Costa Rican Identity and the Stories of Carmen Lyra

COSTA RICAN IDENTITY AND THE STORIES OF CARMEN LYRA Ann González Carmen Lyra, the pseudonym for Marı́a Isabel Carvajal, made a lasting impression on Costa Rican letters. She was recognized in her own time, not only for her contribution to literature both for adults and children , but also for her leadership in politics and her efforts to improve socio-economic conditions especially for women and children. She helped found Costa Rica’s Communist Party in 1931 and was elected its General Secretary in 1943 right before it was dissolved and reconstituted as the National Vanguard Party [Vanguardia Nacional]. She was the first person in Costa Rica to write fiction attacking Yankee imperialism and decrying the conditions on the foreign-run banana plantations (Bananas and Men, 1931), a trend followed later by such Costa Rican notables as Joaquı́n Gutiérrez, Fabián Dobles, and Carlos Luis Fallas. Her most immediate and long lasting success, however, has been her collection of stories and folklore for children: Cuentos de mi tı́a Panchita (1920). While the original source material for most of Lyra’s stories is either European, brought over during Spanish colonization, or African, brought over by black laborers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Lyra has clearly “nationalized” it according to a consensus of her critics1 as well as the blurb on the back cover of the most recent edition (2005). Yet, by incorporating Afro-Caribbean stories and elements of indigenous folklore2 into mainstream Costa Rican literature, Lyra manages to link the subaltern status of the Central American Creole of European descent to that of the marginalized blacks and Amerindians that inhabit rural Costa Rica. The most notable feature of the collection is the orality of the language, certainly the fundamental reason she is so often included in costumbrista lists.3 But Lyra is no costumbrista in a strict sense of the term; in fact, just the opposite.4 Despite her use of popular Costa Rican speech, her tales for children are in no way little slices of life or “cuadros de costumbres” (too many kings and queens and palaces and talking animals). Furthermore, there is no humor directed at or against the protagonists of the stories for their uncouth behavior or limited intelligence. Instead, the humor derives from the language used by the narrator (not just the characters) and the obvious artifice of the story construction. For example, there is never any attempt to erase the distance between teller and tale; in fact, this distance is exaggerated both by narrator commentary like: “I forgot to say” [“me olvidaba decir” (147)] and by the use of formulaic beginnings and endings: “once upon a time” [“habı́a una vez”]; formulaic phrases not used in English [“y me meto por un huequito y me salgo por otro para que ustedes me cuentan otro”]; alternative endings that insinuate that maybe the story 73 SECOLAS Annals, Volume 52, 2008 did not actually happen that way: “perhaps the person who told me made a mistake” [“que quien me lo contó se equivocara”]; and the placement of kings and queens and Catholic icons (the Virgin, José, Saint Peter, Jesus, and God [Tatica Dios/Nuestro Señor] Himself), in familiar Costa Rican settings (sitting on the porch, watching people go by in the street, cooking in the kitchen, and, perhaps the most unusual: the Virgin Mary feeding her chickens in the backyard of Heaven). One intriguing question is why a political activist, vocally opposed to the interference of the Catholic Church in government, would substitute fairy godmothers with the Virgin Mary? It seems odd that Lyra would have divorced her political values so completely – indeed, reversed them – in her children’s stories. The contention here, however, is that Lyra is not departing from her political convictions; instead, she is engaging in a process that translators call familiarization. She makes her stories appear innocuous,5 home grown and familiar by adding familiar elements (Costa Rican speech, settings, religious imagery)6 to the imported ones. One Costa Rican critic, for example, remarks: It is interesting to note how Carmen Lyra, while making use of foreign elements – princes, kings and princesses – manages to place the barefoot dummy of...