In the absence of loyal self-silencing, the authorities rely on the fear of
punishment to induce internal censorship in the characters. The protagonists of my corpus reflect on their fear and acknowledge the role that it plays in limiting their actions and expression. Fear is a prominent emotion for a variety of characters, some of whom are censored artists and others of whom simply suffer from the general atmosphere of repression.
In Díaz‟s Las palabras perdidas, the juxtaposition of the two narrative moments in 1968 and 1978 highlights the extent to which fear has come to dominate El Flaco. By showing images of the protagonist before and after his external censorship, Díaz implies the difficulty of the censorship and the punishment that followed without dwelling on the unsavory details of it. Conversing with Adrián in the restaurant of Moscow‟s Ostankino Tower, El Flaco becomes terrified by the suspicion that his old acquaintance may have been the informant who betrayed him to the censors in 1968 and that he may be falling into a new trap. Fear causes him physical unease, and he “estaba obligado a reconocer que temblaba debido a las imprevisibles consecuencias de aquel diálogo y que tenía miedo, simple y sencillamente” (9). He considers hiding in the bathroom for the rest of the night, in order to “dormir allí su cobardía” (9). Fueling the protagonist‟s suspicion, Adrián brings up Roque Dalton, the Salvadoran revolutionary and poet who is woven into the narration as a friend of the Güijes. The presumed informant asks whether El Flaco
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agrees that there was no place for a poet like Roque in a revolutionary society, effectively inviting El Flaco to condemn the revolutionaries who executed Roque as a suspected double agent. Knowing the political sensitivity of that question, El Flaco “sintió un timbrazo de alarma. Aquel tema era tabú. Sabía muy bien que no debía siquiera
consultarlo con la almohada y se preguntó si [Adrián] no estaría provocándolo” (172). He is justifiably afraid, and this fear leads him to hide his true thoughts behind a veil of silence. In the same way, fear has kept him from discussing with anyone his plan to write a novel. “Albergaba un temor supersticioso,” we learn, “a que una fuerza inesperada, que en sus pesadillas cobraba la forma de un accidente, un censor o una enfermedad, le impidiera concluir o publicar un trabajo que no había siquiera empezado” (48). He is afraid that something will go wrong to doom the project if it becomes known.
La piel y la máscara even more explicitly explores the open wound of the artist- protagonist‟s fear. El Oso admits to himself that since his loss of faith in the revolution, only fear has kept him from rebelling against the norms of censorship. “¿Miedo a qué?” he asks himself,
¿A que me condenaran al ostracismo, convirtiéndome en una especie de no persona? Sí, desde luego, pero también a ser tachado de traidor por mis propios amigos, aquellos que coincidían conmigo en privado y que se verían obligados a acusarme en cuanto mis obsesiones artísticas u opiniones políticas se hiciesen públicas, como yo mismo acusé a otros en el pasado. (55)
He fears punishment by the authorities, but fears even more the rejection by his friends and colleagues who, he foresees, will not risk their own public standing on his behalf. Admitting his complicity in the system of censorship, he acknowledges that he has played just such a game in the past by publicly accusing others while secretly sympathizing with them. But even more than ostracism, he fears admitting to himself that “la gran utopía
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laica que dio sentido a mi existencia y a la de tantos y tantos otros había fracasado” (55). Like Stalin Martínez, who cannot bring himself to fully renounce his belief in the
revolutionary project, El Oso hesitates to acknowledge that the efforts of his adult life have been spent in vain. Thus, fear exerts its pressure both in the realm of the social, the fear of rejection by the group, and in the personal, the fear of losing one‟s guiding principles. To those fears El Oso adds the fear of having to start his life over in exile, of returning to the most menial of labors, of being denied work altogether and of finding no refuge other than suicide (55). In this moment of intense self-analysis, we learn that El Oso has been driven by fear for much of his adult life.
Nearly 20 years after being banned from Cuban theater, Alberto Marqués
continues to be plagued by fear. He lives largely isolated from the world, emerging from his old and decaying home only to attend gatherings of other marginalized habaneros. He admits that the decree prohibiting him from the theater has been rescinded in recent years, but notes that he has chosen not to resume working in theater in part because “nadie podía garantizarme que lo del año 71 no volvería a repetirse, ¿verdad?... Y yo no hubiera tenido fuerzas para cumplir una segunda condena, después de haber vuelto al espectáculo y a la exhibición” (110-11). Conde is almost sorry to have heard this confession by Marqués, for with it he loses a tragic and heroic image of arrogance and independence that he had projected onto the playwright, and he realizes that the true motivation for Marqués‟s silence was “el miedo” (111).
Fear is also a defining characteristic both of Conde and of his generation. Already in Pasado perfecto, the first installment, Conde describes two photos from his final years in the preuniversitario, after the closure of his magazine. The feature that stands out
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about himself at that age is his “cara de susto” (94, 228). In that same novel, Conde and Tamara confess to each other the long lists of fears that plague them, with Conde admitting that he is afraid “[a] todo. Sí, a todo” (140), and Tamara confiding, “Yo
también tengo miedo [...]. A todo le tengo miedo” (143). We see that for the two of them, representatives of their generation, fear is an ever-present aspect of their daily lives.
Máscaras further universalizes the emotion of fear though references to the biblical tale of the Transfiguration. We find Padre Mendoza meditating on the
compassion that Christ shows towards his disciples, who are frightened by seeing him transfigured into a heavenly body in this biblical episode, provides the priest with a comforting image. If Christ, foreseeing his own fear to come at the moment of the crucifixion, can understand and feel human fear, “¿por qué nosotros vamos a renegar de un sentimiento tan humano? Tal vez el más humano de todos, Conde” (86). Alexis Arayán, whose taboo sexuality has led him into a life dominated by fear and self-
silencing, also takes solace in the compassion of the transfigured Christ, and he seems to interpret it in the same way as Padre Mendoza. Alexis carefully removes from his Bible the page containing Matthew‟s retelling of the Transfiguration, writing in the margin a note that indicates his sense of community with Christ‟s fear of suffering, “Dios Padre, ¿por qué lo obligas a tanto sacrificio?” (162; italics in original). Both Padre Mendoza
and Alexis are attracted by Christ‟s compassion for those who are afraid. They clearly feel fear themselves and seem to take for granted its pervasive status in their society as the most human of all emotions.
In Pedro Juan of Trilogía sucia we see yet another character plagued by his “lucha contra el miedo” (98). We may presume that the experiences of external censorship, and
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the circumstances into which he was thrust as a result, have contributed to making fear a defining aspect of his character. However, fear also seems to precede his personal confrontation with censorship and saturate him from the very environment in which he has lived. Looking back on his life, he sees it as dominated by “el miedo. Desde niño siempre el miedo” (134).8
Pedro Juan sets out to conquer his fear, declaring “Ahora me imponía vencerlo” (134). To this end, he tells us, he takes up boxing: “Boxeaba con cualquiera y siempre temblando por dentro. Intentaba golpear duro. Intentaba ser arrojado, pero no. El miedo estaba ahí, hacienda lo suyo. Y yo me decía: ah, no te preocupes, todos tenemos miedo. El miedo aflora antes que cualquier otra cosa” (134). Like Padura‟s characters, Pedro Juan takes comfort in the universality of fear.
In Trilogía sucia,fear appears in a number of contexts, some of which are directly related to self-expression, thus leading to silence, as we will see below. Pedro Juan hides his fear and pretends to be at home in the solar, the slum in which he lives. Though at times he claims to like the solar, at others he reveals a deep fear of his neighbors there, explaining, “intento mantenerme al margen de esta gente. En realidad estoy aterrado, pero ellos no deben percibirlo. Si olfatean que me molestan y que me dan miedo, estoy perdido” (159). He senses the need to hide his fear and to mask himself in order to blend in with those around him. In him, as in the protagonists across my corpus, fear leads to the act of concealment. All of his reflections on fear foreshadow a kind of silence that results from fear: the repression of one‟s thoughts vis-à-vis one‟s neighbors and the avoidance of certain topics in one‟s speech and writings. Pedro Juan also connects fear and inaction, recognizing that “[c]on miedo y confusión me paralizo” (98). Fear leads Pedro Juan to conceal his thoughts from his neighbors, adopting a face that is not really
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his, and the paralysis—or inaction—to which he refers in this quotation can be related to the various masking behaviors that he and the other protagonists exhibit.