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Spanish professor Carol D'Lugo's special areas of research and teaching include the Mexican and Argentine novel. In a paper given at the Congress of the International Institute of Iberoamerican Literature, she reflected on the novel Los herederos del hambre: una nueva imagen de Chiapas. |
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Shadow in a land of sunshine
Professor Carol D'Lugo's research
Vacations in Cancun, mariachi bands, tortillas, sombreros. For many of us, these festive images are what come to mind when we think of Mexico. Our knowledge of Mexico on a deeper level is sketchy. Most U.S. Americans are unaware that Mexico's history for over five centuries has been characterized by continual conflict between its native population and its European colonizers and their descendents, a conflict that has yet to be resolved.
Professor of Spanish Carol D'Lugo has been analyzing a portrayal of these struggles in the 1994 novel Los herederos del hambre: una nueva imagen de Chiapas (The Heirs of Hunger: a new image of Chiapas). Author Jesús Magdaleno Cañavera places his story in Chiapas, a southern Mexican state bordering Guatemala. Some readers might remember Chiapas as the site of a peasant uprising by a group descended from the ancient Maya in January 1994. Led by subcomandante Marcos, the group has taken the name of Zapatistas, after the legendary peasant leader from the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata. Zapata was the only leader who fought completely for land reform, with no thought of personal gain.
In a recent article, D'Lugo shows how Cañavera structures Los herederos to illustrate the struggle between the Indians who work the farms and the landowners who control everything. Cañavera creates parallel characters whose words and actions articulate their differing interests in the conflict and their differing attitudes toward the land.
- Benjamin Pastrana is the governor of Chiapas. He represents government collaboration with the landowners.
- Filemón Pedranza is a liberal lawyer who articulates the position of the indigenous and champions their cause.
- Segura and Gauner represent wealthy and ruthless landowners who see the land and its native inhabitants as a commodities to be exploited.
- Simón and Valentín represent Native American farmers whose families are perpetually indebted to the landowners. The Indian tradition is one that sees the land as a living entity to be respected and shared by all.
- Father Pastor is a priest who must leave the Catholic Church in order to support the indigenous population. Cañavera creates this character to reveal the Church establishment as a supporter of the status quo.
- Simón and Valentín are contrasted with a more radical group of highland Indians who refuse any connection with the landowners. Cañavera thus reveals a split within the native population itself.
Cañavera portrays the conflict as one that passes, relentlessly and without resolution, from generation to generation. The novel focuses on the interactions of three generations of landowners and Indians chained together by interest in the same parcels of land. Each generation of Indians is heir to a cycle characterized by apathy, a sense of hopelessness and violent repression. Each generation makes a tentative attempt to rise from a life of poverty, only to be starved into submission by the collusion of the landowners, government, and Church. Cañavera keeps the names of landowners and Indians the same from generation to generation, thus reinforcing the cyclical nature of the struggle. The only voice that surfaces to articulate a positive solution is that of a journalist, thus linking Cañavera to a collection of recent works coming out of Chiapas that use journalism as a vehicle with which to articulate a plan for peace.
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Additional Resources
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 The Chiapas region of Mexico. Click to enlarge.
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