Jeremy Bentham,
Utopia, Paradise, and Costa Rica
Dennis Seager
University of
Wisconsin – Milwaukee
Jeremy Bentham
"planned, schemed, [and] worked for the establishment of a New World
utilitarian utopia" (Williford, 87).[[1]] According to Miriam Williford,
in her Jeremy Bentham on Spanish America: An Account of His Letters and
Proposals to the New World, "Bentham foresaw Spanish America as an
area destined to stability and equity, wherein the universal interest of the
subject many would always predominate over those of the ruling few"
(31). Williford's reading of Bentham's
manuscripts at the British Museum, as well as those at King's College at
Cambridge University and University College in London shows Bentham to be
"gratified by the political achievements of some Spanish American leaders,
particularly Bernardino Rivadavia in Buenos Aires" yet at the same time
fully aware that, "in spite of [Bentham's] own endeavors and the desires
of many well-wishers, the conditions in Spanish America were hardly conducive
to the growth of the Benthamic utopia of which he dreamed" (31). One of those conditions was the simple fact
that "the area was not sufficiently developed to take on the major task of
the construction of an interoceanic canal" (Williford, 87).
Just
as in the United States where Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark off to find
a Northwest Passage that would link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Spain had
wanted a water passage to connect the two oceans since 1513 when Núnez Balboa
"discovered" the Pacific Ocean.[[2]] In a letter to Bernardino Rivadavia,
minister of state for Buenos Aires, dated the thirteenth of June, 1822, Bentham told Rivadavia that he
had already mentioned his own idea for an interoceanic canal to Simón
Bolívar. In the same letter, Bentham
noted how he had mentioned the possibility of such a canal to Bolívar's agent
in London, Echeverría, and learned from him that Colombia was already
considering such a project and had sent an engineer to make surveys for a
possible canal. According to Williford,
Bentham relied upon a single source for the basic geographical parts of his
plan, William Davis Robinson's Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution
published in 1821 (94). Although Robinson proposed two sites for such a canal,
one being through the Mexican Isthmus or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Bentham
seems to have ignored this part of Robinson's work. Bentham concentrated on a Nicaraguan route for his plan. Robinson's other proposed route, however,
takes us right through the heart of what was to become Central America's
putative paradise. As quoted in
Williford, Robinson attempted "to elucidate the extraordinary and peculiar
advantages which Costa Rica possesses for the establishment of a navigable
intercourse between the two seas" (94). Because of geography, Costa Rica,
very early in its history, lies at the nexus of the attempt to develop a
Central American utopia. Of course,
Bentham never communicated directly with any Costa Rican leader, as he did with
Rivadavia and Bolívar. However, Bentham
did maintain a six year correspondence with at least one Central American
leader, José del Valle of Guatemala.
Williford notes that "the Spanish American leader who probably took
Bentham most seriously in his endeavors to apply utilitarian philosophy to the
creation of a new government was Bernardino Rivadavia of Buenos Aires"
(114); however, it was Del Valle (born in Honduras in 1776) who most mourned
Bentham's death. Del Valle "had
been instrumental in achieving Central American independence from Spain and
Mexico and had narrowly missed becoming the first president of the Central
American Federation" (Williford, 117).
According to Williford, Del Valle "fit perfectly into Bentham's
scheme for Spanish America" (117), especially after Bentham's falling out
with Bolívar who had abandoned utilitarian principles. Del Valle's correspondence with Bentham
began in 1826 and continued until Bentham's death. It was Del Valle who first
referred to Bentham as the "legislator of the world" and who wrote in
a letter to Bentham on April 18, 1827, "The political world is in
movement; all the states desire to
improve their laws, and you have pointed out the line by which they ought to
march in order not to be devoured by anarchy, nor destroyed by despotism"
(quoted in Williford, 134). Two weeks
before introducing a resolution to the congress of the Central American
Republic asking its members to show the proper respect at the death of Bentham,
Del Valle published an article in the Gaceta Federal (Guatemala) on
September 17, 1832 in which he pleaded to fellow Central Americans that they
endeavor to realize Bentham's dream of a Spanish American utilitarian utopia.
Del Valle implored, "let us venerate the memory of this benefactor of
humanity … that the luminious (sic) principles that he had irrevocably
established by means of his works, may preside in our assemblies, governments,
and tribunals, and thus we will build our happiness upon indestructable
foundations" (quoted in Williford, 135).
Bentham
first mentioned one of those principles in a letter to Jean Baptiste Say, dated
January 18, 1827, "For an infant State in which Books are in a manner
unknown, choice of Books is a branch of legislation" (Williford,
107). Bentham reached this conclusion
as a result of developing a list of works which he thought would contribute to
the founding of a public library in Central America. Del Valle's cousin, Próspero de Herrera, carried with him on a
trip to London a list of books which Del Valle wished him to acquire while in
Europe. Although the primary purpose of
Herrera's trip was to solicit English funding to exploit the family mines in
Guatemala, a secondary objective was to acquire the books on the list that Del
Valle had sent with his cousin. After
a meeting with Herrera, Bentham took the task to heart and consequently wrote
the "Memorandum Works for Guatemala" (Williford, 109). In addition to a code of laws for Guatemala,
Bentham developed a catalogue of books which he hoped would form "the
commencement of a public library for the formation thereby of the public
mind" (Williford, 109).
The
impact of books on the public mind, particulary how novels contribute to the
development of a national character and culture is the basis of Doris Sommer's Foundational
Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Sommer points out that the concept of the
national novel needs no explanation in Latin America; "it is the book frequently required in the nation's
secondary schools as a source of local history" (4). The close
relationship between books and the public mind is evidenced by "the
page-long list, by the turn of the century, of Hispano-American writers who
were also presidents of their countries" (4). Sommer's two principle concerns in her book are: 1) "To show
the inextricability of politics from fiction in the history of
nation-building" and 2) "to locate an erotics of politics, to show
how a variety of novel national ideals are all ostensibly grounded in 'natural'
heterosexual love and in the marriages that provided a figure for apparently
nonviolent consolidation during internecine conflicts at mid-century"
(6). Although the two Costa Rican
"utopian" texts that will be addressed below, Fabian Dobles' El
sitio de las abras and Tatiana Lobo's Asalto al paradiso are 20th century novels, they both
confront these issues. Dobles does so
in his attempt to situate the origins of an agrarian utopia; and Lobos does so
in her assault on the false history perpetuated on the public mind by the Costa
Rican secondary school reading list.
Likewise, although through quite different means, both novels offer a
strategem to comply with another component of foundational narratives. Each novel, in its way, like those Sommer
discusses in her book, is "an exhortation to be fruitful and
multiply" (6). Sommer is concerned
with the relationship of marriage and desire to nation building. For her, "happiness reads like a
wish-fulfilling projection of national consolidation and growth" (7). In as much as happiness, or "the
greatest happiness to the greatest number" is the basic utilitarian maxim
and for Jeremy Bentham the object of government was "the happiness of the
nation" (Williford, 49), it is not surprising that Sommer refers to
Bentham. In a section called
"Romance Realized" Sommer notes how the newly independent societies
of Spanish America "experimented with liberalism adapted from examples in
Great Britain (Bentham was a great favorite), the United States and
France" (13). Furthermore, just as
the newly independent states looked to Europe for guidance in developing their
civil codes and imitated the novels that were popular in Europe, "America
was Europe's ideal, imaginary, realm for the bourgeoisie's project of
coordinating sense with sensibility, productivity with passion. It was, to cite the specific example of
Jeremy Bentham, a realizable utopia, the place where his reasonable laws
(solicited by American admirers like Bolívar, San Martín, Rivadavia, and Del
Valle) could bring the greatest good to the greatest number" (14).
Of
course, increasing the number of Americans in order to better build these new
nations was also a consideration.
Sommer recalls that after winning independence, America needed
civilizers, "founding fathers of commerce and industry, not fighters"
(15). She cites Juan Bautista Alberdi,
whose notes for Argentina's 1853 constitution became a standard of political
philosophy throughout Latin America, "glory has ceded its place to utility
and comfort, and military heroism is not the most competent medium for the prosaic
needs of commerce and industry" (15).
Alberdi agreed with Domingo F. Sarmiento on the need to "fill up
the desert, to make it disappear".
Sommer paraphrases Alberdi's slogan, "to govern is to
populate" as "Husband the land and father your countries"
(15). For her, this is another
incidence of the correlation between erotics and politics, building a family
and building a country. Sommer reads
José Marmol's Amalia and Romulo Gallego's Doña Bárbara, among
other 19th century novels, as evidence of just this sort of
correspondence.
In
Costa Rica, in 1945 and 1946, Fabian Dobles writes exactly the same sort of
text with his El sitio de las abras.
In response to an interview
question asked of him by the historian Ricardo Blanco, Dobles comments,
"[El sitio de las abras] narra algo que sucedió y no sucedió, pero
sigue sucediendo.. Al río, al monte, al
agro nacional y sobre todo al campesino pobre del siglo pasado, generándose
incesantemente desembocó en el presente" (cited on rear cover). Dobles' own account of his novel
underscores its allegorical dimension, according to Sommer's definition of
allegory. While the author himself
never imputed any utopian aspects to his work and apparently accepted its classification
as an "agrarian novel", the simple fact is that the Costa Rican
Ministry of Education placed El sitio de las abras on the required
reading list for the nation's secondary schools thereby following Bentham's
notion that an educated, literate public is a necessary ingredient for eventually
forming an utopian society based upon his utilitarian model. This fact, likewise, situates the text as among those
foundational fictions which Sommer so skillfully defines.
For
Costa Rica, El sitio de las abras, is the sort of national romance which
can be a source of local history and which can contribute to the formation of
the public mind and the development of the national character. In other words, the required reading of El
sitio de las abras, according to those who put the book on the national
reading list can yet contribute to the development of a Central American
utopia. The fact that Dobles was
awarded the National Prize for Literature in 1969, for his extensive work which
includes short stories, poetry, and other novels, but particularly for El
sitio validates Dobles' central place among Costa Rican authors. The
further fact that the national publishing house, Editorial Costa Rica, came out
with the second edition of the novel in the year subsequent to the prize
confirms the status of this book as a foundational fiction for Costa Rica.
Dobles'
text has achieved this status not because of its intrinsic literary value, but
because Dobles narrates an edenic, utopian "history" of the
"civilizing" of the nation, the sort of history which the nation's
ruling elite wishes the public mind to believe. The novel/allegory (allegory because Dobles frequently reminds
his readers that the text can and should be read as the history of a family,
particularly the family and descendants of Espíritu Santo Vega, and as
the history of the nation) begins with the creation of the abras, those
openings or clearings in the forest which eventually give way to farms which
cede their place, in turn, to coffee plantations and eventually,
metaphorically, to the entire nation.
Throughout the novel, Dobles effectively reminds the reader not only of
the passage of time, "Y las hachas llegaron" (12), "Y así
terminó la infancia de las abras" (80), "Y la vida continuaba"
(90), "Transcurrieron algunos años" (109), "Los años
transcurrieron sobre los años" (122), "¡Cuánto tiempo ha pasado"
(128), but more importantly Dobles emphasizes the importance of knowing family
and national history. So, when young
Martín returns to the abras, he listens to the family histories told him
by his ancient Uncle Remigio, and begins to understand "de modo más real y
hondo que antes de su fácil felicidad actual habían existido otros hombres y
otros tiempos de los cuales quedaban, árboles arrancados, con las doloridas
raíces crispadas al viento, su madre, su tata y el tío abuelo. Empezaba a ser partícipe de aquel pesado
agobio que de ellos emanaba" (144).
Shortly afterwards, anxious to hear more stories, to learn more about
his family history and his own identity, Martín goes to live with Remigio who,
night after night, would recount the family stories. Martín "las oía con nueva y diferente devoción, viendo en sí
mismo la continuación de todo aquello y alimentando su alma" (148). Eventually Martín understood just what
Dobles wanted all of his readers to recognize and we understand why the Costa
Rican Ministry of Education requires the reading of this novel, for the
development of the public mind. Martín
thought that "su tío abuelo no había vivido para morir, como él
creía. Había sembrado" (155). In this agrarian novel, Dobles plants the
seeds of a national culture. For him
(and the Ministry of Education), as well as for young Martín, "Las abras,
los sueños de ñor Espíritu Santo y su mujer, … Todo eso tenía sentido. Era historia, Sí, era como para ponerse a meditar" (155). Finally, Remigio shouts to Martín what he
and his countrymen understand; they are the children of their parents, the
descendants of their ancestors who founded the country. It is this sense of history which allows
Martín for the first time to comprehend what Señorita Leflair had told him
years ago, "que todos los seres humanos deben ser realmente iguales en
oportunidades y en derechos. Con el
tiempo llegará de algún modo a conseguirse.
Muchos hombres han luchado y siguen luchando por esto, pero aún faltan
más Bastillas que derribar" (155).
In fact, this is why Martín returns to his childhood home as a labor
organizer. He is called a communist for
agitating the "parasites", but, in fact, he is simply recalling the
liberal, democratic ideals of the French Revolution, and fighting for the
happiness that Bentham had promised the world if it but implemented the
policies he devised and adopted the civil codes which he developed. For Martín Vega Villalta, as well as for all
of the high school students in Costa Rica who are required to read this novel,
"Era necesario no perder la alegría, el optimismo, el deseo de vivir para
vivir" (156). Happiness and the
possibility of a Costa Rican utopia still exist, or so the Ministry of
Education wants us to believe.
While
Espíritu Santo Vega and his literal and figurative descendants were clearing
away the forest, turning those openings into the farms that would grow into
haciendas and repeating the whole process, "En la capital, en las pequeñas
ciudades y aldeas donde los hombres luchaban e iban logrando implantar las
ideas liberales, … " , completely unaware of what was happening in the
countryside (116). The young nation was
developing on two fronts.
Naturally,
none of this would have been possible without what Sommer has noted as the
other aspect of the foundational fictions, the erotics of politics. When Dolores informs her husband, Espíritu
Santo, that once again she is pregnant, he responds, "Con este hacen
nueve, y donde comen ocho come uno más" (37). Expanding the family went hand in hand with expanding the
abras and developing the nation.
Perhaps Dobles had heard of Alberdi's slogan because when even Espíritu
Santo's spirit wanes for a moment and he thinks of his own death, he quickly
recalls that "Dios no lo habría de permitir, porque él era el soporte de
aquella ramazón de hijos y sentimientos.
Estaba por delante continuar arrebatando a la montaña, pedazo a pedazo,
más y más tierra, pues sus muchachos eran muchos y cada uno constituiría en el
porvenir un matrimonio y más hijos y la multiplicación de los hombres. Urgía multiplicar los panes y los
peces" (39). Of course, Dolores'
contribution toward populating the abras extends beyond bearing and
raising her own children. She also
plots to strengthen the family blood line, "cuánto me gustaría un nieto
que fuera hijo de Villalta" (83); so she offers her own daughter Magdalena
to her neighbor Villalta and his invalid wife as a domestic servant knowing all
along that Magdalena will eventually say to the object of her own teenaged
desire, "¡haga conmigo lo que quiera!" (94). When Magdalena returns home, pregnant,
Dolores "experimentaba una extraña y triunfante sensación de júblio; aquello era, no la victoria de Magdalena, sino
su propia victoria. Y se daba con
pasión a ensoñar el bien deseado nieto" (96). As Doris Sommer makes clear, matrimony or, at least, the
natural alliance of families is a necessary step toward the founding of
nations.
Dobles'
text, then, includes a sense of national history so necessary for the
development of civil codes and a prescription for populating the country. His emphasis on the notion of family as the
foundation for the nation is the justification for the recurring metaphor of
trees and roots. His characters clear
away the original trees of the forest in order to establish their utopian abras,
but they replace those trees with themselves.
"…con la familia, árbol que crecía, se trasladaban las costumbres,
las tradiciones y los sueños" (27).
The whole community, all of the original seven families, celebrate
Christmas Eve together, in the home of Dolores and Espíritu Santo Vega. These pioneers who bring civilization to the
wilderness find the sort of happiness which Jeremy Bentham had somehow imagined
for Spanish America. They can do this
on the site of the abras because, here, far from the capital, they are
free, "Aquí la libertad nacía de la ausencia de grandes vecindarios y de
autoridades" (31).
Perhaps
it is not so surprising that the Costa Rican Ministry of Education would uphold
Dobles' novel as an excellent source of national history and a guidebook for maintaining the sense of
optimism and national pride so necessary for the eventual flowering of a
Central American agricultural utopia founded upon hard work and family
traditions. Unfortunately, Costa Rica's
history includes chapters that are not mentioned in Dobles' novel. Or, at least, that is what Tatiana Lobo
would seem to assert in her Asalto al paradiso.
As
her title suggests, Costa Rica didn't need the axes of the Dobles' pioneers
clearing away the forests and, in the process, killing all the animals and the
fish, destroying the rivers and the mountains in order to transform the country
into an agrarian utopia. Costa Rica was a paradise on earth when the Spanish
first arrived. Dobles, for his part,
recognizes the environmental consequences of the actions of Espíritu Santo Vega
and the other founding fathers of his Costa Rica. Consequently, Martín Villalta, in a dialogue with Espíritu Santo
about the tenuous equilibrium between man and the environment makes it very
clear, "Se dejan a menudo los huesos en la tierra porque ella cobra su
precio. Pero vea usted quiénes han salido
perdiendo aquí a la larga: los ríos y las montañas. Ustedes los han herido con sus hachas y sus puentes; ellos han tenido que ceder terreno a los
pastizales y el ganado. Los animales
salvajes han debido alejarse frente a sus escopetas y cuchillos, en tanto que
ustedes tienen sus casitas bien entejadas.
La selva se ha venido pudriendo bajo las plantas de los hombres mientras
los hombres ven crecer a sus hijos y a sus reses y saben venerar a sus
difuntos. ¿Dónde estaba el peor
enemigo? En ustedes mismos, los
hombres; en nosotros" (72).
The
action of El sitio de las abras takes place at the end of the 19th
century and through the early part of the 20th century, up until the
1940s. Lobo's novel clearly shows that
in the effort to develop a Central American agrarian utopia a natural paradise
was being destroyed from the time the Spanish first arrived. The major themes of Asalto al paraiso, that is cultural and ethnic identity, national
identity, indigenous mythology, especially the genesis myth, and of course,
Spanish colonial abuse all constitute part of what Lobo understands to be a
more accurate foundational fiction.
At
a round table called Artists' Contributions to a National Cultural Agenda which
was part of a conference on "The Voice of Artists at the End of the
Millennium", Lobo precisely articulated her own contributions to that
agenda. The transcription of Lobo's
round table presentation was
subsequently published as "Por una identidad nacional libre y
autogestionaria" in a Cultural Supplement to the Sunday, San José
newspaper (February 25, 2001). First
she distinguished "cultural identity" from "national
identity" by pointing out that individuals cannot have an impact upon
their cultural identity because that is a phenomenon that is the consequence of
history and the group in which the individual finds him or herself. National identity, on the other hand, is
different. She says, and I quote, in my
translation, "we can influence national identity because it is in itself
an artificial creation: national identity is an invention of the State that
begins with unifying signs like the national flag, the national hymn, the
national heroes, etc." (2). Lobo
continues, "In the construction of a national identity we artists,
writers, intellectuals can intervene.
We should intervene. We
have been intervening" (2). Lobo's
particular manner of intervention in the development of a national identity lies in the dismantling of received
national myths which have been perpetuated by the State. She proposes that Costa Rican artists
(writers and intellectuals) contribute to "the construction of a national
culture by expanding the tico frontiers beyond the mountains of the
Meseta, opening spaces to peripheral and marginal groups, to the Afro-Caribbean
sector, to the indigenous, guanacastecan groups who, in spite of everything,
still conserve cultural identities that are much more defined, richer and
stronger than that of the miasmic Central Valley" (3). [[3]]
Then Lobo further
proposes that Costa Ricans overcome the self-satisfaction and complacency that
result from their myths because these myths are "wrong and fraudulent, and
have impeded the strengthening of the (national) identity" (3).[[4]] She details five
ways to eliminate these damaging myths.
Very briefly they are:
1)
Break the cultural shackles created by the political parties:
2)
Become conscious of racism, chauvinism, and xenophobia;
3)
Unmask the falsities of the official history (or that history perpetuated by
the official reading list required by the Ministry of Education) by doing a
rereading of the national history. This
one is particularly important as it suggests the rationale for Assault on
Paradise. She emphasizes that Costa
Rica has never been the Central American utopia they many have proclaimed; it
has "never been exceptional, nor peaceful, nor democratic; like all Latin
American countries, it has been subject to fraud, more or less covered-up
violence, and profound economic and political inequalities" (3).
4)
End the arrogance of a supposed ethnic and cultural superiority. This is another theme of the novel. And,
5)
Distrust official applause because this encourages submission, not rebellion.
Of
these five proposals, numbers three and four are particular relevant to Asalto
al paraiso. Reference to what
might be considered a "classical" text on the History of Central
America illustrates the point. Hubert H. Bancroft writes, in 1883,
"… the Talamancans rose in revolt, burned their churches, tore down their
dwellings, and killed the friars and the soldiers, the latter but ten in
number. Rebullida's head they cut off
on the 28th of September 1709" (618). Bancroft continues by noting that "Lorenzo Antonio de Granda
y Balbin, the governor of Costa Rica"
… "took summary vengeance on the natives". According to Bancroft, under Granda y
Balbin's leadership, "The rebels were utterly routed, and their cacique
was tried, sentenced, and executed as an instigator of revolt" (619). The
"cacique" is not even named.
The brutality of the "summary vengeance" is never
mentioned. Tatiana Lobo's account
presents a quite different picture. As
Alvaro Quesada Soto, of the University of Costa Rica mentions in his Historia
y Narrativa en Costa Rica (1965-1999) , "La novela, que tiene como
fondo la sublevación indígena de Presbere en 1709, rompe con la visión
idealizada y bucólica de la Colonia que proclamaba la historia oficial"
(no p. #).
Asalto
al paraiso begins with Pa-brú Presbere's theological and, almost, mystical
meditation. For Presbere this was not an
insurrection or an uprising, but a religious war. "Primero, dioses contra dioses. Después, soldados contra soldados" (207). Lobo's account of Presbere's execution
likewise contributes to debunking the myth of the pacific or peaceful
tico. Granda orders that, "Y luego
que sea muerto, le sea cortado la cabeza y puesta en alto que todos la
vean" (311). Of course, we soon
realize that the sun carries off the soul of Presbere, "hacia el mundo más
abajo donde lo espera la inmortalidad" (314). The brutality of these colonial Costa Ricans is such that the
protagonist-hero of the novel, Pedro Albarán is literally sickened, "Pedro
sintió una ligera náusea" (313).
Pedro's reaction to Spanish/Costa Rican brutality and mistreatment of
the indigenous population provokes him into sneaking over to the corral where
the Talamancans are being kept prisoner until they can be divided up among the
cacao growers and setting them free. He
then picks up his daughter and runs off into the Costa Rican night, never to be
heard from again. This seems to me a
myth worth repeating.
Pedro
Albarán, himself the grandson of a "recalcitrant moor" who is burned
at the stake of the Inquisition (22), wants to save his daughter, Catarina,
from the fate of growing up Spanish.
After all, she is the result of his union with la Muda, the mute,
mystical indigenous girl. Pedro decides
to raise his daughter within her mother's culture. So, he takes this initial step to lay the foundation for the
genuine multicutural, multiethnic national identity that Tatiana Lobo
advocates.
That
is the fourth of the five ways to eliminate harmful myths, according to
Lobo. Even books as new as A Brief
History of Central America by Lynn V. Foster (2000) still
perpetuate, in their own way, the myth of Costa Rican ethnic superiority. Foster writes, "Oscar Arias Sanchez is
a descendant of prominent coffee growers and of the conquistador Juan Vásquez
de Coronado" (177). Unfortunately,
she neglects to point out as the genealogist Mauricio Meléndez Obando does in
"Presencia de Africa en las familias costarricenses", one of a series
of essays he has done for La Nación, that "Oscar Arias Sánchez,
premio Nobel de la Paz y expresidente de Costa Rica, es descendiente de la
mulata Ana Cardoso y el Cap. Miguel Calvo" (12). Meléndez Obando, who
collaborated with Tatiana Lobo on their Negros y Blancos: todo mezclado
(1997) concludes "Se debe reconstruir una parte de nuestra identidad
'nacional', aquella que se refiere a nuestros orígenes mixturados, a nuestras
raíces pluriétnicas, para combatir el nacionalismo chovinista promovido, …, en
las últimas décadas. Se debe, entonces,
reescribir la historia de nuestra génesis, dejando de lado la visión idealista
y bucólica de una Costa Rica imaginaria y alejándonos de posiciones eurocentristas"
(13). Curiously, Dobles' only allusion
to the history of slavery in Costa Rica
occurs when the narrator asserts, "La esclavitud que había era la del
trabajo y las asechanzas de la montaña, pero esta servidumbre entraba en el
ánimo como refrescante viento de amplitud y autoafirmación sobre la
tierra" (31). Although seeming to
deny that slavery ever existed in Costa Rica, Dobles does admit to the damage
done to the natural environment.
However, excluding the Indigenous and African contributions to Costa
Rican national identity, practically denying their existence is one of the most
frequent critiques other Central Americans make of Costa Ricans. Tatiana Lobo, for her part, insists on the
importance to Costa Rica of recognizing that, just like other Latin American
countries, Costa Rica is a multiethnic amalgam. It is not as white as it pretends to be. For her, any foundational fiction of Costa
Rica must begin by recognizing the marriage of races. In Doris Sommer's words, the erotics of politics in Costa Rica
was much different for Lobo than it was for Dobles.
So then,
Asalto al paraiso by Tatiana Lobo offers a quite different
version of the history of Costa Rica from than that set forth in El sitio
de las abras by Fabian Dobles. Dobles
wanted to supply a national history that would contribute to the still possible
Benthamic utopia in Central America.
Lobo, in critiquing the official history and foundational fiction
perpetuated by the Ministry of Education as a pernicious myth, suggests that
the longed for Central American paradise can never be achieved until the public
mind accepts the true genesis of the country.
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