Rambling Thoughts on La Charca

Although the translation of La Charca has its problems, it's a wonderful way to learn about rural Puerto Rico in the 19th century through literature. The peasantry depicted in this highland barrio are depicted as sick beings under colonial society. However, author Manuel Zeno Gandia included the landowner elites as part of the problem of this stunted, ailing society. Blackness is largely omitted here, although the racially mixed campesinos, presented as descendants of the indigenous population and European conquerors, are the racialized others who are compared to black slaves.  In many respects, this novel brings to mind Salvador Brau's writings about the mixed-race peasantry of Puerto Rico and their indolence inherited through indigenous forebears. And though the novel's critical of the Spanish colonial period, it's also critical of greed and unbridled capitalism, represented by Andujar and Galante. 

However, for this blogger, this tragic novel, in which Silvina appears to be an allegory for the island of Puerto Rico, beaten, abused, violated and manipulated by others, brought to mind Zoune in Justin Lhérisson's novel. Like Silvina, her peasant upbringing was one of abuse, illness, and ignorance, but Haitian writers, for the most part, were less likely to invest themselves in racial theories of degeneration to explain the appalling conditions in which post-emancipation Caribbean peasants often faced. But the narrator of Lhérisson's novel, when commenting on the improvements in the physical, mental, and social development of Zoune after living in a proper home, suggests optimism. In the case of La Charca, Juan, Padre Esteban, and the town doctor debate different solutions for the Puerto Rican peasant "problem," never coming to an agreement on if the solution will be found in "public" wealth, religion, or physical health and nourishment. Needless to say, hacendados like Juan are part of the problem, despite their self-proclaimed liberalism. 

Yet, despite the pessimism and theories of racial miscegenation operating in the novel, one cannot help but feel that there is some hope of change for Puerto Rico, even as the rising world of business and profit did proceed to further immiserate the Puerto Rican countryside. Moreover, as part of realist and naturalist literature, the novel is a priceless document of the daily lives, customs, entertainment, and conflicts of the campesinos in Puerto Rico's highlands. This author couldn't help but think of Bonó's El montero, which is set in a rural Dominican peasant setting, although the influence of Romanticism is stronger. The florid prose vividly brings to life Puerto Rico's beauty in the midst of its anemic, diseased coffee world.