and kept them strong, capable of maintaining social stability. These diverse societies were replaced by a homogenizing system that converted all the indigenous groups, with their many differences, into one controllable Other. Colonization entailed the redefinition and renaming of the conquered territory: the "New World," the "Indies," "New Spain." Just as the geographical boundaries were remapped into new political entities, ideology shifted to make way for a new hegemony, drawing new lines of demarcation to separate the "civilized" from the "barbarian," the urban from the rural, the literate from those grounded in orality. (By ideology, I mean simply a given world construct with its prevailing dis course, assumptions, and value systems; by hegemony, I mean the ide ology of the dominant group.) The decimated area was inscribed with the new social, political, and religious order, with its own codes and its own spectacular displays of power. Spectacle, though still key, inverted the pre Columbian pattern. Spectacle was not power, as before; now it supported power. The theatricality, the pomp, and the ceremony of religious and secular celebrations contributed to the legitimation of the new order; they helped recast the indigenous peoples' loss of their world as their gain of Christendom and eternal salvation; they served to maintain order and hierarchies by inspiring terror in the native audience that witnessed public executions, acts of torture, and other spectacles of awesome power. More over, by the mid-eighteenth century the monumental theatres themselves bespoke the grandeur of the hegemonic culture. The continuing domina tion of Latin America is still to a large extent facilitated by the manipula tion of spectacle, ranging from political rallies to mass media, Broadway "hits," television, and advertising. As Guy Debord observes in The Society of the Spectacle (57), "The society which carries the spectacle does not dominate the underdeveloped regions by its economic hegemony alone. It dominates them as the society ofthe spectacle." In various ways, then, theatre and the theatricality of social spectacle have historically played, and Introduction 3 continue to play, instrumental roles in the cultural colonization of the Americas. Before analyzing the various interconnections between theatre and theatrical social spectacles, I must clarify three points here: (1) theatre and theatricality are not the same thing; (2) theatre and theatricality are not intrinsically oppressive; (3) they do not invariably work in the same way or support each other. First, theatre and theatrical social spectacles and ceremonies clearly have much in common: people play roles, set scenarios in motion, wear costumes, construct