Milli mála - 01.06.2016, Page 124

CENTRAL AMERICAN COASTAL IDENTITY
124 Milli mála 8/2016
nation”.20 Moreover, the Costa Rican historian Ronald Soto-Quirós
explains that the determination of the national oligarchy to distin-
guish itself clearly from its Central American neighbors was quite
evident from early on in the independence period. Thus, based on an
alleged European heritage, the notion of uniformity and whiteness
became the dominant concept of the nation. Furthermore, and rele-
vant to Rossi´s positioning of her female characters, Harpelle clari-
fies: “one important group that is always overlooked are the women
who arrived in the region as daughters, sister, wives, and mothers of
the workers. […] Nevertheless, thousands of women did make their
way to the region”.21
In the context of Rossi’s literary works, it is worth remembering,
as Rafael Cuevas Molina notes, that all identities are constructed on
the basis of a relationship between an ‘I’ and an ‘other’. In fact,
Harpelle, referring to the particular case of the Costa Rican national
identity, uses a simplified version of that paradigm when he com-
pares the Central Valley with the Afro-Caribbean province of Limón.
His version depicts the Costa Rican Atlantic as a unified social en-
tity, whereas Rossi exposes a complex mosaic of mestizaje tracing
back centuries. The two novels reveal her meticulous study of the
history of the Caribbean coast, and they indicate her desire to show-
case a multifaceted reality ignored by national, historical and cul-
tural accounts until recently. The novels focus on the ethnically
hybrid community of the coastal region and their sub-theme seems
to be to “appreciate the multicultural and multiethnic heritage of
the Costa Rican people where native, European, African and Asiatic
values are a part of the national character”.22 And, as will be demon-
strated, drawing on recent theoretical debates, Rossi’s novels high-
20 Quesada Soto, Álvaro, Uno y los otros… Here p. 32.
21 Harpelle, Ronald N., The West Indians of Costa Rica: Race, Class and the Integration of an Ethnic
Minority, Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001, p. 13–14. For further information, see
Harpelle’s chapter “White Zones. American Enclave Communities of Central America”, in Blacks
& Blackness in Central America. Between Race and Place, Eds. Gudmundsson and Woulf, 2010. There
he explains that “women, when they do appear [in Central American public records], are usually
just a footnote in a male-centered story of conquest”, p. 309. In the same publication, see also
Mauricio Meléndez Obando´s chapter; „The Slow Ascent of the Marginalized: Afro-Descendants
in Costa Rica and Nicaragua“, pp. 334-352.
22 Duncan, Quince, “El afrorealismo, una dimención nueva de la literatura latinoamericana”, Anales
del Caribe, 2006; “apreciar el carácter multicultural y multiétnico de la población costarricense
donde valores indígenas, europeos, africanos y asiáticos forman parte del carácter nacional“, p. 9.