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This thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Modern Languages —————————————————— Dr. José Delgado Thesis Advisor Department of Modern Languages —————————————————— Dr. Betsy Partyka Honors Tutorial College, Director of Studies Department of Modern Languages —————————————————— Dr. Jeremy Webster Dean, Honors Tutorial College 2 Comentario social en dos novelas de Fabián Dobles —————————————————— A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University —————————————————— In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Spanish —————————————————— by Brian C. Vadakin August 2015 3 Reconocimiento Quiero agradecer a todos los que hicieron posible este trabajo. Primero, a mi mentor, el Dr. José Delgado, por su dirección, sus revisiones estilísticas y gramaticales, y el tiempo precioso que él invirtió en mi éxito como estudiante. A causa de él, este proyecto se transformó de un ejercicio académico a una experiencia verdaderamente disfrutable. A la Dra. Betsy Partyka, por su sabiduría, sus correcciones y revisiones, y su paciencia inagotable. Semanalmente, ella me forzó a considerar el significado de que la tesis fuera de mi propia mente. Por cuatro años, ella fue la persona que más me presionó académicamente y también la que más me ayudó a mejorar. A la Biblioteca Nacional de Costa Rica, por su apoyo durante mi investigación en San José buscando documentos e información de Don Fabián. En adición, debo mucho agradecimiento a la facultad de Honors Tutorial por el sostén económico proveído por la beca Dean’s Travel & Research que me permitió viajar al país. A mi profesora de español de Chardon High School, Esther Neumann, sin la cual nunca hubiera encontrado la pasión para la lengua española y para Latinoamérica. Finalmente, y sobre todo, a mi familia por darme el temple, la curiosidad y el apoyo para emprender (y cerrar) este capítulo de mi vida. 4 Índice de materias English Summary 5 Capítulo 1: Introducción 39 Capítulo 2: Comentario político en el contexto costarricense del siglo XX 50 Capítulo 3: Las privaciones del campesino en Ése que llaman pueblo 68 Capítulo 4: La radicalización del comentario político en Los leños vivientes 82 Capítulo 5: Conclusión 95 Apéndices Apéndice 1: Mapa del valle central de Costa Rica 100 Apéndice 2: Artículo: “Fabián Dobles: nunca escribo solo por entretener” 101 Bibliografía 102 5 English Summary Introduction The Costa Rican author Fabián Dobles (1918-1997) is a regionalist writer well known within his own country, but whose ample literary production has received scant attention from international literary critics. Costa Rica’s cultural and political history has also not been in the forefront, perhaps because of the country’s recent history as a pacifist democracy whose societal inequalities have been relatively small in comparison with neighbors like Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. However, in the first half of the twentieth century, the country exhibited a high level of social tension and political turmoil, culminating in the 1948 Civil War. As a writer, Fabián Dobles made an important contribution to this political development through his literary works, some of which feature a strong Marxist agenda. This thesis focuses on two of his novels, Ése que llaman pueblo (Those They Call the People, 1942) and Los leños vivientes (Living Firewood, 1962)1, which represent alternative types of political commentary. In the first the author indirectly offers societal critiques by illustrating the lifestyles and hardships of its characters, all of whom are campesinos (rural farmers) or members of the lower class. In the second novel, published twenty years later, Dobles takes a more direct and radical strategy to make his argument based on his experiences as a political prisoner after the 1948 Civil War. In both works the political commentary is accompanied by a strong emphasis on the Costa Rican population and a concern for themes of social justice. Given his lack 1 Except where noted, all translations are provided by the author of this thesis. 6 of notoriety, this thesis focuses first on imparting an understanding of Fabián Dobles as a writer and the context in which he wrote. Next, it explores the two aforementioned literary works to detail Dobles’s specific political commentary. It concludes that the efforts of writers like Dobles, along with the Costa Rican Communist Party (CRCP) and reform-minded politicians, were one factor in creating significant change in the country that helped it transition from the first veritable “banana republic” to a demilitarized state with successful democratic institutions and a strong economy. Fabián Dobles started writing at the beginning of that transition, and is one of the younger members of the Costa Rican literary generation that reached a high level of production in the 1940s. Dobles and other writers, such as Carlos Luis Fallas, Yolanda Oreamuno, Joaquín Gutiérrez and José Marín Cañas, were not necessarily linked by a shared novelistic style. They were, however, engaged with contemporary social issues, a commonality Dobles attributes to their shared upbringing in a time of decisive international events like the First and Second World Wars, the Soviet Revolution of 1917, the Spanish Civil War, and an increased recognition of socialism worldwide (“Fabián Dobles contesta”). Dobles recognized that the governmental and social systems were instrumental in creating the social injustices he observed. He, along with the other writers of the generation of 1940, transitioned away from “the literature of the prior decade, to the questioning of the liberal model of national identity and to the fragmentation of that imaginary” (Rodríguez Cascante 228). The prior generation of writers, known 7 collectively as “El Olimpo” (1890-1920) wrote primarily for the coffee-producing oligarchy of the Central Valley region, constructing a largely homogeneous narrative of the Costa Rican “peaceful rural democracy” (Guennec). Dobles and his contemporaries saw it as their responsibility to inform Costa Ricans of the marginalization and oppression that citizens in other provincial regions faced, such as the Afro-Caribbean immigrants on the coast or workers in the large ranches in the Northern part of the country. With their writings Dobles and his contemporaries gave a narrative voice to many Costa Ricans who had previously been silenced because they did not conform to the existing national image. Dobles’s upbringing with a charitable family was one factor in the creation of his worldview. Born in the small town of San Antonio de Belén to Dr. Miguel Dobles Sáenz (M.D.) and Carmen Rodríguez Solera, Dobles’s early childhood was spent mostly in rural areas. His father received medical training at New York University but preferred to practice medicine in more isolated regions, helping Costa Ricans who otherwise were unable to travel or pay for medical treatment in San José, the country’s capital. This social preoccupation pervades Dobles’s literary works, along with an understanding of rural issues. Both San Antonio de Belén and Atenas, where the Dobles family moved when Fabián was three years old, can be considered semi-rural areas, each with populations of about 1,500 in 1927. As such, Fabián experienced aspects of the campesino lifestyle firsthand, and witnessed the difficulties some farmers had making money and occasionally obtaining sufficient food or medicine. 8 Notwithstanding, the Dobles family never struggled financially due to Dr. Dobles Sáenz’s medical practice, and was even able to afford a small family library. Dobles received a bachelor’s degree in literature and science from the Liceo de Costa Rica in 1935, and went on to complete another bachelor’s degree in law at the University of Costa Rica in 1941. The following year he married Cecilia Trejos, eventually raising five daughters. In 1942 he also began his career at the recently formed Costa Rican Department of Social Security, but was dismissed, along with many others, when he found himself among the ideological losers of the 1948 Civil War. This was not the only time Dobles lost his job because of his leftist beliefs; he was also fired from an English teaching position after the director of the school learned he had traveled to Cuba in 1962, only three years after the Cuban Revolution. These job dismissals complicated Dobles’s life, but the most direct consequence of his political convictions was his imprisonment after the 1948 Civil War. The first time he was arrested for reading revolutionary poetry on the radio and, consequently, spent about six weeks in prison. The second time he was only detained for a week after he had been accused of hiding weapons (González 39). His job terminations and political beliefs made it difficult to begin a new career in government or law, so Dobles was forced to work in a variety of short- and long-term positions, such as a door-to-door milk distributor, as a writer and editor for various Communist Party publications, and as a supervisor in his brother’s factory. When not occupied with his various jobs, Dobles dedicated any time he could find to writing, sometimes going months or years in between different literary projects. 9 Over the course of his lifetime, he published seven successful novels, three books of poetry, eight collections of short stories, two theatrical works, and various essays. In 1968 Dobles was named a recipient of the Magón National Culture Prize, arguably the most prestigious cultural award in Costa Rica. Two of his major works, The Stories of Tata Mundo (1955) and his last novel Years Like Brief Days (1989)2, were both translated into English by Joan Henry, and the latter is included in UNESCO’s Collection of Representative Works. The focus on community and current issues in Dobles’s regionalist writing can be construed as social and political commentary. In comparison with Costa Rican contemporaries like Joaquín Gutiérrez and Yolanda Oreamuno, whose novels had more psychological elements, Dobles incorporated greater political messaging, social critique, and agrarian themes into his works (Rodríguez Cascante 228).