Dictatorships in the Hispanic World. Trasatlantic and Transnational Perspectives ed. by Patricia L. Swier, Julia Riordan-Goncalves (review)

This volume collects twelve articles that address the direct or indirect influence of totalitarian political systems on the cultural production of His-panic nations. Different artistic and literary disciplines are included: visual arts, novel, poetry, film and even puppet theater. The book denounces many forms of damage inflicted by dictatorships in Hispanic societies, including assassination, torture, gender violence, censorship and political corruption. This multilayered approach shows the wide cultural variety existing in the Hispanic world and demonstrates the inexhaustible power of resistance of art and literature against totalitarianism.

This wide range of focus comes with a price. Dictatorships in the Hispanic world have many different faces, but not all of the articles include enough background information to understand their specific idiosyncrasies. Moreover, the diverse connections between the works analyzed and Hispanic dictatorships are not always clearly stated, although some essays focus on a period before the dictatorships in question began, while others treat exile or democratic reconstruction. Finally, a handful fails to justify connections among the texts selected for analysis.

A number of the studies shed light on genres usually ignored by literary and cultural critics. Such is the case for the first article, “Feminine voices of resistance against dictatorships” by Ana Corbalan. Her excellent contribution focuses on two different female prison narratives under a dictatorial regime, Desde la noche y la niebla (Juana Doña, 1978), about the experiences of a political prisoner in Francisco Franco’s Spain, and Fragmentos de la memoria (Margarita Drago, 2009) describing an Argentinian women’s prison during Rafael Videla’s military dictatorship. Both texts are presented as testimonies, not so much as literary artifacts. Using this fresh approach, Corbalán describes the different strategies of denunciation in both and explains the role of memory in their composition. The article presents a compelling analysis of the role of self-censorship in these prison narratives, which depict their protagonists as heroines devoid of negative traits for the sake of ideological effectiveness.

This volume also illuminates critical works on literary fiction. Of particular interest is Irene Gómez Castellano’s essay about two classics in twentieth century peninsular literature, Nada (Carmen Laforet, 1944) and La plaça del diamant (Mercedes Salisachs, 1962). Both novels written by women launched indirect attacks on Franco´s dictatorship. The article consists of a terse and insightful analysis centered on specific topics. Nada is studied through its imagery of hunger, a common trait in postwar Spain, and is read as a symbol of political, cultural and sexual repression. La plaça del diamant is interpreted via its images of parasite-ridden decaying flesh as a commentary on the Spanish Second Republic, whose failure would give way to forty years of military dictatorship.

Reinaldo Arenas became a world icon after the opening of a film based on his autobiography in 2000. Rafael Ocasio´s “Queering the Cuban Exile” attempts to understand Arenas’s literature by researching his role as a Cuban refugee in the United States. Ocasio, who was a personal friend of Arenas, is able to give a first-hand account of the writer’s exploits in New York, beginning with his ambivalent relationship with the critic Angel Rama, an experience which opened the way to Arenas’s conscious decision to sexualize his own literary persona in his novel Before Night Falls. This article offers poignant testimony of his literary and personal goals and values.

The politics of Cuban art in Castro’s dictatorship is the topic of “The World Within the Island: The International Projection of Cuban Artists’s Books and Prints: 1985–2009,” authored by Ana León Tavora. The title refers to an international exhibition presenting the work of some Cuban artists during the Periodo Especial on the island. This exhibition offered several meaningful examples of political resistance in Cuba through art and literature. Tavora is able to construct an insider description of the toils and repression suffered by Cuban artists...