Encounter with Memory

Conclusion

HE LIFE OF Elena Garro was extraordinarily rich in satisfactions, pleasures, works,41 sufferings and persecutions, as was her literary work. When she died, she left 19 published books,42 some of which received major literary awards. In her personal life she experienced many incredible things. One example is when she attended a party also attended by Lee Harvey Oswald, a few days before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President of the United States. Lee continues to be considered the one who assassinated the president. The American Embassy in México interrogated Elena Garro. She was known as an activist for the leftists because of her strong campaign in favor of the peasants against the government. 43 All of these vital experiences served to nurture her literary fiction. She repeatedly stated that for Ortega and Gasset, “literature must be life”, if not, then it is academic. Elena Garro transformed many autobiographical elements into literary motives. Also, through her use of the pen, she vindicated famous people who had fallen into

41 Elena obtained work in the different countries where she lived: México, United Status, France, Switzerland, but not in Spain, cfr. “Cronología,” 307-28.

42 At the end of this book is the list of her published works, following a chronological order of publication.

43 In the section about the life of Garro, I mention that president Adolfo López Mateos asked Octavio Paz to take her out of the country in 1959. Charles William Thomas, agent with the CIA, a supposed friend of Garro’s, wrote a biography about her for the CIA where he presents her as “an active participant in the Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC) (Carlos Puig, Proceso, March 23, 1992, p. 51). 120 disgrace due to governmental politics, as in the case of General Felipe Ángeles who fought in the Mexican Revolution. She then vindicated the figure of La Malinche considered by many to be the traitor of her own race for living with the enemy, Hernán Cortez and for having with him a bastard44 child named Martín, who was the first mestizo in the world. Elena Garro, through a short story with a plethora of magical realism, “La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas” [“It is the Fault of the Tlaxcaltecas”]45 recreates the battle between the Spaniards and the Aztecs and the life of La Malinche at two different levels—the present, and the past, the memory in the year 1524. Through the use of the flashback, she is able to go from one level to the next. At the end of the short story, la Malinche is given the opportunity to correct this historic error of being considered the one responsible for the Spanish triumph over the Aztecs.46

Overall, Elena Garro was an original writer. She experimented with new techniques as much with the narrative genre as with the dramatic text. She has been considered the precursor of magical realism. Fernando Alegría, author and critic, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, has suggested that the work of Elena Garro in Los recuerdos del porvenir influenced the development of Cien años de soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude]:

Other heroines and other spellbound people can be found in the Latin American novel, but none like Francisco Rosas, Julia Andrade, and Isabel Moncada. Colonel Aureliano Buendía? Remedios la Bella? They are the same family. It is clear that Elena Garro created her characters much earlier, and left the mold behind . . .

44 Octavio Paz states in El laberinto de la soledad [The Labyrinth of Solitude] (1950), “. . . this makes us celebrate our condition as Mexicans: ¡Viva México, hijos de la chingada!” (68).

45 This is part of the collection in Semana de colores [A Week of Colors].

46 More information can be found in my analysis of this short story in this book.

One would be tempted to say that Elena Garro’s novel remains a strange achievement, something that Gabriel García Márquez was able to execute years later on a grand scale (Nueva historia de la novela hispanoamericana, 277).47

Elena Garro referred to magical realism in her works during an interview48 with Dr. Veronica Beucker from the University of Düsseldorf. When asked why her novel Recollections of the Things to Come is not considered part of the Latin American “Boom” in literature, Elena Garro responded: “Because I wrote it four years before, because it was considered a Catholic novel [This novel depicts one aspect of the Mexican Revolution—the war of the Cristeros], and because I am a woman.”

There are many authors who consider this novel one of the major literary works of the twentieth century, among them are Carlos Fuentes, Carlos Monsiváis, and others. Recollections of the Things to Come (1963) was awarded the Javier Villarrutia prize the same year it was published, and has been translated into English, French, Polish, and Mayan. Garro’s other works which received awards are: Testimonios sobre Mariana (1981), México: Grijalbo. Juan Grijalbo Prize and Busca mi escuela and Primer amor (1996), Monterrey: Ediciones Castillo, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, 1996.

Elena Garro is considered a pioneer in historical theatre for her play Felipe Ángeles. Garro’s writing is important not only because she was a pioneer in employing the style of magical realism, but also for her use of metaphors, and the diverse techniques she uses

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