El Fósforo

Transcripción

El Fósforo

This record of the proceedings of the
department of Spanish, Portuguese and
Latin American Studies’ annual PostGraduate Forum, 2011, is produced with
thanks to Corin Faife (cover design) and to
the academic staff of the department,
without whose support, guidance and
dedication neither the annual forum, nor
this publication (nor, indeed, a great many
of our academic endeavours) would be
possible.
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Contents
Foreword – Professor Antoni Kapcia................................................3
Editorial – Stephen Fay, Sofia Mason and Rosi Smith ......................5
Texto, Contexto y Argumento en la Entrevista. Hacia una
Reconstrucción de los Discursos Híbridos – Sergio Vidal……………...8
Silvia Galvis: Cronista de la Historia – Jeannette Uribe.………………19
‘Ya no puedo más’: Commemoration and Catharsis in Olga Alonso
González’s Testimonios (1973) – Sofia Mason…………………………….32
False Legacies: Narrating Madrid’s History in Early Modern Spain Camille Clymer................................................................................50
Cuban Citizenship Discourse: Where Love and Hate Collide – Rosi
Smith ..............................................................................................64
Guerra y cotidianidad militar en la Cataluña del cambio dinástico,
1705-1714. Reflexiones y posibilidades documentales – Adrià
Cases
...........................................................................................83
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Foreword – Prof. Kapcia
Foreword
Professor Antoni Kapcia
‘Giving ownership’ has so much become one of the clichés of ‘eduspeak’, that one easily forgets what it might actually mean in real
cases. Yet the forum which created the context for this collection of
articles (the annual Postgraduate Forum for the Nottingham
Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies)
does indeed demonstrate the truth of that principle: not only do
the students themselves regularly organise and chair this event,
but the quality of the papers and the discussions which
characterise it make it the high-point of the Department’s year. For
the students themselves, this is an opportunity to show their
wares, test out ideas and have an encouraging intellectual
exchange with their peers; the depth, breadth and rigour of
research, the level of sophistication of ideas, the self-confidence
which is shown, and the willingness to ‘go beyond’ which they all
show are all heartening to see and experience.
One of the many aspects of postgraduate life which the event
demonstrates clearly is the advantage of the elusive ‘critical mass’
of such a student body, a vital component of any group of
postgraduates, given the potential for solitude which all sustained
research degrees offer. However, what this Forum and what these
papers and articles remind us is that such a ‘mass’ has the potential
not only to overcome this solitude but also to provide a rich
context for individual development: not only do the students
themselves evidently approach the experience in a spirit of genuine
cooperation and solidarity, posing questions that enquire rather
than trap, that support rather than undermine, but the staff
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Foreword – Prof. Kapcia
present also bring a supportive flavour to the proceedings, offering
each of the students advice based on experience beyond the
expertise of each student’s supervisors.
As a result, the whole event and the written outcomes all
demonstrate something else fundamental to a lively functioning
academic environment: a spirit of collegiality. Indeed, this Forum
and the quality of the articles published here all remind us that, in
a wider context where academics are constantly being encouraged
to be competitive (competing for grants, for funds to be gained
through the old Research Assessment Exercise or the current
Research Excellence Framework, or, in the case of expostgraduates, for a diminishing number of jobs), collegiality lies at
the heart of good academic exchange, and thus also lies at the
heart of good research. The articles here show clearly both the
benefits of such an environment and the quality of the coming
generation of scholars; both are to be celebrated.
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Editorial – Fay, Mason, & Smith
Issue 1: Lighting the Torch
Editorial
Stephen Fay, Sofia Mason and Rosi Smith
This work was born of a forum, and provides a space in which to
speak.
Whether a classical marketplace or law-court, or a more
contemporary Internet chat-room, a forum is characterised by a
coming together of perspectives, a philosophy of engagement
and exchange. Since its inception, the Annual Post-Graduate
Forum of the department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin
American Studies has provided an opportunity all too rare for
the nascent academic – a setting in which one may not only
showcase one’s work but also develop it through open
discussion and experimentation.
It is this exchange of knowledges and approaches to
research that makes the annual forum more than a practice
ground for tomorrow’s dons or a stage for the rehearsal and
performance of pre-packaged, already ossifying knowledge. The
disciplinary breadth and geographical-cultural scope of the
department renders it almost impossible to end the day without
encountering a paper, a perspective or a methodology that
stimulates a fresh view of one’s own, and every paper
reproduced here bears the marks of those encounters.
In deciding for the first time to publish a selection of the
papers arising from the forum, it is our intention to retain the
discursive mood of the original, drawing attention to the points
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of contact through which the six distinct contributions speak to
one another.
The first contributor, Sergio Vidal, is an academic edgeman
who percipiently reads around and in-between what many of us
take for granted. In this paper, Vidal obliges us to explore the
limen between imagination and information in what he calls
‘textos híbridos’. From an irascible Ernest Hemingway excising
sections of a 1950 Lillian Ross interview to the storm of scandal
that raged around the Real Academia’s 2011 description of
General Franco in its Diccionario Biográfico Español, Sergio
illuminates the subtle omissions and heavy-handed inclusions
that often place the text itself ‘en peligro de extinción’.
While Vidal investigates artful and artistic elision on the
part of journalists, Jeannette Uribe’s paper uncovers instances of
coerced omission in Colombia, where the severe political
repression faced by those who speak out against the status quo
has left journalists compelled to omit or encode. In keeping with
a Latin American history of blurred boundaries between
journalism and literature, fact and fiction, Uribe uncovers the
excluded and finds in the novels of Silvia Galvis a critical, satirical
chronicle of Colombian social and political life.
The succeeding paper also interrogates the relationship
between personal narrative and the political establishment, in
this case an establishment that seeks not to censor or censure,
but rather to augment, extol and reify. Using the case of Cuban
testimonialista, Olga Alonso, Sofia Mason here demonstrates
how paratext can operate to simplify, universalise and even
distort the voice of the author, in this instance by taking a life
containing political ideology but pulsating with human desire
and frustration, and re-presenting it to the reader as a life
contained within political ideology.
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Camille Clymer’s paper sees this external re-inscription of
history writ large in the stones and stories of Madrid, the
identity of which is formed, it seems, from little but paratext. An
insubstantial chimera of inflated classical origins, rumoured
bears and dubious saints is revealed as the window-dressing for
a much more prosaic reality of competitive ambition, racial
tension and the centralisation of power.
Just as the ostentatious physical and mythological
construction of Madrid was understood as capable of resisting
and repelling Rome, Islam and Judaism, so, argues Rosi Smith,
every discourse of national belonging and citizenship is defined
by that which it excludes and repulses as much as by that which
it recognises and embraces. The institutionalisation of patriotic
feelings of love and hate in Cuba is examined to argue that a
collective sense of identity and shared struggle enables Cubans
to resist and oppose US imperialism and, in so doing, formulate
their own unique sense of citizenship.
Adrià Cases’ paper roots the reader in the telluric details of
the terrible strife of the War of Succession and yet enables our
spirits to soar after this inspirational example of impassioned
and assiduous primary research by an outstanding young
academic. In this introduction to the historical context and
methodological techniques of his doctoral investigation, Cases
leads us into the hallowed silences of major European archives
there to explore the minute daily details of ‘estos momentos tan
convulsos e históricamente tan efervescentes’.
It was these edifying glimpses into thought and practice
that inspired the name of this new publication – El Fósforo. The
intention is that these short papers (and those that follow in
future years) illuminate the concepts and perspectives, each
alight with energy, that will provide the basis of the intellectual
futures into which our participants are striking out.
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Texto, Contexto y Argumento de la Entrevista - Vidal
Texto, Contexto y Argumento de la
Entrevista.
Hacia una reconstrucción de los discursos
híbridos.
Sergio Vidal
Resumen
Tomando como punto de partida los problemas que presenta el
hoax literario, esta ponencia es un intento de descripción del
discurso periodístico de la entrevista. Para ello, se ha prestado
especial atención a la relación entre texto y contexto, así como a
toda la cadena discursiva. El principal cometido de esta
descripción es la aplicación de los resultados obtenidos a la
entrevista literaria y, por
extensión, a otros
considerados como híbridos.
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géneros
E
n el pasado Forum, me referí a la dificultad existente a la
hora de describir el comportamiento de ciertos textos
literario periodísticos. Entre otros, expuse el ejemplo de
las entrevistas falsas de Tomasso Debenedetti. El resultado de
dicho análisis puso de relieve la existencia de una aparente
disyunción textual. Un divorcio que, por un lado, anulaba el valor
periodístico de dichas entrevistas y que, por otro, atribuía al
texto una única categoría, la literaria, por el simple hecho de
proceder del mundo de la inventiva, de la ficción.
¿Se comportan todos los textos híbridos del mismo modo
ante un caso de falsificación? ¿Es la referencia a la realidad una
condición indispensable en este tipo de texto híbrido? Mis
trabajos recientes se basan en la explicación del fenómeno de la
disyunción textual como posible herramienta de definición de
textos literario-periodísticos. Esta revisión al género de la
entrevista considerada como formación del texto literario y del
texto periodístico tiene como objeto el planteamiento de la
problemática que su definición encierra y el establecimiento de
una base desde la que comprender su comportamiento ante un
caso de falsificación. Algunas nociones implicadas en este
estudio son: texto, discurso, contexto, entrevista, entrevista
literaria y hoax.
Para constatar un caso de falsificación textual se debe
recurrir al marco comunicativo del texto. Un texto no puede ser
verdadero o falso si no es mediante una valoración externa a su
naturaleza lingüística. Por ello, la descripción de los análisis
tradicionales del texto no arrojaría demasiada luz a nuestros
interrogantes. El establecimiento de unas coordenadas que
vinculen constituyentes textuales con elementos fuera del texto
permite un diálogo entre estructura interna del mismo y
estructura global o social en la que el texto juega un papel
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funcional. Es decir, un texto como una entrevista periodística
tiene una función primordial: informar. Además, la función del
texto tiene un marcado carácter social ya que se convierte en el
objeto con el que se establece un diálogo entre diferentes
niveles que no son únicamente los niveles textuales.
Para analizar esas asociaciones debemos establecer que el
texto periodístico se halla inmerso en otra noción que amplía su
concepto: el discurso. Según recoge Gonzalo Abril, un discurso
no está compuesto de frases, sino de enunciados. Estos
enunciados están dotados de significado y sentido. Al ser capaz
de ampliar el significado de la oración durante el acto
comunicativo,
un
enunciado
equivaldría
a
una
‘acción
socialmente reconocible’.1
Un ejemplo reciente es la polémica suscitada tras la
publicación del Diccionario Biográfico Español, de la Real
Academia de la Historia de España. Una colosal obra con 43.000
entradas donde el famoso historiador Luis Suárez ha escrito
sobre Franco cosas como:
Una guerra larga de tres años le permitió derrotar a un
enemigo que en principio contaba con fuerzas superiores.
Para ello, faltando posibles mercados, y contando con la
hostilidad de Francia y de Rusia, hubo de establecer estrechos
compromisos con Italia y Alemania.2
El escándalo se produce porque parte de la sociedad española
pudo interpretar dichos enunciados de un modo similar al que
sigue:
a. ‘derrotar a un enemigo’ significa ocultar que los franquistas
iniciaron el levantamiento contra los republicanos;
b. ‘estrechos compromisos con Italia y Alemania’ es evitar
mencionar la simpatía de Franco con el movimiento fascista.
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De ese modo, Franco no fue un dictador, sino que para
Suárez, Franco fue un ‘Generalísimo’ o ‘Jefe de Estado’. El poder
de un enunciado puede ser tan grande que incluso el mismo
texto que lo soporta podría estar en peligro de extinción. El
escritor Andrés Trapiello ha reclamado: ‘Pese a lo que digan en
la Academia, cualquier editor sabe que hay medios técnicos para
subsanar ese error: se retiran los ejemplares del tomo, se
desencuaderna y se sustituye el pliego correspondiente’.3
No obstante, de especial interés en nuestro contexto son
las palabras del escritor Javier Cercas:
(La legitimación del franquismo) es lo preocupante. Es como si
dentro de 50 años los diccionarios dijeran que ETA no era una
organización terrorista sino un movimiento de liberación.
Significaría que hemos perdido la batalla del discurso. (El País,
‘Contra el falseamiento, 02/06/2011)
Si un tipo de discurso se caracteriza por estar formado por
ciertos tipos de enunciados, ciertos tipos de enunciados serán
característicos de ciertos discursos. En este sentido, la entrevista
tendrá unos enunciados característicos que la diferencien de
otros discursos periodísticos. Por ejemplo, mientras que, en la
entrevista, las intervenciones aparecen asignadas a sus
interlocutores, la noticia se sirve de una representación textual
distinta: ‘ “De repente, el coche se salió de la carretera”, afirmó
uno de los testigos’. Pongamos que si el modo de representación
es distinto, la acción también podría serlo. Para la noticia debe
entenderse: ‘yo, periodista, confirmo con esta cita lo que otra
persona ha dicho en relación con este tema y no con otro’.
En el caso de la entrevista, el periodista refleja cada palabra
tal como ha sido enunciada. El periodista no necesita citar, sino
reproducir. Por tanto, tiene lógica pensar que se ha ido creando
un prototipo de entrevista, un modelo con posibilidad de
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variantes, y que dicho modelo puede ser reproducido en
condiciones similares, es decir, con enunciados que forman
titulares,
subtítulos,
entradillas,
cuerpos
de
entrevista,
destacados, textos a pie de foto y que pueden funcionar de
modo distinto según el tipo de género periodístico que formen.
En su fundamento, la entrevista tiene un propósito
primordial: constatar lo que alguien ha dicho en un marco
concreto de tiempo y espacio anterior a ella. El objeto final es un
texto. Ese texto tendrá un fin social y estará al servicio del
periódico que la publica con la intención de atraer al lector para
que compre un ejemplar.
En el texto, se materializan las funciones de revelación y
testimonio y los roles de fuente y testigo. La revelación y la
fuente se asocian al plano del personaje entrevistado.
Testimonio y testigo, al plano del periodista. De la interacción de
fuente y testigo, surge el argumento de la entrevista. En esta
interacción, el aspecto estructural está dominado por la función
testimonial; el aspecto de contenido está dominado por la
función de revelación. No obstante, ambas funciones se
determinan
mutuamente:
el
entrevistador
orienta
los
contenidos y el entrevistado puede modificar la estructura al
generar cierta secuencia para nuevos contenidos.
Esta idea parece chocar con las palabras de Lynn Barber,
para quien el periodista ‘has all the power when it comes to
writing the piece: she chooses which quotes to use and which to
omit, which to highlight and which to minimize’.4 Ese proceso de
elegir u omitir citas, de destacar o minimizar otras partes, se
lleva a cabo sobre el argumento, es decir, sobre el resultado de
la interacción de los roles que han asumido ambos
interlocutores. El argumento representa el resultado total del
encuentro entre periodista y personaje y que no necesariamente
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debe ser registrado en el texto. El texto solo muestra una parte
sesgada del argumento.
Para ilustrar esto con mayor claridad, veamos el ejemplo de
Lillian Ross cuando entrevista al escritor Ernest Hemingway. El
texto final, publicado en el New Yorker (13/03/1950), es el
resultado de varios días junto al escritor y a su esposa en Nueva
York. El propio Hemingway revisó la entrevista antes de ser
publicada y solicitó que se realizara una omisión (Barber, Secrets
of the Press, 197). Este dato –desconocido para nosotros- pudo
haber sido incluido, pero no lo fue. ¿Significa que nunca existió
porque no lo recoge el texto? Tiene sentido pensar que se
quedaron fuera otros muchos elementos que estuvieron
presentes y que fueron potencialmente partes constituyentes de
la entrevista.
Conviene señalar que los roles de fuente y testigo son dos
nociones en línea con la condición básica de la comunicación
humana que reside en la base del periodismo. Las funciones de
revelación y testimonio están marcadas por el rol protagonista
de la fuente y el rol periodista del testigo. Más tarde, el
periodista cumplirá una función semejante a la de fuente para
ofrecer un texto a sus futuros lectores.
La noción de argumento podría ser válida para la
reconstrucción del inmenso abismo en el que se debilitan
muchas teorías que cruzan el terreno especulativo del contexto.
Pensar que las huellas de coherencia entre texto y evento
comunicativo pertenecen al contexto, significaría incluir en el
mismo ámbito elementos que funcionan de manera diferente a
nivel discursivo como pueden ser las exigencias editoriales del
periódico (que determinan, pero no parecen construir el
argumento) o las limitaciones o virtudes del periodista al
redactar (relacionadas con su calidad y con la exigencia del
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medio). El establecimiento del argumento como punto
intermedio entre el acto comunicativo y el objeto o texto es un
intento de reconstrucción de lo que venimos denominando
contexto. A modo de imagen podríamos asociar la noción de
argumento con la libreta del periodista que trata de recoger el
mayor número de datos para crear el mejor texto posible,
incluso tal vez fuera más exacto decir que el argumento sería esa
libreta del periodista más todo el documental gráfico que
pudiera extraerse del evento entre entrevistado y entrevistador
a fin de que ningún detalle quedase fuera del texto en potencia.
Pensemos en el registro mental que el periodista ha llevado a
cabo de la situación (colores, olores, formas, etc.) que no han
sido anotados en su libreta.
Otro llamativo ejemplo que puede ilustrar la tesis del
argumento es la siguiente entrevista, realizada por Nicole Berger
al actor británico, Colin Firth, de la que se expone el siguiente
extracto:
Aunque hablo un poco de italiano, mi relación con los
idiomas es una relación extraña. Una vez, conocí a un italiano,
en un momento en el que yo no lo hablaba en absoluto y él no
hablaba nada de inglés. Estábamos en Sudamérica y los dos
sabíamos un poco de español, de hecho, nos comunicamos en
esta mezcla rara de italiano, inglés y español. Y supimos
distinguir lo que cada uno decía en cada momento.
[…]
Un lugar que me gusta es Irlanda, donde rodé Circle of Friends
en 1994, y volver allí para trabajar es algo que me gustaría
hacer. Me di el lujo de hacerlo en vacaciones y me llevé a mi
hijo conmigo y pasamos el tiempo allí. He estado varias veces
de visita y tuve que enamorarme porque creo que es lo que
todo el mundo hace.5
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La política de la revista ha suprimido la enunciación del
entrevistador en el turno pregunta-respuesta. Como puede
verse, el texto no tiene preguntas, ni orientaciones temáticas,
pero el lector puede hacerse una formulación hipotética de ellas.
De lo contrario, ¿significaría que el testigo no existe, porque el
texto solo refleja la intervención de la fuente? ¿Tal vez el
encuentro previo no ha existido? ¿Por qué sabemos la pregunta
leyendo tan solo la respuesta? Omitimos voluntariamente en
este punto las consideraciones de Van Dijk,6 acerca de la
producción de los textos periodísticos, la noticia más
concretamente, porque básicamente nos interesa destacar que
existe un conocimiento previo que permite al lector tomar
conciencia de lo que está pasando y recuperar esa información
perdida, pero que todos esos elementos que han formado parte
de la primera interacción, se han quedado en el transcurso de la
segunda, en el argumento. Esos elementos, aunque no han
llegado a constituir parte del texto, siguen existiendo y su
posible referencia sigue ejerciendo una función en una ausencia
textual.
Por razones de espacio, no puedo extenderme en mayor
medida en un punto fundamental para la consideración del hoax
en textos híbridos, pero trataré de presentarlo a modo de
premisa acerca del discurso, que está siendo desarrollada en
mayor grado en mi tesis doctoral. Parece que existen tres niveles
de interacción. En primer lugar, fuente y testigo y un argumento
como resultado. En segundo lugar, una interacción entre
argumento, texto y medio que publica, con un texto como
resultado. En tercer nivel, se reúne de consuno desde la primera
voz hasta el lector que se hará eco de los resultados de aquel
primer nivel, con una repercusión como resultado.
15
No obstante, conviene señalar que el carácter periódico de
los discursos periodísticos ha provocado que, hoy por hoy, el
discurso exista con anterioridad al texto. Estos tres niveles de
interacción se han convertido en un discurso tipo, de modo que
los creadores del mismo, entrevistador y entrevistado, se dan
cita sabiendo de antemano cuál será en gran parte el resultado
del evento comunicativo. Como consecuencia, el periodista sabe
que tiene que aplicar la pauta general del periodismo, el
entrevistado sabe que va a ser sometido a ciertas cuestiones que
dotarán de dominio público a cualquier declaración que realice.
Por su parte, el lector ya sabe a lo que se enfrenta y espera
encontrar en la entrevista el resultado de aquella primera
interacción y el de la segunda.
El marco (otro concepto que requiere mayor tiempo y
detalle) en el que se desarrolla el evento y que se refleja en el
argumento viene determinado por la premisa: ‘Estamos aquí
reunidos y lo que aquí se diga será objeto público’ y la estructura
tipo del futuro texto también estará presente con anterioridad:
‘El resultado de este encuentro será reproducido bajo los
cánones establecidos y conocidos de la entrevista’. De igual
modo, se sabe que el discurso de la entrevista adquiere un
nuevo valor cuando se incluye en el mecanismo complejo de un
discurso mayor: el de la suma de todos los discursos del
periódico.
Esta preexistencia del discurso al texto ha facilitado la
creación de las entrevistas falsas de Debenedetti. El periodista
italiano se sirvió de una estructura tipo así como de los
enunciados propios de la misma. El uso del estilo directo
constituyó la prueba del acuerdo del rigor en el ejercicio
periodístico.
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En cambio, al publicarse como verdadera, se aceptó un
texto creado a partir de unas pautas que no eran las pautas
discursivas del mismo. Es decir, faltaba una coherencia entre los
elementos de la cadena: la fuente del texto, se correspondía con
la fuente del argumento, pero no con la fuente del evento. Esto
nos lleva a preguntarnos si la consideración de argumento es
extensible a otros discursos periodísticos y, en último término, a
esos discursos híbridos que son los que verdaderamente nos
preocupan.
Parece ser que la entrevista literaria respeta la noción de
argumento. Hemos citado el caso de la entrevista ‘How do you
like it, gentlemen?’, de Lillian Ross, al escritor Ernest
Hemingway. Sin duda, la precisión de todos esos detalles de
escenas, movimientos, descripciones, que le confieren –como
suele considerarse a grandes rasgos- valor literario, es una
muestra del contenido que puede llegar a almacenarse en el
argumento de una entrevista.
Time did not seem to be pressing Hemingway the day he flew
in from Havana. He was to arrive at Idlewild late in the
afternoon, and I went out to meet him. His plane had landed
by the time I got there, and I found him standing at a gate
waiting for his luggage and for his wife, who had gone to
attend to it. He had one arm around a scuffed, dilapidated
briefcase pasted up with travel stickers.7
1
Teoría general de la información. Datos, relatos y ritos, (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000),
239.
2
Citado por Terexa Constenla en ‘Franco, ese (no tan mal) hombre’ El País (Edición
Digital), 30/05/2011.
3
‘Contra el falseamiento de la Historia’, El País (Edición Digital), 02/06/2011.
4
The Penguin Book of Journalism. Secrets of the Press, Stephen Glover, ed. (London,
1999), 202.
17
5
Ryanairmagazine, enero-febrero 2001, 39.
Van Dijk, T. A., La noticia como discurso. Comprensión, estructura y producción de
la información, (Barcelona: Paidós Comunicación, 1990).
7
The New Yorker, (13/03/1950), 36.
6
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Silvia Galvis - Uribe
Silvia Galvis:
Cronista de la Historia
Jeannette Uribe
Resumen
El vínculo entre el periodismo y la literatura es un fenómeno
reiterativo
y
fundamental
en
la
tradición
novelística
Hispanoamericana. Silvia Galvis es una continuadora de esta
tradición. Sus novelas dejan entrever la imbricación entre la
investigación histórico-política y cultural de Colombia y la labor
periodística de su columna de opinión en el diario El Espectador.
Tanto en sus columnas como en su novelística la historia de
momentos cruciales de la vida política colombiana está siempre
presente. A través de la ficción Galvis narra asimismo, desde
nuevas perspectivas, episodios sobre la censura periodística en
Colombia.
Sus novelas se valen de géneros y personajes que toman el
rol de cronistas para narrar la historia desde el período de la
Regeneración hasta los episodios más recientes de la política
colombiana. Así, Galvis en un estilo satírico, típico de su
profesión periodística, se convierte en cronista crítica de la
historia socio-política y cultural colombiana.
19
H
istoria,
periodismo
y
literatura
han
estado
estrechamente ligados en los diversos procesos
histórico-culturales de Hispanoamérica y Colombia.
Esta interrelación ha sido una larga tradición y ha sentado unas
bases muy fuertes y exclusivas en el desarrollo literario
hispanoamericano que la ha diferenciado de la de otros campos
culturales como la de algunos países de Europa y Norteamérica.
A diferencia de lo que sucede en países del norte, los escritores y
periodistas hispanoamericanos para denunciar y criticar las
instituciones gubernamentales han tenido que recurrir al exilio
como forma de protección de sus vidas, casos de Faustino
Sarmiento (1811-1888), ‘El Alacrán Posada’ (1825-1881), García
Márquez (1928), Alfredo Molano (1944) entre muchos. Otros,
han sido asesinados como el caso de la periodista colombiana
Sylvia Duzán (1958-1990) y otros más. Ante este dilema, la
literatura
en
Hispanoamérica
ha
tomado
un
papel
predominantemente político para narrar los eventos políticoculturales, valiéndose de formas literarias que, aunque
tradicionales, se vuelven innovadoras al tomar nuevos matices
para lograr fines críticos y sociales. Este es el caso de escritores y
periodistas que han ejercido esta doble función como Gabriel
García Márquez y narradoras contemporáneas colombianas
como los casos de Silvia Galvis y María Teresa Herrán.
Nos centraremos en el caso de Silvia Galvis (1945-2009) y
miraremos cómo la historia, el periodismo e incluso la historia
del periodismo están vinculados a través de toda su narrativa de
ficción. Observaremos cómo su columna de opinión y su
investigación histórica son fundamentales para la comprensión
de su producción literaria. Galvis, como periodista, historiadora y
narradora de ficción, buscó bajo estas tres modalidades
narrativas dar a conocer a sus lectores su perspectiva sobre la
20
historia política del país, recurriendo a géneros y narradores
diversos para el caso de su novelística.
Desde sus primeras columnas de opinión publicadas en El
Espectador entre 1991 y 1997, se vislumbra su tendencia
didáctica, crítica y denunciatoria de diversos episodios políticos
en la historia del país. Su producción historiográfica, realizada
junto con el también periodista investigativo Alberto Donadío,
señala igualmente este deseo de dar a conocer episodios poco
conocidos de la historia de personajes y acontecimientos vitales
en el desarrollo político y cultural colombiano. Estos dos hechos
se interrelacionan en su producción literaria. Así, tanto el
contenido y el estilo de sus columnas de opinión y los temas de
los libros de historia Colombia Nazi 1939-1945 (1986), y El Jefe
Supremo (1988), escritos con Donadío, forman parte primordial
de la producción novelística histórica y documental de Galvis.1
Pero ¿cómo logra Galvis integrar el contenido periodístico e
histórico a su narrativa? Para ello, Galvis se vale de varios
mecanismos. Uno es el uso de varios géneros literarios
narrativos para comunicar dichos contenidos histórico-culturales
de forma menos academicista y oficial que el discurso
historiográfico, y en este sentido muestra más conexión con el
estilo satírico de sus columnas de opinión. Otro es un excelente
manejo de narradores que por medio de discursos serios, pero
también coloquiales y humorísticos permiten al lector
adentrarse en los ámbitos secretos políticos, judiciales y
periodísticos de Colombia. Para tal efecto, busca además de
narradores varios, personajes marginales: damas pacatas y
sorprendentes de la sociedad, niñas curiosas, empleadas
domésticas y mujeres envidiosas y descontentas que cuestionan
o charlan acerca de los eventos políticos y sociales del día a día.
Forman parte de su narrativa de ficción además, diálogos y
cartas privados entre políticos, documentos oficiales y
21
grabaciones de interrogatorios detectivescos sobre episodios de
corrupción política que son verdaderamente sorprendentes e
informativos al lector. De esta manera, su narrativa de ficción
forma un repertorio histórico-político y periodístico de los
eventos más importantes de la historia colombiana narrados a
veces de forma seria y otras de forma humorística. Por medio de
estos mecanismos, Galvis convierte su ficción en documentos
ricos en historia y vivencias generacionales de acontecimientos
histórico-políticos y culturales olvidados, ignorados o acallados
en la historia oficial colombiana. Este compromiso crítico social
de informar y enseñar sobre la historia, según lo implica la
narrativa de Galvis, debe ser obligación del historiadorperiodista y escritor en países donde la censura acalla. Elena
Poniatowska, periodista y escritora mexicana, señala que el
trabajo de las escritoras en América Latina, a diferencia de las
europeas o norteamericanas, es un trabajo más políticamente
comprometido contra las dictaduras y la censura. Esta
perspectiva coincide con la producción y finalidad literaria,
histórica y periodística de Galvis.2
Aníbal
González
arguye
que
la
narrativa
actual
hispanoamericana facilita a quienes trabajan en la doble función
de periodistas y literatos una mayor libertad para ejercer la
crítica que no les es permitida en la escritura periodística debido
a la censura. Observa que esta interrelación entre lo periodístico
y lo literario en Hispanoamérica viene desde comienzos de la
independencia y pone como ejemplo El Periquillo Sarniento
(1816) de José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776-1827). Según
González, Lizardi emplea el personaje del periquillo como una
forma disfrazada para hablar sobre sus propias experiencias
como periodista.3 Algo similar sucede con la narrativa de ficción
de Galvis cuyos personajes están de alguna forma involucrados
en la función del periodismo o en la tarea de volverse cronistas
22
de sus comunidades, cuestionando la situación de su entorno y
registrando los hechos como cronistas-periodistas.
Si se observan las dos primeras novelas de Galvis, ¡Viva
Cristo Rey! (1991) y Sabor a Mí (1994)4 y comparamos la
temática de de sus columnas de El Espectador con su producción
historiográfica, se advierte inmediatamente que su temática
pasa del discurso historiográfico encontrado en textos escritos
con Donadío al discurso periodístico de sus columnas, para luego
desarrollar esa misma temática en su narrativa de ficción,
utilizando narradores y mecanismos diversos. La producción
literaria de Galvis así subsume las otras dos y deja en evidencia
el acertado manejo literario de Galvis y la intención didáctica de
su narrativa que busca, por medio de formas simples, enseñar
los complejos procesos histórico-culturales de Colombia.
Sus columnas ‘Cholombia’ (02/02/92), ‘Modernización y
Barbarie’ (03/11/92), ‘Del Baculazo al Divorcio’ (23/08/92), ‘Cien
Años de Terquedad’ (20/09/92) y ‘Diez Balas por Diez Orejas’
(18/06/96), publicadas en El Espectador, y algunas de sus últimas
columnas publicadas en las revistas Alternativa (1997) y Cambio
16, Colombia (1998), tratan de forma seria y humorística sobre el
protagonismo de la iglesia católica en Colombia, su influencia en
los programas educativos y su relación con la violencia
bipartidista del país, junto con otros fenómenos sociales y
culturales como los de la cultura popular, la pobreza, la
impunidad, la corrupción política y la compleja situación de la
mujer en un país como Colombia.
¡Viva Cristo Rey!, primera novela de Galvis, narra la
violencia bipartidista desde la perspectiva de mujeres afectadas
por las creencias religiosas y políticas de su entorno. Sus dos
disímiles protagonistas, Rosalía Plata y Visitación Jinete ejercen
la crítica de formas inesperadas. Rosalía, de clase media, modela
sus acciones en el ejemplo de María Cano (1887-1967), una de
23
las líderes sindicalistas más importantes de los años veinte y
treinta en Colombia. Visitación, campesina amiga de Rosalía, es
violada por el terrateniente de la finca donde trabaja su familia
y, recurriendo a la escritura como única forma de conservar la
memoria de su familia y su comunidad, escribe un diario. Este
diario, escrito en un estilo oral campesino, registra las anécdotas
e historias político-sociales de un pueblo con características
políticas y sociales muy parecidas a las de Barrancabermeja,
ciudad petrolera y sindicalista colombiana por excelencia.5 A
través de estos dos personajes y de narradores de tercera y
primera persona, Galvis incorpora historias y testimonios rurales
de Colombia durante los primeros años de la violencia en el país,
también registrados en El Jefe Supremo. Galvis, al igual que
Visitación, busca registrar fenómenos políticos que han dejado
una profunda huella en el imaginario colombiano, pero que la
censura ha intentado acallar, caso de la violencia en Colombia.6
Pero para narrar estos episodios, Galvis mezcla lo privado de las
dos protagonistas con el entorno político patriarcal. Tanto la
sindicalista Rosalía como Visitación subvierten, en diversos
grados y formas, los patrones femeninos tradicionales de la
época en cuanto se hacen sujetos activos y partícipes del devenir
histórico-cultural de sus comunidades. Rosalía, desobedeciendo
las órdenes del padre y esposo, participa en los movimientos
sindicalistas mientras Visitación ocultamente escribe la historia
de su pueblo y de su familia en el diario. Sin embargo, los
resultados de las acciones de estas dos mujeres no son siempre
exitosos, comparados con los resultados políticos de algunos de
los hombres de la comunidad. Rosalía por su parte, decide
suspender su actividad política una vez asesinado su hijo y
rechaza la oferta de escribir en una revista radical. Visitación al
contrario, registra la historia en un diario esporádico y sin
rigurosidad cronológica. Visitación de esta forma se hace un
24
personaje doblemente subversivo porque además de registrar
las atrocidades de la violencia, lo hace en un estilo familiar,
campesino más comunicativo y cercano a las experiencias de su
comunidad, disímil del oficial. La novela de esta forma presenta
un contraste entre el discurso patriarcal repetitivo y vacío de los
políticos y religiosos de ese entonces, que conlleva al
enfrentamiento político y a la violencia irracional por un lado, y
por otro lado, señala cómo el discurso familiar y campesino
muestra de forma más efectiva las nefastas consecuencias del
discurso político oficial.
El uso de personajes que hacen uso de la escritura como
único mecanismo de sobrevivencia y resistencia al olvido, dadas
las dramáticas circunstancias socio-políticas del país, es una
característica recurrente en la narrativa ficticia de Galvis.
En su segunda novela, Sabor a Mí, hay dos niñas
protagonistas cuyas familias pertenecen a partidos políticos
contrarios, pero este hecho no afecta la amistad entre las dos
familias de las niñas pertenecientes a la clase media alta. La
novela es contada bajo las perspectivas de dos niñas
preadolescentes y se centra en el período del golpe militar en
Colombia bajo el mando del General Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957). La
temática de esta novela está igualmente contemplada en el
trabajo historiográfico El Jefe Supremo, realizado con Donadío y
en las columnas de El Espectador como ‘¿Legítima Nostalgia?’
08/12/91, ‘Hablando de Democracias’ (9/02/91), ‘Eva y el
Discurso de la Tutela’ (19/7/92) ‘Querido Tony’ (13/3/94), ‘Un
Purgatorio de Disparates’ (17/04/94), ‘Años de Candela’
(31/10/94) y otras más. En estas columnas se muestran no sólo
los temas relacionados con este período político, sino también el
estilo de habla de algunos personajes inventados que Galvis
desarrollará más en profundidad en esta novela.7 Una vez más
esta novela devela la estrecha relación entre su producción
25
histórico-periodística y su producción literaria. Aparte del estilo y
temática de sus columnas, Sabor a Mí guarda también gran
relación con otro de sus trabajos periodísticos, el de la entrevista
en Vida Mía (1993). En este texto periodístico se encuentran
nueve entrevistas a personajes femeninos colombianos de
diverso orígenes y formación profesional que cuentan vivencias
similares a las de sus dos personajes ficticios en Sabor a Mí. Esta
novela guarda igualmente similitud con la única producción
teatral de Galvis, De la Caída de un Ángel por Culpa de un Beso
Apasionado (1997), especialmente en las secciones compuestas
por Anita, una de las niñas que escribe en su diario lo que
escucha de los adultos en estilo de diálogos directos. Su amiga
Elenita, por otro lado, registra también lo que oye y ve en el
mundo de los adultos, pero en un estilo más indirecto y por ello
menos escénico. Las secciones escritas por Anita bien podrían
ser puestas en escena, como ha sucedido con novelas de
características más teatrales, caso de la producción literaria de
Manuel Puig, por ejemplo. El estilo conversacional y familiar en
Sabor a Mí guarda semejanza con el estilo de su texto teatral
aunque la historia de su novela es mucho menos predecible que
la del texto teatral.
Otro aspecto fundamental en la novelística de Galvis,
evidente en esta y otras novelas es el de la denuncia a la censura
periodística, tratada también en varios capítulos de El Jefe
Supremo.8 Aunque las dos protagonistas en Sabor a Mí enfocan su
narración en los acontecimientos de la vida privada familiar, ésta
siempre está marcada por los fenómenos político-sociales que
afectan especialmente a la familia de Anita por estar
comprometida con la profesión del periodismo de denuncia
durante el gobierno militar. Las dos niñas, desde sus perspectivas
aparentemente inocentes, dejan entrever la compleja situación
social, cultural y política del momento. Mientras las instituciones
26
educativas religiosas ven la influencia diabólica de los procesos
modernizadores por doquier (en el cine, la radionovela, los
periódicos liberales y la música bailable pecaminosa), las niñas se
preguntan por qué a pesar de ello la gente sigue consumiendo
estos productos que el mismo gobierno utiliza como formas de
entretenimiento para ocultar la corrupción y las masacres
ocurridas durante el período militar. Las dos niñas deciden escribir
un diario por separado que supuestamente confrontarán un día
que nunca llega, pues las circunstancias familiares y sociales lo
impiden. De esta forma, los diarios ocultos de las dos niñas se
convierten en verdaderas crónicas sociales que delatan los
acontecimientos políticos y culturales de Colombia bajo el régimen
militar. Por medio de la lectura de los dos diarios, el lector logra
tener un amplio conocimiento de las circunstancias políticosociales y culturales de Colombia durante el proceso modernizador
bajo la dictadura militar.
Soledad, Conspiraciones y Suspiros (2002) es la novela
histórica por excelencia de Galvis y por ende su novela más
extensa y compleja. Revisando una vez más la conexión entre su
producción periodística en El Espectador durante el año noventa y
cuatro, es evidente su interés historiográfico en el período de la
Regeneración (1884-1898). Columnas como ‘La Polilla de la
Púrpura’ (19/04/94), ‘La Muerte de la Presidenta’ (13/10/94) y ‘La
Triste Historia de Una Virgen Calva’ (07/?/ 95) dejan entrever el
interés histórico de Galvis en las intrigas, conspiraciones políticas,
guerras civiles, corrupción y censura periodística durante el
período regenerador en Colombia. Elena Araújo acierta en su
crítica cuando compara la obra historiográfica de Aída Martínez
Carreño (1940-2009) con la ficción histórica de Galvis. Araújo
escribe que Martínez es: ‘una historiadora que podría haber sido
novelista’ y sobre Galvis, ‘una novelista que podría haber sido
historiadora’.9 En realidad, esta novela de Galvis es un documento
27
histórico valioso que muestra, desde su perspectiva y la
perspectiva del periodismo radical de la Regeneración, diversos
momentos históricos importantes que influyeron notoriamente en
la cultura colombiana. A través de distintos narradores picarescos,
políticos serios, periodistas críticos y narradores marginales, el
lector se entera de la historia pública y privada de doña Soledad
Román y Rafael Núñez, sus protagonistas principales. Galvis se vale
para ello de cartas de políticos y diplomáticos nacionales y
extranjeros adversos a las políticas de Núñez, de pasquines
confiscados y de varios otros narradores. Éstos últimos se
encuentran insatisfechos con su función de narradores y acuden a
otros narradores con los cuales negocian y debaten entre sí sus
capacidades y deficiencias narrativas para poder cumplir la difícil
misión de contar esta larga historia marcada más por las
conveniencias personales y políticas de la pareja Núñez que por
intereses y necesidades públicas. La novela es rica en mostrar
diversos documentos haciendo de la misma novela un documento
histórico del proceso de la Regeneración y de la lucha ideológica
de periódicos como El Espectador durante la difícil censura bajo
este régimen. En esta novela, quienes escriben en periódicos son
los mismos personajes históricos reales que utilizan sus medios
informativos para propagar su ideología política. La novela señala
la importancia de la palabra escrita por parte de los políticos
quienes son cuidadosos en escoger el vocabulario, el tema y la
forma para provocar y atacar a sus adversarios políticos, caso de
Salvador Camacho (1827-1900), por ejemplo.10 La otra escritura
con la que se hace historia en esta novela, es la correspondencia
privada entre los diversos personajes históricos donde se
comentan severas críticas a políticos, temores, secretos, odios y
venganzas políticas de doña Soledad Román, primera dama de la
nación.
28
Finalmente, sus dos últimas novelas La Mujer que Sabía
Demasiado (2006) y Un Mal Asunto (2009) son más novelas de
corte documental que histórico, entendido por documental una
narración
ficticia
que
narra
acontecimientos
políticos
contemporáneos a la autora. Si se prefiere, podemos valernos
también del término de novela ‘catártica’ dado por Noé Jitrik,
cuando define este tipo de narraciones como novelas que
responden a necesidades de solucionar problemas inmediatos al
autor y por ello se dirigen hacia ‘necesidades analíticas propias de
una situación de cercanía’.11 Esta nueva postura narrativa de Galvis
se distancia de la narrativa de tendencia más histórica como la de
sus novelas mencionadas, aunque todas ellas contienen grados
diversos de historicidad.12
Si existe o no algún valor en este último tipo de ficción, ha
sido tema polémico entre académicos como Habermas para quien,
como indica en Opinión Pública, la remoción de la realidad al plano
de lo ficción da como ‘resultado un cómodo y acomodaticio
material de entretenimiento’.13 Dicho argumento indudablemente
tiene su validez; sin embargo, si observamos la situación política en
Hispanoamérica, este tipo de novelas puede más bien indicarnos
que aún existe la necesidad de realizar narraciones ficticias críticas
de denuncia sobre hechos no abiertamente discutidos ni
claramente solucionados a nivel público, como el caso de
corrupción política. La intensidad de la denuncia dependerá
obviamente del grado de conocimiento que el lector tenga sobre el
hecho real referido. Pero, incluso si el lector desconoce los hechos
reales, estas narraciones dejan sembrada la inquietud en el lector
sobre los mecanismos y grados de corrupción extremos a los que
puede llegarse en países como Colombia. Por medio de este tipo
de narraciones ficticio-reales, la crítica y la denuncia son evidentes
como sugiere González cuando arguye que dada la represión a
periodistas hispanoamericanos, éstos tienden a echar mano a
29
formas literarias como única forma de denuncia. (González,
Journalism, 13).
Observando
sus
columnas
‘Una
Extraña
Extradición’
(02/07/95), ‘El Profesor Blackaman Responde’ (06/08/95), ‘Los
Pechos de Carlina Martínez Guerraaaa, y Yo’ (20/08/95) y ‘Una
Cirugía Revolucionaria’ (19/09/96) entre muchas otras, es obvio
que el tema de corrupción durante el gobierno de Ernesto Samper
(1994-1998) fue reiterativo. En las columnas se ve plasmada
claramente la denuncia a la corrupción política colombiana que
Galvis hábilmente transforma luego en novelas detectivescas en
las que el lector se vuelve el periodista investigativo de esos
eventos. Se develan allí documentos de interrogatorios detallados
donde el lector no logra saber si son formas camufladas de la
autora para develar lo ‘real’, o si más bien son diálogos inventados
entre detectives y testigos. También, en La Mujer que Sabía
Demasiado, el fiscal Nolano toma el rol de cronista de la historia
que investiga en cuanto decide crear una novela paralela a su
investigación, haciendo de esta meta-ficción un mecanismo de
apoyo a su propia investigación, cumpliendo a su vez su sueño
frustrado de escribir una novela detectivesca.
De esta manera los personajes de la narrativa Galvis son una
proyección de su misma labor en cuanto todos, de alguna manera
y por medio de distintos mecanismos, registran y cuentan la
historia de Colombia y la historia del periodismo en el país. En las
novelas de Galvis confluyen la investigación historiográfica, su
columna de opinión y la sátira de su estilo periodístico, camufladas
de ficción. En un país de ‘memoria lacustre’, la ficción se vuelve
una necesidad social fundamental y una nueva forma didáctica de
enseñar y preservar la memoria histórica del país.14 Por esta razón
podemos afirmar que Galvis fue una verdadera cronista de la
historia político-cultural colombiana y de ahí la importancia de su
trabajo histórico, periodístico y literario.
30
1 Colombia Nazi 1939-1945 (Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1986); El Jefe
Supremo (Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1988).
2 Elena Poniatowska, ‘Women Writing and Living in Latin America’ en Contemporary
Women Writing in the other Americas, ed. Georgiana M. M. Colvile, (New York:
Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), 156.
3 Aníbal González, Journalism and the Development of Spanish American Narrative
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 37.
4 !Viva Cristo Rey! (Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1991); Sabor a Mí,
(Bogotá: Arango Editores , 1994).
5 Mauricio Archila, Cultura e Identidad Obrera. Colombia 1910-1945 (Bogotá: CINEP,
1991), 66-70.
6 Salomón Kalmanovitz, ‘El Desarrollo Histórico del Campo’ en Colombia Hoy
(Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores, 1978), 287-8.
7 Véanse los personajes Don Sotomayor Silva y la tía Horte en El Espectador,
24/11/91 y 08/12/91.
8 Alberto Donadío y Silvia Galvis, El Jefe Supremo (Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana,
1988), 276-349.
9 Helena Araújo, ‘Aída Martínez y Silvia Galvis: Del Documento al Relato y de la
Ficción a la Historia’, Literatura: Teoría, Historia y Crítica. Revista de la Universidad
Nacional de Colombia (Santafé de Bogotá, No. 8, 2006), 144.
10 Soledad Conspiraciones y Suspiros (Bogotá: Arango Editores, 2002), 35.
11 María Cristina Pons, Memorias del Olvido. Del Paso, García Márquez, Saer y la
Novela Histórica de Fines del Siglo XX. (México: Siglo XXI, 1996), 53-4.
12 Jeannette Uribe, Historia y Periodismo en las Novelas de Silvia Galvis
(Nottingham: Tesis doctoral, 2011). Caps. 4 y 5 en particular.
13 Jürgen Habermas, Historia y Crítica de la Opinión Pública. (Barcelona: Editorial
Gustavo Gili, 2004), 198.
14 Galvis escribe: ‘Este país no tiene historia, sufre de memoria lacustre, es decir,
llena de lagunas. Aquí todo se olvida, y lo que no se olvida, de todas maneras, lo
cubre el polvo de la impunidad [...]’ en El Espectador, 24/11/1991.
31
‘Ya no puedo más’ - Mason
‘Ya no puedo más’
Commemoration and Catharsis in Olga Alonso
González’s Testimonios (1973)
Sofia Mason
Abstract
Published in Cuba to commemorate Olga Alonso’s accidental death
in 1964, at the age of nineteen, and to promulgate her image as a
Revolutionary heroine, this multifaceted text combines poetry,
epistolary writing and diary entries to communicate Olga’s
arguably traumatic experience of volunteering in rural Cuba during
the first five years of the Revolution of 1959. Olga’s writing
explores themes such as coming-of-age sexuality, unrequited love,
depression, political frustration and an insecure, fragmented sense
of self. The text is a particularly paradoxical example of women’s
testimonio as it presents a sharp tension between the occasional
but zealous expression of Olga’s political convictions, highlighted
by the official revolutionary editor, and her more critical, intimate
thoughts and feelings, revealed in her erotic, morbid poetry and
brutally honest letters to her mother.
32
B
orn on 18th February 1945, Olga Alonso joined the Escuela
para Instructores de Arte in 1961, the same year as the
Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) invasion. She graduated in 1963,
and from October to November of that year she volunteered in the
province of Camagüey, which had been badly hit by Hurricane
Flora.1 Olga also volunteered during the coffee harvest, and as the
Orientadora de Teatro Regional she organised theatre productions
and classes for the rural population.2 On the 4th of March 1964, on
her way to teach a class, she was killed in an accident involving a
tractor. She was nineteen years old.3
Written during her time in rural Cuba, Testimonios critically
explores the Revolution’s cultural policy as expressed in Fidel
Castro’s ‘Palabras a los Intelectuales’ (1961).4 The speech put
forward the notion of sacrificing individual artistic objectives for
those of the revolutionary collective, as Olga’s own theatrical
interests were put aside to work with campesinos. The most
quoted line from the speech, ‘Dentro de la Revolución todo; contra
la Revolución, nada’, is also applicable, because, as a volunteer,
Olga was inside the Revolution and it is for this reason that it was
possible for her testimonio to be published. However, the candid
honesty with which rural voluntary work is described threatens to
undermine the Revolution’s idealisation of volunteering and rural
Cuba. While her work as an ‘Instructora de Arte’ upheld
revolutionary cultural policy, many of Olga’s poems ignore the call
to make art for the masses that promotes the Revolution. Instead,
her poetry explores personal themes such as love, sexuality and
depression; Testimonios contains more personal reflection than
political analysis. The Revolution has published an account that
superficially seems uncritically to transmit revolutionary ideology
and, while the paratext encourages this reading, the first-person
account of the testimonialista problematises it.5 Ambivalent
emotions are cathartically explored and thus carefully authorised
33
in keeping with Aristotle’s observations regarding tragedy in
Poetics.6
A close reading of Testimonios reveals that Olga struggled to
adjust to the unusual and unsettling new environment of rural
Cuba and that writing became a cathartic expression of this
difficult period in her adolescent life. Olga was not suffering from
conventional trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a
result of a war or natural disaster, although she was affected by
the Revolutionary war, the Bay of Pigs invasion at Playa Girón and
Hurricane
Flora.
It
is,
rather,
the
potentially
traumatic
psychological response to volunteering in rural Cuba, leaving her
family for an extensive period of time and adapting to a radically
different way of life that is examined. While normal for many
Cubans, for a middle-class student the conditions of rural working
life were extremely challenging. Throughout Testimonios Alonso
repeatedly complains of homesickness and the fatigue she
experienced due to the arduous physical labour of working the
land. Gente Nueva may, therefore, have published this account not
only to celebrate her sacrifice but also to legitimise similar
concerns or experiences for Cuban readers.
The first page of Testimonios features one sentence in italics
‘los jóvenes pensamos que somos historia porque sabemos que
somos historia.’7 The quote, from a poem that appears later in the
text, is emphasised as it celebrates the political activism of young
people, an important aspect of Cuba’s early programme of mass
mobilisation. The political framework of the text is clear:
‘Reproducción de la edición hecha por el Departamento de
Orientación Revolucionaria del Comité Central del Partido
Comunista de Cuba, La Habana, 1973, Año del XX aniversario'
(Alonso, Testimonios, inside sleeve).’ Although published to
commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Moncada, the text is
also, as we shall see, multifaceted in that it explores revolutionary
34
cultural guidelines and challenges the glorification of volunteering
and rural Cuba while revealing adolescent concerns regarding
identity and typical teenage emotions of love, depression and
angst.8
A thorough analysis of the themes of identity and
adolescence falls beyond the remit of this paper, but the reading
presented here concurs with Par Kumaraswami’s analysis that
Testimonios constitutes: ‘the early attempts of a young Cuban
woman to represent, and therefore define, a new identity-in-themaking, a subject/object definition which might reconcile the
conflicting worlds of self-interest and self-sacrifice, of personal
love and ‘amor revolucionario’ of private thoughts and public
actions’.9
The conflicting worlds of commemoration and catharsis,
childhood and adulthood might also be added to this list. With
attention to Olga’s more depressive and suicidal poetry, the
argument that she was ultimately incapable of developing this new
identity and reconciling these conflicting interests emerges as
themes of morbidity and mental instability continually recur.
Testimonios is comprised of eleven letters, thirty-seven
poems, three of which have the structure of a letter, and twentyseven diary entries, all of which are written in the first-person by
Olga.10 The first seven diary entries are at the beginning of the text,
while the last twenty are at the end. Most of the letters, and the
poems in letter format, are addressed to Olga’s mother, and the
dedication is also written by her, foregrounding the mother/
daughter relationship. The ‘dedicatoria’ quotes one of her
daughter’s letters: ‘no quiero que mi escritura se quede sin voz, no
quiero que dejen de oírla con los ojos, es mi voceo. Es mi palabra…’
(Alonso, Testimonios, 7). Motivated by these words, Olga’s mother
collected her daughter’s writing:
35
Al pueblo que recibió su sangre humilde, su sangre joven,
llena de ardores, deseos, esperanzas. A este pueblo que
alimentó sus letras, haciéndolas fuertes y generosas: entrego
(Alonso, Testimonios, 7).
Throughout the dedication there is a sense that Olga’s mother
is coping with her daughter’s death by conceptualising it as a
revolutionary sacrifice. No reference is made to the fact that Olga
died in an accident. The relationship between mother and
daughter is highlighted to create the sense of a personal account
and to humanise the testimonialista while stressing her connection
to the family and the domestic sphere; unaccompanied female
voluntary labour is sanitised of potential controversy; while Olga
may have been far from home she was still a dutiful daughter,
while somewhat independent, she did not forget the patriarchal
norms to which she was obliged to abide.11
The prologue, written by Anilcie Arévalo Ocaña, also fails to
mention Olga’s death. Instead it praises Olga’s writing and
encourages the reader to adopt a particular interpretation of the
text: ‘en sus testimonios nada está presumido ni coloreado,
ninguna frase fue internada en los laboratorios de la imaginación,
resultan
así,
explosivas,
maternales,
respondiendo
a
su
personalidad; escribir para ella era juntar corceles y flores
destinadas a pelear hasta el último pétalo’ (Alonso, Testimonios,
10).
The use of the adjective ‘maternal’ supports the argument
that connections to the sphere of the family are foregrounded by
the paratext of Testimonios. The paratext also largely conflicts with
the content; in both cases the editors contain the first-person
narrative of the testimonialista. Obscuring the fact that most of
the letters and poems are not overtly political, Arévalo Ocaña
continues to suggest otherwise to the reader:
36
Se admira en Olga Alonso la autocrítica continua, la seriedad
ante
las
responsabilidades,
su
madurez
súbita,
la
preocupación constante por entregar mayores y mejores
frutos de creación; irrumpiendo violenta y analíticamente
contra las falsas erudiciones, las posturas extravagantes y las
divagaciones, nóminas de un Arte pasado contra el cual lucha
por rescatar en grado absoluto de pureza las nuevas
aspiraciones artísticas y culturales que exige la Revolución
(Alonso, Testimonios, 11 – 12).
There is no attempt to account for the numerous love poems,
letters and diary entries that seem critically to explore the
Revolution’s
cultural
and
artistic
aspirations
rather than
unambiguously to enforce them. The reader is encouraged not to
pay attention to the significance of these sections of Testimonios,
or at least not to interpret them as beyond the limits of what is
pro-revolutionary and acceptable. Rather the paratext suggests
that Olga’s writing is a spontaneous, direct and honest expression
of a young, dedicated revolutionary which contrasts with the
contrived, elite, bourgeois art of pre-revolutionary Cuba.12
Testimonios has no contents page and is not structured
chronologically. Chapters are introduced with a quote from a
poem or letter that follows, located in the middle of the page in
italics. An unnamed editor appears at the beginning of the book
only to underline their own absence: ‘En esta edición se ha
respetado la gratía y el estilo de la autora.’ (Alonso, Testimonios,
14). Although she or he is not named, the editor provides
contextual information throughout. The first example of epistolary
writing is introduced under the heading ‘REMEMBER PLAYA
GIRON. [Sic.] Esta carta fue escrita en el año 1962, como respuesta
a los insultos de una exilada.’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 17).
Throughout the zealous and explicitly political letter Olga argues
against US intervention in Latin America:
37
¿Cree a Cuba inocente? Ahora es cuando ha dejado de serlo.
Ahora. Independiente ya de ese ‘maravilloso’ país donde Ud.
vive. A costa del sudor de bananeros de Panamá y Colombia, a
costa de consumir sus vidas los petróleos de Venezuela y
México, a costa de destrozar sus manos los mineros de
Bolivia, a costa de todos los pueblos subdesarrollados, que
mantienen en la más ignominiosa ignorancia, en la miseria.
Nunca ha pensado en eso ¿Verdad? No. Nunca (Alonso,
Testimonios, 19).
The belligerent tone of the letter to the anonymous exile and
the use of angry rhetorical questions persuasively convey the
political convictions held by the author. In contrast to the letter,
however, most of the text is not overtly political; a deliberate
editorial decision has placed the pro-revolutionary texts at the
beginning and end of the testimonio with the result that a prorevolutionary account is simulated.
The tone of the following letter differs considerably from the
first. Written to an unnamed ‘compañero latinoamericano’, it is
clearly a love letter.13 In an unusual combination of the literary,
personal and political, Olga interrupts the passionate articulation
of her feelings to briefly discuss the restructuring of the Unión de
Jóvenes Comunistas before describing nightfall with complex
poetic imagery: ‘[E]s de noche: la luna soñolienta despertó al sol
mojado de mar, y su bosteza gordo y amarillo ha prendido una flor
de arcoíris que ha llegada a mi cara pegada a la tierra verde y
carmelita’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 26).
She describes the sun as ‘rojo, colérico porque tiene que
marcharse.’ Olga Alonso’s natural imagery is without political
symbolism; poetic language, the personification of the sun, and the
description of natural phenomena is employed to communicate
personal feelings. Throughout the text, Olga’s use of such imagery
38
is not, as we shall see, explicitly produced in the interests of the
revolutionary collective.
While the mother/daughter relationship is highlighted by the
paratext to connect Olga’s account to the patriarchal family unit, it
is while writing to her mother that Olga most explicitly challenges
the glorification of voluntary work and the rural population. One
letter begins by providing precise information, such as the times at
which they work, and what and when they eat. She explains that it
is due to the hot sun that their work day is divided between a
morning and an afternoon shift and she frequently reiterates the
physical difficulties of such manual labour. Unlike the way in which
the literacy crusades were presented by other Cuban writers,
Olga’s complaints demonstrate that she found working in the
countryside with el pueblo extremely challenging. Despite the
sense of conciencia revolucionaria expressed in her letter to an
exile above, Olga complains about almost every aspect of rural life
and work. She begins with a general complaint about the climate:
‘hay un calor sofocante y mucho polvo’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 95),
which does not suit her: ‘Tengo la cara ardiendo de colorada, dicen
que parezco manzanita’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 96). The rural
poverty and lack of basic infrastructure and amenities irritate her:
‘no hay luz eléctrica y en la tienda del pueblo no hay casi nada’
(Alonso, Testimonios, 95) She also laments that ‘El agua tiene un
sabor malísimo, porque no hay cañería, es de pozo, y la tomamos
siempre con limón’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 96). The source of the
irritation is not indignation for the impoverished conditions of the
local population but rather personal inconvenience. She also
complains about the standard of her accommodation to which she
was evidently unaccustomed: ‘dormimos en una barraca, que está
sucísima, llena de telarañas y comején, con pinturas horribles de
santos en las paredes… las hamacas de los compañeros son de
saco pica-pica…’ (Alonso, Testimonio, 96).
39
In a statement that harbours classist sentiments, as opposed
to the traditional Marxist idealisation of the worker, she
complains: ‘Tenemos peste a trabajador de campo, olor a manigua’
(Alonso, Testimonios, 96). This statement solidifies the notion that
her middle-class, urban upbringing left her ill-prepared for the
harsh realities of working life in the Cuban countryside. Perhaps
the most subversive complaint points to the political apathy and
laziness of the rural people, undermining Dora Alonso’s
presentation of them as generous, welcoming and humble: ‘Las
gentes aquí son un poco apáticas y todo es hastio; pero resistimos’
(Alonso, Testimonios, 98) and she continues:
Aquí se cree imposible dar ningún acto cultural porque la
gente ni canta ni come fruta. Los hombres aquí son muy vagos
y son pocos a los que le gusta trabajar la tierra (Alonso,
Testimonios, 97).
In stark contrast to the ideal of the hardworking, historically
exploited, passionately pro-revolutionary campesino, Olga Alonso
describes an apathetic people who resist progress, education and
work. The letter ends ‘Mami, con el cansancio de cinco días de
arduo trabajo dejo de escribirte para continuar mi tarea.
Escríbeme bastante’ and signed ‘mami, mami tengo que irme ya.Chao, Olguita’ (Alonso, Testimonio, 99). In light of the rest of the
letter, the repetition of ‘mami’ sounds almost desperate. By
foregrounding her five days of hard work, Olga again draws
attention to her middle-class background, as peasant girls would
be accustomed to such regular manual labour. Olga’s potentially
subversive complaints may have been included in the testimonio in
order to highlight the sacrifices made by middle-class young
women such as Olga with a view to encouraging readers to
volunteer and participate in mass organisations. As above, this
apparent authorisation of ambivalence might also function as a
40
form of catharsis for Cuban readers, validating and legitimising
such experiences and emotions and containing them within a prorevolutionary framework. Nevertheless, her account does not
paint an appealing picture of rural Cuba, her letters, poetry and
diary entries seem to function more to criticise the Revolution’s
insistence on the importance of volunteering than to promote it.
The notion that Testimonios articulates problematic emotions
as a form of catharsis is further developed with a poem that
explores the recurring theme of death. Olga continues to combine
poetry and epistolary writing as the poem repeatedly addresses
her mother, ‘madre camarada’:
En esta vida
morir es cosa fácil
Hacer vida es mucho más difícil –dijo
Maiakovski y se pegó un tiro
¡Seamos el ejemplo de su verso
sin pistola!
Los jóvenes, madre camarada
pensamos que somos historia
porque sabemos que somos historia (Alonso, Testimonios, 183)
It is ironic that the quote about revolutionary youth we saw
placed at the very beginning of the book, is taken from such a
poem. The reference to Vladimir Mayakovsky may have political
significance; born in 1893, he committed suicide in 1930 and was a
poet, playwright and member of the Futurist movement:
‘Romantics suggest that he killed himself over a woman, while
realists maintain that he succumbed to a grave mental illness.’14
His poetry was concerned with themes such as ‘a man’s longing for
love and his suffering at the hands of the loveless’, a theme to
which Olga may have been able to relate as she also wrote on the
topic of unrequited love (Alonso, Testimonios, 13).15 If Futurists
disregarded syntax, formal writing and punctuation, then Olga may
41
well have been imitating their style in her poetry. Mayakovsky was
a socialist activist who, ironically considering Cuba’s relationship
with the Soviet Union, became disillusioned with Stalinism.
The cathartic function of the poem becomes apparent as Olga
confesses to feelings of fear while simultaneously encouraging
herself by asserting her bravery: ‘a veces, madre, tengo miedo...
los ruidos en la noche son más grandes y sé que no soy cobarde.’
The poem ends by exploring Olga’s own death in more detail:
¡Yo moriré tremendamente llena!
Resplandeciente
de blanco marfil
en el comienzo del Mundo
donde todos me vean morir
donde todos me sientan
donde todos me huelan.
¡Seré un cadáver sin cuerpo!
¡eternamente humana!
¡Madre camarada
vivirás orgullosa
de tu hija camarada! (Alonso, Testimonios,185)
The recurring themes of death, fear, depression and identity
crisis support the argument that Olga was both traumatised by the
harsh experiences of rural volunteering and exploring themes
common during adolescence.16 These death fantasies and the
direct reference to a famous suicide contrast with the treatment of
martyrdom in the paratext of the Cuban testimonios examined
above. The cautiously defiant tone, and the way in which it
attempts to assert a sense of agency in the face of death,
reinforces the reading of the poem as a cathartic attempt to
remain strong in the face of difficult experiences and negative
emotions.
42
A particularly dramatic and literary poem, which provides
further cathartic expression for feelings of frustration and distress,
begins by addressing a lover before revealing an existential crisis:
Amor mío.
Sola con soledad.
No puedo más.
Ni aún conmigo misma.
Me busco.
Me hallo.
Me destruyo.
Sales tú renovado.
Te yergues ante mí.
Te haces gigante.
Te desvaneces.
Mis cenizas se dispersan en tu busca.
Vuelven a unirse en una lágrima.
Yo ya no soy yo.
Tú ya no estás
Hago silencio.muerdo
Ruido para no oír el silencio.
Estoy loca...loca...loca...loca!
Quiero cambiar de mundo
quiero….quiero….quiero
Y nadie quiere
¡Ya! ¡Ya! ¡Ya!! ¡¡Ya!!
Recuerdo del olvido.
Siempre todos olvidan recordando.
Ya no puedo más
Repetida frase.
Tan rebuscada. Tan dicha.
Basta. Basta. Basta (Alonso, Testimonios 157 – 8).
The poet looks for herself, finds herself and then destroys
herself, a clear reference to an adolescent identity crisis. The
repetition of ‘quiero’ underlines the rejection of the collective
43
identity at the heart of revolutionary politics, as her personal
desire takes precedence. The internal rhyme and euphony of the
line, borrowed from Federico García Lorca, ‘Yo ya no soy yo’
emphasise her identity crisis and the repetition of ‘yo’ underscores
her self-prioritisation. The poem is a palimpsest, as echoes of
contemporaries of Lorca may also be found.17 The irritating
repeated sentence referred to may be a revolutionary slogan,
strengthening the notion she is experiencing some political
disillusionment. Alternatively, ‘no puedo más’ might be the
offending sentence, as Olga attempts to summon the strength and
courage to continue her volunteer work. The line following the
repetition of ‘loca’ provides some clarity if read in keeping with the
interpretation of Testimonios that sees it as a politically
unorthodox work; Olga does not want to change the world,
improve it in keeping with revolutionary objectives, rather she
wants to change worlds, and wishes that she was not volunteering
in 1960s rural Cuba.
The anonymous editor of Testimonios employs paratextual
strategies, such as chapter titles, to underline the political and
downplay the challenging material, so that the chapter that is, in
fact, comprised of erotic love poems is entitled ‘¡Seremos ejemplo
de amor comunista!’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 135). One poem with
strong sexual connotations repeats the word ‘ven’ at the beginning
of several lines: ‘ven hasta mi playa’ and ‘ven hasta mi grandeza’
(Alonso, Testimonios, 137). Sexual imagery recurs as the same
poem uses images from nature such as ‘caracoles’, flowers and
gardens: ‘multiplica la flor/en mí súmate.../aquí... todo un jardín te
espera’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 137). Olga makes effective use of the
natural imagery of a thunderstorm to explore her sexuality in a
poem from the same section, which begins ‘está lloviendo ... /y.../
[...] en cada gotica de agua/ estás tú.’ Olga paints a vivid image of
the sea reflecting the tempestuous sky: ‘el mar.../es una
44
prolongación de cielo lluvioso’ before returning to this image to
express erotic longing later in the poem ‘quisiera ser una
prolongación tuya.’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 145). Natural imagery
recurs throughout Olga’s love poetry; she repeatedly employs
imagery of precipitation and other weather conditions, flora and
fauna to explore her own sexuality and feelings of desire.
Towards the end of Testimonios, poems about sexuality and
depression are followed by more pro-revolutionary and political
poems, arguably a deliberate editing technique adopted to contain
the piece within acceptable pro-revolutionary parameters.18
Passionate, personal poems concerned with unrequited love are
framed by the pledge of the ‘Instructores de Arte’ and the final
two poems are unequivocally pro-revolutionary and political:
Sois un ejército del arte
-nos dijo nuestro félix pita…
como diploma de graduación
¡Bravo camarada Félix no se equivocaba,
una vez más, ha acertado!
Confiaba usted en nosotros
desde las primeras letras escritas
en las paredes de nuestras aulas
y más aún
cuando fuimos intelectuales
del café
el maíz
del frijol…
de la caña
somos un ejército del arte [..]
tú me enseñas
que se siembra en el tiempo de la seca
manejar
un arma
yo te enseño la conjugación de los verbos que te traigo
actuar
45
cantar
bailar
pintar
[...]
nuestro manifesto
es consigna de la práctica:
¡y nos pertenece a los instructores,
a ustedes también, si quisieran!
¡por un arte revolucionario socialista
para las masas obreras y campesinas!
Patria o Muerte
¡Venceremos! (Alonso, Testimonios, 209 – 214)
This final poem is addressed to the Cuban writer Félix Pita
Rodríguez and the first-person plural, used intermittently
throughout the poem, incorporates the other students at the
school for ‘Instructores de Arte’ and contrasts with the
predominance of the first-person singular in the rest of Olga’s
poetry. A nature versus culture dichotomy is set up through the
structure of the poem, which has the effect of underlining the
difference between the rural Cuba of the campesinos and the
urban Cuba of the volunteers. The way in which the words coffee,
corn, beans and sugar, all representative of rural Cuba, are
separated from the rest of the text draws attention to them in
contrast to the verbs act, sing, dance and paint, also separated,
which represent the cultural activities that Olga and her fellow
students were to take to the Cuban countryside. Despite this,
apparently deliberately selected, pro-revolutionary ending and the
sparse other examples of Olga’s strong political convictions,
Testimonios is an exceptionally complex, dense and literary
example of Cuban women’s testimonial literature. It challenges
revolutionary idealisation of voluntary work, rural Cuba and
campesinos. In addition, through sexual and morbid poetry and
46
personal letters it critically explores the limitations of the
guidelines for revolutionary art put forward by Castro in ‘Palabras
a los Intelectuales.’ Ultimately however, as Olga was a dedicated
revolutionary volunteer, her writing is ‘dentro’ and not ‘contra la
Revolución.’
1
Olga Alonso, Testimonios. (La Habana: Departamento de Orientación
Revolucionaria del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba. 1973), cover.
2
The Comisión de Alfabetización was founded to confront the high level of illiteracy
in rural areas and 1961 was declared the Year of Education. The campaign was the
Revolution’s first major, nationwide operation and despite its militaristic tone it was
both a humanitarian mission and ‘a profoundly political effort, one tied intimately to
the revolutionary transformation of society and the economy.’ See Richard Fagen,
The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba. (California: Stanford University
Press. 1969), 35.
3
Catherine Davies, A Place in the Sun? Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba.
(London and New Jersey: Zed Books. 1997), 130.
4
Fidel Castro. Speech on 30th June 1961 available at
www.min.cult.cu/historia/palabras.doc
5
The paratext is defined as that which “enables a text to become a book and to be
offered as such to its readers, and more generally, to the public” and includes
prefactorial texts, chapter titles and all other editorial decisions. Gérard Gennette
(translated by Jane E. Lewin). Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 1997), 1.
6
In his Poetics Aristotle states that tragedy ‘effects through pity and fear the proper
catharsis of these emotions.’ Here catharsis might mean purging (as it does in a
related passage of Aristotle’s Politics, in which music is said to get rid of, ‘katharein’,
disruptive emotions). But catharsis can also mean a purification; and, in addition, a
demonstration or display. Beyond the issue of tragedy, catharsis involves the use of
traumatic experience in any genre. See David Mikics, New Handbook of Literary
Terms. (New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press, 2007), 52. This chapter also finds
relevant the more recent definition:
‘The term catharsis has also been adopted by modern psychotherapy, particularly
Freudian psychoanalysis, to describe the act of expressing deep emotions often
associated with events in the individual’s past which have never before been
adequately expressed. Catharsis is also an emotional release associated with talking
about underlying causes of the problem.’ From Ambreen Safder Kharbe, English
Language and Literary Criticism. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House: 2009), 193.
7
Olga Alonso, Testimonios (La Habana: Editorial Gente Nueva, 1973). All subsequent
references are also from this edition and pages numbers will be provided
parenthetically in the text.
47
8
An understanding of adolescence is crucial for a successful reading of Testimonios.
Olga’s distance from her family can be understood as of one of several ‘main status
transitions’ that form part of adolescent growth and development, as outlined in
John C. Coleman, The nature of adolescence. (London: Routledge, 1999), 9.
The identity crisis that Olga seems to be working through must also be
placed in this context as ‘intrapsychic restructuring during adolescence brings
identity questions to the surface; while socio-cultural factors undoubtedly may
accelerate, delay or even arrest this developmental process, sequential stages in the
transformation of the self and its way of understanding remain unaltered, according
to this developmental perspective. Transformations in cognitive and affective
processes or qualitative change in some self (ego) structure which subtends both
these facets of identity have all been held accountable for alterations to the
subjective sense of ‘I’ frequently experienced during life’s second decade.’ Jane
Koger, Identity in Adolescence: The Balance Between Self and Other (New York,
London: Routledge, 1996), 6.
The observation that during adolescence ‘Creativity, love and hope battle
with hatred, aggression, violence, depression and suicidal despair’ is also relevant, as
Testimonios grapples with all of these emotions. Inge Wise, Adolescence:
Psychoanalytic Ideas [should this not all be in italics? Is there a colon between
Adolescence and Psychoanalytic?] (London: Karnac Books, 2000), 2. Olga’s recurring
concern with death is also explained with reference to this literature which explains
that thoughts of suicide ‘are not unusual in adolescence. They are not in themselves
a sign of serious disturbance, although attempted suicide is. [...] The loss of
childhood, the growing awareness of time passing, of their own and parental
mortality, and overwhelming anxieties in relation to these collide with feelings of
omnipotence and youthful exuberance.’ (Wise, Adolescence, 4). ‘Conscious thoughts
about death are not infrequent in adolescence. Most adolescents entertain, at some
point or other, the wish to kill themselves, to disappear, to see their parents dead.’
(Wise, Adolescence, 23).
9
Par Kumaraswami, ‘‘Pensamos que somos historia porque sabemos que somos
historia’: Context, Self and Self-construction in Women’s Testimonial Writing from
Revolutionary Cuba.’ Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Vol. 83. No. 6. 2006), 523 – 539.
10
Of Testimonio’s eleven letters, the first is written to the aforementioned exile, the
second to the anonymous ‘compañero latinoamericano’, a further six to Olga’s
mother, one to her grandmother, one to her grandparents and another to her
mother, father, grandmother and other relatives.
11
“For the first time the Cuban government sent adolescent girls out on their own,
far from home and the protection of their parents. Such a policy would have been
astonishing, unthinkable perhaps, only a few years before. This wholly new
experience for Cuban girls caused a great deal of anxiety for parents. To assuage
their fears, Fidel Castro insisted that the girls working in the countryside with the
literacy campaign would remain “virtuous.” They would not be living with the
peasants. The girls would be more closely supervised than their male counterparts
and would be housed in huts with females only. The sexual revolution had not
reached Cuba, and the leadership tacitly assured parents that the familiar sexual
double standard still prevailed.” According to Julie Marie Bunke. Fidel Castro and
the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1994), 95.
48
12
It is worth noting the difference between the treatment of Olga’s subversive
poetry and that of Heberto Padilla who was imprisoned in 1971, two years before
Testimonios was published.
13
She states: ‘te siento a mi lado y traes el aire fresco de primavera recién
estrenada. Miro tus ojos. ¿cómo son tus ojos? … con la alegría con que la madre
recibe al niño recién nacido he recibido tu carta.’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 25)
14
‘Introduction. The Two Deaths of Vladmir Mayakovsky.’ Vladmir Mayakovsky, The
bedbug and selected poetry (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1975), 11.
15
The ending of a particularly passionate poem ‘te amo intensamente/pero.../no
debes saberlo no/no te gustaría’ suggests that Olga’s love is unrequited. She
provides more details in another poem: ‘¡Mi amante es instructor de Arte/y fue
electo obrero de vanguardia!’ (Alonso, Testimonios, 162). Rather than being proud
of her lover’s contribution to revolutionary voluntary work, Olga laments his
decision and implies that she blames the Revolution for separating them.
16
As we saw above with reference to Wise.
17
Lines 5 – 10 seem to echo ‘La Injusticia’ by Damas Alonso. ‘Yo ya no soy yo’ is a
direct quote from Lorca’s ‘Romance Sonámbulo’ as stated. The lines ‘Recuerdo del
olvido/ Siempre todos olvidan’ might be a reference to Miguel de Unamuno’s
‘Domirse en el olvido’, the first two lines of which read ‘Dormirse en el olvido del
recuerdo,/ en el recuerdo del olvido.’
18
The lengthy poem that begins the last section of the book is largely about the
Segundo Congreso Latinoamericano de Jóvenes, (Alonso, Testimonios, 193). This is
followed by a series of diary entries concerned with her lover: ‘¿cuándo podré tener
el derecho como otras muchachas, de amarte en nuestro hogar? sí: ya sé, la lucha, la
revolución... pero... ¿no puedo tenerlo dentro de ella?¡dí amor! ¿es culpa mía
amarte tanto?’ (204 – 205). Here Olga again explicitly dismisses the Revolution in
favour of personal concerns. The ‘Instructores de Arte’ poem follows as these diary
entries are sandwiched between pro-Revolutionary writing.
49
False Legacies - Clymer
False Legacies:
Narrating Madrid’s History in Early Modern Spain
Camille Clymer
Abstract
This paper examines the proliferation of pseudo-historical
narratives of Madrid’s supposed glorious history, penned after the
settlement of the Spanish court there in 1561. The court’s
presence in Madrid and desire to establish Madrid as a world
power required the previously small town to be socially and
architecturally reformed, to create retrospectively a city befitting
its royal court. Concurrent with the rebuilding of the city, came the
desire to justify the court’s otherwise ordinary location through
chronicles and histories. Chroniclers of the courts of Kings Philip II
and III began to create a historical narrative of Madrid’s
beginnings, of Greek and Roman origins, and legends built upon
wishful thinking. This paper will examine the content and truth of
these histories in their historical and political context. At a time
when Spain was in a precarious position, these romanticised
historical narratives created the image of the Empire’s power.
50
T
he year 1561 was one of fundamental importance for the
Spanish Empire and for Madrid in particular. Madrid,
which until 1561 had existed primarily as a small town
serving a population of about 14,000 people, had suddenly been
proclaimed the court of Spanish Empire and became part of a new
consciousness and historical narrative.
1
Philip II’s questionable
choice of a settled court in the rural pueblo of Madrid, landlocked
and surrounded by hinterlands, for the imperial capital, has been
the subject of much conjecture from contemporary to modern
historians. It is universally accepted that one reason for the court’s
placement there was the centrality of its location, a perfect place
from which the king might rule from the centre of his empire.
Jerónimo de Quintana, a Madrilenian priest and writer, and Gil
González Dávila, a chronicler writing in 1623, mention its
centrality, and Alonso Núñez de Castro, writing in 1658, adds a
comment about its proximity to a town named Pinto, named after
the Latin punctum, meaning centre.2 Modern historians, such as
Alvar Ezquerra, link this to a characteristic of the Renaissance
period, where it was recommended to situate one’s court in the
centre of one’s empire, citing, for example, Franciscus Titelman’s
assertion that: ‘Rex et princeps debe esse in medio Regni non lateri
in angulo’.3
Using a similar rationale, another reason can be extrapolated
in the quest for elucidation of the king’s questionable choice: the
reason why Madrid was selected above other previous sites of the
court, such as Valladolid and Toledo. Toledo itself, despite having
housed the court in the immediate years before the court’s move,
was missing key components necessary for both the king and his
retinue. One possible reason as to why Toledo was not chosen,
proposed by Alvar Ezquerra, is due to its problematically steep
51
terrain and ready-established architectural and civic infrastructure,
which would consequently complicate the municipal reforms
required for the court to stay there (Alvar Ezquerra, Felipe II, 4).
Valladolid, the king’s native town, had benefited from a similarly
active civic and municipal life until its fire of 1561, despite being a
landlocked town in the same fashion as Madrid. It was home to the
Cortes, was where laws were made and it had previously been
residence to the Crown.4
It seems that the reason for the monarch’s choice of Madrid
was a self-conscious one. Despite the fact that Valladolid and
Toledo had previously seen the glory of the court and possessed
ready-established infrastructures, the king’s choice of Madrid, with
its landlocked nature, inhospitable hinterlands and lack of viable
trade routes, short of long treks across land, cannot have been due
to anything other than its fortunate geographical location and
undeveloped nature. In this sense, the king’s questionable choice
was self-conscious: Madrid had nothing to offer besides being in
the very centre of the Iberian Peninsula, and possessing the
potential and sufficient unimportance to be moulded into a city in
line with the king’s vision, in a way that Alvar Ezquerra notes as
being ‘de modo artificial’.5
Despite the assertions of modern historians, such as Deleito y
Piñuela, who described the court’s move to Madrid as ‘una
improvisación’,6 and Alvar Ezquerra, who described it in similar
terms as ‘experimental’ (Alvar Ezquerra, Felipe II, 33), it seemed
that Madrid as a place was incidental, but that the move itself was
fundamental. Norbert Elias, a twentieth-century sociologist
described this idea more coherently: ‘it was not the ‘city’ but the
‘court’, and court society, that was the centre with by far the most
widespread influence’.7
52
If the town of Madrid as a physical entity was secondary to its
fortunate geographical location and, consequently, that of the
court that moved there, then attention must turn to the reason
that King Philip II chose to settle the court at all. By the year of
1561, Spain had been dogged by financial problems and was
teetering continually on the brink of bankruptcy, with high taxation
forcing the public into abject poverty. Despite a ‘mutually
dependent’ trade with the Netherlands in the mid-sixteenth
century, the rumblings of Protestantism sweeping Europe began to
strain Spain’s relationships with not only the Netherlands, but also
with France and England. 8 The relationship with the English had
been fraught with problems since the failure of the marriage
between Mary Tudor and Philip II, however, it was the extreme
attempts of the Spanish monarchy to retain Catholic orthodoxy by
way of the Spanish Inquisition that caused friction between Spain
and the other rival powers of Europe.9
The need to settle a court, then, was a calculated decision,
and one that was fundamental in terms of politics and establishing
ideologies. It was, therefore, no accident that Philip II ordered
work to start on the construction of the Escorial, monument to
Catholicism, before the court’s move to Madrid. Despite the
impending bankruptcies and money being poured into the
enterprise of the New World, Spain made a decisive move in
European politics by settling its court and constructing a palace as
an affront to spreading Protestantism. This approach towards the
Protestantism spreading through Europe could possibly also have
been targeted toward the New Christians, or conversos - former
Jews who were forced to convert for fear of expulsion.
Differentiation and stigmatisation of New Christians from the
cristianos viejos, pious believers of Spanish origin, were still rife
into the seventeenth century.10
53
The reason for the settling of the court was, therefore, a
political one, which was influenced by the development of state
bureaucracy after the peninsula had been reclaimed from the
Moorish by the Spanish.11 As a result of this reunion and
reconquista, it seemed that the final motive for settling the court
was to unite the king with his country, and so that he might be
seen as the king of Spain, rather than only of Castile. The
reiteration of Spain’s Catholic doctrine in the building of the
austere and expensive Escorial Palace in the very centre of the
Iberian Peninsula was possibly an attempt by the monarch to force
a sense of nationhood and remind insincere Christian converts of
the true divine influence, particularly after the annexation of
Portugal in 1580 signified an influx of Portuguese New Christians
into Spain’s Catholic frontiers.
In conjunction with this monarchical display of power in the
face of spreading Protestantism, it seemed that the settling of the
court offered more practical advantages. The displays and
celebrations of the court, which had previously been temporary
due to the court’s itinerant nature, could then be exhibited on a
more permanent basis, allowing the monarch better to display the
power of his empire. At the point of the court’s move in 1561,
then, the small town was subject to an explosive population
growth and the beginnings of a transformation in terms of not only
cultural and architectural development, but also of convivial affairs
and social behaviour. The town’s population grew to 25,000 by
1562 (Alvar Ezquerra, Nacimiento, 33), despite the fact that, if
Jerónimo de Quintana’s account holds true, the monarch and his
court did not physically appear in Madrid until 1563 (Quintana,
Villa de Madrid, Lib. III, Cap. XXV). In keeping with the burgeoning
population, Philip II began to rebuild Madrid in line with his own
vision. Even before the court had moved to Madrid, the king had
ordered an initiative to clean up Madrid’s streets and rid them of
54
the filth festering there, at the exorbitant cost of 2,463,954
maravedís (Alvar Ezquerra, Nacimiento, 217). Ugly or unsanitary
pieces of architecture were demolished,12 façades of buildings
were improved and adorned, and there was an introduction of
green urban spaces with the planting of trees and orchards (Alvar
Ezquerra, Nacimiento, 208).
With a dual imperative to improve the city for his subjects
and the rapidly growing population, and also to reshape Madrid in
line with the example of Renaissance Italy,13 it seemed that the
monarch’s expensive reformations of Madrid were simultaneously
an expression of confidence and one of crisis. At a time when the
Spanish monarchy was suffering from a decline in silver from the
New World and imposed heavy taxation on its public, and one in
which the growing civil unrest in the Netherlands required the
intervention of an army to keep the peace, the Spanish monarch
had embarked on the ambitious project of Madrid, the like of
which had never been seen before. Despite low funds and a
desperately poor public, Philip II began to build both a city and its
culture in retrospect. He created a city befitting the court, and
created the beginnings of a grand Madrilenian history, as it began
to be told after the king moved the previously ambulatory court to
the heart of Castile. It was this point in Madrid’s story that the
nascent city began to metamorphose into a narrative space, and
chroniclers began to tell its history.
The key to an approximation of the early Madrilenian history
is encapsulated in the word ‘after’, the concept of posteriority, and
therefore the narration of a rich history as a calculated
afterthought. From the moment of King Philip II’s decision to settle
the court in the town of Madrid, it seems that writers of the royal
court turned their attention to creating a suitably majestic, and
55
perhaps pseudo-historical, narrative, befitting the glory of the
court.
The physical act of recording history, or chronicling, as it is
called, was not a custom that arrived newly with the rule of Philip
II. The idea, or definition, of the chronicle is a recording of
historical events, but when the way they are recorded is altered to
better represent a certain desire or requirement of the monarch
the history becomes less of a catalogue of events and more of an
‘official’ or ‘authorised’ history, a text designed to disseminate
certain events in a certain way. In the court of Charles V, Holy
Roman Emperor, the practice of chronicling changed direction and
diverged from the usual purpose: it became a way of protecting
the monarchy and its reputation.14 The historiographical concerns
of Charles V were different to those of his son. Charles V had
chosen the approach that Richard Kagan describes as the historia
pro persona, a chronicle based on the exploits and derring-do of a
single monarch’s reign.15 Conversely, the concern of his son, Philip
II, was the patria, the Empire, in a time when the Spanish
monarchy was under threat from religious dilution, strained and
sometimes acrimonious relationships with other European powers,
and continually empty coffers with which to rule the country.
Charles V, in his quest for self-reflexive historiographical narratives
and a proclivity for absenteeism throughout his monarchy, had left
his son with an unpleasant legacy: an Empire near bankruptcy,
which is perhaps a reason why Philip II’s approach to chronicling
the history of his Empire was focused on Hispania rather than
himself. Rather than focus on the glory of the monarch, it seemed
that Philip II was conscious of creating a sense of nationhood and
union within the Iberian Peninsula, as Spain’s prior religious
dominion over the Netherlands began to wane and heretical
Protestantism to gather force.
56
In the light of the narration of history, its myriad biases and
preoccupations, a quotation by Tomás Tamayo de Vargas, a royally
appointed chronicler of Philip IV, interestingly refers to the task of
chronicling Madrid as ‘decir verdades’ (Kagan, El rey recatado, 37).
On the fine line between telling the truth, for example, the act of
recording a history, and being truthful, such as the manipulation of
that history, Holocaust survivor Charlotte Delbo has this to say in
her epigraph:
Aujourd’hui, je ne suis pas sûre que ce que j’ai écrit soit vrai. Je
suis sûre que c’est véridique. [Today, I am not sure that what I
have written is true. I am sure that it is truthful.]16
It is with this notion of truth and truthfulness that we come to
consider the nature of Madrid’s official, monarch-authorised
history and the way in which it was narrated.
The Madrid that existed prior to 1561 is not well documented,
despite the creation of histories to narrate the contrary. Histories
and historians, in fact, point to a set of rather grandiose
circumstances
for
the
much-maligned
Madrid,
apparently
inhabited by the Greeks as one Mantua Carpetania and, later,
appropriated by the Romans as the province of Maiorito. Madrid,
as described by Dutch traveller Enrique Cock in 1582, began as a
near-utopia: a forest filled with wild creatures and a specific noted
abundance of bears,17 perhaps giving rise to a later sobriquet:
Ursaria.18 Discrepancy exists in separate chronicles over the name
of the apparently ancient and glorious city, almost as though those
tasked with writing Madrid’s history could not agree on a version
to narrate. According to both Ambrosio de Morales, and Gil
González Dávila, writing fifty years later in 1623, the secondary
part of the name, Carpetania, was one appended by the Romans
and named after their chariots so prevalent in the streets of
Madrid (González Dávila, Teatro de las grandezas, 4).19 Jerónimo
57
de Quintana, on the other hand, added a stronger neo-Latin
dimension to the hypothesizing by arguing, in his 1629 publication,
that the Romans had translated Mantua Carpetania into their own
Maiorito (Quintana, Villa de Madrid, Lib. I, Cap. XVI). It remains
unarguable, however, that one of the earliest recorded names was
of Arabic origin, Majrīt, a fact which chroniclers such as Quintana
and Ambrosio de Morales, a chronicler writing in 1572, attempted
to circumvent with their assertion that this particular name was an
evolution of its Latin form Maiorito, perhaps a mindful endeavour
to avoid condemning Madrid to its true history of the very group of
people the king sought to expel from Spain.
When placing these texts in their historical context, a pattern
of specific socio-cultural circumstances occurs, which may indicate
why the king’s chroniclers were reluctant to accept the Arabic
Majrīt as the first recorded name for the royal capital. It seems
unsurprising that the building of the Escorial was timed, as it was,
amidst a severe economic decline: the religious instability and
financial downturn made it more imperative than ever for the king
to assert his power in the guise of a costly palace. The surge of
Protestantism signified the Escorial to be a double-edged sword: a
demonstration of regent power amid crisis and a bastion of
Catholicism against the religious insurgence.
In the decades of 1560 and 1570, when Ambrosio de Morales
published his text Las antigüedades de las ciudades de España, the
rumblings of Protestant cells among the Spanish public in
Valladolid and Seville created religious unease among the Catholic
populace, and the obsession of pureza de sangre (purity of blood)
began to surge (Elliott, Imperial Spain, 212). The decisive victory of
the Spanish over the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto in
1571 marked the height of anti-Muslim feeling in Spain, and the
need to defend the Catholic roots of the empire. Until the 1609
58
expulsion of the moriscos (or Muslims who had converted to
Christianity) expunged the final lingering link to Islam in Spain, the
long catalogue of economic and social disasters in this period was
thought to be the result of the abundance of non-believers in a
Catholic country. The disasters were a divine punishment, rather
than poor monarchical ruling, and the topic of Madrid’s Moorish
origins was one the chroniclers seemed keen to occlude (Elliott,
Imperial Spain, chap. 8).
The most prominent point of difference between these two
specific points in Spanish history, and the effect this had on the
historiographies produced in these times, lies in one incident: the
court’s abandonment of Madrid and subsequent return after a five
year sojourn in Valladolid from 1601-1606. Whereas the chronicles
of Quintana and González Dávila were published during the reign
of Philip IV, a monarch known for a reign of austerity and
patronage of the arts, the chronicle of Ambrosio de Morales firmly
reflects the concerns of monarch Philip II. This aspect of the
historiography of Madrid is never better reflected than in its
apparently legendary Roman beginnings.
To reaffirm Madrid as a Catholic power in the light of the
threat of heresy, then, there was one specific city against which to
‘measure up’: Rome, the home of Catholicism. It was Jerónimo de
Quintana who provided the flourish of proof that Madrid was older
than Rome itself, thus insinuating that Madrid was more holy than
the papal city and seat of Catholicism. This link with the divine not
only established Madrid as a royal power at a time when
reiteration of this fact was needed, but additionally represents a
decisive retaliation in the light of the Protestantism that had swept
Europe, blighted the Spanish Empire for years in warfare and was
threatening the religious dominion established by the Reyes
Católicos. Conversely, archaeologist Ambrosio de Morales noted
59
earlier in 1572, when seeking to link Madrid’s apparent Roman
origins with architectural phenomena, that there was no evidence
of Roman presence and the name of Carpetania in Madrid: ‘no hay
con que averiguar cosa cierta, por no hallarse este nombre escrito
en piedra ni en moneda antigua que pudiera quitar la duda’,
(Morales, Antigüedades, 274). This demonstrates a marked
departure from the grand claims of later chronicles and uncovers
the foundations of a history built, in those later chronicles, on a
surfeit of conjecture and a lack of tangible proof. The chronicle of
Morales, however, did not seek to create a common history or
sense of nationhood in the same way as did the texts of the early
seventeenth century. Ambrosio de Morales wrote the continuation
of an earlier work by royal chronicler Florián de Ocampo, entitled
Crónica general de España, and his text focused more on the
Roman aspects of Spain and the ‘Spanishness’ of Spain, to cite
Richard Kagan, such as the founding myths which informed the
way in which Catholic Spain lived (Kagan, Clio and the Crown, 112).
There is some small irony, perhaps, in the fact that Ambrosio
de Morales made reference to a particularly intriguing piece of
information regarding Toledo’s Roman origins: the existence of
stones and coins thought to be hailing from the Roman era
(Morales, Antigüedades, 327). Madrid, as an architectural legacy,
however, was furnished with city walls dating from its Arab
occupation. With the documented tangible proof of Roman
ancestry in Toledo, formerly Toletum, rather than Madrid, as
historians later claimed, it seemed that Toledo was already
historically more grand and glorious than Madrid, the city the
monarch was so intent on creating. There is a little humour at least
when considering the alternative name for Madrid: Mantua
Ursaria, a place so-called due to the abundance of bears in the
surrounding lands. The town of Madrid later adopted this image as
the crest, almost as though suggesting a subtle jibe at the Roman
60
myth of Romulus and Remus, and the iconic wolf. Not content with
laying claim to religious superiority, the chroniclers of Madrid had
fabricated a past that was bigger and better than the seat of
Catholicism, right down to the crest.
However, from as early as 1592, historian Juan de Mariana
had sought to integrate local histories into a larger collective one,
bringing a new consciousness to the historiographies of the court
of a growing empire that had come to include Portugal. This
consciousness of creating the history of a nation was reflected in
the almost self-reflexive writings of Quintana and González Dávila
in the decade of 1620 (Kagan, Clio and the Crown, 119).
This almost self-reflexive turn in historiography, where the
histories come close to betraying their own fictitious narrative, is
never better demonstrated than in Madrid’s patron saint, San
Isidro. The hasty canonisation of the lowly labourer and
philanthropist-turned-spearhead for a new and glorious capital
began in 1619 and was completed in 1622, and represented the
illusion of Madrid joining the ranks of other created cities. Just as
with its created history, the canonisation of a seemingly arbitrary
peasant represented the monarch’s consciousness of what an early
modern city should have, and indeed, what other contemporary
counterparts did have. The narration of this aspect of Madrid’s
history shows self-consciousness, a recreation of all the elements a
Renaissance city should have, and would have formed over long
passages of time, and it affirmed and safeguarded the sacredness
of the Spanish monarchy and its chosen capital. The canonisation
of Isidro revealed the tacit acceptance of these cultural inventions
by the Spanish public to an extreme degree: the histories and
cultural aspects of a city which should have developed organically
were created artificially and knowingly accepted. The situation of
the court in Madrid had not only given rise to a new city, but also a
61
culture, and the strength of Madrid’s allure had become such that
the desire to believe in and to create a sense of identity and
nationhood within the urban space of the court superseded the
truth behind Madrid’s history.
However, having formed a piecemeal city from both
borrowed styles of architecture and borrowed histories, it seemed
that the Habsburg monarchs were uninterested in the real and
tangible. Just as in the fine line between truth and truthfulness, we
see how the identity of an empire was created on a narrated
history, and how power and religious dominance were created out
of the careful narration of dire economic circumstances and the
relentless march of heresy and Protestantism through Europe. The
differentiation between historical narratives written before and
after the court’s brief sojourn in Valladolid illuminate how the
imperative for chronicling history turned from the patria to the
creation of a new form of collective memory and nationhood to
complement the new city, with the full knowledge of the falseness
of these gestures superseded by the desire to be part of the
ambitious and ‘never before seen’ project of Madrid. The Spanish
empire
was
under
threat
in
these
times,
and
these
historiographical texts serve as one part of a calculated defence
mechanism. While reforms of Madrid saw the façades of particular
buildings of the court subjected to ornate embellishment and
reconstruction better to befit an imperial capital, the inside and
overall structure remained the same, the Spanish monarchy
mirrored this by recreating its own identity and projecting it
outwardly to the other rival European powers. It was never the
power or riches of the Empire that were important: it was all in the
illusion, and a game of smoke and mirrors.
62
1
Jerónimo de Quintana, A la muy antigua, noble y coronada Villa de Madrid: historia
de su antiguedad, nobleza y grandeza (Madrid: Imprento del Reyno, 1629), Lib. III,
Cap. XXV. Further references will be given parenthetically in the text.
2
Alonso Núñez de Castro, Libro historico politico: Solo Madrid es corte, y el
cortesano en Madrid, 3rd edn (Madrid: Roque Rico de Miranda, 1675), 6.
3
Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, Felipe II, la Corte y Madrid en 1561 (Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1985), 40.
Further page references will be given parenthetically in the text.
4
Alejandro Rebollo Matías, La plaza y mercado mayor de Valladolid, 1561-1595
(Valladolid: Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad, 1988), 18.
5
Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, El nacimiento de una capital Europea: Madrid entre 1561 y
1606 (Madrid: Turner, 1989), 191. Further references will be given parenthetically in
the text.
6
José Deleito y Piñuela, Sólo Madrid es Corte (la capital de dos mundos bajo Felipe
IV) (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1942), 15.
7
Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. by Edmund Jephcott, rev. ed. by Stephen
Mennell (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006), 40.
8
John Huxtable Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469-1716, rev. edn. (London: Arnold, 2002),
chap. 6. Further references will be given parenthetically in the text.
9
John Huxtable Elliott, Spain, Europe and the Wider World: 1500-1800 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2009), chap.
10
Matthew Warshawsky, ‘A Spanish Converso’s Quest for Justice: The Life and
Dream Fiction of Antonio Enríquez Gómez’, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of
Jewish Studies, 23, no. 3 (2005): 1-24 (2). See also: Miriam Bodian, ‘“Men of the
Nation”: The Shaping of Converso Identity in Early Modern Europe’, Past & Present,
143 (1994): 48-76.
11
Jesús Escobar, The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 19.
12
Alicia Cámara Muñoz, ‘Modelo urbano y obras en Madrid en el reinado de Felipe
II’, in Actas del Congreso Nacional: Madrid en el contexto de lo hispánico desde la
época de los descubrimientos (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1994), 31-48 (35).
13
Richard L. Kagan, ‘Cities of the Golden Age’ in Spanish Cities of the Golden Age:
The Views of Anton van den Wyngaerde, ed. by Richard L. Kagan (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989), 68-83 (68).
14
Richard L. Kagan, El rey recatado: Felipe II, la historia y los cronistas del rey
(Valladolid: Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial, Universidad de
Valladolid, 2004), 46. Further references will be given parenthetically in the text.
15
Richard L. Kagan, Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History in Medieval and Early
Modern Spain (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 27. Further
references will be given parenthetically in the text.
16
Charlotte Delbo, Aucun de nous ne reviendra (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1970), 7.
17
Enrique Cock, El Madrid de Felipe II visto por el humanista holandés Enrique Cock,
ed. and trans. by V. Eugenio Hernández Vista (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios
Madrileños, 1960), 25.
18
Gil González Dávila, Teatro de las grandezas de la Villa de Madrid (Madrid: Por
Thomas Iunti, 1623), 4. Further references will be given parenthetically in the text.
19
Ambrosio de Morales, Las antigüedades de las ciudades de España: que van
nombradas en la Corónica, con la aueriguacion de sus sitios, y nōbres antiguos
(Madrid: En la oficina de Don Benito Cano, 1792), 274. Further references will be
given parenthetically in the text.
63
Cuban Citizenship Discourse - Smith
Cuban Citizenship Discourse:
Where Love and Hate Collide
Rosi Smith
Abstract
Citizenship codes are the primary link between the exclusionary
legal boundaries of states and the moral, cultural and behavioural
factors that are used to justify them. Such discourses, especially
when as ideologically codified as is the case in Cuba, create great
feelings of unity and love among those included within them, and
an equal and opposite resistant force against those who are seen
to threaten them.
This paper argues that resistance and opposition, particularly
to the USA, has historically been formative of the ideology,
character and prescribed citizenship behaviours of Cubans and
may well be one of the most valuable assets of the Revolution.
64
W
hile the value of the nation-state for those who rule,
own and control the people and capital within a
territory is evident, the loyalty and affinity to nations
felt by the majority of their citizens is less immediately explicable.
The boundaries, formed largely through violent conflicts or
political contracts between those with power and wealth (though
of course largely fought by those without), that have come to
define us and divide us from those who may live closer to us and
resemble us more closely in experience and values than do our
compatriots, can appear arbitrary and irrational. Nationalism has,
nevertheless, come to be described as ‘the most universally
legitimate value in the political life of our time’.1 Most of us, it
seems, accept as reasonable and legitimate the differentiation
made between the people on one or another side of an imaginary
line made concrete with a checkpoint or a barbed wire fence.
This paper contends that we have come to accept the
irrationality of divisions between people in great part because the
basis upon which they are sold to us is not primarily rational but
primarily emotional. The construct of citizenship is central to
effecting the often seamless internal conflation of the nation-state
with one’s emotional relationship to one’s community. It is able to
do this because it is unique in bestriding at once the practical, legal
distinctions made between peoples and the historical, cultural and
emotional factors on which they are, at least ostensibly, based.
According to communitarian thought, this is, of course, the
great virtue of citizenship – the way in which it provides a
discourse of unity that creates bonds within nations and
communities not just of mutual interest but of friendship, of
fellow-feeling, of love.2 This has certainly been an abiding and
defining theme in the Cuban Revolutionary discourse of
65
citizenship, with Che Guevara, when formulating the New Cuban
Man to be created through education and conscientisation,
asserting that the central quality of any revolutionary must be
love.3 Civic education in Cuba follows this ethos; the Ministry of
Education’s stated aims principally highlight not knowledge but
feeling. At primary level, one is to ‘express feelings of love for
one’s country’, ‘feel self-respect’ and ‘feel happy to be a school
student and a good pionero’ but these are not the only feelings
required. One must equally ‘show feelings of repudiation to all
those who offend [one's] country’ and more specifically at
secondary
level
‘show
patriotism
in
rejecting
American
imperialism’.4 It seems, then, that feelings of love alone are
insufficient, and that the buen revolucionario – the key signifier of
a good Cuban citizen – must also hate, oppose and resist.
Citizenship as resistance is not exclusive to Cuba. The duality
of love and hate has always been integral to the notion of
citizenship, which (whether encapsulated in Aristotle’s envisioning
of a citizen as a privileged white male whose wealth and leisure
bought him sufficient time and objectivity to attend to the
business of ruling and being ruled,5 or in the racist discourses of
contemporary Britain that lead to many students resisting
Citizenship Education because they think it will be ‘about whether
my mates [are] goin’ to be allowed to stay in the country or not’)6
has perennially been a way to draw lines around a group, a model
that creates affinity among one set of people by excluding another.
This exclusion is more than simply an unfortunate side effect of the
cohesiveness of a specific group; it is a necessary condition when
states are attempting to elicit active citizenship behaviours.
Presenting one’s nation and its characteristics as under threat
and in need of defence is a well-known and practiced method of
eliciting popular support and conformist behaviours, as evidenced
66
by the political truism that one of the most certain ways of
ensuring re-election and reasserting the popularity of a regime is to
declare war (as in the cases of Thatcher's electoral resurrection by
means of the Falklands conflict and George W Bush's restoration of
popularity after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001). A
cyclical relation occurs here whereby real crises stimulate increases
in citizen loyalty and conformity, at the same time as crises are
manufactured or ‘ramped up’ to promote an artificially stimulated
willingness to put aside personal preferences and allegiances to
service a, often re-imagined or redefined, greater good. Discourses
of this kind are of current significance in the UK where a
thoroughgoing, potentially irrevocable programme to diminish
social welfare provision and shrink the state is being instigated
under the premise that it is a response to the provisional and
exceptional circumstances of a financial crisis.
Such crises not only decrease dissent and encourage citizens
to fight against the external threat but also encourage more
intense and manipulable performances of the values associated
with the nation in question. This was particularly evident in the
period directly after September 2001, when the attacks were
presented as aimed not simply on the political and military might
of the USA but on its values, which, in turn, enabled the populace
to demonstrate their resistance through a heightened performance
of ‘Americanness’, enacted through its traditional codes. Citizens
uncertain of how to fight the threat of terrorism were advised by
their President to ‘live [their] lives, hug [their] children and… live
out the values of America’.7 Such values of course are not solely
moral, but have come to comprise social and economic behaviours,
enabling the mayor of Miami Dade County to exhort that it had
‘never been more patriotic to go shopping’.8 This position was then
sanctified in the post-tragedy orgy of consumerism that officials in
Florida named, seemingly without irony, ‘Freedom Weekend’.
67
Where Cuba is exceptional, however, is in the extent to which
those traditional codes are not only protected by resistance but
are formed with the notion of resistance at their core. This
resistance is, moreover, highly specific and directed. The
secondary school student is not asked simply to show their
patriotism by rejecting capitalism or even imperialism, but their
American incarnation.9 The oft-repeated slogan of ‘Cuba sí, yanqui
no’ does not simply state that one is both Cuban and antiAmerican, but that one's Cubanness is to a great extent defined by
one’s anti-Americanness, that support for one entails resistance of
the other. Contemporary Cuban resistance to American values is in
many ways only to be expected. A socialist nation is bound to
reject the apotheosis of capitalism, especially when embodied in a
superpower that stands just 90 miles from its shores and has been
its most recent occupier and most determined political opponent.
The resistance, however, goes deeper, challenging what the USA
stands for as much as what it does.
Analysis of the ideologies of nationhood in the USA and Cuba,
as codified in cubanía revolucionaria and the American Dream
reveals striking parallels, a correlation much closer than is evident
between Cuba and other nations in the Caribbean or Latin
America. 10 Each of the constructs is moralistic, mission-oriented
and focussed on the same contested ground, with many common
central ideas applied to similar content with often diametrically
opposed conclusions, to the extent that their central propositions
can be said to be in direct, reflective tension.
This is not to make the reductive argument that the Cuban
ideological code is no more than a contrarily drawn inverse of the
American, a contention palpably belied by the powerful, selfdefined, positive code of citizenship in Cuba. Concepts such as the
New Cuban Man and cubanía revolucionaria are testament to a
68
revolutionary spirit that has put huge creative energies into
building new models of citizenship and involving the people in
their development.11 It could, indeed, be argued that the critical
consideration required for the nineteenth-century formation and
twentieth century re-formation of Cuban citizenship ideals, that in
each case rejected much of what had gone before, led to a far
more refined and codified interpretation of citizenship than was
able to be realised in countries where citizenship norms emerged
out of more organic and evolutionary processes. Cuba and the USA
argue in a common ideological language, derived from a history in
which American identities have been naturalised and then
uprooted, and to understand their conflicted kinship it is necessary
to delve into that history – to the birth of the Cuban nation as such
– wherein can be found the source both of Cuba’s attachment to
resistance in general and its complicated relationship to the USA in
particular.
Cuba was born out of resistance, not to the USA, but to Spain,
and the nineteenth century foment of rebellion and progress
towards independence necessitated the development of an
ideological and moral framework and a narrative of nationhood
that would unite the nascent country. The USA was materially
involved in this development, so much so that the post-colonial
nation of Cuba can be said to have been arisen in and with, before
it was ever against, the USA. The half century that preceded the
overthrowing of Spanish colonial rule saw the USA home to ever
greater numbers of Cubans (largely economic migrants employed
in the tobacco industry), who found in its comforts, technology and
progress the antithesis of what was fast being seen as a backward
European influence at home.12 This contrast interacted with the
formation of the Cuban nation and its ideology that was being
undertaken by the independentista movement, especially since
heightened repression and vigilance at home meant that the USA
69
at that time was a site of resistance, a safe haven in which many of
those involved in the PRC (Partido Revolucionario Cubano) and
other independence groups could plot, debate, and travel to other
parts of Cuba (Perez Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 44-6). Activists not
only lived there for long periods of time, and so inevitably
internalised aspects of the American character and ideology, but
also frequently took on formal US citizenship as a statement of
independence because it rendered them other than Spanish (Perez
Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 39). Much that is recognisably American
in Cuban value-systems was developed in this period, when the
minds behind the imagining of a new nation were in close and
constant interaction with American thought at a time when many
believed the USA to be ideal of freedom and independence made
manifest.
As authoritatively set out in On Becoming Cuban, the USA’s
intervention in the Cuban war of independence changed its status
in Cuba from that of a welcome neighbourly exemplar of freedom
and plenty to a powerful defining force in Cuba’s future. The
period of US occupation then pseudo-annexation that followed led
to two trends that operated in tension with one another. One was
an inculcation and consequent further assimilation of US ideals,
occurring naturally as result of the constant presence of US
structures, people and material and cultural products, but also by
design. This was particularly evident in the field of education, the
structures and curriculum of which were directly copied from
those of Cleveland, Ohio and the education therefore replicated US
ideals to the extent that ‘education operated at the cultural arm of
the wider annexationist design’.13 Cubans were treated in this
trend almost as if they were part of the USA, with the use of a Civic
Education programme originally developed in New York to
facilitate the assimilation of new immigrants into US ways and
ideals (a tactic that proved almost too successful, as the
70
succeeding decades saw Cuban anger and resentment, as the USA
reacted negatively to Cuban attempts to demand the wealth and
lifestyle that they had been taught marked civilisation – the result
of a values-system that had become an intrinsic element of their
national identity) (Perez Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 160).
This cultural imperialism was bolstered by the actual material
improvements experienced by Cubans as a result of US
intervention, in which a country ravaged by an economically,
materially and personally destructive war of independence, saw
the arrival of previously unheard of levels of comfort and
infrastructure. Cubans bought US products, lived under US
structures, spoke English as a sure-fire route to wealth and were
didactically presented with US values. The contrary trend was a
growing rejection of US values in response to the feelings of
betrayal that were created as the independence for which many
Cubans had sacrificed their health, wealth and lives failed to
materialise, and as the exploitation of Spanish colonialism was
replaced by that of US imperialism. The insult of economic
disadvantage and lack of national sovereignty inherent to the Platt
Amendment was then further inflamed by the USA’s use of Cuba
as a home from its more prudish home for the exercise of its vices
and crime (Perez Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 183-6),14 and by the
economic inequalities that saw Cuba become a ‘rich land inhabited
by impoverished people’ (Fagen, The Transformation of Political
Culture, 24).
For those building and then implementing the 1959
Revolution, therefore, the redefinition of Cuban citizen identity
had moved from being a project of discovering how to be other
than Spanish to one of discovering how to be other than
norteamericano. This task involved a reinterpretation of codes
formed through the incorporation and naturalisation of US values.
71
The theory of the New Cuban Man encouraged the uprooting from
one’s consciousness of the vestiges of capitalism (Guevara,
‘Socialism and Man in Cuba’, 394), a process which meant the
excavation, decodification and sacrifice of deeply embedded
American values from the collective Cuban consciousness.
To a great extent, this involved the selection and emphasis of
values that could be seen as at once authentically Cuban and
contrary to Americanism. Two pertinent examples here are
ruralism and moralism, both existing codes of cubanía that were
stressed heavily by the new regime. Ruralism represented a radical
departure from the pre-revolutionary system in which, largely due
to disproportionate US investment in the tourist trade and related
industries, had been heavily urban-centric (and Havana-centric in
particular) and which had led to a dramatic gulf between rich and
poor that was starkly predicated on urban wealth and rural
poverty.15 Rural areas and people were, therefore, presented as
those most ill-served by the existing regime and hence most in
need of the benefits of the Revolution, but also as those least
sullied by the American association. Similarly, the renewed
emphasis on moralism, an aspect that lay at the heart of the
teachings of Jose Martí, represented a defiant reaction against the
US portrayal of Cuba as a site for licentiousness and vice.
The central emphasis of the young revolutionaries, however,
was and has remained the banishment of US influence. This is a
struggle waged not in order to bring about any particular element
of social justice, but rather on the basis of the simple moral
principle of authentic sovereignty. It was, too, the linchpin that
simultaneously justified the new regime’s repudiation of the level
of influence that US Americans had wielded over their country and
provided a narrative and tradition into which the young rebels
were able to insert their contemporary struggle. The contention
72
that the current resistance and search for independence was part
of the incomplete attempt to throw off the yoke of colonialism,
and that this would represent the culmination of cien años de
lucha, resounded with the people and allowed for the association
of the guerrilleros with the heroes of the past, such as Maceo or
Martí.16
Notwithstanding the fact that the Americanised content of
Cuban citizenship has been drawn out as if poisonous, the story of
its development means that structurally, particularly as regards the
foregrounding and mythologising of sovereignty, it retains much in
common
with
its
norteamericano
counterpart.
Far
from
undermining Cuba’s self-identification as a nation defined by
virtuous struggle, these structural resemblances help formulate
and sustain the mythologised narrative of two nations locked in
irreconcilable ideological conflict.
In common with Cuba, the USA has, from its inception,
regarded itself as a nation with a mission and one whose
independence is an end in itself. Clearly, however, this struggle
operates very differently in the case of a global superpower than it
does for a small, relatively impoverished and often politically
isolated, island state. Given its dominance, America may
realistically be conceived of as an original against which alternative
projects are to be judged and by which they are to be resisted and
repelled. Might and power are viewed as legitimating the idolising
of the American model and the ‘otherising’ of that which differs
from it, assuming such difference to be destructive, as in this
subtle and nuanced reading of the reasons for the 2001 attacks by
one New York Observer columnist: ‘They hate the fact that
America is mighty and good… the incarnation of a dominant world
system – an empire of capitalism and democracy… because we are
powerful and good (or at least better than they are)’.17
73
The polar opposite approach is pursued in Cuba, which can be
said to revel in its status as ‘other’, a status that is the result, at
least in part, of self-definition. Building upon the David and Goliath
victory at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs), Cuba has frequently been
portrayed as a plucky underdog whose struggle and resistance is
mythic because out of proportion to its size and wealth.
18
As
represented in Figure 1 (below), its strength comes not from
might, but from what is portrayed as a courageous reflecting of the
greater might of the superpower. This image as a tiny rebel was
cultivated not only in reaction to the USA but also in early
attempts to remain distinct from the ideological character of the
USSR, despite its clear economic dependence.
Figure 119
74
Figures 2 and 3 are two further OSPAAAL posters depicting
coded enactments of Cuba ‘punching above its weight’. In each
image the island of Cuba is dwarfed and entrapped by the chosen
symbol of America, but in each the entrapment is only partial, with
most of the country escaping the talons of the eagle and
protruding cheekily outside the imprisoning bars of the stripes of
the US flag.
Figure 2
Figure 3
The Cuban re-appropriation of its ‘other’ status is also evident
in the choices the government has made as to how to represent
itself on the international stage. A pivotal moment in this regard
was the early decision made by the revolutionary government to
declare Cuba not, as its economic position might reasonably have
allowed them to, a second world, aspirant country, but as a third
world nation – actively choosing an association with the oppressed
and a position in which it could be seen as an exemplar,
transforming the nation itself into a revolutionary foco. From this
position, intense Cuban patriotism and sense of ‘exceptionalism’
75
are complicated by a wish to promote its model of resistance to
others, as in the case of Guevara’s evangelism for a foquista model
of guerrilla warfare in Latin America, and as in the message to
Panama delivered in Figure 4, in which the ostensibly meagre
strength of the oppressed nation, applied with guile, is able to
disable the stronger enemy.
Figure 4
A further example of this hopeful audacity within Cuban
discourse is the reiteration of the idea that otro mundo es posible,
which has been a focal point for international solidarity
movements, who frequently see the existence of a surviving
alternative to global hegemony as of equal or greater significance
than the nature of that alternative.
76
A state’s positioning within the national imagining on the
continuum of ‘original’ to ‘other’ intersects with the extent to
which its ideology may be said to be mission-oriented. This
intersection then affects the reasonableness and efficacy of using
different techniques to elicit loyal citizenship. Here a cautious line
is negotiated between the wish to naturalise and de-problematise
existing ideologies – creating a pacified, apathetic citizenry – and
to create sufficient fear and insecurity to persuade citizens to
make material sacrifices in defence of their nation. The first of
these tends to be the favoured approach of modern capitalist
countries, which have largely ceased to take the risk of presenting
their systems as intrinsically righteous, thereby opening them up
to ideological attack, and have instead espoused the ‘End of
History’ doctrine. Popularised by Fukuyama, this position holds
that the historical debate over the best way to run human affairs
that characterised the twentieth-century is over, and, influenced
by that contention, ‘modern’ states largely choose to portray
capitalism and representative democracy as the imperfect but
logical result of a pseudo-evolutionary process – as inevitable
rather than laudable. 20
This approach is effective when the citizen behaviours sought
are passive – the continued paying of taxes, attendance at work
and conformity to law – and, as described by Tapper and Salter,
leads to a grudging acceptance of extant conditions that is a de
facto legitimation. 21 This is a far safer and more predictable model
for the purposes of stable state than a heroic, resistant notion of
nationhood, as the minimalist citizenship produced – one of
relative obedience and apathy – is far less susceptible to radicalism
and dissent than a maximalist citizenship discourse that engages
with, and thereby legitimates, alternative world views.22 It is
insufficient, however, when the behaviours sought are active or
77
involve some cost to the individual, such as sending their sons to
war or tolerating a certain level of oppression.
In reality, of course, no state pursues one of these approaches
in isolation, but rather each blends the two in varying and
changeable ratios.23 Cuba, constrained by its historical and political
situation, can make only limited use of the first, passivitypromoting, path. Hegemony relies upon ideology assuming a
seamless
appearance
that,
post-globalisation,
must
have
international purchase, and it is all too evident (to its citizens as
well as the rest of the world) that Cuba’s system does not embody
a truth universally acknowledged. Cuban ideology, as expressed in
the codes of cubanía, is in an ambiguous position in that it displays
many hegemonic features, such as widespread acceptance and the
embedding of political content into extant folklore and common
sense, while operating in a global context that makes any
pretension to universality unsustainable. Standing against the
global norms its ideology is at once official and counterhegemonic, problematising resistance to that ideology and
necessitating continual restatement of its import and legitimacy, a
position that sustains and is sustained by the discourse of lucha
and a revolution that is always and forever en marcha.
The designation of revolutionary Cubanness as at once
official ideology and counter hegemony is of palpable value in
sustaining popular support, in that it unites the regime with the
people as joint rebels against an external monolith. What Sartre
understood when he claimed that ‘if the United States did not exist
Cuba might perhaps find it necessary to invent it’ is that a
revolutionary people, schooled in continual struggle, require
something against which to revolt.24 The combination of the real
victimisation of Cuba by the USA with the heightened portrayal of
78
that oppression by the Cuban government and cultural sources
ensures that revolt faces firmly outwards.
The most significant modern enactment of the stimulation of
internal unity by means of external vitriol and resistance was the
reaction to refusals of US based Cubans to return ‘wet foot’ child
Elián Gonzalez to his paternal home in Cuba.25 In a renewal of
revolutionary vigour that Kapcia has written of as Cubans ‘learning
to march again’,26 a post-Special Period Cuba,27 short on resources
and reputedly shorter on popular will to sustain the Revolution
(Kapcia, ‘Lessons of the Special Period’, 30), was able to mount
historically
significant
manifestations
that,
while
clearly
orchestrated, caught and united the popular imagination in a
struggle that at once defied the USA, defended national
sovereignty and protected the right to family and nation of an
innocent child.
As time and reforms go inexorably forward, such shows of
resolute unity are likely to become more and more necessary to
the defence of the Revolution but also represent a danger to it. As
the economic and social realities of the re-emergence of wealth
inequalities and the imminent potential end of full employment
become
embedded,
it
may
be
deemed
necessary
to
counterbalance these potential sources of internal dissatisfaction
with a renewed emphasis on the resistance of external domination
to ensure continued loyalty. Resistance (and indeed hatred) is a
logical reaction to a history of disempowerment and domination,
but it has maintained a greater legitimacy in Cuba because the
defence of the Revolution has been the defence of something
tangible and well understood, in material as well as ideological
terms. Belief in equality and pride in the logros sociales has
combined with an awareness of their exceptional nature to ensure
that demonstrations and acts of national conformity have been
79
both resistant and celebratory. The risk is that if erosions in the
Cuban social contract continue to be effected, its discourse of
resistance may become hollowed out, symbolic and purely
negative. Awareness of the two faces of national belonging is
demonstrated by the Cuban eschewal of the term ‘nationalism’,
widely regarded as posturing, aggressive and a province of the
Right, in favour of ‘patriotism’, which is understood rather as love
and fealty to the nation and its revolutionary ideals. It is to be
hoped, then, that consciousness of this distinction will continue to
be felt by a rebel people united by a great deal of love, and only a
proportionate measure of hate.
1
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. (London and New York: Verso, 1983),
3.
2
For a variety of arguments that utilise the notion of friendship and emotional
loyalty as essential to citizenship see for example: Will Kymlicka, ‘Multicultural
Citizenship’ in The Citizenship Debates: A Reader, Gershon Shafir, ed. (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1998) 167-88; David Miller, Citizenship and National
Identity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000); Adrian Oldfield, Citizenship and Community: Civic
Republicanism and the Modern World (London: Routledge, 1990) and Eamonn
Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1997).
3
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, ‘Socialism and Man in Cuba’ in Venceremos! The speeches
and writings of Ernesto Che Guevara, John Gerassi, ed. (London: Wiedenfield and
Nicholson, 1968) 387-400, 398. Further references are given parenthetically in the
text.
4
Chiela Valera Acosta, 'Education for Citizenship in the Caribbean: A Study on
Education Policy and Curricula Training in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic'
(online publication: International Bureau of Education, 2003), 14-15. Accessed at
http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/archive/curriculum/Caribbean/C
aribbeanPdf/Study_Valera_%20trans_eng.pdf on 30.06.11.
5
Aristotle, Politics and the Constitution of Athens, trans. Steven Everson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
6
Tony Breslin, 'From citizenship-rich schools to citizenship-rich communities: lessons
from the classroom and beyond' in Taking Part? Active Learning for Active
Citizenship, and beyond, Marjorie Mayo, and John Annette eds. (Leicester: NIACE,
2010), 70.
80
7
George W. Bush., address delivered to the Joint Houses of Congress on 20.09.2011,
accessed at http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/20rhet/bush.html
on 30.06.2011.
8
John Maudlin in ‘John Maudlin’s Outside the Box’, (investorsinsight.com,
28.03.2011) accessed at
http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2
011/03/28/the-confidence-game.aspx
on 30.06.2011
9
The adjective 'American' is used throughout this paper to describe behaviours and
characteristics of the USA. It is important, however, to note that the term would not
be used in this way in Cuba, where the terms yanqui or norteamericano distinguish
the USA from what Martí called 'Nuestra America', a pan-Latin American family of
nations defined, in many ways, in response to their shared experience of Spanish
colonialism and US imperialism.
10
As set out by Antoni Kapcia in Cuba: Island of Dreams (Oxford: Berg, 2000, 6),
cubanía is the ‘teleological belief in cubanidad’ (Oxford: Berg, 2000, 6) and its
revolutionary cast, developed since the 1950s, has evolved from powerful existing
codes of radical and rebellious patriotism, with which the new incarnation shares
many values and codes.
11
Fagen describes how the revolutionary government attempted to politically
socialise the populace with the express intention of creating a ‘participatory subject’
(Richard Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1969) 7, further references will be given parenthetically in the
text), and LeoGrande draws out the mutual responsiveness of citizen and state,
making reference to the formation of ‘a direct non-institutional relationship
between the people and their leaders’ (William, M. LeoGrande, 'Theory and Practice
of Socialist Democracy in Cuba' in Studies in Comparative Communism, vol., no. 10
(Spring 1979) 39-62,( 40)).
12
Louis A. Pérez Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Nationality, Identity and Culture (Chapel
Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 78. Further references are
given parenthetically in the text.
13
Sheryl L. Lutjens, The State, Bureaucracy, and the Cuban Schools: Power and
Participation (Westview: Boulder, Colorado, 1996) 72.
14
In what amounted to a condition for the end of the USA’s occupation of the island,
Cuba’s Constitution incorporated the Platt Amendment, then ratified as a treaty
between the two nations, which allowed the USA to intervene militarily in Cuba in a
broad range of circumstances and to maintain political, military and economic
privileges within the newly independent nation. (James H. Hitchman, ‘The Platt
Amendment Revisited: A Bibliographical Survey’ in The Americas vol. 23, no. 4 (Apr.,
1967) 343-69. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/980494 on 30.07.2011).
15
Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, ‘The Background of the Revolution’ in The
Cuba Reader, Brenner et al, eds. (New York: Grove, 1989), 7.
16
Use of the discourse of guerrilla warfare to describe Cuban heroes of the past, as
far back as indigenous peoples defending their land against the Spanish, can be seen
regularly, for example, in the fourth grade history textbook Relatos de la Historia de
Cuba (Soy del Pozo et al., Havana: Pueblo y Educación, undated).
17
Ziauddin Sader and Merryl Wyn Davies. Why Do People Hate America?
(Cambridge: Icon, 2002) 19.
81
18
The analogy of David and Goliath was used well before that date, as in José Martí’s
1895 ‘Letter to Manuel Macedo’ (Our America: Writings on Latin America and the
Struggle for Cuban Independence (New York: Monthly Review, 1977) 440).
19
The OSPAAAL (Organisation for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and
Latin America) posters shown in each of the four figures can be found, along with
many others, at http://www.ospaaal.com/
20
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992),
xi.
21
Ted Tapper and Brian Salter, Education and the Political Order: Changing Patterns
of Class Control (London: Macmillan, 1978), 13.
22
David Kerr describes minimalist citizenship models as ‘narrow… exclusive…
content led-and knowledge-based’ and maximalist as ‘thick…activist… values-based’
(Citizenship Education: an International Comparison, online publication:
International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks, 1999, accessed at
http://www.inca.org.uk/pdf/citizenship_no_intro.pdf on 30.07.2011.
23
In established liberal democracies the tendency is for notions of resistance and
heightened citizenship behaviour, formed by and recalled for moments of real or
perceived crisis, to be used only minimally at other times. The much-vaunted 'Blitz
Spirit', for example, that is widely held to have pertained throughout the Second
World War (and which Tapper and Salter (Education and the Political Order, 78)
argue did more for promoting conformity than any amount of citizenship education)
added to the stock of national citizenship characteristics ideas of stoicism and
collective sacrifice. Although these codes were allowed to lie dormant, they were
sustained in popular mythology until such time as it became politically useful for the
public to be called upon to accept erosions of their welfare state and make sacrifices
because of a recycling of the codes in the notion of being 'all in it together'.
24
Theodore Draper, Castroism: Theory and Practice (London: Pall Mall, 1965), 123.
25
So called with reference to the ‘1995 agreement under which Cuban migrants
seeking passage to the United States who are intercepted at sea ("wet feet") are
sent back to Cuba or to a third country, while those who make it to U.S. soil ("dry
feet") are allowed to remain in the United States. The policy, formally known as the
U.S.-Cuba Immigration Accord, has been written into law as an amendment to the
1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.’ (Jefferson Morley, ‘U.S. – ‘Cuban Migration Policy’ in
Washington Post Online (27.07.2007), accessed at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072701493.html on 30.06.2011.
26
Antoni Kapcia ‘Lessons of the Special Period: Learning to March Again’ in Latin
American Perspectives vol. 36, no. 1 (January 2009) 30-41, title.
27
The ‘Special Period in Time of Peace’ was declared in the years following the fall of
the Berlin Wall; in recognition of the desperate economic situation caused by the
loss of Soviet trade and economic protection, it introduced a variety of emergency
economic measures, many of which, while largely effective, have been seen as
dilutions or betrayals of the socialist project of the Revolution.
82
Guerra y cotidianidad en la Cataluña del cambio dinástico, 1705-1714 - Cases
Guerra y cotidianidad militar en la
Cataluña del cambio dinástico, 17051714.
Reflexiones y posibilidades documentales
Adrià Cases
Abstracto
El conflicto sucesorio español de inicios del siglo XVIII fue uno de
los momentos más importantes de la Historia Moderna de España.
Los resultados de la contienda transformaron el Estado tanto en su
vertiente interna como externa. Interna porqué se impuso un
modelo político de carácter unitario, donde la ley emanaba
exclusivamente de la potestad real y era igual para todos los
territorios de la Península Ibérica. Externa porqué se confirmo el
declive del antiguo imperio español ya que se perdieron las
posesiones europeas del Reino de las Dos Sicilias, de Cerdeña, de
Flandes y el Milanesado.
En paralelo a este proceso político tan interesante existe un
drama humanitario. La guerra que enfrentó a los partidarios de la
dinastía Borbón y Habsburgo dejaron tras de sí más de un millón
de muertes así como incontables desplazados. Nosotros tratamos
de definir esta realidad en el frente catalanoaragonés, una de las
geografías más castigadas por la disputa bélica.
83
E
l conflicto internacional que enfrentó a las principales
potencias durante la primera quincena del siglo XVIII es un
momento crucial para el devenir de Europa; y
especialmente para España. Los combates superaron las fronteras
continentales, dando lugar a enfrentamientos en América y Asia.
Los autores cifran en 1.200.000 muertos y tan sólo desde el frente
hispánico se contabiliza un exilio de entre 25.000 y 30.000
personas.1 La disputa se originó a causa de la muerte del monarca
Carlos II (1665-1700), que no dejó descendencia directa al trono.
Esta situación postuló a dos pretendientes, Felipe de Anjou y/o el
archiduque Carlos de Austria. Finalmente, la Corte española se
decantó a favor del aspirante francés, lo que provocó que el
candidato derrotado y el conjunto de facciones e intereses que le
apoyaban consideraran que la nueva situación ponía en riesgo el
equilibrio internacional. Con el apoyo del emperador Leopoldo I y
de las potencias marítimas – Gran Bretaña y Holanda - se planteó
una guerra contra el monarca recién coronado. Esta alianza
cristalizó en 1701 y consideraba que la ascensión de un candidato
francés al trono español concentraba demasiado poder en manos
de la dinastía Borbón. En mayo de 1702 iniciaba oficialmente la
guerra, que se dispersó en múltiples frentes a lo largo del
continente europeo. Uno de los más importantes fue la península
Ibérica, especialmente, la Corona de Aragón.
A continuación exponemos las líneas maestras de la tesis
doctoral que lleva por título Guerra y cotidianidad militar en la
Cataluña del cambio dinástico, 1705-1714,2 inmersa en este
proceso que acabamos de referir. Para abordarlo hemos
organizado la exposición en tres bloques. En un primer apartado
situaremos la dinámica exterior e interior de la Monarquía
española, intentando comprender lo que significa el conflicto para
la Historia Moderna del país (1492-1789). En un segundo punto
trataremos propiamente el cuerpo de nuestras pesquisas,
84
expendiendo ya algunas primeras conclusiones acerca de los
trabajos realizados durante estos últimos meses. Para acabar,
relataremos brevemente los fondos documentales que nos son de
mayor utilidad así como algunas recomendaciones para los
científicos interesados en conocer la dinámica social de estos
momentos tan convulsos e históricamente tan efervescentes.
1. La bisagra de la modernidad española: la Guerra de Sucesión
(1702-1715)
¿Por qué el conflicto sucesorio es uno de los períodos más
importantes entre 1492 y 1789? Analizando el conjunto de tres
siglos de Historia Moderna de España (XVI-XVIII) encontraríamos
pocos episodios que tuvieran una repercusión tan importante al
acabar dicho proceso. La España de 1700 no tenía mucho que ver
con la España de 1715. Durante esta quincena, una guerra a nivel
internacional derivó en contienda civil en las Coronas Castellana y
Aragonesa, con especial complejidad en este último territorio. Los
resultados de la disputa cambiaron la Monarquía que hasta
entonces se había concebido.
Un primer elemento en el que podemos percibir este proceso
lo encontramos en la vertiente exterior y la pérdida de los
territorios europeos heredados desde los siglos medievales por el
monarca hispánico. Los tratados de Utrecht (1713) y Rastaadt
(1714) consolidaron el declive que ya había iniciado, como mínimo,
desde mediados del siglo XVII. Con la Paz de los Pirineos (1659), la
Monarquía hispánica cedió los territorios del condado del Rosellón
y la Cerdaña, así como algunas plazas fuertes de Flandes (Artois).3
Posteriormente, los Tratados de Nimega (1679) ponían fin a la
dominación del Franco Condado, enclave importantísimo para la
comunicación entre Flandes y el Sacro Imperio. En realidad, la
85
segunda mitad del siglo XVII no hace más que demostrar el frágil
equilibrio continental entre las potencias europeas. En los últimos
cuarenta años de este siglo, se promulgaron cinco tratados que de
una manera u otra modificaron las fronteras europeas hispánicas.4
De todas formas, Utrecht marca el fin de este proceso ya que
a partir de 1713-14, la Monarquía pierde todos los dominios
seculares de Italia (Reino de Cerdeña, Reino de Nápoles, Reino de
Sicilia, el Milanesado), así como la totalidad de los prósperos
territorios de Flandes. Podríamos decir que el camino que se había
iniciado en 1492 – y el consiguiente impulso hacia la hegemonía
europea -, termina definitivamente en Utrecht, relegando la
superioridad territorial a los otros grandes estados de Europa
occidental (Francia y Gran Bretaña). Desde Gran Bretaña, la
opinión no podía ser otra: ‘Spain was made to pay the bill for all
the rest and an era of French expansionism was closed’.5 Ante esta
situación, era lógico que durante los años posteriores a la guerra
(1715-1725),
Felipe V desarrolló una intensa campaña para
“recuperar” las antiguas posesiones perdidas en los tratados de
paz, sobre todo, en relación a la península Itálica y las islas
mediterráneas.
La vertiente interna del período no fue menos importante ya
que con el advenimiento del pretendiente Borbón se inició una
monarquía de tinte absolutista con tendencia a centralizar el
Estado. Este nuevo modelo impregnó toda la centuria ilustrada e
incluso penetró en la contemporaneidad española hasta fechas
bastante tardías. Si hasta ese momento (1707) las Coronas
Castellana y Aragonesa se regían según su propia legislación, de
manera independiente y compartiendo el monarca como elemento
indispensable de unión, la victoria del pretendiente francés al
trono hispánico impuso este modelo unitario de matriz castellana,
aboliendo la tradición pactista de los territorios del este
86
peninsular. De hecho, Felipe V anuló el corpus legislativo aragonés
bajo la justificación de lesa majestad, ya que los territorios de
Aragón, Valencia, Cataluña e Islas Baleares se habían sublevado
contra él, ofreciendo una resistencia muy severa; especialmente
en los territorios de Valencia y Cataluña.6 Estas dos áreas tenían
intereses políticos y económicos relevantes para apoyar al
pretendiente Habsburgo; sobre todo en términos de mercado,
cuyo tejido estaba estrechamente vinculado a la dinámica de las
potencias atlánticas (Gran Bretaña y Holanda).7
2. La contienda en el frente catalanoaragonés
En paralelo a estos procesos políticos tan importantes y con tanta
repercusión en el devenir de la configuración estatal, existió una
guerra durísima que fustigó vehementemente algunas zonas
peninsulares. A grandes rasgos, la frontera portuguesa-extremeñacastellana y el conjunto territorial de la Corona aragonesa vivieron
la violencia en primera persona, especialmente en este último
frente, ya que quizá es el escenario donde la presencia de
combates es más larga, dura y constante. Esta zona se presenta
como un laboratorio idóneo para investigar la dinámica social del
conflicto y su interacción con el territorio.
Así pues, bajo el paraguas de la ‘New Military History’ que tan
buenos resultados ha dado en el conjunto de Europa – y está
dando en España - nosotros pretendemos reconstruir el perfil
sociológico de los soldados, los mecanismos de reclutamiento, la
promoción dentro del cuerpo, la “cobertura” sanitaria, los
aprovisionamientos, el vestuario y las consecuencias de ejercer el
oficio de soldado (en este sentido nos referimos a la enfermedad,
procesos de encarcelamiento y la deserción). Y, quizás, un
elemento interesante y nuevo desde nuestro punto de vista es
87
tratar de abordar estas cuestiones desde una óptica transversal,
sin centrarnos en ningún ejército concreto ni en ninguna nación en
particular.
El
objetivo,
pues,
es
radiografiar
el
frente
catalanoaragonés contemplando la totalidad de aspectos que
jugaron un papel relevante en los procesos anteriormente
mencionados.
Consecuentemente, este enfoque nos ha hecho contemplar
un elemento añadido que es absolutamente fundamental si el
investigador pretende realizar un trabajo serio y contrastado. Nos
referimos al análisis de las fuerzas irregulares (y auxiliares), muy
presentes durante todo el período que referimos. A pesar de que
no contempláramos este propósito en nuestros planteamientos
iniciales, trabajar las fuentes primarias con detenimiento nos ha
impulsado a redefinir estos cuerpos seudomilitares ya que este
tipo de milicias tuvieron un protagonismo fundamental en la
evolución de la contienda y en su repercusión con la sociedad civil.
Los somatenes (milicias urbanas), pero especialmente, los
migueletes y los voluntarios de Aragón fueron unas “guerrillas”
que desgastaron mucho los ejércitos regulares y en buena medida,
explican la prolongación de los combates en momentos en que la
superioridad del ejército franco-español era muy evidente. Sería
interesante trabajar más profundamente estos cuerpos “militares”
pero cabe preguntarse cómo pudo alargarse la guerra siete años
más en Cataluña que en Aragón y Valencia. Hay muchos factores
que responden a esa pregunta, pero probablemente las acciones
de estas partidas y su arraigo en el territorio son elementos a tener
en cuenta.
Acotar esta investigación, a día de hoy, nos ha permitido sacar
unas primeras conclusiones. Aunque sabemos que la reflexión pide
de un cierto sosiego para poder validarla, a continuación pasamos
88
a referir unas primeras ideas con la intención de motivar el debate
y sugerir posibles variantes interpretativas:
- El factor de la pobreza es un elemento absolutamente
indispensable para entender el proceso de enrolamiento al
ejército. En este sentido, y tal como aseveró F. Andújar,8 los
segmentos más bajos de la sociedad eran los que formaban los
estamentos más bajos del ejército (la tropa), siendo éste un reflejo
del orden jerárquico establecido en las sociedades europeas del
Antiguo Régimen.
- El éxito de un ejército no estaba tanto en la cantidad de hombres
que podía poner en el campo de batalla - que también -, sino en la
capacidad de responder a las carencias crónicas del sistema de
abastos militar. Cuando no respondía –hecho bastante frecuente
en el frente que estudiamos-, la sociedad civil tenía que satisfacer
estas necesidades, sufriendo al mismo tiempo un proceso de
pauperización demoledor.
- El sistema sanitario estaba mejor preparado de lo que a priori se
podría considerar. De todas formas este hecho va absolutamente
ligado a la profesionalización y organización de cada ejército. Por
ejemplo, el británico viajaba con su propio hospital y cuerpo
médico. Incluso periódicamente enviaba medicinas para proveer
sus hospitales en España y Portugal.9 El ejército franco-español
montaba un dispositivo en la retaguardia del frente capaz de tratar
diariamente a más de 3.000 hombres.10 El austro-catalán se
apoyaba únicamente de la red existencial en el territorio, como el
portugués, que según nuestras pesquisas, no contaba con ningún
tipo de instalación sanitaria de campaña.
- La importancia de las milicias irregulares – teniendo en cuenta su
efectividad - nos hacen plantear hasta qué punto el concepto
historiográfico de la Revolución Militar está bien acotado.
89
Obviamente no nos atrevemos a debatir la naturaleza de esta
teoría, ya que la compartimos absolutamente. De todas formas
sería aconsejable debatir alrededor de la cronología e incluso
plantearnos hasta qué punto el fenómeno no debería considerarse
hasta bien entrado el siglo XIX.
3. Las fuentes documentales y sus posibilidades
Básicamente, los archivos que albergan documentación sustancial
y que nos permiten trabajar los aspectos que conformaban la
cotidianidad militar durante el conflicto sucesorio de inicios del
siglo XVIII son los grandes centros estatales. En España, en primer
lugar, cabe mencionar el Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid, con
unos fondos de Estado realmente amplios. Los principales
investigadores que han trabajado sobre el período han tratado
estas fuentes con detenimiento. Además, el archivo cuenta con la
aportación de fondos trasladados desde Viena, que pertenecieron
al conjunto de exiliados que buscaron la protección del Imperio
austriaco una vez concluido el conflicto.11
En Barcelona, el Archivo de la Corona de Aragón es la
principal institución para estudiar los organismos aragoneses
durante la contienda. De todas formas, cabe precisar que no
cuenta con una sección demasiado amplia si lo comparamos con
otros períodos anteriores. Los años 1702-1715 están en los límites
de su cronología de abasto. A parte, muchos autores catalanes,
aragoneses y valencianos han trabajado y releído estos materiales,
lo que a nuestro entender hace disminuir la prioridad en el
estudio.
El Archivo General de Simancas abarca los primeros siglos
modernos de la historia de España (los Austria), así que la Guerra
de Sucesión queda al margen de este período. De todas formas es
90
interesante mencionar la sección suplementaria de la Secretaría de
Guerra, con algunos fondos de utilidad relativos al funcionamiento
hospitalario.
En el Reino Unido, los Archivos Nacionales (The Nacional
Archives, TNA12) se presentan como un buen reclamo para el
investigador que pretenda conocer la interrelación entre ejército
británico y los reinos portugués y aragonés. La intensa red de
embajadores y la actividad marítima de Gran Bretaña posibilitaron
la creación de unos fondos estatales muy copiosos, aunque desde
nuestra óptica de estudio no son tan útiles debido a la dificultad de
percibir las problemáticas surgidas en un frente bélico tan alejado
como el hispánico. Así pues, las informaciones que hemos
rescatado se adentran más en el mundo de la diplomacia y la
evolución general de la contienda. Las secciones más relevantes y
que consideramos de mayor utilidad son la Secretaria de Estado
(State Papers, SP) y la Oficina de Guerra (War Office, WO). De
todas formas, siendo conscientes de la situación historiográfica en
España, el hecho de poder trabajar estos materiales nos posibilita
dar un salto cualitativo en nuestra investigación ya que son escasos
los investigadores del estado que han contemplado este gran
archivo para llevar a cabo sus respectivos proyectos intelectuales.
En un segundo nivel archivístico encontramos las instituciones
de carácter comarcal o municipal. En Cataluña, la política del
gobierno autonómico ha dado un salto cualitativo en estos últimos
años y ha promovido la presencia de profesionales en el sector, lo
que ha facilitado una homogeneización de los contenidos
(inventarios) e incluso una flexibilidad para trabajar los materiales.
Nosotros hemos consultado atentamente aquellos municipios que
nos parecían de mayor interés y aunque a menudo las
informaciones extraídas son de carácter absolutamente local, es
posible advertir el impacto derivado de la guerra sobre la sociedad
91
civil. Asimismo, estos entes locales eran fundamentales para poder
suministrar todo tipo de pertrechos y combatientes a la monarquía
de turno.
A modo de conclusión, nos gustaría poner sobre la mesa las
opciones que pueden ofrecernos las instituciones de carácter
asistencial. Obviamente, en nuestro caso contemplar este tipo de
organismos tiene mucho sentido, ya que los militares que
participaron en este tipo de guerras a menudo necesitaban de su
atención (el modus operandi castigaba severamente a los
combatientes: largas marchas, comida de mala calidad, mal
acuartelamiento – o ninguno -, higiene escasa, etc.). Nuestras
investigaciones en el Hospital de la Santa Creu de Barcelona han
sido muy provechosas. En particular, los registros de entrada que
contempla esta institución centenaria son abundantes y nos ha
facilitado la elaboración de una base de datos que supera los
18.500 registros donde documentamos los nombres de los
militares, el origen, la compañía, el regimiento, el período de
estancia y los índices de mortandad. En el caso inglés no
conocemos la existencia de trabajos de esta índole pero si es
evidente el recurso de contemplar este tipo de organismos y su
relación con el mundo castrense (Chelsea Hospital).13 En el ámbito
de la Corona aragonesa, estudios sobre los hospitales de Zaragoza
y Valencia ya se han llevado a cabo con buenos resultados.14
Otra línea documental que a nuestro parecer podría ser de
utilidad para acercarnos al mundo cotidiano, ya fuere militar o
civil, podría porvenir de la literatura y la documentación privada.
Nos referimos a los dietarios ya sean personales como
institucionales (con bastante posibilidades entre el mundo
religioso). En la Corona de Aragón existen algunos ejemplos de
esta índole así como la obra de Defoe sobre el capitán George
Carleton, que viajó con el conde de Peterborough a Barcelona y
92
participó en la guerra que nos ocupa.15 Desgraciadamente, a inicios
del siglo XVIII, este tipo de fuentes son escasas, sobre todo si lo
comparamos con otros momentos posteriores insertados ya en la
contemporaneidad (Peninsular War).
1 Joaquim Albareda, La Guerra de Sucesión de España, 1700-1714 (Barcelona:
Crítica, 2010), 17; Agustí Alcoberro, L'Exili austriacista (Barcelona: Fundació
Noguera, 2002), 56.
2 Este proyecto se realiza bajo la supervisión del Dr. Antonio Espino, catedrático de
Historia Moderna de la Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Asimismo, realizamos la
investigación gracias a una beca del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación del Gobierno
de España. Referencia de la ayuda BES-2008-001955.
3 En este sentido, véanse las Actas del Congreso publicadas recientemente. Oscar
Jané, ed., Del Tractat dels Pirineus a l'Europa del segle XXI, un model en construcció?:
actes del congrés: col·loqui Barcelona-Perpinyà, 17-20 de juny de 2009. (Barcelona:
Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació, Museu
d'Història de Catalunya, 2010).
4 Tratado de los Pirineos (1659), Paz de Aquisgrán (1668), Paz de Nimega (1678),
Tregua de Ratisbona (1684) y Tratado de Ryswich (1697).
5 Julian Hoppit, A land of Liberty? England 1689-1727 (Oxford University Press,
2000), 123.
6 Antoni Simon, Construccions polítiques i identitats nacionals: Catalunya i els
orígens de l’estat modern espanyol (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2005); Carme
Pérez, Canvi dinàstic i Guerra de Successió. La fi del Regne de València (València:
Tres i Quatre, 2008); Maria Berta Pérez, Aragón durante la Guerra de Sucesión
(Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2010).
7 Véase la brillante esquematización del proyecto austriacista en Oscar González, ‘El
partit austriacista: coherència, divergència i supervivència d’una facció de poder’,
Pedralbes. Revista d’Història Moderna, 23, vol. II (2003): 297-09.
8 Francisco Andujar, Ejércitos y militares en la Europa moderna (Madrid: Síntesis,
1999), 16-7.
9 The National Archives (TNA), WO 4/4, fols. 44, 63, 141.
10 Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Secretaría de Guerra. Suplemento, leg. 269.
11 Maria Pilar Castro, ‘La Guerra de Sucesión (1701-1714): fuentes para su estudio
en la Sección de Estado del Archivo Histórico Nacional’, La Guerra de Sucesión en
España y América: actas X Jornadas Nacionales de Historia Militar, Sevilla, 13-17 de
noviembre de 2000 (Madrid: Deimos, 2001), 1077-84.
12 En este sentido, agradecemos al Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin
American Studies (University of Nottingham) y muy especialmente a los Doctores
Jeremy Lawrance y Jean Andrews su acogida, absolutamente imprescindible para
poder estudiar los fondos del TNA con detenimiento.
13 Eric Gruber, Hospital Care and the British Standing Army, 1660-1714 (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006).
14 Asunción Fernández, El Hospital Real y General de Nuestra Señora de Gracia de
Zaragoza en el siglo XVIII (Zaragoza: Instituto Fernando el Católico, 1987); Ampar
93
Nogales, La Sanidad municipal en la Valencia foral moderna: 1479-1707 (València:
Ajuntament de València, 1993).
15 Vicent Escartí, ed., El Diario (1700-1715) de Josep Vicent Ortí i Major (València:
Fundació Bancaixa, 2007); Antoni Bach, ‘Crònica de la Guerra de Successió a les
terres de Lleida, escrita per un pagès del Palau d’Anglesola’, Ilerda, vol. XLIV (1983):
171-87; Daniel Defoe, Memoirs of an English officer (London: Gollancz, 1970);
Marquis de Hautefort, Memoirs of the war of succession in Spain, from 1702 to 1707
(London, 1763).
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