"IN COBWEBS, IN STORMS, IN CHAINS": THE GOTHIC IN SPANISH AMERICAN SHORT FICTION PDF Free Download
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“IN COBWEBS, IN STORMS, IN CHAINS”: THE GOTHIC IN SPANISH AMERICAN SHORT
FICTION
by
Mariangela Ugarelli Risi
A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Baltimore, Maryland
January 2025
© 2025 Mariangela Ugarelli
All rights reserved
ii
Abstract
This dissertation demonstrates the Gothic’s long historical presence, focusing on short-
form literature during the twentieth century. While doing so, it also seeks to explore the
shortcomings of genre and Gothic studies while providing a different perspective on them;
a new model inspired by the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
Within contemporary Gothic studies, the Gothic is a genre (a set of historically
bound tropes and conventions juxtaposing the horrifying and the appealing) and a mode
(the deterritorialized negative affects inspired by such tropes and conventions) but also a
hermeneutic tool that focuses on how both genre and mode can abject Otherness and
deal with the “unwillingness of the past to go away” (Sage & Lloyd Smith 4). This
dissertation seeks to unify these three faces of the Gothic into a single entity (the Gothic
Abstract Machine, the ‘diagram’ of the Gothic) and use this tool to analyze its elements
within short fiction, the medium where its prominence is most discernible and pervasive
across Spanish America.
My theoretical framework allows me to understand the passion and fear that the
characteristically technological Argentinean modernity project inspired in twentieth-
century writers (Leopoldo Lugones’ Las fuerzas extrañas and Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de
Amor de locura y de muerte), the portrayal of Andean indigeneity as a seductive and
dangerous threat to the modernizing project (La venganza del condor), the construction of
national identity in permanent negotiation with Death after the Mexican revolution (Pedro
Páramo and Aura), and the affect-driven voices of domestic abuse victims and animals in
Tiempo destrozado. As such, this dissertation finds that the specters of miscegenation,
iii
ever-progressing technology, uncontrollable nature, colonialism, identity, domestic
violence, and death herself are constitutive components of the Spanish American short-
form canon.
Thus, this dissertation concludes that one cannot speak of a single Spanish
American Gothic but of a multiplicity of Gothic Assemblages that run through these
countries such as a Mexican Gothic, an Indigenista version of the mode, the modernista’s
interpretation of it, and a Female Gothic. All these assemblages point towards the same
Abstract Machine that ties them together.
Primary advisor: Dr. Sara Castro-Klarén
Secondary advisor: Dr. Juan Pablo Dabove
Faculty advisor: Dr. William Egginton
iv
Dedication
To the memory of Dr. Juan Pablo Dabove, whose understanding of the Gothic in Latin
America was, is, and will remain unmatched.
v
Acknowledgements
I would not have been able to electrify this project to life had it not been for the
help of my committee, professors, colleagues, friends, and family. First and foremost,
words cannot express my gratitude to Dr. Sara Castro-Klarén, who played a fundamental
role in developing my ideas, bringing out my voice, and pushing me to be the best critic I
can be. In parallel, Dr. Juan Pablo Dabove’s expertise and critiques have also been crucial
to my project, and I am immensely thankful for his invaluable guidance. Additionally, I
would like to thank Dr. William Egginton, who has been an important mentor throughout
my time at Johns Hopkins. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Dr. Douglas
Mao and Dr. Leonardo Lisi for serving as part of the committee during the defense of this
project. Their comments will be invaluable in the process of transforming this dissertation
into a book.
I would be remiss not to mention all the hands, eyes, and ears that took part in
building this Gothic Body. Liliana Colanzi, Cecilia Esparza, Helen Garnica Brocos, Pablo
Ansolabahere, Sandra Gasparini and Alvaro Jasaui Chero provided important sources of
information, read the manuscript in several different stages or were fundamental
interlocutors for ideas that had not yet taken shape. This list would not be complete
without Craig Osterbrock, who polished the rough edges of the wild creature I created.
To conclude, I want to thank my parents, family, and friends, who stood by me
during the laborious and protracted birth of this monstrous progeny. Without their
support, this five-headed beast would have never come to life.
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Table of contents
Abstract................................................................................................................................... ii
Dedication .............................................................................................................................. iv
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ v
List of figures ........................................................................................................................ vii
Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1
Chapter 1 The Ghost of Gothic’s Past: Literature Review and Theoretical Framework ...... 22
Chapter 2 Modernismo and the Gothic................................................................................ 53
Chapter 3 Ce n’est pas le Pérou: La Venganza del Cóndor, indigenismo and the Gothic .. 114
Chapter 4 Mexican Gothic’s Death Without End ............................................................... 170
Chapter 5 Amparo Dávila’s Female Gothic ......................................................................... 251
Conclusions Gothic Machines, Gothic Assemblages, Gothic objects ................................. 318
Appendix ............................................................................................................................. 325
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 327
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List of figures
Figure 1. José Guadalupe Posada’s original “Calavera Garbancera”. ................................ 325
Figure 2. Center panel of Diego Rivera’s “Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda
Central” ............................................................................................................................... 326
Figure 3. Catalina and Maximillian in “Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda
Central” ............................................................................................................................... 326
1
Introduction
Even among Gothicists, the idea of a Latin American or Spanish American Gothic
tradition is sometimes met with a mixture of incredulity and curiosity. This dissertation is a
new approach to the Spanish American canon, on the one hand, and to the Gothic on the
other. The Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas are haunted by their distant and
not so distant past. Hidden under a thick layer of exoticization, beneath plantain leaves
and colorful dances, the Spanish-speaking countries of the American continent bear a
shared history of colonization, pain, and blood. The ghosts of the continent’s history
return to haunt it incessantly. Despite futile attempts to exorcise them, these ghosts come
back to life in the continent’s cultural production. From the outside, it would seem there is
very little to say about the Gothic in Spanish American literature during the twentieth
century. Within a tradition that has been for the most part presented to the world as a
realistic representation of the trials and tribulations of incipient nation-states or as an
expression of picturesque resilience in the face of poverty, there seems to be no room to
savor darkness under an unrelenting sun.
However, I argue that the lack (and even outright derision) of the term “Gothic”
regarding this literature distorts our perception of its tradition as a whole, creating
unnecessary gaps in our comprehension of some of its texts. A closer look at this canon
reveals that Spanish American authors have been deploying the Gothic, a genre (and later
a mode) preoccupied with a juxtaposition between the terrifying and the appealing, as
well as the past’s “unwillingness […] to go away” (Sage & Lloyd Smith 4), for at least a
century. This means that understanding the processes it entails illuminates crucial parts
2
within certain touchstones of this literary canon. What does the Gothic in Spanish
American literature look like? The answer to this question is not a simple transposition of
tropes from center to periphery: pointing out the presence of vampires, Gothic villains,
distressed heroines, witches, or stone castles seems a pointless exercise or at least an
insufficient one. Such lists can only be the start of a Gothic analysis, not the end.
To approach this topic, we must first address the geopolitical dimension of the
categories used in this research. From the invented category of “America” itself to the
idea of Latin America, the different ways in which we denominate the Spanish-speaking
countries of the American continent will always be contentious. All the monikers that
encompass these countries are scored not by geography but by politics, as authors such as
Walter Mignolo have made clear. “An excess of confidence has spread all over the world
regarding the ontology of continental divides,” states Mignolo in his The Idea of Latin
America, before proceeding to deconstruct this very idea (x). There is nothing evident or
natural in the compartmentalizing of America into Latin or Spanish America; these
categories exist not as material realities but as part of discourse and as ways to organize
and understand distinctive literary canons.
I have chosen “Spanish America” to refer to this group of countries and “Spanish
American” for the authors hailing from these latitudes to distinguish them from Hispanic
American or Latinx writers in and from the United States. The texts analyzed in this
dissertation are part of the Spanish American literary canon, since they were all written in
the Spanish language in former Spanish colonies. My selection does not include texts in
Portuguese (which excludes the term Latin America) nor texts produced by native
3
communities in indigenous languages (which excludes geographical terms such as South
America or Abya Yala).
1
The relationship between majority Spanish-speaking countries and
the Spanish language—the language of the colonizer—is complex, considering that
Spanish was used after the apparent end of colonization to produce post-colonial national
states where those not versed in the language were excluded from those states’
constitutive processes. The colonial past of these nations marks the manifestations of the
Gothic in them, throwing another wrench into my analysis.
Spanish American creoles (criollos), people of European descent living in the
Hispanic Americas, or letrados, people with the ability to read or write in countries that,
despite the written word’s dominion, had high rates of illiteracy, constitute the majority if
not all of the authors examined here. In the first three authors studied (Leopoldo Lugones,
Horacio Quiroga and Ventura García Calderón), the criollo identity is constitutive of their
writing. As Mignolo states, criollos “could not claim the past that belonged to the
Spaniards, to the Indians, or to the Africans […] they were all cut off from their pasts and
they were living in a present without history” (66). This particular situation regarding their
own frail identity set them in a particularly vulnerable place, ready to be accosted by an
abject Other, be it the promise and failure of modernity and technological progress,
nature itself, or racialized groups tied to nature. Ventura García Calderón, author of La
venganza del cóndor (1924), is a paradigmatic example of this conundrum: his text
conjures up a teratological image of the indigenous, a Gothic figure fueled by the creole’s
own oscillating identity.
1
These would be required to provide a full survey of “Latin America”.
4
But what is the Gothic after all? As Catherine Spooner observes in her historical
account of the evolution of Gothic Studies, “Gothic as a critical discourse has become so
all-encompassing that it has started to lose definition” (20). Nonetheless, we can still
identify some elements with a degree of certainty. It has to do with darkness, death, and
their representations and transformations into something that is, if not beautiful, at least
aesthetic. In the Gothic the presence of the past is permanent—a past that remains
hidden as a secret and pines to come to the surface, creating terrible consequences for
those who try to hold it back. In fruitless attempts to conceal the secret, excesses and
transgressions, both intradiegetic and extradiegetic, are committed. Some form of forgery,
an imitation of the past, an anachronism in itself, is also crucial, as revealed by the ur-
Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764).
The Gothic has conventionally been understood as a genre born in England with
the publication of Horace Walpole’s self-proclaimed “Gothic” story. I take Otranto as a
starting point for the Western Gothic tradition, which eventually, through Edgar Allan Poe,
the Neogothicists (Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley), French symbolists, etc., would leave a
trace that can be reworked into a map and analyzed through the framework of the Gothic.
This map leaves out what could be deemed instances of “oopart Gothic” or anachronistic
Gothic, works that chronologically precede Walpole’s text. Like most genre fiction, the
Gothic as we understand it appeals to the reader’s previous knowledge and understanding
of its forms, which have been shaped by the Western imagination.
In calling his text a “Gothic Story,” Walpole made a statement of purpose. Gothic
was the adjective used to demean architecture that was not in accord with the
5
neoclassical style favored in his time, a word that used to mean medieval, un-enlightened,
barbaric, and therefore in bad taste.
2
One of the basic movements of the Gothic—its
fundamental act of transgression—is the transformation of models of the barbaric,
unenlightened, and unsightly into something aesthetically beautiful. The transgression
enacted when this boundary is crossed produces a form of jouissance in the reader, an
aesthetic effect.
Purposefully taking that which is considered in bad taste in order to fuel an
aesthetic machine of its own accord is part of the artifice that characterizes the Gothic.
Without artifice, there can be no Gothic. Gothic artifacts pretend to be something else:
accounts from a time gone by, a faraway land, or even a different plane of reality. They
are made to stand in contrast to a verisimilar version of reality with which they produce a
clashing effect that renders them out of place.
3
The need for intertextuality, be it serious,
satirical, or otherwise, is paramount. From the outset, the Gothic cannot be defined as a
closed self, since it requires something to build upon, deform, or abject. This is true for
the genre Walpole founded with his Castle of Otranto and for the architecture and tales of
which it was a pastiche.
2
Fred Botting expounds on this in his book Gothic: The New Critical Idiom (2013):
“Privileging uniformity and proportion over scale and extravagance, eighteenth-century critics classified any
deviations from symmetrical structure as the deformities exhibited by the absence of taste of a barbaric
age” (20).
3
The aesthetic effect of that which is out of place can be perceived clearly in Carlos Fuentes’ Chac Mool
(which wil be analyzed in a later section). The Mayan statue is beautiful in its own context but when the
figure turns into flesh, preserving all its non-mimetic stylization (the small, beady eyes, the long nose, and
limbs), it is a monster amongst men. This is noted in the story as Filberto realizes that “…otra cosa es su
piedra, y haberla arrancado del escondite maya en el que yacía es artificial y cruel. Creo que Chac Mool
nunca lo perdonará. Él sabe de la inminencia del hecho estético.”
6
Two approaches to the perceived excess of artifice and use of “machinery” would
channel Walpole’s legacy in two directions: the Radcliffean and the Lewisite. On one hand,
Ann Radcliffe
4
chose to explicate the workings of her ghost stories, usually going so far as
to completely dismantle the machinery put in place to produce terror. Radcliffe usually
chose domestic conflict as the center of her lengthy narratives, thus consolidating the
Gothic Romance as a genre. Clara Reeve
5
and the Brontë sisters were to follow in this
tradition. On the other hand, Matthew “The Monk” Lewis pioneered the other branch of
English Gothic, immersed in the dark and supernatural, and usually focused on a male
protagonist’s plight in facing demonic forces external or internal to him.
Lewis's work points towards another aspect of the Gothic present in both branches
of the original English Gothic tree: the portrayal of Christianity as irrational and backward
in contrast to English Protestantism, which is portrayed as enlightened and rational.
Radcliffe, for example, often ridiculed for her impossible rationalizations and
anachronisms, uses the Inquisition as the context for her novel The Italian, even though
the institution had been abandoned for over a century in the country. Lewis operates
similarly, albeit for different reasons, by making Ambrosio, the titular monk of his novel, a
lascivious, power-hungry debauchee but also a fascinating orator who can evoke intense
emotion in his congregation. The images of the Inquisition in action, as well as Christian
iconography, eschatology, self-flagellation, and martyrdom become, paradoxically, a
4
Known as the Enchantress or the “Shakespeare” of Romance, Radcliffe was one of the most important and
popular authors of her time. The tradition she pioneered, the Female Gothic, will be further explored in
Chapter 5.
5
Reeve writes The Old English Baron as a response to what she perceived to be an excess of artifice in
Radcliffe herself.
7
fundamental part of the Gothic. This element was carried into Spanish American
territories, which share an intensely complex and bloody history with the Spanish Catholic
Church, the Inquisition, and its methodology, while remaining profoundly Catholic.
6
These two branches, the Radcliffean and the Lewisite, can also be understood in
terms of the space used or traversed by their respective protagonists. Kate Ferguson Ellis
states in The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology that
the two styles are best described by the protagonist’s position in regard to the literal or
metaphorical castle: locked in (Radcliffean) or locked out (Lewisite). Both quests—the
transformation of the cursed castle into a proper home and the Luciferian wanderings of
the one banished from the familial hearth, as well as combinations of the two—prefigure
a vast majority of the Gothic novels that were to follow. These two master plots, ruins
(Modern, Colonial, or pre-colonial), Christian iconography and machinery, an entire closet
full of costumes and effects, plot structures, and plot points, are still only a partial
description of what the Gothic is.
The Gothic enjoyed a revival in the following century on similar terrain (neogothic),
where figures such as the Brontë sisters popularized the style once again. Nonetheless,
the story of the Gothic cannot end with the neogothic, if one considers the way it
percolated into other kinds of texts and spread around the world through colonization and
later globalization. For this reason, in contemporary genre theory the Gothic is described
6
The Honduran author Froylán Turcios’ El Vampiro (1910) is a masterclass in this negotiation. A rewriting of
Lewis’ work, Turcios maintains the basic plot elements from The Monk in order to criticize, from a Catholic
perspective, what he perceives to be the state of disarray into which Catholic institutions and their
representatives have fallen. This novel is, however, an isolated case that will be touched upon in the
following chapter.
8
not as genre but a mode. As Alastair Fowler states in Kinds of Literature, “Normally a
modal term would imply that some of the nonstructural features of a kind are extended to
modify another kind” (107). Most contemporary Gothicists understand the Gothic in such
a way: not as a genre that encompasses a text, but as a set of nonstructural features
derived from this genre that can surface in others.
Some contemporary Gothicists who understand the Gothic as a mode (chiefly Jerald
Hogle and David Punter), whose texts have become classics of contemporary Gothic
studies, have inspired what can only be called Gothic hermeneutics, a crucial part of what
has come to be known as Gothic Studies. According to Spooner, Punter’s Literature of
Terror “created a canon and conferred legitimacy on Gothic as an intellectual endeavor. As
such, it permitted Gothic Studies to exist” (7).
The type of analysis pioneered by Punter borrows from Fowler’s definition of mode
and focuses on pointing out the Gothic elements (nonstructural features)
7
in a text.
8
If the
Gothic is not a group of tropes to be pointed out and listed, then what is it? From the
aforementioned Gothicists’ work, I have derived three gestures that are fundamental for
the Gothic as genre, mode, and hermeneutical tool: the processes of hiding and
uncovering (haunting), forgery, and excess. Hiding implies the presence of a secret,
7
Kelly Hurley’s Gothic Body and Patrick Brantlinger’s Imperial Gothic are two concepts that contribute to
Gothic hermeneutics, since they can also be used to study texts that exceed the initial group of texts defined
as such.
8
A Gothic reading can be applied to a text whether it is part of the traditional Gothic canon or not. An
interesting example of this can be found in David Punter’s analysis of Laura Esquivel’s Como agua para el
chocolate (1989). One would be hard pressed to find a hispanist that agrees with categorizing Esquivel’s
work as Gothic itself, but the analysis of the text as Gothic still stands.
9
withheld in the depths of a castle or manor, or, in the Spanish American case, in a
dilapidated casona or the Andes mountains. Hogle mentions that within the Gothic lie
some secrets from the past (sometimes the recent past) that haunt the characters,
psychologically, physically, or otherwise at the main time of the story. These
hauntings can take many forms, but they frequently assume the features of ghosts,
specters, or monsters […] to manifest unresolved crimes or conflicts that can no
longer be successfully buried from view. (2)
The concealed secret returns from a place distant in time or space (anachronism and ruin).
Attempts to cover it up or to keep it locked away corrupt the very layers that hide it,
creating Gothic artifacts or tropes in themselves. Carlos Fuentes’ doppelgänger novella
Aura (1962) is a case in point: attempts at covering up her own truth only make Consuelo,
the antagonist, more abject in contrast with the titular character, who becomes abjected
herself once the secret that binds them together is revealed.
Aura is also a forgery of Consuelo, a fake copy of her own past. The gesture of
forging, inaugurated as Gothic by Walpole, is crucial to modern instances of the genre that
reach out into the past in order to create innovative imitations of its features. Doubling
thus not only occurs on the diegetic level (Aura as a copy of Consuelo) but also on the
extradiegetic level (Aura as a copy of a Gothic novel, an anachronism in itself.)
Fuentes’ Consuelo and Leopoldo Lugones’ proto science fiction “mad scientists”
from Las fuerzas extrañas (1906) share the element of transgression, with all of them
breaking the limits of what is deemed appropriate or even possible in the pursuit of a
greater goal; breaking with morality and reality. Aura’s Consuelo, in her role as witch,
10
sacrifices her own life and that of the protagonist (the second person “you”) to bring back
the past, while Lugones’ scientists put their sanity and life on the line in the pursuit of
forbidden knowledge. Once again, this feature can be read both on the diegetic and
extradiegetic levels, since the Gothic, as a minor literature in relation to the “respected”
and positively sanctioned realism is, in itself, a transgression. This double transgression,
accompanied by its excessive portrayals of emotion and violence (which are not an
absolute necessity but are often part of the Gothic), completes my description of these
three basic movements.
These three gestures (uncovering of a secret, forgery/anachronism and
transgression) determine the relations among the elements within texts, as well as the
historico-political contexts that house them. The presence of just one of these elements in
a text would not be enough to call for a Gothic analysis—but when more than one is
present on various levels, a Gothic reading can uncover meaning previously sidelined in a
text. This vision of the Gothic allows us to integrate the multifaceted critical apparatus
while providing terminology that is specific enough to remain productive.
The case for the productivity of the Gothic is a crucial one because so many have
argued that the use of the Gothic in Spanish America is an unnecessary exercise, even a
self-colonizing one, when the term fantástico fulfills the same role. Authors like Adolfo
Bioy Casares, in his prologue to a famous 1940 anthology of fantástico literature co-edited
with Silvina Ocampo and Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortázar in his “Notas sobre lo gótico
en el Río de la Plata” (1975) have historically argued against the Gothic, while Maria
Negroni held that the Gothic in Spanish America is identical to fantástico. I argue against
11
such positions: fantástico, according to Tzvetan Todorov, whose theory is the touchstone
for the genre in the continent and beyond, refers to a structural/narrative element that
can freely coexist with the Gothic.
Moreover, the complexities of Spanish American nations render attempts at a
mere transposition of tropes a futile exercise. For this reason, in order to provide a useful
model for the study of the Gothic in this region, I propose an approach based on Deleuze
and Guattari’s assemblage theory. Franois Zourabichvili conveniently summarizes
Deleuze and Guattari’s protean notion of assemblage in his The Vocabulary of Deleuze:
“we can say that we are in the presence of an assemblage any time we can identify and
describe the coupling of an ensemble of material relations and a corresponding regime of
signs” (145). Deleuze and Guattari’s model of double articulation allows us to place, on
one side, the historico-material elements that motivate and fuel the Gothic and, on the
other, the form of expression that corresponds with the Gothic mode. As such, for
example, a creole society that abjects the indigenous Other will try to hide real indigenous
peoples behind a simplistic caricature. This caricature is a specifically teratological one,
which turns the abject into a monster, into a being in communion with other creatures
(animals, mountains) that yearn for vengeance. One can thus clearly see a Gothic
Assemblage at work: the process of hiding and monstering tie together the material and
the symbolic. It is on the symbolic plane where one finds the “tropes” or indexes that
signal the presence of a larger, more complex Gothic Assemblage that transcends the
mere presence of these tropes.
12
This approach makes possible the creation of a genre model that can include the
complexities of Spanish America as a region (the historico-social component pertaining to
all the texts analyzed) as well as the complexities inherent to Gothic studies and genre
studies. In addition, the assemblage model resolves some important questions that derive
from Gothic hermeneutics while, at the same time, allowing for the combination of a
multiplicity of genres and modes without one having to replace the other.
The main question that can be asked of Gothic hermeneutics is: does the Gothic
represent a certain fear or is fear itself instantiated in the Gothic? This is what I will refer
to as the Hurley/Mighall debate. In her The Gothic Body, Hurley states that, following
Terry Eagleton’s psychologization of literary events, the Gothic “has been theorized as an
instrumental genre, reemerging cyclically, at periods of cultural stress, to negotiate the
anxieties that accompany social and epistemological transformations and crises” (3).
However, in his A Geography of Victorian Gothic: Mapping History’s Nightmares, Robert
Mighall argues strongly against what he calls Hurley’s “anxiety model.” He perceives a
logical flaw in Hurley’s argument since, for him, the Gothic is reduced “to demonstrate
what the critic already knows about ‘Victorian culture,’” namely its supposed fears of the
criminal, racial and class Other” (168). Mighall also argues that horror in general and the
Gothic in particular are “not the most reliable guide for indicating supposedly
‘widespread’ anxieties,” given the generic obligation to produce fear (167).
Mighall thus rejects the “anxiety model,” arguing that the discourse does not
reflect anxieties already present in society but instead creates them. Therefore, “Such
practices do not reflect ‘fear’, but power” (208). Mighall’s new model, nonetheless, still
13
considers a historico-social background to be an important element in Gothic analysis but
changes the relationship between the two elements. My own model does precisely this:
the Gothic does not merely reflect social anxieties already present before the creation of
the text but, more than that, creates them. This creation, however, is not wholly without
its own effects, since its referent is usually tethered to some form of reality (modernity,
technology, nature, the indigenous, women, death, etc.). Consequently, the two sides—
which, following Deleuze and Guattari, I will term form of content and form of
expression—do not represent each other: like two oxen joined by a yoke, they are brought
together by the assemblage and walk together, drawing a single line.
As the foregoing discussion, one amongst many, makes clear, the field of Gothic
studies is already multiple, as is Spanish America’s literary tradition. In the face of such
complexity, a stationary genre model seems antiquated and, more importantly,
inadequate. One of the most important features of the genre model I propose is that it
considers multiplicity: using the Gothic mode, being part of a Gothic Assemblage,
effectuating the Gothic Abstract Machine, in short, relating in one way or another to the
Gothic does not mean that a text loses its other generic qualities. As such, Leopoldo
Lugones’ Las fuerzas extrañas does not cease to be fantástico, just as La venganza del
cóndor is not removed from indigenismo. A single text can pass through several generic
assemblages; there is no need for a model in which genres cancel each other out.
Deleuze and Guattari’s model of the assemblage provides a way to understand the
plurality of a tradition characterized by its heterogeneity. This model, most prominent in A
Thousand Plateaus, not only embraces multiplicity but also solves the issue of the Gothic
14
hermeneutics’ anxiety-based hylomorphic model (Gothic as representation of fear,
signified and signifier). Instead of the text as a representation of fear, the text and the
historical context compose the Assemblage in an isomorphic fashion: they produce
meaning together instead of one being a representation of the other. Horacio Quiroga is
not merely articulating or negotiating anxieties intensely felt by the creole class regarding
nature vis-à-vis the project of modernity—he is creating nature as a Gothic object, worthy
of being feared within discourse and thus creating the fear in itself.
The concept of a Gothic Abstract Machine also solves the problem of the Gothic as
both a mode and a hermeneutic tool: they both respond to the same relations between
elements. The abstract machine functions, in a simplified manner, as a diagram of the
assemblage, in which it becomes effectuated: “Abstract machines operate within concrete
assemblages” (Deleuze & Guattari 510). As a result, “each abstract machine can be
considered a plateau of variation” (511). It is in this sense that we can say that the Gothic
is a plateau composed of relations between elements. These relations are what hold the
assemblages together, chiefly hiding and uncovering (haunting), forging, and
transgressing.
These processes describe the relations between the elements in the assemblage.
Leopoldo Lugones’ Las fuerzas extrañas, further explored in Chapter 2, exhibits all of these
processes on multiple levels, transgression being the most important of the three. On the
diegetic level, scientists, religious figures, and “sabios” (knowledgeable people) transgress
the limits of knowledge and faith in a quest for what lies beyond those limits. The
transgression also occurs on the extradiegetic level, if one considers the horrific price
15
these individuals have to pay for their transgressions. The process of abjecting also takes
place on both levels, since what is beyond the limits of knowledge is hidden by nature.
However, in so doing, Lugones is hiding and uncovering much more. In a story like “Un
fenómeno inexplicable,” the abjected nature of the postcolonial criollo project is hidden
under the guise of a fantaciencia story and uncovered through analysis. The model I
propose allows for all of these stories to retain their original generic quality (fantaciencia)
and also participate of a Gothic Assemblage that allows for this meaning to be uncovered.
Nonetheless, a model that permits a text to belong to multiple genres does not
necessarily permit all genres at the same time. The pertinence of regarding a text as a
participant in a particular generic assemblage must, therefore, be taken into
consideration: Is it useful to read this text as Gothic or to point out its Gothic qualities?
This question is particularly relevant in cases in which a text has not been conventionally
read as Gothic, as is the case for many of the ones in this dissertation. Though Rulfo’s
Pedro Páramo is one of the texts labelled and analyzed as Gothic in the corpus I have
assembled, I ask the question: What is Gothic about Pedro Páramo? And, more
importantly, what do we gain by saying so? Chapter 4 will answer these questions,
demonstrating that the Gothic is a crucial fragment of the many that form the fractured
face of Pedro Páramo.
Within the Spanish American literary canon, the elements in a text that signal the
presence of the Gothic are more prominent and distinct in short-form texts than in the
longer forms. There are a number of reasons for this pattern, from the influence of Edgar
Allan Poe to the robust Spanish American short-story tradition strongly associated with
16
non-mimetic genres, which includes the classic Argentines such as Borges and Cortázar, as
well as José Emilio Pacheco and Carlos Fuentes in Mexico.
9
For this reason, I have chosen
to reduce my corpus to short forms, with the longest being Pedro Páramo. This text stands
at the cusp of the short and the long form and in terms of length defines the upper limit of
my investigation.
Furthermore, my interest in the twentieth century as a chronological limit stems
from the exceptionally distinctive instances of the Gothic in the past century. From
Leopoldo Lugones’ Las fuerzas extrañas, published in 1906, to Carlos Fuentes’ Aura (1962)
and Amparo Dávila’s Tiempo Destrozado (1959), this dissertation seeks to portray the
variety of approaches Spanish American writers have taken to the Gothic and the different
ways in which it was effectuated during the twentieth century.
Chapter 1 provides both a historical account of the Gothic in the Spanish American
literary and critical tradition and the theoretical framework on which the dissertation
rests: the Gothic as an Abstract Machine that is effectuated in a series of texts which
constitute a variety of Gothic Assemblages. These assemblages will be presented in the
chapters to follow.
The first of these instances is modernismo, which I argue is the first truly
widespread use of the Gothic, running across most of Spanish America. To illustrate the
effectuation of the Gothic Abstract Machine, I perform close readings of two of
9
A myriad of other examples can be mentioned that include the father of Modernismo, Rubén Darío, as well
as most modernistas overall (José Asunción Silva, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Francisco Gaviria, Clemente
Palma, Froylán Turcios to mention a few), the Uruguayan Felisberto Hernández, the Peruvian Abraham
Valdelomar, Argentines Juana Manuela Gorriti, Silvina Ocampo, Macedonio Fernández and Mexican Elena
Garro are but a handful of the myriad writers who wrote stories outside of realism. Even writers whose body
of work focused on realism tend have at least one non-mimetic short story in their catalogue.
17
modernismo’s most salient short story collections: Leopoldo Lugones’ Las fuerzas extrañas
and Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (1924). These short story
collections present a particular isomorphic relationship, a mirrored movement, between
modernismo’s use of the Gothic and the notion of limits, from technological or ontological
to racial or cultural.
Las fuerzas extrañas is the Southern Cone’s quintessential fantaciencia collection.
Fantaciencia is an early form of science-fiction that rests in the tenuous line drawn
between science and magic during late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In this
book, the Argentine modernista Lugones blends science and theosophy in order to bridge
the gap with invisible forces, the titular Fuerzas extrañas. A Gothic reading of the already
Gothic elements present in the text brings together the zeitgeist of the time, which
involves an ambiguous discourse on modernity and its apparatuses, with the modernista
decadente aesthetic form of expression employing an abundance of Gothic tropes. This
assemblage uncovers the abjected nature of modernity’s promises and the limits of its
knowledge, in parallel with fears of contagion and contamination from “othered” racial
and gender groups.
Quiroga’s Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte shows the other side of the coin: the
same zeitgeist hovers over Quiroga’s short story collection, but he shifts Lugones’ focus to
nature herself and her perils. Classic Gothic landscapes are swapped out for the jungle of
Misiones and el Chaco, though the affects are maintained. Quiroga’s anthology also
addresses modernity but through its confrontation with a Gothified nature. Quiroga’s
Cuentos present nature as a dark center from which the abject emerges, an abjection
18
almost too powerful for man and culture to combat. A story like “El almohadón de
plumas” skirts the traditional vampire by inserting it as a red herring: nature and its
creations (an insect creature bordering on fantastic hyperbole), produce a much more
intense and verisimilar affect.
The third chapter, in turn, explores the representation of Andean subjects
transformed into teratological creatures by the Gothic. Though La venganza del cóndor
contains some of indigenismo’s and García Calderón’s most well-known stories, the
collection is rarely read as a complete anthology. In this case, the assemblage brings
together class and racial derision of the indigenous person, perceived as a hindrance to a
modernizing national project. García Calderón adopts his zeitgeist’s fictive representation
of the Andean person—the discursive “indio”—and takes it a step further, presenting a
teratological vision of the Andes and its inhabitants. In the titular story, as well as others in
the collection, García Calderón presents the Andes as a body that combines landscape,
animals, and humans into a single entity moved by the desire for revenge against the
wicked white man. La venganza del cóndor stands as paradigmatic of this specific
configuration of elements, bearing the marks of the Imperial Gothic that Brantlinger finds
in Joseph Conrad.
Brantlinger’s notion of Imperial Gothic is made up of three components: fear of
invasion, fear of self-regression (going native), and the fear of an ever-shrinking field for
exploration and self-realization through colonization. These elements, outlined in his book
Rule of Darkness, are crucial for the texts belonging to the earlier part of the twentieth
19
century. Since the avatar of modernity still looms large over these authors, its shadow—
coloniality (Mignolo xiii)—is also present in an abjected fashion.
The fourth chapter deals with texts that have been much more closely linked to the
Gothic tradition by the likes of David Punter and Djelal Kadir: Carlos Fuentes’ Aura and
Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo. These two texts, analyzed together, contrast with each other
in their uses of the Gothic. Fuentes, a quintessential author of the Boom with a known
taste for genre literature, wrote a text that was purposefully Gothic, while Rulfo did no
such thing. In this way, the two texts oppose each other, providing a two-faced vision of
Mexican Gothic and its nodular relationship with Death.
Finally, the last chapter explores Amparo Dávila’s Tiempo Destrozado, a text that
has become foundational for female authors exploring genre literature in the twentieth
century. In this chapter, I argue that contrary to her male peers Fuentes and Rulfo, Dávila
wrote (willingly or not) in the key of the Female Gothic. This tradition, of which Anne
Radcliffe is the mother, focuses on women and the plight of gendered and marginalized
bodies as they are locked inside the place that should protect them: the home. If
patriarchy traps women inside the house because of the perilous world outside, what
happens when the dangers are inside the house itself? The unveiling of this terrible secret
perforates patriarchal discourse on the place of gendered bodies in society, something
that Dávila enacts within Tiempo Destrozado. Dávila’s collection focuses on the lived
experience of the marginalized and oppressed, including women and animals, creating an
analogous relation between the affect evoked by the Gothic and the horrors of societal
20
issues like domestic abuse. Her effectuation of the Gothic centers on the capabilities of
bodies to be affected, that is to say, affect as understood by Deleuze and Guattari.
In each chapter, the assemblage model integrates a historico-literary context that
signals a particular fear or abject situation that is also found in literary texts. These two
inform each other; that is, one is not the signifier of the other. This integration, together
with the close reading of each text, illustrates how each assemblage functions and
generates new readings of the Spanish American canon.
This dissertation’s contributions are manifold. In the first place, the theoretical
framework constructed in it gives depth to studies of the Gothic, which, in some cases,
can read as a shallow transposition of tropes. The assemblage model makes possible a
complex approach to the societal and aesthetic issues presented by the Gothic, while also
remaining open to the possibility of other genres interacting with the text. The double
articulation of the assemblage also resolves the Hurley/Mighall debate and brings
together the Gothic as genre, mode, and hermeneutics (reading of Gothic elements in
texts not usually considered as part of the genre or mode).
In addition, there have been very few attempts to study the Gothic in an
articulated fashion throughout the entire continent. The work elaborated (like Gabriel
Eljaiek’s outstanding notion of Gótico Tropical) is usually applicable only to certain
countries or elements within Spanish American Gothic texts. The comparativist approach
discloses just how profound the influence of the Gothic was in the region and the
uniqueness of its fruits.
21
Finally, the question of the binomial modernity/coloniality that runs through most
chapters of the dissertation (though not relevant to Chapter 5) also marks a break with
conventional Gothic analysis, which has only recently accepted postcolonial theory in its
toolbox. This approach makes my project substantially different from other Gothic
analyses that do not take this element into account.
At the end of this dissertation I will evaluate my findings, the adequacy of my
model, the objectives established in this section, and the answers to some of the following
questions: Can the Gothic be a useful analytical tool without locking the text in an oblong
box until the end of time? Can it be part of postcolonial analysis, or should it be banished
to the basement, in cobwebs, in storms, in chains, never to be seen or heard of again? As
time has shown, attempts at shutting the Gothic off from any tradition, whether literary
or critical, are futile. This dissertation opens the window, letting the Gothic rush in.
22
Chapter 1
The Ghost of Gothic’s Past: Literature Review and Theoretical
Framework
First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between
him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through
imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things
imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves
we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such
as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies.
Aristotle. Poetics. Part 1V.
“The Castle of Otranto debe ser considerado antecesor de la pérfida raza de
castillos teutónicos, abandonados a una decrepitud en telarañas, en tormentas, en
cadenas, en mal gusto” (7),
10
stated Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares in the
introduction to his Antología de la literatura Fantástica (1940), one of the first and most
influential genre anthologies in the continent. Edited by Bioy Casares in coordination with
Jorge Luis Borges and Silvina Ocampo, the anthology celebrated the “fantástico,” the local
version of what Tzvetan Todorov calls “fantastique,” while maintaining a derisive attitude
towards other forms of the non-mimetic (non-realist literature). The anthology would go
on to become a crucial text of genre literature in the region, a touchstone for the works
10
“The Castle of Otranto must be considered a predecessor of the perfidious race of Teutonic castles,
abandoned to decrepitude in cobwebs, in thunderstorms, in chains, in bad taste.” Unless otherwise noted,
all translations from the Spanish are my own.
23
sanctioned by three of the fantástico masters. In his prologue, Bioy Casares made it clear
there was no room for the Gothic in the group’s vision for non-mimetic literature.
Why did Bioy Casares doom the Gothic to decrepitude, and why have so many
others followed suit? It is difficult to give an entirely apt explanation but, from the
twentieth century onward, the ‘gothic’, both as a descriptor and as a literary category, has
been shunned by critics and writers who shaped the Spanish-American literary canon.
Even if they employed Gothic paraphernalia and Gothic affect-producing tropes, plots,
characters and multiple markers of the Gothic, texts openly associated with the genre
were repudiated in favor of state-building narratives oriented toward realism. Spanish
American literary tradition has chosen to ignore or abject the term itself for a variety of
reasons that range from the apparent lack of a need for it (unnecessary either because it
does not exist or because it can be replaced by fantástico) to allegations of neo-
colonialism (Casanova Vizcaíno and Ordiz 2).
11
Much like high fantasy, science fiction, and
other non-mimetic literatures or literature of unreality (with the exceptions of realismo
mágico and real maravilloso), the Gothic has been castigated so much that authors
buckled under the negative pressure or went underground.
12
Beyond abstract questions as to why the term Gothic was rejected until very
recently, it is important to note the role of authors of the non-mimetic (particularly those
associated with fantástico) in driving the most memorable nails in its coffin. Bioy Casares’
11
Casanova Vizcaíno and Ordiz support this argument by quoting Glennis Byron “For many, there is a
concern that identifying and reading these texts as Gothic is… a kind of colonial imposition.” (2)
12
This scenario has undergone an important change. Currently, genre fictions are the vanguard of Spanish
American literature: Mariana Enríqiez, Samantha Schweblin or Maria Fernanda Ampuero are but a few of
such authors.
24
statements on the Gothic, relegated to a footnote, were crucial in shaping the rejection of
the Gothic as a genre “in poor taste” (“mal gusto”). The author’s insistence on the claim
that the cuento fantástico, specifically that of Río de La Plata, was not Gothic can be
explained as a claim to prestige he sought to make for the corpus of texts he presented.
13
The texts in the anthology are, however, largely considered either explicitly Gothic by their
respective traditions (Edgar Allan Poe’s and W.W. Jacobs’) or, in the Spanish American
canon, perceived as part of the decadentista or decadente branch of modernismo.
Julio Cortázar espoused a different position to Bioy Casares’ with respect to
genealogy but a similar one with respect to value judgment. In his “Notas sobre lo gótico
en el Río de la Plata,” Cortázar amply concedes the influence of Gothic classics on
Argentine fantástico del Río de la Plata in particular.
14
However, he does to a certain
extent consider European Gothic a rudimentary form upon which the fantástico has built a
perfected product of higher quality. Cortázar states that “todos los niños son góticos por
naturaleza” (“all children are gothic by nature,” 147), a “nature” that is lost to the rule of
social realism: “en alguna parte he contado mi desconcierto y mi decepción frente al
amigo que me devolvía desdeñoso El secreto de Wilhelm Storitz, de Julio Verne, diciendo
lapidariamente : ‘Es demasiado fantástico’” (147).
15
Even if Cortázar appears to lament the
loss of original Gothic innocence, he also derides most European Gothic, which he deems
13
The anthology combined texts from multiple traditions and languages translated into Spanish. Amongst
the authors included were Kafka, Kipling, Lugones, Borges, and Bioy Casares himself.
14
Cortázar deems fantástico to be the main feature of his work and a form which has been successfully
adapted to Argentine territory to a point which it has become distinct (“lo fantástico que nos es propio”,
Cortázar 151).
15
“Somewhere I have related my bewilderment and disappointment when faced with a friend who returned
The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz to me with disdain, saying, in a lapidary manner: ‘It is too fantastical.’”
25
too highly affected. In his view, the Gothic and its machinery belong, as he would say
himself, to the realm of childhood or the childish. He states that the best of the Gothic
produced in his time is expressed through a “rechazo irónico” (“ironic rejection”) of the
props and “gimmicks” employed by Sheridan Le Fanu, Walpole, and the early proponents
of the genre.
Nevertheless, Cortázar does declare his admiration for Count Dracula and cannot
help expressing his esteem for Edgar Allan Poe, whose influence on the writers of the
continent was paramount.
16
Is then Cortázar’s Gothic characterized by innocence or
immaturity? “Viejos y queridos maestros” (“Old, beloved masters”) or authors of fairy
tales for grown-ups? His essay has been read as an ambiguous piece in which he relates
his evaluation of European and Anglo Gothic, as well as his own opinions on an array of its
most important authors. And yet Cortázar is unambiguous about the influence the Gothic
had on the literary tradition in which he places himself. The essay closes with the phrase
“recibimos la influencia gótica sin caer en la ingenuidad de imitarla exteriormente; en
ltima instancia, ése es nuestro mejor homenaje a tantos viejos y queridos maestros”
(151).
17
This final quote is possibly the most pertinent of Cortázar’s analysis, as he
recognizes the influence the Gothic has had on his tradition but reaffirms the
distinctiveness of that tradition in relation to his predecessors. This is especially applicable
16
Nonetheless, Cortázar also disparages H.P. Lovecraft, whose writing he considers wildly inferior to Poe’s
and more akin to Anne Radcliffe’s.
17
“We receive the Gothic influence without naively imitating its exterior traits; ultimately that is our best
tribute to so many old and dear masters.”
26
to the modernistas, who pay homage to their old, beloved masters not by imitating them
but by furthering their legacies.
Bioy Casares and Cortázar express the twentieth-century position of local critics
concerning the Gothic. However, in recent years, this paradigm has undergone a dramatic
change. Literatures of unreality, fantasy, Gothic, and the non-mimetic are becoming
increasingly popular in the region, as are generic terms to describe them. This makes the
question of the Gothic all the more pressing since, as recent studies reveal and this
dissertation seeks to further reiterate, the Gothic is anything but new to the region.
Juan Pablo Dabove’s article “La cosa maldita: Leopoldo Lugones y el Gótico
Imperial” drives this point home. Dabove’s 2009 article employs the term developed by
Patrick Brantlinger in Rule of Darkness, “Imperial Gothic,” which describes a combination
of adventure and gothic genres. Summarizing Brantlinger’s term and applying it to
Leopoldo Lugones’ “Un fenómeno inexplicable” and “Yzur,” Dabove writes: “el gótico
imperial comprende tres temas principales: la regresión individual (going native), la
invasión de la civilización por las fuerzas de la barbarie, y el demonismo y la disminución
de las oportunidades para la aventura y el heroísmo en el mundo moderno” (776).
18
Dabove’s use of the Gothic demonstrates the productivity of such terms when applied to
Spanish American literature. Moreover, the fears abjected in the Imperial Gothic model
are almost identical to those espoused by criollo authors who employ the Gothic Mode.
The second element—the invasion of civilization by barbarism—has been until very
18
“Imperial Gothic is comprised of three main themes: individual regression (going native), the invasion of
civilization by the forces of barbarism and demonism and the reduction of opportunities for adventure and
heroism in the modern world.”
27
recently the crux of most of Spanish America’s literary canon, a concern most clearly
visible in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writing. The binomial
civilization/barbarism or “civilización y barbarie” as posited by Domingo Faustino
Sarmiento’s Facundo towers above the other two topics presented by Brantlinger as the
fundamental concern of early Gothic authors in the continent. The category, however, can
no longer be labeled ‘imperial’ in the same way when used by criollos, who are both
colonized and colonizers. Notwithstanding, Dabove’s insight shows that the three main
fears listed by Brantlinger are crucial effectuations of the Gothic when it comes into
contact with colonial or postcolonial contexts.
Fantástico: Structure and Plot
The most recent and important effort to revindicate the use of the Gothic as a
term to analyze the Spanish/Latin American canon is Inés Ordiz’s and Sandra Casanova
Vizcaíno’s
19
anthology Latin American Gothic in Literature and Culture, published in 2018
by Routledge. The anthology contains a variety of essays that deal with multiple visions
and definitions of the Gothic. The most informative part of the anthology with respect to
the Gothic and the state of the art in Latin America is, therefore, the prologue. The
prologue presents a multitude of potential reasons why the term has been either rejected
or obscured. One of these is the argument for the use of fantástico in its stead. Fantástico
19
The two anthologists have continued to write about the Gothic separately. In 2021 Casanova Vizcaíno
published El Gótico Transmigrado: Narrativa puertorriqueña de horror, terror y misterio en el siglo XXI.
28
is understood in its Todorovian
20
sense, a structuralist approach that has been
predominant in Spanish American criticism, instead of the anglophone tradition’s
‘Fantasy.’
21
Fantástico has been the primordial mode of understanding non-mimetic texts in
the Hispanophone sphere and the most theorized subject of non-mimetic literary
criticism, rivaled only by realismo mágico. Multiple Spanish American and Spanish literary
critics have made attempts to expound upon Todorov’s model, making his theory the
touchstone of this side of the theoretical aisle. Among them, the Argentine
22
critics are
the most prominent in number and depth. The structuralist proposals of Susana Reisz, Ana
María Barrenechea, and Rosalba Campra all observe the limits established in Todorov’s
theory and its rigorous parameters, which do not seem entirely adequate descriptors for
the texts of the region. This idea is explored further in the Spanish critic David Roas’
Teorías de lo Fantástico, in which he points out a major caveat to Todorov’s theory: not
only do some of the texts traditionally understood to be “fantástico” not line up with his
20
In his Introduction à la littérature fantastique, Tzvetan Todorov presents one of the first attempts not at
dealing with the genre (Callois, Castex, and Vax are the three ever-present precursors) but theorizing about it
in a systematic, structuralist fashion. The Todorovian structure is deceptively straightforward: Todorov
presents an exceptionally concise plot structure that, in its multitude of requirements, can exclude some of
the most prominent narrations commonly understood as fantastique or fantástico. This depends on the
importance given to these details by the critic examining a certain corpus from Todorov’s theoretical
perspective. Some of these are decisively more prominent and most exegetes agree are definitively
constitutive of Todorov’s categorization: 1) a break in the status quo, usually represented through realistic
modeling that happens due to magic or coincidence. 2) Both protagonist and reader must remain indecisive
(hesitate) between the two solutions for a text to be considered strictly fantastique. 3) The breaking point and
its explications can be of any nature, terrifying or otherwise, grotesque or not, gothic, or not.
21
A short list of examples ranging from oldest to newest: Bioy Casares, Ana María Barrenechea, Susana
Reisz, Elton Honores, Audrey Louyer, Omar Nieto and María Negroni.
22
Given the country’s literary history, this should come as no surprise. Argentina’s relationship with non-
mimetic genres and stylings of European origin has a profound history studded with some of the most
important names in the Spanish American canon (Borges and Cortázar).
29
criteria, but they also seem to be some of the most important texts of this tradition
(Dracula is one such case).
23
When evaluating the place of fantástico in the continent’s literary canon and its
resilience within it, it is also important to directly address what Pablo Brescia terms
“literary politics.” I have previously discussed this issue in examining Bioy Casares’ and
Cortázar’s position on the term “Gothic” as a demeaning descriptor for what they
considered a superior art form, or, as Brescia quoting Borges would phrase it, “a superior
magic.” Taking this phrase as a title for his article “A Superior Magic: Literary Politics and
the Rise of the Fantastic in Latin American Fiction,” Brescia argues that both Jorge Luis
Borges and Juan José Arreola were crucial in the positioning of the fantastic as not only a
legitimate form of non-mimetic writing but, in addition, one that is particular to the
region. Brescia argues that “Borges and Arreola made sure the ‘superior magic’ of the
unexpected would not go unnoticed in Latin American literature, thereby becoming the
main agents in the legitimation of the literary fantastic” (11-12).
Viewing from a critical and temporal distance the historical-political legitimacy that
authors of the time sought to establish by championing fantástico makes the task of
parsing fantástico and Gothic much easier: One describes a type of plot structure, the
other a type of modeling that may adopt the same narrative structure or a number of
different ones. The Gothic cannot function as a placeholder for fantástico or vice-versa.
23
Dracula, as pointed out by Roas in the prologue to his theoretical anthology, is the classic blind spot of the
structure: Dracula is paradigmatic for the ‘fantastic’ understood as dark fantasy, but there is no hesitation in
either the characters or the reader that the vampire is real within the diegesis. The fantastic does not have to
be Gothic and the Gothic does not need the structure of the fantastic to exist.
30
Conceding that fantástico can function outside of the Todorovian structure, it still requires
a break with a constructed verisimilitude, something that is not necessary for the Gothic.
Even if much of the classical corpus that is deemed Gothic is not strictly fantástico
or fantástico in any way, it is undeniable that this type of modeling and plot structure
often converge. Negroni, in her Galería fantástica, argues that fantástico is an evolution or
a variation of the Gothic. She opens her book with the statement “Leo la literature
fantástica de América Latina como una deriva de la literature gótica” (9). The text,
however, has been criticized at length for an apparently haphazard corpus that reflects
poorly on the initial hypothesis. One of the merits of Negroni’s text is that it points
towards the overlap between fantástico and Gothic in the Spanish American literary
tradition. Though the former has come to dominate the latter, Negroni’s work shows that
fantástico cannot stand in for the gaps that only the Gothic can describe. I maintain that
fantástico does not have to be at odds with the Gothic, since they describe different parts
of the textual fabric. The structure of fantástico lends itself to representing the process of
abjection and its unearthing in a dramatic fashion, whereas usually the latter comes as the
final beat of the story.
24
This is another fundamental argument of the project. The Gothic
covers a space that cannot be described fully by any other term, be it fantasy, fantástico,
horror, or weird fiction.
A plot structure and a modeling machine that coincide in the act of obscuring can
become convenient tools in the process of abjecting the Other in social discourse. Starting
24
The Tell-Tale Heart’s ending is paradigmatic of this: “Villains!” I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the
deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
31
with Otranto’s claim to Italian and medieval origins, the Gothic has served to reify the
condition of Otherness upon places and individuals and thus it is unsurprising the colonies
would soon take the place of the abjected Other. Also unsurprising is that criollo elites,
developing the Gothic in postcolonial states, would eventually seek to step outside of this
position by relegating the indigenous person to it. Before exploring this side of Spanish
American Gothic, I will delineate what I consider to be wider statements about it, starting
with the issue of genre.
Gothic, Neogothic, and Contemporary Genre Theory
What is Gothic? Secret, Forgery, Excess, and Anachronism
The Gothic as genre and mode sits astride a fascinating generic paradox. On one
hand, it has what Jerrold Hogle has deemed “relatively constant features” (2) while, at the
same time, remaining a “highly unstable” genre (1). Giving a straightforward response to
the apparently simple question of “What is Gothic?” has, therefore, proven to be a
daunting task; the object at hand is much more elusive than one may think at first glance.
Vampires, apparitions, the undead, and an endless cohort of monsters and villains line up
in lists that, despite their efforts to be complete and extensive, always leave something
out.
The question of defining the genre has occupied contemporary Gothicists who
have sought to go beyond listing generic tropes to capture the essence of the Gothic.
32
Understood initially as a genre, the Gothic is now perceived as a mode
25
that has
percolated into a vast number of literary traditions, including Spanish America’s. Over the
last decades, Jerrold Hogle, Glennis Byron, Fred Botting, and David Punter have positioned
themselves as some of the most prominent and innovative voices in the field, a field which
only in recent years has opened up to the idea of the Gothic in other, distant latitudes.
Skirting conventional, list-like definitions of the Gothic genre, most contemporary critics
understand that the ghosts and witches of the Gothic are but elements in the process of
hiding something that is abjected: a process of abjection directed usually at a foreign
Other (Hogle 2-3).
25
Contemporary genre theory has moved beyond attempts at “listing” armoires for genre literature and away
from understanding Gothic as a genre to favor the theory of literary modes, suggested in Aristotle’s poetics
and pioneered in modern literary criticism by Northrop Frye. As José Amícola indicates in La Batalla de los
géneros: Novela Gótica vs Novela de Educación, the positive reassessment of non-mimetic literature (ushered
in by Todorov) coincides with Frye’s attempts at reassessing the value of romance through his own sets of
signs.
Following Frye’s intuition, Alastair Fowler provides the basis for this theoretical approximation in
Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to a Theory of Genres and Modes, where he posits that narrative “kinds”
present a variety of generically organized features that differ in importance from one “kind” to another:
representational aspect, external structure, metric structure, size, scale, stock characters, among others. A
“mode,” in Fowler’s theory, stems from a “kind” and can acquire a life of its own attaching itself to other
“kinds.” In Fowler’s words, “Normally a modal term would imply that some of the nonstructural features of a
kind are extended to modify another kind” (107) (my emphasis). The presence of a mode in a different kind
not associated with it historically can be detected through a series of “signals” that indicate its presence:
As we have seen, a mode announces itself by distinct signals, even if these are abbreviated,
unobtrusive, or below the threshold of modern attention. The signals may be of a wide variety: a
characteristic motif, perhaps; a formula; a rhetorical proportion or quality. (107)
In Fowler’s theoretical paradigm, “kind” determines form (e.g., novel) and mode indicates how said
kind manifests (e.g. comic novel). For the Gothic, however, what for Fowler was once a kind (the Gothic
romance) emanates a mode (Gothic) that can be decoupled from its original kind (109).
Fowler’s arguments are compelling and productive for our purposes but are not entirely adequate.
The idea of mode as presented, particularly in its hierarchical relationship to “kind” which, for Fowler, always
precedes it, bears a tinge of arboreal teleology that does not converse with my notion of the Gothic as an
abstract machine that can dictate over an endless number of assemblages. Nonetheless, I will still employ the
terms mode and modeling over generic and genre, due not only to the critical consensus on its usage among
contemporary scholars of the Gothic but because of the associations of the latter with that which is closed or
finished (as in the Gothic genre which contains a defined set of attributes); that which cannot be anything but
identical to itself. As I discuss later on, the Gothic does not need to be at odds with other types of modeling,
kinds, plots, or affects. This open perspective on genre/mode allows for the inclusion of other theoretical
elements.
33
At its core, then, the Gothic is a type of modelling that relies on the occultation
and eventual disclosure of a terrible secret (that which has been abjected). As such, it
does not depend on any other category (fantástico, fantasy, etc.) but often overlaps with
one or more of them. The Gothic abjects a supposed ‘truth’ that will eventually come to
light within the diegesis: a ghost rattling its chains, Frankenstein’s monster coming after
his creator, the indigenous man unleashing his (perceived/feared) rage that has festered
over centuries of oppression under the guise of a condor,
26
the destructive side of mother
nature hidden under its beauty—these are all examples of such a process. The act of
revealing the horrifying truth, which usually implies some form of violence or horrendous
transgression, is delayed or suggested through the construction of the plot. The hidden
truth poisons everything around it, corrupting the artifacts that at the same time conceal
it; the rotten apple of incest produces the eponymous fall in “The Fall of the House of
Usher” and captivity drives Bertha Mason
27
to madness, which leads to part of the
Rochester manor burning down. The dynamic that develops from the attempt to restrain
that which is considered abject opens the door for its release: that is, opens the door to
excess. The Gothic is excessive in its attempt to contain and in its portrayal of the collapse
of such containment. The metaphor at the base of The Picture of Dorian Grey is a perfect
example: the means (painting) of containing that which is abjected (aging) is corrupted by
what it attempts to contain.
26
The plot of Ventura García Calderón’s “La venganza del cóndor.”
27
The “madwoman in the attic” from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
34
The “truth” derived from the final revelation, however, yields value insofar as its
artificial nature is recognized; it is truth only in the diegesis. The Gothic is artificial,
baroque, constructed, a hidden copy of itself. Even when ghosts manifest and revelations
occur, a question remains. Why was Madelaine Usher buried and what is the real
relationship between the two siblings? In the same way, Bertha Mason’s truth is never
revealed after she commits suicide; the act is taken as a happy coincidence for Rochester
to marry Jane Eyre. The reasons for her going mad, where she is from (Jamaica), and who
she was before arriving at Rochester Manor are never addressed.
28
The final truth the
Gothic reveals lies in what it chooses to abject and what it chooses to assimilate. It is,
then, a double-edged sword.
The mechanism of revealing a hidden secret truth is what distinguishes the Gothic
from other types of depictions in which there is no secrecy or artificiality. The Gothic
stands in opposition to the raw and naturalistic; it is the constructed, the affected. Thus,
building on what has been previously established, the process of hiding the secret
(abjection) can be said to occur through elaborate stylization that deceive the reader
about where the terrible or violent secret may lie and its actual nature. The Gothic isn’t
the secret behind the layers under which the secret is wrapped—it is the layers
themselves.
Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre: these well-known instances of the Gothic
are, nonetheless, not the “original” sources of the genre. Far from it, these famous
28
Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea attempts to address the elements pertaining to Bertha Mason’s life that
Brönte keeps in the dark.
35
“Gothics” are, in actuality, instances of the Neogothic, a second moment in relation to
what Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto started. Walpole’s Otranto is, despite being the first
instance of an object self-described as Gothic, itself a forgery. It was published under the
guise of a found Italian medieval manuscript, not as the Gothic Novel it was later
understood to be. Considering that the first self-acknowledged Gothic text was specifically
intended to be a convincing pastiche of medieval style, plots, and images, forgery is a
primordial element in the constitution of the Gothic (Hogle 15). This reveals that there is
no such thing as a true ‘authentic’ or ‘original’ Gothic other than the medieval Gothic from
which Walpole took his setting and inspiration. This conception thus breaks with the
arboreal model so often used in generic analysis.
29
Departing from the arboreal model accords with the very aesthetics of the Gothic
genre, which from the beginning circled back to the idea of breaking with perfect,
hermetic categories and teleology. In short, as Fred Botting writes, “the Gothic is a writing
of excess” (1). Walpole himself was taking a step backwards when attempting a pastiche
of a Medieval romance, a form of fiction ridiculed by his peers: “Surely if comedy may be
toute sérieuse, tragedy may now and then, soberly, be indulged in a smile. Who shall
proscribe it? Shall the critic, who, in self-defense, declares, that no kind ought to be
excluded from comedy, give laws to Shakespeare?” (Walpole 81).
As Rosemary Jackson states in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, the Gothic, in
its delayed or covert attempt at representing that which is unspeakable, rejects the idea
29
This is a fundamental point, since many of the authors that I consider to have been influenced by the
Gothic were accused, in efforts to discredit their work, of being derivative.
36
of the perfect body and of wholeness put forth by Renaissance aesthetics and classical
painting (96). The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin described such aesthetics in the following
terms:
The Renaissance saw the body in quite a different light than the Middle Ages, in a
different aspect of its life, and a different relation to the exterior nonbodily world.
As conceived by these canons, the body was first of all a strictly completed,
finished product. Furthermore, it was isolated, alone, fenced off from all other
bodies. All signs of its unfinished character, of its growth and proliferation, were
eliminated, its protuberances and offshoots. […] The accent was placed on the
completed, self-sufficient individuality of the given body. Corporal acts were
shown only when the borderlines dividing the body from the outside world were
sharply defined. The inner processes of absorbing and ejecting were not revealed.
[…] It is quite obvious that from the point of view of these canons the body of
grotesque realism was hideous and formless. (29)
From the point of view of the Renaissance body, that which is realistically or naturally
grotesque (related to the low, i.e., animality) is as monstrous as that which is deformed to
resemble it (i.e., faces or masks that are animalistic or Medieval art itself). Enlightenment
and neoclassicism took up the idea of the finished, perfect Body as ideal, further
restricting what was admissible in art and literature. Thus, Walpole’s choice in itself can be
considered a Gothic gesture, the production of an anachronistic forgery.
By adopting an anachronistic aesthetics, the Gothic provides a “shadow” to the
notions of order and teleological progress on the aesthetic, moral, or technological level.
37
Summing up the point, Botting states that even in the twentieth century the Gothic
continues to be a shadow to “the progress of modernity with counter-narratives
displaying the underside of enlightenment and humanist values” (1). The following
chapters demonstrate that this shadow can present itself as a challenge to the ideas it is
shadowing or as an enemy Other whose defeat will further cement the status quo.
Affects and effects: Horror, terror, and the abject
The shadows that the Gothic indicates or creates through the aforementioned
three gestures (haunting, forging and transgressing) are inevitably linked to the negative
affects
30
with which the genre is most often associated. This is another issue within the
field of Gothic studies: it is difficult to demonstrate that horror can be qualified in and for
itself, since it is linked to a hermeneutic intention. To explain horror as it pertains to the
Gothic, Hogle returns to the binomial Radcliffe/Lewis,
31
pointing towards them as
representatives of terror and horror, respectively, and defining each succinctly:
The first of these holds characters and readers mostly in anxious suspense about
threats to life, safety, and sanity kept largely out of sight or in shadows or
suggestions from a hidden past, while the latter confronts the principal characters
with the gross violence of physical or psychological dissolution, explicitly shattering
30
Affects are not necessarily always emotions. They represent the ways in which a body can be affected.
These are a body’s affects. Deleuze and Guattari explain that “Affect is the active discharge of emotion, the
counterattack, whereas feeling is an always displaced, retarded, resting emotion” (400). A negative affect
speaks of a body affected negatively (reducing its power), in this case, through the act of reading.
31
The Radcliffean and the Lewisite are often recognized as subsets of the genre; the first espousing terror,
the second horror. This division also roughly coincides with the division between “female” and “male”
Gothic that will become crucial in Chapter 5.
38
the assumed norms (including the repressions) of everyday life with wildly
shocking, and even revolting, consequences. (3)
In Hogle’s characterization, terror and horror are features of the Gothic
understood as genre. In the less restricted mode, however, these elements may or may
not be present directly, either as tropes or as plot structures.
32
Horror or terror may not
be explicitly present, but they must be somewhere else. Jacob’s “The Monkey’s Paw”
leaves the horrifying nature of the mother’s third wish—for her mauled son to return from
the grave in any form—to the reader and never ventures a description. The narrator of
Horacio Quiroga’s “El almohadón de plumas” describes barely noticeable traces of blood
before revealing the monstrous bedbug, the actual vampire of the story. The act of
bloodsucking is itself never depicted. Similarly, the death of the cruel Spanish captain in
Ventura García Calderón’s “La venganza del cóndor”, is executed by the wing of a condor
who pushes the evildoer into the jagged peaks of a hostile Andean landscape, previously
described in the story. Violence is precisely what the Gothic displaces: violence can and
will occur and might already be occurring, but it is totally or partially hidden until it is
ushered out of its abjected hiding place. This is true for the original Gothic pastiche, The
Castle of Otranto, as well as its more recent, contemporary expressions. One of the most
memorable scenes belonging to the tradition—the blood transfusion of Lucy in Dracula—
stands in place of direct depictions of sex or violence. This displacement is a fundamental
32
In simpler terms, the text may or may not have the explicit intention to startle or frighten a hypothetic
reader.
39
gesture for the genre: the displacement or suggestion of violence inflicted or violence to
come.
Horror and/or terror is in this way also displaced, morphing into the psychological
and the historical. The two can be read, then, as coupled with anxieties about subjects that
have been historically othered encroaching upon modernity. Botting outlines this process as
follows:
Many of the anxieties articulated in Gothic terms in the nineteenth century
reappear in the twentieth century. Their appearance, however, is more diverse, a
diffusion of Gothic traces among a multiplicity of different genres and media.
Science fiction, the adventure novel, modernist literature, romantic fiction and
popular horror writing often resonate with Gothic motifs that have been
transformed and displaced by different cultural anxieties. Terror and horror are
diversely located in alienating bureaucratic and technological reality, in psychiatric
hospitals and criminal subcultures, in scientific, future and intergalactic worlds, in
fantasy and the occult. (9)
Another particularity of the Gothic that sets it apart from other genres or modes
that employ horror and/or terror is the attraction the horrifying element generates. As
Botting puts it “The emotions most associated with Gothic fiction are similarly ambivalent:
objects of terror and horror not only provoke repugnance, disgust and recoil, but also
engage readers’ interest, fascinating and attracting them.” (6)
The process of representing the horrifying and terrifying yields monsters and
monstrous bodies—Gothic bodies, as Kelly Hurley has called them. Hurley opens her book
40
by affirming “The topic of this book is the ruination of the human subject” (3), a statement
that suggests the expansive idea of ruins that participates in the Gothic: ruined
architecture as a source of inspiration, ruins of a distant past, ruined, deformed bodies,
the perceived ruin of a bloodline, or even the corrosion of one’s very identity. To explore
the notion of ruins, however, I must return to a term I have glossed over: the abject.
Recent scholarship on the Gothic includes the concept of the abject as posited by
Julia Kristeva as a central element of its theorization. What is the nature of that which is
abjected? In essence, the abject is abjected because it is horrifying, because it is a
perceived threat. The abject thus festers in its venom until it is forced out, exerting the
violence it has been forced to withhold. Horror and terror are thus not at odds with the
Gothic—on the contrary, the Gothic is a machine that requires horror or terror not as
immediate effects but as parts of abjection. This is how the gesture of “hiding” or covering
up occurs within the Gothic. (Hogle 2-7).
For Kristeva, the ultimate source of abjection is the corpse: “The corpse (or
cadaver: cadere, to fall), that which has irremediably come a cropper, is cesspool, and
death; it upsets even more violently the one who confronts it as fragile and fallacious
chance” (3). The corpse challenges the constitution of the “I” itself, the closed off, the
perfect body; consequently, “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes
abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders,
positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (4).
41
Nonetheless, Kristeva’s abject is not “objective or objectal”; on the contrary, “We
may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity” (9). She goes even further, stating
that
It is simply a frontier, a repulsive gift that the Other, having become alter ego,
drops so that "I" does not disappear in it but finds, in that sublime alienation, a
forfeited existence. Hence a jouissance in which the subject is swallowed up but in
which the Other, in return, keeps the subject from foundering by making it
repugnant. (9)
The constitution of the “I” requires this abjection, since “The more or less beautiful image
in which I behold or recognize myself rests upon an abjection that sunders it as soon as
repression, the constant watchman, is relaxed” (13).
The abject cannot be objective or objectal as these are the qualities of ideas, not
affects. The abject is a “composite of judgment and affect” (10) that takes form and comes
into being as an obscene supplement. The distinct quality of the abject is how repugnance
maintains the “barrier” of abjection between the subject and the Other. This barrier must
be held up (discursively or otherwise) to keep the subject from “foundering” into the
Other through contact. It is the constant threat of the abject coming to the forefront,
returning to face the “I”—the revenge of the Condor, the coming to life of a Chac Mool, or
the beating of the tell-tale heart—that ties it to the Gothic.
In this vein, Hogle, who understands the “abject” as that which is “cast-off,”
explains that abjection “…encourages middle-class people in the west […] to deal with the
tangled contradictions in their own existence by throwing them off onto ghostly or
42
monstrous counterparts that then seem ‘uncanny.’” Thus, the Gothic allows “…both the
pursuit of sanctioned ‘identities’ and a simultaneously fearful and attractive confrontation
with the ‘thrown off’ anomalies that are actually basic to the construction of a western
middle-class self” (7-8). Hogle here points to an interpretation that has been widely
accepted by Gothicists: that the Gothic expresses not individual psychological phenomena
but more widespread, particular societal fears.
On this score, Hurley’s The Gothic Body signaled a major turning point in Gothic
literary criticism. For Hurley, the Gothic serves as a true symptom of societal fears.
Nonetheless, to Robert Mighall, Hurley’s text is a perfect example of what he derisively
called the “anxiety model” in his book A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping
History’s Nightmares. Mighall posits that Hurley’s approach in The Gothic Body bespeaks a
wider problem with literary analysis and its potential as a mirror of such societal fears.
Hurley employs the metaphor of the Gothic Body to depict the fear of Othered (Gothic)
bodies and the potential of the idyllic (white, male, able-bodied) body to be corrupted,
arguing that the Gothic can be read in parallel to the use of scientific discourse to similar
ends. Mighall sounds a warning of Hurley’s method, not completely dismissing but instead
reframing her arguments. According to Mighall, scientific discourse and Gothic discourse
did not run parallel but were often at odds, as the first sought to replace the superstitions
often intertwined with the second (204). Because of this, their affinities are not factual but
mostly rhetorical and a reflection of a shared societal class: it is “…not that they feared the
same things but belonged to the same class community” (181). The Gothic, then, can be
43
understood not as a reflection of fear but rather as an instantiation of the power of a
specific class (208).
33
Beyond Genre and Mode: The Gothic as Plateau
Is the Gothic merely one of many uses of one social class’ power? Can it say nothing
about societal fears? Is it tied down to specific texts that use the mode explicitly? To resolve
these questions, I turn to Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage model. Instead of considering
the Gothic a pure reflection of certain societal fears—a vision that would constitute a
repetition of the form/content hylomorphic model and the anxiety model—I propose the
isomorphic model of the assemblage.
Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the assemblage is neither clear nor succinct.
Nonetheless, we can state that the coupling involved in it, between form of content and
form of expression
34
, entails a relationship not between signified and signifier but between
two distinct elements that can exist independently of each other. As Deleuze and Guattari
themselves illustrate:
between them, between content and expression, there is neither a correspondence
nor a cause-effect relation nor a signified-signifier relation: there is a real distinction,
reciprocal presupposition, and only isomorphy. (503)
Assemblages, then, combine these two elements, form of content and form of
expression, into something that can give birth to a particular situation. Ian Buchannan sums
33
The intellectual debate between Mighall and Hurley is important with respect to the Gothic in general and
to refining my conception of abjection, particularly concerning La venganza del cóndor and the convergence
of Gothic and Indigenismo.
34
Described by Zourabichvili in his Dictionary as “the coupling of an ensemble of material relations and a
corresponding regime of signs” (145).
44
it up in his Assemblage Theory: “For Deleuze and Guattari the critical analytic question is
always: Given a specific situation what kind of assemblage would be required to produce
it?” (22). One of the questions I seek to explore is: What do the assemblages of Spanish
American Gothic look like?
Deleuze and Guattari explain the two elements that constitute assemblages in their
A Thousand Plateaus. They state that these two elements are on one hand a “machinic
assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions; an intermingling of bodies reacting to one
another [form of content]; on the other hand it is a collective assemblage of enunciation,
of acts and statements, of incorporeal transitions attributed to bodies [form of expression]”
(88). As I have already noted, these two elements do not have a linguistic signified/signifier
hylomorphic relationship but an isomorphic one. They are independent of each other, put
together by the assemblage itself, since “even to fit the forms together requires a specific,
variable assemblage” (66). This is the exercise I am performing by putting together the form
of content and form of expression of a variety of distinct Gothic Assemblages.
The assemblages that express the Gothic all pertain to a certain abstract machine
that acts as their diagram. As Deleuze and Guattari posit, “The abstract machine is like the
diagram of an assemblage. It draws lines of continuous variation, while the concrete
assemblage treats variables and organized their highly diverse relations as a function of
those lines” (100). The aforementioned diagram sets out the relations I have already
named: secret, forgery, and excess are the pillars of the Gothic Abstract Machine. Thus, the
45
abstract machine of the Gothic, its essence or its diagram, is effectuated in each assemblage
since “abstract machines operate within concrete assemblages” (510).
35
As with most Deleuzian concepts, the abstract machine is elusive and variable. Even
within Deleuze and Guattari’s own work it does not always appear under that name.
Explaining the workings of the Kafka machine, Deleuze furnishes a surprisingly clear
description of the workings of a “desiring machine,” a concept he would later refer to as
“assemblage”:
A Kafka-machine is thus constituted by contents and expressions that have been
formalized to diverse degrees by unformed materials that enter it and leave by
passing through all possible states. To enter or leave the machine, to be in the
machine, to walk around it, to approach it—these are all still components of the
machine itself: these are states of desire, free of all interpretation. The line of escape
is part of the machine. (7)
Gothic Assemblages work in a very similar way. They are constituted by “contents and
expressions” that have been “formalized” by those very “unformed materials” that “enter
into it and leave by passing through all possible states.” The formalization of unformed
materials is particularly clear when referring to a genre that has become highly
conventionalized. The products of the Gothic (that which leaves “passing through all
possible states”) are, then, also constitutive of the assemblage itself (the line of flight is also
a part of the desiring-machine/assemblage).
35
This vision is indebted to genre maps, particularly those drawn by the structuralist critics of fantástico and
Franco Moretti’s Distant Reading. I have not, nevertheless, provided a diagram, since a two-dimensional
model would inevitably depend upon unnecessary teleology and hierarchy. It would be more adequate to
envision Gothic Assemblages as three-dimensional composites.
46
The Gothic Abstract Machine is the “diagram” or “map” of rhizomatic compounds,
Gothic Assemblages, which not only includes but is constituted in part by the “clap-trap” of
Gothic machine-ry. As with the Kafka-machine, things that encounter or surround the
Gothic run the risk of being formalized by it. Like its objects, the Gothic is a contagious abject
body: once a text receives this label, once it is touched by its corrupt hand, the miasma
cannot be erased. All these elements are constitutive of the Gothic, as are the Victorian
Gothic and the Spanish American Gothic (two assemblages). As such, the list of “regional”
Gothic assemblages that participate in The Gothic is potentially infinite.
The movements of abjection and breakthrough of the abjected (haunting), forging
and transgressing, in addition to the turning of the beautiful into the abjected and the
abjected into the beautiful, constitute the essence of Gothic Assemblages, living beings that
produce and reproduce the genre’s well-known trappings. As time goes on and these
trappings are explored, exploited, and exhausted, they begin to drift away from the Gothic
and, thus, the trappings produced by its assemblages and machines (Gothic machine-ry) can
be re-interpreted and recycled. In this way, household items can be touched by the
tentacles of the Assemblage and deformed to serve its purposes: a cooking stove can
become a torture device and a woman can become an automobile, all while Rodolfo
Hinostroza’s vampires despair over packets of Aji-No-Moto, the only condiment that makes
human food edible for their species in the ridiculous “Las memorias de Drácula,” and
Griselda Gambaro’s “Nosferatu” crawls through Buenos Aires, not as a hunter but as prey,
terrified of gangs and criminals that may be hiding at every turn, ready to beat him to death.
These examples illustrate the rhizomatic nature of the assemblage: the “flat” nature or
47
“plane” in which The Gothic Abstract Machine allows for the interplay and change of tone
of the Gothic Machine-ry created by the European Gothic Assemblage. The
deterritorialization and re-creation of Gothic roots into new assemblages that produce new
and distinct roots extend the whole Body of the Gothic, which functions, as Deleuze
describes in A Thousand Plateaus, like a “constellation” or a series of interacting atoms.
Even if, from a historical standpoint, an origin suggesting a teleology could be found in
Walpole’s Otranto, this supposed “original” is itself a copy that grew “aparallel” to the
German and French traditions that would later inform Spanish American Gothic.
Shaping the horrific or dangerous into the beautiful or unassuming and vice-versa—
processes that challenge Enlightenment ideals of a complete, perfect, uncorrupted body—
while at the same time corrupting that which seems untouchable plays an intense part in
Gothic modeling. This is because it immediately raises a question: Why has this object or
space lost its associations? What is the secret behind the dislocation of verbal associations?
How does an innocent pot on a stovetop turn into a diabolical torture device? These are
some of the questions posed by Gothic layering, an artifice designed to cover up that which
is abjected even when the layers are falling apart and corroded from within by the very
object they attempt to restrain.
Spanish American Gothic?
The first trait of Spanish American Gothic that I would like to indicate is its focus on
the short story and novella rather than the novel. This holds true despite the novel’s strong,
even privileged position throughout most of the literary history of Spanish American
48
countries. From the inception of Spanish American nation states, the production of fully-
fledged Gothic novels is not unheard of: José Mármol’s Amalia (1851) or Turcios’ El Vampiro
(1910) are some of the names invoked when seeking such texts in the canon. Nonetheless,
the mode is not prevalent across the whole of Spanish America and these isolated instances
serve as little proof of the Gothic mode truly percolating into the continent’s collective
imagination. Moreover, these texts are decidedly less influential beyond their national
contexts and do not come close to the importance of Gothic texts produced in short form.
The influence of Edgar Allan Poe and the French decadent prose writers (such as
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam) was decisive for the type of texts in which the Gothic would be
inscribed in the Spanish American literary tradition as a primary mode of modeling. A
plethora of texts evince contact with the Gothic in one way or another, usually by
adopting its conventional artifacts and dynamics, though their primary modeling mode is
not Gothic. From the primordial invocation of Sarmiento’s Facundo—“Sombra terrible del
Facundo, voy a evocarte” (“Terrible shadow of Facundo, I shall invoke you”, 7)—to the
dark and biting satire of Manuel Atanasio Fuentes’ “El Murciélago,” there are many
examples in early nineteenth-century political writing of elements borrowed from the
Gothic (which can be analyzed) but that do not form a tradition beyond their national
borders. Furthermore, the primary communicative purpose of the political essay and
political satire is, as their names suggest, political, while literary qualities remain
subordinate to their primary political purpose. There are a number of reasons for this, all
of which are scored by the plights of individual national states to constitute themselves as
49
such. They all share, nonetheless, a single intention: the configuration of national states
from the rubble left by the conquest and the wars of independence.
The value of literature in such states was therefore decidedly political. The telluric
novel (novela de la tierra) ran through the nineteenth century until at least the mid-
twentieth century, achieving what is arguably its most perfected and paradigmatic form
with Rómulo Gallego’s Doña Bárbara (1929). Gothic modeling ran parallel to these
intentions and was not perceived as a fully compatible mode, associated as it was with
flights of fancy rather than the virile and necessary political dissection of the nation state’s
issues. Even the texts mentioned have an unquestionable political slant without which
they become almost incomprehensible: such is the case of Amalia, a Gothic mise-en-scène
of the struggle between Unitarios and Federales in Argentina (criticizing the latter) and
Turcios’ El Vampiro, a tirade against the perceived failure of the Catholic church to stand
as a pillar of Honduras’ development.
With the arrival of foreign immigration into the Southern Cone, copies of the
European Gothic classics began circulating, as José Amícola has shown. It is known that
Otranto, The Monk, and Radcliffe’s works circulated widely in Argentina, a country
steeped, as Soledad Quereilhac argues in Cuando la ciencia despertaba fantasias, in a
peculiar combination of an extremely successful literacy campaign, scientific progress, and
theosophical speculation. The historico-cultural fabric of turn-of-the-century Buenos Aires
was ideal for the appearance and public acceptance of non-mimetic literature, an anomaly
when compared to most countries in the region.
50
The continental appeal of the Gothic arrived through a wider movement:
Modernismo, the subject of the following chapter. As criollos, the postcolonial ruling class
of the incipient republics, the authors of modernista texts were not exempt from colonial
ideas and ideals that percolated into their writings, in some instances through the Gothic.
The Gothic and Modernity/Coloniality
Throughout its history, the larger portion of the Gothic corpus has had some link,
explicit or implicit, intradiegetic or extradiegetic, with colonialism and other forms of
subjugation (as per Aníbal Quijano and Mignolo). The Horror, the abjected, is commonly a
geographical Other (Dracula in Transylvania) often from a colony (Jacob’s Monkey’s Paw
hails from India and Bertha Mason is a Jamaican creole). The position occupied by the
Other in European Gothic, as previously stated, can and eventually will be replaced by a
local Other in the usage of the Gothic mode (the indigenous man in “La venganza del
cóndor” or the Mayan Chac Mool statue in the eponymous tale by Fuentes). Much of the
Gothic analyzed in this dissertation stems from the project of modernity that feeds off the
products, both metaphorical and material, of coloniality. I firmly maintain that there is no
need to create a new term (such as Byron’s Globalgothic) to describe a phenomenon that
has, for decades, been punished for sameness and is now excluded for geographic (or
political/anti-decolonial) reasons. This does not mean that the European Gothic
assemblage and the Spanish American Gothic Assemblage are the same: they both are
constitutive limbs of a greater Gothic that work off of and feed each other.
Conclusions
51
The texts that exhibit higher degrees of Gothic modeling or the Gothic qualities of
canonical texts have, to an extent, been pushed to the margins in order to build a
particular history of Spanish American literature that focuses on the recasting of literature
as a tool through which complex national histories are to be portrayed and better
understood. Realism is assumed to be the only mode in which this goal can be achieved.
In the modernity/coloniality binomial, Gothic modelling falls, historically speaking,
on the side of modernity. The European Gothic assemblage worked in favor of those in
power, dismissing colonies as barbarous. As a rhizomatic compound, however, The Gothic
can change and be repurposed to the contrary, producing assemblages that connect
different forms of content and forms of expression in a non-hylomorphic manner: the text
is not merely or necessarily an expression of a particular societal anxiety but rather an
instance of it. The social anxiety and the text exist on two different tracks that are joined
together by the Gothic Assemblage, by relations described by the Gothic Abstract
Machine. The presence of such fear can in this way be used in a critical fashion; to
question it (in Amparo Dávila’s case) or to further it (as Ventura García Calderón does).
The texts chosen for close reading are intended to represent what I believe are
different types of Gothic modeling intrinsic to the Spanish American literary tradition that
constitute distinct assemblages. As the critics of Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick and Kelly Hurley
posit, the surface dimension of the Gothic cannot be forgotten. Close reading helps one to
see that, despite the importance of the ideological dimension of these texts, it is the layers
that cover the secret that makes something Gothic. I will, then, seek to bring out the
artistic quality of the texts analyzed.
52
Cortázar’s essay furnishes the perfect prelude to the analysis of the following
chapters: “Hemos buscado lo gótico en su nivel más exigente de imaginación y de
escritura” (“We have sought the Gothic at its most demanding level of imagination and
writing,” 151).
36
Even though I do not share Cortázar’s value judgment of the Gothic, there
is a definitive and conscious influence of the Gothic on the authors studied in the next
chapter—the modernistas—who chose to follow in the footsteps of Edgar Allan Poe and
Villiers de L’Isle-Adam by producing texts that in some instances transcend those of the
old masters.
36
““...we have sought the gothic at its most demanding level of imagination and writing.”
53
Chapter 2
Modernismo and the Gothic
In 1903, the renowned Argentine poet, scholar, and theosophist Leopoldo Lugones
would set foot in San Ignacio, Misiones, accompanied by his cameraman, Uruguayan
writer Horacio Quiroga. The expedition, commissioned by the Department of Education
(Ministerio de Instrucción Pública), was important for Lugones but crucial for Quiroga: it
was not only the primary resource for the former’s celebrated historical essay on Jesuit
missions in the area but also the catalyst for Quiroga’s future obsession with nature (Jitrik
Quiroga 20). Even if Lugones considered Quiroga his protégé and eventual successor, the
two modernistas could not have been more different in their writing styles and
personalities. Lugones, academic and artificial, was writing the text of El Imperio Jesuítico
(The Jesuit Empire), while Quiroga, rugged and energetic, registered the images. Their trip
to Misiones would cement the respective styles and public images of the two authors:
savoir and savoir-faire, word and image, intellect, and passion. Lugones and Quiroga
represent distinct strains of Fantástico del Río de la Plata and two different flavors of the
Gothic during the time modernismo dominated short form literature in Spanish America.
This chapter will trace the history of the modernista Gothic assemblage, a combination of
a specific historico-literary context and material elements such as technological
developments, and a decidedly dark form of expression; the chapter then focuses on two
short story collections: Leopoldo Lugones’ Las fuerzas extrañas (1906) and Horacio
54
Quiroga’s Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (1917). I also outline earlier uses of the
Gothic before arriving at modernismo, which I argue constitutes the first major literary
movement in Spanish America that favored a widespread use of the mode and the first
point in Spanish American literary history where an identifiable Gothic assemblage can be
described.
Early Flights of the Gothic: Costumbrismo, Satire, and Politics
It would be unfair to suggest that the Gothic mode in Spanish America emerged
spontaneously from modernismo and its chosen influences and poetics. Traces of the
Gothic in media can be found in earlier forms of literature that existed before, during, and
shortly after the wave of independence washed over the continent.
37
Nineteenth-century Spanish American “lettered cities,” capitals and important
centers of creole (“criollo”) power, privileged forms of writing that engaged directly with
the political interests of their respective nations. Following the paradigm set forth by the
global North, writers in these countries strived for some form of realism or romanticism in
their writing. The urban chronicle (realist), the romanticism-infused “cuadro de
costumbres,” and the political essay became the preferred forms of the early nineteenth-
37
Since the scope of this thesis is limited to the Modern Gothic, inaugurated by Horace Walpole, I will be
focusing on instances that can be unquestionably and historically linked to this mode. This does not mean,
however, that cultural manifestations of the Colonial Baroque were lacking in elements that could be
considered Gothic retrospectively (now referred to as Oopart Gothic). The same can be said of pre-
Columbian art. Whether these can or should be considered Gothic is a contentious matter that exceeds the
limits of this project.
55
century printing press. As Lola López Martín states in her prologue to Penumbria:
Antología Crítica del cuento fantástico hispanoamericano del Siglo XIX,
el desenlace histórico, social y politico solicitaba una literatura testimonial, que se
dio en el artículo de costumbres y la producción realista y folletinesca. La novela
naturalista fue la lectura preferida en una Hispanoamérica ya emancipada que
buscaba la construcción de una literatura nacional.
38
(XVIII)
Of these forms, the “cuadro de costumbres” is closest to the non-mimetic, since it
fictionalized scenes (“cuadros”) of daily life but was not limited to urban settings nor the
strict retelling of factual events. Ricardo Palma, the Peruvian romantic, created such
scenes in his Tradiciones Peruanas, a series of “tradiciones” (traditions) composed in a
particularly complex and intricate style.
39
Despite the widespread popularity of these “estampas goyescas” (Goyesque prints,
as Germán Arciniegas calls them) that are sprinkled throughout the nineteenth century in
Spanish America (245), political rhetoric, a type of discourse which was not exempt from
Gothic imagery, was still dominant in most republics throughout their first decades.
38
"...the historical, social and political outcome demanded testimonial literature, which took the form of the
‘costumbres’ article and the realist and feuilletonesque production. The naturalistic novel was the preferred
reading in a now emancipated Spanish America that sought the construction of a national literature." Unless
otherwise noted, all translations from the Spanish are my own.
39
In his attempt to reinforce national identity—one of the main purposes of literature at the time—Palma
used a tremendous amount of turns of phrase and local argot that he had collected, thus creating a type of
discourse that is almost untranslatable from the Spanish. In his attempts at creating a unifying (albeit idealistic
and capricious) national identity, Palma did not limit his scope to Lima, the capital of the country, nor the
urban, but reached out to other latitudes to find material suitable for his exploits, even if his discourse still
focused on “criollo” forms of “Peruvianness.” “El Manchay Puito” is one such Andean “tradición.” Purported
to be a “real” oral tradition from the Peruvian Andean region, “El Manchay Puito” tells the story of a priest
who loses his lover. He then desecrates her grave and performs the ritual of the Manchay Puito (translated by
Palma as “terrifying hell”), which consists of playing a pan flute (quena) inside a pitcher. The ritual opens a
gate to hell, and the text strongly suggests that the priest gives his soul away to the devil.
56
Political satire was also fertile ground for such images, following Marx’s description in
Capital of the bourgeoisie as class vampires feeding on the blood of the working class:
“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the
more, the more labour it sucks” (Marx 342). Characterizations of politicians and
moneylenders as vampires or monsters were therefore not uncommon in the satirical
pages of newly founded journals. Teratological forms, however, were also dominant in
serious political efforts.
As indicated by critics such as Juan Pablo Dabove and Inés Ordiz, Domingo Faustino
Sarmiento’s Facundo: Civilización I Barbarie (1845) is rife with Gothic imagery, which is a
crucial element for the successful presentation of the Federales as a full-fledged lineage of
horror. “¡Sombra terrible de Facundo, voy a evocarte, para que, sacudiendo el
ensangrentado polvo que cubre tus cenizas, te levantes a explicarnos la vida secreta y las
convulsiones internas que desgarran las entrañas de un noble pueblo!” (7),
40
Sarmiento
declares at the outset of Facundo, evoking the “shadow” of Facundo Quiroga as the
source of the convulsions that tear apart the “noble” Argentine “people.” Facundo’s ghost
is the cipher of that which has been reincarnated in the Federalist leader Rosas.
Modernismo: Between Idealism and Imitation
Despite all the aforementioned instances of Gothic modelling, the first moment in
which the Gothic truly spreads throughout Spanish America is with modernismo. The
40
“Terrible shadow of Facundo, I shall evoke you, so that, shaking off the bloody dust that covers your
ashes, you may rise to explain to us the secret life and the internal convulsions that tear the entrails of a
noble people!”
57
principles of innovation and renewal concomitant with technological development pushed
modernismo
41
onward but the movement hesitated between moving forwards and
looking back. As Octavio Paz argued, the movement represents a “modernidad
antimoderna” (antimodern modernity, 105). Modernismo, as Miguel Gomes points out,
feeds off residual values of times gone by and pits them against the “vulgar” artistic tastes
of the incipient bourgeois class (96). Instead of rejecting the past, modernismo “acepta y
reverencia el pasado y se nutre de mitologías y conserva el sentimiento romántico entre
mármoles y nieblas” (“accepts and reveres the past and nourishes itself on mythologies
and conserves the Romantic sentiment between marble and fog”; Arrieta 38). If
modernistas can be considered revolutionaries in some sense, they were not radical ones,
since most did not seek an upheaval of the system but instead wanted to take the place of
the combative antagonist within it. Modernismo’s taste for anachronism should make
their eventual favoring of Gothic modelling an unsurprising development.
Together with the idea of an anti-modern modernity, the other most salient
element of modernismo is its idealism in response to the perceived excess of positivism
and empiricism. Nonetheless, unbridled idealism came at a cost in nations where
positivistic discourse reigned. Gabriela Mora gestures towards this in the prologue to her
anthology of modernista short stories: “El amor a la Belleza (así con mayscula) constituye
41
Despite its name, modernismo has very little in common with Modernism as understood in the English-
speaking world. The desire to fashion oneself as “modern” and explore the challenges of the modern world
are but the tip of the iceberg of two literary movements that could not be more different. Contrary to T.S.
Eliot’s iconoclastic poetry or James Joyce’s Ulysses, modernismo regarded modernity as not just a referent
but an ideal tied to other, similar ideals (i.e. the ideal of progress). In modernismo, modernity coexists with
formal anachronisms. Modernistas explored the modern condition through a language in which they still had
profound faith, language that was fashioned by following the poetic stylings of the past.
58
el rasgo decisivo del modernismo que nadie disputa, y su apasionado cultivo se le criticó
bajo el mote de esteticismo” (16).
42
The quest for Beauty, understood as per José Enrique
Rodó to be a moral quest that encompassed all other areas of life, was reduced by the
detractors of modernismo to “art for art’s sake” and used to stigmatize the movement.
Authors that subscribed to it were thus characterized as apolitical and aloof, disinterested
in the growing pains of their adolescent republics.
The modernista quest for beauty at the start of the twentieth century was
galvanized by French décadentisme, whose stylings were soon added to Spanish American
poetics. It is important to reiterate that modernismo (idealist) and modernismo decadente
are not at odds, since most modernistas wrote texts of the two types. Rubén Darío himself
wrote both “Sonatina” and “La larva.” However, certain members of the loosely tied
modernismo movement were more strongly inclined toward the latter aesthetic, which
took over the greater part of their publications and public personas. This trend within
modernismo manifests itself with some clarity at the turn of the century.
43
It comes as no
surprise, then, that the texts that will be analyzed in this section, Las fuerzas extrañas and
Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, were published in 1906 and 1917 respectively.
Regarding this transition into a preference for decadentism and symbolism, Ángel
Rama indicates in “La Modernización literaria latinoamericana” that
42
“The love of Beauty (with a capital “B”) constitutes the decisive, undisputed trait of modernism, and its
passionate cultivation was criticized under the moniker of aestheticism.”
43
However, the heterogenous, individualistic nature of modernismo allows little room for establishing
categorical trends. José Asunción Silva, for example, would fit neatly into the descriptor of a decadente but
was one of the movement’s precursors and died in 1896. Furthermore, Rodó’s Ariel, the pinnacle of
modernista idealism, was published in 1900. Modernistas thus did not “turn” to decadentismo, shunning
previous ideals; instead, decadent stylings and tropes were added to the previously existing modernismo,
which was already predisposed to them.
59
Del mismo modo que el naturalismo, ambos chocaron a la conciencia moral
fraguada en el catolicismo, la cual prolongó su opositor positivismo, a lo que no
dejó de contribuir la connotación del término (decadentes) que era resistida por el
sentimiento de juventud, energía y aún machismo que caracterizaba a una nueva
generación dispuesta al asalto de una respetabilidad internacional. Pero una cosa
era el discurso moral sobre esos movimientos y otra su instrumental artístico que
se reveló aún más adecuado que el del parnasianismo y el realismo narrativo al
peculiar imaginario de los latinoamericanos. (16)
44
It thus follows that Modernistas knew Poe’s works remarkably well; they explicitly
mention titles of his works in letters and even in their own literary texts. From his poetry
beyond “The Raven,” (“Ulalume”), his more obscure Gothic stories (“The Sphynx”),
hoax/comedic writing, detective quests (“Murders in the Rue Morgue”), maritime
adventures (“M. S. Found in a Bottle”), scientific/pseudoscientific treatises (“Eureka”), and
his Philosophy of Composition (a favorite of Quiroga’s), Poe has been and still is a crucial
influence to take into account when studying Spanish American literature. Since beauty,
the rejection of vulgarity, and cosmopolitism were regarded as values in modernista
circles, it is not surprising that many modernistas spoke several languages and could read
Poe’s texts in English. Still, these texts circulated in Spanish for the wider public through
44
“In the same way as naturalism, both clashed with the moral conscience forged in Catholicism, which
prolonged its opposing positivism, to which it did not cease to contribute to the connotation of the term
(decadents) that was resisted by the feeling of youth, energy, and even machismo that characterized a new
generation of disposed to an assault of international respectability. But one thing was the moral discourse
about these movements and another were the artistic instruments that proved to be even more appropriate
than those of Parnassianism and narrative realism for the peculiar imaginary of Latin Americans.”
60
Baudelaire’s translations and some local efforts
45
that predate the turn of the century
(Arrieta 21).
Bearing all of this in mind, the group of authors whose works were infused with
Gothic elements are as vast as the reach of modernismo itself. The patent influences of
décadentisme, Poe, Wilde, Byron, and Shelley are accompanied by many others that are
evident often through clear hypertextual relations rather than direct quotation. Novels
like Turcios’ El Vampiro, non-supernatural but extremely dark decandentista pieces like
Asunción Silva’s De Sobremesa (Colombia), Atilio Chiappori’s La Eterna Angustia
(Argentina), or the political allegory enshrouded by Gothic artifice of José Mármol’s
Amalia (Argentina) demonstrate that the Gothic novel did exist. It was, however,
outweighed by the reach and influence of the Gothic in short story form. Tales in the most
important papers of every Spanish American nation, later collected in anthologies such as
Clemente Palma’s Cuentos Malévolos, Quiroga’s Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte,
or Leopoldo Lugones’ Las fuerzas extrañas, demonstrate the influence that the Gothic
mode had, through decandentismo, upon modernismo. Eduardo Wilde (Bolivia), Juan
Montalvo (Venezuela), Amado Nervo’s Cuentos Misteriosos, and the group of writers in
charge of El Nacional’s “Cuentos Mexicanos” all show the wide reach of the Gothic in the
lettered cities of entresiglos.
Notwithstanding accusations of frivolity from detractors, modernistas were also
preoccupied with knowledge beyond public displays of eccentricity. One of their preferred
45
Arrieta mentions Carlos Olivera and the American general Edelmiro Meyer, whose translation of Ingram’s
biography of Poe is, according to Arrieta, the one Darío used to write Los Raros.
61
means of knowledge, concomitant with occultism, was the technological aspect of
modernity, with its new and exciting discoveries, including the printing press, the camera,
film, and radiotherapy. All these inventions would serve as inspiration for modernistas,
particularly those in the Southern Cone.
Tecnología y teosofía: The Fantastical Exceptionality of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires was one of the most technologically developed capitals of the
continent at the time and the mecca of journalists and artists from the southernmost
region of the continent. Rama states as much in Las Máscaras Democráticas del
Modernismo, remarking that “Triunfar en Buenos Aires fue la ambición máxima, an por
encima de triunfar en Madrid, y solo por debajo de triunfar en París” (113).
46
Teeming
with sabios (the term given to the men of science at the time [Quereilhac Ciencia 53]),
Buenos Aires and its cultural zeitgeist promoted the development of science, making it a
prominent feature of popular culture. Limits between scientific discovery and magic or
religion were still tenuous, which permitted the rise of pseudoscientific disciplines like
parapsychology and theosophy. The combination of technology and an abundance of
great thinkers and creatives made Buenos Aires the perfect birthplace for what are now
called fantasías razonadas or fantaciencia, early science fiction in which science and
fantástico come together.
46
“Succeeding in Buenos Aires was the ultimate ambition, even more so than succeeding in Madrid, and
second only to succeeding in Paris”
62
Despite their links, it is important to clarify the distinction between science fiction
and fantaciencia. In Gothic: The New Critical Idiom, Fred Botting notes that
science fiction, connected with the Gothic since Frankenstein, presents new
objects of terror and horror in strangely mutated life forms and alien invaders from
other and future worlds. With science fiction, however, there is significant
divergence from Gothic strategies: cultural anxieties in the present are no longer
projected onto the past but are relocated in the future (102).
The brand of science fiction in fantaciencia takes the opposite route by criticizing the very
scientific method that serves to inspire it, thus moving “backward.”
47
Fantaciencia is
another cultural manifestation of modernismo that provides evidence of the movement’s
oscillation between the present, marked by scientific discovery, and the past, which serves
as a benchmark for critique and analogy.
48
47
Quereilhac prefers fantasía científica but I prefer fantaciencia, though they are virtually identical. Much
like in the stories in La venganza del cóndor, which I analyze in the next chapter, the Gothic does not take
the place of the conventional categories given to Lugones’ stories. They are both fantástico-científico and
Gothic, like García Calderón’s stories are both indigenista and also Gothic. As stated in the previous chapter,
fantástico and Gothic are not mutually exclusive but, on the contrary, tend to work together.
48
This second element, made possible by the permeable barrier between technology and magic
characteristic of the period, resonates with David J. Jones's use of the term “Gothic Machine.” David J. Jones
argues in his book Gothic Machine that this term, (which I have given a Deleuzian interpretation),
compounds pre-cinematic visual technologies and writing in European culture, focusing on the impact
Phantasmagoria (magic lantern shows) had on the development of Continental Gothic. Phantasmagoria or
“ghost-shows of late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Europe—illusionistic exhibitions and
public entertainments in which ‘specters’ were produced using a magic lantern” (Castle 27), were, according
to Jones, a constitutive element of the genre in its evolution. Combined with the machinic elements of the
Gothic genre, the physical machines associated with staging Gothic texts (magic lantern shows,
photography, cryptophotography, and eventually film), became deeply imbricated with the genre itself, to
the point that the Gothic had “haunted the devices of moving images, the optical media, from their very
inception, and as early as 1800 the term encapsulated an intricately interrelated network of evolving media
and also included those complex synergies which linked and held these in tension” (Jones 16). The terms
“machine” and “assemblage” are used by Jones in a way that conflicts with Deleuze’s and with my own
theorization. For this reason, I will set aside Jones’ theoretical framework but not his entire proposal, since
the idea of optical technologies fusing with the Gothic becomes immensely productive in the exploration of
entresiglos Buenos Aires.
63
The progress of fantaciencia was galvanized by the appearance of new inventions.
In “Llévese la cámara a la tumba: deseo fotográfico en cuatro cuentos de Lugones,”
Valeria de los Ríos states that photography arrived in Spanish America only a year after its
announcement in France, which coincided with the early years of the continent’s nation-
states. Hence, “no es raro que temas originados a raíz de la fotografía—es decir,
problemas de identificación, reproducción y de copias versus originales, surgieran y se
entremezclaran con cuestiones de formación y de identidad nacionales” (746).
49
This is
also the case for film, which would later produce similar narratives surrounding the issue
of personal and national identity, copy and original. Another optical technology of equal
importance to the formation of the bonaerense zeitgeist was the discovery of the X-ray, an
invention of particular interest to writers of fantaciencia because it uses rays invisible to
the naked eye.
50
The scientific discovery of invisible forces that have tangible effects fits
perfectly with both fantaciencia poetics and the pseudo-scientific tenants of theosophy.
Soledad Quereilhac paints the picture of the scientific culture of Buenos Aires
during the entresiglos period in her book Cuando la Ciencia Despertaba Fantasías,
showing that many prominent political figures, letrados, and sabios participated in
theosophical circles. Theosophy is the name given to a set of beliefs centered around the
study of religions and the advancement of modern science, as put forth by Helena
Blavatsky and Henry Olcott. Their beliefs were derived from what they perceived to be
central truths common to all religious and scientific practices. The quest for truth was the
49
“…it is not uncommon for issues arising from photography-namely, problems of identification,
reproduction and copies versus originals-to emerge and intertwine with questions of national identity and
formation.”
50
For a more detailed study of this, see Sarlo’s La imaginación técnica.
64
most important tenant of theosophy, expressed in the maxim “There is no religion higher
than Truth,” printed on the cover of many of their publications. According to Quereilhac,
theosophy held three core beliefs that were printed in their magazines throughout the
world:
1.Formar el núcleo de una fraternidad universal de la Humanidad, sin distinción de
raza, creencia, sexo, casta o color
2. Fomentar el estudio de las religiones comparadas, las literaturas, la filosofía y las
ciencias Arias y Orientales.
3.[…] Investigar las leyes no explicadas de la naturaleza y los poderes psíquicos del
hombre. (135)
51
The last task, meant exclusively for a select few within the highest theosophical ranks, is
the most relevant to the queries of this chapter, since it is the line of thought that
underlies Lugones’ stories in Las fuerzas extrañas.
Señor de todas las palabras: Leopoldo Lugones
“Dos escritores en el siglo xx lograron una hegemonía incontestada del campo
literario argentino: Jorge Luis Borges después de los años cincuenta; Leopoldo Lugones
hasta los años veinte,” observes Beatriz Sarlo in “Lugones: pasión y escritura” (114).
52
By
51
“1. To form the nucleus of a universal fraternity of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste
or color.
2. To encourage the study of comparative religions, literatures, philosophy and the Aryan and Oriental
sciences.
3. To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the psychic powers of man.”
52
“Two writers in the 20th century achieved an uncontested hegemony in the Argentine literary field: Jorge
Luis Borges after the 1950s; Leopoldo Lugones until the 1920s.”
65
1920, Lugones had diverged far from his moniker of “poeta socialista”
53
(socialist poet)
given to him by Rubén Darío, to become a figure of military, antiliberal authority detested
by the up-and-coming generation of poets (Castellani 17). He was the king to be
dethroned, the main target of parody and mockery for the young martinfierrista-ultraístas
(Sarlo 114).
54
Before Ficciones and El Aleph, before taking the baton Lugones held, the
young ultraísta poet Jorge Luis Borges contributed to the public derision of Lugones, who
had become, by the time of his suicide in 1938, an eminent but reviled figure. “Era muy
admirado, muy respetado, pero no creo que fuera un hombre querido”, reminisces Borges
about Lugones in 1979.
55
The “leyenda negra” (black, dark legend) surrounding the author
and his family weighs heavily on the patriarch’s legacy, so much so that it has “oscurecido
la literatura escrita por él” (“darkened the literature written by him,” Borges, Payador
xxxiv).
Notwithstanding, Lugones’ life and role in the bonaerense literary scene of
entresiglos began well before this transfiguration. Born in Villa María del Río Seco,
Córdoba, in 1874, Lugones arrived in Buenos Aires in 1896, where he met Rubén Darío.
53
Lugones met Darío in Buenos Aires in 1896, a year before Lugones established himself in the city. In his
article “Un poeta socialista: Leopoldo Lugones” Darío dubbed the Argentine a “fanatic” regarding his
political filiation with socialism. Nonetheless, he states in the same text that “…las ideas evolucionan y los
colors cambian. Hoy he visto casualmente que las serpientes rojas que quedaron en las calles desde el
ultimo carnaval están completamente blancas”.( "...ideas evolve and colors change. Today I have seen by
chance that the red snakes that were left on the streets since the last carnival are completely white".)
Lugones would abandon the socialist party that very same year. (Irazusta 50-56)
54
The 1920’s saw the decline of modernismo, which was replaced (in poetry) by local avant-garde
movements. In Buenos Aires, the preponderant literary movement of this kind was Ultraísmo, also known in
its local Argentine variety as Martinfierrismo (after the name of the magazine, Martín Fierro).
55
“He was greatly admired, highly respected, but I don't think he was a beloved man.” Borges would also
call Lugones a “dictator of conversation” (“dictador de la conversación”) in a 1967 interview (Veres 1138).
66
Darío was about to include the young poet among the decadent figures of Los Raros
56
but
in the end did not, a decision that direly upset Lugones’ immense ego. The filiation
between Lugones and the authors included in Los Raros was patent to critics who
compared him to “Edgar Poe,” as Leónidas Vidal Peña emphasizes in El Drama Intelectual
de Leopoldo Lugones:
Allá por los días de su magnífica iniciación, un antologista lo compara con Edgard
Poe, afirmando que el levantisco adolescente de Córdoba y el trágico bohemio de
Boston son los dos poetas de fantasía más complicada, más original, más vivaz,
más exaltada que ha producido el Nuevo Mundo.
57
How did Lugones become such a crucial figure if modernismo was supposedly so
reviled and subversive? The apparent contradiction can be explained both by the historical
context of Buenos Aires, a city that became the capital for the movement (Arrieta 7-8),
and Lugones’ skill, which allowed him to compose an extremely wide variety of text.
Because of these two factors, Lugones could, despite his modernista experimentation,
become a “national poet” and seamlessly assimilate into the nation-state project. “Señor
de todas las palabras” (lord of all words), as Borges dubs him in “La Muerte de Leopoldo
Lugones,”
58
he was undoubtedly an erudite, revered sabio and author of myriad different
56
Los Raros (The odd ones, The weird ones.) was an anthological volume that collected profiles of authors
that Darío considered were outside the norm and worthy of his admiration. Amongst these names we can
find several modernistas (like José Martí) but also authors associated with decadentisme and the Gothic like
Villiers de l’isle Adam, Edgar Allan Poe and Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont).
57
“Back in the days of his magnificent debut, an anthologist compares him to Edgard Poe, affirming that the
rebellious adolescent from Córdoba and the tragic bohemian from Boston are the two poets who have
produced the most complicated, the most original, the liveliest, and the most exalted fantasies the New
World has ever produced.”
58
As this quote reveals, Borges changed his attitude towards Lugones and recognized the heavy influence
his writings had on his own. He dedicates his book El Hacedor to him, a collection whose prologue stages a
67
texts. As Vidal Peña puts it, “Cada uno de sus libros es una pirueta; cada uno de sus actos,
una contradicción” (21).
59
The dramatic, quintessentially modernista poems of Los
Crepúsculos del Jardín (1905) and the romantic lunar verse of Lunario Sentimental (1909),
the socialist pamphleteering poems of Las Montañas de Oro (1897), the baroque and
dense Gaucho epic La Guerra Gaucha (1905), historical essays and biographies (some
commissioned by the government) on diverse areas of national history from Jesuit
missions (El Imperio Jesuítico, 1904) to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s life (Historia de
Sarmiento, 1911), the nationalistic poems of Odas Seculares (1910), a wide array of
political prose, erudite conferences on Martín Fierro, the aphorisms of Filosofícula (1924),
two fantástico short story collections (Las fuerzas extrañas, Cuentos Fatales, 1924), the
fascist speech “La Hora de la Espada,” and the sentimental-decadent novel, El Ángel de la
Sombra (1926), were all authored by the same person.
In addition to his writings, Lugones was among the greatest assets of “Rama Luz,”
the Buenos Aires theosophical chapter, which he joined in 1898 (Salazar Anglada 602). He
would later become its secretary-general (Quereilhac 148) and was elected its president in
1900 (Salazar Anglada 602). By that time, Lugones had abandoned the Socialist Party, a
move that, according to Julio Irazusta, was dictated by Lugones’ “culto de la ciencia en que
se cifraba el saber universal del cordobés” (Irazusta 56).
60
Lugones’ commitment to
theosophy was profound—so much so that Barrancos claims that
meeting between the two authors in a dream. In it, Borges hands the finalized manuscript of El Hacedor to
Lugones who turns the pages and, contrary to his reaction to Borges during his lifetime, likes a few of his
verses, “acaso porque en él ha reconocido su propia voz” (“perhaps because in it you have recognized your
own voice”).
59
“Each one of his books is a pirouette, each one of his acts, a contradiction.”
60
“cult of science, in which his universal knowledge was ciphered”
68
su acatamiento a la doctrina fue perdurable y le inspiró no sólo Las fuerzas
extrañas –es imposible interpretar el texto fuera de una semiótica teosofista– sino
que toda su producción intelectual pasó a estar regida, en diferente medida, por
las pulsiones ocultistas (117).
61
Modernismo’s contradictory oscillations—forward into modernity, backward into a
romanticized Hellenic past and Castilian poetic form—were extreme in Lugones. As
Barrancos puts it, for Lugones "ciencia y filosofía debían mirarse en el pasado, pero mejor,
la ciencia debía orientarse por la filosofía antigua, expresión de la verdadera
sabiduría”(120).
62
His fastidious study of Hellenism, which produced an extensive list of
books (Prometeo, Limaduras de Hephaestos, El Ejército de la Iliada, to name a few, as well
as commented translations of classic Greek texts), was only the most visible and evident
facet of this fixation. According to Bernardo Canal Feijoo in Lugones y el destino trágico:
erotismo, teosofismo, telurismo, Lugones’ study of Hellenism was itself motivated by his
adherence to theosophical tenants and the belief that truth was ciphered in the symbols
of myth (33). Among these symbols, Lugones’ favorite trope is the epic hero, present in
most of his writing and a crucial element of Las fuerzas extrañas. Even without the warlike
elements of La Guerra Gaucha or Martín Fierro, the experiments in Las fuerzas extrañas
are framed as conquests of the Unknown: journeys that, if successful, would change
humanity’s perception of reality. The scientists, mediums, and pilgrims of Las fuerzas
61
“His adherence to the doctrine was enduring and inspired not only Las Fuerzas Extrañas—it is impossible
to interpret the text outside of a theosophist semiotics—but his entire intellectual production came to be
governed, to varying degrees, by occultist impulses.”
62
“Science and philosophy had to look at themselves in the past, but more importantly, science had to be
guided by ancient philosophy, the expression of true wisdom....”
69
extrañas are all male heroes who embark on epic quests, an elite group consisting of
intellectual soldiers.
63
Lugones’ love for the past and the archaic, and his passionate interest in the occult
pair with some of the Gothic Abstract Machine’s inherent qualities. Interest in the archaic
and ruinous, which hides a supposed “real” truth, in combination with the influence
provided by the bonaerense zeitgeist, French décadentisme, Edgar Allan Poe, and fellow
modernistas like Darío, all indicate clear traces of the Gothic in Lugones’ work. With Las
fuerzas extrañas, Lugones sought to cross the limit into Otherness and investigate the
capabilities of the human mind beyond science through analogy, theosophy’s preferred
mode of cognition.
Las fuerzas extrañas belongs to the tradition of Fantástico del Río de la Plata and is
the quintessential short story collection of local fantaciencia and fiction inspired by
theosophy. The book is composed of twelve stories and an essay; most of the stories had
previously appeared in some form in El Tiempo, Tribuna, and El Diario, as well as the
theosophical magazine Philadelphia, to which Lugones was a regular contributor (Martínez
“Variantes” 146).
64
Published in 1906 and reprinted in 1926, Las fuerzas extrañas was
63
These ideas are evocative of Garcilaso de la Vega’s third Égloga: “hurté de tiempo aquesta breve
suma,/tomando ora la espada, ora la pluma.” Although he never engaged in any military conflict as a soldier,
Lugones was enamored with the idea of the fighting/hero poet and practiced fencing as a hobby. Julio
Irasuztra comments that, before arriving to Buenos Aires, Lugones attended the unveiling of a bust of his
ancestor, Colonel Lugones and, before it, proclaimed: “Coronel Lugones: t eres el héroe de mi raza; yo, yo
soy el poeta. T tenías la espada; yo tengo la pluma” (“Colonel Lugones: you are the hero of my lineage; I, I
am the poet. You had the sword; I have the pen"; 48).
64
The stories Lugones published prior to and then included in Las fuerzas extrañas show varying degrees of
reworking. The stories that were republished in the 1906 book are, according to Martínez, Godínez and
Vargas, “El milagro de San Wilfrido,” “El Psychon,” “La estatua de sal,” “La fuerza Omega,” “El Escuerzo”
(published as “Los Animales Malditos”), “Un fenómeno inexplicable” (formerly “Lycanthropía”), and “Viola
Acherontia” (originally “Acherontia Atropos”). The last two stories underwent significant changes: “Un
fenómeno inexplicable” does away with the werewolf theme in order to focus on the Darwin-inspired fear of
70
slightly altered by Lugones between the two editions. The most important alteration is the
addition of a warning (“advertencia”) given by Lugones in the book’s second iteration:
Algunas ocurrencias de este libro, editado veinte años ha, aunque varios de sus
capítulos corresponden a una época más atrasada todavía, son corrientes ahora en
el campo de la ciencia. Pido, pues, a la bondad del lector la consideración de dicha
circunstancia, desventajosa para el interés de las mencionadas narraciones.
(Fuerzas, 2)
65
The order in which the stories were originally published in 1906 remained
unchanged in the 1926 edition and all future editions of the text. This reveals the
calculated nature of their distribution. Some, like José María Martínez, have gone as far as
to postulate a purposeful design in this order, related to Pythagorean mathematics. In
“Ciencia y Secularización en Las Fuerzas Extrañas”, he posits that the text is composed of
“dos partes simétricas, cada una de ellas integrada a su vez por doce textos también con
un orden o gradación internos” (258).
66
“La fuerza Omega,” “La Metamsica,” “Viola Acherontia,” “Yzur,” and “El Psychon”
make up the kernel of the true “fantasias razonadas,” the “scientist stories.” The
remaining seven stories (“La lluvia de fuego,” “Los caballos de abdera,” “El milagro de San
the link between ape and man while “Viola Acherontia” changes the objective of the scientist character:
from the trivial creation of a plant with a skull on its leaves (imitating the Death’s Head Moth, Acherontia
Atropos) to the maximalist objective of creating “la flor de la Muerte,” the flower of death, able to emanate
an odorless but fatal humor.
The remaining stories and final essay, “Ensayo de una cosmogonía en diez lecciones,” appear to
have been written exclusively for Las Fuerzas Extrañas.
65
“Some occurrences in this book, published twenty years ago, although several of its chapters correspond
to an even later period, are now commonplace in the field of science. I appeal, therefore, to the kindness of
the reader to consider this circumstance, which is disadvantageous to the interest of the aforementioned
narrations.”
66
“two symmetrical parts, each in turn composed of twelve texts, also with internal order or gradation”
71
Wilfrido,” “La estatua de sal,” “El origen del diluvio,” “El escuerzo,” “Un fenómeno
inexplicable”) are not fantaciencia but instead are decidedly supernatural. Lugones takes
material from both ancient theology and folklore to create these stories, which exhibit a
wider variety of topics and structures. This makes them harder to categorize than the
“scientist” stories. The two sides, combined, evoke the meaning of fuerza in theosophy
through analogy. Both parts, despite their thematic differences, circle back to a force, a
force that a person, a scientist, or a mystic attempts to restrain or discover. It is important
to note that, in the Gothic tradition, the wizard and the Frankenstenian “mad scientist”
stem from the same branch and are, in intentions and drive, virtually identical. As Marie
Mulvey Roberts points out in her The Handbook to Gothic Literature, “Nurtured on the
Renaissance science of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus, their quests were the same:
eternal life and unbounded knowledge of nature's secrets. Thus, the archetypal wizard is
also the 'mad scientist'” (256).
Henceforth, the Gothic in Las fuerzas extrañas follows the lines drawn by these
two groups. The mad scientist who suffers the catastrophic consequences of his ambition
(the Faustian/Frankenstein plot) is the dominant branch of the Gothic in the collection,
repeated in many stories—but it is not the only one. Revenge by a slighted animal (“Los
caballos de Abdera,” “El Escuerzo”), undead speech through a medium (“El origen del
diluvio”), the morbid hagiography of a Medieval Christian crusader-saint (“El Milagro de
San Wilfrido”), and Imperial/Colonial Gothic (“Un fenómeno inexplicable,” “Yzur”) are all
present in Las fuerzas extrañas and are directly related to the fuerza (force) explored in
each tale.
72
The five scientist stories
67
of Las fuerzas extrañas are widely regarded as among
the earliest examples of science fiction (as fantaciencia or fantasia razonada) in the
continent. According to Martínez, these five stories articulate a critique of the scientific
method and a proposed solution to these flaws through occult sciences. Martínez also
asserts that Lugones’ criticisms of the scientific practice focus on the privileged position it
gives to the inductive method (“Ciencia y secularización,” 255).
Lugones’ scientist stories in Las fuerzas extrañas follow, as noted by Speck, a plot
inspired by Faust and Frankenstein (424). Faustian drive and Frankenstein-like ambition
are combined with theosophical pseudo- and para-scientific analogies, the deductive
method of Auguste Dupin, and the genius enunciator/passive listener structuring
elements of Poe’s detective stories. Speck outlines an approximate structure for this
group of stories:
un sabio solitario invita a un amigo (el narrador) a testimoniar el resultado de una
serie de experimentos. Se sugiere que las investigaciones son diabólicas y
blasfemas: violan los límites sagrados del conocimiento humano y dependen de la
ayuda de seres equívocos, medio humanos. El experimento acierta, pero libera
fuerzas terribles que destruyen al sabio directa o indirectamente. (412)
68
67
In “Las fuerzas extrañas: Leopoldo Lugones y las Raíces de la Literatura Fantástica en el Rio de la Plata,”
Paula Speck points out that “A fines del siglo diecinueve la tradición del romanticismo negro, vigorizada por
la moda de las ciencias ocultas llegó a constituir todo un género de literatura de la cual iban a desprenderse
la ciencia ficción y la película de horror con su ‘científico loco’ en el siglo veinte. En el Río de la Plata
proliferaban traducciones de estas obras y autores…” (424). Speck agrees with Quereilhac on this score,
since they both comment on other writers, most prominently Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg and Horacio
Quiroga, Lugones’ contemporaries, who were also penning similar tales of “reasoned” fantasy.
68
“a solitary sage invites a friend (the narrator) to testify to the results of a series of experiments. It is
suggested that the investigations are diabolical and blasphemous: they violate the sacred limits of human
knowledge and depend on the help of equivocal, half-human beings. The experiment is successful, but it
releases terrible forces that destroy the sage directly or indirectly.”
73
The final statement of the passage quoted is of utmost importance. All the experiments
presented in Las fuerzas extrañas produce either death (immediate or foreseen) or
madness. As Quereilhac indicates, most critics (including Noé Jitrik, Pedro Luis Barcia, and
Beatriz Sarlo) read the fatal outcomes as punishment for daring to transcend the limit into
otherness. Quereilhac argues against such interpretations, positing that the fatal
denouements are not meant as an admonition, since that would clash with the ideals of
theosophy, but that Lugones seeks to show “la pequeñez e inhabilidad de los sujetos
modernos para lidiar con entidades que superan en todo las leyes de su material y
prosaico mundo secularizado” (207).
69
The outcomes are not, then, punishment for
transgression but displays of the strength of “forces,” and reflect the inadequacy of
approaching them through human means.
Quereilhac’s postulate also reinforces the idea of the scientist-as-hero, which
fascinated Lugones. The scientist seeks to enter into Otherness, knowing the danger and
potential consequences of his actions: such a transgression is one of the primordial
elements in the Gothic Abstract Machine. As Jorge Torres Roggero posits in La Cara Oculta
de Lugones, “Como el heroísmo supone violaciones voluntarias de la ley fatal, exige el
sacrificio redentor” (61).
70
They are not “punished” for their quest for knowledge but
suffer the consequences of, as Torres Roggero deems them, voluntary actions. The
botanist of “Viola Acherontia” is a clear example of this, as the first line of the story
strongly suggests: “Lo que deseaba aquel extraño jardinero era crear la flor de la Muerte”
69
“...the insignificance and inability of modern subjects to deal with entities that surpass the laws of their
material and prosaic secularized world in every respect.”
70
“Since heroism presupposes voluntary violations of the fatal law, it demands redemptive sacrifice”
74
(77).
71
The positive outcome of this experiment (creating a violet that produces an
invisible, odorless but deadly secretion) would signal the demise of the botanist. His death
(not narrated in the story) would not be a surprising punishment but an inherent part of
his transgression, a necessary sacrifice required to unleash the deadly power of the
flowers on the world. As such, the scientists of Las fuerzas extrañas are twisted heroes—
something that stands out when contrasted with actual knights like Wilfrido de
Hohenstein, the medieval Catholic crusader. The case of the crusader Hohenstein recalls
one of the three core principles of Patrick Brantlinger’s Imperial Gothic, present in “Un
fenómeno inexplicable” (as noted by Juan Pablo Dabove), namely, nostalgia over the now
barred possibility of conquest. For theosophy, the ultimate conquest is not of land but of
the depths and possibilities of the mind: “El verdadero progreso no es tecnológico sino
psíquico” (Quereilhac 208).
72
Central in the abstract machine, the Gothic dynamic of covering-discovering that
which is hidden is the primordial force in the five scientist stories, and the one that leads
to fatal results. “La Fuerza Omega,” an invisible ray produced by sound waves, kills the
scientist who discovered it by liquefying his brain and splattering it against the wall; “El
Psychón,” Dr. Paulin’s newly discovered element (recalling the names of noble gases such
as neon or xenon), is liquefied thought, but when inhaled it becomes “el elixir de la
locura” (the elixir of madness; 105), which drives Paulin to a sanatorium; the keyboard of
“La metamsica,” which produces perfect allegories between the frequency of musical
71
“What that strange gardener wanted was to create the flower of Death.”
72
“True progress is not technological but psychic.”
75
notes and colors, is overwhelmed by the Force and catches fire, its flames attracting the
creator to his demise; Yzur, the monkey made to talk, dies at the end of the story, taking
the scientist’s discovery, as well as man’s humanity, with him to the grave; and finally, if
successful, the botanist of “Viola Acherontia” would be the first victim of his creation. Like
a Lovecraftian monster or looking directly into a true Aleph, the Force manifests itself for a
brief moment, in which it will harm the human attempting to summon it. The discovery is
immediately concealed again following the death or disappearance of its creator.
The five sabios presented by Lugones are distinct iterations of the Faustian trope
with wildly varied intent: eliminating the need for an intermediary between the mind and
pure Force (“La Fuerza Omega”), discovering the nature of human language (“Yzur”), or
bringing about the end of humanity for no reason other than being able to do so (“Viola
Acherontia”), Lugones does not occupy the reader with motives for the experiments: for
the Faustian scientist, knowledge is its own justification.
The mechanistic descriptions of the apparatuses in “El Psychón,” “La Fuerza
Omega,” and “La Metamsica” distinguish these three stories from the other two scientist
stories. The machines are described as follows:
Consistía en tres espirales concéntricas formadas por tubos de cobre y
comunicadas entre sí. El gas desembocaba en la espiral exterior, bajo una presión
de seiscientas cuarenta y tres atmósferas, y una temperatura de -136º obtenida
por la evaporación del etileno según el sistema circulatorio de Pictet; recorriendo
las otras dos serpentinas, iba a distenderse en la extremidad inferior de la espiral
interna, y atravesando sucesivamente los compartimientos anulares en que se
76
encontraban aquéllas, desembocaba cerca de su punto de partida en el extremo
superior de la segunda. El aparato medía en conjunto 0,70 m de altura por 0,175 m
de diámetro. La distensión del fluido compresionado ocasionaba el descenso de
temperatura requerido para su licuación, por el método llamado de la cascada,
también perteneciente al profesor Pictet. (“El Psychón”)
73
Contenía cuatro diapasoncillos, poco menos finos que cerdas, implantados a
intervalos desiguales sobre un diafragma de madera que constituía el fondo de la
caja. Un sutilísimo alambre se tendía y distendía rozándolos, bajo la acción del
botón que sobresalía; y la boquilla de que antes hablé era una bocina microfónica.
(“La Fuerza Omega”)
74
Este es mi piano, cuyo teclado he debido transformar en series de siete blancas y
siete negras, para conservar la relación verdadera de las transposiciones de una
nota tónica a otra; relación que se establece multiplicando la nota por el intervalo
del semitono menor. Mi piano queda convertido, así, en un instrumento exacto,
73
“It consisted of three concentric spirals formed by copper tubing and communicated with each other. The
gas flowed into the outer spiral, under a pressure of six hundred and forty-three atmospheres, and a
temperature of -136º obtained by the evaporation of ethylene according to Pictet's circulatory system;
passing through the other two coils, it was going to distend at the lower end of the inner spiral, and
successively crossing the annular compartments in which they were located, it flowed near its starting point
at the upper end of the second one. The apparatus measured 0.70 m in height and 0.175 m in diameter. The
distension of the compressed fluid caused the temperature drop required for its liquefaction, by the so-
called cascade method, also belonging to Professor Pictet.”
74
“It contained four tuning forks, a little thinner than bristles, implanted at unequal intervals on a wooden
diaphragm that constituted the bottom of the box. A very subtle wire was stretched and distended by
rubbing them, under the action of the protruding button; and the mouthpiece of which I spoke before was a
microphonic horn.”
77
bien que de dominio mucho más difícil. Los pianos comunes, construidos sobre el
principio de la gama temperada que luego recordaré, suprimen la diferencia entre
los tonos y los semitonos mayores y menores, de suerte que todos los sones de la
octava se reducen a doce, cuando son catorce en realidad. El mío es un
instrumento exacto y completo. (“La Metamsica”)
75
The three machines are all minutely described and each one breaches the barrier of
Otherness to enter into the truth of the “force.” The ability to do so is, according to
theosophy, Lugones, and his scientists, inherent to humankind. As the inventor of the
machine made to synthesize Fuerza Omega states:
Cuando uno piensa que las máquinas no son sino aditamentos con que el ser
humano se completa, llevándolas potencialmente en sí, según lo prueba al
concebirlas y ejecutarlas, los tales aparatos resultan en substancia simples
modificaciones de la caña con que se prolonga el brazo para alcanzar un fruto
(14).
76
The strength of these forces is, however, a source of madness (“El Psychon”) or death (“La
Fuerza Omega” and “La metamsica”). The sabio knows this but is, because of his very
condition of sabio, drawn to the center of the fuerza like a moth to a flame.
75
“This is my piano, whose keyboard I have had to transform into a series of seven sharp and seven flat
notes, in order to preserve the true relationship of the transpositions from one tonic note to another; a
relationship that is established by multiplying the note by the interval of the minor semitone. My piano thus
becomes an exact instrument, even though it is much more difficult to master. The common pianos, built on
the principle of the tempered range that I will recall later, suppress the difference between the tones and
the major and minor semitones, so that all the sounds of the octave are reduced to twelve, when in reality
they are fourteen. Mine is an exact and complete instrument.”
76
“When one thinks that machines are nothing more than accessories with which the human being
completes himself, potentially carrying them in himself, as he proves it by conceiving and executing them,
such devices are in substance simple modifications of the cane with which the arm is extended to reach a
fruit.”
78
The sabio of “Viola Acherontia” is also drawn to a sort of force, but the one he
attempts to wield is much less abstract: he intends to produce an odorless perfume that is
not only poisonous but deadly. This is one of Lugones’ most unique stories, a scientific tale
with important differences that make it stand out from the rest. The most important of
these differences is the subject of the experiment, a plant. The experimenter is, in this
instance, a botanist, who through extensive use of theosophical analogy wants to create
“la flor de la Muerte.” “Viola Acherontia” is, in addition, the only scientist story in the
collection in which the experiment fails, or at least does not succeed in the diegesis.
Instead, the experiment creates a terrible byproduct: the violets do not produce the lethal
humor but instead cry. The process through which the botanist has achieved the
unwanted though extraordinary result is based upon a series of analogies that focus on
the plant not only as an absolute Other but also a gendered Other.
The botanist claims that plants are “seres invertidos” (“inverted beings”) and that
there are “analogías entre la flor y la mujer encinta, supuestas ambas capaces de recibir
por ‘antojo’ imágenes de los objetos deseados” (77).
77
Such analogies, in addition to the
sexual function of plant flowers and the selection of the violet for its sensitivity and “la
afección y el horror siempre exagerados que les profesan las histéricas” (78),
78
make the
botanist’s black violets the only character markedly gendered in the five scientist stories
of Las fuerzas extrañas.
77
“analogies between the flower and pregnant women, both supposedly capable of receiving by ‘whim’
images of desired objects."
78
“the always exaggerated affection and horror professed to them by hysterics”
79
Like Hamlet’s Ophelia, a character known for her link to these flowers, the black
violets of the botanist are constantly surrounded by death. As part of his analogical
method, the botanist believes the violets need to be encircled by death to produce the
desired effect. The first step towards the introduction of the “idea fnebre” into the
plant—which has the power to “recibir, concretar y conservar una impresión; en una
palabra, para sugestionarse” (“receive, particularize, and conserve an impression; in a
word, to hypnotize itself”; 77)—is to change its color. According to the botanist, “El negro
es, salvo alguna fantasía china, el color natural del luto, puesto que lo es de la noche, vale
decir, de la tristeza, de la disminución vital y del sueño, hermano de la muerte” (79).
79
This
element represents the first analogical conclusion in the process, since the botanist states
that “El girasol mira constantemente al astro del día, y reproduce con fidelidad su ncleo,
sus rayos y sus manchas”
80
(78). He derives from this phenomenon that the plant must be
black because superficial analogies “suponen otras de fondo”(“entail other deeper ones”),
adding that this particular color is, apparently, adverse to scent in plants, and thus
contributes to his ends.
The double explanation (black as an inherently funerary color, thus analogous to
the inside of the plant, and the lack of scent derived from black) appears to be a vestige of
the previous version of the story, “Acherontia Atropos.” In the earlier version, the botanist
just wants to create a violet that shows a skull on its petals, much like Acherontia Atropos,
the Death’s Head Moth. However, there is no verisimilar reason for a plant to produce
79
“Black is, except for some Chinese fantasy, the natural color of mourning, since it is the color of the night,
that is to say, of sadness, of vital decrease and sleep, brother of death.”
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“The sunflower constantly looks at the daystar, and faithfully reproduces its nucleus, its rays and its
spots.”
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that shape, creating an almost unsolvable hiccup in the pseudo-scientific machine. Since
the same could be said for the color of the plant, the botanist gives the potential skeptic a
double reason, anticipating the criticism that will come from the narrator himself just a
few paragraphs after: “—¿Y de qué sirve, puesto que la flor no tiene ojos?” (80).
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The
botanist then states that this is not an issue, since there are other ways in which plants
perceive the world. But what does pain mean for a plant? That is the question the sabio
wants to answer. To further the botanist’s intentions, Lugones decenters the human
perspective and changes it for a phytocentric one. Thus, the botanist, through analogy,
considers the most efficient methods to hurt the plant in its own terms, creating not an
ecosystem but a thanathosystem, a system for death. This method will supposedly force
the violets into the production of an odorless humor. After achieving the desired color,
the botanist states that he planted "estramonio, jazmín y belladona. Mis violetas
quedaban, así, sometidas a influencias química y fisiológicamente fnebres” (80).
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The
plants with which he surrounds the violet are “funerary” in color and smell but are also
poisonous to the violets themselves. In addition to this, he rubs the plant’s stems with
cyanide to accentuate their suffering and accelerate the process. That is, however, not
enough, and the final step of the process requires human sacrifice. After listening to the
cries of the violets, the narrator remembers that mandrakes cry when they are watered
with a child’s blood, a suspicion immediately confirmed by the botanist.
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"—And what is it good for, given that the flower has no eyes?"
82
“stramonium, jasmine and belladonna. My violets were thus subjected to chemically and physiologically
funereal influences.”
81
Why does the protagonist go to such extremes to create his flower of death?
Because no explanation is given, Quereilhac suggests that it is a process akin to art for art’s
sake, “una verdadera obra artística, ajena a la utilidad y a la moral, en correspondencia con
una visión del arte característica del simbolismo y del modernismo” (Actuación 281–282).
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Quereilhac’s interpretation seems adequate, particularly when considering the flowers as
evocative of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal.
Still, the reader can do very little but surmise about the motivations behind the
experiment of the “extraño jardinero,” since virtually no information is given regarding his
intention or even the botanist himself. Cynthia Duncan makes an insightful observation
when she notes that the botanist from “Viola Acherontia” is the only sabios of Las fuerzas
extrañas who is considered intellectually inferior to the narrator-witness. The “botanist” is
not a scientist but an overzealous gardener and is the only character in the scientist
stories portrayed as actually mad in his proceedings. Faced with the absurd fallacies and
strange jumps in his logic, the narrator tells the reader that “Mis labios rebosaban de
objeciones; pero callé, por ver hasta dónde iba a llevarnos el desarrollo de tan singular
teoría” (80).
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Another possible reason for differences between “Viola Acherontia” and other
scientist stories is the nature of the subject itself. Despite their profound links to Gothic
imagery, romanticism, and decadentism, plants are, in modernismo, symbols, not agents
of horror. Putting forth a violet as the heart of an ecosystem-for-death (thanathosystem),
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"a true artistic work, foreign to utility and morals, in correspondence with a vision of art characteristic of
symbolism and modernismo.”
84
“My lips were brimming with objections; but I kept silent, to see how far the development of such a
singular theory would take us.”
82
an organic machine made for destruction, appears to be so far removed from reality that
even within the story it is hard to believe. Once the botanist reveals his final step, the
narrator leaves and asks the reader: “¿Llegará a producir la violeta mortífera que se
propone? ¿Debo entregar su nombre maldito a la publicidad?” (105).
85
Even though critics
including Duncan herself have suggested that the ending demonstrates that the narrator
believes in the supernatural achievement of the botanist, I do not believe that is the only
possible explanation. If he really believes the story to be true, why not go to the police?
Suggesting such a thing to law enforcement would probably be met with scorn and
laughter, leaving the press (“publicidad”), the very same press that publishes fringe
pseudo-scientific articles, as the only possible outlet.
Still, the narrator does not need to believe in the supernatural to have a reason to
report the botanist—he only needs to believe that he is insane enough to sacrifice
children for his project. Pedro Luis Barcia points to that interpretation by stating that “la
humanización de lo vegetal va asociada a un crimen horrendo, el infanticidio, para
transferirle vida; sacrificar lo humano a lo vegetal. A la ciencia se suma la hechicería”
(Barcia 59).
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The botanist does not need to be a successful wizard to be a murderer and
his transgression is that much worse since the human is being sacrificed to the vegetative,
the high to the low, thus breaking down the frontier between Nature and Culture,
between Man and Vegetable—in short, crossing one of Bruno Latour’s Great Divides. This
is evidenced by one of the botanist’s claims: “el ¡ay! humano es un grito de la naturaleza”
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“Will he ever produce the deadly violet he intends? Shall I turn his accursed name over to the press?”
86
"the humanization of the vegetal is associated with a horrendous crime, infanticide, in order to transfer
life to it; sacrificing the human to the vegetal. Sorcery is added to science.”
83
(81).
87
Not only this but in this Great Divide in particular—Nature vs Culture—nature can
be understood as “that which arises of itself without human agency. It may be reverenced
as wilderness or pristine animality or feared as the bestial and cruelly inhuman” (Clarke
75). Here the order is reversed: it is the botanist who is “cruelly inhuman” towards the
vegetative. The Nature/Culture divide, as Timothy Clarke, Latour, and Donna Haraway
argue, is anything but innocent or “natural” but has, on the contrary, served “to lend
seemingly unchallengeable foundations to very contestable political claims” (Clarke 75).
That Nature has been heavily exploited in Spanish America is no secret, but this is
probably not what Lugones is trying to show. The creation of the thanatosystem, a
system-for-death that has a plant at its center is, in this case, the consequence of a naïve
interpretation of science, a poor understanding and misapplication of the analogical
process.
A more pointed criticism can be easily read in “Yzur,” where violence is directed
towards another element of the Great Divide which, as Haraway argues in When Species
Meet (2008), includes “gods, machines, animals, monsters, creepy crawlies, women,
servants and slaves, and noncitizens in general” (10). “Yzur” is the only scientist story in
the collection to be narrated in the first person, thus breaking with the structure outlined
by Speck and presenting an unreliable narrator. In the story, a scientist attempts to force a
monkey out of a supposed involution by forcing him to speak. His initial theory is that “los
monos fueron hombres que por una u otra razón dejaron de hablar. El hecho produjo la
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“the human ay! is a cry of nature”
84
atrofia de sus órganos de fonación y de los centros cerebrales del lenguaje; […] y el
humano primitivo descendió a ser animal” (83).
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To test the hypothesis, Yzur, the monkey in question, is subjected to a torturous
process that includes increasingly severe corporeal punishment and starvation. Finally,
Yzur falls ill and, moments before his death, he speaks (or so we are told by an unreliable
narrator) the words: amo, agua, mi amo (master, water, my master). Most readings of the
story have pointed out the underlying Darwinian or counter-Darwinian narrative: man
does not evolve from the monkey, instead, the monkey is an involution from man.
Quereilhac bolsters this interpretation by indicating the link between such a notion and
theosophical beliefs, which held Man as the beginning whence all knowledge derived.
Moreover, according to Juan Pablo Dabove, following Julio Ramon, critics have identified
links between the story and sociopolitical discourse. The Nature/Culture divide in “Viola
Acherontia” is also present here as the dichotomy of Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism.
The monkey, degraded and bestial, becomes increasingly “humanized” as he learns to
speak. Not only this, but the monkey is also becoming more “civilized,” since, according to
the scientist’s cook, he has said two words on his own, which are “cama” (“bed”) and
“pipa” (“pipe”): two objects on the Culture side of the Nature/Culture divide. Yzur invokes
two highly cultural objects created by and used exclusively by humans, painting an
unheimlich or uncanny
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picture. The repetition of the image of a primate using a bed or a
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“monkeys were men who for one reason or another stopped speaking. The fact produced the atrophy of
their organs of vocalization and of the cerebral centers of language; [...] and the primitive human descended
to be an animal.”
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The unheimlich nature of Darwinian or anti-Darwinian theories has an extensive tradition within the scope
of the Gothic Abstract Machine. Poe uses a gorilla as the antagonist in Murders in the Rue Morgue, but it is
H. P. Lovecraft who penned the genealogical nightmare of bestialism in “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur
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pipe—a figure too close to human anatomy for comfort—“ surrounds what would
otherwise be innocent enough with an uncanny atmosphere, and forces upon us the idea
of something fateful and inescapable when otherwise we should have spoken only of
'chance'.” (Freud 237).
This form of disobedience is perceived as a particularly heinous act of indiscipline
unacceptable for the scientist who “tolera tres años de fracaso, pero no soporta un
minuto de indisciplina” (Dabove 788),
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and consequently devolves into inhumanity and
violence. Gomes puts it as follows: "la progresión de la gimnasia o la educación a la
violencia es una involución paralela a la que se supone que ha afectado a los monos, lo
que ya bastaría para recalcar el bestialismo, la obscuridad que paradójicamente encierra
el abuso de la modernidad cientificista. Esa regresión desanda el camino que ha recorrido
la sociedad occidental" (9). The evolution of the monkey and the involution of the master
have been taken as criticism of the cruelty and cost of scientific development, as well as a
comment on society at large, founded on the binary of civilization/barbarism. Dabove asks
“¿quién triunfa, el mono que muere hablando o el científico que lo mata para hacerlo
hablar?” (775).
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By the end of the story, the master-slave dynamic showcased in the
narration has come full circle: making the monkey talk has become a “obsesión dolorosa”
(“painful obsession”) for the scientist, who is enslaved by his obsession and only stops
when Yzur is on the brink of death (87).
Jermyn and his Family.” In Spanish America, Quiroga’s “Historia de Estilicón,” “El mono ahorcado,” and “El
mono que asesinó,” together with César Vallejo’s “Los Caynas,” confirm the unsettling resonance of
Darwin’s theory, something also present in Las Fuerzas Extrañas in “Un fenómeno inexplicable.”
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“tolerates three years of failure, but does not tolerate one minute of indiscipline”
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“who wins, the monkey who dies talking or the scientist who kills him to make him talk?”
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The scientist has regressed in his own two-poled scale, realizing one of the fears
described by Patrick Brantlinger in Rule of Darkness (2013) as constitutive of Imperial
Gothic. Brantlinger outlines its three major characteristics: 1) “going native” or individual
regression, 2) the invasion of civilization by the barbarous and 3) the dwindling possibility
for adventure in the modern world (230). The paradigmatic example he gives is Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. As already discussed above, the third characteristic is
discernable in the “pure” scientist stories of Las Fuerzas Extrañas, since the psychical is
perceived as the only domain left to colonize—but in “Yzur” all three of Brantlinger’s
characteristics can be found.
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The notion of Imperial Gothic is most productive in examining the story “Un
fenómeno inexplicable.” Juan Pablo Dabove has affirmed as much in his article “La Cosa
Maldita: Leopoldo Lugones y el Gótico Imperial.” The tale relates how an Argentine criollo
meets in the Argentine countryside an Englishman who reveals that he has been haunted
since encountering and photographing Indian yogis. The Englishman discloses that he has
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The individual regression, invasion of civilization by the barbarous, and the conquest of scientific
knowledge as space for colonization are all ciphered in the monkey’s name, the title of the story. The source
for Yzur’s name is clouded by mystery within the story itself but here I will outline a hypothesis. Following
the other titles of the collection, namely “La Fuerza Omega” and “La Metamsica,” and the themes of
transcending limits measured by positivistic science, the monkey’s name can be divided into two elements:
yz, the last two letters of the alphabet, and the prefix ur, meaning the first or the original. The two are, thus,
switched: the last two letters of the alphabet come first and what should be a prefix is made into a suffix.
This is a reminder of the multiple inversions that occur in the story and that operate parallel to each other:
the involution that the monkey represents in himself, the evolution that the scientist attempts to operate on
him, and the devolution that he experiments while descending into barbarism. In addition, the first and last
put together are evocative of another Bible verse, Revelation 22:13, rendered in the Authorized King James
Bible as “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Yzur is, indeed, the first
and the last: he is the first monkey to talk but also the last, since he takes his secret with him to the grave.
His name in itself contains the sum of his story, the discovery and immediate covering up of his secret.
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attempted the disassociation performed by them but is now haunted by a terrible figure.
Finally, the Argentine narrator offers to draw the outline of the Englishman’s shadow,
which turns out to be that of a monkey. The story ends with the phrase “Y conste que yo
no sé dibujar” (33).
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Dabove explains in detail how the tenets of Brantlinger’s Imperial Gothic appear in
the story. Nonetheless, he overlooks the conversation between the narrator and the
Englishman, in which, aside from establishing kinship and equal scientific knowledge
between the two, the issue of homeopathy is discussed: “Un glóbulo homeopático
determina oscilaciones iguales a las que produciría una dosis quinientas o mil veces
mayor” (35).
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That the Englishman is a homeopath is not an arbitrary detail and does
much more than merely suggest the zeitgeist in which the story takes place. Given that
the central focus of the story is contagion—the barbarous invading the civilized—the issue
of homeopathy becomes a clear analogy: a single drop is meant to have the same or even
more dire effect than a higher dose; in the same way, the slightest contact with the
barbarous can have devastating effects on the civilized. The animal, here the ominous
primate, stands for the barbarous and represents the surfacing of such contagion.
On the other hand, “Los Caballos de Abdera” and “El Escuerzo” are two stories that
abandon the idea of the cursed lineage or contagion to play on the trope of the bedeviled
animal or animal revenge. In “Los Caballos de Abdera,” horses, when invading human
spaces, start to become humans themselves, vices and all, recalling the themes of “Yzur.”
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“And for the record, I do not know how to draw”
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“A homeopathic globule determines oscillations equal to those that would be produced by a dose five
hundred or a thousand times greater.”
88
As for “El escuerzo,”
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not only does the story illustrate a form of local supernatural but it
also employs the animal avenger trope, with the Argentine horned frog (Ceratophrys
ornata) as the antagonist.
In the frame narrative, the young first-person narrator kills a horned frog
(escuerzo) and is told by the family maid that its corpse must be burned. The reason is
given in the form of a nested narrative that tells the “true” story of her friend, Antonia,
who lived with her child in a rural town. She finds and kills a horned frog who, according
to legend “no perdona jamás al que lo ofende. Si no lo queman, resucita, sigue el rastro de
su matador y no descansa hasta que puede hacer con él otro tanto” (50).
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When they go
back to look for the creature, it has left and so the setup for the revenge is complete. To
avoid the frog’s curse, Antonia has her son sleep inside a box, but the premature burial is
of no use: the frog appears and, after ballooning to three times its size and deflating,
leaves. Antonia opens the box to find her son dead inside what is now his coffin. In “El
Escuerzo,” Lugones combines elements of European/Anglo Gothic, namely the avenging
animal and the premature burial, to create an apparent folk legend. Like in his scientist
stories, where he combines actual science with speculation on the same diegetic level, the
author also combines folklore and literary tropes to create his own stories. The full effect,
then, can take place when all of the stories are considered through the lens of what Kelly
95
According to Pedro Luis Barcia, shortly before his suicide, Lugones was compiling a new anthology which
was to be called Cuentos de la Sierra, a clear analog to Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de la Selva. “El Escuerzo”
and “El Perro Flaco” (a story that Lugones never anthologized) were part of it. Together with Cuentos
Fatales’ “Águeda”, a legend-pastiche dressed in the trappings of gauchesca, these are the only three stories
in which Lugones engages with some form of local folklore.
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"it never forgives those who offend it. If he is not burned, he resuscitates, follows the trail of his killer, and
does not rest until he can do the same with him.”
89
Hurley terms “the revenge of matter.” For Hurley, “Slime is the revenge of matter, which
seeks to swallow up the known and bounded world into its amorphousness” (38). “El
escuerzo” is a Gothic Body that seeks to absorb the world into its amorphous, slimy being.
In the same way, the texts of Las fuerzas extrañas carry around physical relics from the
past: frogs of folk legend, the piano from “La Metamsica,” the tuning forks as part of the
machine of “La Fuerza Omega,” or the flaming tongues of Pentecost in “El Psychon,” all
serve as a springboard for future discovery but, at the same time, drag these very
discoveries into the bowels of the Past.
“El Milagro de San Wilfrido” adds another relic to the cabinet of curiosities in Las
fuerzas extrañas: the disembodied hand of a crucified saint. Together with “El Origen del
Diluvio,” “La Estatua de Sal,” and “La Lluvia de Fuego,” “El Milagro” is part of the group of
tales based on some form of Christian belief, scored by analogous elements from myths
and religious practices distinct from Christianity. “El Origen del Diluvio” tells the “true”
story of the Great Flood through the powers of a medium. The medium gives an
explanation in pseudo-scientific terms that reveals that the Biblical event was caused by
pressurization and depressurization of Earth’s atmosphere. According to this
mythological-scientific origin story, the first inhabitants of the Earth were mermaids (69).
The origin story is confirmed by a mermaid who appears at the end of the narrative inside
the kitchen sink. Concluding with material “proof” of the veracity of the story (like the
inert apparatus at the end of “La Fuerza Omega”) serves to tie together the story’s
multiple threads in a single narrative weave, a strategy that is repeated in “El Milagro de
San Wilfrido.”
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There is an array of classic Gothic elements in “El Milagro”: a medieval setting, a
disembodied body part (bound to become a relic [Gomes 92]), the body part’s revenge,
and the clash of opposing forces painted with the extreme chiaroscuro of Gothic
theatrics—all of which feature in The Castle of Otranto. Lugones sets the story in the
Crusades, a choice that allows him to add more layers of Gothic modeling through the
juxtaposition of the saintly Wilfrido de Hohenstein (pale, blonde, and clad in white armor)
with the sinister Abu-Djezzar. This type of racialized description is not foreign to but rather
constitutive of Gothic tradition (as I shall explore further in Chapter 3). Two of the most
prominent examples of Continental Gothic engage with heavily racialized descriptions of
Muslims: Vathek and Zofloya or The Moor. It could also be argued that Lugones took
inspiration from the Spanish tradition of the novela morisca, notable examples of which
include Cervantes’ “Historia del cautivo” and the anonymous Abencerraje; the portrayal of
Wilfrido as a repentant sinner who does penance over his dead wife’s grave (whom he
killed in a fit of jealousy) corresponds with the chivalric model parodied by Cervantes.
Nevertheless, Lugones’ representation of the brooding “Moor” against the Christian saint
does not follow these aesthetic cues and is much closer to those in the Gothic tradition.
Beyond these important intertextual details, “El Milagro de San Wilfrido” is, at its
core, a tale of martyrdom and revenge: Wilfrido de Hohenstein, the knight of the white
helm, (“el caballero del blanco yelmo”) is captured by “Saracens” whose leader, Abu
Djezzar, sentences Wilfrido to be crucified so that he may die “like his god” (“que muera
como su Dios”; 45) The decadent motif of the beautiful death forms part of the story,
since Wilfrido’s dead body is described in the following words: “La muerte no conseguía
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ajar su juventud, realzándola más bien como una escarcha fina sobre un mármol artístico”
(45).
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When Wilfrido is brought down from the cross, his hand remains nailed to it, the
same hand that will open “como una garra, retorciéndose en su clavo” (“like a claw,
writhing in its nail”: 46) and strangle Abu-Djezzar with his own hair.
The stories in Las fuerzas extrañas highlight several points in which the form of
expression discloses the Gothic Abstract Machine. It is, in fact, a crucial element that
unifies very different narrations. The scientific exploits of a Frankenstein-like figure in the
true fantaciencia stories, the atavistic linkages between the human and the non-human,
and the religious relics that appear as cursed or blessed objects are all tethered to the
Gothic. In this way, Lugones creates a rounded system in Las fuerzas extrañas in which
each story is a compact unit in constant communication with the other pieces, connected
by the throughline of the theosophical “Ensayo cosmogónico en doce lecciones”
(“Cosmogonic Essay in Twelve Lessons”) that concludes the book. The value of the Gothic
body as a remnant of the past carried off into the present and even into the future marks
the entirety of the collection, becoming itself a Gothic Machine where the factual and the
fantastic are seamlessly combined. Lugones had a clear notion of the “valor literario de lo
apócrifo” (“literary value of the apocryphal”; Quereilhac 210), since all the pieces of his
Gothic Machine are made to work on the same level, disregarding their veracity. Cuentos
de amor de locura y de muerte, on the contrary, does not operate like Lugones’ well-oiled
apparatus of perfect symmetry and style but as a jagged, imperfect Gothic Body that
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“Death could not diminish his youth but rather threw it into relief like a fine frost on a sculptor’s marble.”
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attempts to reach into Otherness by illustrating well-known Gothic tropes in combination
with the alluring threats of the Argentine jungle and bush.
“En plena barbarie del bosque tropical”: Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de amor de locura y
de muerte
Vehement and rough around the edges, with an unruly beard and a mysterious
aura, Horacio Quiroga was known both for his isolated lifestyle and his stories about the
jungle. The young dandy-turned-explorer by untamed nature dedicated a considerable
portion of his writing to Misiones and El Chaco, in texts in which he explored both the
fascinating features and the subjective experiences of the animal inhabitants of the two
regions. The intersection between this passion and the Gothic mode is most visible in
Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, a volume published in 1917. Firmly lodged
between Quiroga’s obsession with Poe and his turn to full naturalism, the collection
explores a variety of scenes set in rural landscapes but employs the tools of the Gothic
mode to portray the threatening though alluring otherness of such remote places.
However, not all of Nature is Othered in this way; Quiroga demonstrates that the
dramatism characteristic of Gothic modeling can also be used to express a subjective,
hetero-chronic discourse, the discourse of the animal Other.
Quiroga’s skillful blending of the rural Argentine landscape and Gothic modeling
hinges on his seeing death, as Andrée Collard puts it, “en todo y por todas partes” (“in
everything and everywhere”), particularly in “los mil peligros escondidos en la selva” (“the
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thousands of dangers hidden in the jungle”; 279).
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Though several years passed before
Quiroga could return, according to Noé Jitrik “El señorito deja de serlo y se promete
retorno a esa tierra fascinante” (“The dandy ceases to be a dandy and promises himself to
return to that fascinating land”; 21).
Quiroga’s transformation can be perceived, according to Marie Escalante in La
naturaleza como artificio, in the comparison between his and Lugones’ perspective
regarding the jungle of Misiones:
Si la visión interior de la naturaleza en Lugones supone en última instancia una
mirada que descompone la naturaleza ya sea en sus elementos minerales o en sus
cualidades eminentemente formales, estéticas, para Quiroga la visión subjetiva de
la catarata es más bien una experiencia de aventura y riesgo (253).
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This idea rings true when regarded in the light of both author’s personalities: Lugones, the
analytic academic and Quiroga the reckless adventurer.
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Escalante’s comments are also
echoed in the approach of Las fuerzas extrañas and Cuentos de amor de locura y de
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Lugones had been commissioned by the ministry of education to write a book about Jesuit ruins on the
banks of the Yabebirí River, eventually titled El Imperio Jesuítico.
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“If Lugones' inner vision of nature ultimately involves a gaze that decomposes nature either into its
mineral elements or into its eminently formal, aesthetic qualities, for Quiroga the subjective vision of the
waterfall is more an experience of adventure and risk.”
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Quiroga’s vocation for speed and adventure is well documented. As Emir Rodríguez Monegal states in his
prologue to Quiroga’s Parisian diary, “el vértigo de la velocidad aumenta, y así Quiroga cumple el ciclo
natural de todo aficionado: de la bicicleta a la motocicleta, luego al automóvil, por fin al avión.” (“the vertigo
of speed increases, and so Quiroga completes the natural cycle of all aficionados: from the bicycle to the
motorcycle, then to the automobile, and finally the airplane”; Prólogo 13). In the collected volume of letters
and writings entitled El hermano Quiroga, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada reveals just how extreme Quiroga’s
recklessness could get, comparing his desire for danger to Poe’s “Imp of the Perverse”: “La vectación
vespertina por la Avenida Alvear tampoco era cuestión de aceptar sin augures. Invitaba con voz que podía
significar: «¿Qué le parece si nos estrellásemos esta tarde? ¿No le resultaría magnífico que nos ahogáramos
en el Tigre?»” (34). (“The evening stroll along Alvear Avenue was not to be accepted without foreboding. He
invited with a voice that could mean: «What if we were to crash this afternoon? Wouldn't it be magnificent
if drowned in the Tigre? »".)
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muerte to the Gothic: while in Las fuerzas extrañas Lugones constructs and deconstructs
machinery, Quiroga derives meaning from the agonistic relationship between man and
Nature.
During the two decades that followed, Quiroga would not forget his misionero
adventure. On the contrary, most of the texts he wrote subsequently engage with his
memory of the setting as well as his experience at El Chaco in 1904.
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These rural tales
are known to critics as cuentos misioneros. He then published two of the books that would
consolidate his reputation as a canonical author: Cuentos de la Selva (children’s tales with
animal protagonists in the jungle of Misiones) and Cuentos de amor de locura y de
muerte.
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In Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, Quiroga includes some of the
darkest and most Gothic of his cuentos misioneros, which make up over half of the
collection.
Most of the author’s contact with the Gothic came through Poe’s work, though not
limited entirely to this single influence. That Edgar Allan Poe was Quiroga’s literary idol
and model is no secret. John Englekirk boldly states that “No other Hispanic prose writer
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In El Chaco, Quiroga tried his luck at becoming a cotton farmer but failed miserably.
102
Later in life, Quiroga moved to Misiones and into his famous chalet, where he would exercise his manual
and mechanical skills, sail a boat from San Ignacio to Buenos Aires down the Tigre River,
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and keep coatis,
anteaters, and capybaras as pets. Only illness could bring Quiroga out of the jungle back to Buenos Aires,
where he had to move to be treated for cancer. The progression of the disease would later motivate him to
cut his life short at only 58 years of age. By then, the author had published over 170 stories, some of which
were collected in anthologies.
Quiroga was an incredibly prolific writer who managed to publish ten short story collections and
two novels in his lifetime, in addition to his essays and other literary works. Many of his stories were
published in magazines like Caras y Caretas but never anthologized. Jitrik cites a fragment of a letter from
Quiroga to his editors where he estimates his complete works to be “La suma de 170 cuentos lo que ya es
una enormidad para un hombre solo. Incluya usted algo como el doble de artículos más o menos literarios y
convendrá usted en que tengo mi derecho a resistirme a escribir más. Si en toda dicha cantidad de páginas
no dije lo que quería, no es tiempo ya de decirlo.” (56)
95
has so vividly expressed the spirit of Poe’s tales” as the Uruguayan did (340). His
fascination with the American author is evident in his didactic texts and his works. The
eponymous piece of El crimen del otro (1904), an anthology of stories published prior to
Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, is a collage of references to Poe’s work.
103
The
first-person narrator of “El crimen del otro” states of his reading habits, “Ese maldito loco
había llegado a dominarme por completo; no había sobre la mesa un solo libro que no
fuera de él. Toda mi cabeza estaba llena de Poe, como si la hubieran vaciado en el molde
de Ligeia.”
104
The narrator could very well have been modeled on Quiroga himself in his
early years. Margo Glanz, Jitrik, and a host of critics have commented on this intertextual
relationship, which holds in a large portion of Quiroga’s oeuvre but is most evident in his
early works. Mary G. Berg expounds on this relationship in her text on Quiroga in Poe
Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities, affirming that “Once Quiroga was past the early
years of his apprenticeship, his explicit references to Poe are less frequent and not as
extensive, but they continue to appear and are more deeply embedded in the narratives”
(241).
Poe’s influence alone, however, does not explain Quiroga’s peculiar spin on the
Gothic: the other names on his “Decálogo del perfecto cuentista,”—Maupassant, Kipling,
and Chekhov—are not gratuitous. According to Jitrik, “La gallina degollada,” is a close
103
Quiroga’s protagonist, Fortunato (named after Montresor’s victim in “The Cask of Amontillado”) is
obsessed with Poe’s works and mentions them both directly (by name: “Ligeia,” “The Purloined Letter,” “The
Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” and “The Black Cat,” among others) and indirectly (by inserting names
and references into the text: “El sueño –cogió y siguió– o, más bien dicho, el ensueño durante el sueño, es
un estado de absoluta locura.” (“The dream—he continued—or, better yet, the dream within the dream, is a
state of absolute madness”; Quiroga Justa 152).
104
“That damned madman had managed to completely dominate me; there was not a single book on the
table that wasn’t his. My whole head was full of Poe, as if they had emptied it out in the mold of Ligeia.”
96
hypertext of Maupassant’s “Les idiots” and “El Infierno Artificial” is influenced by
Théophile Gautier’s narrations about the effects of opium. Even though Quiroga was
greatly disappointed with Paris, his early work was influenced by these French authors in
addition to decadents like Baudelaire and Verlaine. Such authors were the focus of
Quiroga’s Consistorio period, when, according to Jitrik, “Lo que predomina es la
experimentación modernista acompañada por la experiencia de drogas, registrada más
tarde en diversos cuentos por Quiroga. Cloroformo, haschisch, elementos indispensables
para exagerar la sensibilidad y también para celebrar ‘Misas Negras’ que debían conmover
el ambiente artístico montevideano” (Quiroga 16).
105
The influence of the French
decadents, bolstered by a generation that according to Englekirk was “obsessed with Poe”
(341), was nonetheless undercut by Quiroga’s own interests. These took him toward
Maupassant’s naturalism, Russian realism, and Rudyard Kipling’s sensibility towards the
Indian jungle and its animals, as expressed in his short stories of The Jungle Book (1894)
and The Second Jungle Book (1895) in particular.
106
Like Maupassant, Kipling, and Poe,
Quiroga would come to be known for his short stories, a genre in which he is considered,
like the authors he treasured, a master and an innovator. As Jitrik states, Cuentos de amor
de locura y de muerte “tiene que haber hecho cambiar muchos conceptos sobre el cuento
105
“What predominates is modernist experimentation accompanied by the experience of drugs, recorded
later in several stories by Quiroga. Chloroform, haschisch, indispensable elements to exaggerate the
sensibility and also to celebrate ‘Black Masses’ that shook the Montevidean artistic scene.”
106
Short story books for children were not common amongst modernistas. Quiroga’s Cuentos de la Selva,
thus, seem to be inspired by the Uruguayan’s personal referents like Kipling.
97
e incluso puede haber servido para comprender en qué podía consistir un ‘estilo nacional’
de hacer cuentos” (Quiroga 33).
107
Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte was anthologized by Quiroga at the behest
of his friend Manuel Gálvez, the editor of the Cooperativa Editorial Buenos Aires. As for
the book’s composition, it is important to note that, contrary to Lugones’ mathematical
distribution and perfect thematic cohesion in Las fuerzas extrañas (which remained
unchanged for the most part between the 1906 and 1926 editions), Quiroga’s text is made
of eighteen dissimilar stories, three of which were excised from future editions (“El perro
rabioso,” “Los ojos sombríos,” and “El Infierno Artificial”). Cuentos de amor de locura y de
muerte became an instant success (Jitrik Quiroga 32-33) and, together with Cuentos de la
Selva, served to define Quiroga’s public image. The transformation from “señorito” into
“el hombre rudo, de la gran barba cerrada, el silencioso y poco amigo de gestos, el
hombre que había convivido con alimañas y hombres peligrosos” (Jitrik Desterrados 110)
was complete.
108
Quiroga’s passion for the jungle of Misiones did not translate into an idyllic vision
of the landscape and its vegetal and animal inhabitants. On the contrary, its beauty
resides both in its wild peculiarities and in the possibility of human will to act upon it. Jitrik
provides a glimpse into the Hemingway-esque edge of the misionero stories by describing
their relationship with nature as “Un largo proceso de reconocimiento de una realidad
107
“must have changed many ideas about the short story and may even have helped to understand what a
'national style' of storytelling might consist of.”
108
“the rough man, with the big bushy beard, the silent and surly, the man who had lived with vermin and
dangerous men…”
98
hostil con la cual se miden las fuerzas y a la que se quiere derrotar” (Jitrik Quiroga 45).
109
Jorge Marcone deems Quiroga’s characters (particularly those of his later books)
“pioneers,” an apt descriptor for the role of “man” in this agon. Even if he has great
sympathy for the plant and animal life of the jungle, the pioneer’s “return” to a natural life
cannot occur within the jungle itself (81), a dark, wild, hellscape incompatible with what is
perceived as human development. Thus, Quiroga’s vision of the jungle is composed of
multiple shades of grey: he criticizes human activity and the excesses of extractivism in
tales like “Los destiladores de naranja” and “Anaconda” while at the same time setting
forth a colonialist path for the individual’s “conquest” of the jungle that excludes
communal work (Marcone 82) and indigenous peoples almost completely.
The conflict between man and nature becomes the starting point for Quiroga’s
misionero stories, which, at that stage of his work, employ Gothic elements to narrate the
aforementioned agon. Nonetheless, not all of Nature becomes the Ur-other. A being’s
pertinence to the group of enunciation is determined through a matrix that combines the
being’s degree of domesticity and anthropomorphism. Hence, in Quiroga, some animals
are companions
110
and some are fragments of the body-without-organs of an antagonistic
Nature. Donna Haraway sets up this conflict and the Gothic appeal of Otherness in the
discursive division between Nature and Culture, Human and Non-Human in When Species
Meet: “to be human is to be on the opposite side of the Great Divide from all the others
and so to be afraid of—and in bloody love with—what goes bump in the night” (11).
109
“a long process of recognizing a hostile reality to which one has to measure up and against which one
seeks to prevail”
110
In letters to his children, anthologized as Cartas de la Selva, Quiroga laments the death of one of his
hunting dogs, bitten by a rattlesnake: “¡Pobre mi perro, compañero mío!” (“Poor dog, my companion!”; 49).
99
Nature is thus the “other side,” where things that crawl in the dark jungle floors reign and,
most importantly, where things that are supernatural or hard to believe for bourgeois
man, can occur. The “other side” is constitutive of the form of content that underpins this
specific assemblage (Modernista Gothic assemblage), one of the many faces of otherness.
In this way, the language of the non-mimetic, as associated with the Gothic
(fantasy/fantastic) and learned from the decadents and Quiroga’s American master, is
employed as form of expression to depict this “other side”—the jungle and “monte” as an
obscure, mysterious place—but also as a way to portray the subjectivity of certain
animals, in particular those of the domestic variety. Despite their nature, they stand with
the Human or in other words with Culture in the artificial Nature/Culture divide, making
them ambiguous figures particularly vulnerable to Gothic regression.
Quiroga’s oeuvre contains an abundance of animal stories that feature imaginary
animal discourse. The most prominent examples are the animals of Cuentos de la Selva, as
well as the charismatic Anaconda from “Anaconda” and “El regreso de Anaconda.” These
stories, nonetheless, have distinct registers and combinations of tone and mode. The
stories of Cuentos de la Selva are explicitly aimed toward children which, in Quiroga’s
work, translates to an unambiguous ending with a positive slant. A
merveilleux/maravilloso non-mimetic register is predominant, combined with the
feuilleton mode of adventure in “Anaconda.” Jens Andermann comments on this issue in
his analysis of “Yaguaí” (in Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte), stating that the story
is “uno de los primeros cuentos donde Quiroga experimenta con esa perspectiva flotante
entre especies que distingue a su obra de un modo radical de las fábulas, las narrativas
100
que emplean al animal en tanto figuración de calidades o aspectos de lo humano"
(Andermann 193).
111
By juxtaposing “Anaconda” and Cuentos de la Selva with the stories
anthologized in Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, the gravitas Quiroga gives to
animal stories in the latter text is most evident. The tragic chiaroscuro in Cuentos de amor
de locura y de muerte is achieved through the Gothic mode.
In representing the agonistic relation between man and nature, Quiroga chooses
the Gothic form of expression to depict his stories’ antagonists. A gigantic flea-like
parasite that lives in feather pillows, a yarara with a deadly bite, or the debilitating heat of
the sun all play the role of antagonists in Quiroga’s stories. “El almohadón de plumas,”
probably his most well-known story, is a retelling of a vampire tale in which the fair-haired
Gothic victim, “rubia, angelical y tímida” (blonde, angelical, and shy) Alicia, is killed by a
monstrous flea in her pillow (Cuentos 37).
112
Quiroga, well-acquainted with Gothic tropes
and stylings, places red herrings at every turn to trick the reader into believing that it is a
traditional vampire story. Cynthia Duncan expresses this clearly: “Initially, it appears to be
almost a literary cliché, a throwback to romanticism and the cultivation of gothic horror
tales. Readers, familiar with this kind of writing, may expect monsters and ghouls to
appear in the text, but they do not” (65). In her feverish deliria, Alicia sees “un
antropoide” (39), a clear attempt at misdirection by the author. The monster is not the
expected anthropomorphous vampire but a disgusting and perhaps even more frightening
111
"...one of the first stories where Quiroga experiments with that floating perspective between species that
distinguishes his work in a radical way from the fables, the narratives that use animals as a representation of
qualities or aspects of the human"
112
All subsequent quotations of Quiroga’s work, unless otherwise noted, are taken from Cuentos de amor de
locura y de muerte.
101
insect. The insect itself—nameless, characterless, and devoid of any human traits—is the
opposite of the anthropoid shape expected in a vampire narrative. If, as Bakhtin puts it in
his theorization about carnival in Rabelais and his World, the human body is the idea of
perfection, Quiroga’s vampire is the most grotesque of them all.
The role of the insect as an antagonist is unambiguous, and is reprised in “La miel
silvestre,” in which the poisonous honey of a local type of bee paralyzes the naïve
Benincasa, who is later eaten by a “corrección” of army ants. Nonetheless, other stories
blur the line between the Otherness of nature and the role of the human as the hero. That
is the case of the dog that can be the antagonist (“El perro rabioso”) or a victim of nature
(“La Insolación,” “Yaguaí”).
Only certain animals play the role of protagonist in Cuentos de amor de locura y de
muerte. An animal’s aptness as protagonist is determined by a combination of its
domesticity, its similarity to humans, and plot convenience. In “El alambre de pa,” two
horses are the protagonists/witnesses to the demise of Barigüí, a bull who had been the
bane of a farmer’s oat crop. The two horses can talk amongst themselves and to the cows,
Barigüí’s admirers and followers. In “La Insolación,” however, the dog protagonists can
talk amongst themselves but not to other animals, such as chickens who merely run by;
one of the dogs is bitten by an insect, whose life is completely disregarded by the
narration.
Having established that the degree of subjectivity/personhood granted to animals
differs from story to story and from animal to animal, I would like to consider the three
dog stories of Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte. “La Insolación,” “Yaguaí,” and “El
102
Perro Rabioso” are all stories about dogs, though the disease plaguing the animal in the
last story transforms the anthropomorphized pet into a potential source of contagion.
When suffering from disease, the animal becomes part of the dark, antagonistic otherness
of Nature.
In “Especismo, Empatía y Diálogo,” an article on ecological representation in
Spanish American literature, Alejandro Lámbarry and Marissa Gálvez define the Western
understanding of animality in the following terms:
En la cultura occidental antropocéntrica la animalidad es asociada a la ferocidad de
ciertas especies depredadoras cuya capacidad de supervivencia se basa en el
ejercicio de la caza de otras especies menores; pensar en la posibilidad de una
animalización en el ser humano, deriva en la construcción de un híbrido en el que
sobresale la fuerza pero no el raciocinio (66).
113
When domestic animals, whose ferocious instincts have been tamed, coexist with “wild”
animals, it is degree of domesticity or potential for domestication that determines their
role as protagonist or antagonist. The dog as part of Nature and “the wild,” at one
extreme of the scale, is the rabid dog from “El perro rabioso.” Essentially a tale of
lycanthropy, “El perro rabioso” tells the story of Federico through his diary. As Marie
Escalante states in La Naturaleza Como Artificio, “el cuento se inicia con la oposición,
confrontación entre hombre y animal y luego postula la inquietante y terrible o trágica
113
“In the anthropocentric western culture, animality is associated with the ferocity of certain predatory
species whose survival capacity is based on the hunting of other smaller species; to think of the possibility of
animalization in human beings leads to the construction of a hybrid in which strength stands out, but not
reason.”
103
transformación del hombre en animal” (283).
114
The tale, nonetheless, starts prior to
Federico’s diary entries by relating to the reader how “los vecinos de un pueblo del Chaco
santafecino persiguieron a un hombre rabioso […] lo rastrearon en el monte como a una
fiera, hallándolo por fin trepado en un árbol, con su escopeta aún y aullando de un modo
horrible.” (55).
115
The man, whom we are told the neighbors had no choice but to shoot
dead, is Federico himself, whose diary becomes the principal narrative thereafter. He
retells how he was bitten by a rabid dog and how, after forty days, he feels he has not
been affected. His diary entries nevertheless denote his increasingly irritable and wild
behavior. By the last diary entry, Federico is suffering from hallucinations that cause him
to attempt to kill his wife and, finally, climb up a tree with a shotgun before he is gunned
down.
The rabid dog’s portrayal deserves closer analysis. More than an individual, it is a
mobile threat of rabies, part of a pack, multiple, not individuated (the dog that bites the
protagonist is a rabid dog out of many), and a source of painful, horrifying howls. Federico
mentions these howls and how they are one of the most horrifying sounds he has ever
heard: “No creo que haya nada más profundamente lgubre que un aullido de perro
rabioso a esa hora” (59).
116
The “metallic” and “dreary” (“lgubre”) howl will be passed on
to Federico once his transformation is complete. The color of the dog is also significant,
particularly when compared to the domesticated dogs in “La Insolación” and “Yaguaí.” The
114
"...the story begins with the opposition, confrontation between man and animal and then postulates the
disturbing and terrible or tragic transformation of man into animal."
115
“the inhabitants of a town in the Chaco region of Santa Fe chased a rabid man [...] they tracked him
through the bush like a wild beast, finally finding him up a tree, still holding his shotgun and howling in a
horrible way.”
116
“I do not believe there is anything more profoundly dismal than the howl of a rabid dog at that hour”
104
rabid dogs, even though there are several of them, are always dark in color, either brown
or black. The particular dog that bites Federico is black. The rabid dogs have also learned a
“verdadero proceder de fieras,” allowing them to walk without being seen or heard, thus
increasing their power as a potential threat (58).
117
Combined with their frothing mouths
and glowing eyes (59), all these traits turn them from potentially friendly animals into
monsters.
Quiroga takes full advantage of the homonymy between “rabies” (“rabia”) and
“rage” (“rabia”). When Federico becomes “rabid,” the symptoms made visible to the
reader (who is cognizant only of the information in the diary) are his increasing anger and
paranoia, directed towards his family, who he assumes is suspicious of him: “En cuanto
llego cesan de golpe, y apenas me alejo un paso recomienza el vertiginoso parloteo. No he
podido contenerme y me he vuelto con rabia: —¡Pero hablen, hablen delante, que es
menos cobarde!” (65).
118
Federico’s phrase is purposefully equivocal: the character means
he has turned around in a rage to yell, but the reader is becoming privy to the fact that he
is turning “rabid.” The protagonist’s condition worsens until he suffers from visual and
auditory hallucinations: he spends the night hearing howls and even “seeing” them: “¡Y mi
mujer y mi madre han fingido el más plácido sueño, para que yo solo absorbiera por los
ojos los aullidos de todos los perros que me miraban!...” (65).
119
Federico’s deterioration
culminates in the visual hallucination of snakes and the belief that his family, together
with the townspeople, want him dead. Federico’s Gothic regression is complete: like Jekyll
117
“true wild beast behavior”
118
“I could not restrain myself and turned in rage: -But speak up, speak up front, it is less cowardly!"
119
“And my wife and my mother have feigned the most placid sleep, so that only I could absorb through my
eyes the howls of all the dogs that were watching me!...”
105
and Hyde or Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, he has transitioned from the civilized into the
barbarous.
The weather—a constant throughout Quiroga’s stories—is itself a character in “El
Perro Rabioso.” Quiroga employs the harsh weather of El Chaco and Misiones according to
the narrative beats of his stories. In this case, the pathetic fallacy functions through the
rain, which is incessant and unnaturally heavy, trapping the family inside the house, which
is besieged by the rabid dog outbreak. This narrative technique is even more prominent in
“La Insolación.”
In contrast to the amorphous, dangerous body-without-organs of “El perro
rabioso,” in “La Insolación” the dogs are not Nature but its collateral victims. Old, Milk,
Prince, Dick and Isond, Mr. Jones’s five fox terriers, are the protagonists of a story based
on the “...superstición universal que atribuye a los perros la facultad de [presentir la
Muerte] y anunciarla por medio de aullidos quejumbrosos” (Collard 279).
120
The supernatural element of the story—Death appearing as a ghostly Mr. Jones—is
not inherently harmful but is instead considered as inevitable as the heat. As indicated by
the fragment from Collard’s essay quoted above, the five dogs are the only ones who
react to the apparition by growling and barking. Despite the fear it inspires in the dogs,
Death’s attitude is not threatening: the figure merely walks to meet Mr. Jones, who
recognizes he is out of breath seconds before dying. The encounter between Mr. Jones
and Death is not violent—it is merely that, an encounter: “El otro llegaba ya. Los perros
120
“universal superstition that attributes to dogs the faculty of [foreseeing Death] and announcing it by
means of plaintive howls”
106
hundieron el rabo y corrieron de costado, aullando. Pasó un segundo, y el encuentro se
produjo. Míster Jones se detuvo, giró sobre sí mismo y se desplomó” (94-95).
121
The
Gothic, thus, appears in the unconventional construction of heat as an oppressive,
inescapable force that calls forth Death in the shape of a ghost.
As foretold by the dogs, the story has a tragic ending and a swift resolution once
Mr. Jones dies. His dogs are left “flacos y sarnosos, e iban todas las noches con
hambriento sigilo a robar espigas de maíz en las chacras ajenas” (95).
122
The
transformation of the spoiled dog into the “perro de monte,” closer to the rabid dog in the
scale of domesticity, is the focus of the last dog story, “Yaguaí.”
“Yaguaí” is one of the stories of Quiroga’s collection in which, as Collard points out,
the supernatural element is completely absent (279). Though an omniscient narrator,
Quiroga tells the story of a white fox terrier
123
named “Yaguaí” who “goes native”
(recalling Brantlinger) after an experience in the jungle. Tragically, his transformation,
framed in the story as an ambiguous regression, is also monstrous: Yaguaí has changed
from a house pet to a wild dog, a “perro de monte,” and is thus confused by his former
master, who accidentally shoots him dead.
An understated animal tale in the vein of Kipling or Chekhov’s “Kashtanka,”
121
"The other one was already arriving. The dogs dipped their tails and ran sideways, howling. A second
passed, and the encounter occurred. Mr. Jones stopped, turned in on himself and collapsed."
122
“skinny and mangy, and they went every night with hungry stealth to steal ears of corn from other
people's fields.”
123
Quiroga mentions a white fox terrier like Yaguaí, an Englishman’s dog, in his letters but this canine suffers
a much milder fate. In the letter called “Cacería del zorrino”, Quiroga describes how the white fox terrier,
unaware of his surroundings and local species, attacks a skunk and is sprayed. Although the white dog is
spared, the Englishman’s other fox terriers are said to have died in India, after confusing snakes with worms.
It is, thus, the inadequacy of the breed to its surroundings that puts the dog in danger. (Quiroga Cartas 77-
78)
107
“Yaguaí” gestures toward the naturalism of “Los desterrados” but employs a Gothic
narrative for effect, parallel to Brantlinger’s “going native” of Imperial Gothic. The process
is, nonetheless, not identical, since Yaguaí’s “regression” is a change from an artificial,
constructed domesticity to a form of brute force that stems from his breed. However,
even if the dog has found a sliver of his “true” nature, the fact that this happened in the
“barbarism of the tropical forest” (“barbarismo de bosque tropical”) marks Yaguaí with
the sign of death and makes the narration all the more tragic.
As in “La Insolación,” the only real antagonistic force is the weather of Misiones,
which dries the crop and forces Yaguaí into the hands of Fragoso and his hunting dogs.
The heat dries up the well Yaguaí used to play in, a symbol of the tragedy about to befall
him. As the temperature increases, the terminology used to describe the well and its
surroundings becomes darker and more akin to Gothic imagery: it is a beautiful harbinger
of death. First, the green pasture is transformed into “una blancura amarillenta, y a fines
de Noviembre sólo quedaban de él columnitas truncas sobre la negrura desolada del
rozado” (239).
124
This desolate blackness is accompanied by a sun that “mataba
instantáneamente a las hormigas rubias” (“instantly killed the red ants”; 239). The
narrator, following Yaguaí, depicts the scene of the drying well in the following terms:
el sol, cayendo sobre el río, sosteníase asfixiado en perfecto círculo de sangre. Y
mientras el viento cesaba por completo y en el aire aún abrasado Yaguaí arrastraba
por la meseta su diminuta mancha blanca, las palmeras, recortándose inmóviles
124
“a yellowish whiteness, and by late November only truncated columns of it remained on the desolate
blackness of the bush.”
108
sobre el río cuajado en rubí, infundían en el paisaje una sensación de lujoso y
sombrío oasis (240).
125
The description of a luxurious and shadowy oasis with the sun as a bloody disc shining
over a red river is an image of both beauty and terror. The image is visually striking but the
reality that it represents is horrifying for Yaguaí, who can barely take the heat. Quiroga
stresses how inadequate the fox terrier is for the heat of Misiones, being a dog that
cannot stand “el calor tropical para el que su raza no había sido creada” (237).
126
Yaguaí
exercises his hunting skills with lizards and the few rats that crawl around Cooper’s (his
owner’s) house. His limited chops prompt one of the peons to remark derisively “no sirve
más que para bichitos...” (237).
127
Yaguaí is decidedly not a “perro de monte” like the ones Quiroga mentions in the
letters to his children from Misiones: “…perros de monte, sin familia conocida, ni padres
muchas veces conocidos tampoco. Pero como perros de caza, bravos, resistentes y
tenaces para correr, no tenían iguales” (34). The “perro de monte,” an animal without
family and without a name, is not exactly an abject rabid dog but it cannot be a house pet.
Fragoso, the peon who takes Yaguaí, owns a few of these and none of them are named.
Like Quiroga’s own dogs, they are “bravos, resistentes y tenaces para correr,”; they are, in
short, tools, professionals of death, not pets. What sets off Yaguaí’s transformation is his
cohabitation with Fragoso’s dogs under the drought’s duress:
125
“the sun, falling on the river, held itself suffocated in a perfect circle of blood. And while the wind ceased
completely and the air still scorched Yaguaí dragged its tiny white spot across the plateau, the palm trees,
standing motionless on the river curdled in ruby, infused the landscape with a feeling of a luxurious and
somber oasis.”
126
“the tropical heat for which his race had not been created”
127
“it's only good for hunting bugs...”
109
[Yaguaí] había adquirido con pasmosa rapidez el aspecto humillado, servil y
traicionero de los perros del país. Aprendió entonces a merodear de noche en los
ranchos vecinos, avanzando con cautela, las piernas dobladas y elásticas,
hundiéndose lentamente al pie de una mata de espartillo, al menor rumor hostil.
Aprendió a no ladrar por más furor o miedo que tuviera, y a gruñir de un modo
particularmente sordo, cuando el cuzco de un rancho defendía a éste del pillaje.
[…] Y a fines de enero, de la mirada encendida, las orejas firmes sobre los ojos, y el
rabo alto y provocador del fox-terrier, no quedaba sino un esqueletillo sarnoso, de
orejas echadas atrás y rabo hundido y traicionero, que trotaba furtivamente por
los caminos (242).
128
The depiction of Yaguaí’s transformation into a “perro de monte” is strikingly similar to
Quiroga’s description of the rabid dogs in “El perro rabioso.” The little white dog, now
mangy and humiliated, has the same imperceptible step that characterized the rabid dogs
in addition to the absence of barks. The metallic howl of the rabid dogs is the only real
difference between them and the “perro de monte” that Yaguaí is becoming. His
newfound familiarity with these dogs is depicted in a moonlit scene, where the starved
canines bite off sugar cane to eat: “en el rozado negro de árboles quemados, que la
fúnebre luz del menguante volvía más espectral, los perros se movieron de aquí para allá
128
“…had acquired with astonishing rapidity the humiliated, servile and treacherous aspect of the dogs of
the country. He learned then to prowl at night in the neighboring ranches, advancing cautiously, legs bent
and elastic, sinking slowly at the foot of cordgrass bushes, at the slightest hostile rumor. He learned not to
bark no matter how much anger or fear he had, and to growl in a particularly muffled way, when the
mongrel of a ranch defended it from pillage. [...] And by the end of January, of the fiery look, the firm ears
over the eyes, and the high and taunting tail of the fox-terrier, there remained only a mangy little skeleton,
with ears thrown back and a sunken and treacherous tail, which trotted furtively along the roads.”
110
entre las cañas, gruñéndose mutuamente” (244).
129
It is the “funerary” light of the waning
sun that creates the somber ambiance of the scene that represents not Yaguaí and the
dogs but “los perros” altogether, indicating that Yaguaí is now almost one of them.
Paradoxically, Yaguaí’s transformation is not the ultimate regression narrated in
the story. Yaguaí has “gone native” in the most literal sense: the English dog has acquired
the customs of the local “perro de monte.” Nonetheless, Yaguaí does not exhibit the
violent traits that would accompany such a regression. In an interesting twist orchestrated
by Quiroga, the dog’s violent traits come from his breed’s nature, stirred and brought to
light by the “barbarism” of Misiones.
In the forest, Yaguaí recognizes for the first time the natural predisposition of the
fox terrier for hunting small mammals when he is called to clear the cornfields of a plague
of rodents:
en plena barbarie de bosque tropical y miseria, surgieron los ojos brillantes, el rabo
alto y duro, y la actitud batalladora del admirable perro inglés. Hambre,
humillación, vicios adquiridos, todo se borró en un segundo ante las ratas que
salían de todas partes. Y cuando volvió por fin a echarse, ensangrentado, muerto
de fatiga, tuvo que saltar tras las ratas hambrientas que invadían literalmente el
rancho. (246)
130
129
“in the black brushwood of burnt trees, which the funereal light of the waning sun made more spectral,
the dogs moved back and forth among the reeds, snarling at each other”
130
"in the midst of the barbarism of the tropical forest and misery, the shining eyes, the high and strong tail,
and the fighting attitude of the admirable English dog emerged. Hunger, humiliation, acquired vices, all were
erased in a second before the rats that came out from everywhere. And when he finally returned to lie
down, bloodied, dead tired, he had to jump after the hungry rats that were literally invading the ranch".
111
For Quiroga, Yaguaí acquires dignity in releasing his repressed self, which distances him
from the humiliation and “acquired vices” learned from the “perros de monte.” The image
of the bloodied white dog nonetheless contrasts starkly with the playful and finicky Yaguaí
presented at the start of the story.
Once fully transformed and wild (“gone native”), Yaguaí cannot return to his
previous life of domesticity; he has become “un ser desarticulado de cualquier alianza”
(Andermann 196).
131
Discussing repression and how it relates to “going native,”
Brantlinger states that “if, as Freud argued, civilization is based on the repression of
instincts, then when the demands of repression become excessive, civilization itself is
liable to break down” (194). What would happen if the now violent Yaguaí returned to his
role as Cooper’s pet? Would he hurt his owner’s young children, who mourn the dog’s
death at the end of the story? Would he be able to repress his newfound albeit archaic
“true” nature as a violent animal? The reader is left in the dark regarding these questions,
since Yaguaí’s attempt to return is frustrated when he is shot down by Cooper himself.
Like Kurtz, he has become a monster, a being in between Culture and Nature, between
Civilization and Barbarism, unsuitable as a pet but with a dignity unknown to the “perros
de monte.” Cooper shoots the dog, it should be noted, under the mistaken assumption
that it is one of the “perros de monte” that have been carrying off his chickens. The
mistake is prompted by the cover of night but also by Yaguaí’s unrecognizable
appearance, which causes Cooper to confuse him for an undignified dog—one that he can
shoot without a shred of remorse. The following morning, a second anagnorisis is
131
"a being disarticulated from any alliance”
112
described. Cooper recognizes his error when “siguiendo el rastro de sangre, halló a Yaguaí
muerto al borde del pozo del bananal” (249).
132
Without falling neatly into a single mode
or genre, Yaguaí’s story combines strokes of naturalism, the Gothic, and even Greek
tragedy. The “fall” of the spoiled white dog and the two scenes of anagnorisis turn what
could be a simple story of Gothic regression (like “El perro rabioso”) into a harrowing and
bitter study of an out-of-place creature, a victim of circumstances.
Of the misionero stories in Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, only two
remain: “Los mens” and “Los pescadores de vigas.” These two stories are far from the
Gothic aesthetic and it would be a stretch to associate them with the Gothic abstract
machine. The remaining stories fall under the category of “love” in the three descriptors in
the anthology’s title. “Una estación de amor,” “La Muerte de Isolda,” “Los ojos sombríos,”
“La meningitis y su sombra,” “El Infierno Artificial,” and “El solitario” deal with a very
conventional, romantic love and its intersection with madness and death. The presence of
the Gothic is, then, much greater and much more evident in these stories that, while less
unique than Quiroga’s misionero tales, give us a complete picture of just how deep the
writer’s filiation with the Gothic ran.
In Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte Quiroga offers a collection
demonstrating that he had overcome the models of his youth and was capable of
producing texts that could transcend his models to create something unique. The two
halves of the collection—the cuentos misioneros and the more conventional stories—are
132
"...following the trail of blood, he found Yaguaí dead at the edge of the banana plantation's well”
113
nonetheless united through the Gothic, thereby forming a collection that, though jagged
and uneven, has the same wild spirit.
The elements of the Gothic Abstract Machine—the cogs that keep the Modernista
Gothic Assemblage together—prove to be essential for the reading of these two short
story collections. They reveal the profound connections between the decadent form of
expression and the postcolonial-ideological form of content. The two anthologies
represent distinctive strains of the Gothic in Spanish American modernismo: one is
mechanistic and scientific, the other is intense and passionate. Lugones’ scientists and
mediums, Quiroga’s nature and its victims have in common the notion of teleological
progress characteristic of modernity, common to both modernism and modernismo, albeit
in different fashions. The conception of progress as a straight, logical line is at the
foundation of both collections, not only as the backbone of stories but also as a target for
challenges from atavistic forces. The oscillation between the project of modernity and a
fascination for the past proper to modernismo makes it a form of expression particularly
open to the Gothic’s infectious character. Gothic anachronism, an important part of its
abstract machine, allows one to read both collections as double-faced entities: one face
looks towards the future (technology, progress, man’s conquest of nature) while the other
is still entranced by the past. Achievements of modernista short story writing, the two
collections demonstrate not only that the Gothic had arrived to the continent but also
that it bore its own distinctive fruits on foreign soil.
114
Chapter 3
Ce n’est pas le Pérou: La Venganza del Cóndor, indigenismo and the
Gothic
133
On a dreary Parisian night, a writer dreams of the mystical lands whence his family
was exiled. A wondrous fantasy of gold and conquest turns into a bitter nightmare when a
gigantic black bird knocks at the author’s window. The Andean condor, an envoy of Peru’s
plundered imperial past, has come to enact cosmic justice and take revenge on the
“intruders” who have pillaged the land to feed the incipient nation-state that the author
represents. Unlike the raven’s interlocutor, the author does not need to ask any
questions: the vengeance he has always feared is finally here. This passage might be
fictitious (the author in question never had such a dream that we know of) but, not unlike
his own stories, represents a real fear—or at the very least a discourse about such a fear
that was mobilized by the author with artistic intent.
Ventura García Calderón’s 1924 short story collection La venganza del cóndor (The
Revenge of the Condor) stands as a paradigmatic example of how indigenismo, a complex
array of discourse about indigenous peoples in Spanish America, employs the Gothic
mode as a way to abject its subject, simultaneously depicted as “seductor y peligroso”
(“seductive and dangerous”; Kristal 66). The tenuous defense of indigenous peoples
purported by García Calderón’s brand of indigenismo is outweighed by the violence of the
133
A significantly revised version of this chapter, with a focus on the ecoGothic, has been published in the
fifth issue of Gothic Nature.
115
Gothic lens through which the Andes and its inhabitants are seen—a lens that deforms
and mutates, that makes animals into monsters, traditions into satanic rituals, and nature
into a hellscape. Because of its inherent complexities, La venganza del cóndor has
consistently been a source of contention since its initial publication. Read by European
critics as a realistic depiction of Peruvian natives and, at the same time, as an insufficient
caricature by Peruvian critics, the text has proved to be a continual challenge to generic
categorization and critical imagination. The debate around La venganza del cóndor,
framed by the polarities of realism and pure fantasy, exploitation, and literary prowess,
obfuscates what the Gothic lays bare: García Calderón’s artifact is both violent and
beautiful at the same time. This type of representation, a dense fabric of fictive modeling,
reveals a different truth than the one rendered by a reading within the paradigm of
realism: not the truth of a verisimilar representation, but of fear staged and wielded as
fiction.
To extricate the complex network of symbols, readings, genre categorizations, and
anthropological and literary debates that score La venganza del cóndor, it is crucial to
provide the context surrounding the paradigm of indigenismo and the author’s position
within it.
El problema del indio
After a disastrous defeat in the Saltpeter War, the Peruvian intelligentsia’s focus on
modernizing the nation became obsessive. According to their perspective, an
insurmountable problem stood in their way. The problema del indio (Indian question or
116
Indian problem) had to be “resolved”: how could Andean nations become modern when
indigenous peoples (indios at the time, now considered derogatory), imagined as atavistic
and backward by the ruling class, made up a significant portion of the population? As
Coronado puts it, the debates concerning the nation’s progress were invariably linked to
the question of the indio or, more specifically, to the idea that criollo elites had of
indigenous peoples:
the indio, represented by others’ projections, became the critical component of
the new configurations of Andean society and culture that these practices
imagined. That is to say, the discourses of indigenismo were always also ways of
figuring how the region might, in its own way, become modern. (1)
Part of the problema del indio was the process through which indigenous peoples were to
be transformed into Peruvians, members of the modern nation-state. As Natalia Majluf
explains in La Invención del Indio (2022), in the minds of criollo ideologues, being Peruvian
(modern) was antithetical and incompatible with being indigenous. For this reason, “los
indios debían convertirse en peruanos, ciudadanos iguales a todos los demás. Los
discursos aparentemente neutrales de la nación liberal sugerían un proceso civilizador que
acabaría por desindianizar el Per.” (54).
134
Pushing the idea of modernity, as Walter Mignolo argues, is directly linked to
coloniality, since “to complete the incomplete project of modernity means to keep on
reproducing coloniality” (xv). Ideas about how to address the “problem” as an obstacle to
134
"the “indios” were to become Peruvians, citizens equal to all others. The apparently neutral discourses of
the liberal nation suggested a civilizing process that would eventually de-Indianize Peru."
117
achieving a modern nation-state can be grouped around two main nodes: the Novecientos
generation (José de la Riva Agüero, Victor Belaunde, and the García Calderón brothers)
and the earliest modern forms of sociopolitical indigenismo espoused by Manuel González
Prada.
During the time Ventura García Calderón engaged in the debates of the Peruvian
intelligentsia, González Prada
135136
was already an established political figure who
opposed the conservative ideologues of the previous generation. A classical anarchist and
a staunch anti-Spain ideologue, he focused in his texts on national identity and the
problema del indio, at first advocating for better conditions for indigenous peoples and
later grew increasingly radical over time.
Early modern debates over el problema del indio echo the 1550 Valladolid debate,
in which one side condemned the abuse suffered by indigenous peoples, arguing that such
135
In his own essay on Peruvian literature, “La literature peruana”, Ventura García Calderón states that the
three most important authors of “el Per independiente” are Ricardo Palma, González Prada and José
Santos Chocano. In the same essay, he maintains that Ricardo Palma is the most “national” of the three and
that González Prada is “el menos peruano de los escritores” (“the least Peruvian of the writers”) (82).
136
In his early works, González Prada points towards what he deems the real problem, what he calls “la
Trinidad embrutecedora del indio” (“the stupefying Trinity of the Indian”) which is made up of “la tiranía del
juez de paz, del gobernadora i del cura” (“the tyranny of the judge, the governor, and the priest”; Discurso
64) This idea in particular is mocked by García Calderón in La venganza del cóndor in the story “A la criollita”
(“His Own Way”) in which an anarchist ideologue, said to be a follower of González Prada, is riddled with
bullets by the very people he is trying to help. Kristal argues that this specific portrayal of an “unwary
ideologue” (“ideólogo incauto”) is a predecessor to Mario Vargas Llosa’s Galileo Gall of La Guerra del fin del
mundo (67). Not unlike the relationship between Lugones and Borges, even if Vargas Llosa criticized García
Calderón at first, many of his works are indebted to García Calderón’s writing.
López Alfonso reads the story in the following way: “«…A la criollita», en el que se denuncia la
brutalidad de los conservadores en las ciudades serranas, que terminan asesinando al periodista liberal, «un
hereje de Lima que leía los libros de González Prada»” (18). However, even if the “brutalidad de los
conservadores” is denounced, González Prada is still ruthlessly mocked in the process. The character that
reads his texts, Manuel Junqueira, a stand-in for Manuel González Prada himself, is opposed by the powers
that be: “el gobernador, el juez de paz y el cura sobre todo”. Despite this, Junqueira believes he can do
things “a la criollita, no más” (get away with it/do things his own way). It is this phrase, the title of the story,
that will be his downfall, since he underestimates his hosts. The story’s style, akin to one of Ricardo Palma’s
tradiciones, is in itself a stance in a stylistic debate where Palma is affected and sonorous and Prada is stark
and impactful.
118
abuse was the source of their supposedly slovenly attitude, while the other (similar to the
later ideologues of the Novecientos generation) believed that racial “inferiority” could
only be gradually phased out or that the nation was condemned due to its degraded and
inferior racial components.
Ventura García Calderón and the Generación del Novecientos
Opposite the political aisle to González Prada, the Generación del Novecientos
(Generation of the Nine Hundred) held beliefs that ran along the lines of racial and
geographical determinism. Despite their intermittent presence in the country, the two
eldest García Calderon brothers (Ventura and Francisco) became central ideologues of this
period in Peruvian literary-intellectual history. Together with José de la Riva Agüero, they
set the intellectual tone of the lettered city’s beliefs on what the Peruvian nation is and,
more importantly, what should be done to modernize it. Ventura García Calderón states
the issue succinctly in his description of what he believes Peru to be:
¿Qué es el Perú? Un laberinto y una síntesis, un ser in fieri como dirían los
teólogos, un crisol de razas, oro, plata y cobre, donde nadie colige todavía el
pergeño de la estatua final. Nos corresponde a todos nosotros la obra urgente de
prefigurar el rostro del futuro. (Nosotros 84)
137
137
“What is Peru? A labyrinth and a synthesis, a being in fieri as theologians would say, a racial melting pot
of gold, silver and copper whose final shape no one has yet figured out. The urgent task of sketching out the
face of the future falls upon all of us.”
119
At the forefront of Novecentista belief was the view that the country was an entity in need
of shaping and that molding the raw form of the nation was their very own “obra urgente”
(urgent task). With the ghost of the harrowing defeat in the Saltpeter War still looming,
the task seemed more pressing than ever. The Novecentistas’ diagnoses of the country’s
nature, which would condition the solutions given to its problems, explored sociology,
anthropology, and literature, hardly distinguishing between the three now clearly
discernible disciplines. Their explorations were steeped in French anthropology and
sociology, chiefly Taine’s and Comte’s positivism.
Carácter de la literatura del Perú independiente (Character of the Literature of
Independent Peru),
138
Riva Agüero’s own bachelor’s thesis, begins with the following
statement: “Dos razas, aunque en muy diverso grado, han contribuido en el Per a formar
el tipo literario nacional: la española y la indígena” (65).
139
For Riva Agüero, the “genius”
of each race, together with “imitation” and “artistic individuality,” explain the character of
each national literature. The romantic approach to literature, which traces literary
characteristics to the national and the racial, was dominant among the novecentistas and
explains Riva Agüero’s attempt to define the nation’s literary character through the racial
category of the criollo, a degraded version of the Spaniard:
138
Racial determinism became the scientific norm in Lima’s lettered circles. Proof of this is Clemente Palma’s
thesis “El porvenir de las razas en el Per”, an “outstanding” thesis at the time that has now become an
indelible stain on the writer’s legacy. In addition, the link Riva Aguero established between literature and
racial determinism was anything but uncommon at the time. This link structures an even more crucial
Peruvian writer’s bachelor’s thesis: César Vallejo’s “El romanticismo en la poesía castellana”.
139
“Two races, although in varying degree, have contributed to form the national literary archetype in Peru:
the Spanish and the indigenous.”
120
La raza española trasplantada al Perú, degeneró de sus caracteres en criollismo.
[…] La influencia debilitante del tibio y hmedo clima de la costa, ncleo de la
cultura criolla; el prolongado cruzamiento y hasta la simple convivencia con las
otras razas india y negra; y el régimen colonial que apartando la vida activa, del
pensamiento, de la guerra y del trabajo y favoreciendo el servilismo y la molicie,
produjo hombres indolentes y blandos; tales fueron los factores principales que
determinaron esta transformación. (68-69)
140
As Riva Agüero’s words here attest, contamination is an essential part of novecentista
racial belief and will surface as a crucial component of the Gothic in La venganza del
cóndor. Kelley Hurley identifies a similar fear in Victorian Gothic literature: the fear that
"the human race might ultimately retrogress into a sordid animalism rather than progress
towards a telos of intellectual and moral perfection" (68).
Riva Aguero continues his explanation of Peruvian “genius” by describing the
relation between the criollo and indio, depicting the former, though degraded, as
inherently superior to the latter: “y en virtud de su superioridad anula casi por completo la
influencia que ha podido ejercer el genio de la raza indígena. […]” (71).
141
In explaining
Peru’s national “genius,” Riva Agüero presents the dichotomy recognized as fundamental
by Cornejo Polar and pointed out by Natalia Majluf. As Majluf posits, criollo identity is
“definida en ltima instancia en contraposición al indio, su pareja dialéctica, el otro que
140
“The Spanish race transplanted to Peru, degenerated from its characters into criollismo. [...] The
debilitating influence of the warm and humid climate of the coast, center of the criolla culture; the
prolonged crossbreeding and even the simple coexistence with the other ‘indio’ and black races; and the
colonial regime, which, by removing the active life of thought, war and work, and favoring servility and
idleness, produced indolent and soft men; such were the main factors that determined this transformation.”
141
“by virtue of its superiority, it annuls the influx of the indigenous race’s character almost completely.”
121
entonces pasó a conferirle sentido” (47).
142
Thus, the two polarities of national identity,
indio and criollo, came to represent, respectively, “tradición y modernidad, pasado y
presente, lo vernáculo y lo cosmopolita, lo oral y lo escrito” (Majluf 33).
143
For Riva Agüero, the indigenous pole of Peruvian identity consists of “la
imaginación soñadora y nebulosa, la melancolía, el dolor íntimo y silencioso, una poesía
amatoria impregnada de tristeza” (71).
144
The characterization of the indio as inherently
melancholy is reiterated in Francisco García Calderón’s Le Pérou Contemporain
(Contemporary Peru), where he argues that the character of the Andean indigenous
person is defined by virtue of their sadness:
la race indienne est défiante et craintive. Elle chante sa mélancolie dans la quena,
instrument doux et émouvant, et le son pénetrant de cette musqieu intense
sètend dans la solitude des hauts plateaux, pendant les nuits claires et froides,
avec une plainte douloureuse. (13)
145
This line of thought was to become a central node in the representation of the imaginary
indio within lettered circles. Even though he did not belong to the aristocratic spheres of
the Novecentistas, indigenista writer Enrique López Albújar shared similar sentiments in
his “Sobre la psicología del indio” (On the Psychology of the Indio) where he famously
declares: “El indio es una esfinge de dos caras: con la una mira al pasado y con la otra, al
142
“ultimately defined in contrast to the Indian, its dialectical partner, the other who gave it meaning.”
143
“tradition and modernity, past and future, the vernacular and the cosmopolitan, spoken and written
word.”
144
“a dreamy and nebulous imagination, melancholy, an intimate and silent pain, love poetry permeated
with sadness.”
145
“the Indian race is defiant and fearful. It sings its melancholy on the quena, a mellow and stirring
instrument, and the penetrating sound of this intense music sings out in the solitude of the high plateaus,
during the clear, cold nights, with a painful lament.”
122
presente, sin cuidarse del porvenir” (1).
146
According to López Albújar, duality is the norm
for the indio who wears one face towards their own (“para vivir entre los suyos”) and
another when dealing with foreigners (“para tratar con extraños”). The pseudo-
anthropological “phenomenon” that López Albjar terms a split personality (“doble
personalidad”) forms a teratological racialized image. On one hand the indio is
“victimizado, inescrutable y melancólico [...]” (Majluf 59),
147
but on the other hand, the
same indio thirsts for violence and is willing to take vengeance when least expected. The
two-faced image completes, then, a teratological vision of the indigenous person who
within this racial paradigm is above all “un gran actor. Frente al hombre de otras razas
simula, solemne e insuperable, la comedia de la humildad y la tragedia de la servidumbre”
(López Albújar 1).
148
The debate on what to “do” with indigenous populations, which took place in
lettered, criollo circles who were geographically, ideologically, and linguistically distant
from such populations, went beyond discourse and political discussion. Not only did it
become reified in the form of pro-indigenous associations (asociaciones pro indígena) but
also surfaced in every form of art, including painting and literature.
Indigenismo
Fictions about indigenous peoples in Spanish America and their plight after the
Spanish conquest can be traced as far back as the first Crónicas de Indias and Bartolomé
146
“The Indian is a two-faced sphynx: with one face he looks to the past and with the other to the present,
without much care for the future.
147
“victimized, inscrutable and melancholy Indian”
148
“a great actor. Before the man of another race he simulates, solemn and insuperable, the comedy of
humility and the tragedy of servitude.”
123
de las Casas’ Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552).
149
Indigenismo,
however, is a modern phenomenon, a particular subset of writings about indigenous
peoples—not written by such communities
150
—that engage in varying degrees with their
condition in the modern Spanish-American nation-states. Neither the term’s use nor the
cultural practices that it describes are homogenous throughout the continent. While in
Bolivia the term indianismo describes a commitment to indigenous people’s liberation
(also denominated katarismo), in Peru indianismo alludes to a romanticized vision of the
indigenous person. There are also discernible differences between what is understood to
be Mexican indigenismo and its Andean analogs. As Manuel Andrés García states in
Indigenismo, izquierda, indio: Perú, 1900-1930 (2010), “A diferencia de lo acontecido en
México la imagen del indígena que se forjó en el país andino [Peru] seguía siendo […] la de
un ser bárbaro e infantil al que había que mantener vigilado para controlar sus desatinos”
(28).
151
152
It is precisely this backward, othering notion of the indigenous person held by
Peruvian elites in permanent tension with the idealized Inca past that will enable their
Gothic characterization within Peruvian indigenismo. As Alberto Portugal notes in “¿Un
149
García Calderón published a scathing piece on the Brevísima Relación in his book Vale un Perú. Despite its
title, “Por y contra Las Casas” (“For and Against Las Casas”), most of the text is a defense of Spain and the
Conquistadors from the Dominican friar’s criticisms. His only argument “for” Las Casas is that he is a good
writer (“Sabe escribir,” Vale 172). Against Las Casas, García Calderón argues that the plight of indigenous
peoples has been greatly exaggerated to promote Spain’s “leyenda negra.” Summing up the two unequal
sides of his rhetorical exercise, García Calderón dubs Las Casas “el genial y desatinado fraile” (“the genial
and bungling friar”; Vale 172).
150
This is explained by José Carlos Mariátegui in his Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana
(1928). Texts written by indigenous peoples themselves cease to be, by definition, “indigenistas” and are
“indígena” instead.
151
The specific difference that García identifies can be partially ascribed to the role of indigenous peoples in
the Mexican Revolution (1910) and cultural policies set in motion in its aftermath.
152
“Unlike what happened in Mexico, the image of the indigenous person that was forged in the Andean
nation [Peru] continued to be [...] that of a barbaric and childish being who had to be kept under
surveillance to control his follies"
124
gótico peruano?,” the text in which he pioneered the association between indigenismo
and the Gothic, authors like García Calderón are interested in “los restos pre-hispánicos,
vistos como signos de una civilización, y el cuerpo del indio, visto como ruina o fantasma”
(77).
153
Despite these differences, La venganza del cóndor shares traits with other forms of
indigenismo/indianismo in other countries. The Argentine Juana Manuela Gorriti, who
spent a considerable amount of her life in Peru, also wrote stories considered to be
indianista/indigenista. Tales such as “Si haces mal…no esperes bien” (1861) “La quena”
(1851) and “El tesoro de los Incas” (1865) have Andean motifs, and the former even treats
the theme of indigenous revenge. Gorriti also explores the Gothic mode, decades before
La venganza del cóndor was ever penned. However, in her stories the treatment of the
indigenous subject or the legacy of Inca artifacts (in “El tesoro de los Incas”) is wholly
conventional and comparable to other victim narratives she wrote. The complex
relationship that forms from the indigenous person being abjected—not only feared but
also desired—is not yet present in these narrations from the nineteenth century.
Bolivian writer Alcides Arguedas’ Wuata Wuara/Raza de Bronce (1904/1919),
154
Chilean Manuel Rojas’ “El colocolo” (1926) or Salvadorean Francisco Gaviria’s “La loba”
(1931) all share characteristics discernible in García Calderón’s writing and all engage to
varying extents with the Gothic Abstract Machine.
155
Nonetheless, García Calderón’s
153
“pre-Hispanic remains, seen as signs of civilization, and the indio body, seen as a ruin or ghost."
154
Notably, one of the main differences between Wuata Wuara and its rewrite, Raza de Bronze, is the
excision of violent scenes that could be considered shocking and too violent even for naturalism.
155
The Peruvian Francisco Vega Seminario, a protégée of García Calderón, is regarded as the closest follower
of his mentor’s style. Vega Seminario’s 1946 short story collection Chicha sol y sangre bears most distinctly
the marks of García Calderón’s influence.
125
collection is not only one of the most significant of these texts but also the most clearly
Gothic of them all. For clarity’s sake and relevance to this chapter’s subject, I will focus on
the development of the notion of indigenismo in Peru specifically.
Peruvian indigenismo
Within the field of Peruvian literature, indigenismo refers specifically to forms of
representation of indigenous peoples not written by indigenous peoples themselves.
These works engage with the political and social plight of indigenous communities
directly, in contrast to the previous romanticized images of indianismo.
Indianismo relates the lost glory of the Inca empire in romantic or epic tones. José
Santos Chocano’s “La tristeza del inca” is a paradigmatic example of the combination of
modernista poetics and indianismo, as are the final verses of his “Blasón”: “y de no ser
poeta, quizá yo hubiera sido/un blanco aventurero o un indio emperador” (PAGE
NUMBER).
156
In the words of Coronado, indianismo "portrayed the indio in a sentimental
light and was noticeably silent regarding the indigenous population’s social, economic,
and political marginalization in modern Latin America" (5). The epic clash often
romanticized by indianismo between the “blanco aventurero” (white adventurer) and the
“indio emperador” (Indian emperor) will become a crucial element for the edification of
criollo identity, the phantasmatic point of departure of the Peruvian nation.
Indianismo in art transitions to indigenismo when the indigenous subject changes
from the “indio emperador” of a glorious past to the indigenous person of the present.
156
“Had I not been a poet, maybe I would have been/a white adventurer or an Indian emperor.”
126
Such a shift, however, does not mean that the indigenous person, still referred to as indio
at the time, was any less fictive. As per Coronado and Majluf, indigenismo is not about real
indigenous peoples but about the phantasmatic image of the indio created by criollos, “un
indio ideal, un concepto casi sin conexión con la población indígena, concebido y
entendido como representación” (Majluf 29).
157
The attempts at indigenismo by the Generación del novecientos demonstrate
Majluf’s point. In what Efraín Kristal has denominated “indigenismo civilista,” the
narrative voice chastises the excesses of the feudal regime of “enganche”
158
but does not
condemn the regime itself, while also ignoring other forms of racial violence in the system.
Indigenismo civilista violently ushered the past into the present by setting a premodern
situation in a modern time. To do this, García Calderón strips the Andes of any modern
technology and places anachronistic racial relations at the forefront of this premodern,
bare bones landscape. The indigenous person is not an Incan but a degraded, weak
version of himself that does little but moan in pain; he is the “indio victimizado,
inescrutable y melancólico” (Majluf 59) depicted by Francisco García Calderón and Riva
Agüero. As González Vigil deftly puts it, “Le cupo a Ventura ser el creador que confirió vida
literaria a esa meditación peruanista [de su hermano]” (51).
159
Indigenismo as Political Movement
157
“…an ideal “indio”, a concept almost completely disconnected from the indigenous population, conceived
and understood as pure representation.”
158
The enganche system consisted of the payment of an advance by a landowner or gamonal to peasants
for labor contracting through an intermediary called an enganchador. This advance indebted the peasants to
the gamonal, who exposed them to hard and dangerous work (particularly in the mines).
159
"Ventura became the creator who gave literary life to this [his brother’s] Peruvianist meditation."
127
It is not unlikely that García Calderón, who by 1924 had spent over a decade away
from his home country, was expecting a discourse like that of an early González Prada as a
rebuttal to his anthology, an opposition still situated within the indigenista debate of the
late nineteenth century that would focus on his and his brother’s alienated vision of the
country.
160
However, the rapidly changing ideological and political status quo of the young
nation would produce critiques much more virulent than what García Calderón had
hitherto received.
By the time La venganza del cóndor was published, indigenismo had transcended
civilismo and had become openly anti-oligarchical.
161
This development should have come
as no surprise. As early as 1904, with the publication of “Nuestros Indios” (“Our indians”,
later to be compiled in Horas de Lucha), González Prada himself was unequivocally
disavowing the scientific racism of civilismo in a strongly worded though conventional
fashion: “Se ve, pues, que si Augusto Comte pensó hacer de la Sociología una ciencia
eminentemente positiva, algunos de sus herederos la van convirtiendo en un cúmulo de
divagaciones sin fundamento científico” (Nuestros 335).
162
Those who would follow
González Prada’s side of the debate were even more energetic than him in their politics
and demands. Led by the Marxist politician and philosopher José Carlos Mariátegui, the
160
Critics such as Sloane Goldberg, López Alfonso, and Valenzuela Garcés have to varying degrees attempted
to ideologically separate Ventura García Calderón from other members of the Generación del Novecientos.
As I will examine throughout this chapter, the ideas quoted in this and other sections are all present in La
venganza del cóndor, the main object of my study.
161
This ideological shift also coincides with Augusto B. Leguías oncenio which marked the end of the
Aristocratic Republic.
162
"It can be seen, then, that if Auguste Comte wanted to make sociology an eminently positive science,
some of his heirs are turning it into a mass of digressions without scientific foundation.”
128
subsequent generation of indigenistas was directly involved and committed to the
betterment of indigenous living conditions through political action.
163
In the words of
Teodosio Fernández Ramírez, Mariátegui’s success was “lethal” to the Novecientos
ideologues, now permanently associated with
criterios colonialistas de una historiografía «civilista» ya superada, representada
sobre todo por De la Riva-Agüero, quien habría orientado a toda una generación
universitaria en un sentido conservador y tradicionalista.
164
(85)
The image of the García Calderón brothers as backward reactionaries, alienated from the
country they so often wrote about for European eyes, would follow them for the entirety
of their lives. The picture of Ventura as a cold aristocrat, aloof and disinterested, would
extend far beyond his material life.
Ventura García Calderón (1886-1959)
One of the five children of the presidente cautivo (captive president) Francisco
García Calderón Landa,
165
Ventura García Calderón lived most of his life in France, a fact
163
Mariátegui’s Siete Ensayos mention both García Calderón brothers by name in order to criticize them. In
the seventh essay of the book, “El proceso de la literature peruana,” Mariátegui only mentions Ventura as
part of a group of “emigrados” (emigrées) who do not share the style nor the ideals of indigenistas working
in the country, and makes no further comment on Ventura. When listing indigenista writers, Mariátegui
does not include Ventura García Calderón. His omission speaks for itself: the sociologist did not consider the
author of La venganza del condor to be an indigenista at all.
164
“colonialist criteria of an already outdated ‘civilista’ historiography, represented above all by De la Riva
Agüero, who would have oriented an entire generation of university students in a conservative and
traditionalist direction.”
165
Francisco García Calderón Landa, an important cultural figure in his own right, became interim president
of Peru during the War of the Pacific (1878-1884) parallel to Nicolás de Piérola (the de iure dictator of the
country) after Chile’s occupation of Per in 1881. García Calderón Landa was captured by the opposing army
and held in Chile due to his constant refusal to accept Chile’s conditions for peace. Once the Treaty of Ancón
put an end to the war in 1883, García Calderón Landa was prohibited reentry to Peru. For this reason, his
second son, Ventura, was born in Paris, where his entire family had fled to.
129
that influenced his work and tinged the public perception of his persona. Permanently
torn between Peru and France, García Calderón describes his upbringing in terms of his
ambivalence as a Hispanic American adolescent at the start of the twentieth century:
“Nadie ha llevado más contradicciones adentro. Describirlo es compadecerlo” (Nosotros
18).
166
It is thus unsurprising that, although they were revered as intellectuals within their own
aristocratic circles, the García Calderón brothers had a long list of scathing detractors who
criticized their work by highlighting their ambivalent status as Hispanic Americans.
167
The
critiques levelled against them, which focused on the disconnect between the brothers’
writings and their object of study,
168
would become even more intense after with the
publication of La venganza del cóndor.
Per’s devastating defeat in the war is probably the most traumatic event in the nation’s modern
history, as it came with colossal human, material, and territorial loss. The post-war period gave way to
prosperity but only for aristocrats and oligarchs. This period, known as the Aristocratic Republic (República
Aristocrática), came to an end with Augusto B. Leguía’s coup. Leguía would then be reelected for eleven
consecutive years (Oncenio de Leguía).
166
“No one has carried inside him more contradictions. Describing him is pitying him.” Not only was García
Calderón born in France but also lost one of his brothers, José, in the battle of Verdun.
167
Of these detractors, Federico More, a member of the Colónida group formed around the anti-oligarchical
publication of the same name, was the fiercest and most outspoken during the brothers’ lifetimes. More
used Colónida and his own satirical publication, El hombre de la calle, to attack the brothers, focusing on
their disconnect with a country that they, as diplomats, supposedly represented. “Pancho” (Francisco) and
“Desventura” (Misfortune, a pun on García Calderón’s name, Ventura, which translates as “fortune”) were
regular subjects of mockery in the pages of El hombre de la calle. More depicted the two brothers as
wealthy but miserly aristocrats focused on the pomp of diplomacy while remaining willfully ignorant of the
realities of their country. In a feigned exchange of telegrams between El hombre de la calle and
“Desventura” (written entirely by More), the editor of the magazine suggests that Ventura’s brother,
“Pancho,” must “repasar manual historia Wiesse” (“review Wiesse’s history manual”) due to his complete
lack of knowledge of Peru’s history. In addition, “El hombre de la calle” prays that “Desventura” may never
reach a position of power such as the presidency: “Si algn día usted llega [sic] Presidencia, regresaremos
Edad Media irremediablemente. Dios no permita” (“If you ever become President we will irreparably return
to the Middle Ages. God forbid”; More 2). This latter comment shows both the power the García Calderón
brothers held in the country and just how backwards their supposedly modern and scientific views were in
the eyes of their detractors.
168
These were summarized by Federico More in La Undécima Hora de Ventura García Calderón. This
publication, which García Calderón deems “un libro soez” (“a vulgar book”; Nosotros 8), is a scathing critique
130
Before La venganza del Cóndor, García Calderón’s fiction was regarded as
modernista to a fault and indulgent in its use of tropes and fantasy. Even if Dolorosa y
desnuda realidad (Painful and Naked Reality, 1914), García Calderón’s first anthology, is
intended as a realistic critique of hypocrisy and frivolity, its settings, themes, and stylings
accorded with French symbolism and remained securely within the literary playbook of
modernismo. As such, Dolorosa y desnuda realidad had the lukewarm reception of any
average fictive text of the time. Claims and demands for truth in writing did not appear
until García Calderón change the subject of his fiction.
Moved by his obsession with the idea of “Peruvianness,” which he had already
addressed in essay form, and the renewed European thirst for the exotic, García Calderón
published La venganza del cóndor in Madrid in 1924. For “Latin American” writers who
resided in Europe, the European public’s rekindled desire for exoticism was ripe for the
picking. As Alfonso Reyes, García Calderón’s close friend, writes in his diary:
“Aquí [Paris] sólo piden al americano que sea pintoreso y exótico. Por eso, Ventura
García Calderón se dedicó a escribir su libro La venganza del cóndor, para arrebatar
el cetro de esta literatura mediocre en sí misma a los escritores mediocres. Pero es
que el exotismo y lo pintoresco es falsedad, y más vale fracasar que mentir.”
(122)
169
of García Calderón’s account of Peruvian literature. The criticism offered by More follows those already
outlined and focus on the disconnect between García Calderón and his object of study.
169
"Here [Paris] they only ask the American to be picturesque and exotic. That is why Ventura García
Calderón dedicated himself to writing his book La venganza del cóndor, to snatch the scepter of this
mediocre literature from mediocre writers. But exoticism and the picturesque is falsehood, and it is better
to fail than to lie."
131
Indeed, European critics’ thirst for exoticism was quenched by La venganza del condor, a
reaction diametrically opposed to that of the Peruvian intelligentsia. The negative reading
of La Venganza del cóndor started with Jorge Basadre
170
and his claim that García
Calderón was engaging in what he termed “pseudo-indigenismo.” Not only did his
comments shape the direction that most Peruvian critics would take in their critiques but
they also raised a crucial point of contention in the text: How could a novecentista, across
the political aisle from González-Prada, pen an indigenista anthology? For that matter, is
the collection indigenista at all?
García Calderón’s Indigenismo
Despite Mariátegui’s and Tomás J. Escajadillo’s ruthless examinations
171
of
Ventura’s work and their unwillingness to regard La venganza del cóndor as indigenista in
any way, it is still difficult to argue that the author was writing solely from indianismo. In
contrast to Chocano and Gorriti’s Inca princesses and emperors or indigenous revenge as
a non-specific trope,
172
García Calderón engages with the situation of the indigenous
person in the Peruvian Andes and describes their exploitation in specific terms, in addition
to mentioning the echoes of a “former” civilization instead of portraying it directly. La
170
Jorge Basadre, one of Peru’s most important historians, also happened to be García Calderón’s cousin. He
is known particularly for his account of the War of the Pacific. Hence, Basadre’s opinions had important
weight within criollo discourse and were but the canary in the coalmine of the critical onslaught that was to
follow.
171
Following Mariátegui’s seventh essay, “Proceso de la literatura peruana,” Escajadillo titles his piece on
Ventura “Proceso a Ventura García Calderón.” The preposition changes the meaning from “process of”
(proceso de) to “trial” (proceso a).
172
This is the case in Gorriti’s “Si haces mal…no esperes bien,” where the rapist of an indigenous woman
commits suicide by hurling himself down a ravine. Even if poetic justice is achieved, this is a far cry from the
historically motivated revenge portrayed in La venganza del cóndor.
132
venganza del cóndor approaches the problema del indio through a civilista discourse,
which does not advocate for a thorough dismantling of colonial structures but a meager
improvement of the treatment of indigenous peoples within them, leaving the systems
that facilitate their near enslavement unchallenged. Even though the collection is not
indigenista as it would be understood from Mariátegui onwards, García Calderón’s
“indigenous” stories also clearly take a clear step away from indianismo. The Inca empire’s
former glory is constantly referred to as a ghost that haunts the degraded figure of the
indio and the stories are no longer set in the time of the empire, as Chocano’s poetry is. In
La venganza del condor, harkening back to the empire’s glory is an element of
differentiation between Andean indigenous peoples and Amazonian indigenous
communities. In the same way that criollos living in the Andes or the rural areas of Peru
are portrayed in García Calderón’s text as a degraded, barbaric version of the Spaniard,
Andean indigenous peoples represent a degraded iteration of the Incas. The confrontation
of the criollo and the indio is therefore but a shadow of the phantasmatic birth of the
Peruvian nation: the war between the Spanish crown and the Empire of the Sun, a virile
and monumental clash between unevenly matched but equally dignified parties.
García Calderón’s version of indigenismo is further complicated by his style.
Contrary to the stark realism preferred by indigenismo (particularly from Mariátegui
onwards), García Calderón’s style can be likened to Viktor Shklovski’s concept of
ostranenye, or estrangement. His thoroughly purposeful and intricate writing is the most
salient and unquestioned trait of his work, which he undoubtedly inherited from
modernismo. In addition, modernismo’s dark, decadentista aura and sensibility never
133
disappeared from García Calderón’s writing. As Valenzuela Garcés puts it, “el
decadentismo con su estela de muerte y maldad no desaparece cuando irrumpen los
modos del regionalismo con sus imperativos americanistas” (61).
173
The combination of
modernismo and indianismo was, to be sure, not uncommon (Chocano’s poetry is a case in
point), but the combination of the decadentista side of modernismo and indigenismo (as
distinct from indianismo) stresses the tensions and contradictions at play in La venganza
del cóndor.
Although Valenzuela Garcés argues that in García Calderón, "el sujeto exótico,
construido a partir de lo extraño y misterioso, reaparece ahora bajo un nuevo ropaje: el
indígena serrano o selvático, y la descripción de su condición degradada, en un nuevo
ambiente: la sierra o la selva peruana” (61),
174
the operation performed in La venganza del
cóndor is far more complex.
175
The collection’s pronounced modernista style (a
supposedly modern trait) paradoxically produces an archaic effect: The modernista short
story style, grafted onto a colonial depiction of race relations of the Peruvian Andes, was
jarring even at the time of its initial publication. The disquieting effect of anachronism
turns La venganza del cóndor into a Gothic artifact whose confusing nature proved
perplexing for critics. On one hand, the stories evoke real landscapes and verisimilar
situations, but on the other hand do so in such heavily stylized prose that they appear to
abandon realism altogether. This tension makes their generic characterization ambiguous.
173
"decadentismo’s trail of death and evil does not disappear when the forms of regionalism and its
Americanist imperatives burst in."
174
“the exotic subject, built from the strange and mysterious, reappears now in a new guise: the indigenous
person of the mountain and jungle, their degraded condition, in a new environment: the Peruvian
mountains or jungle”
175
This depiction is better suited to Gorriti’s “Si haces mal…no esperes” bien or “La quena.”
134
A Gothic reading of the stories can, however, clarify (if not resolve) such ambiguity.
As Portugal posits, the Gothic entails an "exceso de realidad”; therefore, “la 'distorsión' es
en ella condición de la 'representación'” (76).
176
Such distortion or stylization takes
directly from the armoire of the Gothic to create an anachronistic rendering of the Andes:
a pre-modern, colonial vestige that gives birth to corrupt beings and also has the power
tocorrupt the heart of civilization. The scenes and landscapes described are exotic enough
to spark a European reader’s interest but are weaved into tropes just recognizable enough
for such a reader to keep their bearings in the heavy-handed use of foreign nomenclature.
This does not mean that, as Valenzuela Garcés argues, the process is a mere exchange of
subjects (i.e., colonized Africa in Heart of Darkness to the neocolonial Andes in La
venganza del cóndor). There are finer, localized details in the stories (the indigenista
debate portrayed in “A la criollita,” for example) but they are not intended to obstruct the
many tropes in the plot structures. García Calderón’s strategy worked like a charm on his
European audience (his primary one) but stained his legacy in his home country for
decades to come.
La venganza del cóndor
Critical Reception
Critical approaches to La venganza del cóndor hinge on the issue of genre and slide
on a polarized spectrum that ranges from a reading the text through the optics of realism
to a reading centered on the non-mimetic (understood as merveilleux or maravilloso and
176
"excess of reality"; "'distortion' is in [the Gothic] a condition of 'representation'."
135
fantástico). The debate surrounding the text’s genre and its heterogeneous reception,
already outlined by critics such as Portugal, is key to recognizing not only the Gothic
nature of the text but also its fictive nature, as well as the issues that arise from the
tensions between fiction and representation.
First published in 1924 by Mundo Latino in Madrid, the collection and was quickly
translated into French and German.
177
It didn’t take long for vehement reactions to the
text—described by Valenzuela Garcés as the most controversial García Calderón was ever
subject to—to appear. In Europe, the anthology proved to be a success with readers in
Spain, France,
178
and Germany, garnering praise from the likes of André Malraux and
Walter Benjamin. Critics from the three countries praised the text’s exotic ambiance and
descriptions of García Calderón’s home country. In his prologue to La venganza del
cóndor, printed with García Calderón’s next anthology, Couleur du Sang (Color of Blood),
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez reads the text as
177
The book was published in 1925 as La vengeance du condor in Paris, and in 1926 as Peruanische
Nouvellen in Potsdam.
178
The French public’s taste for the exotic and, within it, a particular preference for Le Perou has an long
history. As Estuardo Núñez observes in Las letras de Francia y el Perú: apuntaciones de literatura
comparada, Peru has existed in the French imagination since early news of the Spanish Conquista as El
Dorado, an exotic place of wonder and riches. Voltaire, as Núñez points out, wrote extensively about Peru in
multiple pieces and also in his novel Candide. In it, he depicts Peru as a city made of solid gold where its
inhabitants live in such excessive wealth that they give away their precious metals and gemstones without
hesitation.
This is a topic dear to García Calderón himself. In his book Vale un Perú, the author waxes at length
about French idioms relating to the land of the Incas, including the expression Ce n’est pas un Pérou (“It’s
not El Dorado”).
136
un synthèse concrete de l’énergie des conquérants espagnols, de l’elegance et de
la mollese des créoles de la colonie et de la tristesse de l’aborigène indien,
dépouillé et soumis. (11)
179
Blasco Ibáñez’s reading is surprisingly similar to the passage from Riva Agüero’s thesis
quoted above and also interprets the stories as a concrete synthesis (“sythèse concrete”)
of national character. Such a description seems contrary to García Calderón’s overly poetic
stylistics but accords with Blasco Ibáñez’s interpretation of the text. In the paragraphs that
follow, he presents modernismo as an aesthetic to be transcended, arguing that García
Calderón has done so in La venganza del cóndor:
La jeunesse littéraire de certains pays américains de langue espagnole a perdu
plusieurs décades de vie et de travail à composer des poésies versaillaises ou des
récits élégants d’Europe. C’est regrettable, mais cela ne mérite pas un
commentaire cruel. (11)
180
His comment on modernismo, meant to contrast with the achievement of La venganza del
cóndor, is but one example of the generic confusion caused by the collection.
It cannot quite be said that the “realistic” reading of La venganza del cóndor was a
fully European creation. García Calderón himself fueled these attitudes by never clarifying
the genre of his text. Much to the contrary, in an interview given to Henri Lefébvre in
1947, he, as Filhol notes, “establece un vínculo directo entre su experiencia como
179
“a concrete synthesis of the energy of the Spanish conquerors, the elegance and softness of the colonial
Creoles and the sadness of the Indian aborigine, stripped and subjugated.”
180
“The literary youth of some Spanish-speaking American countries has lost several decades of life and
work composing Versailles-style poetry or elegant European narratives. This is regrettable, but not deserving
of cruel comment.”
137
prospector de minas de plata en los Andes y el proceso de escritura de sus cuentos
peruanos.” (145).
181
García Calderón mentions his own voyage to the Andes in 1911, a
failed quest for precious metals. He states, however, that he found the subject of his tales
on that trip: “Hélas! Je n’avais pas la vocation de prospecteur. J’avais trouvé là,
néanmoins, les sujets de mes contes” (García Calderón qtd. in Filhol 145).
182
Across the ocean, Jorge Basadre’s criticisms set the tone for the first group of
García Calderón’s indigenista critics and inadvertently started a line of critiques that would
be taken up again in the sixties, within the context of the Primer Encuentro de Narradores
Peruanos
183
in 1965. Two years before the conference, Mario Vargas Llosa had argued that
José María Arguedas wrote about the “real” indio and that previous indigenistas had
merely caricatured, indicating Ventura García Calderón in particular. In praising Arguedas,
Vargas Llosa states that García Calderón “probablemente no había visto un indio en su
vida” (3).
184
Tomás J. Escajadillo was of the same mind, writing in his aforementioned “Proceso
a Ventura García Caldrón,” despite recognizing and praising the author’s style, that:
181
“establishes a direct link between his experience as a prospector of silver mines in the Andes and the
process of writing his Peruvian stories.”
182
“Alas! I did not have the vocation of prospector. But I found there, nevertheless, the subjects of my
stories.” In addition to this link, other Spanish-American authors praised the book and highlighted its
supposed veracity. Surprisingly, one of them was Gabriela Mistral.
183
This event, considered of major importance within Peruvian literary history, brought together the most
salient authors and critics of the time, amongst them José María Arguedas, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ciro Alegría,
Sebastián Salazar Bondy, and Tomás J. Escajadillo. At the event, José María Arguedas famously declared that
he found the motivation to write in his disgust at the crude caricatures drawn by Ventura García Calderón
and Enrique López Albújar.
184
“Had probably never seen an Indian in his life.”
138
la vision de V.G.C. del indio peruano es no solamente inexacta, pueril, exotica y
sensacionalista-lo cual ya constituye un cargo-sino que, y esto es lo
verdaderamente indignante, esta visión está deformada y concordada por una
determinada óptica: la de los vencedores, la de los ‘amos blancos’ que campean en
sus relatos.(51)
185
The very thing that Escajadillo finds infuriating (“indignante”) is, for better or worse, a
constitutive part of the text. A Gothic reading allows for an understanding of the text that
engages both sides of the debate surrounding La venganza del cóndor. The text is not
either an aestheticized colonial vision of racialized violence or a beautifully crafted
achievement of modernista literary construction—it is both: the two walk hand in hand.
Formal elements of La venganza del Cóndor (Anthology)
La venganza del cóndor is García Calderón’s rst foray into con that paints
landscapes of Peru outside the capital. He would later repeat this exercise in the short
story collecons Danger de mort (1926), Couleur de Sang (1931), and the novella Si Lo
était venu (1926), which narrates the French author’s imaginary voyage to the Andean
naon. As the rst of these aempts, La venganza del cóndor funcons as an omakase of
the Peruvian experience, an exoc voyage through the country’s three natural regions,
catered to a European reader. The book’s twenty-four stories depend on such a triparte
division to give semanc value to the narraons occurring in each territory. As Francisco
185
“I think that V.G.C.'s vision of the Peruvian Indian is not only inaccurate, puerile, exotic and
sensationalist-which is in itself a charge-but and this is what is truly outrageous, this vision is deformed and
agreed upon by a certain optic: that of the victors, of the 'white masters' that are at work in his stories.”
139
García Calderón demonstrates in Le Pérou Contemporain, the Novecensta belief divided
the country into three natural regions and aributed varying degrees of civilizaon to
each, with the coast being the most civilized and the jungle the least:
Le Pérou offre trois regions géographiques bien défninies, la côte, la sierra , région
froide des plateaux, et la montana, inmense territoire de fleuves et de forêts. Cette
diversité si marquée nui à l’unité nationale. Les climats différents laissent leur
empreinte sur les hommes; les races héterogènes se mélangent difficilement; et la
nature, par ses divisions est ses oppositions, est toujours l’entrave á une
organization des forces nationales. (5)
186
The three different regions are a hindrance to national unity and becoming Peruvian. In
this view, each territory overdetermines the nature of their equally dissimilar inhabitants:
coast (la côte), mountain (sierra), and jungle (montana). The three do not only determine
the nature of the peoples inhabiting them but are contiguous elements of a graduated
scale of barbarism in which the coast and the jungle represent two extremes.
On peut donc établir un rapport inverse entre la nature et la civilisation, de la côte
à la sierra et de la sierra à la “montagne”, la culture s’affaibilit et se perd; et dans la
même direction, de l’Ouest à l’est, la nature, d’abord pauvre et sèche, devient de
plus en plus belle, jusqu’a “ la montagne” extrèmement feconde. (9-10)
187
186
“Peru offers three well-defined geographical regions: the coast, the sierra, a cold plateau region, and the
montana, a vast territory of rivers and forests. This marked diversity undermines national unity. Different
climates leave their mark on men; heterogeneous races mix with difficulty; and nature, through its divisions
and oppositions, is always an obstacle to the organization of national forces.”
187
“One can therefore establish an inverse relationship between nature and civilization: from the coast to
the sierra and from the sierra to the ‘mountain," culture weakens and is lost; and in the same direction,
from west to east, nature, at first poor and dry, becomes more and more beautiful, until it reaches the
extremely fecund ‘mountain.’”
140
Within this ideological paradigm, the “sierra” is the midpoint between civilization and
barbarism and thus a major source of fear for the criollo, both because of the region’s
condition as “in-between” (the indigenous body as the “ruin” of a great empire), and its
territorial contiguity with the coast.
Geographical determinism functions together with racial determinism and
characterization. Without exception, all the stories in La venganza del cóndor refer to or
represent racialized characters and/or mention racialized tropes. In fact, race and
geographical origin is arguably the central pillar of characterization in the book. Races
deemed subaltern by Western culture are depicted with broad strokes as crude
caricatures.
188
But not all the stories address racial divisions in the same way. Characters
from other racialized groups, particularly Afro-Peruvian and Asian, are also included in
García Calderón’s narrations as servants; unlike the indigenous peoples, these racial
groups and their situations are never the subject of the stories. As I will explore in my
analysis of La venganza del cóndor, the tension between the criollo and the indio is
depicted as a particular type of ongoing struggle, while the subaltern position of Afro-
Peruvian and Asian servants is res iudicata. Tensions between criollo and indio are further
stressed by the issue of land distribution implicit in these distinctions.
Nature vs. Culture
188
This is particularly visible in the heavily caricatured way of representing Afro-Peruvian vernacular Spanish.
Linguistic indicators make the Afro-Peruvian characters of the anthology immediately recognizable as such.
141
Paradoxically, García Calderón’s fixation on geographical determinism circles back
to the issue of land and land ownership. As Mariátegui would famously state in his Siete
Ensayos, land is the crux of the problema del indio: “La cuestión indígena arranca de
nuestra economía. Tiene sus raíces en el régimen de la propiedad de la tierra” (26).
189
For
Mariátegui, all discursive forms that elude this fact are merely “ejercicios teoréticos—y a
veces solo verbales—condenados a un absoluto descrédito”
190
that try to “ocultar o
desfigurar” (“hide or disfigure”) the real issue (26). Most early indigenista writing does just
that, barely challenging violence perpetrated against indigenous peoples and failing to
contest the structure that permits, upholds, and promotes such violence.
Criollo fears of land appropriation, a new paradigm shift that would reverse the
Conquista—appeared to be coming true with events such as Rumi Maqui’s (Teodomiro
Gutiérrez Cuevas’) rebellion. As Alberto Flores Galindo explains in Buscando un Inca, Rumi
Maqui was signalled in 1915 as the organizer of “el ataque a una hacienda puneña, como
inicio de una larga lucha que debería llevar a la restauración del imperio incaico” (249).
191
Notwithstanding historical uncertainties regarding Rumi Maqui’s actions and questions
surrounding his authorship of the attacks, such events were for some landowners nothing
but “la confirmación de esa temida ‘guerra de castas’ y del temple vengativo de los
indígenas” (Flores Galindo, 253).
192
189
“The indigenous question has its origins in our economy. It has its roots in the regime of land ownership.”
190
"theoretical—and sometimes only verbal—exercises condemned to absolute discredit."
191
"the attack on a puneñan hacienda, as the beginning of a long struggle that should lead to the restoration
of the Inca empire."
192
“the confirmation of this dreaded 'caste war' and the vengeful mettle of the Indians"
142
These events reminded the empowered class of their precarious position. As
Majluf highlights, criollos held an “hegemonía parcial” (“partial hegemony”) that
emanated from the cities, despite their numerical inferiority. The goal of “sobrevivir en un
país esencialmente rural” (52)
193
thus accompanies the discursive insistence on the
division of Nature and Culture divide and Civilization/Barbarism so crucial in Spanish
American literature writ large.
As I have already noted, Novecentista ideology strongly tied Nature to Barbarism.
In “Nature. Post Nature,” Timothy Clark argues that the former component of the
Nature/Culture binary encompasses “the sea, the atmosphere, people outside the
‘developed countries’ and, above all, the future” (82). Within a colonial understanding, the
collapse of the divide would also mean “that the consequences of human action do not go
away anymore" (Clark 82). The criollo occupies a particular position within this paradigm.
The territories already colonized and in need of re-colonization to continue the project of
modernity are not far away, transatlantic spaces. On the contrary, they are too close for
comfort; they might even be the lands criollos themselves inhabit. The consequences of
colonialism never went out of sight and out of mind, as they had, to an extent, in the
centers of colonial power. The consequences—in the form of indigenous peoples
perceived as vengeful victims—have never been anywhere but here the whole time,
pining for revenge.
193
“surviving in an essentially rural country”
143
Thus, establishing a discursive division between the geographical spaces of Nature
and Barbarism is crucial to Novecentista criollo ideology. The division is established in
Gothic terms. Discussing space in the Gothic, Gerald Hogle states that
a Gothic tale usually takes place (at least some of the time) in an antiquated or
seemingly antiquated space. […] Within this space, or a combination of such
spaces, are hidden some secrets from the past (sometimes the recent past) that
haunt the characters, psychologically, physically, or otherwise at the main time of
the story. (29)
Alberto Portugal makes similar points regarding the Gothified Andes of indigenismo,
explaining that
ese mundo [los Andes] es percibido como problema y amenaza: como el lugar del
mal, real o potencial; un espacio anclado en el pasado, lo primitivo, lo irracional;
una dinámica desde la cual esas fuerzas regresan y amenazan con destruir todo lo
que la "civilización" ha construido entre "nosotros"
194
. (Portugal 65)
The Andes as a Gothic space is not only the locus of evil (locus terribilis), as Portugal
states, but also permanently haunted by the specter of the Conquista and the past glory of
the Empire. This differentiates the Andean chronotope from the Amazonian one. Both are
evidently shades of barbarous, but the Andes bear the unrelenting pain of the open
wound of the Conquest and the perennial haunting of their own past—something that
within this paradigm the Amazon lacks completely. The ideological framework of La
194
“that world [the Andes] is perceived as a problem and a threat: as the place of evil, real or virtual; a space
anchored in the past, the primitive, the irrational; a dynamic from which these forces return and threaten to
destroy all that "civilization" has built among ‘us’.”
144
venganza del cóndor makes almost no distinction between the dangers posed by the
jungle itself (its poisonous animals and plants) and the cannibalistic “indios witotos.” The
Amazon and the Andes are two operating Gothic Bodies-without-organs that differ in the
degree of definition of their parts. The link between indigenous peoples and Nature is
seen not as a neutral anthropological fact but as a negative, degrading mark of barbarism.
The indigenous peoples of the Andes had, within the colonial novecentista discourse,
extricated themselves from Nature only to be tragically returned to barbarism by the
inevitable “fact” of the Conquista. So, in stories such as “La venganza del condor,” “La
momia,” or “La llama blanca,” the elements composing the Body of the Andes—
indigenous peoples, animals, land, and sacred sites (huacas)—are sketched out as distinct,
though the limits between them remain somewhat unclear.
Deformed in this way, the Andean landscape can also serve as a space to quell the
colonial anxiety over an ever-shrinking field for exploration and discovery. As previously
mentioned, this anxiety is one of the three previously discussed elements composing
Patrick Brantlinger’s interpretation of Imperial Gothic. The other two elements—fear of
individual regression and the takeover of civilization by barbarism—also come into play.
The white criollo, an already degraded version of a historical-romantic archetype (the
Spanish Conquistador) can degenerate further, giving way to violent, barbarous impulses.
Simultaneously, the vengeful indio awaits the right time to invade and carry out a new
pachacuti (to put the world upside down) and reinstitute their power as rightful
descendant of the Incas.
145
Similar fears and similarly violent representations can be found in López Albjar’s
Cuentos andinos (1920), a text closely associated by critics to La venganza del cóndor.
195
Nonetheless, López Albjar’s stories, read through Brantlinger’s Imperial Gothic, rely much
more on adventure the Gothic does, whereas García Calderón takes the opposite tack.
López Albujar’s crude body horror scenes (the infamous portrayal of “Ushanan Jampi” is
the most well-known) contrast with the understated terror brewed and unleashed in La
venganza del cóndor. Cuentos andinos is, then, an important point of contrast to which I
will return to distinguish the different shades of Gothic indigenismo.
In Ventura García Calderón’s literary landscape of the Andes, not a single trace of
Western modernity can be perceived. This vision stands in sharp contrast to Cuentos
andinos where, in the story “El campeón de la muerte” (“Death’s champion”), readers are
introduced to illapacos, Andean professional snipers. Juan Jorge, the titular champion of
death, is such sniper, tasked with killing Hilario Crispín, who murdered the mayor’s
daughter. Contrary to García Calderón’s nameless indios, Juan Jorge not only has a name
but is also depicted as an adventurous hero, revered within his community for his skill: it is
an honor to be killed by one of his bullets (33).
Meanwhile, in La venganza del cóndor, weaponry only appears in the hands of
white criollos or mestizos who quarrel amongst themselves or oppress indigenous peoples
(as in “La llama blanca”). The appearance of “modern” weaponry, so common in López
195
Cuentos andinos and La venganza del cóndor are widely regarded as the two first Peruvian indigenista
short story anthologies containing some of the first indigenista texts. They also have a similar (but
recognizably distinct) way of portraying the indio.
146
Albújar, would break the spell Ventura has cast over the Andes, transforming them into a
distant land in space and, most importantly, in time.
Stripping away any trace of modernity from the Andes (politico-social movements
in the Andes or firearms) for aesthetic effect is common practice in La venganza del
cóndor. Since the stories in the anthology are supposed to be contemporary to their
publication date (unless explicitly stated otherwise),
196
the incongruity between a
supposedly modern nation and its atavistic components produces a jarring effect. Given
the context provided by the other stories of the collection, the Andes are, in García
Calderón’s imaginary, the locus of mystery and magic of a dark kind. In contrast to the
“indios witotos” of “Historia de caníbales,” the crucial element of the Andes is their
degradation from a golden empire into “la raza que nunca supo sublevarse” (“the race
that never knew how to rebel”), as mentioned in “Los cerdos flacos” (57). The stories that
are unambiguously set in the Andes, in contrast to the work of other writers who set their
stories similarly (Gorriti, for example), engage directly or indirectly with the debates
surrounding el problema del indio. These stories are: “La venganza del condor,” “La
momia,” “Coca,” “Amor indígena,” “Los cerdos flacos,” “La llama blanca,” “Fue en el
Per,” “A la criollita,” and “El despenador.” I will focus first on the Andean stories that
have a traditional fantástico structure—“La venganza del condor,” “La momia,” and “La
llama blanca”—and later comment on the remaining stories listed above, as well as those
set in the Amazon, chiefly, “Historia de caníbales.”
196
This is the case of “Los males del señor obispo” and “Cuento de mi vieja Lima,” explicitly set in colonial
times.
147
“La venganza del cóndor”
The story that lends the collection its title, “La venganza del condor,” is a Gothic
aestheticization of racial violence: a “lindo latigo” (“beautiful whip”), like the one the story
itself presents. The whip referred to in the story belongs to a white criollo captain who
abuses his indigenous servant. When it comes to the “art” of oppression, he is the
narrator’s “teacher.” His whip, described meticulously by the narrator, exhibits the
tensions García Calderón’s work represents for the Peruvian canon: beauty and violence.
The tale follows a first-person narrator, a criollo from Lima (the capital of Peru) and a
bachiller en leyes (having bachelor’s degree in law) traversing the Andes. In his travels, he
meets Capitán González, a white criollo who lives in the Andes, and his indigenous servant,
whom he abuses with his “beautiful whip.” However, once the captain is left to wander
the jagged and treacherous path on his own, a group of condors swoops down close to
him and he falls down a ravine to a slow, agonizing death. Finally, the narrator wonders if
this fall was a mere accident or if the condors have a “pacto oscuro” (“dark pact”) that
made them push Capitán González as revenge for his brutality.
A version of a classic revenge plot, the story is set in a liminal space: a stretch of
the journey from Chimbote to Huaraz, Áncash. It is an ideal setting for García Calderón’s
colonial imagining of the Andes as a desolate and primitive land, the ashes of a once great
empire. Almost completely devoid of buildings (except for a tambo or inn), technology, or
forms of indigenous social organization, the space in which the atavistic revenge occurs is
a colonial fantasy painted over the realities of the time. García Calderón’s decision to
148
make the story a travel narrative also allows for romantic descriptions of the landscape (in
which the author excels) that highlight the Gothic effect of the story.
The transit between Chimbote, a port, and Huaraz, the Andean capital of Áncash, is
also significant within the ideological paradigm outlined by Francisco García Calderón,
since the coast is supposedly the least barbarous of the three natural regions. As such, the
journey is not only akin to those of the male Gothic tradition but also a descent to Hell in
reverse: “aquel camino rebañado en la piedra y tan vecino a la hondonada mortal parecía
llevarnos, como en las antiguas alegorías sagradas, a un paraje siniestro” (12).
197
The
liminality of the space is also reiterated in the narrator’s ambiguous voice, whose identity
as a “civilized” member of the lettered city is constantly threatened by the seduction of
barbarism.
The first-person perspective of this story differentiates it from its closest relatives
in the collection, “La llama blanca” and “La momia” (the other two non-
mimetic/fantástico stories). The first-person narrator of “La venganza del cóndor” is not
only a witness to the “condor’s” revenge—he also reflects of the precarious material and
ideological position of the criollo. These issues are revealed in the striking opening line of
the story: “Nunca supe despertar a un indio a puntapiés” (9).
198
Here the narrator reveals
the archaic racial relations in García Calderón’s Gothified Andes. The indigenous person, a
nameless indio, is the victim of acts of violence that have become so trivialized as to be
commonplace. His refusal to partake in such activities indicates his ambiguous position; he
197
"that path, rutted in the stone and so close to the deadly ravine, seemed to lead us, as in the ancient
sacred allegories, to a sinister place.”
198
“I never knew how to kick an Indian awake.”
149
does not condemn the act and frames his inaction not in ethical terms but as a matter of
knowledge: “nunca supe.” The action is described as a “triste arte” (sad art) that the
captain attempts to teach the narrator, claiming that it is the right way to “tratar a estos
bárbaros” (“deal with these savages”). The indio’s gaze prompts the narrator to echo his
initial phrase in a new formulation: “Nunca he sabido si nos miran bajo el castigo, con ira o
con acatamiento” (9).
199
This evocation of López Albjar’s impenetrable, sphynx-like indio
prefigures the fantástico solution of the story: if it is anger (the same anger repeated in
the condor’s “ojos iracundos”) then the indio and the condor do have a supernatural
connection; if it is complacency, the indio’s supposedly feigned pain in the final
paragraphs of the story is genuine. The syntagma “nunca he sabido” (an iteration of the
initial “nunca supe”) emphasizes that the narrator’s state of ignorance persists.
Todorovian hesitation and, in turn, the generic quality of the story, are presented at the
outset, establishing the ambiguity that will come to full development with the captain’s
demise.
The captain’s connection to both art and violence is redoubled in his description of
his weapon: “tan lindo latigo con puño de oro y jeme de plomo por contera.”
200
The whip
is referred to in the very same words (“lindo látigo”) at the end of the story, leaving no
doubt as to the importance of the association. Capitán González’s insistent talk of his whip
and the fear it inspires in the indio (whom he refers to as his property (“mi palurdo”))
causes the narrator to comment on “el tejido habilísimo de aquel ‘chicotillo’ de junco que
199
“I have never known whether they look at us from under punishment with anger or with compliance.”
200
“such a beautiful whip with a handle made of gold and a lead endcap.”
150
iba estrechándose al terminar en un cono de bala” (10).
201
The excessive, fetishizing focus
on the whip and its beauty (the richness of its materials and intricate design) strengthens
the link between aesthetic beauty and violence established in the opening paragraph of
the story. That the whip has a “puño de oro” is not an insignificant detail, considering
gold’s powerful association with the Conquista, as the Inca’s riches and the conquistador’s
obsession. From the very start, then, there are cruel echoes of the Conquista in the story,
which will only grow louder as the narration progresses (Ubilluz).
The “lindo látigo” as a symbol for the fetishization of violence does not end with its
material beauty. The narrator explains that it was “en los flancos de las bestias y de los
indios […] sin duda irresistible” (10).
202
His assertion here shows that his initial misgivings
about the mistreatment of indigenous peoples have been dispelled and that his affiliation
has swung towards Capitán González and his despotic criollo worldview. This swing is one
of the story’s fundamental movements; as the voyage progresses, the narrator is seduced
by the two faces of barbarism. The degraded shadows of a glorious combat, both the indio
and Capitán González prove irresistible to the scholar who stands between them.
The act of standing in between the two occurs literally in the story when the
narrator stops Capitán González from hurting the indio even more with his whip. After the
first blow, both the narrator and the indio shudder, an action related in the first person
plural: “El indio y yo nos estremecimos; él, por la sangre que goteaba en su rostro como
lágrimas; yo, porque llevaba todavía en el espíritu prejuicios sentimentales de bachiller”
201
“the skillful weaving of that reed whip that tapered into a bullet-shaped cone".
202
“in the flanks of the beasts and the Indians [...] undoubtedly irresistible”
151
(9).
203
The narrator shudders on account of his “prejuicios sentimentales de bachiller”
(that is, his Western, formal education), which is the only thing separating him from the
captain’s barbarous indolence. Nonetheless, the story implies that the captain’s degraded
nature is a response to the violent environment that has sanded away the city’s
sentimentalisms, leaving him as barbaric as the indio he so profoundly derides.
The narrator describes the mannerisms of both the Capitán and the indio as witch-
like, associating their barbarousness directly with the supernatural: while the Capitán’s
tirade against the indio is seen as akin to “los ritos de las brujas serranas” (“Andean
witches’ rites”; 11), the mannerisms of the indio when pointing towards the culprits of the
Capitán’s death are “ademanes de brujo” (“a warlock’s mannerisms”; 14). The bookending
strategy in the story is, once again, not only a testament to its meticulous construction, in
which echoes of phrases are carefully planned and executed, but also a strategy with
which the barbarousness of the degraded, violent criollo and the servile “indio” are made
inverted mirrors of each other.
Proving that he is truly amidst two barbarous forces and not fully committed to
either, the narrator does not protect the indio from the Capitán’s first blow, nor from his
verbal abuse, but also does nothing to aid the Capitán after his fall. Thus, the act of
revenge is implicitly justified by the first-person narrator’s attitude towards the events
unfolding before him, an effect that is absent from “La llama Blanca” and “La Momia.”
Every act of retributive justice harkens back to a national epic, to the agon of the
203
“The Indian and I shuddered; he, because of the blood that dripped down his face like tears; I, because I
still carried in my mind the sentimental prejudices of a college graduate.”
152
Conquest, and to a primordial injustice perceived as necessary for teleological progress
into modernity. Indigenous peoples are, in La venganza del cóndor, the defeated, “los
vencidos,” tragic but necessary victims of the merciless machine of history. The scars of a
larger, more profound wound frame the death of the captain as a proper sacrifice that can
temporarily quench the Andes’ thirst for vengeance.
The Andean landscapes are, however, also a source of sublime contemplation for
the narrator, bringing forth the seductive dimension of that which has been abjected. If,
as the Novecentistas posited, nature’s hand is strong enough to mold a population’s
identity, and racial degradation is taken as fact, the Andes are already influencing the
narrator, dragging him to one side of barbarism. Once the captain, the indio, and the
narrator leave the tambo, the narrator presents a striking scene: “Los Andes son en la
tarde vastos tmulos grises y la bruma que asciende de la punas violetas a los picachos
nevados me estremecía como una melancolía visible” (12).
204
The dramatic colors
(“grises,” “violetas”) serve as a backdrop to the violent “picachos” (peaks) and ravines
(“quebradas”) whose serrated pattern will be the captain’s demise. The danger the
mountains pose, then, is not only symbolic but material. The stories the indio tells—the
only time he speaks during the otherwise silent trip—are of the kind that “espeluznan al
caminante” and concern “viajeros que ruedan al abismo porque una piedra se desgaja
sbitamente de la montaña andina” (12).
205
The mountain “que se desgaja sbitamente”
and that could, at any moment, “deshacer[se] en segundos” (“fall apart in seconds”)
204
"The Andes are in the afternoon vast gray tombs and the mist rising from the violet punas to the snow-
capped peaks made me shudder as if it were a visible melancholy."
205
"travelers who tumble into the abyss because a stone suddenly breaks off of the Andean mountain."
153
serves as a Chekhov’s gun, a weapon hiding in plain sight to be used as a mask for the
condor’s crime, symbolically linked to the indio. The physical terrain renders all who pass
through it vulnerable and is an eerie reminder of the narrator’s precarious footing. The
very same mountains are later described as “gigantescas vértebras” (“giant vertebrae”), a
skeletal image echoed at the bottom of one of the deadly ravines indicated by the indio:
“Ahi viendo taita”, en la quebrada agudisima, las osamentas lavadas por el río” (12).
206
The remains that surround and haunt the narrator’s voyage become displaced for
an instant when an indigenous woman gives him a glass of chicha and he sees
“unexpected sympathy” (“simpatía inesperada”) in her eyes. Like other moments in which
the narrator is too close to the edge of barbarism, this feeling is swiftly dismissed with an
exclamation that annuls any possibility of communication: “¡Pero quien puede adivinar lo
que ocurre en el alma de estas siervas adoloridas!” (12).
207
The narrator thus evokes López
Albjar’s teratological indio once again: a two-faced sphynx, unreadable and
impenetrable. A similar representation surfaces once the captain falls to his demise and
the indio, who suffered under his whip, exclaims “¡pobricitu ayayay!
208
” and proceeds to
cross himself (“se santiguó”), “quitándose el ancho sombrero de fieltro, para probarme
que sólo decía la verdad” (14).
209
Why does he have to prove that he is telling the truth?
Once again, López Albjar’s legacy hold a key to this teratological representation of an
indigenous person. His excessive outward shows of pain for the death of the captain (the
206
“There you see, taita [father, indicative of respect in this case]”, in the deep ravine, the skeletons washed
by the river.”
207
“But who can divine what goes on in the souls of these dolorous servants!”
208
“Poor thing!” Ayayay is a Quechua expression for pain.
209
"taking off his wide felt hat, to prove to me that he was telling nothing but the truth."
154
Quechua ¡ayayay!, the gesture of removing his hat, and making the sign of the cross)—a
man who had done nothing but beat and berate him—point towards a monstrous
hypocrisy. Is it not he who, conveniently leaving the scene of the crime as it took place,
called upon the condor to take revenge? Or not? Did he even push the captain himself?
The narrator must inhabit the hesitation arising from his Gothic worldview. It is precisely
this Gothic, Western worldview that can produce the condor as a particularly suitable
villain.
Together with Andean camelids (llamas and alpacas), the condor is one of the most
symbolically significant animals of the Andes. For the Quechua and Aymara population
inhabiting the Andes, the condor is anything but an evil force. It is the messenger of the
Hanan Pacha, the land above. Part of the triad formed by the Puma, a representation of
Kay Pacha (kay, meaning “here,” pacha, land), and the snake or Amaru, ambassador of
Ukhu Pacha, the condor is a sacred being featured in indigenous art as a solar deity. As
one of the largest birds on Earth, it is fitting they, monarchs of the sky, should be
associated with the sun god, Inti. The indigenous perception and representation of vulture
gryphus is the opposite of what García Calderón presents in his story. A black, immense
bird with irate eyes (“ojos iracundos”), who will purposefully push people over the ledge
to eat them, García Calderón’s condor is more akin to a falcon of the European tradition or
Poe’s ominous Black Cat.
210
Once the captain has reached the bottom of the ravine, the
condors create a terrifying scenery: with their black wings (“alas pardas”) they form a
210
Poe mentions the condor in his short story “Ligeia” as part of the titular character’s poem, “The
Conqueror Worm.”
155
dark, gyrating, inverted cone (“como una tromba sobre los cadáveres”; 14). The plural
cadáveres (cadavers) here indicates an ambiguous detail that is not developed; the
captain’s corpse has fallen over others, perhaps the “osamentas lavadas por el río”
mentioned once before, the captain’s horse, or other, older corpses piled up at the
bottom of the ravine. Pushing people off cliffs—the apparent modus operandi of García
Calderón’s monster—is strikingly unusual behavior for a real condor. The author appears
to write with a rapacious bird in mind (a symbol the European reader can easily recognize)
and thus bends the nature of the condor to fit such a representation. Though the
eponymous animal of “La llama blanca” is vengeful, the condor, intensely frightening to
the Western imagination because of its size and color, is deadly. García Calderón reprises
the condor-as-monster in the story entitled “Coca,” in which a man, after intoxicating
himself with coca leaves and falling asleep,
211
is eaten by rapacious condors.
The revenge scene, in which the condor is the protagonist, is worth quoting in full.
Once the indio leaves with the mysterious phrase “T esperando, taita” (You waiting,
father; 13), both the narrator and his mule can sense imminent danger. He instinctively
moves his hand towards his gun while the animal “medía el peligro y escuchaba la
muerte” (13).
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The following scene immediately ensues:
Un ruido profundo retembló en la montaña: algo rodaba de la altura. De pronto, a
quince metros de mí, pasó un vuelo oblicuo de cóndores, y entonces,
distintamente, porque había llegado a un recodo del camino, vi rebotar con
211
Just as condors are not violent animals at all but are represented as such by García Calderón, coca leaves
produce an effect opposite to the one depicted in his story. This is probably García Calderón’s way of
assimilating his story to the modernista and decadentista tradition of hashish or opium-related stories.
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“measured the danger and listened to death.”
156
estruendo y polvo en la altura inmediata una masa obscura, un hombre, un caballo
tal vez, que fué sangrando en las aristas de las peñas hasta teñir el río espumante,
allá abajo. Estremecido de horror, esperé mientras las montañas se enviaron
cuatro o cinco veces el eco de aquella catarata mortal (13).
213
This meticulous scene, set up and executed with theatrical purposefulness, circles around
the chief images of the story: the condor, the mountains, and their echoes. The captain’s
body bounces off the jagged rocks “sangrando en las aristas de las peñas” until he
becomes a dark mass that stains the river red. The deep noise (“ruido profundo”) made by
the captain’s fall is echoed by the mountains “cuatro o cinco veces.” Repetition, echo, and
time are the key elements of the condor’s revenge, which is itself an echo of another,
larger, wound, a vengeance that, like the fall, takes a painstaking amount of time and, like
an echo, returns as a mirror image of the initial action. The captain’s protracted death is
also a warning that the condor’s revenge, as part of the larger Body-without-organs of the
Andes, can occur at any time and at any place within its Andean realm. It is not the indio
who directly and immediately effects the revenge but the mountains themselves who
unexpectedly tear the falling captain’s flesh. The image of the protracted echo emphasizes
a crucial component of the criollo’s fear of “la venganza del condor”: if indigenous peoples
are, as Novecentistas believed, teeming with uncontrollable anger and thirst for revenge,
if they are compenetrated with nature to the point of achieving dark, supernatural
213
“A deep noise reverberated in the mountain: something was rolling down from the heights. Suddenly,
fifteen meters from me, an oblique flight of condors passed, and then, distinctly, because I had reached a
nook in the trail, I saw tumbling and crashing in the immediate height a dark mass, a man, a horse perhaps,
that was bleeding on the edges of the rocks until it stained the foaming river, down there. Shuddering with
horror, I waited while the mountains sent four or five times the echo of that deadly cataract.”
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powers, their revenge is not a matter of how but when. The idea of the Andes, of the land
itself with its multiple eyes, wings, and limbs, taking its revenge for centuries of
colonization leaves the criollo in a permanent state of fear.
The connection between the indio and condor is framed as part of “secretos de mi
tierra que los hombres de su raza no saben explicar al hombre blanco. Tal vez entre ellos y
los cóndores existe un pacto obscuro para vengarse de los intrusos que somos nosotros”
(14).
214
The wording of the phrase reiterates the narrator’s ambiguous position, since the
indigenous secret belongs to “mi tierra,” his country (i.e., Peru), but at the same time “los
hombres de su raza” cannot explain the secret to the white man (“hombre blanco,” i.e.,
the narrator). Is the secret that belongs to the country and the indio also the narrator’s,
since they are both peruanos? But the pact between man and condor belongs to “ellos,”
and he acknowledges “nosotros” (us), the lettered people, as the “intrusos” (“intruders”).
The narrator paradoxically sees himself as an intruder in what he deems his own land (“mi
tierra”), once more revealing the precarity of his identity’s footing. The characterization of
the link between indigenous peoples and the local fauna as a “dark pact” is the sum of the
narrator’s ideological and aesthetic position. This connection is, for him, an erasure of the
division of Civilization/Barbarism and Culture/Nature that necessarily bolsters modernity.
The “pact” is not seen in the positive light of contemporary permaculture but as
barbarous and denigrating, evidence of the caricatured indio’s premodern and puerile lack
of discernment. He is one of the “vencidos” whose “resignación” it is “imprudente algunas
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“secrets of my homeland that the men of their race do not know how to explain to the white man.
Perhaps between them and the condors there is a dark pact to take revenge on the intruders that we are.”
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veces afrentar con un lindo latigo” (14).
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The closing sentence of the story reiterates the
these points. The story does not condemn violence wholesale but only its excess, since it is
only imprudent to exert violence “algunas veces.” The captain’s excessive jouissance when
exerting violence makes him barbarous and so a proper victim for the “revenge of the
indio.” As in most of García-Calderón’s stories, the role played by the criollos of the
lettered city (like the narrator of “La venganza del condor”) is obscured and set aside.
The ideological content of “La venganza del condor” is reinforced in the other
Andean tales of the collection but is most visible in those that share the first story’s
fantástico: “La llama blanca” and “La momia,” two highly conventionalized tales that are
less nuanced than “La venganza del cóndor.” In these two stories, Garcia Calderón
prioritized readability and exoticism, relegating to the background modern stylings and
watertight construction.
“La momia” is the second story in the anthology and, like “La venganza del
condor,” makes use of the revenge trope through a highly conventionalized revenge-of-
the- mummy plot. The curse of the mummy, which dates to the earliest discoveries of
Egyptian mummies, had a cultural resurgence in 1922 with the discovery of
Tutankhamun’s tomb and the subsequent fates of those who made the discovery. In “La
momia,” the villain is Don Santiago Rosales, “aquel hidalgo trujillano y severo que blandía
al caminar el chicotillo” (15).
216
Like Capitán González in “La venganza del condor,”
Santiago Rosales is permanently accompanied by his whip, a symbol of the tyrannical
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One of the “conquered” whose “resignation” is “sometimes imprudent to offend with a beautiful whip.”
216
"that stern hidalgo from Trujillo who wielded a whip as he walked."
159
power he exerts over the peons. He is the hacendado of “Tambo chico,” an hacienda that
contains “una antigua fortaleza y necrópolis de indios que llaman la huaca grande” (15).
217
The assimilation of the huaca, an indigenous sacred site (often, as in this case, a burial
ground), with a “necropolis” sets the tone for the rest of the story. The somber tone is
immediately picked up in the lines that follow, a description of the huaca: “Está en el
centro del valle, irguiéndose sobre la colina con sus nidos de lechuzas, siniestra por sus
obscuros pasadizos, en donde ningn peón quiere extraviarse” (15).
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This “sinister”
huaca will be the stage for the revenge of the indio. Like the conquistadors, Santiago
Rosales’ thirst for riches knows no bounds and his unbridled ambition will be his downfall:
after instructing his peons to steal the pre-Columbian huacos (ceramic vessels) from the
huaca, Rosales’ greed drives him to desire the mummies themselves for his own private
collection. This overexertion of his power proves to be his downfall when, instead of an
Inca princess, he finds his own daughter mummified in the depths of the huaca.
This turn in the curse of the mummy narrative is unique to García Calderón. Luz
Rosales (Don Rosales’ daughter) is described as “extraña” (strange) and as a frightful sight
to the indios, who are not accustomed to a person bearing her physical traits. Her
exaggeratedly blonde hair, which reflects light (reiterated by her name, Luz), and
particularly white skin make her an otherworldly sight, marking her as the perennial fair-
haired victim of the Gothic. Luz’s golden hair is reminiscent of the gold in the huaca that
the Incas, having received the news of their empire’s downfall (“la ruina del Imperio”), left
217
"an ancient Indian fortress and necropolis that they call the 'huaca grande' (big huaca)."
218
“It is in the center of the valley, towering over the hill with its nests of owls, ominous for its dark
passages, where no peon wants to go astray.”
160
behind: “a lo largo de los corredores subterráneos, dispuestos en aspas de molino como
los rayos de sol” (16).
219
These corresponding elements in the story—the gold of the Incas
and Luz Rosales’ golden hair—are inverted as a way to restore order: once the buried gold
is exhumed, the gold on the outside (Luz Rosales) is buried as revenge.
Women’s bodies are mere trading tokens in La venganza del condor, particularly
those of racialized peoples. This is patent in one of the most shocking stories of the
anthology, “Amor indígena.” The story has been read both as critical of the abhorrent
behavior depicted (López Alfonso 97) and as a nostalgic swan song to the unlimited power
of the conquistadors. The tonal ambiguity in the story is further complicated by the stories
surrounding it, in which, as in “La venganza del condor,” the narrator’s and the author’s
position is difficult to discern. That the tone of “Amor indígena” tone is undetermined,
permitting a double reading, ratifies yet more the workings of the Gothic Assemblage,
which run through the entire collection.
In this story, an unnamed villain-hero enters an Andean town with two
companions. After insulting the locals and destroying their property, the protagonist rapes
a girl and prepares to leave nonchalantly. But before he can leave, the girl returns, a
gesture taken by the narrator as love (“¿Quién iba a quererme así?” (“Who could ever love
me like her?”)). He then picks the girl up and takes her, feeling pride reminiscent of some
other, older time, “un orgullo de otra edad. ¡El orgullo de aquellos semidioses de la
conquista peruana que robaban mujeres despavoridas en la grupa de su corcel de guerra
219
“…throughout the subterranean corridors, arranged in windmill blades like the sun's rays."
161
!” (45).
220
For López Alfonso, the story is an open satire of those who believe, as the
protagonist does, that, in the protagonist’s words, “el mundo entero pertenece a los que
tienen tan buen revólver. ¿Por qué nos iba a inquietar la desolación indígena?” (43).
221
This reading of the story suggests that García Calderón devised a character that would,
through his own words, demonstrate his vile nature. Yet the villain never gets his
comeuppance in the story; there is no voice to counter his claims. What is more, the
discourse itself is just a notch above that of the other stories of the collection, without a
hint of satire. The overt celebration of the Spanish Conquista and the conquistadors
(called “demigods” in the story), finds no opposition; the exploitative scenes depicting the
horrors of colonial despotism (the rape of the girl, among others) are allowed to flow in
seamless detail within the body of the text. The conflation of present abuse and abuse
committed by the conquistadors is yet another call to the Gothic, to a spirit that resists
the passage of time and persists where it should be absent. The images evoked in the
story, whether celebratory or satirical, are by the narrator's own admission anachronistic.
Beyond the author’s intention, the horror in “Amor indígena” is that colonial violence still
exists in a supposedly “modern” world and a supposedly “modern” nation.
The victim in “Amor Indígena” is, in addition to the violence she endures in the
story, also framed as an exotic other by the cruel and blasé narrator. He characterizes
Quechua as a “suspirante lengua de brujerías” (“sighing language of witchcraft”; 40). The
association between indigenous peoples and witchcraft is recurrent, as seen in “La
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"a pride of another age. The pride of those demi-gods of the Peruvian conquest who stole terrified
women on the back of their war steed!"
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"The whole world belongs to those who have such good revolvers. Why should we be troubled by
indigenous desolation?"
162
venganza del condor.” In “La momia,” it is suggested that the substitution of the Inca
mummy for Luz Rosales is the consequence of an indigenous rite. In the supposed rite,
Tomasa, the local sorceress, performs a special ritual to avenge the stolen ancestors:
Todo ello, unido a extraños menjurjes, sirvió para componer un muñeco de
regulares proporciones que llevaba en el pecho un corazón visible como en los
«detentes» que regalan los misioneros. Y en el centro del corazón, después de
haber investigado, por la amargura de la coca mascada en comn, si la suerte sería
favorable, clavaron todos, llorando, uno de esos alfileres rematados en cuchara de
oro con que cierran el manto las mujeres. Un sapo hinchado agonizaba allí, junto a
los candiles, y el murciélago del muro, prendido por las alas, abría y cerraba un
pico triste. Entonces, una lamentación sumisa, tétrica, a los poderes infernales
comenzó por boca de la hechicera: «Mama coca, mamitay, te pido por el diablo de
Huamachuco, por el diablo de Huancayo, por todos los diablos rabudos...(18)
222
García Calderón combines elements that are easily recognized within the Western
imaginary of witchcraft (frogs, bats, voodoo dolls) with proper Andean elements. The use
of tupos, the “alfileres rematados en cuchara de oro” (“pins that end in a golden spoon”)
for voodoo needles is but one example of many typically Andean objects. Like “La
222
“All this, together with strange concoctions, served to compose a doll of regular proportions that had on
its chest a visible heart, as in the ‘detentes’ that the missionaries gave away. And in the center of the heart,
after having determined, through the bitterness of the coca chewed in communion, if the luck would be
favorable, they all stuck, crying, one of those pins finished off with a golden spoon with which women close
their cloaks. A swollen toad agonized there, next to the candles, and the bat on the wall, pinned by the
wings, opened and closed a sad beak. Then, a submissive, gloomy lamentation to the infernal powers began
through the mouth of the sorceress: ‘Mama coca, mamitay, I ask you by the devil of Huamachuco, by the
devil of Huancayo, by all the tailed devils...’”
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venganza del condor,” “La momia” also has a conventional fantástico double ending given
in the final paragraph of the story:
Algunos cholos liberales del “Club Progreso” explicaron más tarde al juez de
primera instancia de la provincia que, robada en la noche por los indios, la
embalsamaron éstos, empleando los antiguos secretos del arte, que creemos hoy
perdidos. Durante la noche habían macerado en grandes tinajas el cuerpo de la
momia rubia. Pero toda la gente del valle sabe muy bien que fué venganza de los
muertos de la fortaleza. La prueba está en que desaparecieron las momias de la
casa cuando se llevaron a don Santiago al manicomio, y todavía, en las noches de
luna, se las oye chacchar la coca nutritiva de los abuelos. (22)
223
This paragraph clearly illustrates the two solutions: either the mummies themselves took
revenge or the indios embalmed Luz Rosales’ body. The two solutions are given equal
credence, but both are equally damning. As in “La venganza del condor,” hesitation
between the two equally plausible solutions reveals that the answer is not important: the
mummies, the huacas, the Andes, the indios, are all parts of the same Body.
“La llama blanca,” the third non-mimetic Andean story in the collection, adds to
this array of violence and barbarism bestiality. The villain of the story, an hacendado
named Vicente Cabral, punishes bestiality with lashes, refusing to tolerate “estos amores
escandalosos” (“these scandalous relations”; 72). The animal in question is a white llama
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“Some liberal cholos of the ‘Club Progreso’ later explained to the judge of first instance of the province
that, stolen at night by the Indians, she was embalmed by them, using the ancient secrets of the art, which
we believe today lost. During the night they had macerated the body of the blond mummy in large jars. But
all the people of the valley know very well that it was revenge of the dead of the fortress. The proof is that
the mummies disappeared from the house when they took Don Santiago to the asylum, and still, on moonlit
nights, one hears them chacchar the nutritious coca of the grandparents.”
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named Killa, “porque era blanca y tal vez sagrada como la luna llena” (72).
224
To teach the
indios a lesson, “que las llamas no son mujeres ni pueden ser amadas como tales,”
225
Cabral shoots Killa dead. The hacendado’s affront stirs the ire of his peons, who perform a
moonlit ritual as if to avenge the dead llama. The ritual includes tearing out Killa’s heart as
a bloody sacrifice to the huaca: “la Killa se estremeció en el suelo, muerta, y la arrancaron
el corazón para regarlo sobre la huaca de los abuelos, mientras las quenas lejanas seguían
lamentando la injusta ruina de la raza” (74).
226
Pulling out an animal’s heart (particularly a
llama’s) for ritualistic purposes—a practice known as wilancha by the Aimaras and
Quechuas—is, once again, a real practice abjected by García Calderón.
227
Not unlike “La
venganza del condor” or the tupos in “La momia,” an indigenous belief or practice is re-
signified within the Western paradigm, particularly the Gothic aesthetic paradigm.
Wilancha is presented thus as a vengeful, almost satanic ritual intended to do harm. The
ritual is performed under the moonlight, accompanied by the melancholy music of the
quenas and the howls of dogs, who are made to howl through constant lashing. These
elements, absent from the actual ritual, endow the practice with a Gothic ambiance not
inherent to it.
The revenge exacted through this dark ritual in “La llama blanca” is a peculiar one
because it relies on a biological weapon to match the violent technology of the revolver.
Since indigenous characters do not use modern weaponry in García Calderón’s stories,
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“because she was white and perhaps sacred like the moon”
225
“that llamas are not women and cannot be loved as such”
226
“Killa shuddered on the ground, dead, and they tore out her heart to pour it over the huaca of the
grandparents, while the distant quenas continued lamenting the unjust downfall of the race.”
227
Compare to the same practice as depicted by Oscar Colchado in Rosa Cuchillo and Guamán Poma.
165
nature, by virtue of its unknown but endless power, fashions a tool as potent as a firearm.
Killa, having been resurrected, spits on Cabral’s face, who then contracts leishmaniasis
(“uta”). This disease forms ulcers on the skin that, in the narrative, resemble bullet holes.
Thus, Cabral’s face is left “lleno de manchas rojas y chamuscadas, como las heridas de un
revólver de buen calibre” (77).
228
Aided once again by Andean animals and the huacas, the
indios represent a force comparable to that of their white oppressors. As in “La venganza
del condor,” the revenge is slow and protracted, taking place and taking shape over the
course of several days. The uncertain temporality of the “revenge of the indio” is in this
way once again reiterated.
The other stories set unequivocally in the Andes (“Coca,” “El despenador,” “Fue en
el Per,” “A la criollita,” “Los cerdos flacos”) do not share the fantástico generic structure
but do share the same characterization of the indio and indigenous cultures. Not unlike
“Coca,” in the other stories the Andean landscape is plagued by the incessant threat of
death, which comes from every direction. In “El despenador,” García Calderón provides a
glimpse into a purely indigenous scene. Unsurprisingly, the scene he chooses to depict
relates to death: the titular character is called upon to put an end to another’s misery. The
story serves as an excuse to exhibit more abjected practices and a degraded living
conditions in which medical ailments are treated through satanic pacts (the local witch
flies to Huamacucho “a besar el trasero del macho cabrio”) and people live among animals
and fleas, which the indios constantly pick and make “estallar entre los dientes” (“explode
between their teeth”;118)
228
“riddled with red, burnt sores, reminiscent of wounds made by a high-caliber revolver”
166
As for the stories set in the jungle, Valenzuela Garcés’ take on the “exotic subject”
in García Calderón seems to ring true. Yet it is not the clothing of the Andean indio that
dresses the “savage” but that of the cannibalistic indio of the jungle. Despite mentioning
three real Amazonian indigenous communities by name (“indios witotos” –[Uitoto],
“campas” [Ashaninka], and “conibos” [Shipibo-konibo]), these bear no resemblance to
their real-life counterparts. Contrary to the Andean stories, in which García Calderón
bends certain anthropologically accurate elements to fit Gothic stylization, his “jungle”
stories are entirely based on the Western imaginary of the cannibalistic savage. The indios
witotos portrayed by García Calderón are barely distinguishable from the “savages” of
English Gothic. Paradoxically, their representation as idealized savages make them less
abject than the Andean indio. López Alfonso clarifies this detail when outlining the
characteristics of the latter imaginary figure:
la imagen que ofrece del indio de la sierra, descendiente del inacario, no es tan
amable. Si el indio del Amazonas es el hombre natural, el indio de la sierra
representa al hombre civilizado que ha experimentado una regresión cultural; algo
muy similar a la distinción que Chateaubriand
229
establecía entre el salvaje
americano y el árabe.
230
(97)
López Alfonso’s point is exemplified by “Historia de caníbales,” which, as its title suggests,
presents the pseudo-witotos as cannibals who take revenge on a Frenchman by eating
229
“En un mot, tout annonce chez l’Américain le sauvage qui n’est point encore parvenu á l’état de
civilization; tout indique chez l’Arabe l’homme civilisé retombé dans l’état sauvage” (207).
230
“the image he offers of the Andean Indian, descendant of the Incas, is not so kind. If the Amazon Indian is
the natural man, the Andean Indian represents the civilized man who has undergone a cultural regression;
something very similar to the distinction that Chateaubriand established between the American savage and
the Arab.”
167
him. Their revenge, however, does not respond to an atavistic thirst for vengeance but to
a much simpler chain of events. According to Victor Landa, the narrator of the story and
Lucien Vignon’s tale, the man was eaten because the “indios de mi tierra” are
“espiritualistas” (62). According to Landa’s account, Vignon was eaten because of the
indigenous belief that personal characteristics can be transferred through cannibalism.
Convinced that Vignon ate one of their own, they eat him in order to recover their lost
companion’s attributes (65). The “logical” explanation provided is contrasted with another
“fact” Landa presents: he derides Europeans who do not believe his tale, “como si en un
tugurio de Londres no pudiésemos hallar salvajes auténticos” (58).
231
The story thus
demonstrates once again the ideological foundation the collection is built upon: barbarism
is located both in the deep jungles of Peru and the regressed lower classes of supposedly
civilized countries. The same paradigm framesthe Victorian Neogothic Assemblage.
“Historia de caníbales” exhibits a conventional form of the Imperial Gothic, in
which the protagonist enters the depths of the jungle of his own will; at the beginning of
the story he does not live with the “savages” but he eventually will. The descriptors for
Imperial Gothic outlined by Brantlinger are manifest in their most conventional forms,
particularly in the fear of contamination. In the story, the narrator-protagonist comments
on other men, “mister Roberts, el inglés más correcto del mundo, el director de la ‘Iquitos
Rubber Company’” and Juan Cancio Garibaldi, who have become leaders of indigenous
“tribes” (“jefe de tribu”). These two characters read very similarly to that of Kurtz in
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“as if in a London shanty we couldn’t find authentic savages”
168
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and show very few traces of the specificity of the Andean
stories.
The “savage” but not malicious nature of the jungle “naturales” is reiterated in “La
selva de los venenos,” in which an indigenous mother is forced to cut her child’s arm off to
save him from the deadly bite of a “chicharra machacuti.” The “chicharra machacuti”
makes “La selva de los venenos” one of the two “animal” stories in La venganza del
cóndor set in the Peruvian Amazon. The other, “Yacu-Mama,” narrates the relationship
between a boy, Jenarito, the son of Jenaro Valdivia and a nameless (probably indigenous)
woman, and the Yacu-Mama (“water-mother”) incarnate as a boa. Contrary to the “pacto
obscuro” depicted in “La venganza del cóndor,” Jenarito’s link with the boa is depicted as
a mother-son relationship. When Jenarito is threatened by a tiger that had been stalking
his father, the Yacu-Mama comes to his defense, sacrificing her own life. The difference
between the Andes’ Body-without-organs in “La venganza del condor,” “La momia,” and
“La llama blanca” and the pioneer story of Yacu-Mama is stark.
The remaining stories are not exempt from the Gothic trace: they are riddled with
ghosts (“El chimbador”), vampire women or femme fatales (“Chamico”), and even
pretend-apparitions (“Cuento de mi vieja Lima”), including mention of “esos volátiles que
llaman vampiros” (148).
232
These form part of the voyage charted by García Calderón in
his anthology and appear as conventional uses of tropes. These stories, imitative in some
cases of Ricardo Palma’s style, are to my mind unremarkable for the most part. This
confirms that, within La venganza del condor, Andean bodies are abjected in a particular
232
“those volatile beings they call vampires”
169
way. They are living testimonies of the purported “veracity” of regression within the
diegesis. As depicted, they are walking laments, ruins thirsting endlessly for vengeance.
The limits between indigenous person, animal, and space (geographic or religious) are
purposefully blurred into a whole Body-without-organs of malignant intent—in other
words, a Gothic body. If the so-called problem of the indio is the problem of land (as
Mariátegui argues), then the reveng of the indio is also the revenge of the land.
Discourse of a secret vengeance festering in the heart of the land still lives, as do
many of the ideas of the Novecentistas. Though he died in 1959, Ventura García
Calderón’s legacy is still criticized and defended as though he were still alive. And, in the
same way that Sarmiento understood Facundo to live on in Rosas, “La venganza del
condor”’ lives on in texts like Vegas Seminario’s Chicha, sol y sangre and Vargas Llosa’s
Lituma en los andes. Fears of indigenous rebellion, of “pachacuti,” of the return of Inkarri,
the revenge of the condor, the revenge of a supposed Nature over Culture, take on new
life when social and political unrest intensify. When that happens, the discourse behind La
venganza del cóndor reappears, brandished like the captain’s golden whip, made of a
dense pattern of Gothic associations.
170
Chapter 4
Mexican Gothic’s Death Without End
Desde mis ojos insomnes
mi muerte me está acechando,
me acecha, sí, me enamora
con su ojo lánguido.
¡Anda, putilla del rubor helado,
anda, vámonos al diablo!
Muerte sin fin, José Gorostiza
233
Contrary to the modernista use of the Gothic or the indigenista expression of the
mode, questions surrounding the Gothic in Mexico invariably gravitate towards its
connection with the idea of Mexico itself. The term Mexican Gothic
234
has acquired a life
of its own in the pages of literary and cultural criticism, where it lives at ease but is
strangely undefined. Despite contentious and contradictory accounts of the term’s use,
235
even critical classics like Manuel Durán’s Tríptico Mexicano use the term to describe
elements of Carlos Fuentes’ work and seasoned Gothicists like David Punter have amply
explored the concept. What is “Mexican Gothic,” then? Does it even exist?
236
If it does,
233
“From my unsleeping eyes / my death is stalking me, / stalks me, yes, enamors me / with its languid eye. /
Go, little wench of cold rouge, / go, let’s go to the devil!” Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my
own.
234
Some of the critics who use the term “Mexican Gothic” include David Punter (2016), Djelal Kadir (1976),
Inés Ordiz (2016), Enrique Ajuria Ibarra (2017), Raúl Rodríguez Hernández and Claudia Schaeffer (1999). The
texts that analyze the Gothic in Mexican literature, art or film without necessarily using the term “Mexican
Gothic” are countless.
235
While some critics argue that the term (“Gothic”) has been used too much, others state that it has not
been used enough. Despite this discrepancy, it is clear that the term has not faced the same resistance that
it has in South America. Even if we choose to agree that it has been underused or understudied, the
instances of its appearance regarding Mexican literature, traceable to the sixties and seventies, far exceed
similar efforts in other Latin American countries.
236
Does “Mexican Gothic” depend on the author or filmmaker’s nationality? Would Guillermo del Toro’s
Crimson Peak (2015), a film set in England that purposefully serves as a pastiche of Victorian Gothic, be
171
José Guadalupe Posada’s smiling skeletons, Diego Rivera’s Catrina, human sacrifices made
with an obsidian blade, the still-beating heart in the hand of the Mexica priest, courting
and even loving Death—revering it as a saint (La Santa Muerte)—would surely be a part of
it. But such a list could never be exhaustive, and it certainly does not serve as a definition.
To interrogate the concept, one must first address its constitutive component: the idea of
Mexico itself. After parsing this notion, I will explore its relation to two works persistently
associated with Mexican Gothic: Aura (1962) by Carlos Fuentes and Pedro Páramo (1955)
by Juan Rulfo. These two radically different texts, which have been approached by the
Gothic critical tradition from two different angles—one through modal analysis and the
other through Gothic hermeneutics—will shape my answer to the question of Mexican
Gothic.
It is not my aim to list the many ways in which Aura is a Gothic text (this has
already been done) or to determine whether Pedro Páramo is or isn’t Gothic. Both texts
participate in the Gothic abstract machine’s Mexican Gothic Assemblage in unique ways.
Juxtaposing two of the most significant short texts (a novella and a short novel) not only of
Mexican literature but of the Latin American Boom serves as a point of departure for
identifying the components of this assemblage and how it brings to light enshrouded
areas of these well-known and well-read texts.
Mexico and Mexican Gothic
engaging in or be considered a part of Mexican Gothic? A firm negative is not uncontroversial, since
nationality appears to be the underlying commonality between many of the texts labeled as such.
172
In the first place, Mexican Gothic presupposes the idea of Mexico, that “Mexico” is
a critical concept bearing definition. Mexicanness, a form of national essentialism that
seems antiquated for the twenty-first century, was a crucial part of the literary zeitgeist in
twentieth-century Mexico. At that moment in time, writers, sociologists, anthropologists,
and cultural critics circled the matter with obsessive insistence. These various disciplines
make the exploration of such an idea possible.
Like many other terms that have been subjected to extensive archaeologies, the
ontological value of “Mexican Gothic” is “true” insofar as it is related to the equally
contentious idea of “Mexicanness.” It is not necessarily a reflection of a social or
anthropological truth existing outside of discourse. When penning her own homage to
Juan Rulfo, Cristina Rivera Garza inquires and responds: “¿De qué se hace una identidad
nacional? De mentiras, por supuesto. O, para ser más exactos, de falsificaciones.” (59).
237
For the purposes of this dissertation, if such things hold any truth-value for sociological
analysis (that Mexicans by birth or socialization hold a particular and more or less
homogeneous idea about or attitude towards Death) is not relevant. My study concerns
the counterfeit or forgery of Mexican identity. What does pertain to my line of enquiry
are the value of reality held by the idea of Mexican Gothic in discourse and the forms that
populate it.
The conversations that took place during the twentieth century (particularly during
the fifties and sixties) with ample faith in a possible answer all point toward a particular
237
“What is national identity made of? Of lies, of course. Or, to be more precise, of forgeries.”
173
relationship between the construction of Mexicanness and Death. A reading of the Gothic
mode within the Mexican tradition transcends modality by linking it not only to the
staging of negative affects originating from a specific Other but also to a larger national
expression. The assemblage thus created also manifests fear/attraction but in this case of
Death itself, of a particular discursive construction of Death. Life, as a mask of Death,
manifests avatars of it: the archaeological indigenous past (Chac Mool), the female body
as the source of mystery analogous to death (Aura) and the rural landscape as the image
of ultimate abandonment (Pedro Páramo).
From here the elements central to my search—the ones I believe can be assembled
by Mexican Gothic—can be parsed. The following components can be found in the pages
of Carlos Fuentes, José Emilio Pacheco, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Posada’s Catrina, and
Diego Rivera’s murals—even if hardly any of these writers and artists conceptualized the
notion in such a way. These elements are:
1. Death without end
2. Anachronism and ruin: an endless past chasing the present, threatening to catch
it
3. The contemplation of horror through Christian eschatology: extreme multiplicity
or barrenness
4. Sexual othering: Women as mystery, “la chingada”
My scheme here is a multilayered one that differs in scope to those presented in
the previous two chapters. Southern Cone modernistas deployed the Gothic to stage fear
of or attraction to the strange forces of modernity and to exert power (pouvoir) and
174
bolster modernity against potential threats. Ventura García Calderón’s use of the Gothic
mode within the indigenista
238
paradigm (followed later by the likes of Francisco Vega
Seminario) also staged fear and attraction, but in relation to the Andean indigenous
person, and to similarly exert pouvoir and enforce the coding of his conception of
modernity over indigenous people’s bodies.
239
As Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate, one
cannot say that a Gothic tradition does not exist in Spanish America outside of Mexico,
nor that the tentacular appendages of the Gothic have not reached beyond Mexico.
Nonetheless, the syntagms “Peruvian Gothic” or “Argentine Gothic” do not constitute a
set as richly populated as Mexican Gothic, nor can a clear arrangement around national
ideas be discerned in the same way as with said term. Mexican Gothic has even spawned
its own critical tradition, which I will comment on.
Mexican Gothic, then, must articulate Mexico’s purported social/anthropological
discourse on Death with European Gothic, but also re-signify semiotic components taken
from Mexico’s pre-Columbian past, Christian eschatology, and the semiotics of popular
tradition in this same key (form of content and form of expression). One is not the
“representation” of the other
240
—they both work in an isomorphic fashion. What makes
238
In her essay “Ciudad, terror y mito: la concepción del gótico literario desde el mito prehispánico en los
cuentos La llorona de Artemio del Valle-Arizpe, La Fiesta brava de José Emilio Pacheco y Año cero de
Bernardo Esquinca”, Karen Alejandra Calvo Díaz posits that Pacheco, Artemio del Valle Díaz and Bernardo
Esquinca are similar in their approach to the Gothic to the Peruvian indigenistas. This approach, albeit
interesting, seems inexact to us: the use of Mexica mythology within Mexican Gothic is completely different
to its use within the Peruvian indigenista tradition. In addition, said tradition is geographically coded and
time sensitive. In the Peruvian case, it appears as an immediate response to the trauma of the Saltpeter war.
Mexican history (particularly the Mexican Revolution) and the relationship between the state apparatus and
Mexican indigenous peoples produces what we believe to be a different form of the Gothic altogether.
239
This is the image of the “lindo látigo”, the beautiful whip that we have stressed in the previous chapter.
240
The form of content and form of expression constitute the stratum without one standing as a
representation of the other. Deleuze and Guattari discuss this at length in their “Postulates of Linguistics.” In
this pseudo-chapter, Deleuze and Guattari posit that “it would be an error to believe that content
175
this arrangement Gothic is that it gestures towards the Gothic Abstract Machine;
241
it
shares its basic elements: a form of content that captures the zeitgeist of a time regarding
an abjected Other and a form of expression that contains the elements listed above but is
not limited to them. They are both arranged on the axis of representing the frightening
and appealing nucleus of what has been deemed Mexican identity: Death herself.
Santa Muerte: Death and Mexico
When considering twentieth-century discourse on Mexico and “Mexican
character,” names such as Samuel Ramos, Alfonso Reyes, Mariano Azuela, and Carlos
Fuentes may come to mind—but Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad (The Labyrinth of
Solitude, 1950) still looms large. Through a series of potent images strung on the single
thread of “Mexico,” Paz gives his own answer to the question of Mexican difference.
Throughout the six chapters and epilogue, Paz’s notion of Mexican character (“carácter
mexicano”) is threaded by an emphasis on negative affects. For Paz, “La contemplación
del horror, y aun la familiaridad y la complacencia en su trato, constituyen […] uno de los
rasgos más notables del carácter mexicano”(12).
242
Paz’s Laberinto, which condenses the
determines expression by causal action, even if expression is accorded the power not only to ‘reflect’
content but to react upon it in an active way. […] The only way to define the relation is to revamp the theory
of ideology by saying that expressions and statements intervene directly in productivity, in the form of a
production of meaning or sign-value” (89).
241
The machine outline that describes all Gothic texts and assemblages, the commonalities inherent to the
genre described in terms of relations, not tropes.
242
“In contrast, one of the most notable traits of the Mexican's character is his willingness to contemplate
horror: he is even familiar and complacent in his dealings with it. In contrast, one of the most notable traits
of the Mexican's character is his willingness to contemplate horror: he is even familiar and complacent in his
dealings with it” (23; unless otherwise noted, all translations of Laberinto into English are from Lysander
Kemp’s 1961 version).
176
essentialist and androcentric discourse of the twentieth-century Mexican zeitgeist, also
sketches out the shadows of the same discourse, where the Mexican Gothic must live.
This does not mean that the Laberinto is a Gothic text; but, much like Sarmiento’s
Facundo, it contains elements that pertain to and can be read through the Gothic Abstract
Machine.
An inevitable component of Paz’s idea of Mexico is the Mexican’s relationship to
and with Death. In this context Paz describes the celebration of the Day of the Dead:
Calaveras de azúcar o de papel de China, esqueletos coloridos de fuegos de
artificio, nuestras representaciones populares son siempre burla de la vida,
afirmación de la nadería e insignificancia de la humana existencia. Adornamos
nuestras casas con cráneos, comemos el día de los Difuntos panes que fingen
huesos y nos divierten canciones y chascarrillos en los que ríe la muerte pelona,
pero toda esa fanfarrona familiaridad no nos dispensa de la pregunta que todos
nos hacemos: ¿qué es la muerte?
243
The discourse that frames Death as constitutive of the idea of Mexico depicts Her
(invariably female) as both terrible and appealing at the same time, a matter of
“chascarrillos” and “fanfarrona familiaridad” on one hand, and the “afirmación de la
nadería e insignificancia de la humana existencia” on the other. A mask of familiarity
conceals the fact that not even the Mexican’s irreverent attitude towards Her can resolve
243
“Sugar-candy skulls, and tissue-paper skulls and skeletons strung with fireworks . . . our popular images
always poke fun at life, affirming the nothingness and insignificance of human existence. We decorate our
houses with death's heads, we eat bread in the shape of bones on the Day of the Dead, we love the songs
and stories in which death laughs and cracks jokes, but all this boastful familiarity does not rid us of the
question we all ask: What is death? We have not thought up a new answer. And each time we ask, we shrug
our shoulders: Why should I care about death if I have never cared about life?” (58-59)
177
the final mystery: “no nos dispensa de la pregunta que todos nos hacemos: ¿qué es la
muerte?”.
To examine more closely the image of Death within the discourse on Mexicanness,
one must inevitably return to José Guadalupe Posada and his “calaveras,”
244
particularly
his well-know garbancera,
245
the protagonist of Diego Rivera’s Sueño de una tarde
dominical en la Alameda Central (1947).
246
Her most salient characteristic, the wide-
brimmed hat, is an allusion to her social status and the gendered performance of that
status, both neutralized by death. The text that accompanies the original image expresses
this clearly: “Las que hoy son empolvadas garbanceras, pararán en deformes calaveras”
(See Appendix, Figure 1).
247248
Posada’s other “Calaveras del montón,” dressed in a diverse
array of hats, ruffles, and bullet belts, lay bare one of the Gothic’s interactions with Death:
its equalizing power is horrifying but also attractive. Surrendering oneself to Death and its
mystery, having one’s identity erased, is not a traumatic process but a natural or
naturalized step. Paz expresses this idea in a bittersweet question paired with a dejected
244
It is important to note that, although he popularized calaveras, Guadalupe Posadas did not invent them.
According to Ilan Stavans, it was Manuel Manilla (Stavans 59). See Appendix (Figure 1).
245
Octavio Paz mentioned this work many times throughout his own. In “José Guadalupe Posada y el
grabado latinoamericano” he comments: “La Calavera Catrina no es únicamente una estampa satírica de las
señoras ele¬ gantes de su tiempo; es una imagen poética, un emblema, en el que el lujo se alía a la muerte:
plumas, sedas y huesos. Es la moda pero vista desde la perspectiva de un Leopardi: la moda hermana de la
muerte...” (183)
246
See Appendix, Figure 2.
247
“Those that today are powdered garbanceras will end up as deformed skeletons.” Garbanceras are those
who seek to deny their Mexican heritage in favor of the European.
248
The first and second stanza of the satirical poem that accompanies the Garbancera read as follows: “Hay
hermosas garbanceras/De corsé y alto tacón/Pero han de ser calaveras/Calaveras del montón. // Gata que
te pintas chapas/Con ladrillo o bermellón/La muerte dirá ‘No escapas,/Eres cráneo del montón.’” (See
Appendix 1 for the complete text).
178
shrug (“nos encojemos de hombros”): “¿qué me importa la muerte, si no me importa la
vida?” (30)
249
After all, under our skin we are just identical “calaveras.”
Paz’s question points up one of the central characteristics of Mexicanness: the
indeterminacy of what is living and what is dead. In Rivera’s mural, “Catrina” walks
alongside Mexico’s past and history in the making with a smile. Posada’s laughing
skeletons portray Death taken with levity, a form of Death that does not signal the end.
Life’s continuity with death is double-edged: if death is not the end, life’s tribulations are
eternal. Paz attributed these beliefs to Mexico’s pre-Columbian past: “Para los antiguos
mexicanos la oposición entre muerte y vida no era tan absoluta como para nosotros. La
vida se prolongaba en la muerte” (28).
250
It should be noted, however, that softening the
distinction between the living and the dead is not the same as the persistence of the past
as an element of Mexicanness.
Do these ideas come into conflict with the idea of Mexico’s Catholicism? The term
Santa for Death (a popular saint within Mexican tradition) reflects the syncretic
relationship between local traditions and celebrations surrounding Death and Catholic
belief. Catholic practices and beliefs coexist in discourse without contradiction with the
notion of a porous boundary between life and death, pushing Christian rituals to visual
extremes. From a Protestant point of view, Catholicism is excessive, as Anne Radcliffe,
Matthew Lewis, and Edgar Allan Poe made clear. Lustful monks, bloodthirsty Inquisition
officials, and the veneration of idols can all be components of a Gothic narrative. Paz lays
249
Why should I care about death if I have never cared about life? (59)
250
For ancient Mexicans, the opposition between life and death was not as absolute as it is for us. Life was
prolonged in death.
179
out an aesthetic arrangement resonant with such a sensibility in his Laberinto when he
comments on the Mexican’s particular veneration of Christ the Son:
En las iglesias de los pueblos abundan las esculturas de Jesús —en cruz o
cubiertas de llagas y heridas— en las que el realismo desollado de los españoles se
alía al simbolismo trágico de los indios: las heridas son flores, prendas de
resurrección, por una parte y, asimismo, reiteración de que la vida es la máscara
dolorosa de la muerte. (43)
251
Flowers as wounds, life as “máscara dolorosa de la muerte” can be read as a Gothic
gesture of layering that separates the abject through counterfeit.
The indeterminate nature of Death and humanity’s relationship with it becomes
even more complex when not only Christian imagery but Christian eschatology is
considered. Christian doctrine posits death as the end of one form of life and the start of
another, new life after Judgement. But, as Stephanie Merrim points out in her discussion
of existentialism in Pedro Páramo, theological allusions “undergo an existential
transvaluation that strips them of transcendence” (310). Death ceases to provide
existential certainty and gives way to existential dread: no longer a breaking point or
doorway to a new life, Death gives way to a new life hauntingly similar to the one before.
The dark side of a boundless life and an endless death is one of Mexican Gothic’s
inquiries that is braided with another: binary gender difference. In the dance with Death,
251
“The village churches have a great many images of Jesus— on the cross, or covered with thorns and
wounds— in which the insolent realism of the Spaniards is mingled with the tragic symbolism of the Indians.
On the one hand, the wounds are flowers, pledges of resurrection; on the other, they are a reiteration that
life is the sorrowful mask of death” (83)
180
gender still remains a source of anxiety and horror, along the lines of which Otherness, in
the form of gender difference and the undying pre-Columbian past, are coded.
Two Mexican Gothics? El chingón and la chingada
One of the most contentious
252
but constitutive elements of Laberinto is the sharp,
androcentric gender distinction that Paz elaborates. Paz portrays woman as “open” or
“cracked” (“rajado”) by nature, for which reason “el mal radica en ella misma (19).
253
This
gives way to the dialectic of “chingada” and “chingón.” While la chingada is “la hembra, la
pasividad pura, inerme ante el exterior” (40)
254
and “la Madre abierta, violada o burlada
por la fuerza”(41)
255
the opposite holds for the masculine: “El chingón es el macho, el que
abre” (40).
256
Thus, “Lo chingado es lo pasivo, lo inerte y abierto, por oposición a lo que
chinga, que es activo, agresivo y cerrado”(40).
257
As previously noted in the conceptual map of my inquiry, the “female” is not the
only subject of Othering within this discourse. The defeated indigenous past, an element
within the discourse of Mexicanness, also belongs to that which is Othered.
258
On the
252
There has been much discussion surrounding Paz’s classic text. Paz himself revisited it in 1975. William H.
Katra already identified the ideological issues of Laberinto in 1986, among which he includes the text’s
emphasis on the negative aspects of Mexican culture (pathological aspects) and its point of enunciation,
which for Katra “resembles the world-view of Mexico's most privileged groups who continue to wield social,
economic, and political power” (13). These analyses make contemporary acritical uses of Paz’s text all the
more surprising.
253
“Evil/misfortune lies within herself.”
254
“the female, who is pure passivity, defenseless against the exterior world” (77).
255
“the Mother forcibly opened, violated or deceived” (79).
256
“The chingón is the macho, the male; he rips open…” (77).
257
“The person who suffers this action is passive, inert and open, in contrast to the active, aggressive and
closed person who inflicts it” (77).
258
It is interesting to note the sharp distinction—despite a common element (the Othering of indigenous
peoples)—between what I am calling “Mexican Gothic” and Ventura García Calderón’s Gothic indigenismo.
181
feminine side, “la chingada,” the discursive mother of Mexico and Mexicans, Doña Marina,
Malintzin, or Malinche,
259
integrates the Otherness of women and that of the indigenous
past into a single figure and narrative. As Paz frames it in Laberinto, “la Conquista, […] fue
bien una violación, no solamente en el sentido histórico, sino en la carne misma de las
indias. El símbolo de la entrega es doña Malinche, la amante de Cortés. Es verdad que ella
se da voluntariamente al Conquistador, pero éste, apenas deja de serle útil, la
olvida”(44).
260
Thus, within twentieth century discourse on Mexico, the birth of the
Mexican is the "illegitimate fruit of that violent union between the conquering European
and the violated Mexican mother" (Kadir 51).
Twentieth-century scholars and writers in the dominant current of Mexican
discourse, fascinated but separated by an insurmountable barrier, turned to the country’s
pre-Columbian past. In Laberinto, Paz does not always refer to pre-Columbian cultures by
their specific names but prefers the term “los antiguos mexicanos” (28).
261
His usage is
telling because it erases the differences between distinct pre-Columbian cultures and
relegates them to antiquity. Paz frames the partial return of these differences in the
present in the following terms:
En muchos casos estos fantasmas son vestigios de realidades pasadas. Se
originaron en la Conquista, en la Colonia, en la Independencia o en las guerras
sostenidas contra yanquis y franceses. Otros reflejan nuestros problemas actuales,
259
There is a clear link between the figure of Malinche and La Llorona that reiterates this point.
260
“the Conquest, which was also a violation, not only in the historical sense but also in the very flesh of
Indian women. The symbol of this violation is dona Malinche, the mistress of Cortes. It is true that she gave
herself voluntarily to the conquistador, but he forgot her as soon as her usefulness was over.” (86)
261
“ancient Mexicans” (55)
182
pero de una manera indirecta, escondiendo o disfrazando su verdadera naturaleza.
¿Y no es extraordinario que, desaparecidas las causas, persistan los efectos? ¿Y
que los efectos oculten a las causas? (38)
262
In his chapter on Mexican Gothic, David Punter reiterates this idea, pointing out that
we have to notice how the possibility of building and designing, of finding a solid
ground on which to begin, or rebegin, a new structuring of the city or the state,
founders amid a plethora of unresolved issues to do with the past, with that
extraordinary, singular past which is Mexico’s, a past compounded of the traces of
the indigene, of conquest, of the feudal, of successive dictatorial tyrannies (107).
Within Paz’s discourse, Mexico’s “pasts” are not resolved; the death of each does not
signify their end. Rather, each of these “pasts” remains—unresolved, each sedimented
beneath the next, ready to strike. And so another key element of the Gothic emerges: ruin
and anachronism.
Critical Review of Mexican Gothic
Before I lay out my own understanding of Mexican Gothic through the analysis of
Aura and Pedro Páramo, I would like to examine some key critical conceptions of the
term. Djelal Kadir’s 1976 “Same Voices, Other Tombs: Structures of Mexican Gothic”
examines Pedro Páramo and La muerte de Artemio Cruz as two examples of Mexican
262
“In many instances these phantasms are vestiges of past real ities. Their origins are in the Conquest, the
Colonial period, the Independence period or the wars fought against the United States and France. Others
reflect our current problems, but in an indirect manner, concealing or distorting their true nature. Is it not
extraordinary that the effects persist after the causes have disappeared? And that the effects hide the
causes?” (73)
183
Gothic and uses Octavio Paz’s work as a touchstone for his idea of Mexicanness. Kadir’s
success lies in identifying death as the core element of Mexican Gothic. He argues,
following Paz, that “the Mexican” is “engaged in an obsessive dialectic with death" (5).
Kadir’s affirmation here, however, exposes the weakness of his argument, something that
has become constitutive of most interpretations of Mexican Gothic: it appeals to an
essentialism purported to be true of the “real” Mexico and “real” Mexican people. Kadir
takes Paz’s words at face value, despite Paz’s claims of the nuances in his reflections.
263
Although Kadir’s text is not and never claims to be a historical or sociological essay, he
does use Paz’s historico-anthropological essentialism as a basis for his interpretation,
without questioning its discursive nature.
But Kadir makes a crucial contribution to the idea of Mexican Gothic by
establishing “two sets of coordinates for the Mexican Gothic: One founded in the socio-
cultural context which defines the literary tradition of the Mexican novel; the other, based
on the immediate elements with which these works are constructed” (50). These two
coordinates are sketches of the form of content and the form of expression that make up
the assemblage of Mexican Gothic. But to define the form of content as merely the “socio-
cultural context” is not quite enough, however important such context may be. On one
hand, the bodies of the authors—Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Elena Garro, José Emilio
Pacheco, Alfonso Reyes, Octavio Paz, Mariano Azuela, José Guadalupe Posada, and Diego
Rivera—and their relationships with each other are also a part of this assemblage, moved
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In the first chapter of El laberinto de la soledad, Paz affirms that his statements are, more than absolute
truths, notes for himself and a way to make sense of his own thoughts. Even if it is true that the tone of the
rest of the work does not accord with this caveat, it is important to highlight that Paz’s text signals the
problems of the type of reading Punter and Kadir engage in.
184
by the desire to crystallize an image of Death. On the other hand, the “immediate
elements” that make up the form of expression are, as I have already noted, is not limited
only to the tropes of the Gothic and the most visible elements of Mexican culture that are
evocative of death. The form of expression of Mexican Gothic is made up of a dense
network of images marked by indexes from European Gothic, Southern Gothic, elements
of Mexican popular culture, and elements of indigeneity as seen by the assemblage that
constitutes the form of content: the ideal, male, mestizo gaze through which Mexican
Gothic is created.
David Punter, in turn, overemphasizes the role of the “border” in defining the idea
of Mexican Gothic. Punter attempts to connect Donna Haraway’s understanding of the
“cyborg” with the idea of a borderland that is, in the text, concomitant with Mexican
Gothic (the cyborg, for Punter, is the relation between Mexico and the US, a great
transnational cyborg).
When shifting from the border to Mexico, Punter surprisingly does what Kadir did
before him, naming Paz as "the major commentator on this Mexican past […] even though
his The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, was first published in 1950"
(171). More than fifty years of cultural and literary criticism stand between Punter and
Paz’s work, criticism that, as already indicated, highlights the discursive (and fictive)
nature of Paz’s reflections. By reading Paz in this way, Punter not only falls into the same
twentieth-century essentialism discernible in Paz’s Laberinto but also fails to recognize its
lack of actual truth value. Thus, Punter writes about how “The ‘labyrinth of solitude’ of
which Paz speaks is incarnated not only at a cultural level but also in the lives of
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individuals, who have no means of recourse from an apparently closed society” (176). In
his attempt to usher Mexican Gothic into the twenty-first century, Punter abstracts the
idea of the borderland from the US-Mexico border and applies it to the idea of Mexico and
Mexican Gothic derived from it. Bringing the United States into the equation of Mexican
Gothic is not unprecedented—but the point of connection is usually William Faulkner and
the Southern Gothic (which I will touch upon in the second part of this chapter), not the
idea of the border itself, which is Punter’s contribution. Though innovative, Punter’s
interpretation unnecessarily complicates the idea Mexican Gothic, which is already
complex
Notwithstanding Punter’s national essentialism, his intuition that the heart of
Mexican Gothic lies somewhere in the twentieth century seems to me entirely accurate.
Moreover, Punter lays out some of the most salient points of Mexican Gothic (such as the
importance of Christianity and virginity), though he posits them as true essentialisms of
Mexican society. My own conception of Mexican Gothic not only rejects such
essentialisms but regards their truth value as irrelevant.
Setting aside the issue of essentialism, Punter does present an important idea
regarding Mexican Gothic and Octavio Paz’s Laberinto. For him, Mexican Gothic points to
the impossibility of escape, to enduring imprisonment which comes from two
sources: from the depredations of elements of the ‘outside’ world, but also from
the internalizations which have resulted from that and which, according to the
writers, continue to operate in terms of national self-definition. (177)
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The impossibility of escape will come into play in my reading of both Aura and Pedro
Páramo. Instead of asking what the Gothic elements in Aura are, I ask: What does the
superabundance of Gothic elements in Aura suggest? As for Pedro Páramo, one cannot
but wonder why Rulfo’s novel has been insistently read through Gothic hermeneutics and
what the Gothic can actually tell us about the book and the idea of Mexican Gothic.
To recapitulate, Mexican Gothic is a critical construction that, by taking up the idea
of “Mexico” and the idea of Death as central to Mexicanness, assembles a number of
abjections. The cornerstone of this conception of Mexican Gothic, which crystallized in the
twentieth century, is a specific understanding of Death and man’s relationship to it in
which Death is seen not as the end but as a continuation of life’s processes. Life is a
forgery, a counterfeit of Death, its mask.
As such, nothing ever really dies or lives; no “past” can be overcome. The forms of
this idea can be organized in two sets, along gender lines. These elements constitute the
idea of Mexicanness and in turn that of Mexican Gothic as expressed in Aura and Pedro
Páramo, respectively. Starting with the “feminine” side of this construction as represented
in Aura, I will analyze these two contrasting approaches.
Moon: The Feminine
Superabundance, multiplicity, the churrigueresque, cancerous cells that spread
uncontrollably, an inverted vision of reproduction—these are some of the qualities that
flourish on the feminine side of Mexican Gothic: the one that focuses on the Other (from
an androcentric point of view), particularly on woman as the ur-object of mystery. The
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epigraph Fuentes chose for Aura (1962) reveals as much: “la mujer intriga y sueña” (9).
264
Aura expresses a facet of an endless life or a death that does not signal the end. In Aura,
the desire for life and youth distorts the border between the living and the dead—endless
life or death without end—the past and the present, in order to concede victory to the
witch. But is it a victory?
To explore these issues in the text, one must first examine the role of Carlos
Fuentes as an author function and his choice of genre in Aura. Unlike Juan Rulfo, Fuentes’
multi-faceted authorial figure openly engages with a number of sources, among them the
Gothic.
Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)
Like the instances of doubling in his writing, Carlos Fuentes’ narrative voice was also
multiple. Ever-elusive, Fuentes slips between the cracks of Durán’s attempts at capturing
his image:
Carlos Fuentes, cuentista. Carlos Fuentes, guionista de cine. Fuentes dramaturgo.
Fuentes organizador y propagandista del ‘boom’. Fuentes novelista. Fuentes,
historiador del cine. Fuentes, diplomático. Fuentes, lingüista. Fuentes, crítico social.
Fuentes político de izquierdas. Fuentes, eminencia gris. Fuentes, crítico de literatura.
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“Woman intrigues and dreams”; Unless otherwise noted, all translations of passages from Aura are from
Lysander Kemp’s 1965 translation.
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Fuentes, director de cine. Carlitos Fuentes, playboy internacional. Fuentes
sociólogo. Carlos Fuentes, teórico de la literatura pop…(57)
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Evident from Durán’s list is Fuentes’ widely recognized polymathy and desire to be an
authorized voice in a variety of fields. Carlos Fuentes, essayist and analyst of the idea of
“Mexico” also contributed to the debate on Mexicanness with a multitude of essays and
books such as Tiempo mexicano (1971) and El espejo enterrado (1992). His interest in this
question permeates his whole body of work—and his relationship to the Gothic is no
exception.
Within Fuentes’ crowded armoire of masks, Carlos Fuentes, Gothic writer, is sure
to be found. While Rulfo, in the words of Manuel Durán, likes to “‘limpiar la casa’, barrer,
sacar el polvo, pulir las superficies de sus obras hasta que toda huella extraña
desaparezca,”
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Fuentes does the exact opposite (55). Unlike some of the authors
analyzed in previous chapters (the Indigenista Gothic of Ventura García Calderón, for
example), who seek to hide any trace of the Gothic (in itself, abject and contagious),
Fuentes consciously embraces it and purposefully exaggerates to great effect,
emphasizing thus the multiplicity associated with the feminine Other. It should be noted
that Fuentes’ gesture only works if the Gothic is considered in itself minor literature, as
opposed to the hegemonic stylings of the novela total, realism, realismo mágico, and the
Mexican novel of the 1910 revolution. In his work, Fuentes uses minor literature to
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“Carlos Fuentes, short story writer. Carlos Fuentes, screenplay writer. Playwright Fuentes. Organizer and
propagandist of the ‘boom’ Fuentes. Novelist Fuentes. Fuentes, film historian. Fuentes, diplomat. Fuentes,
linguist. Fuentes, social critic. Left-wing politician Fuentes. Fuentes, grey eminence. Fuentes, literary critic.
Fuentes, film director. Carlitos Fuentes, international playboy. Sociologist Fuentes. Carlos Fuentes, pop
literature theorist….”
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“Clean the house, sweep, dust, polish the surfaces of his work until every foreign trace disappears.”
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represent that which, in the context of androcentric discourse, is also minor: the voice of
mystery itself.
Fuentes’ obvious evocation of Gothic themes and tropes has led Ricardo Gutiérrez
Mouat to deem him “the most Gothic of all major Latin American writers” (297) and María
Negroni to affirm that “conoce acaso más que ningn escritor de América Latina, el gótico
europeo”(68).
267
Yet, Fuentes’ work is far from derivative. Instead of the stark separation
between an unstable “I” and the abject, visible in the works of Lugones and García
Calderón, the Gothic as deployed by Fuentes is a means of accessing or approaching
Otherness. The Gothic Abstract Machine opens a portal into the heart of the Other or, at
the very least, what discourse on Mexican identity believes the Other to be.
Los días enmascarados
Fuentes’ first foray into the realm of the non-mimetic,
268
Los días enmascarados
(1954),
269
deserves examination here, and in particular two of its most salient stories:
“Tlactocatzine en el jardín de flandes” and “Chac-Mool.” These two stories contain the
seeds that together will bear the fruits of Aura.
Despite their differences, the two stories share elements that are presented
through the lens of the Gothic and later become crucial in Fuentes’ nouvelle: the
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“knows European Gothic better than any other Latin American writer”
268
It is interesting to note that Fuentes’ first publications (Los días enmascarados and other stories from
around that time like “Pantera en Jazz”) and some of his last (Inquieta compañía) were all forays into non-
mimetic fiction.
269
Paz explains the meaning of this title as follows: “El título [Los días enmascarados] prefigura la dirección
de su obra posterior. Alude a los cinco días finales del año azteca, los nemontani: “cinco enmascarados/con
pencas de maguey” había dicho el poeta Tablada. Cinco días sin nombre, días vacíos durante los cuales se
suspendía toda actividad-frágil puente entre el fin de un año y el comienzo de otro.” (Paz in García Gutiérrez
7).
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obsessive aim of reviving the past is achieved through another character’s confinement.
These two components come together as one of the characters (Chac, Charlotte, and
Consuelo) forces the past onto another, the lodger-victim.
“Chac Mool,” the first story in Los días enmascarados, hinges on the historical fact
of the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the place given to the pre-Columbian in modern
Mexican society: that is, the basement. The past bursts out with violence, not only to
haunt the present but to take its place through the trope of the evil doppelgänger. The
secret, as in previous instances of the Gothic, is not the predictable one—neither the
relationship between the mestizo protagonist and the pre-Columbian figure nor the
subaltern place given to the latter. “Chac-Mool” reveals the impossibility of perfect
retribution, an impossibility produced by anachronism.
The impossible quest of restoring a bygone past is narrated by a friend of Filiberto,
the protagonist, who reads his coworker’s diary. Filiberto, an average white-collar worker
and collector of pre-Columbian artifacts, tells of how he bought what he believed to be a
replica of a Chac Mool
270
for the collection in his basement. The statue begins to morph as
Filiberto’s house is overrun by water. Over time, Chac, the god of rain and thunder, is
incarnated through the statue, which comes out of the basement and begins controlling
Filiberto’s life. Attempting an escape, Filiberto flees only to be found dead, mysteriously
floating in a pool. The events of the story are not narrated in chronological order; the
story opens with Filiberto’s death and then relates the details of his relationship with the
270
A Chac Mool is a specific type of maya statue representing Chac, God of water and thunder. The statue
depicts an anthropomorphic figure with feline traits in a reclining position, over whose stomach a sacrifice
would be placed.
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Chac Mool statue through the diary. The coworker returns to Filiberto’s house with his
body, only to find “un indio amarillo, en bata de casa, con bufanda” whose appearance
“no podia ser más repulsiv[a]” (27).
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This figure, Chac incarnate, says to the narrator,
“Dígale a los hombres que lleven el cadaver al sótano,”
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thus closing the circle of the
master-slave dialectic. Filiberto is placed in the basement where the Chac Mool statue was
originally stored, now an artifact to be collected.
Filiberto, the human, becomes an object, while the Chac Mool, the object,
becomes a human. But the conversion is far from perfect. Chac’s newly begotten
appearance is repulsive, consisting of a face that has been powdered to cover his wrinkles
(“cubrir las arrugas”), dyed hair, and a mouth “embarrada de lápiz labial mal aplicado”
(27).
273
Chac’s abhorrent appearance is the result of two causes: the humanization of the
divine, thanks to which his incalculable age suddenly collapses onto his face, and the
incongruence between modern aesthetics and Chac’s ancient, stylized features.
The image is jarring and intolerable for the narrator in part because of its
anachronistic nature. As Chac himself knows well, the past cannot be ushered into the
present by force without exhibiting its anachronistic quality. It is this anachronism that
turns the past into an abomination:
Con risa estridente, Chac Mool revela cómo fue descubierto por Le Plongeon y
puesto físicamente en contacto de hombres de otros símbolos. Su espíritu ha
vivido en el cántaro y en la tempestad, naturalmente; otra cosa es su piedra, y
271
“A yellow indian, in a house robe and a scarf”; “could not be more repulsive”
272
“Tell the men to take the corpse to the basement.”
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“covered in wrinkles” “smeared with poorly applied lipstick”
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haberla arrancado del escondite maya en el que yacía es artificial y cruel. Creo que
Chac Mool nunca lo perdonará. Él sabe de la inminencia del hecho estético. (22)
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As in the second wish of the distraught mother in Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” in which
the past is willed into the present, the past returns as a monster. The “inminencia del
hecho estético” indicated by Fuentes highlights this artificial (“artificial y cruel”) clash of
symbols that occurs with the violent resurgence of the past from its subterranean
slumber.
The “reality” of what Chac Mool represents goes beyond his teratological
characterization. When Filiberto sees the statue move for the first time, he spots “dos
orificios de luz parpadeante, en dos flámulas crueles y amarillas” (20)
275
in the dark.
Terrified, he turns on the light but, unlike a conventional ghost or monster, Chac Mool
does not disappear. On the contrary, “Allí estaba Chac Mool, erguido, sonriente, ocre, con
su barriga encarnada” (20).
276
The polysemic and sonorous “encarnada” lends the image a
particularly threatening air, alluding as it does to the red stain on Chac Mool’s stomach
(implied to be blood) and that he has now made of flesh.
Despite attempts to bury it, the Other—whether the Pre-Columbian past and its
symbols or the Female—remains. In a world that has confined the Other to a specific place
(here, the basement) its presence anywhere else defies “el hecho estético.” The Chac
Mool is beautiful in its inert state, reduced from ritual slab to decorative piece, but once it
274
“With strident laughter, Chac Mool reveals how he was discovered by Le Plongeon and put physically in
contact with men of other symbols. His spirit has lived in vessels and in tempests, naturally; his stone is
something else and to have torn it from the Mayan hiding place where it lay is artificial and cruel. I believe
Chac Mool will never forgive that. He knows of the imminence of the aesthetic fact.”
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“two orifices of blinking light, in two cruel, yellow pennants”
276
“There stood Chac Mool, upright, similing, ochre, with its red belly”
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acquires agency and becomes a vessel for the god Chac to come back into the world and
take Filiberto’s place, it is monstrous.
In Tiempo mexicano, Fuentes discusses what he deems a multitude of Mexican
“times” that coexist, one of which is the pre-Columbian. However, for Fuentes, the
continuity between the indigenous peoples of Mexico and their artifacts is tenuous. The
return of the Mexica past is a return from the dead, from the realm of Otherness. For
Fuentes, the difference between Mexican ruins and those of classical antiquity is that of
"un templo tolteca no tiene descendencia: es ruina en sí y para sí" (4).
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To round out this
idea, he adds that "México antiguo, en la conquista, cumplió su promesa sólo para
encontrar su muerte"(4).
278
The past is dead but its ghostly hand stretches into the
present and the future. Those who seek it out must connect to it through the
archaeological.
A significant part of Fuentes’ sources for Tiempo Mexicano, as are many of those
used by authors of his time, are of French origin or based on the works of French
anthropologists and ethnohistorians. Given the intervention of France in modern Mexican
history and ethnology this is no surprise. Not only was there great interest from French
intellectuals to delve into Mexica and Maya past, as well as the exuberant nature
portrayed in the diaries of Alexander von Humboldt—it should not be forgotten that the
French also attempted to invade the country and establish a monarchical regime.
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“A toltec temple has no descendants: it is a ruin in and for itself.”
278
“In the conquest, ancient Mexico kept its promise only to find its own death.”
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And Fuentes certainly does not let his readers forget. The Second Mexican Empire,
the brief period in which Maximilian of Habsburg was the Emperor of Mexico, is another
one of the “tiempos mexicanos” his works circle, including “Tlactocatzine del jardín de
Flandes” (henceforth “Tlactocatzine”). As Carmen Serrano points out in her thesis, the
story of the spurious Austrian emperor of Mexico and his wife Charlotte of Belgium was an
important source of inspiration for Fuentes (Serrano 72). Curiously, Fuentes does not
focus on the male figure (Maximilian) but on his wife, who in the story performs the
Gothic gesture of attempting to bring the past into the present, no matter what the cost.
In “Tlactocatzine,” like Consuelo in Aura, the old lady revealed to be “Charlotte, Kaiserin
von Mexiko,” wants to fashion a new Maximillian (the original having been executed) out
of the protagonist, the accursed “güero”
279
unlucky enough to board in her ancient
mansion. The trope of the confined, mentally unstable woman who attempts to effect
some sort of return to the past is echoed in three of Fuentes’ texts: La region más
transparente, “Tlactocatzine en el jardín de flandes,” and Aura.
The title itself announces who the protagonist of story will be, since in Nahuatl
tlactocatzine means “emperor” (Kyeong Kim) and it is said to be the term used by
indigenous peoples to greet Maximillian of Habsburg upon his arrival in Mexico in 1864.
Narrated through the diary entries of the güero, the story relates how Carlota slowly
encroaches upon him before revealing her identity and her intentions. As per Georgina
García-Gutiérrez’s Los disfraces: la obra mestiza de Carlos Fuentes, the ending of the story
279
Blonde. This is the only trait (physical or otherwise) given to the protagonist-narrator, made to bring him
closer to the historical figure of Maximillian. See Appendix, Figure 3.
195
reveals “la etapa final de otro proceso generado por la falta de individualidad: la
extranjerización” (44).
280
The nameless güero is turned into the foreign neo-colonist
Maximilian in a way that closely mirrors the fate of Felipe Montero in Aura. The
relationship between Carlota and the house is also strikingly similar to the one portrayed
in Fuentes’ nouvelle, since, in “Tlactocatzine,” “la casa es un recipiente corporalizado que
recibe, es penetrable (femenino y polifacético como su dueña), pero su movimiento a la
inversa, la expulsión y, por qué no, el nacimiento, no son posibles” (García Gutiérrez
45).
281
These words describe “Tlactocatzine” but could apply just as easily to Aura, in
which the house/Aura/Consuelo are penetrated by Felipe Montero (always referred to in
the second person). Birth cannot be achieved as such, only doubling.
Both “Chac Mool” and “Tlactocatzine” show Otherness taking over. But in neither
story is such a takeover precisely revenge—as in “La venganza del cóndor”—but more an
exertion of personal will. Even Chac, a god, who used to be the master and representation
(signified and signifier) of water and thunder becomes individuated, and his desires
become trivial, i.e., human. Once transformed, Chac does not seek revenge for his culture
or his people, as does García Calderón’s indio, but in a rather petty fashion merely
reciprocates Filiberto’s actions by relocating his corpse to the basement. His newfound
vanity, which makes him, like Rivera’s Catrina, wear lipstick, is another index of his
humanity. Neither is Carlota seeking revenge for the execution of Maximilian but merely
attempting to turn back time and return to her own personal “tiempo mexicano.”
280
“the final stage of a different process generated by the lack of individuality: foreignization”
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“The house is a corporealized container that receives, is penetrable (feminine and multifaceted like its
owner), but its reverse motion, expulsion, and, why not, birth, are not possible.”
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It is also crucial to note that in both instances of Otherness—the secret emerging
to anachronistically drag the present back into the past—the victim is a willing participant.
Like traditional vampires, who require an invitation to access their victim’s abode,
Filiberto brings the Chac Mool statue into his house himself and Tlactocatzine’s güero
willingly moves into the ancient mansion, resisting very little when Carlota’s plans start to
become evident. The desire to approach, or even, as García-Gutierrez’s quote expresses,
penetrate Otherness is an ineludible component of Aura and one of its most salient and
memorable characteristics. Nonetheless, the protagonist/victim in Aura is not the weak-
willed Filiberto or the nondescript güero but instead “you.” Fuentes employs the second
person in order to stage the impossible foray into the bowels of Otherness.
Fuentes’ stated intention with Aura was to write a nouvelle where “the male is
now the deceived” (On Reading 536). The journey of the “deceived male” into the lion’s
mouth is an arrangement (assemblage) of the components of the feminine othered and,
as such, defeats its stated purpose: in the play staged by Fuentes and acted out by the
reader, it is impossible for the Other to actually become the victor. I will analyze this
paradox within the parameters of the Mexican Gothic I have already established, focusing
on the elements in the form of expression that Fuentes throws into relief: Christian
eschatology, gender codes, the baroque abundance of Gothic tropes in itself, and the
desperate attempt to usher back a bygone “tiempo mexicano.”
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Aura (1962)
Consuelo is not the only one to whom the past is more appealing than the
present—her author is also enamored with stylings that were considered démodé for his
time. Even Aura’s millimetric adherence to mot-juste perfection links, as García Gutiérrez
has argued, Fuentes’ artistic principles with those of Edgar Allan Poe, whose “Ligeia” and
“Morella” can be counted among the many hypotexts of Fuentes’ nouvelle (130). It is an
artistic statement in and of itself that Fuentes chose to create a Gothic novella at the
height of the “total novel’s” influence over Latin American fiction and the Mexican novel
of the revolution's dominance over Mexican fiction. As Stephen Buttes indicates in “The
Failure of Consuelo's Designs: Carlos Fuentes and ‘Trompe l'Oeil’ Modernity,” Fuentes,
fully aware of the relationship between art and the economic and political demands of the
world it inhabits, still strove to create a text that could “nevertheless avoid being
subservient to political or economic demands and instead structure an alternative project
through a resolution of tensions internal to itself" (299). Like Joe Desmond, the
protagonist of Sunset Boulevard (a film that shares striking similarities to Aura,
“Tlactocatzine,” and La region más transparente
282
), Fuentes steers away from the main
road and seeks refuge in the dilapidated mansion of the Gothic. Despite its exalted status
282
The narrative and aesthetic similarities between Sunset Boulevard and Aura have been outlined by
Serrano and Lanin A. Gyurko. Sunset Boulevard, “Tlactocatzine,” and La region más transparente,
nonetheless, are far from the only texts that share a similar plots and aesthetics. In “On Reading and Writing
Myself: How I Wrote Aura,” Fuentes outlines the genealogy of Consuelo, stating that she is derived from
Julianna Bordereau from Henry James’ “The Aspern Papers,” who, in turn, was modelled on Miss Havisham
in Great Expectations, herself related to Pushkin’s Queen of Spades. Finally, Fuentes traces the archetype
back to Michelet’s witch, mentioned in the nouvelle’s epigraph, and ties her to Circe, the ur-witch. He also
states that he began writing Aura immediately after watching Ueda Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari, at Julio
Cortázar’s insistence.
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in the Mexican and Spanish American literary canon, Aura is a piece of minor literature
when compared to the trends of the time—trends with which Fuentes was well
acquainted. In many ways, as Alejandro Higashi states in his review of the first critical
reactions to Aura, the nouvelle is “un diálogo con la crítica”
283
in which Fuentes
establishes an intricate web of hypotexts while also taking up a radical position in relation
to the preferred modes of the time.
Fuentes’ motivations for such artistic choices are manifold and, like his own
identity, hidden behind multiple masks. One of the most commonly mentioned aims of
the text, confirmed by a close reading, is to destabilize (even “annul” (“anular”) in
Alejandro Higashi’s words) both the notion of “realism” that had permeated post-
revolutionary Mexican literature and the critical demands to continue cultivating the
realist mode (73).
284
By intentionally writing in the Gothic mode (form of expression),
Fuentes takes this idea even further, forcing his readers to ponder such a choice. A highly
conventional story in terms of plot, Aura is a clear example of the Mexican Gothic
Assemblage in the truest sense of the word: an assemblage or arrangement, fixing in a
particular order. There are very few, if any, components of Aura that are “original.”
285
What is innovative in Aura, and what earned it its exalted status in the Spanish American
literary canon, is the arrangement of explicitly conventional elements along the
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“Dialogue with criticism of the time”
284
Higashi cites multiple critics’ appraisal of Aura who dismissed the work for this very reason.
285
In “On Reading and Writing Myself: How I Wrote Aura,” Fuentes discusses the issue of originality in
relation to Aura. He states that originality is a modern myth, born of modernity’s desire to constantly bear
witness to its own birth. “‘Originality’ is the sickness of a modernity that wishes to see itself as something
new, always new, in order continually to witness its own birth. In so doing, modernity is that fashionable
illusion which only speaks to death” (“On Reading” 533-534).
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exploratory thread of a “minor” narrative in which the Othered feminine forces the
masculine to submit.
The story of Aura is highly conventional and familiar. Felipe Montero, an
unsuspecting young man down on his luck, finds an advertisement for a job that appears
tailored to him. After his initial doubts, he ventures into Donceles 815 and finds Consuelo,
the old mistress of the house who wants him to work on translating her late husband’s
(General Llorente) memoirs. Donceles 815 also houses the old woman’s niece, Aura, with
whom Felipe falls in love instantly. In order to take the position, Montero (like the güero
of “Tlactocatzine”) must remain in the house. Throughout his stay, Montero believes that
Aura is being confined by her cruel aunt and fashions himself into her hero. Little does he
suspect that Aura is a projection of Consuelo and Montero “is” a young General Llorente.
Neither the relationship between Consuelo and Aura nor between Montero and Llorente
is explained in great detail, leaving the exact connections between them to the reader.
As for the arrangement of Gothic tropes, Jean Franco has remarked that they are
so abundant that it would take “a dull reader” (Passions 269) not to detect them in Aura.
There is an excess of Gothic gestures (production of counterfeits, turning of the beautiful
into the horrid and vice-versa, an obsession with the past, a terrible secret), tropes (the
doppelganger, the witch, the lodger, the vampire), images (black cats, Gothic furniture)
that make the Gothic Abstract Machine difficult to avoid. The setting is also conventional:
an old, dingy house-prison surrounded by modern buildings where the protagonist, Felipe
Montero (the lodger286), is made to sleep in a windowless room. Within the confines of
286
The same central trope Dávila employs in “El Huésped,” though from the opposite point of view.
200
the dilapidated building, the secret, central to the plot, appears in the physical form of a
wooden chest that contains an old manuscript. The contents of the chest mirror
Montero’s own work, since Montero is Llorente and Consuelo is doubled in Aura. But to
list the Gothic elements in the novella, however useful that may be, is not the purpose of
this work, since such catalogs are but a starting point for inquiry into the Mexican Gothic
in Aura. The question that must be posed is: What is the significance of the abundance of
tropes?
I would like to turn to the text for an answer. Consuelo has a retablo (altar piece)
decorated with images of suffering saints; the passage describing the altar piece is worth
quoting in full, for it gets to the heart of the Gothic in the novella.
Ella no te habrá escuchado, porque la descubres hincada ante ese muro de las
devociones, con la cabeza apoyada contra los puños cerrados. La ves de lejos:
hincada, cubierta por ese camisón de lana burda, con la cabeza hundida en los
hombros delgados: delgada como una escultura medieval, emaciada: las piernas se
asoman como dos hebras debajo del camisón, flacas, cubiertas por
una erisipela inflamada; piensas en el roce continuo de la tosca lana sobre la piel,
hasta que ella levanta los puños y pega al aire sin fuerzas, como si librara una
batalla contra las imágenes que, al acercarte, empiezas a distinguir: Cristo, María,
San Sebastián, Santa Lucía, el Arcángel Miguel, los demonios sonrientes, los únicos
sonrientes en esta iconografía del dolor y la cólera: sonrientes porque, en el viejo
grabado iluminado por las veladoras, ensartan los tridentes en la piel de los
condenados, les vacían calderones de agua hirviente, violan a las mujeres, se
201
embriagan, gozan de la libertad vedada a los santos. Te acercas a esa imagen
central, rodeada por las lágrimas de la Dolorosa, la sangre del Crucificado, el gozo
de Luzbel, la cólera del Arcángel, las vísceras conservadas en frascos de alcohol, los
corazones de plata: la señora Consuelo, de rodillas, amenaza con los puños,
balbucea las palabras que, ya cerca de ella, puedes escuchar:
—Llega, Ciudad de Dios; suena, trompeta de Gabriel; ¡Ay, pero cómo tarda en
morir el mundo!
287
The passage articulates the profound connection between Christianity and Fuentes’
Gothic reading of it in Aura. The images in this retablo are not just Christian images but
precisely those images chastised by Protestantism: images of excess and excessive
suffering and cruelty. Christ on the cross, Mary’s plight (conveyed through the image of
Our Lady of Sorrows, “la Dolorosa”), Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom by arrows, and Saint
Lucy’s eye-gouging are some of the most extreme examples of earthly trials undergone in
the name of love for the Christian God. The idea that suffering is entrenched within the
promise of salvation is reiterated throughout the New Testament. James 1:12 provides
287
“She doesn't hear you, for she's kneeling in front of that wall of religious objects, with her head resting on
her clenched fists. You see her from a distance: she’s kneeling there in her coarse woolen nightgown, with
her head sunk into her narrow shoulders; she's thin, even emaciated, like a medieval sculpture; her legs are
like two sticks, and they're inflamed with erysipe- las. While you're thinking of the continual rubbing of that
rough wool against her skin, she suddenly raises her fists and strikes feebly at the air, as if she were doing
battle against the images you can make out as you tiptoe closer: Christ, the Virgin, St. Sebastian, St. Lucia,
the Arch-angel Michael, and the grinning demons in an old print, the only happy figures in that iconography
of sorrow and wrath, happy because they're jabbing their pitch- forks into the flesh of the damned, pouring
cauldrons of boiling water on them, violating the women, getting drunk, enjoying all the liberties forbidden
to the saints. You approach that central image, which is sur- rounded by the tears of Our Lady of Sor- rows,
the blood of Our Crucified Lord, the delight of Lucifer, the anger of the Arch- angel, the viscera preserved in
bottles of alcohol, the silver heart: Señora Consuelo, kneeling, threatens them with her fists, stammering the
words you can hear as you move even closer: ‘Come, City of God! Gabriel, sound your trumpet! Ah, how
long the world takes to die!’” (45-49)
202
one such example: “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he
shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him”
(Authorized King James Version).The extreme trials of the saints are likened to Consuelo’s
condition, depicted through a ghastly description of her body. She is “delgada como una
escultura medieval, emaciada” (the adjective ‘medieval’ is not accidental), dressed in
painful “lana tosca” that incessantly rubs against an “erisipela inflamada.” Consuelo’s
suffering body, “opened” in her physical wounds and therefore “chingada,” is the “imagen
central” among the holy images that are gushing effluvia (“las lágrimas de la Dolorosa, la
sangre del Crucificado”) in the retablo. The suffering saints denote the Gothic secret
behind Catholicism: that which is loved (God) causes the most pain (martyrdom).
The passage transitions from holy secretions to the outright bizarre viscera in a jar
(“vísceras conservadas en frascos de alcohol”) through the sensorial image of humidity.
Humidity, which can be smelled (“El olor de la humedad, de las plantas podridas, te
envolverá”), touched (“Tocas las paredes hmedas, lamosas”) and felt (“t sientes un frió
hmedo”), and even heard (“marcas tus pasos, primero sobre las baldosas de piedra,
enseguida sobre esa madera crujiente, fofa por la humedad y el encierro”) everywhere at
Donceles 815, ties Consuelo to the altar and to the entirety of the house-womb.
Opposing the saints are the demons, “los nicos sonrientes en esta iconografía del
dolor y la cólera,” smiling because they enjoy “la libertad vedada a los santos.” If Consuelo
is like one of the martyred saints, she is also barred from freedom, leading to anger,
represented by Archangel Michael, the slayer of demons. Consuelo’s anger is crystallized
in her feeble shadowboxing (“pega al aire sin fuerzas, como si librara una batalla contra las
203
imágenes") and her stuttered words: “Llega, Ciudad de Dios; suena, trompeta de Gabriel;
¡Ay, pero cómo tarda en morir el mundo!”
Desiring the arrival of the Apocalypse and the City of God suggests, once again, an
extreme vision of Christian theology. In addition to the idea of reward for resisting
temptations and undergoing “trials,” Matthew 20:16 states that “So the last shall be first,
and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen” (Authorized King James Version).
Consuelo’s frustration, anger, and desire for the arrival of the apocalypse point toward
this biblical idea. Instead of regarding herself as the one in control, Consuelo sees herself
as one of the “last”—the first to be rewarded in the Kingdom of God.
Is Consuelo, the witch, suddenly a profoundly devout Catholic? Though this would
not necessarily be a contradiction, most of her religious posturing is devoid of any genuine
Catholic action or sentiment. Consuelo’s anger, read through Michelet’s La Sorciére (one
of Fuentes’ most important sources), provides a clue. In La Sorciére, Michelet attempts to
commiserate with witches as victims of religious oppression. He understands witchcraft
and the Black Mass as the efforts “of a woman driven to desperation” (108). The eruptions
on Consuelo’s skin can also be read in the key of La Sorciére, where when passion is
suppressed, “la sève de vie refoulée se corrompit elle-même. Sans lumière, sans voix, sans
parole, elle parla en douleurs, en sinistres efflorescences » (53).
288
Despite the freedom
usually associated with witches, Consuelo is in a double bind. Ironically, she can find
consolation neither in the holy nor in the demonic.
288
“the repressed sap of life corrupted itself. Lightless, voiceless, speechless, it spoke in pain, in sinister
efflorescences.”
204
Critics have overstated Consuelo’s success and power, following Carlos Fuentes’
supposed intention of creating a narrative of a deceived male. The witch,
289
an archetypal
character that Consuelo is modeled on, is, Fuentes’ words, “owner of her time because
she is the owner of her will and of her body” (“On Reading” 536). Is Consuelo really in
control of her actions and body? The phrase she mutters, wishing for the end of the world,
challenges that interpretation and opens up a crack in Fuentes’ stated intention.
290
To test
this idea and show how a Gothic reading of Consuelo’s ambiguous phrase destabilizes the
purported authorial project, Fuentes’ statement on the “deceived male” must be
revisited,.
A Twist on Machismo? Consuelo and the Impossibility of Women’s Agency
In “On Reading and Writing Myself: How I Wrote Aura,” Fuentes details how he
constructed the female characters in his nouvelle. His characterization of them is, in his
own words, indebted to the tradition of witches, owners of
the secrets of a knowledge forbidden by modern reason, the damned papers, the
letters stained by the sperm of candles long since gone dead, the cards wasted by
289
Since Consuelo fits clearly into the witch archetype, critics (such as Carmen Serrano) have argued that
this specific passage reflects an unambiguous black mass. Despite Michelet’s chapters on the Black Mass,
the Gothic interpretation of the passage allows one to see that what is actually being portrayed is precisely
the thin line that divides a parodic black mass from the dark, excessive side of Catholicism itself. As Lewis’
“The Monk” portrays, within the Gothic tradition Catholicism is but a step away from idolatry and witchcraft.
In fact, nothing in Consuelo’s altar is outside the realm of Catholic worship. Even the viscera, albeit bizarre,
are accounted for in Leviticus 7:3: “And he shall offer of it all the fat thereof; the rump, and the fat that
covereth the inwards.” The passage that most closely resembles a Black Mass occurs later in the nouvelle,
when Aura and Felipe have sex and Aura breaks a host, offering it to Felipe.
290
In a Lacanian reading of the text, this would be the moment in which the Real could be situated.
205
the fingers of avarice and fear, but also the secrets of an antiquity projecting itself
with greater strength than the future? For is there a secret more secret, a scandal
more ancient, than that of the sinless woman, the woman who does not incite
toward sin - Eve - and does not open the box of disgrace - Pandora? The woman
who is not what the Father of the Church, Tertullian, would have her be, "A temple
built on top of a sewer," not the woman who must save herself by banging a door
like Nora in Ibsen's Dolls House, but the woman who, before all of them, is the
owner of her time because she is the owner of her will and of her body; because
she does not admit any division between time, body and will and this mortally
wounds the man who would like to divide his mind from his flesh in order to
resemble, through his mind, his God, and through his flesh, his Devil? (536)
Fuentes imagines the scene of an un-fallen Eve, “the sinless woman,” “owner of her time
because she is the owner of her will and of her body.” This woman, Consuelo/Aura,
paradoxically precedes her archetypical fallen successors—Eve, Pandora, and Nora
Helmer—all removed, willingly or unwillingly, from some form of Eden. This position as
author and puppeteer of the domestic allows the woman as an unmarked subject to take
control: “The male is now the deceived. This is in itself a twist on machismo” (536). Can
the paradigm of Mexican Gothic really portray Fuentes’ desired scenario of a deceived
male?
This will be tested by Fuentes in his creation of Aura. From its premise, the text is
strongly gendered: the house, as in “Tlactocatzine” and “Chac Mool,” is a humid, womb-
like space, closed in on itself from the outside world: “Han construido alrededor de
206
nosotras, nos han quitado la luz. Han querido obligarme a vender. Muertas, antes. Esta
casa está llena de recuerdos para nosotras. Solo muerta me sacarán de aquí” (26).
291
The
images of water, which, as we have already seen, surface in the humidity that corrodes
the house, also bear the mark of the erotic, as in Aura’s eyes: “esos ojos de mar que
fluyen, se hacen espuma […] esos ojos fluyen, se transforman, como si te ofrecieran un
paisaje que solo tu puedes adivinar y desear” (17).
292
The semiotic rule of gender and its connection to the past is confirmed in the
number of the house itself, “descubres 815, antes 69” (10).
293
Though seemingly a minor
detail, the choice of the number 69 as the former address for the house at Donceles
represents the gender balance lost to time. Among its extensive and expansive
connotations, the number can be read as an instance of the yin-yang taijitu, the symbol
held by Frida Kahlo in Rivera’s Sueño (see Appendix, Figure 2). The house at Donceles used
to have a balance of feminine and masculine energies, now lost, that now causes the
feminine element to overflow. The necessary yang element will be recaptured through
Felipe Montero, the lodger.
As part of the form of expression of the Gothic, the lodger plot is a convenient way
of exploring Otherness, since it fundamentally deals with the introduction of a foreign
element into the heart of the already semantically charged family home. The lodger plot
can work both ways: the innocent lodger walking into the lion’s den (Harker in Dracula) or
291
“They’ve built up all around us and blocked off the light. They’ve tried to force me to sell, but I’ll die first.
This house is full of memories for us. They won’t take me out of here till I’m dead! (51)
292
“Finally you can see that those eyes are sea green and that they surge, break to foam, grow calm again,
then surge again like a wave […] those eyes do surge, do change, as if offering you a landscape that only you
can see and desire. (27)
293
“discover 815, formerly 69.” (11)
207
the innocent family unknowingly receiving an evil killer (Marie Belloc Lowndes’ “The
Lodger”). Fuentes adopts the first of these two plot lines and immediately entraps the
reader in it: “Lees ese anuncio: una oferta de esa naturaleza no se hace todos los días”
(9).294 The second person assigns to the reader the role of Felipe Montero in the play
Aura/Consuelo is staging. The house as theatre for Consuelo’s play is at its most evident in
the portrayal of the relationship between her and the projection of her younger self, Aura,
illustrated in the following passage:
La encuentras en la cocina, si, en el momento en que degüella un macho cabrío […]
detrás de esa imagen, se pierde la de una Aura mal vestida, con el pelo revuelto,
manchada de sangre, que te mira sin reconocerte, que continúa su labor de
carnicero. […]
Abres de un empujón la puerta y la ves, detrás del velo de luces, de pie,
cumpliendo su oficio de aire: la ves con las manos en movimiento, extendidas en el
aire: una mano extendida y apretada, como si realizara un esfuerzo para detener
algo, la otra apretada en torno a un objeto de aire, clavada una y otra vez en el
mismo lugar. En seguida, la vieja se restregará las manos contra el pecho,
suspirara, volverá a cortar en el aire, como si —si, lo veras claramente: como si
despellejara una bestia…” (41)295
294
“…an offer like this isn't made every day.” (3)
295
“Yes, you find her in the kitchen, at the moment she's beheading a kid: the vapor that rises from the open
throat, the smell of spilt blood, the animal's glazed eyes, all give you nausea. Aura is wearing a ragged,
blood-stained dress and her hair is disheveled; she looks at you without recognition and goes on with her
butchering. You leave the kitchen: this time you'll really speak to the old lady, really throw her greed and
tyranny in her face. When you push open the door she’s standing be- hind the veil of lights, performing a
ritual with the empty air, one hand stretched out and clenched, as if holding something up, and the other
clasped around an invisible object, striking again and again at the same place. Then she wipes her hands
208
Consuelo is controlling the actions of Aura like a marionette, an image that is
suggested throughout the novel with several instances of dolls and marionettes appearing
in the diegesis and as similes. By controlling Aura, Consuelo controls Felipe and, by
extension, the reader.
Yet Aura/Consuelo’s manipulation of Felipe, setting aside Fuentes’ comments on
the text, remains within androcentric discourse. General Llorente, Consuelo’s husband
(and Felipe Montero’s double), convinced his child bride (Consuelo was just fifteen when
she was married) by emphasizing that her only worth was her physical beauty. As a result,
she will do anything to preserve her youthful beauty, as Llorente writes in his memoir: “Tu
es si fiere de ta beaute; que ne ferais-tu pas pour rester toujours jeune?” (32).296 Written
in French, thus made doubly foreign, these words find their echo in Consuelo’s actions.
Llorente also calls Consuelo “Ma jeune poupée” (“my young doll”)297 twice in his diary,
reaffirming his control over his child bride. What Consuelo does to preserve her youth and
beauty is defy Death—“la señora Consuelo tendrá hoy ciento nueve años” (39)—by giving
her own life in the creation of Aura.
The impossible birth of Aura by Consuelo establishes a sacrilegious parallel
between the witch and the Virgin Mary herself. Consuelo’s becoming-witch is fueled by
Llorente’s desires, but also by their inability to conceive a child. Because General Llorente
cannot produce offspring—he states in his diary that it is he who cannot give Consuelo
against her breast, sighs, and starts cutting the air again, as if—yes, you can see it clearly— as if she were
skinning an animal…” (91).
296
“You are so proud of your beauty. What wouldn’t you do to remain young forever?”
297
It is interesting to note that the nickname given to Bertha Antoinetta Mason in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso
Sea (1966) is “Marionette” (140). There are notable parallels between the respective stories of Consuelo and
Bertha Mason.
209
children, something that makes her cry at night (56)—the creation of Aura can be read as
an anti-virgin birth, a “fils de haine, conçu de l'amour” (Michelet 9),298 a vain attempt not
to establish a new order for mankind but to restore a bygone “tiempo mexicano.”
The final lines of the text—“Volverá, Felipe, la traeremos juntos. Deja que recupere
fuerzas y la haré regresar”299—reveal the extent of Consuelo’s involvement in bringing the
archaic order back. Aura is not a succubus, a golem, or any other type of supernatural
being that can exist independently of Consuelo. In Manuel Durán’s apt description, Aura is
a “proyección ectoplásmica lograda con infinito esfuerzo por la anciana” (91).300 Durán’s
phrasing (taken directly from spiritualism and non-mimetic fiction) lays bare the old
woman’s intense suffering in the process of creating an ectoplasmic projection of her
younger self. This is confirmed by Aura’s response when Felipe asks her why she must
sacrifice herself for Consuelo: “Ella se sacrifica por mí” (53).301 Taking into account that
Aura and Consuelo are the same, it is notable just how much Consuelo detests and is
repulsed by herself, made evident by the way she talks about herself as Aura: “Si, es vieja,
es repulsive…Felipe, no quiero volver…no quiero ser como ella.” The dysmorphic
relationship between Consuelo and her elderly body (which she deems “repulsive”) is a
torturous one.
Felipe Montero also undergoes a transubstantiation after the black mass
performed in Aura’s green room, in García Gutiérrez’s words “la zona sagrada de la casa,
298
“child of hate, conceived of love”
299
“She’ll come back, Felipe. We’ll bring her back together. Let me recover my strength and I'll bring her
back . . .’” (145)
300
“an ectoplasmic projection achieved by the old woman with infinite effort”
301
“She sacrifices herself for me” (123)
210
en la que se repite el rito transgresor de la misa católica” (141).302 Aura breaks the
Eucharistic bread before having sex with Montero, after which the second-person narrator
remarks that he has engendered “tu propio doble” (51).303 The newly engendered
“double” is a young General Llorente. Consuelo, like Catalina and Chac, sacrifices the
protagonist as a part of the ritual of transubstantiation. In the grotesque version of
Catholicism presented in Aura, Consuelo lures a sacrificial lamb (the “macho cabrio” she
slaughters) in order to bring back General Llorente, the absent Father and the real author
of the Book locked away in the chest. The identity between General Llorente and Felipe
Montero’s furthers the religious metaphor: father and son, God and Christ, are one and
the same.
Thus, Felipe Montero, the son, has to die for General Llorente to live. But within
the paradigm of Mexican Gothic, the difference is irrelevant. Felipe Montero dies but lives
on as General Llorente, or, conversely, General Llorente died when forgetting his identity
and birthed Felipe Montero. In the same way, Aura exists as a materialization of
Consuelo’s life force (her waning puissance), which means that Consuelo must lose life for
Aura to exist. Consuelo is trapped in an ever-ending becoming-Aura but, in doing so, is
also trapped in a becoming-corpse.
According to García Gutiérrez, the final realization of Felipe Montero “es que el
historiador no es solo el testigo de la Historia, sino el que la hace, como actor secundario,
y el que recibe los efectos de ella que a su vez es creada, manipulada por la mujer,
302
“the sacred zone of the house, in which the transgressive rite of the Catholic Mass is repeated"
303
“your own double” (117)
211
verdadero sujeto de la historia” (115).
304
But is Consuelo/Aura the real subject and creator
of history? The answer seems less clear after examining Consuelo’s motivations and how
they seem to precede her own will. It seems that Consuelo, the marionette of General
Llorente’s desire, will never be able to heal her wounds, not even through witchcraft and
transubstantiation.
Within the paradigm of Mexican Gothic, there is no arrangement in which the male
does not have the final say. Even the final words of the text (“Volverá…”) reveal the extent
to which General Llorente’s will has penetrated and still controls Consuelo’s life from
beyond the grave. The abruptness of the ending also indicates this305: given her suffering
and the tremendous effort she exerts to produce Aura, there is no idyllic scenario in
Consuelo’s future. Even if her plans materialize—the grotesque image of Death incarnate
embracing youth, pulling the strings of her marionette as well as the strings of her willing
or unwilling participant—her failure would be all the more evident: she knows of “la
inminencia del hecho estético.” She is being controlled by the unrelenting will of time that
separates an idyllic “tiempo mexicano” from a monstrous present in which Consuelo’s
face is itself a horrific juxtaposition of times, “un rostro casi infantil de tan viejo” (14).
Despite her status as a “deforme calavera,” Posada’s Garbancera and Catrina insist on
using the accessories that death has reduced to meaningless decorations. The unsettling
image of the lipstick-wearing Catrina is repeated in Consuelo. Aura’s aborted ending
304
“is that the historian is not only the witness of History, but the one who makes it, as a secondary actor,
and the one who receives the effects of it, which in turn is created and manipulated by women, the true
subject of history”
305
The ending of “Tlactocatzine” is similarly abrupt.
212
suggests that the advent of the Kingdom of God is actually a much more viable way out for
the elderly witch.
As part of the section in Tiempo Mexicano entitled “Tiempo is pánico,” Fuentes
posits that “el mundo que la obra lee es un mundo en mutación; la obra quisiera ser fija.
Por fortuna, no lo logra. El mundo mutante también multiplica sus lecturas de la obra”
(27).306 Despite his own repeatedly declared intention of portraying the woman as victor,
Fuentes, in creating a nuanced character, commiserates with Consuelo’s plight. As
Michelet did in La Sorciére, Fuentes furnishes the reader with a reason for Consuelo’s
actions.
Consuelo is not just a witch, but, like Michelet’s sorciére, the victim of a gendered
and postcolonial/neocolonial plight. Parallels to “Tlactocatzine” highlight this dimension of
the text. General Llorente’s memoir reveals “la infancia en una hacienda oaxaqueña del
siglo XIX, los estudios militares en Francia, la amistad con el Duque de Morny, con el
circulo íntimo de Napoleón III, el regreso a México en el estado mayor de Maximiliano, las
ceremonias y veladas del Imperio, las batallas, el derrumbe, el Cerro de las Campanas, el
exilio en Paris” (29).307 General Llorente, a self-colonizing Mexican man whose preferred
language is French, takes Consuelo who “…tenia quince años en 1867, cuando el general
Llorente casó con ella y la llevó a vivir a Paris, al exilio” (38). Consuelo, moreover, never
learns French, making her even more dependent on Felipe. The echoes of the Second
306
"The world that the text reads is a world in mutation; the text would like to be fixed. Fortunately, it does
not achieve this. The mutant world also multiplies its readings of the text.”
307
“his childhood on a hacienda in Oaxaca, his military studies in France, his friendship with the duc de
Morny and the intimates of Napoleon III, his return to Mexico on the staff of Maximilian, the imperial cere-
monies and gatherings, the battles, the de- feat in 1867, his exile in France.” (57)
213
Mexican Empire, Maximilian, and Carlota still remain, echoes of a different “tiempo
mexicano.” An impossible, alternate timeline where a young Llorente and a young
Consuelo live, where the Second Mexican Empire survived, where Chac Mool still reigns,
exists—but only within the walls of Donceles 815.
“La piedra labrada del barroco Mexicano”: The Churrigueresque and Second Person
Theatrics
Let us return to Consuelo’s retablo, where the over-saturation of Gothic elements
in the text can be considered at length. The religious images are nothing but surface,
unaccompanied by Christian practice. This makes the transition from fanaticism to idolatry
to witchcraft a seamless process that Montero cannot perceive and the reader cannot
fully apprehend until it is too late for his double.
The extreme abundance of tropes has a baroque, even churrigueresque, aesthetic
effect.
308
Not only does the text itself conjure the baroque with its saturated stylings, but
Fuentes also—once again directing the reception of his work—cites the baroque as one of
the most important hypotexts of Aura.
309
The Gothic and the Baroque, like Southern
Gothic and certain elements of Mexican Gothic, share certain features. Fuentes smooths
out their differences in his quest for the “sabiduría prohibida” expressed by Michelet and
incorporated as the epigraph of Aura: woman as the purveyor of mystery, the great Other.
308
Though it originated in Spain, the churrigueresque style (barroco anticlásico or barroco de estípite) was
intensely cultivated in Mexico and can be considered “Mexico’s greatest contribution to baroque art”
(Vargas Lugo 86).
309
In “On Reading and Writing Myself: How I Wrote Aura,” Fuentes famously states that Quevedo is the real
author of Aura.
214
Stephen Butte insists on a distinction between Gothic and Baroque gestures that
he terms “Baroque trompe l'oeil (creating a non-market socialization) and Gothic
counterfeit (producing an ever-circulating commodity)" (313). Such a distinction seems
difficult to make when the two categories are so deeply imbricated with one another in
the text. Both the Gothic and the Baroque underscore virtual rather than actual
counterfeit, and trompe l’oeil similarly point towards that which is absent; it is either a
representation or a forgery. In Consuelo’s retablo, what is a representation and what is a
forgery? The figures in the altar piece appear to be virtual in both senses.
If a distinction must be made, Aura is built of Gothic tropes that accumulate in a
churrigueresque baroque fashion. There are in Fuentes’ text a variety of folds (to borrow
Deleuze’s term for the Baroque) that lead not into infinity but into monstrosity, into the
depths of the humid other, or into Death itself.
Fuentes allows the reader to approach Death through the eyes of Felipe: “Lees y
relees el aviso. Parece dirigido a ti, a nadie más” (9).
310
Consuelo’s demand is that he
sacrifice his own Self in order to assume the identity of General Llorente. The image of the
sacrificial altar conjured up by Chac Mool is turned into Consuelo’s baroque retablo and
Filiberto is now Felipe Montero. Montero is also “you,” the reader whose time is
vampirized by the novella, a bottomless well in which time recirculates and is injected into
Consuelo’s ectoplasmic projection. Though Consuelo far too old to carry a child, she
portrays a fecund, ever-growing, ever-multiplying version of Mexican Gothic: Fuentes’
attempt at looking through the Other’s mask.
310
"You read it and reread it. It seems to be addressed to you and nobody else. (3)
215
Sun: The Masculine
In contrast to the churrigueresque distribution of Gothic elements into which the
female moon of Mexican Gothic inquires, the masculine sun is the image of lack, of the
barren and abandoned. “Me cruzaré de brazos y Comala se morirá de hambre” (116)
311
proclaims Pedro Páramo after Susana San Juan’s death. And so he does. His neglect makes
the prophecy written in his name a reality: the once verdant and lively Comala is turned
into a ghost town made of sand and echoes. Instead of the humid house at Donceles 815,
Comala sits “sobre las brasas de la tierra, en la mera boca del infierno” (19).
312
Dust and
dryness are the mark of Comala, a netherworld that has spawned its own configuration of
the Gothic.
Given that Pedro Páramo is a novel composed of voices from beyond the grave, it
is unsurprising that it has insistently been read through the Gothic or is directly associated
with a vague, indeterminate notion of “Mexican Gothic.” These readings single out the
ghosts and haunts in Comala, ghosts that appear to, as Gerald Hogle puts it, “manifest
unresolved crimes or conflicts that can no longer be successfully buried from view” (2).
Why are these ghosts haunting Comala? Is Pedro Páramo a Gothic Villain haunted by
these apparitions?
311
“—I’ll cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger.” (73; all translations of Pedro Páramo are taken from
Douglas J. Weatherford’s 2023 translation.
312
“—. Try to relax. You’ll feel it worse when we get to Comala. That place sits on the burning embers of the
earth, at the very mouth of Hell. They say many of those who die there and go to Hell come back to fetch
their blankets.” (9)
216
In addition to these elements, critics have found further connections between
Pedro Páramo and the Gothic. Jean Franco identifies some that have proved particularly
significant in Gothic readings of the text:
Pedro Páramo puede ser consignada como una novela que no reproduce una visión
coherente del mundo, sino la fragmentación y ruina de un orden social y moral, la
supervivencia de códigos previos dentro de un nuevo orden social, y los conflictos
y confusiones que surgen de la mezcla de lo nuevo y lo viejo. (Viaje 134)
Two elements from Franco’s description here are consubstantial to the Gothic and Gothic
readings of Pedro Páramo: ruin and anachronism. The system that promised change for
the better to rural Mexico has failed to deliver and, on the contrary, has given way to an
exodus towards urban centers, leaving rural areas barren and ruined. At the same time,
the logic of cacicazgo, represented by the eponymous tyrant, coexists with the modern
tribulations of the revolution, post-revolutionary war, and growing urban culture, creating
the rifts responsible for the downfall of Comala. As Amit Thakkar states, “this type of local
caciquismo was held by the state to be a relic of the colonial past, obstructing the
progress of the peasantry by preventing their integration into the market economy” (102).
These historical processes are undoubtedly part of Pedro Páramo but do not
exhaust the potential for a Gothic reading of the text. Taking up Djelal Kadir’s use of the
Gothic Vortex, I argue that absence is also a pivotal theme in the novel. In fact, I situate
absence at the center of my reading of the novel. Because Pedro Páramo meditates on the
idea of absence, this very idea (lack of resources, lack of will, abandonment, etc.) dictates
the arrangement of Mexican Gothic and subordinates the other elements (ruin,
217
anachronism, Pedro Páramo as Gothic villain, etc.). Pedro Páramo’s gesture of letting
Comala die is not only a representation of the failure of the Mexican Revolution to
empower rural Mexico but also a reiteration of their abandonment by the Father, by God
himself as represented in the male figures of authority: Pedro Páramo and Father
Rentería. Comala is not only turned into a wasteland, but a land filled with “adioses,” a
place haunted by its own failure in a permanently moribund state, a death without end.
Juan Rulfo and Pedro Páramo
Despite the presence of the Gothic elements outlined above, Pedro Páramo was
not, as Aura was, written as a genre piece.
313
On the contrary, Rulfo removes the trace of
his influences to maximize the verisimilitude of his texts. While Fuentes exulted in the
artificiality of his work, Rulfo sought to conceal the constructed nature of his work.
For this reason, in his interviews, Rulfo gave a secondary role to “el procedimiento
estrictamente literario para hablar, en su lugar, de aspectos autobiográficos o
semiautobiográficos” (Avechuco Cabrera 2).
314
313
This is also related to Rulfo’s authorial self-fashioning, which contrasts sharply with Fuentes’. Instead of
the cosmopolitan playboy who happily named his influences with journalistic precision, Rulfo, as per
Avechuco Cabrera, de-intellectualized himself, reinforcing the idea that “su arte literario es espontáneo,
natural, orgánico” (3). In his interview with Joaquín Soler Serrano, Rulfo stated his affinity with Peruvian
writer José María Arguedas; a great indicator of the tone the author sought out to capture. Arguedas held
Rulfo in similarly high regard and saw in him a degree of authenticity diametrically opposed to Fuentes’
artificiality. This characterization is reiterated in the author’s diaries, included in El zorro de arriba y el zorro
de abajo (Arguedas 25-26).
314
“the strictly literary process in order to, in its stead, talk about autobiographical or semiautobiographical
aspects.”
218
Born in Apulco, Jalisco, Rulfo lived through the aftermath of the Mexican
Revolution
315
and witnessed the hardships that ensued, struggles that were hidden away
by official revolutionary discourse. Rulfo’s fiction narrates how, in the words of Cristina
Rivera Garza in Había mucha neblina o humo o no sé qué,
Poco a poco y de manera inexorable los pueblos de la provincia mexicana, los
pueblos del así llamado interior, especialmente aquellos con población indígena, se
fueron quedando sin gente o sin recursos naturales. […] Pronto muchos de estos
poblados se convirtieron en fantasmas de sí mismos. (52)
316
Rulfo’s Comala is not just another ghost town, it is the ghost of a ghost, “fantasmas de
fantasmas” (“ghosts of ghosts”) as Fuentes puts it (56), the voices and echoes of ghosts,
an apparition twice removed that speaks from a specific time and specific place that Rulfo
undoubtedly knew well.
Nonetheless, Pedro Páramo is fiction, not a historical or anthropological account.
Rulfo’s superlative achievement in Pedro Páramo is that he makes us believe (or want to
believe) the “lie” of literature. His mastery in hiding the seams holding Pedro Páramo (and
El llano en llamas) together lends his prose an organic quality in accord with the authorial
intention of giving a voice to Comala, or to towns that underwent the same historical
process.
317
Since he provided little and at times unreliable information about his creative
315
Rulfo bore witness to the Cristero War (Guerra Cristera), a direct consequence of the Revolution. The
Cristero Rebellion is one of the few historical elements clearly outlined in Pedro Páramo.
316
“Little by little, inexorably, the towns of the Mexican province, towns of the so-called interior, especially
those with an indigenous population, started to run out of people and natural resources. […] Soon many of
these villages became ghosts of themselves.”
317
In his interview with Joseph Sommers, Rulfo stated, in regard to Pedro Páramo, that “Se trata de una
novela en que el personaje principal es el pueblo. Hay que notar que algunos críticos toman como personaje
central a Pedro Páramo. En realidad es el pueblo” (Rulfo in Sommers 19).
219
process, “ha sido comn que muchos especulen respecto de la huella de lecturas de
novelas y poesía en la obra de Rulfo. Su probada práctica como voraz lector incita, sin
duda, esta perspectiva” (Rivera Garza 138).
318
The uncertainty Rulfo himself sowed has
given birth to a plethora of interpretations that seek to trace the origins of Pedro Páramo
both to Western literary tradition (the archetypal reading) and to local pre-Columbian
myth (the mythopoetical reading), with varying degrees of success. These make for the
majority of readings of the text, with generic readings forming a small fraction.
However, Rulfo’s voracity as a reader, indicated by Rivera Garza, combined with
the well-established influence of William Faulkner on most Spanish American writers of
the period, strongly suggest that Rulfo had some form of contact with the Gothic. The
dark stitches of the Gothic allow us to keep the artificiality of texts in mind and focus on
the counterfeit nature of literature. Peering through the dense fog that looms over
Comala pushes our understanding of the Gothic and the possibilities of Gothic readings to
their limits. How does Pedro Páramo, read as a piece of the Mexican Gothic assemblage,
do so? How does it arrange Mexican Gothic’s components? A thorough answer to these
questions begins with a brief overview of interpretations that have brought Pedro Páramo
under the scrutiny of the Gothic eye.
318
"it has been common for many to speculate about the imprint of his readings in Rulfo's work. His proven
practice as a voracious reader undoubtedly prompts this approach”
220
Pedro Páramo as Gothic, or Southern Gothic
Given the general hostility to the term in Spanish American criticism, reading Pedro
Páramo in relation to the Gothic is to a certain degree controversial. That Rulfo’s novel
has been firmly placed in the realismo mágico tradition—despite Rulfo’s derision of the
term—has only made the endeavor more difficult. Despite these hurdles, several critics
have already undertaken the task.
Djelal Kadir, in his aforementioned Same Voices, Different Tombs (1976),
approaches Pedro Páramo as part of his interpretation of Mexican Gothic by introducing
the concept of the Gothic vortex, which he borrows from J. Douglas Perry’s reading of
Faulkner, Capote, and Styron. For Kadir, Comala itself is a vortex that drags Juan Preciado
into it.
319
Kadir’s reading, though now more than fifty years old, remains one of the more
fruitful attempts at making use of Gothic hermeneutics to understand Pedro Páramo.
Carmen Serrano takes a different approach, elaborating a detailed account of all
the Gothic tropes and gestures in Rulfo’s novel. She lays out her central argument in the
following terms:
This novel not only shares the similarity with the Gothic in terms of its
treatment of history, and its conflation of the past with the present, it also
incorporates many of the popular conventions found in Gothic texts in order to
draw attention to the menacing state of affairs. (101)
319
For Antonio Alcalá González’s “Fragmented Gothic Identities,” Comala is a prison that traps its
inhabitants and their past. This reading is sound but does not make clear the necessity of the Gothic in it. In
fact, the idea of Comala as prison is not that different from Julio Ortega’s arguments in La contemplación y
la fiesta. Alcalá González’s piece does have a unique feature: it establishes the character of Pedro Páramo as
psychopomps that guides Juan Preciado into hell—but this argument does not require the introduction of
the Gothic either.
221
Serrano takes her comparisons even further by boldly affirming that, more than realismo
mágico, “the Gothic seems to be a richer source for the interpretation of this novel since
the haunted ambiance and the element of fear have significant roles” (116).
320
Despite
acknowledging the role of realismo mágico in the novel and its analysis, Serrano chooses
to undermine it in favor of the Gothic, in what to my mind is an unnecessary competition:
Pedro Páramo, not unlike Aura, can participate in a multitude of assemblages, bearing the
indexes of the assemblages it has passed through.
321
Like European Gothic, Southern
Gothic also has indexes in Pedro Páramo.
William Faulkner and Pedro Páramo
Following Eric Savoy and Patricia Yaeger, Mark Helmsing defines Southern Gothic
as “a mode of expression in literature, art, film/television, and other mediums that
employs the grotesque, the forgotten, the failed, and the macabre (sometimes through
supernatural devices) to unearth and displace the values of the American South” (316). As
in Faulkner’s novels, Rulfo’s work (both Pedro Páramo and El llano en llamas) abounds in
violent and grotesque imagery. Rulfo "sigilosamente coloca en primer plano, […] las
320
Serrano’s insistence makes her misread the novel to fit this interpretation. She states that in Pedro
Páramo "the supernatural is not accepted as part of the everyday, rather it is strange, frightening and
threatening” (119). This is a partial, flawed reading of the novel that can be quickly disproven by looking at
the conversation between Eduviges Dyada and Miguel Páramo, who is already dead. Faced with a confused
ghost in denial of his new condition, Dyada responds to Miguel’s “dirán que estoy loco” (“they will say that I
am crazy”) with “No. Loco no, Miguel. Debes estar muerto” (“No, not crazy Miguel. You must be dead”). This
is far from the only instance of Serrano’s misreading. Father Rentería, one of the most nuanced and
historically complex characters in the text, is made out to be a vampire by Serrano, closer to The Monk’s
Ambrosio than to the character actually present in the novel. I will examine Father Renterías
characterization in the corresponding section of this chapter.
321
Serrano’s statement is also made possible by her atomized analysis that acknowledges historical context
and generic tradition but does not perceive these elements as working together, and thus cannot be
haphazardly pulled apart.
222
prácticas que siempre han repelido y embelesado a la tradición ilustrada mexicana:
asesinatos a sangre fría, venganzas, parricidios" (Avechuco Cabrera 8).
322
Faulkner’s influence on the Latin American Boom has been discussed extensively
by authors and critics alike, a trend that has not found an echo in discussion of the
possibilities of Southern Gothic in the region until very recently. One might argue that
there is no discussion to be had: the Southern Gothic is a region-specific mode restricted
to the south of the United States. Yet, as Avechuco Cabrera argues, Spanish American
authors learned from Faulkner much more than just literary techniques, "Caldwell y
Faulkner quizás le mostraron a Rulfo el camino para componer un campesino casi
totalmente desprovisto del recubrimiento folclórico colorista y del paternalismo
imperantes en la literatura de la primera mitad del siglo XX" (4).
323
While Faulkner’s characters may be free of local color, they are drawn with a clear
focus on the sordid and violent aspects of their lives. As in many of its iterations, the term
Gothic was originally attributed to authors like Faulkner in a derogatory fashion, as a way
to denigrate such dark and violent imagery. As a result, the process of forming the
Southern Gothic assemblage is clearly differentiated from that of Victorian/European and
even modernista Gothic, where most of their indexing is purposeful and evident. In such
cases, its artificial quality is part of its aesthetic, whereas in Southern Gothic it is not.
322
"stealthily places the practices that have always repelled and enraptured the Mexican enlightened
tradition in the foreground [...]: cold-blooded murders, revenge, patricides"
323
"Caldwell and Faulkner perhaps showed Rulfo the way to write a peasant almost totally devoid of the
folkloric coloristic overlay and paternalism prevalent in the literature of the first half of the twentieth
century."
223
Despite initial resistance, the authors of the Southern Gothic quickly became a
staple of the country’s literary fiction
324
and an immense influence on other literatures
worldwide. Faulkner’s influence on nearly all Spanish American authors of the period is
well known. What is mysterious is how, despite consistent associations of Faulkner’s work
with the term, the imprint of Southern Gothic as Gothic
325
has been frequently excised
from literary analysis.
326
Is there really a similitude between the “Gothic” aspect of Faulkner and that of
Rulfo? From the plane of consistency,
327
it might seem all too obvious. The representation
of the Other, the rural Other, is at the center of the text. Faulkner’s insistence on the
abject (death, incest, murder, poverty) is what grants him the moniker of Southern Gothic
and Rulfo follows suit. Telling the stories of the plight and abject hardships of the
peasantry in dust-filled, dreary landscapes replete with violent imagery cast in a
324
In addition, Faulkner is now considered an essential author in what has come to be known as American
Gothic.
325
It remains open to debate whether Southern Gothic remains tethered to Continental/European Gothic.
Even if Faulkner had not been influenced by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe (which he was), the processes
employed in his texts to describe Otherness fit snugly into the Gothic Abstract Machine, particularly in his
first stories. “A Rose for Emily” is the most often cited example of Faulkner’s connection to the Gothic, since
it is without a doubt the most evident use of conventional Gothic tropes.
326
In “Rosario Castellanos' Southern Gothic: Indigenous Labor, Land Reform and the Production of Ladina
Subjectivity,” Ericka Beckman attempts such an undertaking by transposing elements of Southern Gothic
onto Rosario Castellanos’ Balún Canán. Beckman interprets the idea of “Southern” in Southern Gothic as the
South not of the United States but the south of Mexico to “bring Chiapas out of the site of ultra-particularity
it occupies in Mexican culture” (142). Thus, Beckman attempts to deterritorialize the term and establish a
connection between the South of the United States, the South of Mexico and other latitudes where
racialized labor is exploited (the Global South). However, this gesture erases the specificity of both the
situation in Chiapas and Faulkner’s American South, under the power relationships inherent to the Gothic
Abstract Machine, not the Southern Gothic as a particular assemblage. In these exercises, the term
“Southern Gothic” loses all specific content it has as a geolocated term.
327
In Deleuze’s conception, on the plane of consistency (planomenon) “the most disparate of things and
signs move upon it: a semiotic fragment rubs shoulders with a chemical interaction, an electron crashes into
a language, a black hole captures a genetic message, a crystallization produces a passion, the wasp and the
orchid cross a letter” (69).
224
fragmented, polyphonic narrative are some of the features common to Rulfo and
Faulkner. Pedro Páramo (1955) teems with the elements that make a novel like The Sound
and the Fury (1929) Southern Gothic. And yet there is a crucial element that differentiates
Pedro Páramo from Faulkner’s work, and that is realismo mágico.
My reading of genres through assemblage theory provides a way of approaching
and accounting for textual complexities without restricting a given work to a single genre,
which so often produces critical blind spots. Generic qualities can be deterritorialized, but
never lost. The Gothic and realismo mágico need not be at odds. In fact, realismo mágico
is a necessary element in the expression of Mexican Gothic. Realismo mágico is the way in
which, according to Paz, a uniquely Mexican approach to death can be narrated. Since the
division between life and death is tenuous, the passage from one to the other cannot
function as it does in fantástico or the Victorian Gothic or even the modernista Gothic, in
which it comes as a rupture. Here Paz’s words echo across the deserted lands of Comala:
“¿qué me importa la muerte, si no me importa la vida?” Pedro Páramo tells the story of
how the lively town of Comala is robbed of its life and turned barren. Once in this state,
life and death are indistinguishable. Comala lies between life and death.
Ghosts and Horrors: Gothic Tropes in Pedro Páramo?
The presence of specters and the focus on death make Pedro Páramo a prime
target for the Gothic eye. Nonetheless, if the categorization of the novel as realismo
225
mágico
328
appears to be in open contradiction to the Gothic, death is no longer terrifying:
the supernatural element (the speech of the dead) is neutralized and the terror it inspires
reduced to a few scattered moments in the text. Can the two modes coexist? The
assemblage model embraces what genre theory perceives as a contradiction.
At the center of Pedro Páramo’s realismo mágico, like the very idea of Mexico, is
the relationship between humanity and death. Calavera Catrina’s smile reappears: like
her, the inhabitants of Comala walk and talk as if living. “Como esas hermosas e
inquietantes ‘calaveras’ de José Guadalupe Posada” (Durán 9).
329
Though Durán is
describing the stories of El llano en llamas, his words could easily be applied to Pedro
Páramo. The orality of the novel, a dialogue between ghosts that makes up most of the
novel, is scored by class and gender markers aimed at achieving maximum verisimilitude.
Juan Preciado does not even realize he has been dead before descending into Comala; as
Luis Leal puts it, “la transición de lo real a lo irreal, de la vida a la muerte, de este mundo
al otro mundo es casi imperceptible” (45).
If the transition is as smooth as Leal suggests, what is the role of terror or horror in
the narrative? In La contemplación y la fiesta, Julio Ortega addresses this issue and
minimizes the supernatural in Pedro Páramo in favor of the mythological. For Ortega,
“Esas voces y visiones son aquí presencias. Casi no se trata de ‘fantasmas’ o de
‘aparecidos’ […]” (20). Through a comparison with German romanticism, Ortega posits
that
328
Rulfo himself disliked the term, further demonstrating his aversion to any generic categorization.
329
“Like those beautiful and unsettling ‘skulls’ of José Guadalupe Posada”
226
la introducción del mundo de la muerte no tiene aquí la finalidad del terror,
aunque ese terror se insinúa: Juan Rulfo presenta de un modo inmediato a sus
personajes muertos; sabemos que están muertos aun cuando hablan o accionan.
(20)
330
For Serrano, however, “instilling fear is the cornerstone and one of the central aims of the
Gothic and this is also what Rulfo achieves in this work” (110). Is Ortega wrong in his
statement about terror?
Let us return to Hogle’s definition of terror Gothic. For Hogle, “terror Gothic holds
characters and readers mostly in anxious suspense about threats to life, safety, and sanity
kept largely out of sight or in shadows or suggestions from a hidden past” (3). Does this
apply to Pedro Páramo? The most prominent passage dealing with fear in the text is
undoubtedly Juan Preciado’s death. After being overwhelmed by surrealist visions and
oppressive heat, Juan Preciado claims, in conversation with Dorotea, that he died because
he was not able to breathe. Dorotea responds:
-¿Quieres hacerme creer que te mató el ahogo, Juan Preciado? Yo te encontré en
la plaza, muy lejos de la casa de Donis, y junto a mí también estaba él, diciendo que
te estabas haciendo el muerto. Entre los dos te arrastramos a la sombra del portal,
ya bien tirante, acalambrado, como mueren los que mueren muertos de miedo. De
no haber habido aire para respirar esa noche de que hablas, nos hubieran faltado
las fuerzas para llevarte y contimás para enterrarte. Y ya ves, te enterramos.
330
“introducing the world of death here does not have the purpose of terror, although that terror is
insinuated: Juan Rulfo presents his dead characters in an immediate way; we know that they are dead even
when they speak or act.”
227
[…]
-Es cierto Dorotea. Me mataron los murmullos. (64-65)
331
The passage is not meant to induce terror in the reader; it merely describes the terror
Juan Preciado feels during his own anagnorisis. In Pedro Páramo, physical death is of
trifling importance—the process of awakening to one’s death is what produces notable
change. Juan Preciado’s death is caused by “los murmullos,” which terrified him with the
realization of his own death, a sensation that reaches a crescendo and causes him to faint.
Once buried, Dorotea, who cradles him in her arms, insists “Ya déjate de miedos. Nadie te
puede dar ya miedo” (68),
332
further confirming the attitude towards Death of those on
the other side. For this reason, Death is not a matter of horror or terror in Pedro Páramo.
It is, as reiterated by Paz, a continuation of life itself.
Where does this leave fear? Fear is present, but not located in the reader and the
character in the same way. Juan Preciado is a newcomer to the underworld of Comala
and, thus, his fear is unique to him, not shared by the other characters. Once he dies, a
moment like his death (or the anagnorisis of his death) caused by fear is not repeated in
the novel. In addition, it is difficult to argue that the fragmented style can hold the reader
331
“—You expect me to believe you died of suffocation, Juan Preciado? I found you in the plaza, a long way
from Donis’s house, and he was right there with me, telling me you were playing dead. Between the two of
us, we dragged you into the shade of the portico, already good and stiff, twisted up like someone who’s died
of fright. If there hadn’t been air to breathe the night you’re talking about, we wouldn’t have had the
strength to carry you, let alone lay you to rest. But as you can see, we did bury you.
—You’re right, Doroteo. Didn’t you say your name was Doroteo?
—It’s all the same. Although my name is Dorotea. But it’s all the same.
—It’s true, Dorotea. It was the murmuring that killed me.” (39)
332
“It’s time to stop being terrified. No one can scare you anymore” (41).
228
in “anxious suspense” about the characters’ well-being, characters whom we already
know to be dead.
But there is existential fear in Pedro Páramo, directly related to Death as a non-
end. Ortega himself points out this fear in the same text when commenting on the space
described in the novel: “aquella oscura rebeldía de la vida vista desde la muerte se
relaciona, de algn modo, con el terror victorioso de un espacio negro” (22).
333
The
ghosts, “los murmullos” whose presence “kills” Juan Preciado by awakening him to his
own state, are all chained to the town, trapped in place by their guilt. The reader’s fear
(anxiety, terror) can only be located here, in the fear of a restless death, abandoned by
God, a cursed existence in which not even death can provide a chance at freedom.
Juan Preciado is thus a receptacle of the “ghosts” or echoes in Comala, whose
death is caused by “los murmullos” that progressively fill the air. Accordingly, Molloy and
Bastos describe Juan Preciado as “una ausencia que se colma” (Estrella 249). He functions
less as a protagonist and more as a hollow vessel in which other voices resonate. His
hollowness recalls again the image of the hole, a kind of absence that sustains Pedro
Páramo much more than its ghosts. The process of Juan’s becoming-vessel begins before
the narration, in another instance of absence: the first voice that resonates in him is his
mother’s, whose photograph he carries in his breast pocket. Like the passage describing
Consuelo’s retablo in Aura, Juan’s description of the photo is worth quoting in full:
333
“that dark rebelliousness of life seen from death is in some way related to the victorious terror of a black
space”
229
Sentí el retrato de mi madre guardado en la bolsa de la camisa, calentándome el
corazón, como si ella también sudara. Era un retrato viejo, carcomido en los
bordes; pero fue el único que conocí de ella. Me lo había encontrado en el armario
de la cocina, dentro de una cazuela llena de yerbas: hojas de toronjil, flores de
Castilla, ramas de ruda. Desde entonces lo guardé. Era el único. Mi madre siempre
fue enemiga de retratarse. Decía que los retratos eran cosa de brujería. Y así
parecía ser; porque el suyo estaba lleno de agujeros como de aguja, y en dirección
del corazón tenía uno muy grande, donde bien podía caber el dedo del corazón.
334
That Dolores Preciado’s image is a photograph is not a minor detail, considering
that “si, como asegura Eric Santner, la fotografía es un medio privilegiado porque parece
funcionar como un sitio de comercio con los muertos (o mejor dicho con los no muertos),
no es de extrañarse que el autor de Pedro Páramo mantuviera una relación estrecha y
constante con la fotografía a lo largo de su vida” (Rivera Garza 80).
335
Photography has a
long association with ghostly apparitions and the supernatural, which is reflected in the
passage itself: “Mi madre siempre fue enemiga de retratarse. Decía que los retratos eran
cosa de brujería.” The photograph is the first instantiation of the many absences that give
form to Pedro Páramo. Dolores is in Juan Preciado’s pocket as a double of herself, as an
334
“I felt my mother’s portrait tucked away in my shirt pocket, keeping my heart warm, as if she too were
sweating. It was an old photograph, worn along the edges; but it was the only one I’d ever seen of her. I had
found it in the kitchen cabinet, in a clay pot full of herbs: lemon balm leaves, castilla blossoms, twigs of rue.
I’ve kept it ever since. It was the only one. My mother was always opposed to being photographed. She said
portraits were a form of witchcraft. And it seemed she was right, because hers was full of holes, like
pinpricks, with one large enough to fit your middle finger through located right where her heart should be”
(9-10).
335
“If, as Eric Santner asserts, photography is a privileged medium because it seems to function as a place of
exchange with the dead (or rather with the undead), it is not surprising that the author of Pedro Páramo
maintained a close and constant relationship with photography throughout his life.”
230
absence, like the disembodied sound of her voice. As Jean Franco posits, in Comala there
is a discrepancy between sound and image, “lo que Juan Preciado oye es diferente de lo
que ve” (Viaje 128).
336
In contrast to Our Lady of Sorrows in Consuelo’s retablo, the most important
element in the description of the photograph is a type of lack: the holes in Dolores
Preciado’s portrait, particularly the larger one “donde bien podia caber el dedo del
corazón” that rarify the image.
337
Why is the image perforated in such a way? This is
another mystery, another hole, in the novel. The holes, in combination with the plants
mentioned— “hojas de toronjil, flores de Castilla, ramas de ruda”—associated with home
remedies and supernatural cures to ailments, point once again to voodoo or some
indeterminate form of folk magic that is never again addressed in the novel.
Dolores’ name provides another layer of interpretation for her photograph. The
holes in the portrait, particularly the one through the heart, are evocative of Our Lady of
Sorrows, an image also present in Consuelo’s altar. In this instance, however, there are no
swords piercing Mary’s heart, only the holes they have left behind. Aura and Pedro
Páramo express a similar attitude toward Christianity; after all, they participate in the
same assemblage. They both focus on the abject, painful elements of religion.
Nonetheless, Fuentes’ approach in Aura is addition (Our Lady of Sorrows, Saint Sebastian,
Jesus Christ, Saint Lucy) while Rulfo’s is subtraction.
336
“What Juan Preciado hears is different from what he sees”
337
Curiously, in the 1967 film adaptation of the novel (in which Fuentes participated as script writer),
Dolores Preciado’s portrait does not have any perforations whatsoever.
231
Pedro Páramo: Gothic Villain?
While Juan Preciado’s anagnorisis reveals him to be a vessel, that of Pedro
Páramo—his collapse “como si fuera un montón de piedras”—shows him as something
altogether different. His death (or his realization of his death) reiterates his role as a
fragmented absence. Pedro Páramo, whose name evokes the lithic, is nothing, a
reminiscence of “un montón de piedras,” without a center, an assembly of voices and
echoes. A “rencor vivo,” “la pura maldad,” “un intil,” “se llama de otro modo y de este
otro,” Pedro Páramo is a contradictory collection of descriptors. Despite his role as the
central figure in the text, it is difficult to pin him down amidst a series of pieces that are
themselves broken. What defines Pedro Páramo is his ruthlessness and the wounds he
leaves behind: a trail of crime, violence, and death ultimately expressed in his abandoning
the entire town.
Pedro Páramo’s tyranny leads Carmen Serrano to suggest that the character is a
Gothic Villain:
More specifically, in Pedro Paramo Juan Rulfo deploys the classic Gothic
villain, a power-hungry feudal lord, whose desire engenders more violence, which
ultimately leads to the deterioration of his birthplace into a ghost town peopled by
the living dead where unsuspecting visitors are assured a tombstone. (101)
Serrano compares Pedro Páramo to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Susana San Juan
to Catherine, his eternal love and eventualghost in Brontë’s novel (118). This comparison,
232
(also drawn by José de la Colina [de la Colina 62], forms the basis of an explanation of the
titular character’s name as a reference to the “moors” of Wuthering Heights.
338
To evaluate such a claim, I would like to return to a definition of the Gothic Villain. For
Fred Botting, Gothic Villains
[…] usurp rightful heirs, rob reputable families of property and reputation while
threatening the honour of their wives and orphaned daughters. Illegitimate power
and violence is not only put on display but threatens to consume the world of
civilized and domestic values. In the skeletons that leap from family closets and the
erotic and often incestuous tendencies of Gothic villains there emerges the awful
specter of complete social disintegration in which virtue cedes to vice, reason to
desire, law to tyranny. (3)
Botting’s description does recall some of Pedro Páramo’s qualities—but the partiality of
the correspondence should not be overlooked. Pedro Páramo is unquestionably a complex
character who is both attractive (because of his power) and repulsive (because of his
actions). However, even if one accepts the Gothic trope, the more important observation
to make, in my judgment, is to note that Pedro Páramo is not actually present in the
novel: he “is” nothing in the text, only pieces, only “un montón de piedras.” Pedro Páramo
is not defined by the archetypes he may resemble, such as the villain-hero or even bandit,
338
Though the comparison between Pedro Páramo and Wuthering Heights is not unique to Serrano’s text, I
do not consider it as useful as Serrano does. José de la Colina’s offhand comment is in Serrano’s text an
entire section that, to my mind, does not explain the novel but partly occludes its meaning. The comparison
between Heathcliffe-Cathy and Pedro Páramo-Susana San Juan only works as a sketch; it cannot withstand
more careful observation. The most important element that destabilizes this comparison is that it is unclear
whether Susana loves Pedro Páramo or even likes him at all beyond their early rapport as children, a
fundamental difference between Rulfo’s novel and Wuthering Heights. The similitude between the two
novels is tangential, like the parallel between Consuelo-Bertha Mason/Aura-Jane Eyre.
233
but by the devastation he leaves behind as the trace of an intensity that no longer exists.
Despite attempts to characterize Pedro Páramo as a Gothic villain, such characterizations
can only be partial, only, like his own memory of his father’s death, “la imagen de la cara
despedazada; roto un ojo, mirando vengativo el otro” (73).
339
Yet the pieces of Pedro
Páramo’s fragmented image can occasionally fall into a shape that reaches the intensity
and rashness of a Gothic Romance’s villain.
This is particularly evident in the sequence following Susana San Juan’s wake. After
days of ringing, the bells of Comala draw the attention of neighboring towns. Eventually,
Las campanas dejaron de tocar; pero la fiesta siguió. No hubo modo de hacerles
comprender que se trataba de un duelo, de días de duelo. No hubo modo de hacer
que se fueran antes, por el contrario, siguieron llegando más. (115)
340
Meanwhile, Pedro Páramo looks on from La Media Luna:
La Media Luna estaba sola, en silencio. Se caminaba con los pies descalzos; se
hablaba en voz baja. Enterraron a Susana San Juan y pocos en Comala se
enteraron. Allá había feria. Se jugaba a los gallos, se oía la música; los gritos de los
borrachos y de loterías. Hasta acá llegaba la luz del pueblo, que parecía una
aureola sobre el cielo gris. Porque fueron días grises, tristes para la Media Luna.
Don Pedro no hablaba. No salía de su cuarto. Juró vengarse de Comala.
-Me cruzaré de brazos y Comala se morirá de hambre.
339
“The death of his father had been followed by so many other deaths, and with each one he saw the same
vision of his father’s face ripped open, one eye shattered, the other looking on vengefully.” (44)
340
“The bells finally stopped ringing, but the party continued. There was no way to make people understand
that this was a question of mourning, that these were days of grief. Nor was there any way to get them to
leave. Instead, more people kept coming” (73 Trans. Douglas J. Weatherford)
234
Y así lo hizo. (116)
341
For an instant, Pedro Páramo dons the costume of the Gothic Villain to wreak his
vengeance on the town that has slighted him by having light (“la luz del pueblo, que
parecía una aureola sobre el cielo gris”) when he is in mourning (“días grises, tristes para
la Media Luna”). Goaded by his unrequited passion for Susana San Juan, his “pleitos del
alma” damn all of Comala to an eternal becoming-void, an eternity of dying.
His reason for swearing vengeance on Comala is highly significant: the line
between the living and the dead is shamelessly disrespected by Comala, a transgression
for which the land and the people must pay. Despite his best efforts, “no hubo modo de
hacerles comprender que se trataba de un duelo” (115). On the contrary, “siguieron
llegando más” (115). Belief in the porosity of the limit between the living and the dead,
between celebration and mourning, belongs to the peasantry, not the cacique and the
order he represents: absolute death and devastation, the opposite of vitality.
This scene reflects, therefore, the convergence of indexes, many of which point
towards the Gothic Abstract Machine: a transgression must be punished by the cruel
tyrant, punished absolutely and mercilessly. The transgression itself, however, is particular
to the Mexican Gothic assemblage, since it responds to belief in the identity between life
and death, celebration and mourning. The relationship between the landowning class and
341
“The Media Luna stood alone, in silence, everyone walking around barefoot and speaking in hushed
voices. They buried Susana San Juan and few in Comala noticed. They were celebrating. There were
cockfights and music, and shouting from drunkards and people playing games of chance. The lights from
town reached all the way out here and appeared as a halo above the gray sky. Those were gray days, sad
ones for the Media Luna. Don Pedro didn’t say a word. He didn’t leave his room. He vowed to take revenge
on Comala:
—I’ll cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger.
And that’s what he did.” (73)
235
the peasantry provides an additional layer to the semiosis of the scene, which outlines the
systemic failure that the novel ultimately portrays. It is the Mexican revolution that has
failed, leaving Comala at the hands of a tyrant who can behave with the intensity and
cruelty of a Gothic villain.
Nevertheless, Rulfo’s novel is structured so that the titular character remains a
memory, an echo. Juan Preciado never encounters the ghost of Pedro Páramo: he is not
“there,” not even as a phantom. Susana San Juan’s wake and Pedro Páramo’s vow of
revenge are but fleeting moments, one of the many fragments that construct the broken
face of the cacique. And yet, this is one of the most important scenes in the novel. It is in
this scene that the imagination of Pedro Páramo as Gothic Villain creates Comala as we
know it.
Susana San Juan: Moon
Antithetical to the eponymous character of the novel, Susana San Juan is to Pedro
Páramo as the moon is to the sun. Like Pedro Páramo, she cannot be reduced to a single
character role or referent. She is not, as Serrano suggests, “the persecuted female,
vulnerable heroine and victim of desire” (117) because she is not the heroine of the novel
in any way and, despite being a victim of her father and Pedro Páramo, her altered state
of mind provides her with a particular mode of resistance that such a description ignores.
Though she cannot be cast as a single character type, a dark aura looms over
Susana San Juan. The victim of her father’s cruelty, Pedro Páramo, and the dire
236
circumstances of her living conditions, Susana spends her entire life in the dark: first, in
the mines of La Andrómeda and ultimately in the confines of her own madness. She is
“hija de un minero muerto en las minas de La Andrómeda” (87)
342
and “una señora muy
rara que siempre estuvo enferma” (82),
343
marked by otherness and strangeness since
birth. She is otherworldly and does not fit in the mold established for her by her husband-
captor Pedro Páramo and resists such a mold. As Pedro Páramo becomes more expansive
and all-powerful, Susana San Juan turns to herself and her past, becoming completely
alienated by the time of her death. María Elena de Valdéz describes her in the following
terms:
The language of Susana San Juan is the inversion of the discourse of Pedro
Páramo. […] The language of Susana is moving inward as she recedes further and
further into the closed world of her mind. […] On the other hand, the discourse of
desire enunciated by Pedro is aimed at the object of desire which is the figure of
the girl/woman he has created. The drive is toward the other, not as person, but as
a creation of desire to possess and consume.
In contrast to Pedro Páramo’s aridity and harshness, Susana San Juan is humid and erotic,
traits that recall the young Aura. Susana’s characterization indicates, yet again, the
abjected woman as “chingada,” the open, humid, and irrational. Susana San Juan
embodies the “chingada” more than any other character in the novel and, despite her
342
“Bartolomé San Juan, a dead miner. Susana San Juan, daughter of a miner dead in the Andrómeda
mines.” (54)
343
“She was a strange woman who was always sick and never visited anyone.” (51)
237
partial nature,
344
one of the fragments in which she features belongs decidedly in the
representation of the Female Mexican Gothic I have discussed above.
Pedro Páramo can never discover the abjected secret buried within Susana San
Juan’s psyche: “¿Pero cuál era el mundo de Susana San Juan? Ésa fue una de las cosas que
Pedro Páramo nunca llegó a saber” (97).
345
The shadow of incest, however, looms large
over Susana San Juan’s story and is suggested in a number of passages in the novel.
346
These suggestions are reinforced through her alienated discourse, in which she confuses
her father with her partner and assumes the role of her own mother. In their essay on
Susana San Juan, Molloy and Bastos describe this discourse as a series of “fragmentos
superpuestos” (“superimposed fragments”; 7). Susana San Juan shifts between father
figures (her own father and Father Rentería)
347
and between her partner (Florencio) and
her mother’s partner (her own father, Bartolomé San Juan).
Such shifts are brought about by another crucial scene in the novel that reprises
the image of the hole. Examined in both Kadir and Serrano’s Gothic analyses and Molloy
and Bastos’ study of Susana San Juan, the scene depicts the moment in which she is
lowered by her father down “un pequeño agujero abierto entre las tablas”
348
to search for
gold. Despite her father’s insistence, she only finds a skeleton:
344
In their essay on Susana San Juan, Molloy and Bastos recall Rulfo’s comment on Susana San Juan: “Eso no
es un personaje” (“that is not a character) he states (Susana 3).
345
“But to what world did Susana San Juan belong? That was one thing that Pedro Páramo was never able to
figure out” (61).
346
The 1962 film version of Pedro Páramo makes the novel’s implicit suggestions explicit.
347
These shifts explain the fear caused by Father Rentería’s apparition to Susana San Juan. She is not afraid
of the supernatural, as Serrano suggests, but of her own father. Her question “Eres t, padre?” is equivocal.
348
“a small opening between some boards” (58)
238
Y ella agarró la calavera entre sus manos y cuando la luz le dio de lleno la soltó. -Es
una calavera de muerto- dijo. -Debes encontrar algo más junto a ella. Dame todo lo
que encuentres. EI cadáver se deshizo en canillas; la quijada se desprendió como si
fuera de azúcar. Le fue dando pedazo a pedazo hasta que llegó a los dedos de los
pies y le entregó coyuntura tras coyuntura.
349
For Molloy and Bastos, this scene both causes and illustrates Susana’s fragmentation,
introducing a new mode of understanding and reading reality (the shifts mentioned
above). The image of Catrina, the sugar skull (“la quijada se desprendió como si fuera de
azcar”), reappears to take the place of the Gothic secret. Is it the incest between Susana
San Juan and her father? Yes, but also something more. The skeletal fragments slowly
unearthed mirror the 70 parts of the novel, slowly unearthed from the grave; Susana San
Juan’s descent in search of gold is also her descent into madness, projected into her own
grave.
Before the town’s “death,” Comala had both blistering sun and heavy rain. With
Susana San Juan’s death, there is nothing left to counter or contain the sun’s rage, leaving
the town “abandonado...a merced del elemento solar que lo termina calcinando”
(Gacinska 96).
“El puro calor sin aire”: Comala and the Ruins of Hell
349
“She picked the skull up in her hands, but let it drop as soon as the light hit it.
—It’s a dead man’s skull —she said.
—You should see something else right by it. Hand me everything you find.
The cadaver broke into pieces. The jawbone came off as if it were made of sugar. She slowly handed
each bit of the skeleton up to him until she got to the feet and then passed him one toe joint at a time.” (58)
239
With a single gesture, Pedro Páramo turns Comala into a wasteland:
Desde entonces la tierra se quedó baldía y como en ruinas. Daba pena verla
llenándose de achaques con tanta plaga que la invadió en cuanto la dejaron sola.
De allá para acá se consumió la gente; se desbandaron los hombres en busca de
otros bebederos. Recuerdo días en que Comala se llenó de adioses y hasta nos
parecía cosa alegre ir a despedir a los que se iban. (84)
350
The land is abandoned, left “baldía y como en ruinas.” Comala is personified as a gendered
body with female pronouns (in “la dejaron sola”) and descriptions likening it to an elderly
body suffering from “achaques,” a body in its final throes. The town is in the process of
becoming a corpse of itself: hollow, empty, (“se desbandarn los hombres”), a well filled
with the fragments of its former inhabitants.
As discussed earlier, the idea of hollowness, absence, lack, failure, and the holes in
Dolores Preciado’s photograph are fundamental to this novel composed of fragments. For
Kadir, “the identity quest and the descent into the hell hole are closely linked from the
very beginning; the Gothic vortex which will deepen even further confronts the young
man from the outset” (53-54). Kadir, like many critics before him, points out the obvious
association between Comala and hell that is strongly suggested in the novle: Comala is, in
an allusion to its heat, “la mera boca del infierno.” Ortega makes a similar observation,
remarking that:
350
“From then on, the land was left fallow, as if it were barren. It was disheartening to watch those fields
deteriorate as they were hit with all kinds of plagues. People everywhere started to melt away, the men
scattering in search of better “watering holes.” I remember days when Comala was filled with the sound of
“adiós,” and we thought it was great fun to go bid farewell to those who were leaving.” (52)
240
la descripción del espacio no por economía deja de ser constante y precisa: el
creciente calor, la lluvia incesante, la desolación árida, suscitan el curioso agobio
ensañado de ese espacio; aquella oscura rebeldía de la vida vista desde la muerte
se relaciona, de algún modo, con el terror victorioso de un espacio negro. Un
espacio infernal que posee desde la muerte el tiempo de la vida. (22)
351
The association between Rulfo’s Comala and hell is one of the earliest, classic readings of
the novel. Durán, Sommer, Molloy, and Franco all make the connection, while Ortega
places the archetypal in general at the center of his reading. Ortega, like Carlos Fuentes,
posits that original sin and paradise lost are crucial themes in the novel, associating
iterations of the fall, falling and descent, with Telemachus’ quest for his father. Comala is,
according to Ortega, unequivocally hell, a hell in which “los muerto están presos,
encadenados al lugar” (20). Binding them to this “hell” are the dead’s sins, which cannot
be properly confessed because Padre Rentería fails to perform his duties as a priest.
Comala as hell is also suggested in its weather. As in Quiroga’s “La insolación” in
Chapter 2, weather and landscape can be Gothified even if they do not correspond with
European tropes. In Pedro Páramo the landscape is the polar opposite of the European
Gothic image: whereas European Gothic boasts darkness and storms, Pedro Páramo
produces a similar effect through heat and aridity. Several depictions of present-day
Comala, Juan Preciado’s Comala, emphasize the town’s hot, dry air. From the moment of
his arrival, Juan Preciado notes the lack of breathable air and the heat of Comala, “el puro
351
“the description of space does not cease to be constant and precise because of its austerity: the
increasing heat, the incessant rain, the arid desolation, give rise to the curious and unrelenting oppression of
that space; that dark rebelliousness of life seen from death is related, in some way, to the victorious terror
of a black space. An infernal space that possesses the time of life from death.”
241
calor sin aire” (19). Remembering his death, Juan Preciado relates that he was awoken by
the heat: “el calor me hizo despertar al filo de la medianoche” (64). Then,
No había aire. Tuve que sorber el mismo aire que caía de mi boca, deteniéndolo con
las manos antes de que se fuera. Lo sentía ir y venir, cada vez menos; hasta que se
hizo tan delgado que se filtró entre mis dedos para siempre. (64)
352
Comala was not always the barren ghost town that Juan Preciado encountered.
353
Dolores
Preciado’s voice, according to Jean Franco, “se asocia con la plenitud materna. La
confusión surge porque el paraíso terrestre ha existido solamente en el recuerdo, en el
pasado y por lo tanto es fantasmal” (127). The loss of a form of paradise reiterates a
foundational narrative of the Gothic: the fall. Both Juan Preciado and Susana San Juan
descend to meet a form of death: Juan Preciado’s own death and the skeleton found by
Susana San Juan).
However, some elements in the novel qualify Dolores Preciado’s picture-perfect
memory of Comala. Even before Pedro Páramo’s decision to let Comala die, the town had
undergone a rapid decline. By the time Comala dies, its landscape has long been dry and
dreary.When describing Pedro Páramo’s hacienda, la Media Luna, Fulgor Sedano reflects
on his appreciation of “a aquella tierra; a esas lomas pelonas tan trabajadas y que todavía
352
There wasn’t any air. I had to gulp down the same air that was trying to leave my mouth, grabbing it with
both hands before it could escape. “I could feel it flowing out and in, each time a bit thinner, until it became
so fine that it seeped through my fingers and disappeared forever.” (39)
353
For Martin Lienhardt, the space that Dolores Preciado’s voice evokes is Tlalocán of Mexica mythology
(850).
242
seguían aguantando el surco” (47).
354
Likewise, the priest of Contla and Father Rentería
comment on the peculiarity of the region’s soil:
Vivimos en una tierra en que todo se da, gracias a la Providencia; pero todo se da
con acidez. Estamos condenados a eso.
-Tiene usted razón, señor cura. Allá en Comala he intentado sembrar uvas. No se
dan. Sólo crecen arrayanes y naranjos; naranjos agrios. Y arrayanes agrios. (77)
355
Moreover, in Juan Preciado’s conversation with Abundio, the characters address the heat
of Comala, with Abundio responding that it will only get worse:
- Cálmese. Ya lo sentirá más fuerte cuando lleguemos a Comala. Aquello está sobre
las brasas de la tierra, en la mera boca del infierno. Con decirle que muchos de los
que allí se mueren, al llegar al infierno regresan por su cobija. (19)
356
Abundio’s remark suggests that Comala is not hell but Purgatory, a place between heaven
and earth to which the characters remain tied by their sins.
The representation of heaven, in turn, does little to clarify the situation of Comala.
Dorotea “La Cuarraca” relates two dreams, one holy (bendito), the other unholy or cursed
(maldito), to Juan Preciado. In the first (bendito), Dorotea has a child; in the second, her
354
“The bare, rolling hills that had been worked so hard, yet kept accepting the plow, giving more and more
of themselves” (27)
355
“We live in a place where Providence allows everything to grow, but it all ends up bitter. That’s our
punishment.
—You’re right, Father. I’ve tried to grow grapes over in Comala. They never thrive. The only thing that
grows are arrayán and orange trees, both of them bitter.” (47)
356
“—. Try to relax. You’ll feel it worse when we get to Comala. That place sits on the burning embers of the
earth, at the very mouth of Hell. They say many of those who die there and go to Hell come back to fetch
their blankets.” (9)
243
child is taken away because of someone’s “mistake”: “En el cielo me dijeron que se habían
equivocado conmigo” (67).
357
Dorotea’s vision of heaven, an imperfect place where saints and angels make
mistakes, is explored further the description of her second dream. In her second dream,
she arrives in heaven looking for her child, but she cannot seem to find him among the
ominous repetition of faces: “Todas las caras eran iguales, hechas con el mismo molde”
(67).
358
When she inquires, “uno de aquellos santos se me acercó y, sin decirme nada,
hundió una de sus manos en mi estómago como si la hubiera hundido en un montón de
cera. Al sacarla me enseñó algo así como una cáscara de nuez: ‘Esto prueba lo que te
demuestra’” (67).
359
The image Dorotea depicts is, evidently, the opposite of heavenly
perfection. It is instead grotesque: the saint penetrates her body (again, “chingada”),
which has itself lost its shape and become “un montón de cera” (67). The image is
compounded with the coldness and cruelty shown by the heavenly figure who tears out
and shows her a shapeless, indeterminate object we can only assume to be her dry uterus.
The symbol of sterility combines with a Faulknerian/Southern Gothic affect, since Dorotea,
in denial, wants to say to the saints that “aquello era sólo mi estómago engarruñado por
las hambres y por el poco comer” (67),
360
portraying a level of starvation that would turn a
stomach into something reminiscent of a “cascara de nuez.” Dolores is finally ushered out
of heaven by another saint: “otro de aquellos santos me empujó por los hombros y me
357
“In Heaven, they told me they had made a mistake.” (40)
358
“All the faces were the same, cast from the same mold.” (40)
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“One of those saints came over and, without saying a word, buried one of his hands in my gut as if he had
buried it in a ball of wax. When he pulled it out, he showed me something that looked a bit like a nutshell.
‘Take this as proof of what you are being shown.” (40)
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“I wanted to explain how that thing was just my stomach all shriveled from hunger and so little use” (40)
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enseñó la puerta de salida” (67). Without offering any solace, the saints send Dolores
down her own descent from Paradise. Juan Preciado and Susana San Juan all go the way of
Lucifer, Telemachus, and Quetzalcoatl. Comala, then, cannot be hell, Mictlán, or
Purgatory, nor heaven or Tlalocán. What the novel narrates is the transition between
states: the Fall itself. Death, supposedly, provides an end and certainty—but Comala’s
body is trapped in an eternal falling.
Godforsaken Land: Pedro Páramo and Catholicism
If Aura’s Gothic Catholicism consists of exaggerating elements of its worship to the
point of fetishization, Pedro Páramo focuses on the desert of abandonment produced by a
lack of faith, or a faith that has been emptied. As Rulfo puts it “su fe está deshabitada. No
tienen un asidero, una cosa de donde aferrarse” (Rulfo in Sommers 21). In Comala, both
past and present, religion is never a source of solace but one of pain, guilt, and suffering.
The character that embodies this is without a doubt Comala’s priest, Father Rentería, the
other “Father” of Comala who abandons his flock after feeling himself abandoned by all
goodness and holiness.
Father Rentería embodies godforsakenness in its most literal sense when realizing
he has failed in his duty as a priest. Contrary to Ambrosio, the monk of Matthew Lewis’
Gothic novel, Father Rentería’s role is one not of action but inaction, endless suffering in
the “valle de lágrimas” (42) or “vale of tears.” He is subjugated by material concerns that
have made him dependent on Pedro Páramo, who, in turn, corrupts his duties as a priest.
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The complex political reality of post-revolutionary rural Mexico, which would give
way to the Cristero War, provides an explanation for Rentería’s dependency. In The Fiction
of Juan Rulfo: Irony, Revolution and Postcolonialism, Amir Thakkar explains that
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the state aimed to redeem the peasant
with a ‘civilizing’ programme of economic modernization while the Church, in the
face of capitalist excesses, continued to offer Christian salvation; but the common
aim was patriarchal dominion over the soul of the peasant and of the countryside.
This ideological conflict, and the battle over the rural domain, would manifest itself
physically in the Cristero War” (102).
The Cristero War, one of the remnants of the revolution, was set off by the Calles Law.
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This law, aimed at debilitating the Church, made clergymen like Father Rentería
dependent on local caciques for their livelihoods. In the novel, the priest is yoked to the
cacique’s tyrannical ends, which corrupts his moral standing and purity.
Rentería knows himself to be corrupt; as he tells his niece, he feels “malo. Un
hombre malo” (78). Nonetheless, his precarious standing makes his ethico-theological
problem irresoluble. As he states, “De los pobres no consigo nada; las oraciones no llenan
el estómago” (41). Unlike Ambrosio, he is not corrupt out of lust but out of need.
The scene of Miguel Páramo’s wake, where the theological meets the material,
reveals the essence of this problem. Fragment 13 starts with Father Rentería proclaiming
heaven for everyone, only to immediately deny it to Miguel Páramo, who raped his niece
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The Calles Law subordinated the Catholic Church’s power to the state by enacting prohibitions on the
amounts of property owned by it as well as restricting the number and power of priests.
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Ana. Moments later, Pedro Páramo bribes him into changing his mind. The scene not only
reveals Father Rentería’s corruption but, as Thakkar indicates, his sinfulness reaches the
rest of the community in the form of Miguel Páramo’s body and the void he leaves
behind:
As well as the fact that [Miguel Páramo’s] corpse represents the sin of the
community, there is also a sense of a void-Comala’s lack of an heir-and, in the next
line, an oblique sense of the struggle of two fathers over this void, a kind of
premonition of the Cristero war. (111)
Rentería realizes the extent of his “sin” when he cannot provide solace for María
Dyada, Eduviges Dyada’s sister, when she begs for her sibling’s redemption. But, since
Eduviges committed suicide, Christian doctrine stipulates that she is damned. María insists
by saying: “Murió con muchos dolores. Y el dolor . . . Usted nos ha dicho algo acerca del
dolor que ya no recuerdo. Ella se fue por ese dolor” (41). Like Consuelo in Aura, María
alludes here to the idea that the greater the suffering the higher the reward in the
Kingdom of God: what Rentería most probably said to María Dyada but that she can no
longer remember. But he can offer very little to María and merely responds that maybe by
“rezando mucho”(‘lots of prayer’) Eduviges’ soul can be saved. On one hand, even if she
was a good Christian for the majority of her life and endured the trials and tribulations
required to access the Kingdom of God, her suicide bars her from it. On the other,
Rentería absolved Miguel Páramo after receiving his father’s bribe. Unlike the cacique,
María Dyada has no money for the “misas gregorianas” (‘gregorian masses’) required to
save her sister’s soul (“no tengo dinero,” [‘I don’t have money’] she laments). The last
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cannot be the first in the Kingdom of God if the poor can never get there. Has all their
earthly toil been in vain?
Powerless, Rentería turns to the priest of Contla for absolution but instead is
barred taking confession from the people of Comala. Comala’s souls, then, are damned
within the logic of Christian eschatology. The priest of Contla chastises Father Rentería’s
weak will and corruption, remarking “Ese hombre de quien no quieres mencionar su
nombre ha despedazado tu Iglesia y tú se lo has consentido. ¿Qué se puede esperar ya de
ti, padre? ¿Qué has hecho de la fuerza de Dios?” (76).
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Not only has Pedro Páramo
damned the lives of the people of Comala but now Rentería’s lack of holiness has damned
their deaths, too.
Having lost all of his power and authority, having become “un hombre malo,”
Father Rentería joins the Cristero rebellion. As Thakkar argues, this should not be read as
an act of “heroic defiance of the cacique” (114) from Rentería and the priesthood as a
class, but a way of expunging his sins, since the priest at Contla could not do so. Thakkar
sums up the point by commenting that
his involvement in a manufactured conflict between Church and state in which the
figure of the priest is a manicheistic pawn of political power leaves the real culprit
on a local level-caciquismo-firmly intact, the inhabitants of Comala unblessed and
the town itself abandoned to ghosts in purgatory. (116)
362
“That man you refuse to mention by name has torn your Church apart, and you’ve allowed him to do it.
What should we expect from you now, Father? What have you accomplished with the authority of God?”
(47)
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What is the source of fear in Pedro Páramo? Not only the fear of the void, of the lack, of
the pain caused by emptiness, and an uninhabited faith, but also the fear that such is the
destiny of Man, that there will always be a Comala in every historical process, forever
dying in the shadows.
Conclusion: Mexican Gothic is Dead—Long Live Mexican Gothic?
By way of conclusion, I would like to reiterate that, in the conception of Mexican
Gothic developed in this chapter is deeply imbricated with the idea of Mexico itself and its
robust standing in the twentieth century. Mexican Gothic lives off Mexico and cannot exist
without it.
In debates surrounding what Mexico is and is not, the presence of Calavera Catrina
can still be felt from beyond the grave. If life is Death’s mask, life and death are more
similar than other eschatological interpretations may suggest. Death is, in one sense, the
excess of life, the dark side of the feminine; in another sense, death is lack and as
abandonment, the dark side of the masculine. In any case, Death signals no end. Within
this configuration of the Gothic, fear is produced by the lack of an ending: none of the
“tiempos mexicanos” ever truly end—they keep coming back.
In juxtaposing the excess of Aura and the barren “comal” of Pedro Páramo, I have
sought to describe two distinct configurations of similar elements, two different
approaches to the Gothic. Fuentes’ Gothic abounds in tropes related to the notion of the
evil feminine that, instead of giving life, engenders a form of death in which new life saps
the witch and mother. Rulfo’s Gothic, on the contrary, centers on the idea of “lack” and
forges images of holes and absences. Though certain elements and actions that could be
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considered Gothic once existed in Comala, they no longer remain. Thus, Comala is
condemned to an endless process of dying, forever filling itself with emptiness and
“adioses.”
These two configurations of the Gothic depend on the idea of Mexico for their
articulation, to indicate what is to be placed on the axis of Other and to build the
relationship with Death explored in this chapter. Once the idea of Mexico collapses,
Mexican Gothic must die with it. Such is the nature of assemblages, which respond to and
describe conditions determining the integration of disparate elements at a specific
moment in time. The twenty-first century has little patience for national essentialisms
that, as even Paz himself admits in Laberinto, were already dated discussions. The
androcentric nature of Mexican Gothic understood in this way, its Othering, antiquarian
eye roving over indigenous artifacts, its dejected gaze at the void all seem unfit for a task
that time has rendered futile.
Nonetheless, as the content it describes, Mexican Gothic is not really dead. The
Mexican Gothic Assemblage died with the twentieth century and with the idea that
Mexico can be defined through its relationship to death. In death, like Posada’s Catrina,
Mexican Gothic still lives in the images it has created, now used as part of the form of
expression of contemporary assemblages.
Silvia Moreno García’s novel entitled Mexican Gothic (2020) is proof. A lodger plot
set in an English household residing in Mexico, the novel makes multiple cosmetic
references to the Gothic images of Aura and Pedro Páramo, demonstrating how the two
texts have become inextricably linked to Mexican Gothic. For example, the lodger plot and
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the prominence of the color green can be read as references to Aura, while the death of
one of the English family’s workers in the silver mines harkens back to Juan Preciado’s
death: “people who saw the body said his face looked awful. You’ve heard about people
dying of fright? Well, they said he died of fright” (128). The superficiality of these allusions
to Aura and Pedro Páramo demonstrate that Mexican Gothic can only operate in a
twenty-first century work as a decorative or referential trait. Mexican Gothic has created
its own images and indexes, readymade for use in other texts.
Does the end of this particular Mexican Gothic Assemblage mean that no Gothic
texts are being written in contemporary Mexico? Not at all. But with the debilitation of
the idea of Mexico in itself, it is difficult to form an idea of what could articulate all of the
notions of the Gothic presented in contemporary literature, besides the indexing I have
described above. Many of the texts penned in the contemporary Gothic in Spanish
America actually point towards an altogether different construction: the Female Gothic.
Since the idea of Mexico as forged in the twentieth century is inherently
androcentric, for the subaltern to speak, she must do away with most of this assemblage.
Amparo Dávila excises almost all of the characteristic images and tropes of Mexican
Gothic from Tiempo Destrozado because she excises most of the idea of Mexico. With it,
she creates totally different vision of the Gothic governed not by tropes but by the
description of affects.
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Chapter 5
Amparo Dávila’s Female Gothic
To be a woman in a patriarchal society is, in the words of Argentine poet Alejandra
Pizarnik, nothing short of a tragedy (“una desgracia”).363 Finding oneself to be the Other,
the one irreparably marked, is a horrifying and frustrating experience that can give way to
equally horrifying fictions. The anxiety produced by self-anagnorisis is, according to
Aristotle, the precondition for the most elevated of literary effects: you are the other, the
criminal Oedipus was looking for, Berenice’s killer and torturer, Lovecraft’s Outsider, not
Frankenstein but the Monster, the impostor, the Other against which a discursive
tradition has been built. Coupled with the reification of the abstract concept of othering in
the daily pangs of a gendered person’s life, such anxiety creates a phenomenological
experience plagued by negative affects. Despite the primordial miasma of Otherness,
Pizarnik also states that what matters (“lo importante”), in the end, is “aquello que
hacemos con nuestras desgracias” (310; “what we do with our tragedies”). It is no wonder
363 “Aunque ser mujer no me impide escribir, creo que vale la pena partir de una lucidez exasperada. De este
modo, afirmo que haber nacido mujer es una desgracia, como lo es ser judío, ser pobre, ser negro, ser
homosexual, ser poeta, ser argentino, etc. Claro es que lo importante es aquello que hacemos con nuestras
desgracias” (“Even if being a woman does not bar me from writing, I think it is worthwhile to start off from a
point of exasperated lucidity. In this way, I affirm that being born a woman is a tragedy, as it is to be Jewish,
to be poor, to be black, to be homosexual, to be a poet, to be an Argentine, etc. Of course, what matters is
what we do with our tragedies.” (310)
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that, despite their own opinions on feminism and women’s liberation, women writers
have, when engaging with their “tragedy,” portrayed their experience through the Gothic
mode. The coupling of such quotidian experience with the Gothic mode is, in the critical
approach I have been developing, the coupling of form of content—a combination of
phenomenological reality, gendered bodies, extreme danger and violence due to the
gendered nature of such bodies, and social imperatives—and form of expression. Given
the intrinsically misogynistic nature of Mexican Gothic, it should come as no surprise that,
when narrating the plight of the Other, Amparo Dávila (1928-2020) chose to do away with
most of it. Unlike Fuentes, who believed that he could write of a victorious Other within
the logic of the sovereign, and unlike Rulfo, who gave voice to the voiceless through the
same paradigm of Mexicanness, Dávila devises a literary cosmos governed by intensities,
by the affects that construct and constrict Otherness for the dominant discourse. To write
completely à rebours of the male-dominated Mexican and Spanish American literature
during the peak of the Boom was a bold move but one that was in character for Dávila,
who, during her lifetime, rejected every label for her work. Though she covered her tracks
well—on that score she is more akin to Rulfo than Fuentes—Dávila was undoubtedly
influenced by English literature and by the incipient Spanish American Gothic traditions
(assemblages) I have discussed in previous chapters, which helped to give form to her
ideas. In this chapter, I will examine the workings of the Female Gothic Assemblage in
Spanish American literature, and how, rooted in the historico-social context of women,
such literature can create an assemblage. Dávila’s work is a paradigmatic piece in such an
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assemblage, a coupling that has given birth to many of today’s most prominent Spanish
American female authors.
Womanhood regarded as Eve’s punishment, even as tragedy, is not only an
obvious theme for the woman-writer but also a profoundly Gothic one. To maintain
patriarchal status quo, women’s struggles, especially those exclusive to women and
feminized bodies364 need to be hidden from the dominant discourse; such realities, in
turn, become the unspeakable: an abject body. The bodies subjected to this discourse,
when writing may use fiction, particularly that of the non-mimetic kind, to uncover these
struggles and destabilize the male gaze, giving women365 and subalternized bodies an
opportunity to speak and even win.
The Female Gothic Tradition
The phenomenological experience of ‘women’ marks a distinction that is
fundamental for early Gothic fiction. The portrayal of the narrator’s plight is one of the
364 ‘Woman’ will be understood as the signifier for the feminized experience or phenomenological reality of
the experience of “women.” This is to stress that biological sex is irrelevant as this position can be occupied
by a multiplicity of gendered bodies and a-gendered bodies (infants).
365 As proven time and time again by the ambiguity of gendered pseudonyms, there is no factual or
necessary difference between the writing of biologically female and male bodies. This, however, does not
annul the existence of a tradition of woman writers dedicated to the phenomenologically female or
feminized experience. Even if it is usually written by women (for obvious reasons), I understand the
“female” literary traditions not as those texts exclusively written by people who identified with this gender
but as those who thematize the struggles specific to it. This is what brings together the authors in this
section; they all partake in the same “tragedy.” The “tragedy” of women’s position in modern society is
trans-historical and trans-geographical but is expressed in a multiplicity of forms that also shape their uses
of the Gothic tradition.
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most salient lines along which the genre is cut: into the Lewisite and the Radcliffean.
These categories roughly describe the two most common types of early Gothic’s approach
to horror and terror, respectively, but also two different approaches to emplotment
(according to Ellis, Clery, and Gilbert & Gubar). The former is the story of a male Satan-like
outcast who, in the pursuit of some form of power, meets an untimely demise (Melmoth,
Ambrosio, Victor Frankenstein366) while the latter relates the struggle of the Gothic
Heroine in her quest to convert her inherited and haunted castle into a suitable home
(Brontë sisters, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, The Recess, Clara Reeve’s novels, etc.)
As Kate Ferguson Ellis posits in her book The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and
the subversion of Domestic Ideology (1989), these two forms deal fundamentally with the
locus of the body in relation to the house: locked in or locked out. EJ Cleary goes so far as
to say that female Gothic stories can be read as “parables of patriarchy” (2), since they
construct plots that expose the analogous relation between the physical imprisonment of
women in the house and the patriarchal structure that imprisons them in society. These
structures, as Robert Mighall similarly suggests in Geographies of Victorian Gothic (1999),
hinge on anachronism: both are historical relics that should have remained in the past. In
such a light, the Female Gothic tradition points towards the unspeakable: the Eden of the
home is not a paradise for the Angel in the House. In fact, it can be the locus of violence.
As Ellis, who espouses this argument, states: “Silence around the issue of violence against
women is still problematic” (7)—an affirmation true to this day. A transhistorical issue, the
366
Frankenstein’s case is contentious since it can also be taken as a metaphor for pregnancy, an experience
exclusive to people with uteruses. Nonetheless, on the literal level, it still follows the intellectual pursuit of a
man outside the home whose purpose is to transcend the limits of nature. Victor Frankenstein’s plight is
much more related to this than to the sphere of the home.
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representation of domestic violence is one of the strongest points of connection between
Victorian (or English) Gothic and Spanish American Gothic.
Within the field of study of the Female Gothic, a perennial point of reference is
Gilbert and Gubar’s classic The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), a touchstone of feminist
thought within the semantic space of the monstrous. Gilbert and Gubar explain that: “a
woman writer must examine, assimilate, and transcend the extreme images of ‘angel’ and
‘monster’ which male authors have generated for her” (17). Such polarity finds expression
in the figures of Virginia Woolf’s “Angel in the House” and Charlotte Brontë’s Bertha
Mason, the “madwoman in the attic.”
Virginia Woolf suggests in “Professions for Women” that the woman writer must,
before putting pen to paper, consider the role that the patriarchy has assigned to her: the
Angel in the House.367 Woolf explains that the woman writer and the Angel in the House
cannot coexist because
you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without
expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex.
And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with
freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must—
to put it bluntly—tell lies if they are to succeed. (238)
Insofar as the figure is an obstacle to the woman as intellectual, “killing the Angel in the
House was part of the occupation of a woman writer” (238).
367 Woolf borrows the term from a poem by Coventry Patmore in which the poet details the traits of this
figure, inspired by his wife.
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On the pragmatic level of patriarchal discourse, the woman-writer is, by writing,
divesting time that she should spend by tending to the house. “Literature cannot be the
business of a woman’s life and it ought not to be,” wrote Robert Southey in his infamous
1837 letter to Charlotte Brontë. “The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less
leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation” (Brontë 10).
Arguments like these also permeate discourse in the southernmost countries of the
Americas, where England and France were perceived as models for “civilization,” as
dictated by the likes of Rodó and Sarmiento.
On a symbolic level, however, the crime is even more grave. “Is the pen a
metaphorical penis?” is the first question posed by Gilbert and Gubar, in the very first
sentence of their book. As they masterfully set forth, the act of writing in itself is
profoundly linked to the masculine: the notion of the author as God “fathering” a text and
of literary history as a struggle between “fathers” and “sons” bear witness to such a link.
Writing is a form of power and self-inscription, an assertion of selfhood that does not
correspond with the expected behavior of the Angel in the House. The woman-writer is, in
the eyes of the patriarchy, a monster herself, forfeiting socially-imposed unselfishness for
self-affirmation. Moreover, women’s capacity for “sublimity” was permanently put into
question and, even when female authors achieved a degree of success, this was
undermined by labelling their works as inferior (Anne Radcliffe is an example). It is thus
unsurprising that women writers of the Gothic tradition embraced what Anne Radcliffe
terms a belief in “creative androgyny” (Cleary 6). Amparo Dávila’s persistent denial of any
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links with feminism or the feminine can be seen as a response to a similar aspiration
towards androgyny and erasing difference.
The House as Home: Domus
Even if women have been under a social imperative that ties them to the field of
the domestic, this does not mean they have had historical authority in the discourse on
homemaking. Gaston Bachelard famously attempts to summarize the Western perception
of the domus in his Poetics of Space (1957), a book that has been a consistent point of
reference for discussions of space in literature. Bachelard notes that “the house shelters
daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer. […] The binding principle in this integration
is the daydream” (28). It is imperative to question the identity of Bachelard’s dreamer and
whether it is compatible with the demands placed upon women. As Gilbert and Gubar
point out “for the female artist the essential process of self-definition is complicated by all
those patriarchal definitions that intervene between herself and herself” (17). The Angel
in the House is not the dreamer but part of the house itself; to escape, the physical body
must step out of the domus, just as Nora Helmer does in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
The idea of the house as the center of the female Gothic is connected to the idea
of “woman” as not only Angel in the House but part of the system of the domus. This
intersection reveals, as Ellis argues, the one secret behind the entirety of the Female
Gothic tradition: the horrifying reality of domestic abuse. For a patriarchal system that
enforces a separation of the private sphere, on the grounds of protecting the Angel in the
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House from the perilous world, the truth that a woman can be attacked in her own home
is devastating; it breaks the signifier apart.
A fundamental step in dismantling the Angel in the House, besides “killing” her, is
severing the connection between the feminized body and the house itself. The Angel in
the house, according to Woolf, is a “phantom,” a shadow that haunts the woman writer,
prohibiting her from speaking on her own. This figure, however, cannot exist without a
house to be in and to take care of. Through a new, deterritorialized portrayal of the 1)
Angel in the House, the 2) madwoman in the attic, and the 3) haunted home that women
writers such as Silvina Ocampo, Elena Garro, and Amparo Dávila inscribe themselves
within the tradition of women’s writing, engaging to varying extents with what I call the
Spanish American Female Gothic Assemblage. To describe the composition of this
assemblage, it is imperative to complete the form of content by adding a brief description
of what it’s like to be a woman in Spanish America.
Being a Woman in Spanish America
It is no wonder that objects are the domain of the feminine, considering that
women and the feminine have been objectified in most patriarchal cultures. In the
Westernized criollo culture of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish America,
the notion of “buenas maneras” (good customs or manners), as dictated by strict
etiquette books like the Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras (1853) by the
Venezuelan Manuel Antonio Carreño (or “Manual de Carreño” for short), was still
paramount. Carreño details how men and women should behave in “polite” society,
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reinforcing the place of women in the domestic sphere. Carreño dictates that women who
venture out in public are forbidden to even touch a member of the opposite sex and
affirms that a sweet, high-pitched voice (“dulzura de la voz”) is the only polite way for a
woman to speak. Carreño’s view of women as objects, or that they should behave as
objects as much as possible, is plainly expressed when he evaluates women’s worth in
terms of the value of motherly love and the virgin Mary:
allí está representado este sentimiento como él es, allí está divinizado; y allí está
consagrado el primero de los títulos que hacen de la mujer un objeto tan digno y le
dan tanto derecho a la consideración del hombre! (13)
Public perception of women’s behavior can be summarized with Carreño’s own words:
dignified objects, words that will find an echo in Amparo Dávila’s “El Huésped.” Karl Hölz
again echoed these words in 1992 by remarking that “El cliché machista que degrada la
mujer a un objeto secundario y a disposición del hombre sigue determinando de manera
general las pautas de la sociedad latinoamericana” (33).
As questions about women’s independence arose and feminism was introduced
into academic conversation in the incipient Spanish American nations at the turn of the
century, attacks on domesticity were perceived as attacks on the modern nation itself.
Leopoldo Lugones’ own El problema feminista (1916) clearly illustrates this point. He
states that “cada crisis feminista ha coincidido en la historia con una crisis de esterilidad,
lo cual asimila desde luego el feminismo a la prostitución” (11).368 Among many other
368
Every feminist crisis has coincided in history with a crisis of sterility, which of course assimilates feminism
to prostitution.
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reprehensibly racist and misogynistic statements—including that a woman’s “normal
activities” (“actividad normal”) are being a good wife and a good mother—Lugones also
makes the chauvinistic association between female oppression and state-building
discourse:
la superioridad de la especie humana, consiste en que ella es voluntaria y
racionalmente capaz de vivir para un ideal desinteresado, en ese sacrificio
permanente del bienestar individual a la felicidad colectiva, que es el fundamento
del progreso social. Así vive la mujer para el hijo y el hombre para la patria; así es
como únicamente pueden ambos vivir, en el concepto humano de esta palabra, sin
estar sometidos a la fatalidad del instinto. (36)369
Lugones’ words reveal an additional dimension to the tragic experience of women in
Spanish America. That woman should live for the son and man of the nation not only
portrays the idea of housekeeping as a putative form of state-building but also as one
ordained by God.370
In recent years, the issue of violence against women and femicide in Mexico has
reached global discourse, becoming a widely known fact. Nonetheless, as I have suggested
above, the issue of violence against women runs deep in Spanish America and Mexico is
369
“the superiority of the human species consists in the fact that it is voluntarily and rationally capable of
living for a disinterested ideal, in that permanent sacrifice of individual well-being to collective happiness,
which is the foundation of social progress. This is how woman lives for her child and man for his country; this
is the only way in which both can live, in the human concept of this word, without being subjected to the
fatality of instinct.”
370 Lugones’ quote is itself a rephrasing of Ephesians 5:21-33: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the
Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its
Savior” (King James Authorized Version).
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no exception. The “Mexico” whose discourse gave birth to Mexican Gothic during the
twentieth century is steeped in misogyny, the same misogyny that casts women as the
one who “intriga y sueña” and men as the one who “caza y lucha.” Women-led
organizations and feminist circles of resistance in Mexico have a long history that dates
back to the nineteenth century (Cano 345), many years before women finally got the vote
in Mexico, in 1953. As this date reveals, the Revolution, despite galvanizing women’s
desire for suffrage and equality371 and creating a “cambio ideológico favorable para la
emancipación femenina” (Turner 603), did not lead to immediate change.
Notwithstanding its successes, then, the Revolution not only failed the rural and
indigenous peoples of Mexico, left to wither away in their own Comalas, but it also failed
women, who still faced a long road to constitutionally guaranteed rights and equality
(Cano 354).
During the twentieth century, authors such as Elena Poniatowska, Elena Garro,
Rosario Castellanos, and María Luisa Puga made clear their discontent with the Mexican
patriarchy and its social structures (Author 36). As Karl Hölz summarizes, in Mexico and in
all of Spanish America
El ser mujer significa ajustarse sin reservas a estos tres papeles (ama de casa,
madre y esposa), aceptando así una reducción específica del sexo y sus
posibilidades. Según la filosofía del machismo, la disposición natural de la mujer
está determinada por la debilidad, la necesidad de protección, la dulzura y la
371
Cano points out that before the Revolution feminist circles and authors “daban un lugar secundario a la
igualdad de derechos ciudadanos. La participación política femenina se veía si acaso como una realidad
deseable, pero posible sólo en el largo plazo” (345; “Gave a secondary place to equality regarding civil rights.
Female political involvement was seen as a desirable reality but one possible only in the long term.”)
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caridad. La mujer puede compensar esta negada autodeterminación cuando más
con su encanto, belleza o sensibilidad moral o bien estética.372
Despite this harrowing situation, Amparo Dávila was not as vocal as her peers. In fact, she
openly and derisively rejected the label of feminist. Nonetheless, her position does not
imply that her work does not share in a world view similar to her peers. I will explore
Dávila’s refusal of labels as part of her own attempt at self-determination, an attempt that
also led her to refuse the fantástico label. Tiempo Destrozado is nonetheless an
unapologetically genre anthology. What is more, Dávila relies on the reader’s familiarity
with common Gothic tropes, which she invokes as a way to understand the potential
nightmare of domesticity.
La memoria de las cosas: Amparo Dávila’s Tiempo Destrozado (1959)
“These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of
being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral
inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too
obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or
beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought it probable, or possible, that the
Minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best
preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it."
“The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe
During an interview with Erica Froumann Smith in 1989, Amparo Dávila remarked that her
first reading of Poe, encouraged by Julio Cortázar, made her physically sick:
372
To be a woman means to conform unreservedly to these three roles, thus accepting a specific reduction
of sex and its possibilities. According to the philosophy of machismo, the natural disposition of women is
determined by weakness, the need for protection, gentleness, and charity. Women can compensate for
their negated self-determination with their charm, beauty or moral or aesthetic sensibility.
263
Y fue tal la impresión que me causó la lectura de Poe que me vino una colitis. Y
estuve enfermísima porque era una colitis de tipo nervioso. Porque me impresionó
tanto que yo después supe que inconscientemente me defendía. Había ese
presentimiento de que me iba a causar pues un estremecimiento tan grande,
interior. (Entrevista 62)373
This reaction and the context surrounding it are extremely significant for the analysis of
Dávila’s first book, Tiempo Destrozado, through the prism of the (female/domestic)
Gothic. Cortázar, who had translated Edgar Allan Poe’s complete works into Spanish, was
aghast (“no me perdonaba el que no lo hubiera leído”374) when Dávila confessed that she
hadn’t read Poe. “No se explicaba cómo una gente como yo podía haber prescindido de
Poe,”375 she says in the same interview (Entrevista 62). If one takes her word at face value,
Dávila’s relatively late discovery of Poe—after Tiempo Destrozado (1959) and Música
Concreta (1964)—and her intense, physical reaction to his work confirm my theory that
Quiroga, Lugones, García Calderón, and Dávila all resonate with a similar sensibility.
It is thus unsurprising that, even if Dávila had not read Poe’s work, she names his
most accomplished disciple in Spanish America—Horacio Quiroga—as one of her most
profound influences. Prompted by the interviewer, Dávila states that the elements
common to all her stories are “el amor, la locura y la muerte” (60),376 an evident reference
to Quiroga’s most important short story collection (Cuentos de amor de locura y de
373 “The impact that reading Poe had on me was such that I fell sick with colitis. I was extremely sick because
it was a colitis of the nervous kind. I was so impressed that, later, I realized I was unconsciously defending
myself. I had this feeling that it was going to cause turmoil of an intense, innermost kind.
374 “He (Cortázar) would not forgive me for not having read him (Poe)”
375 “He (Cortázar) could not understand how someone like myself could have done without him (Poe)”
376
“Love, death and madness”
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muerte), analyzed in Chapter 2. Dávila’s allusion to Quiroga is no coincidence; she remarks
in the same interview that she had a great affinity with authors from the Southern Cone.
Her work, however, is substantially different from that of Silvina Ocampo, her Argentine
counterpart, as well as local female writers such as Elena Garro or Rosario Castellanos.
Like Garro, Dávila focuses on the “feminized” or “domestic” experience and deals
predominantly with female characters circumscribed by Female Gothic tropes; on the
other hand, like Castellanos, she renounces traditional clearer-cut fantástico in favor of a
non-mimetic style that resembles Cortázar’s, and has been called (rather unsuccessfully)
“neo-fantástico” or “post-fantástico.”377
In the same interview, Dávila says that being born in Mexico did not affect her
writing “at all” (“en lo absoluto”; Entrevista 59)—but her “Apuntes para un ensayo
autobiográfico,” where she describes at length her childhood in Pinos and how it shaped
her writing, tells a different story, one that has proven difficult for critics to make sense of.
The local context in her stories and her characters’ nonchalant attitude toward the
supernatural, akin to Juan Rulfo’s non-mimetic writing, also strengthen the suspicion that
Dávila is not entirely candid in her many interviews. These ostensible contradictions
between her writing and her testimony are particularly significant in my analysis of “El
Huésped,” a story set in a place akin to her native town. Dávila also denied being a
feminist or even liking the non-mimetic genre, a remark that still baffles some critics, as
377 All these terms are contentious in their own way. Cortázar belongs to the tradition of Southern Cone
fantástico but we are using this terminology here in order to differentiate between his approach and that of
the classic fantástico in Quiroga or Lugones.
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her stories appear to be immersed in these traditions. I will examine these (apparent)
issues closer in the course of describing her life and literary persona.
Amparo Dávila (1928-2020)
Born in the isolated mining town of Pinos in 1928, Amparo Dávila is now
considered one of the most, if not the most, important genre authors born in Mexico. She
has not been recognized as such, however, until very recently, much more recently than
Ocampo or even Garro. Though Dávila was the youngest of these three authors (she
passed away in 2020), her recognition in the Spanish-speaking world has been unduly
delayed. In her native Mexico, she achieved relative success at a young age when she was
approached by the Fondo de Cultura Económica to publish her short stories, an event that
motivated her to pursue prose rather than poetry, with which she had started her literary
venture. Her shift from poetry to prose was also influenced by her encounter with Alfonso
Reyes, who urged her to move to Mexico City and supported her throughout her literary
career (Entrevista 58). In a 1965 conference cycle held in Buenos Aires, by the name of “Los
narradores ante el pblico,”378 remarked of her hometown
Pinos, el pueblo donde nací, es el pueblo de las mujeres enlutadas de Agustín
Yáñez, es también Luvina donde sólo se oye el viento de la mañana a la noche,
desde que uno nace hasta que muere. Situado en la cima de una montaña y
rodeado siempre de nubes, desde lejos parece algo fantasmal, con sus altas torres,
378 This text would later be recouped and published under the name of “Apuntes para un ensayo
utobiográfico” in 2005 in Pinos. Gutiérrez Piña argues that this is the “ur-piece” of Dávila’s autobiographical
writings and that she would later model most of her interview responses after this very text.
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las calles en pronunciado declive y largos y estrechos callejones. Pinos es un viejo y
frío pueblo minero de Zacatecas con un pasado de oro y plata y un presente de
ruina y desolación. (1)379
In her description of her place of birth, Dávila already hints at a Gothic sensibility,
transposing elements from Anglo-American Gothic—the tall towers, the ghostly clouds, as
well as the idea of “ruin” with a past of “gold and silver”—to construct the phantasmic
“origin” of her narrations. In addition to the ghostly nature of Pinos as portrayed by
Dávila, she also repeatedly relates other components of her childhood to flesh out the
characterization of her authorial persona. According to Gutiérrez Piña in “Autobiografía y
autofiguración de Amparo Dávila: Un descenso al infierno,” Dávila portrays Pinos and her
childhood in a way that prefigures her writing, positing that “de sus recuerdos de infancia,
Amparo Dávila recoge la imagen de sus primeros años marcados por un aislamiento
obligado por la enfermedad, debido a la cual gastó horas en la biblioteca del padre,
ojeando libros de grandes ilustraciones, entre los que, dice, aprendió las primeras letras,
pero también sus miedos más acendrados” (15).380 Her birthplace and early childhood as
an isolated, bookish girl appear to inform most of her work; as such, the many she did are
a useful (albeit not entirely trustworthy) source of information. Nonetheless, the author
who was to be considered one of the most important faces of Mexican fantástico and a
379
“Pinos, the town I was born in, is the town of Agustín Yañez’s mourning women. It is also Luvina where
from dusk until dawn wind is the only sound, from cradle to grave. Located atop a mountain and
permanently surrounded by clouds, it looks ghostly from afar, with its high towers, declining streets and
long, narrow, passageways. Pinos is an old, cold, mining town in Zacatecas with a past of gold and silver and
a present of ruin and desolation.”
380 “From her childhood memories, Dávila recoups the image of her early years marked by isolation forced
upon her by sickness, due to which she spent hours in her father’s library, flipping the pages of illustrated
books from amongst which she learnt writing but also her most incensed fears.”
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crucial purveyor of writing that thematizes the phenomenological experience of gender,
womanhood, and feminized bodies, would, in the very same interviews, minimize the
importance of her home country, deny that her texts were feminist, and renounce genre
literature altogether. In a 2007 interview with Jorge Luis Herrera, Dávila says as much,
stating “la verdad no me atrae mucho la literatura fantástica... ni como lectora ni como
escritora” (16).381 Regarding the potential feminist readings of her texts, Dávila was also
quick to reject such labels. When asked directly if she considered her texts as feminist, she
responded, “No, porque también me interesa la problemática del hombre” (Lorenzo y
Salazar 119-120).382 She goes on to cite stories from Tiempo destrozado, including
“Fragmento de un diario,” “Moises y Gaspar,” and “Final de una lucha,” as proof of her
interest in the male psyche—but then adds, “No creo ser una escritora feminista,
definitivamente no, porque me han gustado mucho los hombres y los he amado
mucho...Pero nunca soportaría ver a una mujer humillada, sojuzgada, maltratada”
(Lorenzo y Salazar 119-120).383 Dávila appears to understand feminism as a man-hating
movement and cannot reconcile this with her respect for male authority figures in her life,
such as Cortázar or Alfonso Reyes. Nonetheless, she points toward her interest in gender
relations and impositions and how they can turn into horrendous situations—thus
questioning the gender imperative.
381 “Honestly, I’m not attracted to fantastic literature…neither as a reader nor as a writer”. This is directly
contradictory to her statements in her interview with Erica Frogman Smith about Quiroga and the
rioplatense fantástico tradition. It is also possible that Dávila is referring to fantasy and conceives fantástico
rioplatense as a distinct form of writing that is separated from “genre” literature.
382
“No because I’m also interested in the problems of men.”
383
“I don’t think I am a feminist writer, definitely not, because I like men and I have loved them a lot…But I
could never stand to see a woman humiliated, subjugated, or abused.”
268
Many statements from Dávila's interviews are not fully consistent with each other,
but the contradictions only increase when collated with her literary work and the
traditions from which it draws. Esther Argüelles Rosada argues successfully in “La tensión
autoral en Amparo Dávila: un estudio de la postura feminista de la escritora” that Dávila
rejects labels for her work primarily because she wishes to be read as an individual author
rather than a “Mexican,” “feminist,” or “fantástico” writer, not because she rejects such
categories themselves. Argüelles Rosada states that “esta aparente incoherencia es el
resultado de una tensión generada por estos mismos códigos de género, que la llevan a
configurar una postura literaria que se esfuerce en definir el feminismo como una
etiqueta limitada pero, sobre todo, limitante” (120).384 Argüelles Rosada’s argument here
helps explain Dávila’s refusal of qualifiers such as “Mexican,” “fantástico,” and “feminist”
as part of an effort to fashion her own authorial figure, free of labels she regarded as
constraints.
Tiempo Destrozado
In interviews, Dávila reveals that her struggles as a young woman were caused in
part by the chauvinistic beliefs of her father. In an interview with Javier Báez Zacarías, she
states that “Mi padre era un hombre muy inteligente, muy culto, pero todavía muy señor
mexicano que piensa que la mujer no sirve para nada más que para ser señora de su casa,
384
“This apparent incoherence stems from these very gender codes that lead her to create a literary position
which defines feminism as a limited but, most importantly, limiting, label.”
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madre de los hijos cuando se case, tocar el piano y punto” (5).385 As a result, she would
later dedicate Tiempo Destrozado to him: “Mi primer libro de cuentos, Tiempo
Destrozado, se lo dedico a mi padre, porque cuando le dije que me venía a México para
buscar por mí misma el camino hacia las letras, no me apoyó” (Rosas Lopátegui 67-68).386
Despite such lack of parental support, her works received almost universally
positive reviews, according to Dávila herself, Gutiérrez Piña, and, most importantly, Diana
Catalina Escutia Barrios, in her thesis about the reception of Tiempo Destrozado. Many
critics noted that her stories were not quite realistic but at the same time not fully
committed to traditional fantástico. Her first critics, according to Escutia Barrios and
Gutiérrez Piña, worked under the dominant paradigm of realism and the incipient
fantástico set forth by the historical and literary context in which they wrote.
Consequently, they interpreted Dávila as a writer of fantástico, though not without
reservations. Gutiérrez Piña writes that “la articulación en sus mundos narrativos de una
noción de realidad en la que los miedos, las obsesiones y las visiones interiores de los
personajes condicionan los modos de percepción representados, llamó de inmediato la
atención de sus lectores, a contraluz de la tendencia imperante, llamémosle ‘realista’, de
la literatura mexicana precedente” (20).387 Luis Leal, Luis Mario Schneider, and María
Elvira Bermúdez, among the first to make critical appraisals of Tiempo Destrozado, all
385 “My father was a very intelligent man, very well-read, but still very much a Mexican man who thinks that
women can’t do anything but look after the house, bear children (after marriage), play the piano and that’s
it. “
386 “I dedicated my first short story anthology, Tiempo Destrozado, to my father because when I told him I
was coming to Mexico to make a way for myself as a writer, he didn’t support me.”
387 “The articulation of a notion of reality in which fears, obsessions and character’s worldviews condition
modes of perception, drew her reader’s attention immediately in contrast to Mexican literature’s prevailing
tendency towards realism.”
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reviewed the collection positively. Escutia Barrios examines each of their distinct opinions,
among which Bermdez’s stands out as the most contentious and complex. She is the first
critic to label Dávila’s stories as fantástico and, at the same time, argue that they are not.
She posits that Dávila deploys fantástico not in a Todorovian sense but in a Jungian one,
an analysis that accords with Davila’s own statements about her writing but that also has
served to complicate the question of genre in her works.388
Jorge Olmo was also among the first critics to praise Tiempo Destrozado and the
precision of Dávila’s language (Escutia Barrios 89). Olmo identifies one of the most salient
features of Dávila’s storytelling: just a few brushstrokes are enough to evoke the scenes in
which she places her characters. Her first short story collection contains twelve tales
constructed to meditate upon the effect objects, tropes, and non-human persons have on
characters, rather than their tangible actions in the material world. Commenting on her
writing process, Dávila states in her interview with Froumann-Smith that her inspirations
are usually “una cosa sensorial, un color, un sonido, un paisaje, algo me trae a la memoria
una vivencia mía, lejana, casi olvidada, y eso es la motivación para un cuento” (60).
Dávila’s remarks here support the argument that Dávila presents a phenomenological
approach to the Female Gothic, a tradition in which this collection is profoundly
inscribed.389 The twelve stories are, in one way or another, linked to the Gothic
Assemblage through the Female Gothic—understood as the Gothic from the point of view
388 Dávila comments in several of her interviews that she “takes” things from genre literature (even when
she says she dislikes it or is not interested in it) to portray the interior reality of her characters which trumps
the “physical” reality within the diegesis. This type of psychologization is what Bermúdez is pointing
towards.
389 This has been pointed out by Erica Froumann Smith and reiterated by Eric Pennington but left
unexplored. In the story “La Señorita Julia,” the Brontë sisters are explicitly mentioned.
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of being locked in rather than locked out. All the stories’ crucial moments take place
indoors, specifically in domestic settings. “Fragmento de un diario” is the only story set in
a liminal space, but it is still indoors (the staircase). The staircase correlates with the pain
scale used by the narrator in his quest to reach the ultimate level of pain. In this quest, he
climbs up and down the scale as he would the staircase, leading him to finally push the
object of his affection (a neighbor) to her death from the top of the stairs. The direct
relation between human characters and inanimate “character-objects,” as well as non-
human persons (plants and animals), is not the exception but the rule in Tiempo
Destrozado. I will, therefore, read Tiempo Destrozado as a unit that harkens back to the
Gothic Abstract Machine, through both Mexican literature and the Female Gothic
Assemblage, and lay out close readings of the most salient stories in the collection: “El
Huésped,” “Alta Cocina,” and “Tiempo Destrozado.”
Amor, locura y muerte: Deleuze, Spinoza, and Affect
The stories in Tiempo Destrozado operate by enunciating (not representing) the
change in emotional states in their characters, changes provoked by objects, animals, and
paranormal/psychological phenomena. These are all written over the design of the Gothic
Abstract Machine, employing its tropes, be it to subvert them or to rewrite them from a
different angle, usually focusing on the affects produced by these situations rather than
the situation itself. David Loría Araujo has noted just such an emphasis: “la narrativa de
Dávila otorga al cuerpo un papel protagónico: le concede valor a la materialidad de los
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sentidos, y así el encuentro con la alteridad detona el “erizamiento” (445).390 However,
Loría Araujo does not articulate a theory of affects but of emotions, dismissing Spinoza,
Deleuze, and Sedgewick as inevitably leading to “una mirada eminentemente dualista”
(448).391 Loría Araujo’s claim here does not seem to me a sufficient reason to reject
Deleuze's perspective, considering that Deleuze’s assemblage model serves precisely to
eschew dualisms. The two poles proposed by Deleuze (diminution of power392 and
increase in power) are set on a sliding scale and motivated by different degrees of power
to be affected, producing thus a matrix that exceeds the binaries Loría Araujo claims are
inevitable.
In his lectures on Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze lays the
groundwork for what will become his theory on the concept of affect. Deleuze’s reading of
Spinoza’s Ethics (1677) emphasizes the difference between affectio and affectus, often
translated as the same word; Deleuze proposes “affection” for the first and “affect” for
the second. His distinction is crucial, as affectus or affect is not an idea, a representational
thought, but “every mode of thought insofar as it is non-representational” (1). Affect is
then described as an immediate “continuous variation in the power of acting” (2) amidst
the poles of joy and sadness (3), which correspond to an increase and diminishment of
power (pouvoir), respectively. As affects, which are the transition between two states of
affectio conceived as affection-ideas, occur imperceptibly, Deleuze and Spinoza term
390 “Dávila’s narrative grants the body a starring role: it gives value to the materiality of the senses and, thus,
the encounter with alterity detonates a ‘bristling’.”
391 “An eminently dualistic perspective”
392
Deleuze makes a distinction between power as pouvoir (power to affect others, as in political power) and
power as in vital energy (puissance) that can be diminished by another’s pouvoir. I will make this distinction
where it is relevant to our analysis.
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humans “spiritual automata.” These transitions occur constantly and on infinite and
infinitesimal levels, depending on each individual’s capability or power (pouvoir) to
become affected or for a certain affect to be realized fully in them (8). This may result in a
positive or negative combination, understood in the terms of joy and sadness in relation
to conatus. Within the realm of affect, this is the most important power (puissance) and is
not defined by species or by ontological quality. As Deleuze states: “If you consider beasts,
Spinoza will be firm in telling us that what counts among animals is not at all the genera or
species; genera and species are confused notions, abstract ideas. What counts is the
question, of what is a body capable?” (7). These concerns are fundamental in Tiempo
Destrozado, and are crucial to my analysis of "El Huésped.” Before examining Dávila’s
collection as a whole, I would like to turn briefly to the story “Un boleto para cualquier
parte” to illustrate Deleuze’s theory of affects.
“Un boleto para cualquier parte” stands as a fascinating testament to what
Amparo Dávila reveals in her interviews. In the story, a man arrives at his house and is
informed of the unannounced visit of another man. The visitor is described in only a
cursory manner, merely as “un hombre flaco y alto, como lo había descrito la criada,
vestido de oscuro, serio, sombrío” (25)393 but his effect on the protagonist is meticulously
detailed throughout the story. The narrator does not know who the man is, what he
wanted, or if he was to deliver any news to him at all—he is sure, nonetheless, that the
man “quería hacerle daño, destrozarlo con una noticia terrible” but he “había sospechado
393
“a tall, thin man, as described by the maid, dressed in dark clothes, solemn, somber”; unless otherwise
noted, all translation of passages from Tiempo destrozado are my own.
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al instante y se había escapado” (27).394 On the basis of this deduction and nothing more,
he is determined to escape the visitor no matter what the cost; he asks the teller at the
train station for a ticket to anywhere (“un boleto para cualquier parte”), so that the
mysterious man will never be able to reach him with his dreaded message: “El hombre no
lo alcanzaría nunca. Aunque fuera por todo el mundo, de ciudad en ciudad, de pueblo en
pueblo, buscándolo. Jamás le daría su mensaje” (27).395
This narrative technique, which can be interpreted as a direct consequence of
Dávila's poetics, is discernible in the entire collection and plays a crucial part in this
iteration of the Gothic. What the protagonist fears is not any actual knowledge about the
man or his message but that the encounter with him will produce a negative affect. The
protagonist thus takes extreme measures to avoid the encounter and prevent its potential
affects from being produced; but at the same time he diminishes his power of acting on
account of a secret that he is unwilling to confront. The uninvited man becomes a “sign” in
Deleuzian terms: more than an image, a thought without an image that can only be
sensed. The sign, like Proust’s madeleines, riots the soul, “as if the encountered sign were
the bearer of a problem” (Smith 32). Even if the protagonist of the story is trying to avoid
the man as ontological reality, he has in fact already met him as a sign, “beyond the norms
of common sense and recognition” (Smith 34).
Turning now to a more comprehensive analysis of Tiempo Destrozado, I will divide
the stories into three categories that organize the tales according to the source of the
394 “He wanted to hurt him, destroy him with some terrible news, but he had suspected instantly and ran
away.”
395 “The man would never reach him. Even if he searched across the whole world, city by city, town by town.
He would never give him his message.”
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principal “passions” (not affects) invoked in each story. The question with which my
analysis begins, recalling Dávila’s own words, is: What is the source of “amor, locura y
muerte” in the story? The question produces three thematic groups in the collection: 1)
domesticity and routine; 2) the living non-human; and 3) the destruction of the self. I will
begin with the first of these three groups, arguably the most important to my study.
Domesticity and routine: “El huésped,” “La celda,” “ La quinta de las celosías,” “La señorita
Julia,” “El espejo”
Working within her own hermeneutic and productive horizon, Dávila marshals the
trappings of the Gothic—familiar to her in the work of Horacio Quiroga and the Brontë
sisters—to draw out the anomalous, even horrifying nature of daily life. The anomalous is
even more prominente in the tradition of the Female Gothic, a machine that Dávila
employs to subvert its conventions. “La quinta de las celosías,” “La celda,” and “El
huésped” are the three stories in which the classic features of the Gothic are most
evident, with “El Huésped” and “La celda” closer to the Radcliffean line and “La quinta de
las celosías” closer to the Lewisite line. “La Señorita Julia” emphasizes the psychological
dimension of the Gothic narrative, explored by Poe and expounded by Quiroga,396 which
also occurs in “El Espejo.” “El Espejo,” however, relies heavily on the psychological
dimension to tell a cursed object story, a cornerstone of the genre. But final twist is closer
to the sensibility of Cortázar than the binary ambiguity of fantástico.
396 Stories such as “El conductor del rápido” demonstrate Quiroga’s masterful handling of this style.
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“La quinta de las celosías” and “La celda” represent two poles of the vampire story,
even though vampires are never explicitly mentioned. In the first, the protagonist
desperately desires to visit his partner Jana’s house, the titular “Quinta de las Celosías”
(“House of lattices”). Jana is a German nurse who works for an eccentric doctor (Doctor
Hoffman397) and is fascinated by embalming techniques and ancient Egyptian
mummification. These facts, odd but plausible, are dressed in the garb of a Gothic story:
not only is Jana the student of an extraordinarily talented but eccentric doctor, but also a
foreigner and an orphan who is remarkably mysterious and cold and always smells of
“formol y balsoformo” (“formaldehyde and balsophorm”; 32). When the protagonist,
Gabriel Valle, is finally invited to the infamous quinta, he is surrounded by a myriad of
suspicious decorations, which are hallmarks of the Female Gothic and its fixation on the
unheimlich domestic space: portraits of each family member hanging on the wall, an
ancient piano, and an oppressive atmosphere that makes Gabriel want to escape from
“aquel mundo de objetos” (“that world of objects”; 35) In isolation, these objects and
decorations would not produce the effect they do when compounded and compacted in
the short span of the story.
Gabriel is finally drugged by Jana, who takes him into an even stranger place
beyond the gardens of the house where “dos féretros de hierro” (“two iron caskets”) are
located. There, he is attacked by something very large and heavy (“algo muy pesado,
grande”), possibly a character named Walter, whom Jana has previously mentioned.
Whoever the culprit is, Gabriel is beaten to the sound of terrible laughter: “Sobre Gabriel
397 A possible allusion to German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, notwithstanding the slight orthographic variation.
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caía una lluvia de golpes mezclados con terribles carcajadas” (38); Jana’s words are the
last of the story: “—Sheeesss, no tanto ruido, que puedes despertarlos” (38).398. As we will
see in “El Huésped,” the identity of may be a monster is made irrelevant by the myriad of
affects (changes in states of power through the power of being affected) experienced by
Gabriel in Jana’s space. The lattices of the title are invoked again in the final scene for
dramatic chiaroscuro, pointing towards the profound change in affectio produced within
Gabriel: “estaba oscuro y sólo una débil claridad de luna se filtraba a través de las
celosías” (38). Like “Walter,” the identity of the casket-dwellers is only suggested, never
revealed, which is in any case rendered irrelevant to Gabriel by the heavy smell of
formaldehyde, ether, and corpses, the very sight of the iron caskets, and the “lluvia de
golpes” that rains down on him.
“La quinta de las celosías” presents a female vampire-like being and a male victim
who walks into her trap. “La Celda,” in contrast, depicts a female victim terrorized by a
vampire-like, unnamed entity every time she is left alone in her room. In order to suggest
that Maria Camino, the protagonist, is being trapped by a vampiric figure who makes her
bedroom a hellish reminiscence of a cell in Dracula’s domain, the setting of the haunted
Gothic castle is evoked in direct terms. Her room is described as a stone dungeon, which
she experiences as would a victim of vampirism. This space smoothly transitions into a
sanatorium cell in which she is finally confined. As with other stories in the collection,
there is no indication as to the ontological value of the intradiegetic reality; only affects
398 “A shower of blows and terrible cackling fell on Gabriel”; “Shhh…don’t make so much noise. You could
wake them up”
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and affection are presented. José-Miguel Sardiñas-Fernández argues for a “vampiric”
reading, convincingly linking the story to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and showing how it relies
on its imagery for complete hermeneutic success. Sardiñas-Fernández, moreover, sees the
story’s truncated ending as an indicator of a certain “reading code” (“código de lectura”)
evocative of fantástico. Sardiñas-Fernández’s reading, which spots certain trappings and
affects of a Gothic narrative but not the Gothic as such is, in my interpretive framework,
the Gothic Abstract Machine.
“La señorita Julia” combines the motif of spatial confinement with that of social
constriction and occupational fatigue leading to psychological decay. Miss Julia’s
deterioration is signaled by the appearance of rats that are imperceptible to everyone but
her. The noise they make inside her house disturbs her so much that it starts taking a toll
on her physical appearance, which is compounded by gossip at her workplace about her
condition and her failing romantic relationship. As a consequence, Julia feels like “una casa
deshabitada” (“an uninhabited house”; 62) after her almost complete collapse. She finally
finds the source of the mice, or thinks she does, and feels that now she can show
everyone just how right she was. But what she thinks are killer rats turn out to be nothing
but “su hermosa estola de martas cebellinas” (“her beautiful sable fur collar”; 64).
“El Espejo” is the only cursed object story in the collection. As such, it follows a
long tradition that is not exclusive to the Gothic short story but often overlaps with it.
Among the countless cursed object stories in the tradition, two in particular serve as
points of comparison because of their cultural proximity and their focus on mirrors as
cursed objects: “Los Ojos de la Reina” (“The Queen’s Eyes”), a largely fantástico piece, and
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“El Espejo Negro” (“The Black Mirror”), a clear example of fantaciencia, both by the
Argentine Leopoldo Lugones, studied in Chapter 2. Despite their differences, the two
stories are linked by the danger of the mirror and what can be seen in it. The mirror in
“Los Ojos de la Reina” reflects Egyptian princess Sha-It’s fatal gaze, which curses
whomever it falls upon to death, while “El Espejo Negro” is an artificial “black mirror”
created by Doctor Paulin,399 which can show on its surface whatever the onlooker is
thinking about. Whether through ancient magic or modern (pseudo)science, both mirrors’
powers rely on what is seen on their surfaces. They both cease being magical because
they become dull, unable to reflect anything at all.
Conventionally, then, mirrors can form part of a witch's cabinet, occult practices
associated with the fragmentation of the I, or serve as points of entry into our world of
potentially fatal beings. In Dávila’s story, however, the situation is quite different: nothing
is seen in the mirror and this is what produces the change in affect. The mirror in Dávila’s
story was not found in an Egyptian tomb nor created by the zeal of a mad scientist but
instead is an unassuming closet mirror in a hospital room. The mirror’s power lies not on
its surface but what in what it makes its victim feel; a major source of horror in the story is
the transition from heimlich to unheimlich. In the story, the narrator’s mother has been
hospitalized after breaking her leg, but inexplicably her condition soon worsens. She then
reveals that her decline is due to the mirror in her room and the sensation it causes. The
narrator corroborates her experience and finds that “el espejo estaba totalmente
399 Doctor Paulin, Lugones’ Victor Frankenstein, is the only named doctor-character in Lugones’ stories and is
also the protagonist of “El Psychon,” from Las Fuerzas Extrañas. In “El Espejo Negro,” a story that was not
anthologized by Lugones but is similar in spirit to his first collection, Paulin creates a black mirror, a magical
implement of mythological lore, by sanding down a piece of ebony.
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deshabitado y oscuro, ensombrecido de pronto. Sentí que algo se rebullía en mi interior,
tal vez el estómago, y se contraía; después experimenté un gran vacío dentro de mí igual
que el espejo” (76).400 The unheimlich nature of the mirror does not end in its reflection of
a void but continues and gives the narrator “la seguridad de que de aquel vacío, de
aquella nada, iba a surgir algo, no se qué, pero algo que debía ser inaudito y terrible, algo
cuya vista ni yo ni nadie podría soportar” (76).401 The narrator’s fear of the mirror is akin
to the fear of the narrator in “Un boleto a cualquier parte.” In this case, the prelude to a
potential affect creates not a symbol but an affection-idea that has such power to affect
both the narrator and his mother that it does not require the presence of the affect-
producing encounter. In addition, the story reveals that the mirror’s power is not only a
matter of sight, since when the son devises a plan to cover it, both he and his mother feel
“una oscura música dentro de nosotros mismos, una música dolorosa, como gemidos o
gritos, tal vez sonidos inarticulados, salidos de aquel mundo que habíamos clausurado por
nuestra voluntad y temor” (77).402 This demonstrates that the “horror” of the story is
deeply rooted in affect, not ontology. This is also the case in stories such as “Final de una
lucha,” “Tiempo destrozado,” and “El Huésped.”
Once the effect of the mirror proves to be beyond their control, both mother and
son decide to capitulate: “No volvimos a cubrir más el espejo. Habíamos sido elegidos y,
400 “The mirror was completely uninhabited and dark, suddenly shadowed. I felt something stir inside me,
perhaps my stomach, and contract; afterwards, I experienced a great emptiness identical to the mirror.”
401 “the certainty that from the void, from that nothingness something would surge, I don’t know what, but
something that must have been outrageous and terrible, something whose visit neither me nor anyone
could possibly stand.”
402 “A dark music from inside ourselves, painful music, like moans or screams, maybe inarticulate sounds,
coming from that world we had shut off of our own free will and fear.”
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como tales, aceptamos sin rebeldía ni violencia, pero sí con la desesperanza de lo
irremediable” (78).403 This attitude of resignation recalls that of the characters of
Cortázar’s Bestiario or Felisberto Hernández’s Nadie Encendía las Lámparas, all of which
display the blasé approach that characterizes modern and contemporary fantástico and
produces so much confusion among academics foreign to Hispanic American criticism.404
“El Huésped”
The last story grouped in this section is probably one of Dávila’s most well-known,
and is paradigmatic of her style and poetics. It is also a very clear example of her
engagement with the Female Gothic tradition with a focus on the affect relations between
female protagonists, objects, and circumstances. Gerardo Arguelles Fernández and Luz del
Carmen Ledesma Juárez state in their essay, "Vértigo frente a la libertad y angustia vital;
dos hipótesis sobre el fenómeno autoscópico en ‘El huésped’ de Amparo Dávila,” that “la
narrativa de la autora es incendiaria, en virtud de que en ella se gesta la violencia, la
soledad, la desesperación y el caos en los que los personajes son sumergidos con
exabrupto al tener que enfrentarse a un estado de cosas inesperado, una situación que los
403 “We did not cover the mirror anymore. We had been chosen and, as such, we acquiesced without
rebelliousness or violence but with the despair of the irremediable.”
404 The blasé attitude towards the supernatural is often confused with realismo mágico, the label thrown
around to describe an outstandingly eclectric array of authors and stories such as Kafka, Bulgákov, Cortázar,
Jorge Luis Borges, and even Mary Poppins. The debate around realismo mágico and real maravilloso is
complex and has a critical element these texts do not exhibit, one which is clear in the first chapter of Cien
años de soledad: the inhabitants of Macondo find what Westerners would consider supernatural as natural
but also find things that are not impossible to be magical. This is what happens when José Arcadio exclaims,
when faced with a giant block of ice in Macondo’s blistering heat “Es el diamante más grande del mundo.”
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orilla al desmoronamiento” (22).405 Thus, the unprecedented state of things brought
about by a “being” of undetermined nature prevails over ontological certitude and reality.
The story is a turn of the screw on the Gothic plot of the lodger, previously
discussed in Carlos Fuentes’ Aura. Here the protagonist is the housewife, trapped in a
rural “casona” and in an unloving relationship. Her husband brings a mysterious lodger
into their household, a being not clearly defined either as human or animal. This “person,”
yellow-eyed and ominous, sleeps all day and stalks the family at night, disturbing the
unhappy but calm homeostasis of the home. The new and tense routine established by
the housewife, Guadalupe (the housekeeper), and the lodger is broken when he violently
attacks Martín, Guadalupe’s son. After the incident, Guadalupe finds the protagonist with
a bar in her hand (“una tranca”) next to her hurt child but chooses to believe the
protagonist and together they devise a plan to defeat the lodger. The next day, the two
women lock the lodger in his room and keep him there without food or water. After two
weeks, the lodger dies and the story ends.
Argüelles Fernández and Ledesma Juárez argue in their essay that there are two
dominant interpretations of Dávila’s “El Huésped”: one considers the tale strictly
fantástico, arguing that the protagonist lapses between reality and paranoia (Felipe
Fuentes’ reading) while the other focuses on the potential psychological/psychical effect
of domestic abuse on the protagonist (Ávila et al.). Psychologizing interpretations and
405“the author’s narrative is incendiary in that it portrays the violence, loneliness desperation and chaos in
which characters are submerged when confronting unforeseen circumstances, a situation that leads them
towards their own decay”
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attempts at diagnosing the character are not uncommon, even if the information provided
by Dávila about her character is infinitesimal.
The insistence of critics in labeling the story as fantástico, some going so far as to
say that it follows Todorov’s strict structure, is remarkable. This trend can be traced back
to the initial critical reception of Dávila’s work mentioned earlier, though it is also
undeniable that the story seems to lead up to a fantastical ending. The intertexts evoked
by “El Huésped” contribute more to this sense than the text itself, an effect that is
intentional: the story relies on the reader’s knowledge of a genre that is presented in a
stripped-down fashion. “El Huésped” builds upon the Female Gothic tradition and
combines diverse elements from two famous variants within it: that of the female
Victorian detective and the explicated ghost story, taking full advantage of the
expectations these types of plots generate in the reader. I will address one example of
each as a point of comparison: “The Lodger” (1911) by Marie Belloc Lowndes and The Turn
of The Screw (1898), Henry James’ famous ghost novella. The two stories bear remarkable
similarities in plot and development. “The Lodger” is instructive in its focus on the
precarious position of the Angel in the House when faced with an “evil” lodger. It is,
therefore, an example of a tale immersed in the Gothic tradition that does not require a
fantastic plot, much like Dávila’s. The Turn of the Screw, on the other hand, is diametrically
opposed, though its famous ending, similar to a scene in the “El Huésped,” cannot be
ignored when considering the generic nature of “El Huésped.”
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Despite sharing the same title and plot,406 to my knowledge, no critic has pointed
out the relation between “El Huésped” and Marie Belloc Lowndes’ “The Lodger.” It is not
impossible that the Zacatecan writer read Belloc Lowndes’ paradigmatic story, considering
that she had access to her father’s extensive library, which included copious volumes of
English literature (58), as she states in the interview with Froumann-Smith.407 The plot of
Dávila’s story bears striking resemblances to the lodger plot in Belloc Lowndes’ story, and
the central focus of both stories is a woman in a traditional family structure, the Angel in
the House confronted by evil in her own space in a non-fantastical plot. “The Lodger” is a
detective story that borrows elements of the Penny Dreadfuls authored by Belloc
Lowndes’s Victorian contemporaries. Her story inaugurates a vast tradition of home
invasion narratives,408 begotten in this case by the fascination of Victorian England with
the case of Jack the Ripper.409 Elyssa Warkentin states as much in her prologue to the
novel-form version of the text. Belloc Lowndes introduces the reader to the Buntings,
Robert and Ellen, a bourgeois London couple in economic hardship who are forced to take
a lodger in one of their spare rooms. The strange behavior of the lodger, Mr. Sleuth,
arouses Mrs. Bunting’s suspicion. Her suspicions intensify when she hears news of a serial
killer active in London, known only as “The Avenger,” whose killings seem to match Mr.
406 Belloc Lowndes’ short story (later developed into a novel) is often translated into Spanish as “El
huésped.”
407 “It didn’t cross his mind that I would dedicate myself to literature because I lacked the academic
preparation for it.”
408 To the contemporary reader, the most familiar version of such a plot is Alfred Hitchcock’s version of
Belloc Lowndes’ text. In what is regarded as the best production of his black and white era, Hitchcock’s The
Lodger: A story of the London Fog (1927), is a filmic adaptation at odds with the original text. Interestingly
enough, Hitchcock chose to end the story with the discovery that Jonathan Dew is not “The Avenger,” thus
leaving him free to marry Daisy.
409 The fact that Jack the Ripper’s victims were not only women but exclusively prostitutes adds another
interesting dimension to Belloc Lowndes’ use of the lodger plot.
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Sleuth’s arrivals and departures from the house. Unable to act on her suspicions due to
social and economic constraints, Mrs. Bunting can do little more than speculate. In the
dramatic denouement of the story and novel, set in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, Mr.
Sleuth suspects that the snooping police officers stationed there have been called upon by
Mrs. Bunting (though this turns out not to be true). Surrounded, Mr. Sleuth vents his ire
towards the protagonist and jumps to his death in the Thames, revealing himself as “The
Avenger.”
The story is a conscious effort to represent the dangers to which women are
subjected within the domestic sphere and how poorly equipped they are to face such
threats, not as women but as individuals and members of society. As Warkentin indicates,
“The Lodger turns a tale of the London streets into a domestic narrative, and Mrs. Bunting
uses the tools of domestic labor (cleaning implements, for example) for investigative
purposes” (xxi). Indeed, Mrs. Bunting does her best to play the role of the detective within
the space she knows, even if, as Warkentin states, “Although the novel participates in
many of the cultural tropes of domestic feminism, it ultimately demonstrates that women
require influence beyond the domestic sphere if they are to be full and equal citizens, with
rights and responsibilities to society at large” (xxii). Mrs. Bunting is not limited by her
gender in her effort to discover the true nature of her Lodger but is limited by social
constraints in her attempt to act upon her discovery and protect her family and the entire
city from “The Avenger’s” rampage. The dramatic tension in the story, which could very
well have ended in tragedy, derives from the contrast between Mrs. Bunting's suspicions
and her inability to act. The tension of such a situation—a woman left to her own
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resources with a dangerous person, human or non-human—is precisely what Dávila seeks
to generate and subvert. Similarly, Dávilas' protagonist uses the domestic to her
advantage, though she does not use household implements to protect the home, but the
house itself.
Though Dávila may never have read or even heard of Belloc Lowndes, she almost
certainly was well acquainted with the lodger plot, considering the influence on her work
of Quiroga, D. H. Lawrence, and the Brontës. In any case, the comparison between the
two stories remains fruitful, as it reveals the similarities between the phenomenological
experience of a female character in the position of Angel in the House, while at the same
time the divergences between the stories demonstrate precisely why Dávila’s is so
effective, working as it does from an existing precedent for perilous inaction.
James’ The Turn of the Screw—a text that elucidates the grounds for the fantastic
interpretation of “El Huésped”—is perhaps the intertext most pertinent to an
interpretation of Dávila’s piece. The two stories are remarkably similar in their
emplotment and ghost story conventions, which Dávila cannibalizes in service of a
different denouement.
James’ novella is famous, among other things, for its carefully crafted ambiguity.
He constructs a narrator-protagonist who is at two removes from the reader: the story is a
text written by the protagonist but hidden in a drawer to be read later by Mr. Douglas, the
actual enunciator of the tale, in a ghost story soirée. The actual narration is penned by a
governess who relates what she perceived as the haunting of Bly Manor by the spirits of
two disgruntled former employees. Nonetheless, James peppers the narration with ample
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evidence of the obsessive and frayed mental state of the governess, portraying her as
unreliable before the multiple layers of readers who are now privy to her story and could
give it a psychoanalytical interpretation. The final scene is the culmination of this
ambiguity: Did the ghost of the groundskeeper, Quint, kill the young Miles, or did the
overzealous governess suffocate him? The ending is purposefully ambiguous and, much
like the central scene in “El Huésped,” includes an attempt against the evil force by the
governess. The final lines of the novella read: “I caught him, yes, I held him—it may be
imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was
that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had
stopped” (217). It is worth noting that the story abruptly ends here; the framing device is
not recouped to tie up loose ends. The ambiguity thus reaches a climax and a sudden end.
What is left ambiguous, the secret of the novella, works as the motor of the story and its
logical conclusion. When the governess catches Miles and holds him, is she suffocating
him, or did she, in her confrontation with the ghost (“What does he matter now, my own?
—what will he ever matter? I have you,” I launched at the beast, “but he has lost you
forever!”), provoke the “beast” who then murders the young boy? Dávila’s story
incorporates the ambiguity of the governess’ actions; though certainly evocative of James’
narration, the construction of her story is quite different.
The passage cited as evidence of a fantastic turn in Dávila’s work is the one in
which the protagonist and Guadalupe’s fears are confirmed by the lodger’s attack on
Guadalupe’s child. Prior to the attack, however, the narrator attempts to hit the Lodger
with a gas lamp but misses, almost setting the house on fire, were it not for Guadalupe:
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“De no haber sido por Guadalupe que acudió a mis gritos, habría ardido toda la casa”
(21).410 After this encounter the situation rapidly worsens:
Vuelvo a sentirme enferma cuando recuerdo… Guadalupe había salido a la compra
y dejó al pequeño Martín dormido en un cajón donde lo acostaba durante el día.
Fui a verlo varias veces, dormía tranquilo. Era cerca del mediodía. Estaba peinando
a mis niños cuando oí el llanto del pequeño mezclado con extraños gritos. Cuando
llegué al cuarto lo encontré golpeando cruelmente al niño. Aún no sabría explicar
cómo le quité al pequeño y cómo me lancé contra él con una tranca que encontré
a la mano, y lo ataqué con toda la furia contenida por tanto tiempo. No sé si llegué
a causarle mucho daño, pues caí sin sentido. Cuando Guadalupe volvió del
mandado, me encontró desmayada y a su pequeño lleno de golpes y de araños
que sangraban. El dolor y el coraje que sintió fueron terribles. Afortunadamente el
niño no murió y se recuperó pronto. (21)411
In the contentious, supposedly fantastical passage in which the protagonist finds the
lodger beating Martín, some critics have speculated that it is the protagonist who may
have perpetrated the crime and that this is the point of Todorovian ambiguity (vacilación)
within the story. A close reading of the passage renders this explanation highly
410 “Had it not been for Guadalupe, the whole house would have burned.” The symbolic relevance of this
event will be commented on in the following sections.
411 “I feel sick once again when I remember…Guadalupe had gone out grocery shopping and left Martín
asleep inside a crate where she would put him to bed during the day. I went to check on him several times,
he slept calmly. It was near noon. I was combing my children when I heard the boy’s cries mixed with
strange screams. When I got to the room, I found him cruelly beating the child. I still do not know how I took
the boy from him and how I lunged at him with a metal bar I found and attacked him with all the rage I had
festered for so long. I don’t know if I hurt him much since I passed out. When Guadalupe returned, she
found me unconscious and her boy covered in bruises and bleeding scratches. The pain and anger she felt
were terrible. Luckily, the boy survived and quickly recovered.”
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implausible. The two plot lines that would facilitate the fantástico effect have to exclude
each other (an or statement). The Turn of the Screw emplotment, of which we are
reminded by other elements in the story—the remote house, the candle-lit darkness, a
female protagonist with a female side character facing a home invasion enshrouded in
mystery—would suggest that the two solutions are either the “apparitionist” (the Lodger
is real) or psychological (the Lodger is not real and is a product of the protagonist’s
psychological issues; an unreliable narrator.) The passage can be interpreted in this way
but the evidence in the story points to a different solution. The psychological explanation
of the passage requires casting the main character as an unreliable, unstable narrator,
which is what happens in James’ Turn of the Screw. The novella’s thorough ambiguity
allows two interpretations to hang in the balance, leaving critical debate open. That is not
at all the case in Dávila’s story. Even if the unnamed narrator’s husband attempts to
portray her in a light similar to James’ protagonist, (specifically, by calling her hysteric),
there is nothing in the text, other than his own words, to corroborate such an impression.
In James, even the acquiescent Mrs. Grouse is, by the end of the novella, shocked by the
governess’ mental state, a sentiment echoed by Flora, the female child. In “El Huésped,”
there is very little to suggest such a degree of mental instability. The initial phrase of the
passage and the ellipses with which the phrase ends (“Vuelvo a sentirme enferma cuando
recuerdo…”), in addition to the fact that the protagonist faints after her attack on the
Lodger (“No sé si llegué a causarle mucho daño pues caí sin sentido”), evoke a lack of
information about the event, considering the absence of conscious discourse in the two
instances. Critics such as Felipe Oliver Fuentes take these details as evidence that “el
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lector puede sentirse tentado a pensar que el huésped quizá no existe salvo en la mente
trastornada de la narradora” (59).412 This interpretation, however, must give credence to
the absent husband’s words, which is antithetical to the story’s postulations.
Why is the story consistently interpreted against the grain of textual evidence? “El
Huésped” contains aesthetic elements that point in various directions. The most evident
of these is the Gothic Abstract Machine, particularly as actioned by the Female Gothic
Assemblage, which has been inextricably linked to fantástico emplotment. The ghost
town, far removed from any potential line of flight for the protagonist, the candle-lit
darkness of the large rural house (casona), and the trope of the evil lodger itself are all
borrowed from the Gothic armoire. “El Huésped” is an example of the comparatively rare
use of Gothic tropes without fantastic emplotment. The characters are stock types of the
genre and are meant to function in that way: the protagonist resembles a Gothic Heroine
and the Lodger evokes the otherworldly apparitions of The Turn of the Screw and the
Castle of Otranto—but even if the Lodger teeters on the edge of the paranormal, there
are no genuinely supernatural elements in the story; even the Lodger’s strangest habits do
not require a supernatural explanation. The Lodger, a combination of horror-producing
affection ideas—yellow eyes, carnivorous diet, stalker behavior, vampire-like sleeping
schedule, and explicitly violent tendencies towards small children—is less human than
feline or monster; in the words of Henry James’ governess: “The horror itself.”
412 “The reader can feel tempted to think that the lodger might not exist but in the warped mind of the
narrator.”
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The Affected Home
The question of the ontological reality of the Lodger is rendered moot when their
phenomenological value is, in either case, identical: Does it matter if the Lodger is a
creature, an animal, or a human when their behavior is perceived as equally monstrous?
The nature of this “creature” is not the main question the story poses, though it has
occupied many critics who have written about it. In Belloc Lowndes’s story, determining
the identity of the lodger is crucial: is Mr. Sleuth the serial killer that Mrs. Bunting suspects
him to be, or is she suspecting an innocent person? The answer to this question is the
difference between survival and death. For Dávila’s protagonist and Guadalupe, the
question has been settled: even if they have no idea why—what Deleuze and Spinoza
term “notions”—the two women have already determined that the presence of the
Lodger in their home realizes their power (pouvoir) to be affected in a completely negative
way, tending towards the absolute appraisal of their power (puissance), pushing them
towards the worst of encounters: death. Like James’ governess, however, both women are
most concerned with the well-being of their children: once they become affected, there is
no turning back and an ethical choice must be made to avoid further negative encounters.
Thus, the protagonist and Guadalupe use the cruelty they face (imprisonment) as a
means of self-defense. The house and its potential as a prison are weaponized by the
Angel in the House to destroy the unmasked evil within it. Once the decision has been
made by the protagonist and Guadalupe to destroy the invader, they begin to act as a
single Body with a unique intention and direction for their power (puissance). Their power
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(pouvoir) to affect the Lodger in a negative way (or, rather, the Lodger’s ability to be
affected negatively by them) is, nonetheless, limited by a lack of knowledge and a lack of
power (puissance). The women, then, must fall back upon their only remaining weapon:
the Home as an idea (Bachelard’s “shelter for the dreamer”), with all its parts, moving and
inert, which becomes a single Body set to swallow the Lodger in its bowels.
The protagonist is characterized as an inextricable part of the House/Home from
the very beginning of the story; she states that she “represents” a piece of furniture to her
husband: “Representaba para mi marido algo así como un mueble, que se acostumbra
uno a ver en determinado sitio, pero que no causa la menor impresión” (11).413 Many
have misconstrued this passage as meaning that she considers herself a piece of furniture,
but this is yet another ontological misunderstanding in a phenomenological tale. The
protagonist is like a piece of furniture in the eyes of her husband—but that is not how she
actually feels about herself and, as a result, she can act. Her action is, not unlike Belloc
Lowndes’ detective, limited by the physical (trapped and alone in an isolated town) and
social constraints imposed upon her and Guadalupe, a reality she conveys when
Guadalupe demands that they act:
—Tendremos que hacer algo y pronto —me contestó.
—¿Pero qué podemos hacer las dos solas?
—Solas, es verdad, pero con un odio…
Sus ojos tenían un brillo extraño. Sentí miedo y alegría. (17)414
413
“To my husband I represented something like a piece of furniture one gets used to seeing in a certain
place and leaves no impression at all.”
414 —We must do something soon—she replied
—But what can we do, the two of us alone?
293
The only line of flight left for the housewife is the House itself, something of which, in the
eyes of her husband, she already forms part (“Representaba un mueble…”).
Technically speaking, the murder weapon in “El Huésped” is the house itself, which
plays one of the most important roles in the story. The narrator remarks that she is living
in a “pueblo pequeño, incomunicado y distante de la ciudad. Un pueblo casi muerto o a
punto de desaparecer” (19).415 The isolated location of the house (reminiscent of Dávila’s
own Pinos) is a form of entrapment for the protagonist, since she has nowhere to go when
faced with abuse. She has contemplated escaping, but has rejected the idea: “Pensé
entonces en huir de aquella casa, de mi marido, de él… Pero no tenía dinero y los medios
de comunicación eran difíciles. Sin amigos ni parientes a quienes recurrir, me sentía tan
sola como un huérfano” (22).416 The rural location of the house contributes to the Gothic
ambiance of the story; though there are few details that help the reader date the setting,
domestic electricity is available, but not in the town: “No había luz eléctrica en aquel
pueblo y no hubiera soportado quedarme a oscuras, sabiendo que en cualquier
momento…” (21).417 This setting allows for the candle-lit ambiance of the Female Gothic
and, more importantly, enables the scene in which the house is almost set on fire by the
protagonist. This is particularly meaningful when considering the method employed to
eliminate the Lodger. The house becomes the most significant symbol in the story,
—Alone, yes. But with such anger…
Her eyes had a strange gleam. I felt fear but also joy.
415 “…small town, isolated and distant from the city. A town that was almost dead or just about to
disappear.”
416 “I thought about fleeing that house, my husband, flee from him…But I didn’t have money and the means
of communication weren’t accessible. Without friends or family to go to, I felt as alone as an orphan.”
417 “There was no electric light in that town, and I could not have borne being left in the dark, knowing that
at any moment…”
294
representing a return to the elemental component of Female Gothic: confinement. Both
fire and confinement serve to steep the narrative in the Female Gothic Assemblage, since
both features harken back to Jane Eyre and the confinement of Bertha Mason.
The method employed by the “hysteric” women to defeat the Lodger is highly
symbolic: the “Madwoman” confines her enemy before the enemy is condemned to a
living entombment. After barricading the Lodger’s door, the protagonist hugs Guadalupe
(“Guadalupe y yo nos abrazamos llorando”; 23),418 cementing their bond. The Lodger’s
slow death is likened in the text to a torturous event:
Los días que siguieron fueron espantosos. Vivió muchos días sin aire, sin luz, sin
alimento… Al principio golpeaba la puerta, tirándose contra ella, gritaba
desesperado, arañaba… Ni Guadalupe ni yo podíamos comer ni dormir, ¡eran
terribles los gritos…! A veces pensábamos que mi marido regresaría antes de que
hubiera muerto. ¡Si lo encontrara así…! Su resistencia fue mucha, creo que vivió
cerca de dos semanas… (23)419
The protagonist and Guadalupe are not portrayed as vengeful or delighting in their
actions; instead, they remain frightened until he is finally gone.
The room in which the lodger is entombed is the opposite of the protagonist's
favorite space, the garden, whose upkeep the she recognizes as her work.
418 “Guadalupe and I embraced, crying”
419 “The days that followed were terrifying. He lived many days without air, without light, without food…At
first he would bang on the door, lunging at it, he screamed desperately, scratching…Neither Guadalupe nor I
could sleep or eat, the screams were so terrible…! Sometimes we thought that my husband might return
before he died. If he found him like this…! His resistance was remarkable, I think he lived for around two
weeks…”
295
La casa era muy grande, con un jardín en el centro y los cuartos distribuidos a su
alrededor. Entre las piezas y el jardín había corredores que protegían las
habitaciones del rigor de las lluvias y del viento que eran frecuentes. Tener
arreglada una casa tan grande y cuidado el jardín, mi diaria ocupación de la
mañana, era tarea dura. Pero yo amaba mi jardín. Los corredores estaban
cubiertos por enredaderas que floreaban casi todo el año. (20)420
The garden is the only space of solace for the protagonist, where she can achieve a form
of self-expression through gardening and create a safe space for the children of the house,
away from the frightening lodger. However, even in the garden, the narrator cannot help
but “mirar, de vez en cuando, hacia el cuarto de la esquina” (20), a chamber described as
“…grande pero húmeda y oscura” (19),421 in stark contrast to the garden; so described, the
room is suggestive of a cave or mausoleum, which is what it will in the end become.
With few but effective brushstrokes, “El Huésped” paints the picture of a
dysfunctional but not uncommon family dynamic in which the husband is permanently
absent and condescends to his wife when prompted. To him, his wife is little more than a
piece of furniture and her opinion barely relevant even within the sphere of the private, to
which she has been relegated:“ Mi marido no tenía tiempo para escucharme ni le
importaba lo que sucediera en la casa. Sólo hablábamos lo indispensable. Entre nosotros,
420“The house was spacious, with a garden in the middle and rooms distributed around it. Between the room
and the garden there were corridors that protected the rooms from the frequent wind and the rain’s rigor.
Fixing up such a large house and tending to the garden, my daily occupation in the morning, was hard work.
But I loved my garden. The corridors were covered in vines that blossomed almost all year round.”
421 “…large but humid and dark”
296
desde hacía tiempo el afecto y las palabras se habían agotado”422 (21). When informed of
the situation with his guest, which he repeatedly labels as “inofensivo” (“harmless”), he
dismisses his wife’s warnings as hysterics: “Cada día estás más histérica, es realmente
doloroso y deprimente contemplarte así… te he explicado mil veces que es un ser
inofensivo” (22). 423 In the words of Eric Pennington, “Nothing reveals and condemns the
husband more than using the sexist and chauvinistic word ‘hysterical.’ The term itself is
fiction. It is a sign without a signified, a symbol without an emblem. There is no such
disease or condition as hysteria; it is only a convenient fabrication by the medical doctors
of the late nineteenth century.” The use of the word and its loaded history colors the
reader’s interpretation of the husband to an almost unequivocal degree. Even if the
situation is ambiguous and permeated with carefully placed semantic voids, one of the
few certainties of the story is that the husband’s behavior is at the very least to be
condemned, quite possibly abusive.
The ambiguity with which the character refers to the lodger only as “él,” the
husband’s bizarre attachment to the intruder, as well as their alternating schedule,
suggest a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation, in which the lodger is the husband’s alter-ego
who enacts physical violence and the husband psychological violence. This common
interpretation of the story relies on a psychological explanation that divides a single male
into two: the passive, neglectful husband, and the aggressive, violent lodger. As with all
interpretations that seek to establish the identity of the lodger, this one does not cancel
422 “My husband had no time to listen to me nor did he care about what happened in the house. We only
talked when it was essential. Long ago, affection and words had been exhausted between us.”
423 “Each day you become more hysterical, it is painful and depressing to see you like this…I have told you a
thousand times that he is harmless.”
297
out other readings of the text but is complimentary to them, continuing as it does
discussion of the lodger—the focus in my reading of the story is the protagonist’s reaction
to changing affects, her actions, and their ultimate consequences.
Eric Pennington points out that “it is noteworthy that the maid is the only
character of the plot who is given a name.” Even if he is not exactly correct (Guadalupe’s
son, Martín, is also named), Pennington is right to stress the significance of Guadalupe.
While the Lodger represents absolute evil, Guadalupe represents an absolute, motherly
good. The importance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Mexican imagination cannot be
overstated. Jacques Lafaye, in his book Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of
Mexican National Consciousness, portrays Guadalupe as “both queen and mother of the
Mexicans; in the first case they are ‘slaves ’of Mary, in the second her ‘sons’” (287). It
should come as no surprise, then, that Guadalupe would protect her sons and daughters
within the household. She does not champion passivity or turning the other cheek but
requests immediate and efficient action to protect her children, even if this action is
murder. Following this line of thought, Pennington adds:
The Virgin of Guadalupe is a traditional symbol of refuge and succor, but she is
also, as thematized in “El huésped,” a figure of rebellion against male dominance.
As Wolf explains with considerable clarity, her image is connected with “successful
rebellion against power figures”. The symbolism was born during the wars for
Mexican independence, and we espy this same defiant Guadalupe fictionally
transfigured into the pivotal role of aiding and empowering victims of violence to
win their freedom in “El huésped.”
298
In addition to characterizing Our Lady of Guadalupe as a symbol of rebellion and citing the
flag hoisted by Miguel Hidalgo in the Grito de Dolores, a symbolic act considered to
represent the start of Mexican independence, Lafaye also stresses her role as a mediator
between cultures in Mexico: “Although Guadalupe was the mediator between God and
men, between God and the Mexicans, her mediation did not stop there. […] A Virgin with
an olive complexion who first appeared to an Indian [sic], Guadalupe made creoles,
mestizos, and indians a single people united by the same charismatic faith” (288). The hug
shared by the protagonist and Guadalupe once the lodger is trapped in his room
represents this successful mediation. “As mentioned,” Pennington states, “the wife’s
liberty is only achieved with the support of her maid.” The denouement of Dávila’s story
resembles, in this sense, that of Elena Garro’s “La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas.” The
question of the maid’s freedom, however, is treated differently in the two stories. In “El
Huésped,” Guadalupe’s freedom is not mentioned, something that contributes to the
otherworldly quality of the character, disaffected from social limitations.
Guadalupe also provides the protagonist of “El Huésped” with something that Mrs.
Bunting never had: a trusting interlocutor who is also, contrary to Mrs. Grose, proactive.
Guadalupe’s trust in the protagonist is the actual turn of the screw in the story; if she had
sided with the absent husband, the fantástico plot would be able to unfurl. Guadalupe is,
moreover, the principal purveyor of sustenance for the home, as she is the only member
of the entrapped family (the protagonist, Guadalupe, and their children) that ever goes
out of the home, precisely to provide food (“Guadalupe había salido a la compra”; 21).
299
Marina Warner in Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary propounds
that in the Christian tradition,
Milk symbolized the full humanity of Jesus at one level, but it also belonged in an
ancient and complex symbolic language. For milk was a crucial metaphor of the gift
of life. Without it, a child had little or no chance of survival before the days of baby
foods, and its almost miraculous appearance seemed as providential as the
conception and birth of the child itself. The milk of the Mother of God became
even more highly charged with the symbolism of life, for the life of life’s source
depended on it. (197)
With this aspect of the Virgin Mary’s multifaceted cultural symbolism in mind, the action
taken by her and the narrator-protagonist acquires an additional layer of symbolism. As
Guadalupe is the provider, she can also take away the very sustenance that the motherly
figure is supposed to provide within the space of the Home.
The grueling and powerful ending of the story is a question not of ethics but
morality. As Deleuze states, “Spinoza doesn’t make up a morality for a very simple reason:
he never asks what we must do, he always asks what we are capable of, what’s in our
power, ethics is a problem of power, never a problem of duty” (9). Were the actions of the
protagonist and Guadalupe moral? What we know to be true is that they have acted
within their power to protect their family—but the ambiguity surrounding the story and
the uncomfortable but unsolvable question of the identity of the lodger leaves the reader
ruminating on the morality of their actions.
300
Consider the Lobster: “Muerte en el Bosque,” “Moisés y Gaspar,” “Alta Cocina”
Writing from the point of view of the Other, that which has been feminized, Dávila
also delves into the world of the non-human, the most extreme form of Other. This
exploration results in one of the most successful stories of the collection, “Alta Cocina,”
which questions the relationship between the human and non-human through food. As
Liliana Colanzi states in her article, “Festín del horror: la comida siniestra en 'Alta cocina’,
de Amparo Dávila,” “tanto las historias de vampiros como las de zombies abordan el
terror primitivo del ser humano de convertirse en alimento de otros seres voraces, así
como la transgresión de tabúes sobre la ingesta de sangre y sobre el canibalismo” (22).424
Cooking is usually circumscribed by the domestic, a space well-known to Dávila.
The kitchen relates to the consumption of food, introducing things into the body, and, as
such, is close to the grotesque practice of eating (as per Bakhtin) and of killing. The space
of the kitchen serves the purpose of closing the curtain on these acts to perform the
transformation of non-human persons into food. Dávila further complicates the
significance of the space by referring to a specific type of cooking: the adjective “alta”
takes the reader out of the solely domestic space and into the realm of professional
cooking, done for others to judge and enjoy. The story exposes the process that makes
cooking elevated, “alta,” as some of the most exquisite and expensive dishes are also the
cruelest (foie gras and ortolan are but two examples). Dávila thus puts a normalized
process on the chopping block by using the language of Gothic horror to describe it and,
424
“Both vampire and zombie stories deal with the primitive terror of humans becoming food for other
voracious beings, as well as the transgression of taboos on blood drinking and cannibalism.”
301
as Colanzi remarks, “pone en entredicho el binarismo civilización/barbarie” (23).425
Cooking, in this case an expression of high culture and civilization, is produced by a
process depicted as cruel and barbaric. The jouissance produced by this process is key: as
if it were the very suffering of the creatures cooked which gives value to the final dish
consumed in a “long and savored” (“largo y paladeado”) banquet.
Crucial to Dávila’s story is her decision to withhold the identity of the animal being
cooked, creating a source of ambiguity that is particularly effective. Colanzi considers that
the main referent for the story is the preparation of the silent escargot, as the cleaning
ritual performed on them resembles the one described in the story. Nonetheless, as the
referent is ambiguous in Dávila’s story, more than one type of animal may have been the
inspiration for the portrayal of the cooking process. In her article, Colanzi mentions the
lobster only briefly; but the descriptions in Dávila’s text resemble the process of cooking
lobster and an oddly specific misconception about it.
In his famous essay, “Consider the Lobster,” David Foster Wallace invites the
reader to question the consumption of lobsters. Prompted by the Maine Lobster Festival,
Wallace comments on how this cultural apparatus distances the consumer from the facts
surrounding the meal’s preparation. “A detail so obvious that most recipes don't even
bother to mention it,” states Wallace, “is that each lobster is supposed to be alive when
you put it in the kettle. This is part of lobster's modern appeal: it's the freshest food there
is” (258).
425
“calls into question the binary of civilization/barbarism”
302
The fact that, not unlike escargot, the lobster is still alive when dropped into
boiling water is made even more harrowing when considering its behavior once inside.
Wallace describes it in the following terms:
Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling
and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature's claws scraping the
sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very
much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the
obvious exception of screaming). A blunter way to say this is that the lobster acts
as if it's in terrible pain, causing some cooks to leave the kitchen altogether and to
take one of those little lightweight plastic oven timers with them into another
room and wait until the whole process is over. (264)
This is one of the crucial elements in the machinery of Dávila’s story. As Wallace states
above, “The lobster […] behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged
into boiling water.” This description is reminiscent of the one employed in “Alta Cocina,”
as the creatures “no morían pronto. Su agonía se prolongaba interminablemente” (49).426
In the story, the animals’ screams play an important role in portraying the cruel agony
they are going through. Wallace adds a footnote to the passage quoted above that
addresses one of the most common myths about cooking lobster, regarding the high-
pitched noise they make when entering the boiling water. He states that:
There’s a relevant populist myth about the high-pitched whistling sound that
sometimes issues from a pot of boiling lobster. The sound is vented steam from
426 "They did not die quickly. Their agony prolonged itself endlessly.”
303
the layer of seawater between the lobster’s flesh and its carapace (this is why
shedders whistle more than hard-shells), but the pop version has it that the sound
is the lobster’s rabbit like death scream. Lobsters communicate via pheromones in
their urine and don’t have anything close to the vocal equipment for screaming,
but the myth’s very persistent—which might, once again, point to a low-level
cultural unease about the boiling thing.
This loud, high pitched squeak, understood to be the lobster’s death rattle, is the main
feature of the unknown victims of “Alta Cocina,” as their squeals (“chillidos”) can be heard
from the opening sentence of the story—“Cuando oigo la lluvia golpear en las ventanas
vuelvo a escuchar sus gritos”427—almost to the very end: “Chillaban a veces como niños
recién nacidos, como ratones aplastados, como murciélagos, como gatos estrangulados,
como mujeres histéricas” (50).428 The list of similes is anything but random, as it evokes of
a variety of things that could take the place of the empty signifier. The list emphasizes the
cruelty of the whole ordeal, for potential human victims but also for animals that are
common in the Gothic tradition.
This commonplace cruelty of daily life is the secret to which Dávila points. Only the
narrator can perceive the shrieks of the animals; meanwhile, the others enjoy the meal or
ignore the creature’s suffering. The cook, working in the “shadowy” kitchen (“sombría
cocina”) is pitiless (“despiadada”; 49), and implacable in the face of pain (“implacable ante
el dolor”; 49). The narrator drives this point home by stating that, “No había misericordia
427 “Whenever I hear rain hitting the windows, I, once again, hear their screams.”
428 “They squealed sometimes like newborn children, like crushed mice, like bats, like strangled cats, like
hysterical women.”
304
en aquella casa” (“There was no mercy in that house”; 50), a house that they leave by the
end of the story. This callousness circles back to the debate around animal cruelty.
Wallace adds that “the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it's also
uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I
know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or
unfeeling” (262). Dávila places her reader in the position of the merciless cook, “cruel and
unfeeling,” when faced with the pain of other creatures. As in “El Huésped,” the identity
of the “creature” remains hidden, and, thus, the question of the morality of the actions
cannot be affected by speciesism. If it were not humans, as the story suggests, but the
animals we consume in daily life, would their suffering be different?
“Moisés y Gaspar” is another animal story that bears a certain resemblance to “La
Señorita Julia” in that it relates the story of the protagonist’s deteriorating mental health,
this time produced by the effects of two mysterious beings (most likely dogs) he inherited
from his now-dead brother. Even if Dávila had never read Poe, she would have had ample
inspiration in Quiroga’s animal stories, also present in Cuentos de amor de locura y de
muerte.429 It is worth pointing out, however, that in stark contrast with Poe’s “The Black
Cat” (where the source of ‘evil’ or the perverse is the narrator’s alcoholism) and Quiroga’s
“El Perro Rabioso” (where the narrator’s decline is caused by the bite of a rabid dog)
Moisés and Gaspar, the animals in Dávila’s story, are the direct source of the narrator’s
429 “La Insolación,” “El Almohadón de plumas,” “El perro rabioso,” “Yaguaí,” “El alambre de pas,” and “A la
deriva” are all animal stories in Cuentos de Amor de Locura y de Muerte. The one which most resembles
“Moises y Gaspar” is “El perro rabioso,” not because they both deal with canine figures but because they
both deal with the effect an animal causes on the narrator. Quiroga’s story is, to an extent, a hypertext on
Poe’s “The Black Cat.” Animals and animality are a common theme throughout Quiroga’s work.
305
debacle. Nonetheless, they don’t “do” very much directly, besides making noises that
annoy the neighbors, which push their new owner into increasingly isolated spaces. The
narrator accepts what he deems his “fate”: to be isolated with the two dogs that are now
his responsibility and whom he feels are constantly watching him. The burden they
represent and the extent to which they isolate the narrator is characterized by Dávila as
monstrous, as Miguel Candelario Martínez argues in “Oblicua Teratología: Un
Acercamiento a Lo Fantástico En ‘Moisés y Gaspar ’De Amparo Dávila.” Dávila’s insistence
that the story is concerned with issues concerning men specifically (even though gender
does not feature prominently in the story) could indicate just how unprepared the
protagonist is to support two living creatures. Without him realizing it, Moisés and Gaspar
have become his two demanding children who take complete control over his life, to the
point of running it into the ground.
Contributing to this protagonist’s inability to handle Moisés and Gaspar is his inability to
communicate with them: “Si pudiera saber lo que piensan…! Pero no, me asusta la
posibilidad de hundirme en el sombrío misterio de su ser” (86).430 On the issue of
communication in the story, Candelario Martínez states that “en esta frustración reconoce
el fracaso de su intento por comunicarse con sus acompañantes, mientras que, al mismo
tiempo, postula los límites del lenguaje para contener o transmitir el conocimiento, esto
es, los límites de la comunicación entre los hombres, del hombre frente a la otredad”
430 “If I could only know what they are thinking…! But no, I’m terrified by the possibility of sinking into the
shadowy mystery of their being.”
306
(129).431 The story ends with the repetition of a phrase used earlier in the story by
Leónidas to demonstrate his own complacency: “es inútil resistirse, podemos dar mil
vueltas y llegar siempre al punto de partida…” (80).432 The phrase is recast as “Podríamos
haber dado mil vueltas y llegar siempre al punto de partida…” (87),433 thus setting it in the
past and confirming the narrator’s resignation under the monstrous burden laid on him by
Leónidas. The narrator realizes that the animals he has been “given” as “things” are not
mere objects but non-human persons that are now completely dependent on him. The
recipient of Leónida’s pets has had his life uprooted by his new “children” and is, as the
phrase and its repetition suggest, in danger of losing his own identity. The rewording of
Leónidas’ phrase appears to suggest that the narrator is, through his complacency,
becoming Leónidas himself.
Finally, “Muerte en el Bosque” anticipates two major topics Dávila and other
writers will continue to explore: plant subjectivity and objectuality. Once again, an
unnamed protagonist feels suffocated by his wife, her complaints, and the objects that
“…no hay sitio ni para una palabra.” (“there is no space, not even for a single word”; 51).
The objects are grating for this protagonist who thinks “todo está lleno de cosas, es cierto.
De esas cosas que tú [his wife] has ido acumulando y que me han hecho insoportable esta
casa…” (51).434 The ominous nature that objects may convey is combined in this case with
431 “In this frustration he recognizes the failure of his attempt at communicating with his companions, while
at the same time, postulating the limits of language to contain or transmit knowledge, that is to say the
limits of communication amongst men and of man when faced with Otherness.”
432
“Resistance is futile. We can go around in circles a thousand times and still arrive at the same starting
point.”
433
“We could have gone around in circles a thousand times and still arrive at the same starting point.”
434
“Everything is filled with things, that is true. Of things that you have accumulated and that have made
this house unbearable.”
307
an anti-materialistic, even anti-capitalist sentiment, as it is the accumulation of things in
his house, the presence of his wife, her claims, his physical fatigue, and alienation from
work that makes his life unbearable. When he goes looking for a new apartment, at his
wife’s request, he perceives the defect of accumulation in the woman selling the new
house: “Donde quiera es lo mismo - pensaba al observarla-almacenar basura, llenarse de
cosas inútiles por si algún día sirven, juntar cosas y más cosas con desesperación hasta
que un día muera asfixiado entre ellas” (53).435 Feeling trapped by things and thingness,
the protagonist begins to fantasize that he is a tree, finally freed from the demands and
objects that modernity attaches to the human experience. He wants to “vivir en el bosque
enraizado,” “descansado de aquella fatiga de toda su vida,” with time “para pensar, tal vez
para recordar, para detenerse en algún momento hondamente vivido” (54).436 In other
words, the narrator’s desire can be condensed in the rejection of affect automatism,
reducing both his power to act and, most importantly, his power to be affected.
Remarkably, he considers actions apparently harmful to the tree in a positive light,
fantasizing about birds pecking his arms, lumberjacks hacking him down, and his eventual
death as firewood. The story ends with the protagonist frantically leaving the apartment
building and running into the forest. A tree doesn’t have the same capacity to feel pain or
pleasure as the animals in “Alta Cocina” do. This protagonist wants, once again, freedom
from the encounter that produces affect. The crowding objects in his house reduce his
435
“Wherever I go it is the same thing – he thought whilst observing her- stowing junk, filling up space with
stuff just in case it might be useful someday, accumulating things and more things, desperately, until one
day one may die asphyxiated amongst them.”
436
“live in the forest, rooted”, “resting of the fatigue of his whole life”
308
power (puissance) to act; that they are objects does not annul their power (pouvoir) to
affect him.
Fragments of Time: “Tiempo Destrozado,” “Final de una Lucha,” “Fragmento de un diario,”
“Un boleto para cualquier parte”
“Fragmento de un diario” is the opening story of the collection and exposes the reader
directly to Dávila's experimentation with fragments. Again, the reasons for the
protagonist’s actions are never revealed: Why does he want to achieve the highest level of
pain? Such a secretive vocation stands at the core of the story, in which, to achieve this
level of pain he must murder the only person he feels affection for, his neighbor. The tale
is, again, a story about affect and affect ideas, as the character himself states that “Aun
cuando hay quienes aseguran que el dolor es interminable y que nunca se agota, yo opino
que después del 10.º grado de mi escala, sólo queda la memoria de las cosas, doliendo ya
no en acción sino en recuerdo” (14).437 This represents not mobile affects but affection-
ideas (the memory of things) that can create further affects. The isolated and secretive
nature of the character and his bizarre predicament are what give this story its Gothic
sheen, in combination with the fragmented letter format, which reiterate the semantic
gaps mentioned in “El Huésped.”
437 “Even when there are those who assert that pain is endless and never-ending, my opinion is that after
the 10th degree of my scale, only the memory of things remains, hurting not in action but in their
recollection.”
309
Yet again, the affect is produced not by other people but by the rarification of an
object. The staircase, made analogous to a scale of pain and, as in “El Huésped,”
transformed into the murder weapon, becomes through modeling an object of
abjection.438 The refinement of pain associated with the scale, furthermore, transforms
the abject into the beautiful, refining it and hiding the secret behind modeling.
“Final de una lucha,” as Dávila mentioned in one of the interviews cited above, is a
story with a male protagonist that deals with the issues produced by the imposition of the
masculine gender and its expectations over the male body. It is another story about
domestic abuse but this time the focus is the abuser, who must confront his double to
face his crimes. One day, Durán spots an identical double of himself walking with a woman
identical to his former lover, Lilia. Now unhappily married to Flora, he follows the couple
and sets out to discover the mystery of his double, feeling that “…él era quien se había
perdido, no los otros” (45).439 The anxiety created in him when recognizing himself as a
shadow or as partial makes him seek out the couple as he “Necesitaba saber la verdad.
Conocer su condición de cuerpo, o de simple sombra” (46).440 At the end of the story, he
intrudes into a scene of domestic violence in which his double is the abuser. After an
attempt to save Lilia, she rejects Durán, after which “Todo se rebeló en su interior. Se
arrepintió de haberla librado de los golpes de haberle mostrado su ternura. Que el otro la
hubiera matado, habría sido su salvación” (48).441 The switch between the two is depicted
438 Lidia García Cárdenas convincingly argues the relationship between the degrees of the scale and the
dates on the diary entries.
439 “He was the one who was lost, not the others.”
440
“He needed to know the truth, be certain about his condition as a body or as a shadow.”
441 “Everything rebelled inside of him. He regretted having freed her from the blows and showing her his
tenderness. If the other had killed her, that would have been his saving grace.”
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as italicized, overlapping passages that end with Durán finally “killing” the other (the
eponymous fight) and exiting the house with the realization that he had beaten Lilia to
death and thus fears being captured by the police. As Marisol Luna Chávez and Víctor Díaz
Arciniega argue, in the case of “Final de una Lucha,” “el desdoblamiento puede servir
como una manera de confrontar una vida de errores o para autoconvencerse de haber
consolidado un anhelo que al final es una ficción para poder ejecutar lo que siempre se
deseó.”442 The motor of “Final de una lucha” is Durán’s frustration with what he sees as
his own mediocrity as a man, a loveless marriage, and the poverty that made him realize
he was an inadequate suitor for Lilia. This frustration over unfulfilled gender expectations
resolves itself into violence. The feeling of inadequacy carried by Durán splits his
personality but, remarkably, even in his fantasy, he feels like he is the Other: a pathetic,
degraded copy. Durán’s frustration can be understood as a permanent tendency toward
powerlessness in terms of action (pouvoir) and, as with most of Dávila’s characters, a clear
propensity to be affected by the outside world. Even if Dávila understandably renounced
the feminist label, “Final de una lucha” is, in one senese, a story about toxic masculinity
read through affect. When on a cultural level masculinity is understood as dominance and
control, having no control over how other Bodies affect the Body can be untenable,
resulting in the split depicted in the story.
Dávila’s characters’ astounding ability to be affected is also on display in “Un
boleto a Cualquier parte,” which I commented on at the outset of my analysis of Tiempo
442
“Doubling can serve as a way to confront a life of mistakes or to convince oneself of having consolidated
a desire that is, in the end, a fiction at the service of executing what was actually always desired.”
311
destrozado. I would add to my previous comments that the character is particularly
susceptible to be affected negatively, a characteristic taken to an extreme in his request
for a ticket to anywhere/nowhere. The first lines of the story show the character leaving a
“club” even though his friends insist that he stay. Their reasons seem benign, but the
protagonist perceives a secondary intention in his friend’s demands: “Lo que querían era
desquitarse. Por eso insistían en que se quedara. No podían soportar que él ganara alguna
vez” (24).443 This phrase reveals the character’s propensity to believe that other people’s
actions are motivated by a hidden ill will but also reveals that he sees himself as a loser
who cannot “win” in any situation, leading him to interpret a seemingly neutral event (the
unannounced man) as a horrific symbol.
Finally, “Tiempo destrozado,” composed of six thinly connected scenes, takes the
affect-heavy aesthetic found in other stories of the collection to its logical extreme by
fragmenting the pseudo plot itself, a plot consisting almost exclusively of affect ideas and
sensorial encounters. No hints as to why the things described are happening can be found
in “Tiempo destrozado” nor a clear indication of what is occurring from an ontological
perspective. The only thing the reader is privy to are disembodied, negative affects:
“Primero fue un inmenso dolor […] Todo acompañado de una música oscura” (65).444
These descriptions of affection ideas are accompanied by literal words, “las palabras como
materia ineludible” (65).445 The following lines describe a sudden change into a positive
affect: “Todo fue ligero entonces y gaseoso. […] Todo era instante. El sólo querer unía
443 “They just wanted to retaliate. That’s why they insisted that he stayed. They could not stand seeing him
win, not even once. “
444
“First it was immense pain […] accompanied by dark music.
445 “Words as inescapable matter”
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distancias” (65).446 Dream logic is prevalent in the first section of the story, which
becomes a map for reading the following sections. The passage continues, describing the
changing intensities previously referred to: “Subir y bajar como movido por un resorte
invisible” (65).447 The intense movement towards absolute power is followed by a fall to
zero or absolute nothingness: “Nada tenía valor sino el recuerdo. El instante sin fin estaba
desierto…” (65).448 This depiction of an affective graph anticipates the affect-oriented logic
of the five sections to follow, which are five distinct scenes that appear to reflect foggy
memories ranging from childhood to adulthood, but all relating to the fear of death.
The second section narrates a scene from childhood in which a child narrator
vaguely remembers going to a place named Huerta Vieja with her parents and
approaching a pond filled with apples. This event is associated with her parents’ death by
drowning in the very same pond. The child feels in some way guilty for her parents’ death,
as she repeats: “…yo tenía la culpa…mi papá…mi mamá.” (66).449 Before going into the
pond to retrieve the apples, the child requests one from her father, who denies the
request by saying, “Las manzanas son un enigma, niña” (“apples are an enigma, child”;
66). The passage itself is enigmatic and pieced together by dream logic and symbolism.
The apple is an evident symbol of Eve’s original sin; that it is the father who denies the
child’s request seems especially significant. The girl disobeys and, after jumping into the
pond, the water rises in a whirlpool and swallows her parents. The child immediately feels
446 “Everything was light and vaporous […] Everything was that instant. Distances were eliminated.”
447 “Going up and down as if moved by an invisible spring.”
448 “Nothing had value but memory. The infinite instant was empty.”
449
“It was my fault…My father…my mother.”
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guilty for her “transgression”: “Los había perdido y yo tenía la culpa […] mi papá, mi
mamá…miré hacia abajo; el fondo del estanque era un gran charco de sangre” (66).
The moment of genesis is followed by the third section, which introduces the
theme of objectuality, as observed in “Muerte en el bosque” and “El Espejo.” The scene in
this case is a room in which a man attempts to sell a piece of fabric to a nameless buyer.
He appears to be obsessed with death; when he starts looking at the fabric he remarks,
“mariposas muertas, las flores disecadas…todo se acaba y descompone,” (66)450 to which
she replies, “Yo no quiero cosas muertas, quiero lo que perdura, no lo efímero ni lo
transitorio…” (66).451 This exchange reveals the attitude toward death articulated in the
passage: the corporeal aspect of life’s end. The buyer’s reticence to accept death echoes
the previous passage—the guilt regarding the death of the child’s parents—and will be
echoed the final passage, in which the narrator wants to resist the negative encounter
with aging and death. Once the buyer chooses a piece of fabric and asks the salesman to
cut three meters of it, he refuses, exclaiming: “¿Cortar esta tela? ¿Hacerla pedazos? ¡Qué
crimen más horrendo! […] su sangre corriendo a ríos, llenando mi tienda, manchándolo
todo, todo, subiendo hasta mi garganta, ahogándome, no, no ¡qué crimen asesinar esta
tela! asesinarla fríamente, sólo porque es bella, porque es tierna e indefensa” (67).452
Once again, a commonplace scene is imbued with a negative affect by giving sentience to
the object (the fabric). The buyer is now a despicable being (“ser despreciable”) just for
450
“…dead flowers, desiccated flowers…everything ends and decomposes.”
451
“I don’t want dead things. I want what lasts, not the ephemerons or transitory”?
452 “Cut this fabric? Tear it to pieces? What a horrific crime! […] Rivers of blood filling up my shop, soiling
everything, everything, rising to my throat, drowning me, no, no. What a crime it would be to murder this
fabric! Murder it in cold blood only because of its beauty because it is gentle and defenseless”
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requesting that the fabric be cut and, according to the salesperson, deserves now to be
choked to death by the fabrics themselves (“todos vienen hacia acá, hacia usted […] hasta
que usted ya no pueda moverse ni respirar”453). The ability of the buyer to affect the fabric
has been reversed and the fabric now can affect the buyer.
The fourth passage returns to childhood memories but now evokes the discussion
prompted by “Alta cocina.” Narrated through the eyes of a child, the passage begins with
the child complaining about the negative affect produced in her by blood: “Sangre ¡qué
feo el olor de la sangre!” (68)454 The blood is from a lamb whose slaughter the child has
witnessed (“¿por qué mataron al borrego?”455 (68)). The scene swiftly transitions to the
fair, where an adult, Quintila, buys cotton candy and ice cream for the child. When the
child, after riding several times in the carousel, throws up, the cotton candy and white ice
cream are reminiscent of the whiteness of the lamb: snow-white and full of hair mixed
with blood: “…el algodón se me hizo una bola en la garganta y vomité otra vez, y otra,
tenía la boca llena de pelos, de pelos tiesos de sangre, nieve con pelos, algodón con
sangre…” (68). 456 In this act, the link between the living lamb and its consumption is re-
established. Even if the act of killing the sheep has been cleaned up physically and
metaphorically (the child’s dress is changed), she refuses to eat the soup that is given to
her, suggested to be a lamb stew: “Yo no quiero ese caldo espeso, voy a vomitar, no me
453
“They’re all coming here, towards you [… until you can’t move or breathe anymore.”
454 “Blood! Blood has such an unpleasant smell!”
455 “Why did they kill the lamb?”
456“
...the cotton (candy) balled up in my throat and I threw up again and again, my mouth was filled with
hair, with hair hardened by blood, snow with hair, cotton with blood”
315
den ese horrible caldo, es la sangre del borrego” (68).457 The lines render the account a
reverse eucharist (the choice of animal is not accidental) which, instead of producing
mystical gratification, evokes negative, pre-logical affects.
In the fifth section, Dávila returns to objectuality; this time, books and bookcases
are the objects of ominous affection ideas. The scene occurs in a bookshop where books
are free. Like the rest of the patrons, the narrator attempts to take some but stumbles
because of their weight. Suddenly, “Toda la gente se había ido y ya no quedaban libros”
(68);458 the bookcases are empty. Objects generate a negative affect merely by existing.
They are not animated or anthropomorphized. The sight of emptiness, an object
becoming obsolete and devoid of its reason for existing (a bookcase devoid of books), is
not unlike witnessing its death. The now empty bookshelves are described as “…muros
con libreros vacíos como ataúdes verticales” (69).459 After the appearance of this affect-
idea, the narrator is followed by “una presencia oscura…informe” (69) and the passage,
again, abruptly ends.
“Tiempo destrozado” ends in a railway station, where the narrator gets on a train.
This is the first image of moving forward in the story, heading into the future, as opposed
to the stagnation of the pond, the repetitive roundabout of the carousel, the “dead”
bookcases, and “murdered” fabrics. But the train proves to be analogous to the passage of
time, which is unbearable for the protagonist. She sees herself as an old woman sitting on
the train: “Era yo misma elegante y vieja” (69); at the same time, she finds that her
457“I don’t want that thick soup, I’m going to throw up, don’t give me that horrid soup, it is the blood of the
lamb.”
458 “The people had gone and no books were left”
459 “Walls with empty bookcases like vertical caskets”
316
reflection has disappeared. This recognition triggers in her an affect which she then
explains in an affect idea caused by the fear of death and age: “Sentí frío y terror de no
tener ya rostro. De no ser más yo sino aquella marchita mujer llena de joyas y de pieles. Y
yo no quería ser ella. Ella era ya vieja y se iba a morir mañana, tal vez hoy mismo” (69).460
The fear of death and the fear of time are compounded into the fear of change and loss of
identity as she once again sees herself as a different character, a woman taking a child’s
hand and, later, the crying child who appears to be, by the end of the story, choked with a
handkerchief. The end of the story, ambiguous and surreal like the passages that
compose it, alludes both to the physical death (of the child) but is also suggestive of an
end of human personhood as a form of death. The narrator carries around a fishbowl with
a goldfish in it throughout this final section. She then vomits “una basca negra y espesa”
(“thick and black nausea”; 69) into it and covers it with a handkerchief. In turn, the
floating, black void in which the fish now lies recalls the beginning of the story and the
void of pain of the first section.
Conclusion: The Purloined Letter
All the stories of Tiempo destrozado attempt to reveal one final Gothic truth: the
abject nature of daily life that we set aside to make existence bearable. Dávila focuses on
the experience of feminized beings, historically relegated to subaltern positions. The dire
460
“I felt cold and terrified of not having a face anymore. Of not being myself but that wilted woman full of
jewels and furs. And I did not want to be her. She was old and was going to die tomorrow, maybe even
today”
317
effect on humans, objects, or plants of things often discounted as non-living, the cruelty of
domestic violence, surménage, and decaying mental health to which we turn a blind eye
are all focal points of the short story collection which serves to shed light on these
experiences. What matters is not the object’s ontological nature but its capacity or power
(pouvoir) to affect us. It does not matter if the threat is “real” or not when it is perceived
as such, whether it is a threat to our physical body or the tenuous constitution of our
personas and perceived personalities.
Like Dupin in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” Dávila points towards what
is already out in the open and part of our daily lives as an object of artistic concern. These
have come to be such an inherent part of modern life that they have lost (or possibly
never had) the ominous qualities they could have. Their position, nonetheless, makes
these things truly terrifying for the modern reader, much more so than the bestiary of
creatures still employed by Modernismo. Critical works on Amparo Dávila’s oeuvre are
sparse, relative to her importance, though a contemporary surge in Female Gothic authors
from Spanish America is changing that. Framed in this way, Dávila becomes a crucial link
between the Modernista past and contemporary reinvention of the genre, through what
can only be described as the construction of a Female Gothic Assemblage.
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Conclusions
Gothic Machines, Gothic Assemblages, Gothic objects
What is common to the work of Leopoldo Lugones, Horacio Quiroga, Ventura
García Calderón, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, and Amparo Dávila? They all formed part, at
some point in their respective bodies of work, willingly or not, of a Gothic Assemblage. At
some point in their literary explorations, willingly or not, they all harkened back to the
Gothic in its ur-form, the Gothic Abstract Machine. Spanish American authors, then, have
been deploying the Gothic Mode or writing texts that can be described as part of a
particular Gothic assemblage for at least a century.
As I have sought to demonstrate, there are as many Spanish American Gothics as
there are Spanish American Gothic assemblages. This variety transcends mere
geographical division, as in the case of Amparo Dávila, who, though she belonged to
Mexican literary circles rejected everything I have described in the Mexican Gothic
assemblage. At the same time, the task of describing assemblages is not another instance
of simply labelling everything “Gothic” and so creating an endless litany of categories.
Catherine Spooner succinctly describes this issue within the field of Gothic Studies as
follows:
Studies twinning Gothic with a variety of different adjectives proliferated in the
twenty-first century (Fred Botting poked fun at this trend with his 2001 essay
‘Candygothic’, for example). At best, this produced exciting new combinations of
Gothic and theory – Queer Gothic, Ecogothic – but this could also dwindle into the
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endless taxonomisation of subgenres and, at worst, deliver an ever-multiplying
and, thus, ever-vanishing critical object. (8)
In order to claim the usefulness of the Gothic in relation to a particular text, the presence
of Gothic machinery (that is, tropes or symbols tethered to the genre and mode) is a good
indicator but not a sufficient one. These are but a part of a Gothic Assemblage one must
describe. The Gothic Assemblage articulates a form of content and a form of expression
that, together, give way to an expression of an abstract machine. Such an assemblage
must point to the Gothic Abstract Machine.
I have defined the Gothic as an abstract machine that describes three basic
relations between its elements: suppression (the hiding/abjecting of a secret),
counterfeiting, and transgression. These three gestures are the source of tropes
developed in different variations of the mode, variations that can be observed to be
distinct Gothic Assemblages. They are accompanied by the transformation of the beautiful
into the abject and the abject into the beautiful. Changing one of the components within
the assemblage changes everything else, since the elements within it are as important as
the assemblage itself, which is nothing other than the constitutive relationship between
the assemblage’s elements.
After having evaluated five different Gothic Assemblages, I have arrived at the
following summary of the Gothic Abstract Machine as analytical tool:
The Gothic Abstract Machine, a fixing or desiring-machine, arranges form of
content and form of expression along the lines of the desires of a particular body, a Body
Without Organs. By form of content I mean discourse on Otherness and by form of
320
expression I mean deterritorialized signs and indexes, or tropes; this is the territorializing
part of the assemblage. By desires, I mean affect, simultaneously positive and negative.
The particularity of this arrangement lies in 1) the hiding of one or more of these
elements, constituting the Gothic Secret; 2) the nature of the arrangement itself, which
requires the simultaneity of a positive (beauty) and a negative (fear) affect; on the
symbolic level or plane of continuity, these manifest as the Gothic mode. The two parallel
affects surface in the plane of continuity as the aesthetically horrible, the horrifically
beautiful, or the process of turning one into the other: in other words, a becoming-Gothic.
The Gothic Abstract Machine implies that the latter tension that can be described
in terms of affect: horror and terror (negative affect) are, through the Gothic, turned into
a source of attraction. This process displaces the source of abjection. What distinguishes
Gothic Abstract Machines from other Abstract Machines is the relationship of obfuscation
between its elements. Not only can the form of expression obfuscate the form of content
but, more importantly, it can attempt to hide the desire circulating through the whole
machine. This desire is a combination of positive and negative affects towards that which
is being transformed when in contact with the Gothic Abstract Machine. This sort of desire
is productive: it produces Gothic objects. The process of hiding the secret (abjection)
occurs through elaborate stylization that deceives the reader as to where the terrible or
violent secret may lie and what its nature might be. The Gothic is not the secret
concealed under the layers in which the secret is wrapped—it is the layers themselves.
This is the mechanism of revealing a “truth” that has been set up for revelation.
321
The attempt to hide a real discursive content through layers of expression yields
the opposite result: it attracts more attention to itself. For this reason, the Gothic can be
molded efficiently to desire and to produce both reactionary and dissident objects.
The Gothic objects produced by each assemblage—Modernista, Indigenista,
Mexican, and Female—harken back to the Gothic Abstract Machine and other Gothic
Assemblages in which it has taken shape. This process of looking back to other
assemblages recalls the rhizomatic connections between all of the Gothic Assemblages,
connections that are not determined by temporal or arboreal linkages. There is no “true”
Modern Gothic, only the medieval; forgery is a fundamental element in the constitution of
the Gothic. Without artifice, there can be no Gothic, which leaves the argument that Latin
American Gothic is a mere imitation of some “true” Gothic with very little to stand on.
As I have already indicated, Gothic assemblages are deterritorialized. To say that
the Gothic Mode deterritorializes is not enough because it carries with it the specific
relations between its components, something that the genre-as-mode theory eschews.
Deterritorialization occurs in the form of expression, where tropes become indexes of the
Gothic. Even when it participates in the Mexican Gothic Assemblage it does not lose its
other generic indexes.
This is but one of the positive elements of this model. This theoretical apparatus
has allowed me to study five distinct assemblages and can describe other assemblages
from other times and places. The Gothic as abstract machine can also be applied to
Contemporary Gothic and recent publications. Can we speak of a machinic organization of
the Gothic Abstract Machine in century-wide assemblages? Is there an inherent difference
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between the Gothic assemblages discernible in the twentieth century and those that can
be described in the twenty-first?
Another interesting question that remains is the issue of postcoloniality and, to go
even further than this dissertation has gone, decoloniality. We have seen how Gothic
analysis can address questions related to postcoloniality, particularly the role of creoles in
its use against marginalized groups. The Gothic mode, then, can be used in a reactionary
way, even though the critical analysis that identifies it pushes in the opposite direction.
Nonetheless, can the Gothic, whose abstract machine is deeply entrenched in Western
discourse, ever be part of a decolonial exercise? Amparo Dávila shows that the Gothic
does not have to be reactionary—though neither her works nor those of any of the
authors studied here are by any standard decolonial texts. Are those that have been
penned in the twenty-first century decolonial? Do they respond to these issues, or do they
avoid addressing them at all? Can Decolonial Gothic exist? These questions remain to be
answered.
Though my project is not truly decolonial, it does attempt to shift the power
differential that has guided readings of Spanish American genre literature both within and
outside of the continent. Against the demands of literary politics and mainstream literary
discourse—stemming from the Latin American boom and those constructed as its
precursors—I posit that Spanish Americans whose works can be described in some
capacity as Gothic are not mere epigones or imitators of writers from the global north.
The assemblage model allows us to read the complexities within what on the surface
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might appear as mere repetition, while also leaving space to analyze that very surface (the
exercise of close reading that we have performed for each text).
Whether it be the ambiguous position of the anti-modern modernistas who look
backwards and forwards at the same time, the tenuous identity of the criollo ready to fall
into the jaws of barbarism, Mexico’s oscillating dance with death, or the ominous voice of
that which has been silenced, these are all elements related to negative affect. Is this
negative affect always fear? Not necessarily, though fear must be one component of the
Assemblage. It can be the author’s direct intention—to provoke fear in the reader, as in
Quiroga’s shocking bedbug—but it can also surface in a more ambiguous form: the fear or
anxiety that the Indigenous could take over the modernizing project. All of these texts
manifest the transformation of negative affect into aesthetic value, a pivotal process of
the Gothic Abstract Machine. Without such a translation, it would not be possible to
discern similitudes across various works, separated as they are by thick layers of literary
politics and prejudices circling around Spanish American literature.
The ultimate aim of this project has been to demystify Spanish American literature
and to provide an alternate reading of a part of its history through the Gothic lens.
Spanish American Gothic is not a recent invention; it has been festering for at least a
century. Many questions concerning the Gothic remain, including its relation to the
decolonial project and the possibility of establishing century-wide assemblages. Can the
Gothic be a collective experience or is it limited to subjectivity? Can we think of a Spanish
American eco-Gothic assemblage? Can such an assemblage be described? These are some
of the questions that should guide further inquiries into the Gothic.
324
Like an infection that refuses to go away, or a haunting that cannot be exorcised,
the Gothic will forever remain a part of Western culture. Denying its presence in Spanish
American literature does nothing but limit our understanding of it and its historical
development. Describing the sinuous movement of the Gothic Abstract Machine’s
tentacular rhizome has been the aim of this dissertation. The rhizome that it is, it
continues to grow, to fester, and to reach into the future.
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Appendix
Figure 1. José Guadalupe Posada’s original “Calavera Garbancera”.
Posada, José Guadalupe. Remate de calaveras alegres y sandungueras. 1913. Museo Nacional de
Arte, INBAL Donación Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico City
326
Figure 2. Center panel of Diego Rivera’s “Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central”
featuring, from left to right: José Martí, Diego Rivera (as a child) Frida Kahlo, Catrina, and José Guadalupe
Posada.
Rivera, Diego Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Centra. 1947. MEXICANA: Repositorio del
patrimonio cultural de México,
https://mexicana.cultura.gob.mx/es/repositorio/detalle?id=_suri:ESPECIAL:TransObject:5bce55047a8a0222
ef15d47a#detalleinfo.
Figure 3. Catalina and Maximillian in “Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central”
327
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