Copyright by Gregory Gierhart Helmick 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Gregory Gierhart Helmick certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: ARCHIVAL DISSONANCE IN THE CUBAN POST-EXILE HISTORICAL NOVEL Committee: _____________________________________ César A. Salgado, Supervisor _____________________________________ Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez _____________________________________ Naomi E. Lindstrom _____________________________________ Nicolas Shumway _____________________________________ Harold A. Wylie, Jr. ARCHIVAL DISSONANCE IN THE CUBAN POST-EXILE HISTORICAL NOVEL by Gregory Gierhart Helmick, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2009 Dedication This dissertation is for Joanna, Samuel, and James. Acknowledgments I would like to express appreciation to the members of my committee for participating in this project through its conclusion. I am grateful to Naomi Lindstrom for having proofread and provided commentary on hundreds of pages of draft material. I especially owe a debt of gratitude to my dissertation supervisor César Salgado for his critical efforts in support of this project and for his mentorship. I would like to acknowledge the indispensable support of family and friends, beginning with Joanna, her parents Vera and Vito, and my mother Glenda. Finally, I would like to express appreciation to Jorge Febles, Roberto G. Fernández, and Gustavo Pérez Firmat for discussing the project with me in 2006. v ARCHIVAL DISSONANCE IN THE CUBAN POST-EXILE HISTORICAL NOVEL Publication No. ____________ Gregory Gierhart Helmick, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisor: César A. Salgado This dissertation investigates a common methodology of staging Cuban and Cuban exile historiography in three novels by Roberto G. Fernández (b. 1950), Antonio Benítez Rojo (1931-2005), and Ana Menéndez (b. 1970). This methodology develops a counterpoint between, first, the diagetic (strictly fictional) stories of characters who attempt to research or write Cuban history from exile and, second, the extradiagetic (extra or non-fictional) use of actual sources and tendencies of Cuban, Caribbean, and U.S. historiography structuring the narrative fiction. Reinforcing the density of the discursive field, the authors additionally incorporate works of Spanish, Latin-American, Caribbean, and/or Cuban literatures as constitutive elements of their fictions‘ extradiagetic ―noise.‖ vi I make the case that Fernández‘s, Benítez Rojo‘s, and Menéndez‘s U.S.-produced historical novels develop a critical and investigative approach to the politics of Cuban exile and diaspora historiography. As such, they participate in the emergence of a post- exile Cuban literature, in dialogue with broader Caribbean and Latin American literatures. I analyze what I call archival dissonance in (1) the first, paradigm-setting novel in the body of historical fiction narrated from the frame of a dystopian future by Roberto G. Fernández, La vida es un special; (2) in Ana Menéndez‘s use of reader response and archival research methods to critically recast a history of family division under the Cuban Revolution as popular romance fiction in Loving Che and (3) in the only novel Antonio Benítez Rojo lived to write in the United States, Mujer en traje de batalla (about the accidental arrival to New York City of the ―first female Cuban physician‖ Enriqueta Faber, 1791-1827). Departing from the methodology presented with the narrative structure of each of the novels, in which a diagetic process of a character‘s reading and/or writing Cuban history from a site of exile is countered by extradiagetic documentary and metaliterary information, I examine each novel‘s metacritical approach to the politics of exile and diaspora historiography, as well as toward Cuban, Caribbean, Latin American, and/or U.S. literary textual economies. vii Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction: Archival Dissonance as Metacritical Methodology in the Post-Exile Cuban Novel………...………….………………..1 1.1 Justification of Works Analyzed………………………………………………4 1.2 Methodology Statement……………………………………………………….7 1.3 From Exile to Post-Exile in the U.S. Cuban Historical Novel………………...8 1.4 Historiography in the Development of U.S. Cuban Literature……………....22 Chapter Two: Cuban Revisionist Historiography and the Poetics of Transculturation in Roberto G. Fernández´s La vida es un special $1.50 .75…………….......…………...38 2.1 Readership and Reception of Fernández‘s Novels…………………………. 39 2.2 Vignette Structures in La vida es un special…………………………………44 2.3 Fernández‘s Novels as Metacritical Archive………………………………...51 2.4 La vida es un special $1.50 .75: Overview and Context…………………….53 2.4.1 Monarchy, Military Intervention, and Sugar Aristocracy………….54 2.4.2 Transcultured Turkeys……………………………………....……..62 viii 2.4.3 Re-archiving Operation Peter Pan and the Mariel Exodus………...66 2.4.4 Turkey Wars: Big Sugar, Exile Aristocracy, the Catholic Church, and the U.S. Military Occupation of the San Given Shrine……….72 2.4.5 Reconstituted Aristocracies……………………………………….80 2.5 We All Live In a Yellow Submarine: Validation of Revolution in La vida es un special and the Areíto Group………………………………….84 2.6 Criticism of Cuban Exile Literature in Fernández‘s Doctoral Dissertation….94 2.7 Discourse, Historicity, and Bargain Shopping: Corrective Parody of Lilayando in La vida es un special…………………………………………..96 2.8 Documenting the Occult: Santería as Archive and the Esu, Griñán Peralta, and Sarduy Subtexts in La vida es un special………………………………110 2.9 Synthesis: Sugar People, Transcultured Turkeys, and Archival Ghosts……120 Chapter Three: Commodifying Revolution as Popular Romance in Loving Che by Ana Menéndez………………………………………………………………………130 3.1 Menéndez‘s Career, Readership, and Reception…………………………...132 3.1.2 Towards Loving Che and After.………………………………….135 3.1.3 Menéndez and the Miami Media Machine……………………….146 3.2 Overview and Context of the Novel: Gendered Discourse of Family and Nation…………………………………………………………………..153 3.3 Interposition of the Cuban Exile Grandfather………………………………158 ix 3.4 Markings of Cuba‘s Special Period in Loving Che…….…………………...169 3.5 Interposition of Apocryphal Revolutionary History as Romance Fiction….172 3.6 Reader Response and the Popular Romance Frame……………………......180 3.7 ―Great Man‖ Historiography in Loving Che………………………………..185 3.8 Historical and Literary Sources for Guevara and the Cuban Revolution in Loving Che……………………………………………………………….198 3.9 Martí, Intertextuality, and Monumentality in Loving Che………………….208 3.10 Conclusions………………………………………………………………..222 Chapter Four: Staging Enriqueta Faber as Post-Exile, Trans-Atlantic, Trans- Caribbean Memoirist in Mujer en traje de batalla by Antonio Benítez Rojo………….224 4.1 Antonio Benítez Rojo: Statistics and Literature, 1958-2005……………….228 4.2 Benítez Rojo‘s Caribbean Trilogy, 1979-2000……………………………..233 4.3 Mujer en traje de batalla (2001): Overview and Critical Reception……….243 4.4 Cuban Archival Appropriation of Enriqueta Faber as Paratextual Frame in Mujer en traje de batalla: From Calcagno to Marrero…........………….252 4.5 ―Éste, que ves, engaño colorido‖: Specular Transvestitism in Mujer………277 4.6 ―Caos se ha visto en la historia de la humanidad‖: Henriette Faber- Cavent‘s Memoir…………………………………………………………...288 x 4.7 Oceanic Textualities of Maryse Polidor: Improvisation/Supersyncretism as a Poetics of Survival and Trans-Caribbean Plantation History………….295 4.8 The Island of Juana de León…………………………………………..……313 4.9 Conclusion: The Progression of Enriqueta Faber‘s Last Archival Meditations…………………………………………………………………318 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...321 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….328 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………...352 xi Chapter One: Introduction: Archival Dissonance as Metacritical Methodology in the Cuban Post-Exile Historical Novel The novels by the Cuban-born writers Roberto G. Fernández (b. 1950), Antonio Benítez Rojo (1931-2005), and Ana Menéndez (b. 1970) that explore both Cuban and Cuban exile historiography –Fernández‘s La vida es un special $1.50 .75 (1981), La montaña rusa (1985), Raining Backwards (1988), and Holy Radishes! (1995); Benítez Rojo‘s Mujer en traje de batalla (2001); and Menéndez‘s Loving Che (2004)—are considered significant contributions to late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century U.S. Cuban narrative fiction (Alvarez Borland, Cuban American 97, ―Figures‖ 31-46; González Echevarría, Rev. 18; Irizarry 602; Pérez Firmat, Life 144). Their work is dissimilar in narrative structure, language, tone, the period of Cuban history portrayed in the fiction, and the generation of Cuban émigré writer that each author represents. Yet their novels share, as is investigated in this dissertation, a common methodology of staging Cuban and Cuban exile historiography within a doubly-framed fictional narrative. This methodology develops a counterpoint between, first, the diagetic (strictly fictional) stories of characters who attempt to research or write Cuban history from exile and, second, the extradiagetic (extra or non-fictional) use of actual sources and tendencies of Cuban, Caribbean, and U.S. historiography structuring the narrative fiction. Reinforcing the density of the discursive field, the authors additionally incorporate works of Spanish, Latin-American, Caribbean, and/or Cuban literatures as constitutive elements of