Milli mála - 01.06.2016, Blaðsíða 135

HÓLMFRÍÐUR GARÐARSDÓTTIR
Milli mála 8/2016 135
At first the blacks were loving and confident that the Costa Ricans would
see them as equals. But one day they realized that the ‘whites’ considered
them undesirable, lower […] the ‘whites’ did what they could to destroy
them. The government banned their employment, so they roamed the
streets starving; almost half of them had to leave. When Figueres granted
nationality to the ones left (in 1949) it was a very injured, closed, dis-
trustful, and secret community.54
Likewise, in Limón Blues, Orlandus is precisely someone who has
suffered from bad treatment at the hands of the Costa Rican major-
ity society. As he loses faith in his role, the women take center
stage: the predominant narrative voice changes and the storytelling
becomes theirs. His mother, wife and ex-mistress (the minister’s
wife from Guácimo) bring to the forefront the complex processes of
identity formation where gender, ethnicity and class cannot be
ignored.
In her sociopolitical representation, which mirrors the historio-
graphy of the region, Rossi confirms Panesi’s observations about
collective memory, which suggest that “literature will always be
history’s other archive”.55 What official history reveals then, is only
partial, and Rossi’s literary representation complements it, filling
some of the important gaps. Rossi’s imaginative use of historical,
social and demographic developments enhances understanding of
how the local community has developed its complex multiethnic
and plurilingual identity. In the process of her character’s identity
formation, Rossi participates in what Quince Duncan explains as a
“reconciliation with a raptured cultural heritage, and assumptions
of its Afro-Hispanic ethnicity”,56 However, as already discussed,
54 Rossi, same text: “Al principio los negro eran cariñosos y confiaban en que los costarricenses los
verían como iguales. Pero un día se dieron cuenta de que los paña los consideraban indeseables,
inferiores […] los paña hicieron lo posible por destrozarlos. El gobierno prohibió darles empleo,
vagaban por las calles muriéndose de hambre, casi la mitad de ellos se tuvo que ir. Cuando Figueres
les dio la nacionalidad (en 1949) a los que quedaban, ya era una comunidad muy herida, des-
confiada, cerrada, secreta”, p. 38.
55 Panesi concludes that: “los archivos de la historia siempre están adulterados, o pueden ser des-
truidos. Se conserven o desaparezcan, la literatura será siempre el otro archivo”, p. 24.
56 Duncan, Quince, “El afrorealismo, una dimensión nueva de la literatura latinoamericana”, Anales
del Caribe, 2006; “reconciliación con su herencia cultural arrebatada, y asunción de su etnicidad
afro hispánica”, p. 19. He further observes that: „los afrorealistas nos llaman a no considerar la
diversidad étnica como un peligro para la unidad nacional, sino que corresponde abrazarla como
nuestra gran riqueza“, p. 19.