Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

204 reframing latin america
Altamira means high view or forward looking, whereas Bárbara’s land is
simply called El Miedo (fear).
But the crux of the argument made by Gallegos is not simply that Luzardo’s
vanquishing of Bárbara implies a corresponding victory of civilization
over barbarism. Rather, in order to win, Luzardo must merge civilization
with barbarism to create a more unifi ed and powerful whole. This union is
most clearly expressed in his marriage to Marisela. Although he educated
her and thereby symbolically civilized her, Luzardo also surrenders to her
more seminatural infl uence upon his life, allowing himself to be changed
in the process. In this regard, the novel is what literary critic Doris Sommer
calls a “foundational fi ction,” in which two characters (Santos Luzardo and
Marisela) represent confl icting ideologies (civilization and barbarism) and
their marriage results in the union of the differing views, thus resolving a
national confl ict. Just as Sarmiento saw something uniquely Argentine in
the nation’s land and people, Gallegos sees something of Venezuela’s essential
spirit residing in the lands and people of the plains. To simply cast that
aside in favor of the urban, European-oriented, civilized side of urban Venezuela
would be to lose part of one’s soul. Only when these two sides render
themselves united will Venezuela achieve its full and lasting potential as a
nation.
Essentialist readings of Doña Bárbara either agree or disagree with
Gallegos’s vision of a nationalistic, anti-imperialist future for Venezuela
and his corresponding defi nition of the nation’s true essence. Many people
have agreed with Gallegos over the past decades, particularly in Venezuela,
where Doña Bárbara remains mandatory reading in schools. Literary critics
might also celebrate Gallegos’s attempts to complicate his characters’
motivations. Doña Bárbara’s turn to barbarism, for example, is dated to her
rape as a young woman by a group of brutal men who also killed Hasdrubal,
the one man who had inspired earnest passion in her.
Semiotic readings of the novel acknowledge its canonical success but
reveal the many discursive constructions running through it. They point
out that although the author’s fusion of barbarism and civilization was
trendsetting, it also reinforced accepted notions of essence and hierarchy.
For example, civilization remains male, whereas barbarianism is female.
While Santos Luzardo is depicted as better off as a result of his embrace of
Marisela’s rural essence, his domain remains that of the rational, political,
public world, whereas Marisela’s remains domestic and private. By portraying
Bárbara as a witch acting in concert with a spiritual familiar, Gallegos
inscribes a discursive tradition that is centuries old of depicting women
as weaker-willed than men and thus more susceptible to the wiles of dark
spiritual forces.