Writing Revolution in Latin America: From Martí to García Márquez to Bolaño
272
Writing Revolution in Latin America: From Martí to García Márquez to Bolaño
272Hardcover
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826522580 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Vanderbilt University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2019 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Revolution before Revolution
José Martí and José Carlos Mariátegui
The year 1959, when the Cuban Revolution came to power, must be placed next to the magical digits 1789 in any revision of Latin American history. After all, if the latter date represents the beginning of the belief in revolution for overcoming obsolete social structures throughout the Western World — and for some, even the birth of modernity itself — 1959 marks the moment in the twentieth century when these utopian hopes seemed, for the first time since the heady days of the struggle for independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to be fully applicable to the region.
Of course, other events and the dates that represent them are significant in the region. One must mention 1776, when the first American colony began its successful fight for independence from a European power. In fact, the struggles for independence in Spanish America, which are conventionally seen as beginning in 1810, took place under the twin examples of the American and the French revolutions. The United States will be a shining light for the region's struggle against Spain up to and including Cuba. But as the writings of José Martí, the leader of Cuba's struggle for independence, illustrate, by the 1890s the luster of the United States had been dimmed by its imperialist attitudes and actions in the region.
One must also keep in mind 1910, the year the Mexican Revolution began, the last and greatest peasant revolt that also provided one of the first intimations of a truly radical social revolution. The Russian Revolution of 1917 — the ten days that shook the world and that seemed for more than a decade to prove that utopia was possible — must also be added to this list. Undeniably, the Mexican and Russian revolutions served as central intellectual and emotional touchstones for the activists and radicals who came of age in the 1920s, such as Peruvian politician Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and his compatriot, friend, and later enemy, José Carlos Mariátegui, the region's first major Marxist thinker, among many others.
However, the Mexican Revolution's inability to create a truly modern and egalitarian republic and its rapid ossification into a one-party system — famously described in 1990 as "the perfect dictatorship" by novelist Mario Vargas Llosa — meant that Mexico never fully achieved the role of political model. Proof of the limited appeal of the Mexican Revolution can be found in its representation in literature: from Mariano Azuela's The Underdogs (1915), the novel that first portrays the revolution, to Carlos Fuentes's The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), the stress has been on how the Mexican Revolution created an environment of violence and corruption rather than on any potential utopian dimension it may have had.
Likewise, Stalin's rise to power and his creation of a cult of personality and repressive political system destroyed whatever hopes could have been held for real existing socialism. This led to the Soviet Union's loss of allure outside the ideological ghettoes of the Latin American Communist parties. That the region's mass political movements of the first half of the twentieth century were, with the exception of Chile, mostly populist — from Haya's APRA to Peronism — underlines communism's inability to become a successful electoral or subversive movement in the region. Moreover, while nominally committed to promoting a socialist revolution, most Communist parties responded instrumentally to the Soviet Union's political interests. At best, the often small parties engaged in the struggle for civil and human rights, even for democratic processes, while also promoting labor organizing; at worst, they cynically supported whatever local policy or politician the Soviet Union felt was in their best interest. Given the social realities of the region, after the 1930s Communist parties were not interested in promoting socialist revolution — or any type of revolution, for that matter.
It is tempting to add 1979 to this list of dates. This was the year when the Sandinistas toppled one of the oldest US-backed dictatorships, one that dated back to the 1930s. After all, the Sandinista revolution, the last success of the revolutionary Left in Latin America, helped rekindle the enthusiasm of progressive forces throughout the region and beyond. Moreover, it was characterized by a transformative progressive cultural policy that, following in the footsteps of José Vasconcelos's literacy and educational campaigns in 1920s Mexico, and the more successful attempt at promoting literacy in 1960s Cuba, not only advanced basic education, appreciation of literature, and knowledge of the Western classics but also stressed popular literary and artistic creation. But despite this and other partial successes — for instance, in health care — the Sandinistas failed to gain the internal support that characterized the Cuban Revolution, at least during its first years. This may very well originate in the Sandinistas' coming to power as part of "a system of alliances that made possible their eventual victory in July 1979" (Hoyt 13). Furthermore, as Hoyt notes: "Until the signing of the Central American Peace Accord ... in 1987, the United States funded and trained the contra [anti-Sandinista] army, carried out covert military operations against the Sandinista government, cut off all U.S. foreign aid to Nicaragua, stopped the multilateral lending agencies from lending money to Nicaragua, and from 1985 on, carried out a trade embargo against Nicaragua" (51). In 1990, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega suffered electoral defeat at the hands of Violeta Chamorro, who, in addition to being the widow of Pedro Chamorro, who had been murdered by the Somoza regime, was a former member of the governmental junta and the director of the main Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa. For these reasons, the lack of a "charismatic Fidel Castro ... to ignite the passions of the Latin American masses" (Wright 166) and what historian Thomas C. Wright has called "the prevailing climate of reaction in the late 1970s and early 1980s," the Sandinista revolution "did not have an impact of the magnitude of the Cuban Revolution twenty years earlier" (166). The temporary success of the Sandinistas was unable to fully defuse the political skepticism generated by the failures of the Cuban Revolution and the triumph of the Southern Cone dictatorships beginning in 1973. Nor was it able to derail the growing embrace of the free market and liberal democracy by an ever-growing number of Latin Americans. It may not be a coincidence that the fall of Sandinista Nicaragua follows closely the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1989 — even if the Nicaraguan Revolution did not imitate the Soviet model. Despite its falling out of power, Wright also notes that "the Nicaraguan Revolution clearly set the agenda for the politics of Central America for over a decade" (166).
After the failure of independence, in which the democratic ideals of the French Revolution and the rationalism of the Enlightenment crashed against the shoals of the region's colonial social structures and conservative Catholic beliefs, after the ossification of both the Mexican and Soviet revolutions and of the political promises that many assigned to them, the Cuban Revolution renewed the promise of a modern egalitarian Latin America just around the corner, even if it lasted for only slightly more than a decade, after which the growing rigidity of the regime undermined its utopian promise.
This brief historical presentation must end with 1989, the year when real existing socialism in Europe broke down, dimming the appeal of socialist ideas throughout the world, including Latin America, despite the ability of the Cuban regime to survive, even if barely.
By looking at the writings of two iconic figures of Latin American radicalism — José Martí, the great nineteenth-century poet, essayist, and activist for Cuban independence, and José Carlos Mariátegui, who in the 1920s attempted to apply Marxist ideas to the understanding of Peruvian and Latin American societies and cultures — one can glean in-sight into the structures of feeling characteristic of the region before 1959, even among those most radical.
In the 1960s, both Martí and Mariátegui would become icons of the Left in their respective countries: Fidel Castro on many an occasion claimed Martí as the revolution's first and greatest influence, and in Peru, General Juan Velasco's left-leaning military government (1969– 1975), the United Left of the 1980s, and even the murderous Shining Path celebrated Mariátegui's actions and writings. More importantly, Martí's ubiquity in Cuban revolutionary discourse led to a rediscovery or perhaps reimagining of the radical potential to be found in his classic essays, such as "Our America." The search for precedents for the resurgent Left in the region would transform Mariátegui from a historical footnote into "the first Marxist in America," to use the title of a well-known essay by Italian scholar Antonio Melis. Mariátegui may have been the region's first Marxist because of his creative adaptation of the ideas of the author of Capital rather than because of chronology, but forty years earlier, in one of his chronicles from New York City, Martí had written the first response to Karl Marx's actions and ideas by any major Latin American author.
Despite the tendency in the region's scholarship and thought to classify both authors as belonging to a political, ideological, and intellectual continuum — for instance, by claiming Martí as a kind of Third World supplement to Marxism, if not a proto-Marxist, or by stressing the putative influence of the Cuban essayist on Mariátegui, despite a nearly complete lack of textual evidence — there are obvious and significant differences between them. While both came into contact with the figure and ideas of Marx, their reactions were diametrically opposed. Nevertheless, despite their divergent relation to the notion of revolution, in the sense used in this study — that is, as a complete change in social structures leading to the establishment of socialism and modernity — both authors represent the attitudes of Latin Americans before 1959.
José Martí on Marx
As the animator and martyr of the country's struggle for independence and the cornerstone of the country's literary tradition, Martí has loomed large in Cuban history and thought. As Enrico Mario Santí argues, "Cubans at home and abroad revere Martí as the very spirit of their national identity" (141). The appeal of the Cuban patriot helps explain, for instance, why the US would call its propaganda outlet aimed at Cuba Radio Televisión Martí. Not surprisingly, in a widely read interview with Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel Castro proudly stated: "I was first a Martí-an and then became a Martí-an, Marxist and Leninist" (157). By claiming Martí as one of the Cuban Revolution's intellectual progenitors, Castro implicitly presents the revolution as part of the island nation's cultural and political tradition, even as its fulfillment. The proliferation of monuments and homages to the Cuban poet — for instance, the Havana airport is named after him — reflect Martí's centrality to national imaginings within the revolution.
However, after Cuba was declared socialist in 1961, the figure of Martí had to be reconciled with that of Marx. One can identify a division of labor being established by the revolution and its intellectuals between both iconic figures. While Martí, who is generally seen as the quintessential Latin American anti-imperialist, was used to justify the revolution's foreign policy in its opposition to US actions and influence, Marx was presented as the inspiration for the economic changes set in place, even if both were described as mutually complementary intellectual figures.
But this linkage between Martí and Marx had to avoid the obvious hurdle of the German philosopher's absolute ignorance of the existence of the Cuban poet — unsurprising given that Marx died in 1883, twelve years before Martí's heroic death. More importantly, this forced connection had to overcome the Cuban hero's relative lack of interest in Marx: Martí referred directly to the author of Capital only on two occasions: in a personal letter and in a "Carta" (Letter) — as the Cuban poet called the chronicles he wrote in New York for the Argentine newspaper La Nación — written on 29 March 1883 and, given its length, published in two parts on 13 and 16 May. Not only are these mentions far from univocally positive, but, to add insult to injury, the piece originally published in La Nación consistently misspelled Marx as Max! Even though Martí's ideas were in flux throughout his life, one can identify certain constant concerns and attitudes. For instance, there is no reason to suppose that he ever changed his evaluation of Marx. This first part of this chapter will thus examine Martí's view of Marxist ideas and of the concept of revolution.
As Santí argues, "Martí's revolutionary nationalism, his aggressively native or indigenous imagination ... makes him a natural precursor of the post-1959 regime. However, to attempt to demonstrate that Martí was a Marxist, or even a proto-Marxist, has been a more difficult task" (142). It is therefore not surprising that early Cuban Marxists, such as Julio Antonio Mella or Juan Marinello, presented a much more complicated view of Martí's relevance — or lack thereof — to revolutionary politics than did those writing after 1959.
For instance, Mella, in an essay in which he expresses his intense admiration for Martí as an ethical example for Cuban revolutionaries in the 1920s, concludes: "Even though José Martí was a patriot ... he was ... the representative of a democratic bourgeoisie [that was] still capable of achieving much, because it had not yet fulfilled its historical mission" (35). Thus, for Mella, Martí "was the interpreter of the need for social transformation in a specific social moment. Today, equally revolutionary, he would have become the interpreter of the social need of this moment" (32). In other words, Martí had been a revolutionary in the late nineteenth century because the island, in addition to still being a colony, had not yet experienced a bourgeois revolution. By the 1920s, after capitalism had been fully implemented, Martí, in order to be a true revolutionary, would have had to embrace socialism and its call for revolution.
Marinello's 1935 evaluation of Martí is much harsher — he even calls him "a great failure" (121). He also stresses the caducity of his ideas: "Martí's ideas, as all skillful political leaders know are by now 'defeated ideas.' The dominant political ideas are always the offspring of the dominant class. The bourgeoisie brought [to Cuba] liberalism, romanticism, and the mirage of democracy. Today the bourgeoisie is as a class as defeated as the ideas it imported" (122). But like Mella, he concludes: "If Martí were alive today ... he would stand next to those who, following Lenin, put Marx's ideas into practice, know that the revolution is not a fortunate plot turn but rather the sharp and endless struggle for a humanity without oppressors or oppressed" (123). While Marinello seems to be putting the ideological cart before reality's horse — after all, he had no way of knowing there would be a revolution some twenty-five years in the future — he is also identifying Martí's actual ideas with the liberalism that in the late nineteenth century seemed to many to represent the best of social proposals (as it would again in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries).
Thus, for both Mella and Marinello, Martí's ideas are no longer relevant. There is, however, the intimation that, given his ethical exemplarity, if Martí were living in the 1920s or 1930s, he would be a Marxist activist and thinker. In fact, other, perhaps more radical, Marxists were outright critical of the Cuban hero as an obsolete bourgeois democrat and, therefore, necessarily opposed to working-class interests. However, Mella's and Marinello's opinions are representative of Marxist interpretations of Martí before the Cuban Revolution: admiration for the man but emphasis on the limitations of the political thinker.
As we have seen, Castro claimed Martí as a central intellectual and political inspiration. Already in "History Will Absolve Me" (1953), the founding document of the Cuban revolutionary movement though clearly not a Marxist text, Castro states that "Martí was the inspiration for July 26" (52). While the Cuban Revolution "began with roots firmly planted in the island's anti-Communist center-left political parties ... In April 1961, just before the invasion of a CIA-trained exile army at the Bay of Pigs, Castro declared the Cuban Revolution socialist; by the end of the year he was calling it Marxist-Leninist" (Iber 117). After 1961, if not earlier, the intellectual juggling that had characterized earlier Marxist attempts to incorporate Martí as a symbolic precedent, even as his ideas were rejected, was no longer possible. In an article that describes Castro as "Martí's reader in chief," Rafael Saumell-Muñoz argues that "Castro has placed Martí's texts in an even more privileged place than the one they held before 1959. ... ey are — together with those by Marx, Engels, and Lenin — the 'master narratives' (historical, political, philosophical) that justify Castro's power" (101). It was thus now necessary for the intellectuals aligned with the Cuban Revolution to find in Martí the "intellectual author" of the socialist regime. Ethical exemplarity could no longer stand in for political relevance.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Introduction, 1,
1 Revolution before Revolution: José Martí and José Carlos Mariátegui, 11,
2 Boom in the Revolution, Revolution in the Boom: What Is Revolutionary about the Latin American Novel of the 1960s?, 44,
3 The Fall of the Revolutionary and the Return of Liberal Democracy: Vargas Llosa's The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1984) and Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976), 86,
4 Revolution after the Demise of Revolution: Roberto Bolaño and Carla Guelfenbein on Social Change, 134,
Notes, 173,
Works Cited, 231,
Index, 251,