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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.
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