La representación de la Conquista en el teatro latinoamericano de los siglos XX y XXI ed. by Verena Dolle (review)

This anthology provides an excellent introduction to the study of contemporary representations of the Spanish Conquest in Latin American theatre. The edition is divided into five sections, each covering the theatre from a geographic region. The articles analyze more than thirty plays and explore the relationships between the past and present, myth and reality, subjectivity and national cultural identity, and of course, the exploitation of the “other,” giving the reader a clear sense that the Conquest stands as the preeminent symbol of the exploitation and destruction of indigenous peoples and cultures. Paradoxically, the Conquest is also the root of the hybridity and heterogeneity that characterizes much of Latin America today. The representations of the Conquest in Latin American theatre examined in this anthology may largely be characterized as allegoric and/or parodic strategies critical of contemporary socio-political realities, particularly of the dictatorships under which many of the plays were written, as well as the rights and inclusion of indigenous peoples in Latin American culture.

In the first section, “La Conquista por antonomasia: México,” separate contributions by Néstor Ponce, Ute Seydel, and Verena Dolle consider the construction (and deconstruction) of Mexican national identity in plays by Vicente Leñero, Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, Efraín Franco Frías and Édgar Chías, particularly considering the mythification of the relationship between Hernán Cortés and La Malinche, especially in light of Octavio Paz’s pronouncement in El laberinto de la soledad that la Malinche is the mother of all Mexicans.

In contrast to that of Mexico, Costa Rican national identity has its roots not in the history of the Conquest, but rather in the history of independence. Wilfried Floeck unearths the presence of Enlightenment values of rationalism and liberalism and emphasizes the small but growing presence of indigenous voices within the Costa Rican cultural milieu. Costa Rica’s experience of the Conquest was far less violent than that of Mexico and most of Central and South America. Floeck observes, nonetheless, that the position of indigenous people within Costa Rican society continues to be marginalized and obscured. Jorge Chen Sham’s contribution explores the characterization of Bartolomé de las Casas in Las Casas: el obispo de Dios (La audiencia de los confines. Crónica en tres andanzas) (1957), by Guatemalan playwright Miguel Ángel Asturias, and in Un réquiem por el padre Las Casas (1963) by Colombian Enrique Buenaventura, each of whom find in Las Casas a hero for indigenous people.

Hugo Hernán Ramírez’s contribution in the third section of the book, “La Conquista en Colombia, Venezuela y Brasil,” also looks at Buenaventura’s play, together with Cenizas sobre el mar (1989) by José Assad, Más allá de la ejecución (1984) by Henry Díaz Vargas, and La tras-escena (1984) by Fernando Peñuela. Likewise, Francisco Rodríguez Cascante and Guido Rings examine plays from Colombia, by Alejandro Buenaventura and Carlos José Reyes, respectively. The near total absence of indigenous characters in these Colombian plays is countered in the anthology by Luz Marina Rivas’s essay on Venezuelan playwright César Rengifo’s Curayú o el vencedor, a play that treats the arrival of Europeans solely from the perspective of the indigenous people. The section is concluded by Cristoph Müller’s essay on three Brazilian playwrights: César Vieira, Antonio Bivar, and Celso Luiz Paulini.

In the fourth section, “La Conquista en el entorno de los Andes,” Ingrid Simson’s “Entre mito y realidad: el héroe nacional Lautaro en el teatro chileno del siglo XX” considers four versions of the story of Lautaro, an Araucan taken prisoner in his youth, who learned Spanish while in the service of Pedro de Valdivia, escaped, and eventually led a rebellion against the Spanish troops, with some success. Julio Enrique Checa Puerta, Eduardo Hopkins Rodríguez, and...