Cannibalizing the Colony: Cinematic Adaptations of Colonial Literature in Mexico and Brazil

Introduction

1 Introduction The 1992 and 2000 quincentenaries of the arrival of the Spanish and the Portuguese in America prompted an explosion of rewritings and cinematic renditions of texts and figures from colonial Latin America. However, such critical and aesthetic negotiations with the colonial past are not simply a recent phenomenon in Latin America.1 They are an enduring concern. Cannibalizing the Colony analyzes a crucial way that Latin American historical films, since the beginning of sound cinema, have grappled with the legacy of colonialism. Mexico and Brazil are the Latin American nations that have produced the greatest number by far of what I call “colonial” films, and are thus the focus of this study.2 In these countries and elsewhere in Latin America cinematic engagements of colonial literature exemplify a shared, perennial interest in conversing with the colonial past in order to evaluate national identity. Mexican and Brazilian filmmakers in particular have transformed colonial narratives of European and indigenous contact into commentaries on national identity. This book focuses on the dynamics of cinematic adaptation and examines the processes through which filmmakers “devour” and “digest” artifacts from the colonial period in order to incorporate them into present-day understandings of these nations. Cannibalizing the Colony considers diverse motivations for these filmic dialogues with the past, and places particular emphasis on the conceptions of identity that each filmmaker attempts to promote and the adaptational and cinematic strategies that he or she uses to construct a particular vision of the past and understanding of the present. Additionally, it examines how the directors attempt to control the way that spectators understand the complex and contentious roots of identity in Mexico and Brazil, especially in terms of the importance of indigenous 2 Introduction populations and their relationship to Iberian colonizers. The different kinds of persuasive rhetoric employed—the ways that directors ensure the effectiveness of their message and entice viewers into sharing the stance on identity that they have fashioned —constitute one of the primary concerns of this book. Despite drastically different contexts of production and ideological perspectives, the colonial films that I study all demonstrate an analogous approach to renovating their source text. These films neither revere the colonial source, nor invite the adapted text to speak for itself. Instead, they take tight control of their intertext and transform it into a calculated commentary on the nation. I call this process of domination “anthropophagous adaptation.” The concept of cannibalism well captures the domineering role that colonial films tend to establish with their source texts and the governed fusion that results from the relationship . I derive my understanding of anthropophagous adaptation from Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 “Manifesto antropófago,” and the enduring theory of cultural cannibalism that it helped to spark in Brazil.3 The strategies that Andrade proposes and enacts enable him to take control of the tricky but inevitable dynamic of transformation that results from intercultural contact across time or space.4 The “Manifesto antropófago” (“Cannibal Manifesto”)5 prefigures (or inspires) the films not only in terms of strategy or form, but also with regard to content: much of Andrade’s preoccupation and much of the fodder for his commentary is the colonial past. Andrade taps into the symbolic appeal of the ritual cannibalism of the Brazilian Tupinambá, which holds that if the captured and assimilated enemy is consumed, his valor is absorbed. He declares that all of Brazil is (or should consider itself) indigenous . From that assumed subject position he adopts an aggressive stance toward colonial rule, some of its key figures and institutions, and their lasting legacy. However, the metaphor of anthropophagy allows Andrade to postulate not only destruction , but also absorption of certain valuable (i.e., nutritious) aspects of what is consumed.6 Andrade creatively navigates, with regard to the past and the present, the power dynamics of center and periphery, in intellectual, political, and artistic spheres. The films coincide 3 Introduction largely with him in that they take an aggressive stance vis-à-vis products of colonial Latin America: texts or figures arising in colonial Latin America whose impact continues to be felt. The “enemy” that these Latin American historical films dominate, consume, digest, and absorb could be seen as the legacy of the colonialism that is embodied in written texts from the past. The films essentially do what Oswald de Andrade does and promotes : they consume, digest, and absorb remnants of colonialism . They take in...