Rita Tejada

Literary Representations of Post-American Intervention in the Dominican Republic

by RITA TEJADA, Associate Professor of Spanish

when the sun is taken by dreams where does spring go it founds rosaura over purple waters and a deep howling of flags

—Tony Raful, Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera

The twentieth century was one of the most turbulent historical periods in the Dominican Republic: It housed the bloody dictatorship of President Rafael Leónidas Trujillo for more than thirty years (1930-1961) and was the subject of two military interventions by the United States.

First Intervention

Political and economic factors are identified as causes of the first American intervention in 1916. Economic causes include the protection of American financial investments in the island’s sugar mills and payment supervision of Dominican debt that was collected by the United States through the control of Dominican customs (Franco Pichardo, History 430-31; Moya Pons, Manual 444-45). Political causes point to the strategic need of the United States to protect its southern coasts and the Panama Canal from potential European enemies and preserve its hegemonic role over the Caribbean, which began in the late nineteenth century with political control established in Cuba and Puerto Rico (Calder xx). The withdrawal of U.S. troops occurred on September 18, 1924, although U.S. customs control lasted until 1940, when it was transferred to the Dominican government presided by dictator Trujillo.

Second Intervention1

In 1965 the second armed American intervention took place. A series of events preceded this intervention. The first of these events occurred on May 30, 1961 with the assassination of Trujillo. He had joined the Dominican army during the first American occupation. His rapid ascent on the military’s hierarchical ladder as well as his political prowess put him in a privileged position. General Trujillo took advantage of the coup d’état of then-President Horacio Vázquez, of whom he was a “loyal” servant as head of the National Army. He joined the coup plotters and eventually managed to be proclaimed president in the elections held in 1930. Through political influence, Trujillo united economic power with the establishment of monopolies in all production sectors of the Dominican Republic:

The growth of Trujillo’s economic empire became so great that at the end of his life he controlled about 80% of industrial production and his companies employed 45% of the country’s workforce, which together with his absolute control of the state employed 15% of the workforce. This made 60% of Dominican families dependent in one way or another on his will. (Moya

Pons, Manual 518). After Trujillo’s death, democratic elections were held in 1962. These elections were won by Juan Bosch. Seven months later, on September 25, 1963, a coup d’etat occurred. Bosch went into exile and his government was succeeded by a civilian triumvirate imposed by the Dominican Armed Forces and Police. This triumvirate was supported by the United States government and the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. On April 24, 1965, two garrisons of the Armed Forces that wanted to restore the constitutional government of Juan Bosch revolted. There were confrontations between two military sides: the one that favored Bosch, called ConstituRita Tejada

tionalists or rebels, and the side that had led to the coup d’etat, called “Loyalists.” On April 28th, “violating the principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, the OAS and International Law, the United States unilaterally intervenes in the country and begins to disembark American troops” (Incháustegui 114). The American arguments for justifying this intervention are summarized in three postulates: “the restoration of law and order, the protection of the lives of Americans, and that the possible triumph of communists be avoided” (Bartlow Martin 617). This last reason was ultimately used by President Johnson to justify the American military presence in the Dominican Republic, as his government wanted to avoid at all costs the emergence of “another Cuba” in the region. During the April Insurrection, two governments coexisted in the Dominican Republic: the Constitutionalists formed the Constitutionalist Government, with Colonel Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó as president; and the “Loyalists,” under the auspices of the United States Embassy and

Rebel soldier during the April War of 1965 its representatives in the Dominican Republic, formed the Government of National Reconstruction headed by General Antonio Imbert Barreras. The repression exercised by the “Loyalists” and intervention troops confined the Constitutional Government to nineteen blocks or eight neighborhoods in the city of Santo Domingo where commandos of Constitutionalist civilians and military operated. This intervention ended on September 21st, 1966, when the withdrawal of troops from the so-called Inter-American Peace Force was completed. As a result of the negotiations, the Constitutionalist Government and the Government of National Reconstruction agreed that, as the only way out of the crisis, an interim government should be created. This government was chaired by Héctor García Godoy.

Art and literature of the April Revolution

The second American intervention generated reactions in all aspects of Dominican life. José Alcántara Almánzar points out that during the intervention there were artistic and cultural manifestations of various kinds in the Constitutionalist side: “Painters made posters and murals in which they recorded the People’s War’s objectives; poets wrote and read their new poems before crowds . . . Art was produced COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC and basically committed to the revolution and therefore opposed to the American occupation (“Narrativa social dominicana” 27). Alcántara Almánzar named “occupation” literature the literary production of that time, whose characteristics are: “aggression, commitment to political circumstance, spontaneity, chronic character, and the ability to witness to bloody events” (“Abril 65” 138). Constitutionalist artists integrated the Cultural Front, an organization that published a pamphlet of poems titled Pueblo, sangre y canto (People, Blood and Singing) and also contained a “Declaration of the Artists” where they expressed their support for the Constitutionalist Government. The Cultural Front also published Permanencia del llanto (Permanence of Crying) posthumously, a book of poems written by Jacques Viaud Renaud, a Haitian poet fighting with the Constitutionalists who died in the war. The Constitutionalists also came up with a “Hymn of the Revolution” that the masses learned and sang at rallies. In the years after the April War, much was written about the conflict of 1965, giving rise to the emergence of a postwar literature. In this regard, Pedro Conde says:

The new Dominican literature began to gestate in the wake of

May’s [1961] tyrannicide, but owes its vital impetus to the 1965 revolution. In many ways, the young generation of authors is a direct potential and lively product resulting from the April Revolution. That is why our literary activity is and will be long influenced, and almost determined, by the events of April, even if its subject is not necessarily bellicose. (10) After the April Revolution, and according to their political convictions, Dominican writers and intellectuals were grouped into cultural associations as a way to prolong the role the Cultural Front had played during the occupation. Their members published in the cultural supplements of Dominican newspapers and participated in literary contests, had programs on the radio, and offered lectures. Andrés L. Mateo, a member of one of these groups, describes his participation in the following terms:

La Isla (The Island) was a group that intended to make literature based on aesthetic considerations related to the social process.

After 1965, Dominican society was divided with such depth that all groups were organized around the ideological expression they believed they represented.

Before that year, and after Trujillo’s death, there was an ethical simplism because society was divided between Trujillistas and anti-Trujillistas. In appearance this was not an adequate social division and the events seen in 1965, that is, the April War, the

American intervention, [and] the emergence of political parties, originated the appearance of groups founded on many ideological traits. Also, cultural and literary groups were organized in a similar way to represent how society had been divided. La Isla was a group that sought to represent, from an aesthetic-political point of view, the most revolutionary side of society. We were almost all from the Dominican political left and had been in the war of ’65 as fighters. We had experienced social struggle and had considered that art and literature were also a vehicle for the transmission of these liberationist ideas and a trench from which we could fight.2

Postwar Period

The April War divided the Dominican people into two sides that caused major physical and material wounds to the country. The split was so great that, in many cases, friends and even parents

Rebel leader speaking to crowd during the April War of 1965. Left of him is Colonel Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó, president of the Constitutionalist government during the April War of 1965.

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

clashed against children who joined opposing sides. And even after the ceasefire between the Constitutionalists and the “Loyalists” was enacted, the military that made up the latter group, covered in the veiled impunity granted by the occupying forces, “started a ruthless hunt, falling into it hundreds of Constitutionalist fighters” (Cury 17). Emigration, especially to the United States, became a necessity for many Dominicans during this time (Vega 260). Juan De Frank Canelo indicates one of the factors that motivated the mass emigration of Dominicans as “the hatred and political passions inherited from the April Revolution of 1965, for after the civil war, many of those who participated in it decided to emigrate to preserve life” (49). Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, a novelist and the Dominican ambassador to Mexico during the provisional government of García Godoy, notes that from his diplomatic position he helped channel the exile of many Dominicans on both sides who used Mexican territory as a bridge for other countries.3

The poet Mateo Morrison recalls the holding of elections in 1966, a condition established for the departure of intervention troops, as the saddest stage of the postwar period: “After so many deaths, Professor Juan Bosch lost the election to Joaquín Balaguer.”4 According to Morrison, the fear the rest of the country had of bringing the war back, coupled with religious and anti-communist propaganda, and the fact that Joaquín Balaguer remained on the sidelines of the April Conflict, were factors that contributed to the country’s inland provinces and peasants, for the most part, voting against Juan Bosch.5 The novelist Andrés L. Mateo was exiled for fourteen years due to the postrevolution. He also recalls the physical and moral “hunting”:

Many people think that repression was only carried out by physical death, but there was a great counterinsurgency on the moral stage, on the spiritual stage, even more effective than physical hunting because physical hunting was limited to locating twenty, thirty, forty revolutionaries who planned to take their ideas into the way of action and make them disappear, kill them. But ideological, moral harassment was about the misfortune of degradation and, of course, there was a lot of success in that.6

The deaths of former members of the Constitutionalist side and young Dominicans identified with the political left continued to occur during the governments of Joaquín Balaguer, who ruled the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years in non-consecutive terms from 1966 until 1996.7

The literary generation of the 60s

The April Revolution marks the division between traditional Dominican literature and modern Dominican literature which produced a different way of presenting Dominican reality (Alcántara Almánzar, “Abril 65” 144). Ramón Francisco (Literatura Dominicana 60) insists that, for the first time, Dominican literature of that decade was “up to date” with literature that was being made in other latitudes. According to Francisco, this generation introduced new literary techniques in Dominican literature, such as the use of spatial and temporal overlays, a combination of first, second, and third person in the same narrative, flow of consciousness, and dislocation of syntax. The Latin American Boom greatly influenced Dominican literature written after 1960. In addition, the urban problems practically replaced the previous rural theme, as writers lived in urban centers (Alcántara Almánzar, “Narrativa social” 65). A very important feature that Chilean critic Alberto Baeza Flores attributes to Dominican poets of the 60s, and a common element to all the intellectuals who wrote during and after the April War, is the fact that they wrote without fear of being censored, as had happened during Trujillo’s regime (33). Dominican writers approached the conflict caused by war from their various personal perspectives, which included the distressing note of defeat, nostalgia, frustration, and testimony. The genres they favored were poetry and short stories, but novels and plays were also written. Dominican novels that referred to the second American intervention and specifically to the postwar period of April 1965 are De abril en Adelante (From

April Onwards), Currículum (el síndrome de la visa) (Curriculum (The Visa’s Syndrome)), La otra Penélope (The Other Penelope), Los acorralados (Cornered), Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera (Rosaura’s Weddings to the Spring), Vendaval (Gale), and Los amantes de abril (April’s Lovers). These novels’ main topics deal with condemning the second American intervention in the Dominican Republic and questioning of Dominican history. On top of that, none of those who participated in the April Revolution are glorified, and there is plenty of self-criticism about revolutionary participation and the role of the Dominican political left after the post-war period. All these narratives succeed in representing the frustration and pessimism of individuals who fought in the Constitutionalist zone and lost the war, but the analysis of the novels also shows the presence of the various manifestations of Dominican pessimism that go beyond the historical context and correspond to attitudes defined as particulars of Dominican society, such as the intellectual and cultural undervaluation of Dominicans, the underestimation of the environment, mistrust and fear among people, and individualism.

Representation of Post-American Intervention in Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera

Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera8 (Rosaura’s Weddings to the Spring) is a novel written by the Dominican author Tony Raful and is described in his prologue by literary critic Pedro Peix as an open genre work which combines photographs and a poetic structure to recount events before, during, and after the April Revolution. The first thing that catches a reader’s attention is the text’s structure: It is written as a long poem without rhyme or rhythm, capitalized only in the first word of some of the long stanzas, and without any type of punctuation. On the book cover there is a black and white photograph taken by the Italian photographer Carlos Sangiovanni. A woman dressed as a bride is depicted with a long white dress, a short veil, and a small crown. She is sitting in a military jeep driven by a soldier. The photo also shows another girl sitting and three young men in military clothing, one of them sitting and two standing. The driver and the other seated soldier carry weapons of different calibers. As readers, we assume that this first photo in the text serves as inspiration or as a testimonial element of the title and its origin. Rosaura’s name will appear throughout the novel as a connecting thread of stories that cover various historical moments of the Dominican Republic as a nation.

The open genre has allowed the writer of this novel to explore different episodes of Dominican history, inserting subjective and stark interpretation of moments in which its protagonists make history. As counterpoints, the stories of common men and women are added where the details and anecdotes indicate that these are experiences of the writer or his acquaintances, inserted in his narCover of Raful’s 1991 Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera (Rosaura’s Weddings to the Spring) ration to perpetuate his memories. of Angelita, the youngest daughter of Rosaura is the only leading character: “when she was fifteen years old, she came from school with her hair cut in two halves, she sighed with movie stars and carried candy in her purse” (1314). Her father died and her mother was a seamstress who lived organizing sanes9 to support the family. Although her mother’s dream was for Rosaura to marry a wealthy man, at the age of twenty her daughter’s best friends were all adult women: a prostitute, a spinster, and a divorcee. dictator Rafael Trujillo, is described and some photos are inserted in the text. In the first photo, Angelita wears a party dress, a cape, a crown and a scepter. In the second photo she appears dressed in gala and dancing with her father, who wears a frock coat with a great decoration. The antithetical contrast cannot be greater, since both Trujillo and his daughter and those around them are dressed like royalty. Angelita Trujillo’s quinceañera party is linked to the death of an Italian, Ilio Capozzi, who was part of the Constitutionalists and died in the Rosaura, a believer in fairy tales, witch- April Conflict during the assault on the es, and superstitions, is in full youth National Palace. Then, in metaphorical and sexual maturity when the April language, other deaths of combatants Revolution and the second American and the landing of Marines who took intervention in the Dominican Repub- the city of Santo Domingo and its inlic take place. The details of Rosaura’s habitants by surprise are mentioned. life are interrupted by the narration of notable events during the April war: the frustrated siege of the National Palace in which important military personnel from the Constitutionalist side died and the ambushes by the American troops, with realistic descriptions of the deaths in battle: “But the colonel seems asleep now he has a hole behind his head he only had five days in the fight” (22). In historical retrospect, the fifteen-year-old party (quinceañera) The author goes even further back in Dominican history and mentions the assault on the Santo Domingo colony by the pirate Francis Drake in 1586, while narrating the landing of the US Marines in 1965. During the landing of the pirate Drake, Rosaura is kidnapped and raped by the English corsairs. Her kidnapping and rape reaffirm the character of Rosaura as symbol of the homeland: Rosaura represents the

Dominican Republic, subjected from its inception to the attacks of political powers whose sole purpose has been to taint the Dominican territory. Despite her limitations, Rosaura assumes her defensive role and is described either as making Molotov cocktails to throw at the invaders (42) or as a poet who exalts the homeland: “if she died she would return as a gull emissary of dawn and sea on the roofs of the rebellious city ”(51). Rosaura’s symbology is cemented with short stories that highlight the importance of women and their militant role during the intervention. Monchín, owner of “La Cafetera,” an emblematic place that still exists on Calle El Conde in the capital city of Santo Domingo, recounts the lives of some of these women, highlighting their active participation, wielding long weapons and shooting at American soldiers. Photos of women marching against the intervention with flags and large banners around the city, of uniformed women marching in the constitutional zone, and of a young woman dressed in a military uniform while holding a rifle complement this representation of Dominican women in the war. However, these images are not idealized, quite the contrary. Just as the text recounts the lives of women who fought alongside men against US soldiers and “Loyalists,” stories of prostitutes such as Arascelis, who marries one of the American soldiers, emerge. Arascelis’s mother comes from the countryside to celebrate, dreaming aloud about the positive future that awaits her and her family because everyone will be able to emigrate to the United States and live very well. The marriage is interrupted by a bomb dropped on the brothel and which wounds the soldier. Because of the event, the high command of the occupation forces prohibits soldiers from visiting brothels in their free hours. In the owner of “La Cafetera” narration, he contrasts the current life of the ex-combatants in the revolution with the life of Rosaura, whom the conflict ended up affecting psychologically. The April War inflicted irreversible traumas on Rosaura, in addition to affecting the country’s postwar sociopolitical situation. The postwar discomfort is Rebel women protesters behind barricades, April War of 1965

reflected in the thoughts and day-to-day actions that Rosaura faces. An example of this is her recounting of a gathering of older men in the “Macalé” bookstore, a staple in Santo Domingo. An eightyyear-old man recalls the era of the dictator Trujillo and highlights that “the boss was great” (93) because “before one lived better” (94). He compares the society in the Trujillo era with the society of the moment, which he considers lacking in respect, without moral values or patriotism, while justifying Trujillo’s conduct because during his government order was established. Rosaura goes to the bookstore and becomes a silent witness to the old man’s tirades, which motivates her to leave quickly, disgusted by the justifications of the sinister past of Trujillo and the omission of regime atrocities such as, for example, the murder of the Mirabal sisters (97).10

The narration is located in the city of Santo Domingo. The poetic vision of the battered and raped city arises in the words of the writer, who uses repetitions of words as a cacophony that imitates the sound of machine guns and the shots that fill the environment. As a breath in the heat of the fight, the love poem “La guerra no se olvida” (“The War Is Not Forgotten)” by René del Rico Bermúdez11 appears in its entirety. A photo of this writer accompanies his poem. Artistic expressions, sports and cultural activities that took place in the Constitutionalist side such as wrestling, shows with singers, dancers, and poets are outlined, giving an air of “normality” that helped unite the inhabitants of the area. However, the sensation of war prevails because on the radio the voice of the Constitutionalists competes with the radio station of the “Loyalists”: Colonel Caamaño orders combatants to fire on the enemy, while the harangue in the radio station of the “Loyalists” broadcasts the following message:

A Soviet submarine has been seen in the Ozama River Che Guevara was seen in the streets of the city haranguing rampant mobs and thirsty for blood attention the country will be saved by P-51 planes bombing will start at the exact time of twelve o’clock the head of the bridge that divides the city must be cleaned, positions must be softened so that the infantry entry follows after the communists are raping nuns by assaulting convents and cutting off their heads to the officers of our armed forces forward pilots forward sons of the great country trained and graduated in the Panama Canal

Zone God is with us and cannot fail (37-39). Manipulation of information is revealed to justify actions like bombing the “communists,” who were nothing more than soldiers belonging to the same armed forces, but who sought to restore

U.S. intervention in Santo Domingo, May 5, 1965. A G.I. has pushed a child under the jeep for protection during a firefight.

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democratic order with the return of the ousted president Juan Bosch. The planes massacre the crowd, made up of civilians and military who gathered on the bridge that connects the east with the west of the city. This sad story is complemented by two versions of the same incident. Through the flow of consciousness, the thoughts of one of the pilots who shot at the crowd appear: he struggles between fulfilling the order that has been imposed on him and his moral conscience while having to shoot his compatriots and his former colleagues. Although this pilot has no name, the first-person narration of these tense moments and internal conflict becomes an effective tool in Raful’s text, as it helps contextualize the trauma suffered by all individuals. Raful humanizes the actors involved in the April War, especially soldiers from all sides who were acting under a superior command who cannot be questioned. Another good example of professional obligation is described in the accounts of two soldiers fighting on opposite sides. First, a twenty-threeyear-old American soldier, Douglas Lucas, relives memories of different stages of his life: from his childhood going to the movies to watch cowboys and Native American movies, playing baseball, and chasing squirrels; from his youth, making love to his girlfriend Jessie, listening to jazz music from his favorite musicians (Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington), and going hunting with his father. All this goes through his mind while he is stationed in one of the tallest buildings in the city of Santo Domingo and tries to justify what he does although he does not understand it: “after all this is my job, I do not know what I am defending but it is a job as worthy as any other… instead of pigeons I hunt little black coconut eaters and I also defend my country” (63). From there he fires at the Dominican combatants, whose casualties he scores through a system of markings on the wall. Next are the thoughts and words of the Dominican who has just been mortally wounded by Lucas: “they shot me they shot me here on the shoulder very close to the heart the blood gushes I’m dying, comrades” (57). This young man without a name also remembers his childhood playing with homemade toys and round games and searching for fruits in other people’s patios; already in his adulthood, he evokes his admiration for Marilyn Monroe and his encounters with prostitutes. Meanwhile, he begs his comrades to leave because they could also become victims of the sniper and to prohibit the ambulance from picking him up because the driver could be ambushed. Although the contrast between these two lives could not be more surprising, the parallelism makes similarities between the young military men even more striking. Thus, the questioning narrative about the armed conflict takes center stage because even when belonging to opposite sides both men reflect on the moral dilemma of choosing between good and evil. The humanization of this conflict’s participants reaches its climax with the monologue of three corpses, pilots from the “loyal” side who went out to have fun dressed in civilian clothes only to end up being ambushed in the Constitutionalist zone. The three bodies describe their physical characteristics, clothes they were wearing, as well as their personal belongings, perhaps as a last resort so as not to die anonymously. With a resigned tone, the author affirms that “[in] the deadly poison of war at night pain has no flags nor propaganda signs nor patriotic verbiage” (82). The structure of the text, like a long speech that is weaving and unraveling with each return to the past, is the most complicated element for a reader not versed in Dominican history. However, this treatment of history ratifies the structural whirlwind that has constituted the Dominican Republic since the beginning of its foundation. Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera does not escape the pessimistic attitude of postwar writings in Dominican literature. The narration goes to the present in which the text was written (1991) to talk about the “appearance” of an angel in an old house in the colonial zone, restored to commemorate five hundred years of the Spaniards’ arrival in the American continent in 1992. The omniscient narrator

criticizes the superficiality of these celebrations that won’t take into account the human cost of that endeavor “because the country has become a carnival […] while the dead continue to die again in shame because what was the war for if a participant who was in it nesting hope for the future is now kissing those in power or so and so who was a sniper in the twilight so that the Motherland will not be shrouded has ended trafficking narcotics ...” (108). The previous quote reiterates the pessimistic discourse on the Dominican Republic and its inhabitants, unable to appreciate the human sacrifice of civilians and military in the April Revolution, united with the objective of defending the incipient Dominican democracy. The author laments the effect of the haphazard present on many of April’s former participants, who have strayed from his ideals. Many have joined the governments chaired by Joaquín Balaguer, remnants of the Trujillo era; others have been dazzled by illegal activities, succumbing to crime. The physical escape from the surroundings, pursued by numerous ex-combatants, reaches its realization in Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera. In an acid monologue, one fighter recounts his decision to leave the country for the United States after his disenchantment with the status quo and his life as an immigrant in New York. Ignoring everything that happened in the country, he associated himself with the mafia and returned to the Dominican Republic after stealing money from a drug transaction. He now lives as a respectable millionaire, owns a mansion and luxury cars, is protected by bodyguards, and is considered a philanthropist. This ex-combatant symbolizes all the excesses of a society that value richness above the principles and ideals that marked an entire generation of Dominicans. The author associates the pain of losing these former comrades with madness: “ours is a spring that has lost its reason” (129). As it is a tropical climate, spring in the Dominican Republic is not distinguished from the other seasons of the year. Used in a metaphorical sense, spring represents the April War, embodies the participants in the revolution, and symbolizes its ideals. Children, adolescents, youth, women, and men who participated defending the motherland are personified in Rosaura, the main character of this novel. “When the sun is taken by dreams where does spring go it founds rosaura on violet waters and a deep howling of flags rosaura was not herself before it was an idle image that filled the seasons and grew old” (13). There is no ideological awareness that leads her to expose her life for political ideals and to join a makeshift army without any military experience. However, this was the conduct of more than 5,000 Dominican civilians who joined the Constitutionalists, made up of some 3,000 soldiers. When the author writes that “rosaura entered the spring and the war” (18), Rosaura’s name in lowercase makes a reference to the anonymous people who fought in the conflict and, like the verb founding that begins the narrative, Rosaura merges with the spring: “I think about Rosaura and I fill her with attributes she asks, and I also ask for an extension of hatred to continue fighting and we both see death oppressing the hearts of children crowding women against a skylight of unspeakable crying and pain” (84). The roar of the civil war is followed by regret, disenchantment: “if Rosaura liquidates her memory, spring disappears” (101); “Paul Eluard said that ours is a spring that is right and that is not true ours is a spring that has lost its reason” (129).

The symbolic title of the book alludes to Rosaura’s weddings, in plural, because several weddings follow one another throughout the narrative. At Rosaura’s first wedding, she is the niece of the president of the Royal Audience during the colonial period and is kidnapped by the pirate Francis Drake on the day she is to be married. Rosaura is taken hostage, raped by corsairs, and exchanged in time to restart her wedding preparations. There is reference to weddings and the lives of “the other girls of war” (52) who, contrary to Rosaura, did not suffer psychological trauma. The wedding of Arascelis, the prostitute who marries dressed in a white wedding dress, despite being a “cuero,”12 is narrated in detail. With the exception of the first wedding in colonial times, Rosaura’s other weddings are not mentioned in the text, although many years after the revolution she is described as someone, “Who has spent several days going out at night around the Olympic Center looking like a madwoman in a shabby dirty white wedding dress” (134). Weddings were activities that were carried out regularly during the April Revolution, according to available photos. In the novel, the white wedding dress embodies the plurality of a nation in which virgins and prostitutes use it interchangeably. The wedding celebrations in the contexts referred to in Raful’s book alter and challenge reality, becoming subversive acts in which optimism and hope of renewal prevail even over adversity. The open structure of Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera is a logical way to give writing representation to the social and psychological chaos of the postwar period. Raful’s novel uses flow of consciousness, a mixture of historical moments, and characters who move incessantly through the city of Santo Domingo that, as a background, takes life on itself. The repeated connections between the Dominican people, their culture and their history as protagonists, established through paratextual and intertextual resources, represent the best accomplishment of this work. Paratextuality can be found in the title’s interpretation and its connection with Sangiovanni’s photography, as well as photographs that complement narratives and descriptions throughout the text. Recorded in these photos are images of everyday moments and peak events during the April Revolution. A symbolic photo reflects the presence of Gregorio Urbano Gilbert, a Dominican who confronted American soldiers during the first intervention of the United States in the Dominican Republic in 1916 and whose story is referenced in the book. In the photo you can also distinguish Colonel Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó. With the figure of Gilbert, the two North American interventions suffered by the Dominican Republic are united. Paradoxically, there are no photographs of the capital Santo Domingo nor of distinctive streets or buildings. The city falls and rises

through the writer’s poetic discourse, which would explain the absence of visual portraits. The poetic and intellectual essence of Tony Raful comes to light through paraphrase or direct quotes from famous poems and works by Sigmund Freud, Calderón de la Barca, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Eluard, Pablo Neruda, Nicolás Guillén, René del Risco Bermúdez, Jacques Viau, and Jorge Luis Borges. Descriptions, narrations, dialogues, and inner monologues abound in this book. In addition to the historical episodes, the author weaves an elegy to the city of Santo Domingo and addresses the protagonist, Rosaura, in the second person, while letting her voice and the ones of other characters tell their stories using a testimonial format. The incorporation of Dominican colloquial language adds naturalness and authenticity to the personal stories. The atmosphere of the text changes progressively and the feelings of anxiety, hope, and fear are well reflected, culminating in a pessimism similar to that displayed in other post-revolution novels about the April Conflict. The testimony of an ex-combatant who emigrates to New York reaffirms the state of demoralization: we lost the war and it’s over we’ve been losing it for five hundred years [...] so the first thing I did when I got to Kennedy Airport was to change my shoes and clothes I discarded a few Dominican pennies that I had carried with me I wanted to clean myself of the country’s ravaging of all that black nightmare (120-121). Rosaura portrays those who did not physically leave the country and immersed themselves in defeatism and hypochondria, unable to free themselves from the trauma of war: “I am confined to memories, my life has been chaotic for twenty years and I cannot find myself” (100). Rosaura, at the age of forty-two, resorts to Buddhist mysticism, transcendental meditation, psychiatric consultations, and listens to the advice of family members, leading to a diagnosis of “schizophrenia characterized by chronic psychopathic delusions” (135) that will confine her to a mental hospital. The madness occurs as a consequence of a reality that cannot be subverted, especially for many of those who fought on the Constitutionalist side, confined in eight neighborhoods of the city of Santo Domingo and subjected to the bullets of the American soldiers by one side of the city and the bullets of former comrades-in-arms on the other. The discomfort of the April War is interpreted as yet another defeat in the institutional life of Dominicans and Las bodas de Rosaura con la Primavera perpetuates that unease in which each wedding or event ends with its shattered spring. Powerless in the face of so much ignominy, death is seen as the best solution: “I hope you die, Rosaura, dementia without spring is impotence” (138).

NOTES

1. This intervention is referred to by different names in the Dominican texts: the

Intervention of the 65’s, the April

War, the April Revolution, the April

Insurrection, the April Conflict, terms that I use interchangeably in this essay. 2. Andrés L. Mateo, interview. 3. Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, interview. 4. Joaquín Balaguer served as Vice-President during Trujillo’s regime from 19571960. When Trujillo’s brother, Hector, a puppet President resigned in 1960,

Balaguer became president of the

Dominican Republic but left the country after Trujillo’s assassination. 5. Mateo Morrison, interview. 6. Andrés L. Mateo, interview. 7. These twenty-two years were distributed as follows: 1966-1978; 1986-1990; 1990-1994; 1994-1996. 8. Tony Raful, Las bodas de Rosaura con la

Primavera (Santo Domingo: Taller, 1991). References are taken from this edition. 9. San/Sanes (plural): informal saving modality in the Dominican Republic in which the organizer motivates a group of people to participate. 10. The sisters fought to overthrow dictator

Trujillo and were killed by Trujillo’s men. 11 René del Risco Bermúdez. Cuentos y poemas completos. Santo Domingo: Taller, 1981, pp. 192-93. 12. Prostitute in Dominican Spanish.

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