Contesting Domination: Modernity, Coloniality of Gender, and Decolonial Feminism in José de la Cuadra’s “La Tigra”

La joven literatura ecuatoriana – tomándola en sus aspectos generalizables – es capitalmente veraz. . . . No se basta con presentar la realidad: la escoge, la traduce y la empuja a servir propósitos, en cuanto busca con eso delatar las injusticias de la organización que rige nuestra vida social.

José de la Cuadra¹

This brief quotation sums up De la Cuadra’s observations and views on the function and role of some of Ecuador’s literature produced in the 1930s and its connection to social issues. In the decades preceding the emergence of notable Ecuadorian writers of the late 1920s and early 1930s such as Jorge Icaza, Demetrio Aguilera Malta, Pablo Palacio, Joaquín Gallegos Lara, Humberto Salvador, among others, Ecuador entered a period of deep economic and political instability. Since the late nineteenth century until the first decade of the twentieth century, Ecuador was one of the leading exporters of cacao and it became one of the nation’s major crops of export, sources of capital, and an indirect way for landowners in rural areas and bankers in Guayaquil to continue thriving in a plutocratic society. This period of economic decline coincided with the effects of the aftermath of World War I on the global economy, which heavily impacted Ecuador’s international trading networks and is further accentuated by the global economic crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s.² There are, at least, three major events that mark the political transformations in the first decades of the twentieth century in Ecuadorian politics. Starting with the killing of Eloy Alfaro in 1912, who was one of the leaders of liberalism, and continuing with a popular insurrection in Guayaquil in 1922 and the coup d’état of 1925, these events mark the end of liberalism and begin a series of democratic governments that tended to favor the upper middle and upper classes which supported an oligarchical alliance among the ruling elite and the emerging political factions. Conversely, this is also the period in which the aforementioned writers and intellectuals, including De la Cuadra, are becoming attracted to Marxist writings and the divergent ideologies stemming from it (Ayala Mora 87–98).³

It is in this context that De la Cuadra is careful to shy away from realism or social realism as a literary school, and particularly rejects any alignment with literary realism after Émile Zola. De la Cuadra is interested in “veracity” and reality as long as it can serve a concrete purpose, primarily to deal with pressing social issues and denounce injustices. Reality must be carefully chosen, translated, and adapted to art without falling into formulas or simply presenting a detailed account of reality and stopping there. Precisely because of such views De la Cuadra stands out as a masterful short story writer, particularly after the publication of his collection Horno from which “Olor de cacao,” “Banda de pueblo,” and “La Tigra” have been the most often anthologized and discussed stories.⁴ As a writer who was part of El Grupo de Guayaquil, and despite his own evaluation of the role his fictional work must play, De la Cuadra has been traditionally placed under the rubric of socialist realism, protest literature, or literature of denouncement.⁵ Moreover, his short story “La Tigra” has often times been compared to Rómulo Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara (1929), though there are marked differences. If Gallegos’s novel works with symbols and metaphors that suggest the constant tensions between civilization and barbarism, De la Cuadra’s short story seeks to destabilize and go beyond such binarisms.⁶ The story of “La Tigra” traces the life of Francisca Miranda from the age of eighteen to her early thirties and the events that trigger her seemingly heartless demeanor and give her a reputation of sexually devouring men and being violent against them with or without provocation. Set in the countryside of Ecuador, in the transitional geographical region that moves from the coast to the Andean highlands, the story shows how the tragic death of Francisca...