Rewriting History: Colonial Latin American Women in Historical Fiction

The quincentenary in 1992 of Columbus's arrival in the Americas elicited a highly diverse set of social, political, philosophical, and artistic responses to this historic encounter of peoples from both sides of the Atlantic. These responses informed the creation of historical fiction in literature, fine arts, cinema, and media. In the years leading up to the commemoration, Latin American authors began focusing on the colonial history of their nations, in order to recreate them in historical novels. In Latin American Novels of the Conquest(2002), Kimberle López points out that most late twentieth-century historical fiction about colonial Latin America is written from the perspective of a European or criollo(a Latin American of Spanish descent) male character whose life exemplified the deeds of "great men" in the New World. At the same time, the novels examine cultural differences and practices such as miscegenation with the intention of deconstructing the rhetoric of the Spanish Empire. Gender roles, however, while present in Latin American historical fiction, are seldom studied as a central theme, and even less frequently are women—whether Spanish, Spanish American, or indigenous—are placed at the center of the narratives. The three novels reviewed here, however, bridge this thematic gap by featuring women as the major protagonists.

The authors of these novels are all acclaimed Latin American writers: Gabriel García Márquez published De amor y otros demonios( Love and Other Demons) in 1994, while Isabel Allende's Inés del alma mía( Inés of my Soul) and Laura Esquivel's Malinchefirst appeared in 2006. All three novelists are identified as writing in the genre of magic realism, although Allende and Esquivel, as we shall see, differentiate their works from García Márquez's. All three novels allow the readers access to the historical, yet fictive, woman's voice in the text. Voice, in this context, is the woman's expression of agency, her intent to participate in the narrative and its representation of events from her own viewpoint. I will address in this review how these historical novels treat women's voices and the female gaze in the authors' recreations of colonial Latin America.

The usual approach to female characters in Latin American historical fiction is to portray them as admirable women—either courageous Spaniards or victimized indigenous—who eventually return to the daily tasks and roles expected of them. Their victimization, eroticism, and exoticism constitute rhetorical devices that create fictional representations in accord with the author's own image of women. In this context, one might ask whether these representations respond to a contemporary patriarchal gaze of women, or if they are intended to reinvent female voices and images of women who inhabit an unfamiliar historical past.

Although splendidly written, García Márquez's novel, set in eighteenthcentury Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), does not provide much in the way of a colonial woman's voice and gaze. Its main character, Sierva María de Todos los Angeles, is an unruly girl whose eccentricities call for the intercession of Cayetano DeLaura, a priest appointed to care for her soul. Sierva María is the daughter of a Spanish aristocrat and his wife who live together in a loveless marriage. Rejected by her mother and ignored by her father, household slaves raise the girl; she learns to speak an African dialect and cherishes their religious beliefs, yet her appreciation of the African elements of her surroundings perplexes and aggravates her parents. The bite of a rabid dog sets into motion a series of events that disclose Cayetano's sinful attraction to the young girl and the Inquisition's view of her as the target of evil forces...