"Dicen que el universo es casi nuestro":
Claribel Alegrķa's Poetic Retort to Leftist Discourse*
Grinnell College
This article explores Claribel Alegría's poetic confrontation with and critique of Leftist discourse in poems that are not explicitly political. It focuses on the ways in which Alegría responds poetically, as opposed to solely politically, to the exclusion of women from Leftist discourse in Vía única (1965). By veiling her political poetry behind metaphoric language, Alegría also succeeds in contesting readers' expectations of political poets and their texts.
In the late 1970s and 1980s Salvadoran Claribel Alegría (1925) represented the female Central American exile; she was a feminist, committed poet and narrative writer whose works fought against authoritarianism. In these aspects, her texts from this period of her literary production fulfill the expectations of the isthmus' Leftist artists. Many are texts that demonstrate Alegría's solidarity, expressed directly without great rhetorical adornment. Most criticism devoted to her oeuvre focuses on her defense of Leftist causes in her narrative texts, both fiction and testimonial; likewise the bulk of research on her poetry investigates her "letras de emergencia," the poetic parallel of her better-known narrations. In general, Alegría's narratives and poetry have been read as oppositional texts against oppression and as attempts to represent the voices of victims of national political excess.
Alegría's textual allegiance to the dominant discourse of the Left has been particularly studied in her narrative works, and, in fact, these have been considered by some to be the birthplace of truer commitment and solidarity to the "emerging subject" in literature (Yúdice, 1985: 956). George Yúdice, in "Letras de emergencia: Claribel Alegría," praises Alegría's success at arriving at this point of engagement in No me agarran viva (1983) [They Won't Take Me Alive (1987)]. He observes that the ideological "progress" of the 1983 testimonio contrasts with two earlier poetry collections, Via única (1965) and Sobrevivo ("Premio Casa de las América" 1978), where Yúdice contends that the reader encounters "solitary alienation" and a simulacrum of commitment (956). Feminist readers have also praised No me agarran viva's "revolutionariness." For example, critics have understood its representation of the guerrillera's role as mother and fighter as a redefinition of motherhood "within a new revolutionary context that motivates today's Latin American woman, the new narrator-protagonist of testimonial literature, to enter this discourse. Such an understanding gives new political dimension to the term and experience of motherhood; it transcends the private sphere and invades the political one" (Sternbach, 1991: 97). And in "Creation of the Woman Warrior: Claribel Alegría's They Won't Take Me Alive," a more critical reading of Alegría's conservative "idealization of Eugenia [the testimony's protagonist] as a warrior/housewife," Mary Jane Treacy ultimately concludes that "If Alegría constructs her biography around the images of woman=motherhood=affirmation of life, it is because she sees these traditionally female forces as the ones capable of overcoming death and destruction" (Treacy, 1994: 91). For her part, Ileana Rodriguez expands the scope of Treacy's conclusion by arguing that this testimony places woman at its center and "is a metaphor for women as well as for the New Man, written by an international couple as the pattern of a new mode of coupling. . . In other words, the Salvadoran woman in struggle transforms the husband into a lover, into a transitory and temporal relation, clandestine not within the bounds of the oligarchic home but within the larger space of the state" (Rodríguez, 1996: 165). Although these feminist readings of Alegría's treatment of the female guerrilla warrior differ in their foci, they all recognize No me agarran viva's heroine as a significant figure of "feminine" revolution. As such, even in Rodríguez's post-colonialist understanding Alegría's guerrillera, as an integral element of an accepted revolutionary culture, represents a nod to dominant discourses of revolution.1
In contrast to these analyses, this paper explores the way in which Alegría confronts and critiques dominant Leftist discourse in poetry that is not explicitly political. This reading uses as a starting point Ileana Rodríguez's argument, in Women, Guerrillas, & Love: Understanding War in Central America, that the Leftist conceptualization of the New Man that would arise in revolution, a vital, resolute and tender man, only "pretends to speak in the name of the collectivity" (1996: 32). Reading Che Guevara as the "Romantic revolutionary hero," she asserts that his power, his "irresistible attraction," resulted "from the combined effect of disparate aspects": he is "inquisitive," "gentle," "dry," "vibrant," "trenchant," and "serene" (50). Although guerrillas, modeled after Che, were to be manly in their courage and resolve, they also needed to embody "feminine" characteristics, such as tenderness, but as Rodríguez writes,
"The revolutionaries deluded themselves in believing that by proposing an 'alternative maleness', one incorporating 'female traits' such as tendress, they would deliver the New Man. Inscribing himself in writing as t/he agent of change, this New Subject posits that his agency is love […]" (33)
This "feminization" of the guerrilla figure, though, does not integrate women into the revolutionary New Man (32-33). In fact Rodríguez finds that even when women form part of the guerrilla army they are relegated to conventional roles: cook, seamstress, courier, "bearer of tenderness" (Guevara cited in Rodríguez 72).
Reading Claribel Alegría against the grain, we observe that she offers a poetic retort to the Left's propagation of the revolutionary ideal described by Rodríguez; an ideal that co-opts "feminine" characteristics in the definition of the New Man but excludes women from revolutionary discourse. In her poetic responses, Alegría questions mainstays of revolutionary thought in Central America, including the necessity of sacrifice and martyrdom for the "warrior" and the efficacy of political action by the general population, the "little people." Her critiques are often veiled behind metaphoric language thereby not only contesting revolutionary discourse but also readers' expectations of political texts and poets. In short, Alegría's "poetic" poetry challenges the thematic and formal characterizations of political poetic production. And precisely because of these texts' difference from "traditional" political poetry, these poems have gone unstudied.
In another study, I have posited that Huésped de mi tiempo (1961) is Alegría's transitional text from bourgeois musings to politicized poetry wherein the poetic speaker's feminist awakening leads to more profound awareness of the surrounding political reality. With this text Alegría initiates her exploration of the efficacy of poetry as a political text, all the while subtly exploiting poetic convention and tradition. In the 1961 collection's "Monólogo múltiple," a polyphonic poem, the reader hears the voices of a variety of men and women who attempt to understand, and survive, their society, its politics and expectations. The poem's five speakers' comments function as critiques of resistance and social upheaval. The various personae allow Alegría to provide a multi-perspective understanding of the sociopolitical roles of the common people (Mother, Lover, Old Man), the military (Warrior) and, the martyr (Artisan). Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, in this poem the Artisan is the only figure with transformative agency: he is the one who will give his life for his fellow men and women despite himself. As he affirms:
"No escogí
el haber nacido.
Menos
el servir de mártir.
Pero es mi turno ahora,
y debo colocarme,
endurecerme,
ser piedra palpitante
que otros hollarán,
los que vienen detrás." (165-174)
Although the Artisan ultimately fulfills his role by accepting martyrdom, the poem in its entirety questions the efficacy and necessity of the cyclical sacrifice of martyrs and the five monologists' acceptance of predetermined social roles. It starkly marks the insufficiency of these roles stressing that these social roles, or "archetypes," imprison the collectivity in individual "puddles" from which they cannot escape. Unlike Alegría's reinforcement in No me agarran viva of the guerrilla mantra that believes that the "death of the revolutionary leads to rebirth in others and a rekindling of fervor to fight" (Treacy, 1994: 85), "Monólogo múltiple"'s representation of an acquiescent but not completely convinced martyr figure is a key criticism of Leftist discourse and its praise, and promotion, of martyrdom (Aparicio, 2001: 107-108).2 Alegría succeeds in problematizing the revolutionary rhetoric of guerrilla sacrifice by presenting a doubting Artisan who is unable to resist the dogma that has assigned him the role of "piedra palpitante" awaiting death. Her subsequent exploration of contemporary women's lives leads her to articulate more focalized criticism of this rhetoric.
In a later poetry collection, Vía única (1965), Alegría critiques aspects of Leftist discourse and women's roles within it. In "Pequeña patria," the poetic speaker, a bourgeois woman, fails to enact social transformation via popular, government and Leftist channels. The poem recounts her failure ironically, through the image of Chicken Little, an unreliable, alarmist character. Her message falls on deaf ears and her threat to the status quo (in the form of her warning) is eventually "neutralized" by her psychiatrist.
"Pequeña patria" follows the poetic speaker as she attempts to warn her homeland that the sky is falling. The description of the I's small, surely insignificant country initiates the poem's recitation of impending doom. The wind-blown scenery on which the poetic speaker will scream her unheeded warning, "Se está cayendo el cielo" (11-12), is populated by marginal "actors," her poor compatriots who represent the nation's majority,
"Detrás de mí
un remolino de huérfanos pálidos
de niños con el vientre hinchado
de madres pordioseras
exhibiendo a sus hijos
llenos de moscas
de mendigos astutos
que invierten su vida
en una pierna morada llena de costras
y vendas sucias." (1-10)
On this stage that recalls a typical open-air market, the poor are on display not as metaphor but as visual "exhibits" of need and want. And also of a pathetic, but perhaps fruitful, attempt to elicit pity and profit from a despicable social situation of poverty, abandonment and disease. But even in the poor's role as actors on a stage, the I is able to turn away from them. They are the scenery, "detrás de mí," that accompanies her as she performs. Her scream of alarm, like their more basic one, goes mostly unanswered by its "audience." The only response the speaker receives is from a woman dealing cards to other women, "'Queridas', / comenta la señora gorda / mientras baraja el naipe / '¿saben la última noticia? / Dicen que el cielo se está cayendo'" (13-17). The lone fat lady does not respond directly to the I's warning, rather she fulfills one of her functions: she passes this news on as she would any piece of gossip. The news that the sky is falling does not fall within the purview of the "señora gorda" role—to read her clients' futures written in a deck of cards. For a moment the "señora gorda" does divest the I of her agency as the announcer of the coming disaster, but she does not confirm the speaker's assertion that the I with her (perceived) special ability, fortune telling. In other words, she does not legitimate the poetic speaker's claim. She presents it not as a future to be wary about, but as another gossipy tidbit to chew.
The I then leaves behind the world of the poor and marginal to enter into the realm of power. She makes her way to a meeting of officials in search of a less nonchalant audience for her groundbreaking announcement,
"A las tres de la tarde
se abre la reunión de directorio.
Me levanto y digo:
'Señores,
hay un solo capítulo
en la agenda de hoy
se está cayendo el cielo.'" (18-24)
In this setting, unlike the previous scene of poverty, it would seem that the I should be able to receive a more appropriate response to her news. And in fact, her doubtful claim that her announcement is the only pending business gives her an air of importance. The poetic speaker rouses the "señores" (which can be read as junta) to action, or at least to the promise of future action. The "gerente," the group's agitated leader, proposes the construction of an underground vault to "proteger nuestros archivos / los valores" (25-30). The display of concern for legal papers and its lack of it for the populace reminds the reader of the desperate conditions of the country seen in the poem's opening scene. The directorate's immediate response to protect the nation's "valores" temporarily grants the speaker legitimacy as does their serious consideration of her news and their subsequent proposal to save the nation. The troops are called and the general gives the soldiers unusual instructions, "Que las tropas vestidas de campaña / se formen, / increpa el general / que levanten rifles y bayonetas / que sostengan el cielo" (33-37). The soldiers are ordered to wear fatigues as if going off to battle although their mission is to prevent a natural disaster. The general's orders highlight the troops' potential for violence even in the presumably peaceful activities of holding up the sky and guarding "our" valuable documents. This use of arms seems preventive and quietly recognizes the possibility of opposition on the part of the "people" to the protection of the "señores"' values. Moreover, the fact that the "gerente" only names the national patrimony as that which is worth protecting, also surreptitiously comments on the Salvadoran historical alliance, and sometimes confluence, of the moneyed elite and the military establishment.
A narrative description of the "pequeña patria"'s daily life suggestively interrupts the soldier's imminent patriotic feat in the poem. In a sea change, the poetic I as speaking subject disappears and instead a third person "narrator" takes over as the poem's voice: "El día está nublado. / Se cumple una cuota normal / de actividades. / Los carniceros venden tres cuartos / a las amas de casa / y cobran un kilo" (38-43). In contrast to the poem's opening lines that present the "stage" on which Chicken Little will declare her truth, these descriptions dispossess her of control over the backdrop.3 Whereas the first line, "Detrás de mí," situates the I in the "remolino" of her country's poverty, here the narration is impersonal, although not completely neutral in tone. Lines 38 through 40 reiterate the normality of the scene by emphasizing its habituality, but quickly the poem's voice changes into a more subtly critical tone, one not completely satisfied with the "cuota normal / de actividades" (39-40). This change occurs in a daily scene that portrays a housewife cheated at the butcher shop and confirms the poem's interest in women's social conditions. The narrator rapidly replaces the seemingly innocuous image of the grocery shopping woman with more heavily socially invested portraits of femininity: the spinster and the working class maid,
"las solteronas ventilan sus odios
en aulas de pupilos
los donjuanes se pavonean con sus amigos
mientras las criadas
arruinan la comida
y contemplan el aborto." (44-49)
The juxtaposition of the housewife, the spinster and the maid expands the view of women beyond which any one figure would conjure. The lives of the three women are marked by their relationships, or lack thereof, with men and offspring,4 and by their economic situations. While the housewife presents an acceptable and even laudable position as a financially dependent caretaker and helpmate, the single maids and spinsters are pitiful because they are without husbands or economic security. More specifically, the vengeful schoolmarms are embittered women who take their (sexual) frustrations out on their students, their virtual children; perhaps indirectly avenging their childlessness. Meanwhile the maids are cursed by their fertility, "ruined" in a way similar to their bosses' meals, for post-pregnancy they are not "edible" as (marriageable) women. They, like the "solteronas" and unlike the housewives, cannot reach social acceptability except, ironically, as the conquests about which "donjuanes" boast. Their contemplation of abortion additionally segregates them from "proper" society and speaks to the inappropriateness of their pregnancies, and of the illicitness of their sexual relations. Finally, besides illustrating a sexual hierarchy, for example, married housewife versus unmarried pregnant maid, all three recall the class divisions, which separate them despite their similar dependencies.
The theme of dependence continues in the poetic speaker's vision of parallels between the three women and the socioeconomic conditions of the homeland. In the following physical description of the poetic speaker's country, which began with "El día está nublado" (38), the poetic narration juxtaposes and compares these representations of a nation, its (unjust) infrastructure, and its citizens:
"Pronto el arbolito de café
dará cerezas rojas
la caña, miel
los desfiladores de algodón
nubes carnosas
que habrán de convertirse
en Cadillacs
en una noche de casino
en el alquiler de una suite en Cannes." (50-58)
In contrast to the maids' inconvenient fertility, coffee, sugar cane and cotton production are desired "births." The welfare of the nation's elite depends on the land's ability to reproduce saleable commodities; commodities that can purchase luxury items.5 Thus unlike the maids' fetuses, the fruits of the nation's flora come to fruition, though not in their current environment or form. The poetic speaker understands that the country's production will not retain its ostensible usage, that the land's harvest actually produces transportation, entertainment and leisure for the wealthy (56-58). The juxtaposed images of women's and the country's reproductive functions, and thus of the poem's economic context, reconfigure the backdrop for the poetic speaker's frenzied announcement. In "Pequeña patria"'s first and second scenes, the poetic speaker presents two very different locales and audiences; both visions rely on commonplace images of Central American reality: rampant poverty and rule by military junta. The shift from descriptions of Chicken Little's travails maneuvering among these two groups to more detailed depictions of the country's peoples and their economic relations interrupts the flow of the poem's narrative as well as exposes the socioeconomic structure that helps maintain the status quo. This change of direction charges the more distant, but not uncritical, third-person "narrator" with filling in the poem's context.
With this broader national landscape behind her, the I as subject re-enters the poem and introduces one more segment of her society: the intelligentsia. In contrast to her communication with the poor and the directorate, here she joins the intellectuals' circle,6
"Me siento a la mesa de los intelectuales.
'¿Qué haremos?' pregunto
'se está cayendo el cielo.'
Sonríe el viejo radical.
Hace veinte años lo predijo.
'¿Y si fuera verdad?'
pregunta el joven iracundo
'¿qué haremos?'
Con ademán ajustado
al significado histórico
saca su pluma
y comienza a redactar sobre el mantel
un manifiesto de intelectuales y artistas." (59-71)
As at the earlier meeting with the national directorate, at this meeting the male protagonists react in a predictable, uncreative manner. While the bureaucrat of lines 25 through 30 fears for national documents and the general calls for the use of firearms (33-37), the old radical, the intellectuals' male figure of authority, sure of his historical foresight and relevance, writes, as usual. Unlike her other meetings, at this one the I's query, "What shall we do?," is echoed by one of her listeners. More than solely repeat "¿Qué haremos?," the angry young man, in contrast to the assured "viejo radical" and government officials, vacillates when confronted with the possibility of a falling sky. He dares to momentarily question the scrupulous radical's and Chicken Little's prediction but does not lead his fellow thinkers to renew their strategies. The intellectuals, as did the soldiers before them (33-37), follow the directions dictated by their leader. As in the previous two "stages," here the female poetic speaker serves only to galvanize into action those around her, but she herself does not opine. The I disguised as Chicken Little fulfills her role as errant predictor, similar to the "señora gorda" (13-17), without surpassing it to act on her own prediction.
Chicken Little's attempts at resolving her country's dilemma reaches its peak and finale at her last meeting. After this, her third unsatisfactory reception, she abruptly retreats from the public eye and returns to her private space, "Hace días no salgo" (72), to contemplate her failed prophecy. Despite the certainty displayed by the I's repeated entreaties, her various audiences prove her wrong: "El cielo no se cae. / Los políticos lo han dicho / los directores / los generales / hasta los mendigos lo afirman" (73-77). The individuals the poetic speaker names as representative listeners include, with the exception of the beggars, only men with power. The exclusion from this list of her own social group (the intellectuals) bespeaks her skepticism about its influence while the inclusion of beggars in her list can be read as recognition of the amplitude of her detractors. At the same time, line 77 demonstrates the poetic speaker's attitude towards the poor. The conclusion of the list with "hasta los mendigos" sarcastically denotes the gravity of Chicken Little's mistake, for "even" beggars see it. By subsuming her public under the images of politicians, directors, generals and beggars, the poetic speaker illustrates her society's power relations and its reliance on sexual and class standing for status. The list's movement from politicians to beggars implies an inclusion of the country's entire population but, ironically, it is a representation that does not take women into account despite their centrality in national daily life and their dominance as images of the everyday in this poem.
The poetic speaker's metaphorization as Chicken Little prefigures the poem's presentation of the erroneousness of her cry, but the I herself only acknowledges her failure once different men concur that she is wrong and when she observes that her society has not been transformed by her cry: "El cielo se está cayendo." In fact, in the poem's last lines, the I's incisive reading of societal relations reveals the inadequacy of the Chicken Little metaphor for her self-representation. For unlike the addled, overly anxious storybook character, "Pequeña patria"'s bourgeois speaker's attitude and perspective shows that she is well aware of social realities:
"Para cada señorito
hay una criada encinta
manteniendo el equilibrio.
Para cada señora gorda
un tuberculoso que recoge algodón
para cada político
un ciego con bastón blanco.
Todo es lícito." (78-85)
These lines transform the third-person narrator's descriptions of the male-female relations of lines 44 to 49 into sarcastic comments on the I's small homeland's status quo, its state of balance, and on its underlying corruption. The poetic speaker exposes line 46's "donjuanes" to be wealthy "señoritos" who consider their families' maids sexual objects with whom they can have worry-free illicit sexual relations. According to the I's view, the maids' unplanned pregnancies and their lovers' inconstancy help maintain current sexual and class roles. The "señoritos" fulfill the social and sexual expectations of their positions, "se pavonean con sus amigos" (46), by taking advantage of the female family help. In the lower classes, the unequal relationship between wealthy men and working-class women depicted by the "criada encinta" and her donjuan positions the gossipy "señora gorda" as the recipient of her male partner's labor and sacrifice. And from another perspective, the consumptive cotton worker also supplies upper class "señoras" with their luxurious lives in the same way coffee and sugar cane plantation workers (50-58) carry the weight of the country's economy on their shoulders without benefiting (equally) from their labor. Finally, the political element of the "pequeña patria"'s equilibrium is embodied by the empty, image-conscious politician whose interest in social security does not extend beyond appearances. The blind man plays a static role in the politician's self-representation: thus he can feign charity and empathy through a fellow, but not equal, citizen.
The poetic speaker's pronouncement, "Todo es lícito" (85), accepts the legitimacy of the preceding seven lines. Her tone of disgust, or perhaps of incredulousness and resignation, insists on her outsider status. Her cries disturb the status quo, jostle the acceptability of her nation's current situation. More importantly, her "el cielo se está cayendo" coupled with these lines' sarcastic tone reveals her conscious adoption of an assigned role.7 The Chicken Little mask allows the poetic speaker's movement from one rung of the socioeconomic and political hierarchy to another and limits her to a particular script, thus predetermining her ultimate failure and propelling her forward toward that end.8 Regardless of the truth or falsity of her belief, in her "pequeña patria" "todo es lícito," except her declaration that "el cielo se está cayendo,"
"Mi pavor, infantil.
La exhibición pública
de la angustia
hace daño a las gentes
interfiere con el comercio
amedrenta a los niños." (86-91)
The poetic speaker is reduced to the status and condition of a child who has been given too much leeway and has become a nuisance. Her reformative attempts are interpreted as groundless worries that create havoc for her compatriots. Whereas from the start of the poem its landscape is one of unequal distribution of wealth and power, "they" now express concern for the well-being of "las gentes" (not "el pueblo"). The list of those perturbed by the I's childish fear reiterates the social hypocrisy of her context, for only the effects on commerce would frighten the nation.9 In fact, although, the I's exhibition of anxiety does temporarily create a nuisance, for example, the soldiers are called to unnecessary action, at the end its consequences fall squarely on the I's personal life. The poetic speaker's Chicken Little performance forces her into the psychiatrist's office and through him to the accepted venue for bourgeois women's social concerns: charity:
"Mañana iré al mercado.
Lo recetó el psiquiatra.
Podré ofrecerle
diez centavos a un mendigo
y sentir compasión." (92-96)
The psychiatrist's advice is three-fold: market shopping to atone for the disruption of commerce, giving alms to the poor (expression of charitable feelings), and finally displaying compassion (in the superficial manner of lines 83 and 84's politician). The poetic speaker's tactic of adopting the role of Chicken Little to achieve a public voice backfires. She does not escape her private world, rather she enters more deeply into it through psychotherapy.
The poetic speaker's self-identification with a folk character who overreacts, infects her friends with her needless worry (after all, a falling acorn is not a falling sky), and leads them to the hungry fox problematizes the poem's representation of feminine agency and transformative power. The Chicken Little metaphor converts the female I's ironic commentary into nothing more than an infantile outburst that is easily allayed by going on with her daily routine (grocery shopping) and aiding panhandlers. The visit to the psychiatrist adds an interesting twist to the utilization of the folk story; instead of leading her compatriots to their end, this Chicken Little's behavior is treated as mental illness and therefore as not meriting serious attention. The poem, as a retelling of "Chicken Little," posits the I as a woman whose (social) anxieties are neutralized via her re-integration into "service functions within male structures," consumerism, and finally a vision of her as a madwoman in the psychiatrist's office (de Lauretis, 1987: 89). No matter her sense of irony and social awareness, the feminine poetic speaker answers to her class' and sex's constraints. As the embodiment of Chicken Little, she behaves accordingly and accepts the expected outcome of that behavior: ridicule and psychiatric treatment. And as a conscious inhabitant of her society she is frustrated by the failure of her performance.
The possible message(s) that the poem's final sarcastic voice may carry is not made explicit. It is clear at the end that the poetic speaker does not believe that the sky is falling literally, but her depiction of and comments on her homeland obviate that the sky is falling metaphorically. But her metaphorical rendition of the nation's demise, its downhill movement towards deeper poverty and injustice falls on deaf ears. Neither her compatriots nor her nation's leadership nor her colleagues are able to interpret the meaning of her warning; they are unable to decipher her metaphoric language. All of her audiences read "El cielo se está cayendo" like a statement of fact and thus react in manners that are absurd (e.g. attempting to hold up the sky with bayonets) and that cannot hope to resolve the nation's problems pinpointed by the poem's narrative and sarcastic commentary. The simplification of the I's lament through a literal understanding divests it of complexity and reduces it to being the panicked cry of a hysterical woman. "The sky is falling"'s absurdity, just like the assumption that the speaker is mentally unstable, serves to invalidate its content and thus its figurative truth.
The reach of the Chicken Little metaphor extends to the national imagery. If the poem's title, "Pequeña patria," is also understood as an allusion to Chicken Little, the nation becomes an anxiety-ridden entity that causes chaos. The fact that the directorate and the intellectuals (representatives of the national body) momentarily trust that the sky is indeed falling speaks of their own gullibility and of the power of conviction on the part of the poetic speaker. This homeland then functions as something that is less than important; a naïve nation that cannot protect itself nor bring about changes in its dreary condition as a "remolino de huérfanos pálidos" (2). At the same time, the leadership's desire to save the national archives from destruction represents an attempt to maintain their "rightful" positions as leaders of their strained homeland-Chicken Little. In this sense, the poem portrays the nation's leadership as pathetic figures eager to exploit their nation's smallness. Thus, in Alegría's poem, the Chicken Little metaphor is also a manner in which to expose the "Pequeña patria"'s fraility as well as its ability to inspire protectors despite its absurdity and the illogic of its socioeconomic and power structures.
Both in its image as an unreflective nation-state and as a mask for the ironic bourgeois female poetic speaker, the Chicken Little metaphor makes possible "Pequeña patria"'s social critique. The reading of the story character as the nation renders a view of El Salvador's obvious distress and its leaders' disinterest, and inability perhaps, to conscientiously attend to its problems. The donning of the Chicken Little imagery is in this case involuntary, for in the poem the nation lacks agency; it is a stage or background for the presentation of the I's alarm as well as for the supporting "actors," her compatriots. On the other hand, equating the poetic speaker with Chicken Little offers a nuanced comprehension of this metaphor and of its critical reach. The I's ironic manipulation of a socially recognizable figure to critique the silencing of women's social views, particularly of those of the middle classes, allows her to draw the reader into the poem via convention. The vision of an anxious woman desperately searching for attention for an absurd preoccupation is socially acceptable in the speaker's small homeland. Her failure is of course predictable. In this sense, "Pequeña patria" criticizes bourgeois women's complacency and inaction in the face of oppression as well as the ineffectiveness of strategies of opposition such as the wearing of the Chicken Little costume. The I, though, also undermines this critique of would-be women activists by slyly demonstrating her society's literal and figural blindness. Through the poetic speaker's self-representation as Chicken Little and the foregrounding of El Salvador's socioeconomic landscape, Alegría's poem attempts to make the implicit listeners and the reader understand that the sky is falling through two different fronts: the metaphoric or poetic and the literal. But even the I's peers, represented by the intellectuals, fail to effectively tackle Chicken Little's dilemma. The bourgeois poetic speaker is unable to find a space for herself within the available avenues for social change: popular, governmental and leftist. When she resigns herself to her psychiatrist's advice, and thus to a simulacrum of social activism, she illustrates the hurdles confronted particularly by bourgeois, left-leaning women who have finally realized that their society is indeed in dire straits. Ultimately then, in "Pequeña patria," women's, and by extension other marginalized group's, desire for a shared space within the discourse of social change, (here the discourse of the Left), remains unfulfilled. The poetic speaker as Chicken Little, as with the Artisan in "Monólogo múltiple," is unable to promote or activate concrete transformation nor speak either for herself or for her group or "puddle" ("Monólogo múltiple"). The Old Man's affirmation, "Dicen que el universo es casi nuestro," as well as Chicken Little's fervent belief in the truth of the falling sky, and therefore in the potential for an active listener, go unheeded; just as the need for the construction of a New Woman that did not imitate the New Man did in Central American revolutions at the end of the twentieth-century.
Alegría, Claribel, 1961: Huésped de mi tiempo, Buenos Aires: Américalee.
Alegría, Claribel, 1965: Vía única, Montevideo: Editorial Alfa.
Aparicio, Yvette, 2001: Negotiating Politics and Aesthetics in the Poetry of Claribel Alegria, Ernesto Cardenal and Roque Dalton, Diss., UC Irvine.
De Lauretis, Teresa, 1987: "Gramsci Notwithstanding or the Left Hand of History", in Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 84-94.
Lara Martínez, Rafael, 2000: "Postestimonio y disolución de la guerrilla en El Salvador," in La tormenta entre las manos: Ensayos polémicos sobre literatura salvadoreña, San Salvador: Dirección de Publicaciones e Impresos, 152-165.
Paige, Jefferey M., 1997: Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America, Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press.
Rodriguez, Ileana, 1996: Women, Guerrillas & Love: Understanding War in Central America, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sternbach, Nancy Saporta, 1991: "Remembering the Dead: Latin American Women's "Testimonial" Discourse," in Latin American Perspectives, 18.3, 91-102, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Treacy, Mary Jane, 1994: "Creation of the Woman Warrior: Claribel Alegría's They Won't Take Me Alive," in: Boschetto-Sandoval, Sandra M./Phillips McGowan, Marcia (eds), 1994: Claribel Alegría and Central American Literature: Critical Essays, Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 75-96.
Yúdice, George, 1985: "Letras de emergencia: Claribel Alegría," in Revista Iberoamericana. 51.132-133: 953-964, University of Pittsburgh.back *. I presented a preliminary version of this paper at the 2003 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) meeting.
back 1. In contrast to these three sympathetic analyses, Lara Martínez's critique of Alegría's text is much more strident. He criticizes Alegría's allegiance to the Salvadoran Left and argues that her text clings too strongly to the party line and therefore disallows any criticism of sexual roles within the guerrilla ranks, "Dudo mucho que el ideal de un feminismo sea la sumisión de toda libertad individual y de pareja a la jerarquía del Partido. ¿Acaso el cuerpo femenino le pertenece a la organización?" (2000: 155). At the same time, he implicitly challenges the authenticity of Alegría's feminism.
back 2. For a Marxist questioning of ideologies of martyrdom in the work of leftist poets, see James Iffland's reading of the "ideologies of death" in Otto René Castillo's poetry in Ensayos sobre la poesía revolucionaria de Centroamérica, San Jose: EDUCA, 1994.
back 3. Imagined as a camera, here the I loses control over the vision recorded. See "Documental" in this same poetry collection for an expanded use of the cinematographic metaphor.
back 4. Note that the schoolmarms' pupils contrast with the bloated children (3) of the first scene and that the maids' unborn children, children of poor women, may end up joining the "huérfanos pálidos" (2).
back 5. The acuteness of the "Pequeña patria's" comprehension of the country's economy is corroborated by a seemingly random comment cited in Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America. Writing on the coffee elite's reaction to the 1979 nationalization of coffee exportation and the creation of the Instituto Nacional del Café (INCAFE) (195), Jefferey M. Paige quotes an interviewee, a member of the Consejo Salvadoreño del Café (CSC) (INCAFE was deemed unconstitutional and was replaced by the CSC), on the government's view of the coffee industry's money management, "The problem with Duarte was that the price of coffee was a political price. When coffee reached 200 dollars per quintal, Duarte said that was too much money…. He said we would just spend it on cars'" (196). Paige goes on to comment that the majority of his interviewees, "believed that the foreign-exchange surplus, which should have gone to them, was wasted through government inefficiency and corruption, particularly INCAFE" (196).
back 6. Note that although she sits with the government officials, "Me levanto y digo" (20), she speaks to them from afar, "Señores" (21). She does not include herself among them.
back 7. "Aprendizaje" (Huésped de mi tiempo) offers a more explicit example of a feminine poetic speaker who ironically conforms to social views with which she disagrees. In this long poem, for example, she confesses that she only pretends to agree with her husband's view of life, "con un aire de sabio / dice que la vida es esperanza. / Yo sonrío / y digo que sí por complacer" (84-87). The I follows this confession of deceit with her own, more complex vision of daily life.
back 8. The poetic speaker's acceptance of the Chicken Little role compares to the martyr's resignation to sacrifice in "Monólogo múltiple." In both cases, the poetic speakers recognize the artificiality of their conditions yet fulfill their respective expectations.
back 9. The poem's opening images of poor ill children implicitly confront the new concern for the nation's youth revealed in line 91.
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