latin american essays maclas

an altar once stood, where vegetables and daisies once grew, where
animals fed. In Florida. (230-231) 9
Estela is not only Gina’s Abuela, she is also the bearer of collective
memory, and she is fully conscious of the links between the past and the future.
She is the one who understands that Gina must deal with the past in order to go
forward. It is fitting that her dying words are: “Life goes on, Ginita . . . It always
does” (188).
Notes
1 Gustavo Pérez-Firmat came to the United States at the age of 11, Cristina
García at 3, Virgilio Suárez at 8, Achy Obejas at 6, Roberto G. Fernández at 9,
and Elías Miguel Muñoz at 14.
2 Isabel Alvarez Borland (50) states: “If anger, despair, and sadness were the
traits expressed by the first exiles, vacillation and ambivalence will be the
prevailing emotions for the Cuban Americans who came from Cuba as
adolescents. The history challenged by the exiles has to be confronted by the
second generation in order to put it aside and to go on, even if this process is
painful, and at times fruitless. . . the questions asked by Cuban-American
writers focus on the relationship between past and present and on the
importance of creating an identity in the adoptive country.”
3 Elías Miguel Muñoz’s novelistic protagonists are all situated in the Los Angeles
area. The protagonist of Orlando Cachumbambé experiences a psychic divide
when he visits his relatives in New Jersey after having spent time as a university
student in California.
4 Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican and Tomás Rivera’s …And the
Earth Did Not Devour Him have become classics of this genre. In the case of
Rivera’s work, it is a story of a young Texan migrant worker of Mexican descent.
Both works are highly autobiographical.
5 Oliva (683) notes, “In poem and prose, Muñoz’s characters exist in the
simultaneous presence and absence of Cuba.”
6 Alexandra McPherson (111) indicates that “Gina has no personal framework to
support her parents’ version of events. But even though she does not have firsthand
experience with the Revolution, she consciously recognizes, albeit
reluctantly, the need to hear and accept the stories of relatives.”
7 Cristina García’s The Agüero Sisters and Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo are
other prime examples of works by contemporary Cuban writers who place their
protagonists in the position of searching for, and reconstructing, family memories
as a key element in the formation and understanding of their own identities.
8 Isabel Alvarez Borland (123) states that the persona in Cuban-American texts is
a form of “second self” created by the author through whom the narrative is told
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