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ABSTRACT
This essay proposes a theory of the elided interwar novela de la caña (sugarcane novel), arguing that the genre participates in a transnational political exchange and cosmopolitics in which it uses regional contexts to examine global capitalist relations. Specifically, many of these works parallel the discourse of the understudied Caribbean Bureau of the Communist International. The Caribbean Bureau attempted to create workers’ movements on US-owned sugar plantations and, due to the efforts of black American intellectuals, aimed to respond to issues facing black labor, including Haitian and West Indian migrant labor. Using Dominican novelist Ramón Marrero Aristy’s controversial novel Over (1939) as a case study, the essay considers how some novels within this broader genre parallel Comintern discourse. That is, they consider the bridging of anti-capitalist organizing with racial justice struggles and meditate on the possibilities and limitations of an alternative world relation to global capitalism. While recent scholarship and literature on so-called South–South organizing – organizing among subaltern groups across national, linguistic, racial, and ethnic lines – tends to examine solidarity in the face of shared experiences of oppression, Marrero Aristy’s Over pivots in a different direction by presenting a self-conscious critique of the difficulties of forging transnational, translinguistic, and transracial political collectivities.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Eli Carter, the audience at the 2016 Society for Novel Studies Conference, and the anonymous readers of this essay for their detailed comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Anne Garland Mahler is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia, USA. She is the author of From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Duke University Press, 2018) and the director of Global South Studies: A Collective Publication with The Global South. Mahler’s work has appeared in Latin American Research Review, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, American Communist History, The Global South Atlantic (Fordham), and Oxford Bibliographies of Literary and Critical Theory.
Notes
1 Letter from Ramón Marrero Aristy to Generalísimo Dr Rafael L. Trujillo Molina, 19 November 1957, in Baud, “Un permanente guerrillero,” 209. Translation by author.
2 Ibid.
3 Marrero Aristy, “El Secretario.”
4 The novela de la caña is often used to refer solely to a group of Dominican novels: Cañas y bueyes (Cane and Oxen) (1936) by Eugenio Moscoso Puello, Over, and Dominican Manuel Antonio Amiamo’s El terrateniente (The Landowner) (1970). See de Sarlo, “The Sugar Plantation”; Graciano, La novela de la caña; and Amiama, Aristy, and Puello et al., La novela de la caña. However, there are other Dominican sugarcane novels from the same period, such as Jengibre (Ginger) (1940) by Pedro Andrés Pérez Cabral and Los enemigos de la tierra (The Enemies of the Earth) (1936) by Andrés Francisco Requena, and there are multiple generations of sugarcane novels. Interwar novels in the rest of Latin America that focus on the sugarcane industry include A Bagaceira (Trash) (1928) by Brazilian José Américo de Almeida; La llamarada (The Blaze) (1935) and Solar Montoya (The Solar Plantation) (1941) by Puerto Rican Enrique La Guerre; and the five novels in Brazilian José Lins do Rego’s so-called “sugar cane cycle” – Menino de engenho (Plantation Boy) (1932), Doidinho (Crazy Boy) (1933), Bangüê (Old Plantation) (1934), O moleque Ricardo (Black Boy Richard) (1935), and Usina (The Sugar Refinery) (1936) – which he later followed with Fogo morto (Dead Fire) (1943). Marcos Antilla: Relatos de cañaveral (Marcos Antilla: Tales from the Canefield) (1932) by Cuban Luis Felipe Rodríguez is a collection of short stories but could also be considered within this genre. For a comparative study of sugarcane novels from Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Puerto Rico, see Carlotti-Smith, “A Field of Islands.” See also Carlotti-Smith, “Sugar’s Sequels” and Smith, “La novela de la caña.” For a comparison of Over and La llamarada, see Reyes-Santos, Our Caribbean Kin.
5 It is commonly referred to under other monikers like novela criolla, novela regional, and novela rural. See Alonso, The Spanish American Regional Novel.
6 They go completely unmentioned in Alonso’s authoritative study on the novela de la tierra. Ibid.
7 See Lionnet and Shih, Minor Transnationalisms; Márquez, Black-Brown Solidarity; Popescu, Tolliver, and Tolliver, “Alternative Solidarities”; Prashad, The Poorer Nations.
8 Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom, 187.
9 Stephens, Black Empire, 11.
10 Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom.
11 Pujals, “Soviet Caribbean.”
12 Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic, 57.
13 Huiswoud and McKay, “Speeches,” 21.
14 Ibid., 18.
15 Ibid., 22.
16 Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic, 13.
17 For the “faja negra” (black belt) thesis in Cuba, see de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 192–193.
18 “Hacia el Congreso de Montevideo,” 6–11; Confederación Sindical Latino Americana, Bajo la bandera de la C.S.L.A., 40–41.
19 For more on Sandalio Junco and this debate, see Mahler, “The Red and the Black in Latin America.”
20 Confederación Sindical Latino Americana, Bajo la bandera de la C.S.L.A., 165–6.
21 Junco’s arguments became official positions of the organization through the CSLA’s resulting “Resolution on the Problem of Black Workers.”
22 Junco, “El proletariado negro.”
23 The editorial collective for Mundo obrero was made up of Hernán Laborde (Mexico), Leonardo Fernández Sánchez and Rubén Martínez Villena (Cuba), Michael Gold and John Dos Passos (USA), Gustavo Machado (Venezuela), Luis Vidales, Inés Martell (Colombia), Agustín Martí (El Salvador). Alberto Sánchez (Puerto Rico) was editor until the August–September issue of 1933 when he was replaced by Rubén Martínez Villena. Walt Carmon (USA) managed the finances and distribution. See Campos Domínguez, “La revista Mundo Obrero.”
24
analizará los problemas que confrontan las masas obreras y campesinas explotadas del Caribe; ayudará a la construcción de un potente movimiento sindical clasista de los trabajadores de la región del Caribe; propugnará incansablemente por la solidaridad más estrecha entre el movimiento revolucionario de la América Latina y particularmente de la región del Caribe y el proletariado de los Estados Unidos. (All translations from Mundo obrero are the author’s. “Propósitos de ‘Mundo obrero,’” 1)
25 “Solo el brazo fuerte de la solidaridad obrera y campesina bajo la dirección de la clase obrera, podrá derrocar el poder del imperialismo y sus lacayos.” Mundo Obrero, 1.
26 Pujals, “A ‘Soviet Caribbean’,” 261.
27 Ibid., 262–263.
28 “Día de lucha antiimperialista.”
29 Ibid, 5.
30 Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 22–24.
31 See, for example, Montero, “El terror en Santo Domingo,” 8.
32 “Organicemos los obreros azucareros en Cuba”; “las masas negras”; “semiproletarios”. Simons, “Organicemos,” 22, 17.
33 Minor, “Salvemos a los Obreros Negros.”
34 Hijos de obreros y campesinos, hijos de nuestra clase. Minor, “Salvemos a los Obreros Negros,” 21.
35 “Salvemos de la muerte,” 2.
36 “el mismo imperialismo asesino que oprime a las masas latinoamericanas intenta llevar a cabo el linchamiento de los 7 jóvenes negros de Scottsboro.” See “Salvemos de la muerte,” 2.
37 Minor, “Salvemos a los Obreros Negros,” on the other hand, does indeed mention the work of several black organizations in the United States.
38 Pujals, “A ‘Soviet Caribbean’.”
39 Graciano, La novela, 57. Other sources report that he was born in 1914. Marrero Aristy, Over, 7.
40 Marrero Aristy, Over, 7.
41 Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom, 270; Graciano, La novela, 57.
42 Graciano, La novela, 57; Marrero Aristy, Over, 7–8.
43 Baud, “Un permanente guerrillero”; the second printing in 1963 would include a prologue by Trujillo’s chief enemy Juan Bosch. Graciano, La novela, 59.
44 Mateo, Mito y cultura, 83.
45 Baud, “Un permanente guerrillero,” 183, 193. When Trujillo came to power in 1930, almost all of the island’s sugar mills were in foreign hands. Under the guise of a nationalist economy, he began seizing small sugar estates, eventually setting his sights on the larger mills under North American control. Within a decade, Trujillo would control more than 75% of all sugar mills in the country. Trujillo was able to maintain good relations with the US government even as he became its competitor since, due to the decline of sugar prices worldwide, US investors were eager to liquidate their assets. Graciano, La novela, 23.
46 Baud, “Un permanente guerrillero,” 184.
47 Graciano, La novela, 211.
48 Vega, Un interludio, 6–7.
49 Marrero Aristy, “La posición del trabajador.”
50 For example, he met with Ramón Grullón, Pericles Franco Ornes, Francisco Henríquez Vásquez, and Mauricio Báez. Vega, Un interludio, 31.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 6–9; 13–17; 25–32; 47.
53 “Tuve la impresión de que Marrero no representaba ni servía los intereses de Trujillo.” Ibid., 34.
54 Baud, “Un permanente guerrillero.”
55 Graciano, La novela, 58.
56 Baud, “Un permanente guerrillero,” 184–187, 194.
57 For example, Eugenio Moscoso Puello’s Cañas y bueyes (1936) depicts the experience of small land-owning colonos whose lands are appropriated by US companies. In Enrique Laguerre’s La llamarada (1935), the protagonist, a descendant of small coffee farmers, becomes employed on a US sugar plantation as an agricultural engineer.
58 Sommer, “Populism as Rhetoric,” 262.
59 “el mundo de la finca.” See Marrero Aristy, Over, 62. Similarly, Carlotti-Smith reads the plantation in sugarcane novels as standing in “synecdochically for the region.” “La novela,” 44.
60 “alguna vez en la calle ha tropezado con un comunista.” Marrero Aristy, Over, 25.
61 Simons, “Organicemos,” 17.
62 Sommer, “Populism as Rhetoric.”
63 Armillas-Tiseyra, “Dislocations.”
64 “hablan fuerte y pisan como militares.” Marrero Aristy, Over, 27.
65 “como sobras … hablando en voz baja; como una maquinilla u otro instrumento del servicio.” Ibid.
66 Ibid., 24.
67 “como se lleva una cosa.” Ibid., 27.
68 “Otro over! ¿Será aquí todo over?” Ibid., 167.
69 “una fiebre; una locura;” “obsesión de más.” Ibid.
70 Ibid., 64.
71 “carne de trapiche;” “hace de lubricante de la máquina.” Ibid., 56.
72 “amos absolutos.” Ibid., 50.
73 Alonso, The Spanish American Novel, 65.
74 For example, “¡Mi no hablando con gentes de tu tamaño!” (“Me not speaking with peoples of your size”). See Marrero Aristy, Over, 22.
75 Ibid., 67.
76 Ibid., 25.
77 Ibid., 64.
78 “las etapas sociales’ indispensables para tal transformación.” Ibid., 65.
79 “el fusil manejado por el blanco y el fusil manejado por el negro, son igualmente poderosos; no hay razas superiores ni razas inferiores.” Ibid., 98.
80 Ibid., 98–99.
81 “En el vientre de un buque de carga, meten generalmente una cantidad de hombres dos o tres veces mayor que la prudente. Allí los negros pasan días y noches, los unos encima de los otros.” Ibid., 75.
82 “al contemplar las recién llegadas manadas de negros, experimenta el placer que un día embriagó el alma de su abuelo, mientras flagelaba las espaldas del africano que compró en un mercado.” Ibid., 79.
83 “la venganza de las masas; blancos insolentes; que nos miran como el amo a su esclavo.” Ibid., 198, 189.
84 “ellos hablan sin ningún sentimiento de rancor o de maldad. Viven tan indefensos, han sido tan exprimidos, que ya no tienen energías. Si dicen ‘ladrón’, es no por ofender.” Ibid., 41.
85 “caras sucias, erizadas de barbas, grasientas; sus narizotas deformes, sus gocas generalmente llenas de raíces podridas y sus ojos desorbitados.” Ibid., 49.
86 “no hay mujeres propiamente dichas en la finca; sólo se encuentran haitianas feas y grajosas que nada me inspiran.” Ibid., 107–108.
87 “La negra y grajosa mujer no sabía cocinar, ni tenía costumbres, ni la más leve noción de lo que significa limpieza.” Ibid., 175.
88 “obedeciendo órdenes de gentes a quienes no desearíamos jamás conocer, y oprimiendo a otros a quienes querríamos por siempre olvidar.” Ibid, 89.
89 For more on anti-Haitianism and Dominican national identity, see San Miguel, The Imagined Island.
90 Baud, “Un permanente guerrillero,” 202.
91 Sommer, “Populism as Rhetoric,” 258.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid., 263.
94 “nuestro dictador.” Marrero Aristy, Over, 62.
95 de Sarlo, “The Sugar Plantation,” 180.
96 “Esto, compadre, sólo se puede ver desde un tonel de ron. Aquí, todo es ron.” Marrero Aristy, Over, 199.
97 Graciano, La novela, 76, 83.
98 In his doctoral dissertation, Norberto Pedro James – the Dominican poet and literary critic of West Indian origin who was born on the sugar plantation of Ingenio Consuelo in San Pedro de Macorís and who grew up in an English-speaking West Indian community – identifies the presence of so-called “pesimismo dominicano” (Dominican pessimism) in two Dominican sugarcane novels, Cañas y bueyes (1936) by Eugenio Moscoso Puello and Jengibre (1940) by Pedro Andrés Pérez Cabral. The tradition of Dominican pessimism refers to the modernization theories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures like José Ramón López and Américo Lugo who – with some variation – used a brand of biological determinism to argue that the Dominican people suffered from racial, climactic, and nutritional variables that prevented their modernization. Ramón López in particular argued that it was malnutrition (and not racial mixture as others had maintained) that ailed the Dominican nation. Trujillismo would mobilize this intellectual tradition, along with anti-Haitianism, to defend the need for a strongman to lift the nation out of uncivilized underdevelopment. James points to the ideological elements of Trujillismo – which he argues were hispanophilia, anti-Haitianism, and above all, Dominican pessimism – in the sugarcane novels that he examines. James, Un estudio sociocultural, 52–59. We see a similar tendency in Marrero Aristy’s Over towards pessimism. However, I would argue that the pessimism of this novel is not based in fatalistic notions of biological determinism but rather represents a political critique of nativism, classism, and racism. While the novel may suggest that the protagonist’s inaction derives from the influence of the tradition of Dominican pessimism over his perceptions of himself and his reality, I would argue that Over does not uncritically reproduce this ideology and thus does not exactly fit the pattern traced by James.