Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2015 The Literary Representations And Interpretations Of La Matanza Roxana Zuniga Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the Latin American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Zuniga, Roxana, "The Literary Representations And Interpretations Of La Matanza" (2015). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 1181. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. THE LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF LA MATANZA by ROXANA GUADALUPE ZUNIGA DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2015 MAJOR: MODERN LANGUAGES (Spanish) Approved by: ________________________________________ Advisor Date _______________________________ ________________________________________ ________________________________________ © COPYRIGHT BY ROXANA GUADALUPE ZUNIGA 2015 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION In memory of my younger brothers, Fredy and Toño, who were killed in El Salvador. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over the years, many people have influenced my educational experiences. I would like to begin by expressing my profound gratitude to Dr. Víctor Figueroa. He has been an exemplary and kind advisor, who has guided me with his insightful comments, suggestions, and editing. I also wish to express immense thanks to the rest of my committee members: Dr. Donald Schurlknight, Dr. Leisa Kauffmann, and Dr. José Cuello, for their careful reading of my dissertation, their corrections, and their patience. Wayne State University has been supportive throughout my graduate studies in providing me with the financial resources that were necessary for me to make this contribution. Many thanks are also due to my inspirational Salvadoran teachers. I would like to express my deep gratitude to my beloved husband, Nate, for motivating me when I needed it the most, and for always making time to care for our daughter, Evaluna, so that I could write. I am also very thankful for the courageous actions of my mothers, Elvira and Elena. Their great love has been extremely important throughout the years. My whole family has been supportive. Special thanks go to my sister, Alejandra and to my friend Jodi, for babysitting Evaluna, while I worked on my dissertation. I would like to thank the staff of the National Library of El Salvador and the Museum of the Image and the Word, for letting me research their archives. In addition, many thanks go to all my friends for their words of encouragement. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………... ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………. iii Chapter 1. The Historical Context of La Matanza………………………………………………...1 1.1 Araujo’s Rise and Fall to Power………………………………………………………5 1.2 The Literary Analysis of the Massacre………………………………………………19 Chapter 2. Intellectual Responsibility in Salarrué and Dalton…………………………………...38 2.1 A Challenge to Hegemonic Discourses: “Mi respuesta a los patriotas”……………..41 2.2 The Social & Literary Context of “El espantajo”……………………………………52 2.3 Annihilation of the Men of Corn…………………………………………………….56 2.4 Linguistic Hybridity……………………………………………………………….....58 2.5 The Role of Women………………………………………………………………….61 2.6 Dehumanization & Survival…………………………………………………………62 2.7 Documentary Poetry of the Massacre………………………………………………..64 2.8 Voicing the Other…………………………………………………………………….65 2.9 A Call for Radical Change…………………………………………………………...78 2.10 Masferrer and the Vital Minimum………………………………………………….80 2.11 Poetic Mockery……………………………………………………………………...82 iv Chapter 3. Miguel Mármol: A Subaltern’s Contestatory Representation of La Matanza…….....96 3.1 On Testimonial Literature…………………………………………………………...99 3.2 Denial of Female Agency…………………………………………………………..114 3.3 The Power of Ideology……………………………………………………………...120 3.4 Narratives of Fear…………………………………………………………………...130 3.5 The Idealized Hero and the Trauma of the Survivor………………………………..136 3.6 A Contestatory Response…………………………………………………………...138 3.7 Dalton’s Voice in Miguel Mármol…………………………………………………..143 Chapter 4. Discourses of Power and Resistance in: Cenizas de Izalco by Claribel Alegría........147 4.1 The Historical Novel in Latin America…………………………………………….149 4.2 Cenizas de Izalco’s Impact in Central American Literature………………………..154 4.3 Origins and Summary of Cenizas de Izalco………………………………………...155 4.4 Summary of the Literary Approach………………………………………………...159 4.5 The Patriarchal Discourse of Power………………………………………………..160 4.6 Echoes of Orientalism in Cenizas de Izalco………………………………………..172 4.7 The Objectification and Exoticism of the Other……………………………………194 4.8 The Massacre at Izalco……………………………………………………………...203 4.9 Allusion to 1932 in Alegría’s Poetry……………………………………………….206 v 4.10 The Capitalist Discourse of Power………………………………………………..214 4.11 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...216 Chapter 5. Manifest Orientalism, Fixity, and Abjection: Manlio Argueta’s Representation of La Matanza…………………………………………………………………………………219 5.1 The Testimonial Novel……………………………………………………………..222 5.2 Summary of Un día and Cuzcatlán…………………………………………………228 5.3 Manifest Orientalism and Fixity in Un día and Cuzcatlán………………………....236 5.4 The Peasant Resistance……………………………………………………………..252 5.5 The Abject…………………………………………………………………………..259 5.6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….........262 Chapter 6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..267 6.1 The Multiplicity of Literary Perspectives…………………………………………..268 Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………...280 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….299 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………309 Autobiographical Statement…………………………………………………………………….311 vi 1 CHAPTER 1 THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF LA MATANZA La Matanza was a massacre that shook western El Salvador in 1932. In late January several sectors of the Salvadoran population rose up in rebellion. Many of the participants were peasants who were dissatisfied with their working conditions of the time. During the Great Depression, many Salvadoran coffee producers slashed wages in half and reduced the amount of workers in their coffee farms to cut costs. In response, workers organized and led a revolt against the landed elites, the government, the military and the bourgeoisie.1 The repressive government of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez responded by sending the military to the areas that had revolted and within weeks of the first killings thousands were dead. According to Michael McClintock, “the revolt was crushed within 48 hours. In the following days 30,000 of a population then of less than one million Salvadorans were massacred” (99). The government repressed and censored these events, wiping them away from Salvadoran history. Newspapers covering the massacre were altered or taken from the national archives of El Salvador. According to Barbara Harlow, “the attempted effacement of the year 1932 from the official record of Salvadoran history is, then, a massacre of another sort: the annihilation of the historical memory” (Harlow 97). How could the murder of thousands of peasants not be recorded and taught in schools throughout the country for several decades? Clearly it was not in the best interest of the military regime to discuss the massacre. Military 2 forces, following direct orders from General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, committed the majority of crimes against Salvadoran civilians.2 General Martínez’s disregard for human life was unsurprising, considering his illegitimate rise to power. According to Juan Mario Castellanos, he rose to power via a military coup d’état on December 2, 1931. “Un golpe de Estado instaura un gobierno militar encabezado por el general Maximiliano Hernández Martínez” (18). He overthrew the nation’s first democratically elected president, Arturo Araujo. General Martinez was Araujo’s Vice President and defense minister. Although the coup consisted of junior officers, Martínez is believed to have orchestrated the coup. After he toppled Araujo’s government, he held seat for thirteen years. For a more detailed historical background Juan Mario Castellano’s book, El Salvador 1930-1960: antecedentes históricos de la guerra civil (2001) is a contemporary source that covers this period of Salvadoran history. Another contemporary source about Salvadoran politics and history from the late nineteenth—twentieth century is Landscapes of Struggle: Politics, Society, and Community in El Salvador (2003), a collection of essays edited by Aldo Lauria-Santiago and Leigh Binford. In addition, the newspapers of the time tend to be an excellent source regarding the coup and the massacre, but the issue is that hardly any exist today because the government censored and “disappeared” them from the national archives. 3 Diario del Salvador, the national newspaper, gave a detailed account of the coup3 on December 4, 1931. According to this article, a military regiment attacked President Araujo while he was in the capital. That night President Araujo fled the Presidential House to take refuge in the National Palace. The next morning he left the country, and was exiled in Guatemala. A ceasefire was reached between the military and the police once they both agreed that it was General Martinez’s “constitutional right” to assume the Executive