LITR 5731 Colonial-Postcolonial Literature                                      1st Research Posts 2009

Aaron Schneider

The Colors of Colonization: Same Name, Same Game

            Being introduced to Colonialism this semester has been an eye-opening experience.  Through my review of course readings, class discussions, and extended research, I have come to understand that colonization has been a global issue for centuries.   What has become glaringly apparent, however, is that the majority of the examples of colonialism we have studied have revolved around the emphasis of an individual’s skin color.  We have been introduced to Robinson Crusoe as a colonizer of his dark-skinned companion Friday; Lucy as an African American daughter of colonization; and the Kafiris of Afghanistan as victims of the pale-skinned British soldiers Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan.  One theme is consistent in each of these stories: the color of the colonizer’s skin is inevitably a shade (or shades) lighter than that of the skin of the victim he is oppressing.  This recurring theme has led me to wonder if this particular white colonizer/black colonized relationship is consistent throughout the context of all Colonialism/Post Colonialism literature.  In my research, I have discovered the colonizer/colonized relationship to be based on the concept of feudalism in Isabel Allende’s 1982 Latin American novel The House of the Spirits.

            My first experience with Allende’s novel came in the form of viewing Caridad Svich’s play titled “The House of the Spirits” which played at Houston’s own Main Street Theater.  While the setting in the play in unspecified, one is able to infer that it takes place in Chile and spans the decades of the 1920s to the 1970s.  The story revolves around three generations of Latin American women and their struggles with gender, politics, and class.  Each of the characters in this story is of Latin American descent, meaning their skin is all variations of the same color (brown).  Unlike most of the material we have become associated with in our class discussions, we find that colonization takes on a new form in this story centrally focusing on land ownership and social class more than race.  Early in the story, we are introduced to the character of Esteban Trueba, who acts as a colonizer throughout the course of the play.  Trueba’s colonization is not that of a particular country, but of a particular class of people.  After the loss of his fiancée, Rosa del Valle, Trueba returns to his family’s ranch (the Tres Marias) in an attempt to return it to its former glory.  Much like the early Spanish Conquistadors, Trueba travels to the ranch alone.  While many of the early Northern colonizers brought wives and families to their lands of colonization, the Southern colonizers (predominately Latin Americans) were typically male and typically loners.

 Trueba’s treatment of his peasant workers is based on the principle that “the ruling order cannot maintain the status quo without the continual exploitation and oppression of the working class.” Phillip Swanson reflects this in his 1994 critique of Isabel Allendale’s novel titled “Tyrants and Trash: Sex, Class, and Culture in La Casa de los Espiritus”.  Esteban Trueba’s desire for political and social power leads to him use feudalism on his ranch as a means of colonization.  According to Wikipedia’s free encyclopedia, feudalism was a system in which

The lord of the manor was the real ruler of society. The peasant worked the land for         him and owed him a number of feudal dues (increasingly commuted to money payments over time); justice was dispensed in the manorial courts. Customs varied, but it was common for a peasant to have a small plot, or to share a communal plot, on which to grow food for himself and his family and to be entitled to gather firewood from forest land for the hearth fire. More common than single plots, however, was the system of dividing the land into strips, with each household's strips scattered about the manor.

In defining feudalism, we discover that unlike normal colonization in which the colonizer assumes total control of a particular person or group of people and their land, feudalism offers an opportunity for the worker to own land as a means of service to a king or, in Esteban’s case, to a Spanish “patron”.     

In moving from Savich’s play to Allendale’s text, we find that Trueba’s feudalistic style of colonization capitalizes on the fact that his ranch workers (who are also Latino) have no options but to “buy” into his feudalism as a means of survival. The foreman of the ranch, Pedro Garcia, states “master we have nowhere to go, we have always lived here" (51). Garcia’s words demonstrate two things: he immediately assumes that Trueba is his master and that his options for a life outside of the ranch are all but non-existent.  Trueba’s response—“I am the patron here now.  The party is over.  Whoever stays won’t lack for food, but he’ll have to work good and hard.  I don’t want any deadbeats or smart alecs around, you understand? (51)”—mirrors Robinson Crusoe’s dialogue upon meeting the native Friday: “I taught him to say Master, and then let him know, that was to be my name" (209).  Trueba’s assumption of power and establishment of his “kingdom” eventually leads to a lapse into ancient barbarism: “he stopped shaving, cut his hair only when it reached his shoulders, and continued to bathe once a day only because the habit was so ingrained in him.  He was slowly becoming a barbarian" (55).  This barbaric nature fully manifests itself in Esteban’s rape of his foreman Pedro Garcia’s sister Pancha: “He attacked her savagely, thrusting himself into her without preamble, with unnecessary brutality" (57).  Esteban’s mistreatment of women, especially poor ones, extends to the rape of nearly all of the women on his ranch and most of the women in the local village.  His spreading of “bastard children” is not unlike the treatment of slaves by American colonizers and plantation owners in the 1800s.  It was not unusual for slave owners to use women slaves as a way to “relieve the tensions of the day and ensure a good night’s sleep," much as Esteban does with his peasants (62).

            In the character of Esteban Trueba, we find examples of the worst kind of villain and the worst kind of colonizer: one who would oppress his own countrymen.  While any form of colonization is inevitably wrong, it seems even worse to mistreat fellow members of one’s own native race.  Treuba, because of his status and wealth, has the opportunity to change the world that his peasant workers live in, but he fails to do so.  He seems to forget that before his trip to the Tres Marias ranch, his status in society was not far from that of being a peasant himself.  The acquisition of his family’s land has instantly elevated Esteban’s social status, allowing him to shed the role of the colonized and assume the role of the colonizer.  In viewing Trueba, the audience is made to discover that while colonization can take on many forms, (many of them relating to distinctions between black and white), individuals existing in the same race are not necessarily safe from the de-humanizing experience of colonization.

Works Cited

Allende, Isabel. House of the spirits. New York: Bantam Books, 1986. Print.

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. England: Penguin Books, 1985. Print.

"Feudalism -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 15 Oct. 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism>.

The House of the Spirits. By Caridad Svich. Dir. Rebecca Greene Udden. Main Street Theater, Houston, TX. 11 Oct. 2009. Performance.

Swanson, Philip. "Tyrants and Trash: Sex, Class, and Culture in La casa de los espiritus." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 71.2 (1994): 217-37. Gale Literary Databases. Apr. 1994. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. <http://libproxy.uhcl.edu:2081/servlet/GLD/hits?r=d&origSearch=false&o=DataType&n=10&l=d&c=17&locID=txshracd2589&secondary=false&u=
CA&u=CLC&u=DLB&t=KW&s=1&TI=La+casa+de+los+espiritus>.