Alás-Brun SS

The Shattered Mirror: Colonial Discourse and Counterdiscourse about Spanish Guinea1

Montserrat Alás-Brun is As- he function of reading literature, according to Fredric sociate Professor of Spanish Jameson, is “the unmasking of cultural artifacts as Literature at the University socially symbolic acts” (20). Abdul R. JanMohamed of Florida. Alás-Brun has T applies and expands Jameson’s theories, among others, to published a book on postwar explain the underlying tensions in post-colonial African lit- Spanish comedy titled De la erature: comedia del disparate al teatro del absurdo, a critical edition of Jardiel Poncela’s The dialectic of negative influence is in fact a literary play El amor sólo dura 2000 manifestation of the Manichean socio-political relation metros, and several articles between the colonizer and the colonized. The black on contemporary Spanish writer finds that colonialist praxis and literature pro- theater, Latin American mote a negative, derogatory image of Africa and its narrative, and the represen- inhabitants, and thus he is motivated to attempt a tations of Africans in Span- correction of that image through a symbolic, literary ish literature and culture. re-creation of an alternate, more just picture of indig- enous cultures. (8)

In order to better understand the efforts by certain con- temporary Equatorial Guinean authors to correct this dis- torted image and create one that instead truly reflects their identity, it may be helpful to revisit the different images of black Africans projected by Spanish colonial discourse. In this essay, I present an overview of ambivalent, sometimes ambiguous and even contradictory images of Spanish Guinean subjects in a variety of colonial texts. I will examine both literary and non-literary sources from Spain in the twen- tieth century, placing a special emphasis on the genres and texts that have been mostly overlooked by previous scholars. Finally, I propose to interpret the motif of the mirror, present in some of these texts, as a trope that symbolizes the diverse

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 8, 2004 164 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

and occasionally conflicting images of the For instance, Carrasco does not include the black African as a colonial subject. colonial literature produced during the Spanish colonial fiction, as well as the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in his oth- travel literature related to the former colony, erwise well-documented study. He does has been studied recently by Antonio M. mention an anti-republican work of propa- Carrasco González (221-55). He devotes a ganda, Estupendos misterios de la Guinea chapter of his book to twentieth-century Española, by Eladio Antonio Rebolloa, Spanish prose, since there are very few works which is a satirical novel written in the early related to Spanish Guinea in the previous years of the Second Republic (231-32). century due to the remoteness of the area The chronological gap in Carrasco’s for Europeans and the difficult and peril- essay is partially covered in La voz de los ous access from the metropolis (221-22).2 náufragos, a study of the personal testimo- The first study of Spanish novels and po- nies and memoirs written by exiled Repub- ems linked to Spanish Guinea starting in licans during or after the Spanish Civil War the 1920s, by Carlos González Echegaray, (1936-1939). This book, by Gemma Mañá was published in 1964. He revised and ex- and others, includes a chapter on the testi- panded his early contribution twenty-five monies related to the Spanish colonies in years later. Both scholars choose to concen- Africa, such as Ifni, Spanish Sahara and the trate on those literary genres, leaving theater Morocco protectorate. The part dealing with and other texts that are not strictly literary Spanish Guinea offers a detailed summary outside the scope of their inquiry. of a little-known testimonial narrative, Carrasco states that there is only one Guinea mártir, by the republican Ángel known play about Spanish Guinea, Bajo el Miguel Pozanco, a colonial officer who fled sol de Guinea, by Bartolomé Soria Marco Spanish Guinea a few months after the 1936 (233).3 However, there is at least another military coup (123-29). Unfortunately, an play that deals explicitly with the colony as analysis of the text beyond the plot sum- its central topic: Alejandro Cervantes’s El mary is lacking. Both this book and puritano, which Carrasco does not mention. Carrasco’s are limited to a specific literary El puritano (1945) is still unpublished and genre, narrative, so other genres and non- remains largely unknown.4 It is a well-in- literary texts such as comics, postcards, post- tentioned drama that denounces racism and ers, etc. are excluded from their scope. discrimination of Spanish Guineans and From the narrative texts studied by condemns the moral hypocrisy of Spaniards, Carrasco, we may infer an image of Span- although it does not question the legitimacy ish Guineans as the exotic, primitive Other of colonialism. It also contains an interest- that seems to dominate these texts, espe- ing use of the trope of the mirror, which I cially in the early decades of the twentieth will examine later. century. The characteristics that the Euro- Besides the above-mentioned genre pean travelers find more striking in the cos- gap in colonial studies related to Spanish tumes and traditions of the indigenous Guinea, with a noticeable scarcity of stud- people—nudity, ritual cannibalism, po- ies on theater, there are certain periods and lygamy, witchcraft—serve as a justification a number of non-literary texts that have not for the civilizing role of the colonizers. The received substantial critical attention yet.5 same litany is repeated not only by causal Montserrat Alás-Brun 165 observers but also by alleged scientists. It is defined by Homi Bhabha (87-89). The nar- a continuation of the pseudo-scientific dis- rator in Buenaventura Vidal’s novel, La course of the africanistas, the intellectual danza de los puñales, published in 1925, community of geographers, ethnologists complains that the natives pretend to aban- and other scientists who gave ideological don their old ways for the benefit of the support to the Spanish colonial enterprise white colonists, but actually continue with at the turn of the nineteenth century. their traditions, including polygamy (27).7 Gustau Nerín has collected numerous ex- A complex, multi-layered type of mimicry amples of racist discourse in a variety of is represented by the narrator’s father and, Spanish non-literary texts through most of in part, by the narrator himself in Donato the twentieth century (43-48). These ex- Ndongo-Bidyogo’s Las tinieblas de tu memo- amples contradict the apparent benevolence ria negra (1987), arguably the best-known and lack of prejudices of the Spanish colo- post-colonial novel by an Equatorial Guinean nizers, a myth that the official discourse of author.8 Franco’s government tried to perpetuate in The Spanish Guinean subjects’ refusal the last period of the African colony.6 to change completely their traditional way All practices considered immoral, pagan of life was used by colonial writers to rein- or uncivilized were banned in the Spanish force the stereotype of Africans as lascivi- colony. Despite strict regulations, however, ous, promiscuous and morally weakened it seems that the Spaniards were largely creatures. As Carrasco points out, a pater- unsuccessful in their attempts to eradicate nalistic attitude and a convenient oversight polygamy, for instance. Contemporary testi- of abuse committed by whites were preva- monies by missionaries, administrative reports lent in colonial literature dealing with Span- and colonial and post-colonial literature re- ish Guinea, regardless of the ideological flect the resistance of the native population orientation of the writers from the metropo- (Bonelli 191; Nosti 46; Yglesias 60-63). lis (221, 226-27, 235). Nerín has documented a number of The Spanish writers in the first de- failed attempts in the long struggle to con- cades of the twentieth century were con- vert the Spanish Guinean population to vinced defenders of the colonial enterprise Catholicism and to impose monogamy (29- (Carrasco 29), even when they lamented the 32). In María Nsue Angüe’s Ekomo, a post- alleged moral corruption of the natives af- colonial novel published in 1985, Oyono is ter their contact with Europeans: “Han a polygamist whose decision to convert to perdido mucho en salvajismo, pero lo han Catholicism creates unbearable tension ganado en hipocresía social” (Vidal 27). The among his four wives and threatens to create ambivalence is also visible in other writers havoc in his household. The elder of the vil- of the prewar period who show a certain lage reproaches Oyono for his foolishness, tension between the attraction of the “wild” since the whites’ house in heaven is not meant life in the jungle and the belief in the civi- for Africans: “Si os dejan entrar en el cielo, lizing mission of Europeans, whose very goal sólo sería para criados o para esclavos” (368). is the imposition of Western culture even if The resistance to forced religious con- it means the destruction of the Africans’ way version and cultural assimilation, registered of life. by European observers, was not always Despite a certain fascination for the overt. It often took the form of mimicry, as jungle, Spanish colonial writers did not seem 166 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

to believe in the myth of the noble savage, it” (77).11 The trope may take different unlike other European writers of their pe- forms, some more unsettling than others, riod. They were not inclined to “go native” but the white hero’s gaze remains a central either.9 On the contrary, they were firmly component. For instance, in an inversion convinced of the inferiority of the African of the Narcissus myth, as Torgovnick states cultures they encountered and the need to (47), the hero of Tarzan of the Apes, the best- bring Western civilization to the primitive selling novel by Burroughs, feels inferior “savages.” As presented in their texts, the when he sees his reflection in a pool for the superiority of Europeans is a token that al- first time and compares himself to the apes lows them to trick and take advantage of (36). the naïve and superstitious blacks from the In colonial discourse, as Spurr has Spanish colony (Carrasco 230). pointed out, the gaze of the observer “marks The presence of the Spaniards them- an exclusion as well as a privilege,” as blacks selves is not necessary to show the superi- are objects of observation, but are not al- ority of their civilization, in contrast with lowed to look back at their white masters: the primitive and naïve mentality that they attribute to their colonial subjects. In a short They are obligated to show them- story by the Spanish writer José Más, pub- selves to view for the white men, but lished in the early 1920s, a remote village they themselves lack the privilege of in Spanish Guinea is agitated by the arrival the gaze; though looked at, they are of an unknown object, a mirror.10 It causes forbidden from looking back […]. Gazed upon, they are denied the such a disturbance that the people in the power of the gaze. (13) village decide to destroy it. However, when they try to break it into pieces, it multiplies In Más’s story, the trope of the mirror magically, much to their consternation. The takes a highly unusual turn. This symbolic omniscient narrator adds: object does not reflect the gaze of the colo- nizer in search of his or her identity, as we Los restos de aquel objeto que ha- normally find in colonial fiction. Instead, bía despertado en ellos el anhelo de tantas cosas desconocidas aún, pero it is clearly presented as an instrument of presentidas tal vez, les torturaba el colonial domination, a symbol of the colo- cerebro […]. La hora de la civiliza- nizer that disrupts the traditional social or- ción había sonado ya en la selva. (13) der when it forces the colonized people to see their own reflection. The trope of the mirror in colonial While the arrival of the mirror in the fiction has been associated with the Euro- story prefigures the defeat of the African com- pean hero’s search for identity (Low 66; munity by the whites and precipitates the Brantlinger 217). Bhabha has applied the process of acculturation, it presupposes the Lacanian concept of the Imaginary, linked ability of the colonized to see his or her own to the formative mirror phase, to a mode of reflection. Although perhaps unintentionally, representation, the stereotype, which he this narrative concedes the possibility that views as the dominant strategy of colonial the colonial subject in Spanish Guinea may discourse that “gives knowledge of differ- actually become the gazer instead of the mere ence and simultaneously disavows or masks object of desire. The instability in the text Montserrat Alás-Brun 167 opens the door for a subversive interpreta- tithesis of dark evil versus white goodness tion in which the African subject may be- is explicit in Y el imperio volvía... (1939), come an agent rather than a subaltern an allegoric play by the Jesuit priest Ramón Other. Cue, which constitutes a strident example The colonial mentality that underlines of crude racism and xenophobia. In a scene the previously mentioned texts, despite their of this play, Spain, represented by a flock of instabilities, can be found even in progres- white doves, destroys the Turkish Empire, sive, leftist writers such as Pozanco, the au- symbolized by a flock of black vultures thor of Guinea mártir, who never questions “from the Orient.”13 the supposed inability for self-determina- Since the war was often cast on both tion of the colonized people in Spanish sides as an apocalyptic struggle between Guinea. On the contrary, before the war Western civilization and the racial Other broke out, he seemed exclusively concerned represented as the barbaric and savage in- with the improvement of the administra- vader of Spain, it was not unusual to ac- tive system in order to make the colony more cuse the political enemies of racial impu- efficient and profitable. It appears that his rity or even characterize them as the ulti- democratic ideals did not extend to the mate aliens, members of one of the “degen- blacks in the Spanish colony. erate” or “inferior” races.14 North Africans There are no studies of the national- or “moors,” which supported Franco in the ist propaganda literature written in the war, were the main targets of the racist pro- colony or related to Spanish Guinea during paganda produced by the loyalists, whereas the Spanish Civil War. Although there does Asians or “Orientals” (identified with the not seem to be any literary text on the topic, Russian “reds”) and Jews were typically the and certainly there is no canonical work chosen objects of hatred of the Nationalist written by Franco’s supporters in or about rebels. the colony at that time, blacks are indeed Some war posters or other propaganda represented in a very insidious way in war drawings distributed by the Republicans propaganda literature. Specific mentions of portrayed the much-feared Moroccan troops black Africans are scarce, however. For ex- that fought with Franco as black, or at least ample, there are racist attacks against presi- with rather dark skin and some exaggerated dent Negrín (based on infantile puns about features usually associated with caricatures his last name) in some articles written by of black Africans, following a trend already journalists from the opposite side.12 exploited in the Spanish-Moroccan war in Typically, the racism against black the1920s.15 By contrast, the image of the Africans is more subtle, unlike the obvious heroic Moroccan soldier was systematically racist stereotyping and often vicious attacks whitened in propaganda drawings and against “Orientals,” Jews and other groups paintings created by Franco’s supporters in the propaganda literature of the nation- (Martín 392). While the “moors” were el- alists in the Spanish Civil War. It is encoded evated to the category of the noble savage in in the negative associations of darkness and many written texts in Nationalist Spain, es- evil, a recurrent motif of Western art and pecially in the propaganda press, the Repub- literature, especially since the nineteenth lican Commissariat of Propaganda of the century (Boime 1-5). The Manichean an- Generalitat (the autonomous government 168 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

of Catalonia) published and distributed fly- the grateful blacks from slavery. Like the ers with illustrated stories, called “aucas” in relationship of Tarzan (the most popular Catalan or “aleluyas” in Spanish, in which comic hero of the 1930s) with the fictitious “savage” moors were sometimes portrayed African tribe of the noble Waziri, the story as black.16 is typical of Western writing about Africa, Besides the above-mentioned ex- since it is “a fantasy of Western superiority amples, which draw indirect associations being voluntarily recognized and rewarded with the colonial subjects in Guinea because by ‘natives’” (Torgovnick 57). of their negative stereotyping of black Afri- This Manichean vision of Franco’s cans,17 there is a striking illustrated story political enemies and the distorted vision published in Spain during the war that takes of the role of the new military regime in place explicitly in Spanish Guinea. It was Spanish African colonies were part of the intended for children, mostly boys, who indoctrination process that Spanish children were the targeted readers of the Fascist underwent for several generations, both in magazine Flechas.18 The story, entitled the peninsula and in Spanish Guinea.20 Al- “Negreros rojos,” takes the ostensible form though it ran counter to the reality of Afri- of an escapist adventure in an exotic land, can colonial society under Franco’s dicta- following the fashion introduced by U.S. torship, it was perpetuated in the official comics in the 1930s. It is skillfully drawn discourse for decades.21 It permeated the and printed in color, an expensive enter- minds of the colonized, not without ten- prise in war-torn Spain, where paper was so sions and contradictions, as shown in scarce that it was rationed. However, the Ndongo-Bidyogo’s first novel Las tinieblas message is transparently Manichean. It pur- de tu memoria negra (1987). ports to represent the fascist rebels as the The narrator in the novel reminisces saviors of the Spanish Guineans, portrayed about his childhood in the Spanish colony. as a mixture of the good savage and Uncle A former student in a public school for Tom, a helpless victim waiting to be liber- blacks in Spanish Guinea, he recalls the fear ated from his oppressors, the Republican of the red-skinned Republicans his black loyalists, by the white hero. teacher instilled in him, in stark contrast The protagonist of the adventure se- with the portraits of José Antonio Primo de ries is Gustavo el Aventurero, a blond, Rivera, founder of Falange Española and the Aryan-looking boy wearing the Falange martyr of the Spanish Nationalist cause, and uniform, the Spanish Fascist party blue shirt General Franco, the alleged savior of Spain with Isabella and Ferdinand’s coat of arms. and liberator of the enslaved blacks. Both He fights bravely against the sadistic vil- were displayed prominently on the class- lains, who are both illegal arms dealers and room wall next to the icon of another white slave traffickers in Guinea. They also hap- savior, Jesus on the cross. The child feels pen to be Republicans or “reds” and are both fascinated and intimidated by the gaze portrayed as a cross of fairy tale ogres and of this White Man’s trinity. hideous criminals, a common representa- The condescending, paternalistic at- tion in children’s magazines from the Na- titude toward the colonized and the exalted tionalist faction.19 In the end, good prevails language used by the teacher and echoed over evil and the handsome white boy frees by the diligent pupil, correspond with the Montserrat Alás-Brun 169 official discourse found in school textbooks sion is still done from a paternalistic vision and political speeches of the postwar period: of the noble savage, internalized by the col- laborator of the colonialists, a civil servant Nunca olvidaré esa mirada severa of the metropolis. […] que […] me obligaba a ser agra- The African teacher from colonial decido hacia Ese Hombre que nos times portrayed in Ndongo-Bidyogo’s novel había traído la Verdadera Libertad does not question the Europeans’ right to que los sindiós nos quisieron arre- batar esclavizándonos con engaños colonize his homeland, but criticizes some y asechanzas materialistas, esos sin- of them for not living up to the high moral diós que formaban una raza especial standards that are expected from a superior, de hombres malvados pintados de civilized race. He has clearly constructed an rojo. (27)22 ideal image of the Other while at the same time being very conscious of the colonial The assertion that the “Reds” or Span- subjects’ image that the white men have ish Republicans were “savages” and “bar- perpetuated, tied to their respective role and barians,” repeated ad nauseam in the offi- the racial hierarchy in the colony. cial discourse during Franco’s regime, ap- A similarly double-edged and poten- pears to be internalized by the colonial sub- tially unstable message can be found in a ject in Ndongo-Bidyogo’s novel, the black 1945 play by the Spanish dramatist Alejan- child attending an elementary school in dro Cervantes entitled El puritano. The play 23 Spanish Guinea. In an ironic mode that offers an unusually severe indictment of the seems to take the perspective of the naïve hypocrisy and racism of the white upper seven-year-old boy, the narrator remembers and middle classes who benefited from the his teacher’s indignation, caused by exploitation of the colonies. Not surpris- ingly, Cervantes’s drama encountered diffi- la barbarie de las hordas de los hom- culties with the rigid censors of postwar bres de piel roja que quemaban igle- sias y conventos con monjas dentro Spain and was never performed nor pub- 24 y todo, algo que jamás había hecho lished. ningún infiel como nosotros, esos El puritano presents the conflict of a sí que eran salvajes de verdad. (29) young African woman of mixed race who tries to pass as white in Spain while in search The black teacher in Las tinieblas de of a better life. In the end she finds social tu memoria negra has made an unexpected acceptance when she is recognized by her inversion, perhaps unintentionally: it turns Spanish father, but only after it is revealed out some of the whites (conveniently named that her biological mother was white, al- “the reds”) are the true savages, the infi- though her adoptive mother is black. The dels, capable of evil deeds that no African other African characters trying to help the pagan would commit. His indignation to- protagonist are rejected by the white char- ward abuses and violent crimes against the acters in the play. After they endure racial Catholic Church in the Second Spanish discrimination, humiliating treatment and Republic leads him to reposition the colo- constant verbal abuse, they decide to return nial subject, now morally superior to those to the colony, sadly convinced that there is European barbarians. However, this inver- no place for them in the metropolis. 170 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Like the black teacher in Las tinieblas departs dramatically from the typical one de tu memoria negra (although for very dif- in which the European looks at the mirror ferent reasons) the Africans in this play are and sees his more or less deformed reflec- outraged by the whites’ immoral and bru- tion projected on the imaginary Other. tal behavior and expose them as hypocrites The underlying assumption in the tra- and corrupt profiteers, Christian only in ditional use of the symbolic mirror is that name. They force the spectator to reexam- the colonial subject is incapable of self-re- ine his or her assumption about racial and flection, since he or she can only ever be moral superiority by inverting the traditional the object of the colonizer’s gaze. However, terms in the colonizing process: the whites in El puritano we find the “savage” pain- are accused of being the non-Christian and fully confronting the image that whites have impure ones by the colonial subjects. The constructed to represent him, an image he play is ironically entitled El puritano in a ref- cannot accept as his true reflection but seems erence to the heroine’s biological father, a unable to change. Unlike the naïve villag- self-righteous, white character who finally ers in Más’s story, he does not try to break admits to having had an illicit relationship the mirror for he already knows it is a sym- with an African woman whom he later aban- bolic object that can reproduce his image doned. ad infinitum. The main rhetorical strategy used by The colonial mirror turns up again in the African characters in the play is the ap- several works by a post-colonial author pre- propriation of the religious discourse viously mentioned, Ndongo-Bidyogo. The brought to Spanish Guinea by the mission- initial purpose of his first novel, which he aries, an important colonizing force in the defines as “a reflection,” is to explain to him- Spanish colony, as has been often pointed self and others “why we Guineans are where out by scholars (Avome 81-82, Fegley 24- we are,” as he said in a recent interview.26 2, Fra-Molinero 50, Fryer 7, Nsue 62-65, His experience in exile in Spain for nearly Salafranca 279). The symmetrical inversion three decades has marked him deeply. He of traditional terms, as in a mirror image, assures that he has learned what he knows subversively returns to whites their accusa- about Africa and Equatorial Guinea tions of savagery, impurity and paganism through an intellectual process, not from by applying to them the strict moral stan- life experience. As a result, he sees his works dards that white missionaries preached to as marked by constant loneliness and evo- the African subjects. cation (112). He does not consider this fact The ambiguous trope of the colonial to be necessarily negative since “La reflexión mirror, used two decades earlier in Más’s continua me permite ver las cosas con mayor story from his book El fetichero blanco, also objetividad, con menos pasión y más racio- takes an interesting twist in Cervantes’s play. cinio” (114). In a key scene of El puritano, the Spanish The reflecting mirror is a polysemic Guinean Tomás looks at his reflection in a trope in Ndongo-Bidyogo’s writings.27 The mirror and sees himself for the first time as constant element in all its different uses is the white characters in the play see him. its relation to the African characters, who He walks away from the mirror, crying si- are sometimes colonial subjects but are lently (95).25 This particular use of the trope viewed from a post-colonial perspective. Montserrat Alás-Brun 171

They are definitely agents, not merely sub- his ancestor that he is looking for him, he alterns, even when they appear to be in a reveals, “yo soy tú” (51). Then he realizes subordinate position. Ndongo-Bidyogo’s the vision has disappeared, but the spoils main characters in his two novels and sev- of the defeated “humanoids” are still there. eral of his short stories are mostly gazers, The vision functions as a powerful although they may be occasionally gazed expression of resistance and shows the con- upon. They are consistently inclined to self- tinuity between the fight of the great Fang reflection, an attribute still considered ex- warriors (who were ultimately dominated clusive of the colonizers in a fairly recent by the Europeans) and the child, whose past. The colonialists are the colonial Other mission will be to defeat the whites by learn- and they are not the ones holding the mir- ing the source of their power (133). The ror. child later decides he will become a Catho- A complex use of the specular trope lic priest in order to acquire the power of appears in Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra. their white magic. By the end of the novel, In this novel, the Equatorial Guinean writer the child, now thirteen years old, is travel- tried, in his own words, ing to Spain with his mentor, Father Ortiz, in order to be educated. When he boards to reflect the conflicts latent in our the boat, he looks at his own reflection in spirit between tradition and/or mo- the fair eyes of the priest.28 dernity, the identity of our people, In his second novel, Los poderes de la […] the portrait of the colonized as tempestad (1997), Ndongo-Bidyogo uses the a substrate of our personality. (“La trope of the self-reflecting mirror, now literatura moderna” 42) clearly appropriated by the post-colonial intellectual, who is no longer a subaltern. In a pivotal episode of the novel, the narra- The second-person narrator laments the tor recalls a vision he had at age six after his protagonist’s lack of introspection when he circumcision ceremony. For the first time, returns to Equatorial Guinea after a pro- he saw his great-grandfather, the leader of longed exile in Spain: his village, fighting with the European in- vaders, who tried to shoot at him in vain. Si hubieras tenido la serenidad sufi- The objects they carried to impress the na- ciente para pensar en ti mismo, de tives, such as mirrors and bead necklaces, analizarte, si hubieras podido con- were unexpectedly turned against the templar tu alma en un espejo que te whites. devolviera la imagen de tu espíritu The Europeans are presented as gro- atormentado. (116) tesque and cowardly humanoids (“figuras hu-manoides” 49-50), defeated by the great In conclusion, the trope of the mirror that magical power of the African warrior, who appears in several Spanish texts dealing with commands nature and turns insects and the former colony, Equatorial Guinea, dur- inanimate objects against them. Fragments ing the first half of the twentieth century, of a shattered mirror were splintered against does not correspond exactly to the colonial their flesh, beads coiled around their hands, trope in the European literature of that time. and a swarm of insects ate them up and left Moreover, it shows the cracks within colo- only their skeletons. When the child tells nial discourse. At least in a few texts, such 172 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

as Más’s story and El puritano, the drama The image of the Equatorial Guineans by Cervantes, some Spanish writers use the that emerges both in the colonial and the mirror as a symbol that represents how the post-colonial texts analyzed in this essay is colonial subjects see themselves in relation a conflicting and ambivalent one, as is co- to the European colonizers. The results cre- lonial discourse itself, since it is in great part ate tensions in an unstable system that is a result of the colonization process and a not as monolithic as it appears to be and reaction to it. The resulting image is not open the possibility for a critical reflection monolithic, but split and even shattered.30 on the supposedly fixed identity of both the colonist and the colonized.29 Notes In El puritano, a counter-discourse is 1 The research for this article was made established by exposing the contradictions possible in great part by the generous support of the colonial discourse of racial superior- of the University of Florida (Humanities Schol- ity in Spain. This is accomplished through arship Enhancement Fund for the Summer of the subversive appropriation of the religious 2001). The preliminary research was conducted discourse of the Spanish missionaries, in- thanks to a grant from the Program for Cul- verting and challenging the traditional ste- tural Cooperation between the Spanish Minis- reotypes of black Africans. In addition, the try of Culture and U.S. Universities in 1999. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the trope of the mirror allows for the represen- helpful librarians of Archivo General de la tation of a colonial subject who is conscious Administración (AGA) in Alcalá de Henares, of his or her unjust discrimination and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas marginalization by the Spaniards. (CSIC) in Madrid, Archivo Histórico de la Finally, in the post-colonial writings Guerra Civil in Salamanca, Biblioteca Nacional of Ndongo-Bidyogo, the appropriation and in Madrid, and Centro de Documentación the reinscription of the specular trope show Teatral in Madrid. I would like to thank espe- both the resistance to colonization and the cially the director of the AGA library. 2 reaffirmation of the autonomous identity Carrasco names a few authors of travel lit- of the former colonial subject, now viewed erature, memoirs, and scientific reports, mostly from the late nineteenth century (224-26), but as that of an agent, even when situated does not provide titles nor other publication within the historic context of the former data, except for the novel, Aventuras de un piloto colony. The “figuras humanoides” of his first en el Golfo de Guinea, signed with the pen name novel were prefigured in several texts by Donacuige (Madrid, 1886). writers of the Spanish colonial period al- 3 He does not analyze the play and does though in Ndongo they are condemned to not say if it was performed. The data he in- failure, a loss of status that manifests what cludes in a footnote (Barcelona, 1945) is prob- Bhabha calls the “disturbances of cultural, ably the place and date of the publication, but racial and historical difference that menace he does not mention the publisher. 4 the narcissistic demand of colonial author- For the only published study of El puri- tano, see Alás-Brun. Interestingly, Cervantes, a ity” (88). This process of the “gaze of oth- resident of Barcelona at that time, requested erness,” in which, according to Bhabha, “the permission to perform his play in 1945, the observer becomes the observed” (89), forces same year the other play about Spanish Guinea us to rearticulate the notion of identity, was published or performed in Barcelona. which can no longer be seen as a fixed, es- 5 Since many Spanish plays remain unpub- sentialist image. lished, more archival research is needed. The Montserrat Alás-Brun 173

National Archives or AGA, in Spain, where I issue of the satirical magazine, L’Esquella de la found the only known typescript of El puritano, Torratxa (385). are an invaluable source for the plays of Franco’s 16 See the examples mentioned in Martín period. 391-92, especially “Aleluyas de un soldado que 6 Nerín’s book has been published in Span- combate a nuestro lado” (392). ish and Catalan. My references come from the 17 For the racist stereotypes of Spanish Spanish edition, Guinea Ecuatorial. Guineans perpetuated after the war in the edu- 7 Quoted in Carrasco 229. See Nerín for a cational system of Franco’s regime, see Fra- thorough study on gender roles, changes in fam- Molinero 55. ily structure and sexual relations and attitudes 18 Flechas, which started in November 1936, in Spanish Guinea from the second half of the just a few months after the military coup, and nineteenth century to the independence of Pelayos, another propaganda magazine for chil- Equatorial Guinea in 1968. dren published since December 1936, merged 8 The title of the novel, with echoes of Jo- in December 1937 under the new title, Flechas seph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, comes from a y Pelayos, a children’s magazine sponsored by quote by L. S. Senghor’s Chants d’ombre. For Falange Española until its demise in 1949 an analysis of the ambiguous character of the (Conde 19-20, Otero 10-11). narrator’s father, see Fra-Molinero 60-61. 19 Conde’s ironic comments exposing the 9 See Torgovnick’s book for a thorough Manichean ideology behind Pelayos can also be study of primitivism and Western writers’ and applied to the stories published in Flechas. He artists’ fascination with Africa. The Western points out that all the republicans portrayed in tropes for the primitive are summarized on page the illustrated magazine were communists or 99. “reds,” and “all the reds are ugly, dirty, and cruel” 10 Many drawings printed on postcards in (20). the early decades of the twentieth century, such 20 Herzberger has studied the attempt to as some by Diego Mullor, show other Spanish construct a monolithic hegemonic discourse colonial subjects, the rifeños from Northern about the essence of Spain and a teleological Africa, surprised to see a mirror and other “mod- vision of history (33-37). ern” artifacts for the first time (Martín 384). 21 There were only one hundred freemen 11 According to Lacan’s theories, the for- or emancipados out of a total population of one mation of the ego or subject “rests upon a basi- hundred thousand Africans in Spanish Guinea cally paradoxical relationship between self and in the mid-1950s. The unemancipated Africans other” (Nichols 31). were “legal semiminors” and suffered many re- 12 For instance, Julio Camba’s article, “Negrín, strictions (Sundiata 33). negroide,” published in the nationalist news- 22 Even scholarly publications such as Bib- paper ABC in 1937, reprinted in Fernando Díaz- liografía General Española e Hispanoamericana Plaja 742-43. praised Franco as an epic hero (9) and presented 13 “Una bandada de buitres negros salió de him as “the providential man, […] the savior Oriente” (Prólogo, leaf 4). of a marvelous culture” (Herzberger 19). More 14 The symbolism is made explicit in Ramón examples can be found in a collective volume Cue’s play, Y el imperio volvía... (1939), which published to commemorate Franco’s trip to the was not performed nor published. I found the Spanish colonies in Northern Africa in 1950, typescript in the AGA archives. Visita de SE el Jefe del Estado, which includes 15 See the illustrations from satirical post- several speeches by Franco and some articles in cards collected in Martín 386-89, especially the an ardent hagiographic tone. one titled, “El tango africano” (389), and the 23 One of the most obvious examples of such description of the cover for the 26 August 1921 demonization of the enemy is the book, La 174 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies barbarie roja, which proclaims to be an objec- that we also need to take into consideration tive document, a collection of war photographs. “questions of class, gender and context” (179). However, beginning with the title and the pro- 30 M’baré N’gom has pointed out that real- vocative cover and continuing throughout the ity appears dislocated, fragmented and trauma- book, the anonymous author or authors sys- tized in the poetic discourse of the Equatorial tematically present the “reds” as monstruous, Guinean exiles (22-23). barbaric hordes of savages, bent on eliminat- ing Christianity and destroying Western civili- Works Cited zation. Alás-Brun, Montserrat. “Ese engañoso amor del 24 For a detailed description of the censors’ blanco: El (contra)discurso colonial en un reports and the obstacles the author encoun- drama español de posguerra.” Afro-His- tered when he tried to obtain permission to panic Review 19.1 (2000): 85-92. perform the play in Spain, see Alás-Brun 85- “A nuestros lectores.” Bibliografía General Espa- 86. ñola e Hispanoamericana 13 (1941): 7-9. 25 A typescript of the play submitted by the Avome, Gisèle. “Religiosidad, independencia author (as required by the Spanish government y conflictos culturales en El párroco de during General Franco’s regime), along with the Niefang de Joaquín Mbomio Bacheng.” application to request permission for the per- Afro-Hispanic Review 19.1 (2000): 79-84. formance and the censors’ reports, is kept in La barbarie roja: Santander, Asturias, Teruel, the Spanish National Archives (Archivo Gen- Alfambra: Doscientos documentos gráficos de eral de la Administración, or AGA) in Alcalá gran valor histórico e inéditos. Valladolid: de Henares, near Madrid. n.p., 1938. 26 “Mi propósito inicial fue explicar, expli- Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. carme a mí mismo—porque en verdad la primera London: Routledge, 1994. novela es una reflexión—y a los demás el porqué Boime, Albert. The Art of Exclusion: Represent- los guineanos estamos como estamos” (“Donato ing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century. Wash- Ndongo-Bidyogo” 112). ington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution 27 In a group of love poems, for instance, Press, 1990. the speaker is so used to seeing his beloved in Bonelli y Rubio, Juan. “Notas sobre la geografía himself that she is transformed into the shadow humana de los territorios españoles del of his mirror: “Te convertiste en la sombra de Golfo de Guinea.” Díaz de Villegas 179- mi espejo. / Tan acostumbrado a verte en mí” 91. (Literatura 292). There is a more traditional use Brantlinger, Patrick. “Victorians and Africans.” of the trope of the mirror in the story, “El Gates 185-222. sueño,” where the waters of the river are like Burroughs, Edgar Rice. Tarzan of the Apes. mirrors which reflect the nude bodies of the 1912. New York: Ballantine, 1963. village girls (Literatura 204). Camba, Julio. “Negrín, negroide.” ABC. Sevilla. 28 The narrator, split in the second person, 6 Aug 1937: n. pag. talks to his former self, the child: “El negro te Carrasco González, Antonio M. La novela co- depositó en el cayuco junto al padre Ortiz y te lonial hispanoafricana. Las colonias africanas miraste en sus ojos claros” (163). de España a través de la historia de la novela. 29 According to Loomba, “colonial identi- Madrid: SIAL, 2000. ties—on both sides of the divide—are unstable, Cervantes, Alejandro. El puritano. Dossier 217- agonised, and in constant flux. This undercuts 45, box 78.231, ts. Archivo General de la both colonialist and nationalist claims to a uni- Administración, Alcalá de Henares. fied self” (178). Unlike Bhabha, who tends to Conde, Javier. Del tebeo al cómic. Un mundo universalize the colonial encounter, she warns de aventuras. Madrid: LIBSA, 2001. Montserrat Alás-Brun 175

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