Langley 1

Mitch Langley

Mr. Kolman

AP English Literature

12 January 2009

Reactions to Violence in Contemporary Spanish Literature

! In most departments of literature in the Spanish-speaking world,

a distinction is made between those works written in Spain, and those

written in the Western hemisphere. Just as we differentiate between

British and American literature, the Spanish literary canon is

divided into two main subgroups: literatura Peninsular, and

literatura hispanoamericana. The hemispheric changes that have

occurred in the past four-hundred years have made their mark on works

on both sides of the Atlantic; however, many components of the story

from Spain and one from Latin America stay similar. In particular,

the raisons d’être, motivating causes for writing, are often the same

no matter the country of origin. In both the Iberian Peninsula and

Latin America, authors were often driven to write by the consistent

and pervasive violence that racked the stability of nearly ever

Hispanic country in the twentieth century. In Latin America, the

textbook example of violence and literary response comes in la

Violencia in Colombia; in Spain, the major period of unrest was the

Spanish Civil War. In both of these conflicts, authors across borders

shared common themes in their works as a way to rationalize or react

to the violence in the world around them. Colombian author Gabriel

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García Márquez wrote prolifically on la Violencia, including his

short story “La viuda de Montiel.” In Spain, Ana María Matute saw the

Spanish Civil War as a driving force in her own upbringing and often

kept it as a background piece in her own work, including “El árbol de

oro.” In these short stories, the authors use the common motifs of

loss of innocence and differences in perspective to make subtle

commentary on the nature of violence in their homelands.

! Spanish literary critic Jean Franco said that there were certain

plot elements of the Colombian story that identified it as having

been influenced by la Violencia, including isolated and solitary

towns where “men and women are still prey to senseless violence,”

which the setting a distinctive medieval aura (Franco 252). García

Márquez’s “La viuda de Montiel” (“Montiel’s Widow,” in English) plays

Franco’s distinctions to a tee. “La viuda de Montiel” is set in an

unnamed town referred to as the “pueblo” at the height of la

Violencia. The period was one of lawlessness and terror stemming from

the assassination of the mayor of Bogotá in 1948. Wrote J. León

Helguera in his essay on the role of the military in Colombia:

Within a week, order was restored in most urban

areas, but the half-hearted coalition between the

Liberals and the dominant Conservatives was ended,

and political violence against the Liberals became

the rule, rather than the exception, especially in

rural Colombia. (Helguera 787)

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The characteristic violence that uprooted Colombia for the decade

between 1948 and 1958 led to a cavalcade of horrific and treacherous

acts committed by seemingly normal people, which García Márquez

focuses on in his story. “La viuda de Montiel” opens with the death

of the man responsible for the story, don José Montiel. The motif of

difference in perspective becomes immediately clear from the very

first scene-setting sentence: “When don José Montiel died, the whole

world felt avenged, save for his wife; but it took several hours

before everyone actually believed that he had died1” (Márquez 258, my

emphasis). While “everyone thought that [Montiel’s] back would be

riddled with bullets during an ambush” instead of dying peacefully at

home, Montiel’s widow is apparently blissfully unaware of her

husband’s wrongdoings, as she “thought that the entire town would

attend the funeral service, and that the house would overflow with

flowers” (259). In reality, only the priests attend the funeral, and

Montiel’s children do not even return from their homes in Europe -

the implication is that they are too afraid to go back to Colombia.

After his death, Montiel’s widow undergoes a complex series of

emotional transformations as she realizes who her husband really was.

At first, she feels angry at the town around her, declaring that she

will “shut myself [at home] forever... I do not want to know more of

this world” (259). Montiel’s widow is afraid to open Pandora’s box by

1 Note: all translations throughout the paper are my own; in all cited quotes I
have tried to maintain the spirit and brevity of the original Spanish as much as
possible.
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delving into her husband’s past, and instead she sees it as easier to

just lock herself away. Unfortunately for her, Pandora’s box is

opened in the form of her husband’s safe, which the police attempt to

open one afternoon. Montiel’s involvement from which she blinded

herself comes back to her in death as the police are forced try to

shoot the lock off of the safe, again driving the widow to think of

her husband and the violence around her. Upset, she thinks, “Five

years praying to God that the shooting stops, and now I have to give

thanks that they shoot inside my house” (259). She continues to be

ignore the evidence around her until one day, she metaphorically

opens a window and contemplates on the mysteries of her world:

She contemplated the desolate plaza, the silent

houses whose doors did not open to see José

Montiel’s burial, and then she felt despaired with

her nails, with her limitless land, and with the

infinite commitments that she inherited from her

husband and that she would never be able to

understand (260).

The widow’s “moment of realization” comes after her manservant,

Carmichael, informs her that their business is failing. The

townspeople, free of the “threat of José Montiel,” exact revenge by

no longer buying his products. The narration informs the reader of

José Montiel’s complete backstory: a local merchant who capitalized

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on la Violencia by aligning himself with a strong-armed alcalde2 ,

Montiel helped the Conservatives massacre the Liberals and drive the

rich supporters away. He would then take their houses, land, and

other capital, in a reference to Colombian leader Rojas Pinilla, who,

as wrote John Crow in his treatment of Latin America:

The dictator made himself rich, bought vast tracts

of lands, filled them with herds of prize cattle,

and administered the law, his law, with a mailed

fist. (Crow 756)

which gives explanation to the widow’s prior desperation towards

“limitless land.” Montiel’s widow is shown in a passing role, aware

of his influence in government but not completely aware of how he

used that influence. Márquez places the narrative in between

Carmichael’s discussion of the business’ recent failures, deeply

contrasting Montiel’s life with his death. As the widow realizes what

her husband was like in life she first keeps an opposing and somewhat

caustic perspective, soliloquizing to her dead husband, “I told you,

José Montiel... This is a disgraced town. You’re still warm in your

coffin, and already the world has turned its back on us” (Márquez

262). However, as she continues on, she comes to accept the reality

of her situation. Perhaps unwilling or unable to leave, the widow

writes her children, telling them, “This is a damned town... Stay [in

2 No direct translation. Héctor Hoyos suggests Mayor with capitalized “M,” but
likens the alcalde to more of a military position in a junta than a mayoral
position (Hoyos 9).
 Langley 6
Europe] forever and do not worry about me” (262). The widow

surrenders to the truth around her, and by doing so finds the peace

that she is looking for. She falls asleep while clutching her rosary,

and as she dreams, the Mamá Grande (another characteristic of García

Márquez’s works) appears to her, telling her that she will die as

soon as her arm gets tired. In the end, the reader sees Montiel’s

widow in a much different spot than the beginning of the story - she

has lost the innocence that she clung to in life, and her perspective

has merged at least somewhat with the townspeople. For the widow, her

conclusions allow her the death that she wishes, free from the world

around her and the deadly ties of José Montiel.

! On the other side of the Atlantic, Ana María Matute wrote in

response to the Spanish Civil War, locally known as the Guerra Civil.

Spain, normally the more peaceful of Hispanic countries, saw its

share of atrocities in its civil war. The terror was described in

this way:

During the war the number of civilians executed by

the Nationalists equaled the number of victims of

the Red Terror in the Republican zone. Having

demonized their opponents as anarchic and “anti-

Spanish” barbarians, the Nationalists predictably

rejected Republican proposals for... the end of the

war. (Boyd 94-5)

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Writing in the wake of such an event, especially in a land

unaccustomed to brutality, the common motifs of loss of innocence

and difference in viewpoints is seen in Matute’s classic short

story, “El árbol de oro” (“The Tree of Gold,” in English). The story

is told in the first person by a young girl who stays at her

grandmother’s house and attends a school in the country for one

fall. The reason given is due to bad health; however, given the

often fierce fighting - and restructuring of Spanish city schools -

during the Civil War, one could assume that the girl may have been

kept in the countryside to keep her away from the fighting. At any

rate, she introduces the reader to a boy in the class named Ivo who

has the ability “captivate whoever listens” to his stories (Matute

94). The teacher, Señorita Leocadia, gives Ivo rewards and

distinctions constantly, even when he is not deserving of them, the

most envied of his distinctions being his possession of a key to

enter the small tower where textbooks were kept. One day, Ivo

decides to share his secret of the little tower with the narrator,

after the teacher publicly refuses to allow other students to go

inside it. He tells the narrator:

I see a tree of gold. A tree made completely of

gold: branches, trunk, leaves... do you understand?

The leaves never fall. In summer, in winter,

always. It shines brilliantly; so much, that I have

to close my eyes so that they aren’t hurt. (94)

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Although the narrator dismisses Ivo’s claims as obvious fallacies,

the boy tells her that it does not matter whether she believes him or

not, as he will permit no-one to see the tree. Certain that she will

not be able to enter and look for herself, Ivo tells her how he sees

it: by squinting through a specific crack in the tower’s wall. One

day, Ivo falls ill and the teacher gives the key to another boy. The

narrator asks if he sees the tree of gold but the boy does not know

what she is talking about; he later tells her, though, that if she

gives him some money he will give her the key so that she can enter

the tower herself. However, when she enters, she is disappointed,

recounting, “I moved a box aside and I saw the crack shining in the

dark. I bent over and I looked. When the light stopped blinding me,

my eye only saw one thing: the dry earth of a prairie stretching to

the sky. Nothing more” (95). The narrator, feeling deceived, forgets

about the key and the tower and soon moves back to the city. However,

when she returns to the village later, she sees the cemetery and

notices “out of the grimy earth abounding with stones, between the

fallen crosses, grew a huge and beautiful tree, with wide leaves of

gold: burning and bright all over, blinding” (96). The narrator

remembers the boy - who has since died - and feels an immense

happiness. In its time context, “El árbol de oro” carries a powerful

message about the Civil War. Matute uses children, natural symbols of

innocence, to show emotional loss in the war. Where Ivo looks through

and is able to see a symbol of hope in a bleak time, the narrator -

 Langley 9
perhaps because of her own potential exposure to the war - is unable

to see anything. The motif of perspective is also evident in Matute’s

story, in the same vein. Where Ivo has not yet been exposed to the

horrors of war, or perhaps can look past it to still see the good in

Spain (represented by the land), the narrator does not have that

hope.

! These shared motifs are perhaps not that uncommon in the whole

of the literary canon, especially among works that are responses to

episodes of violence. However, it is still interesting to note the

commonality between two works from different “sub-canons” within the

Spanish literary tradition. In examining Spanish literature, it is

easy to do what universities do and separate the works based upon

their country or region of origin. Of course, this can be useful —

but failing to hearken back on the literary whole from whence the

pieces came can result in a corollary failure to identify common

beliefs and experiences between seemingly unrelated experiences.

Alone, la Violencia is not often compared to the Spanish Civil War

beyond such statements linking “the dictatorships [in Latin America]”

with violence “aggravated by methods imported from totalitarian

Europe” (Arciniegas 510). Looking beyond just the history,

comparative literature allows the reader to see the common bonds that

tie the people behind the events together, from which we can have a

fuller understanding not just of historical events, but of our own

range of human emotion.

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Works Cited

Arciniegas, Germán. "The Literature of Violence." Latin America: A Cultural

! History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. 510-13. Print.

Boyd, Carolyn P. "History, politics, and culture, 1936-1975." The Cambridge

! Companion to Modern Spanish Culture. Ed. David T. Gies. Cambridge:

! Cambridge University Press, 2000. 86-103. Print.

Crow, John A. "The Postwar Years: Colombia." The Epic of Latin America. New

! York: Doubleday & Company, 1971. 755-59. Print.

Franco, Jean. "The Problem of Violence: Venezuela and Colombia." The Modern

! Culture of Latin America: Society and the Artist. London: Frederick A.

! Praeger, 1967. 248-53. Print.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. La viuda de Montiel. 1962. Abriendo Paso: Lectura.

! Ed. Jose M Diaz and Stephen J Collins. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2000.

! 258-263. Print.

Helguera, J. León. "The Changing Role of the Military in Colombia." Latin

! American History: Essays on its Study and Teaching, 1898-1965. Comp.

! Howard F. Cline. Vol. 2. San Antonio: Universal Bookbindery, 1967.

! 785-90. Print.

Hoyos, Hector. "Garcia Marquez's Sublime Violence and the Eclipse of

! Colombian Literature." Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana

! 35.2 (2006): 3-20. Print.

Maria Matute, Ana. El arbol de oro. 1961. Abriendo Paso: Lectura. Ed. Jose

! M Diaz and Stephen J Collins. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2000. 93-96.

! Print.