Posted by Mariela on May 05, 192003 at 16:59:50:
Mariela Moscoso
Stages of Conflict
Spring 2003; Final Paper
LA PASSION SEGUN ANTIGONA PEREZ
By: LUIS RAFAEL SANCHEZ
Antigone is a famous play about an Hellenic myth or legend, written by Sophocles in 422 B.C., which has withstood the march of time. It is important because the heroine serves as a model to criticize and fight against a political system, a dictatorship. It is a classic story of “arrogant institutional power versus a solitary quest for justice.” (Eugene Williams) The heroine is imprisoned because of socio-political laws, which do not provide her with the freedoms to practice her beliefs. These laws force her to confront and oppose power physically and to suffer the consequences of not abiding by the unjust laws that do not agree with her views. For this she pays with her life. La pasión segnún Antígona Pérez is a Latin American adaptation written in 1968 by Luis Rafael Sánchez about the rights (derecho y deber) and importance of resisting power that dehumanizes people’s lives, memories, values, and beliefs. Barradas, Efrain. Para Leer en Puertoriqueño: Acercamiento a la Obra de Luis Rafael Sánchez. Del Toro, Antonio García. Mujer y Patria en la Dramaturgia Puertoriqueña. Editorial Playor, De La Roche, Elisa. ¡Teatro Hispano! Three Major New York Companies. Garland Publishing, Rabassa, Gregory. Reading Luis Rafael Sánchez. Center for Book Culture.org, No. 6. Online Tió, Teresa. El cartel en Puerto Rico. Pearson Education, Mexico, 2003. Waldman, Gloria F.Luis Rafael Sánchez: Pasión Teatral. Editora Corripio, Santo Domingo, 1988 Zayas, Eliseo R. Colón. El Teatro de Luis Rafael Sánchez. Editorial Playor. Madrid, 1985
Luis Rafael Sánchez, uses his writings to criticize the social norms of gender, race, and socio-economic and political status. He uses the model of Antigone and its age-old theme of the fight against absolute power and fuses it with the relevant problems of Latin America. La pasión segnún Antígona Pérez, the last drama written and published by Sánchez in 1968, in an epic drama style, is acted out in a modern totalitarian state somewhere in the Americas, from which he includes references to contemporary social and political events in his script. “If we have the acumen to look behind these people we will see the tragedy of their homeland, of which they are not in the least aware.” (Rabassa). Luis Rafael Sánchez seems to be more of a Marxist than post modern when understanding and expressing his views in relation to Puerto Rico, Latin America and The United States. He does not portray one country, but steps outside the box to illustrate, in a documentary like play, how all Latin Americans have been and are affected collectively by dictatorship.
Current events in Puerto Rican theatre can be understood to have been a major factor in conditioning La pasión segnún Antígona Pérez. As read and learned through out our Stages of Conflict course this semester, culture, politics and socio-economic factors take a definitive role in shaping and expressing a country’s condition. Puerto Rico’s cultural and political situations take no exception in shaping Puerto Rican theatre, which we see reflected indirectly in Luis Rafael Sánchez’s Antígona.
Luis Rafael Sánchez, born in Humacao, Puerto Rico, is a leading Puerto Rican playwright, storyteller, novelist and professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Puerto Rico. He was only 16 when Puerto Rico officially became a commonwealth, governed by the Estado Libre Associado. During his formative years at the University of Puerto Rico people lived in a “polémica intelectual” (Barradas) that conditioned Sánchez’s education. Barradas accurately describes these times as follows:
“Esta polémica, que ha sido llamada <
Puerto Rico has been in constant struggle and evolution with the issue of its identity, status/citizenship and economic/cultural dependency on another country since the time it was under the Spanish regime to date, a roller coaster history worth mentioning briefly to better understand the settings of Sánchez’s work.
During the Spanish regime, Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico were Spanish subjects who did not enjoy full rights and privileges enjoyed by the Spanish subjects living in Spain. However, Puerto Rican Spanish living in Spain enjoyed full rights and privileges of Spanish subjects there. The same is the case with Puerto Rican U.S. citizens living in mainland United States today. Between October 1898, when the United States occupied Puerto Rico, and April 11, 1899, the Treaty of Paris, under which Spain ceded Puerto Rico to The United States, Puerto Ricans continued being Spanish subjects (non-citizen U.S. nationals). Between May 1, 1900, when the Foraker Act became effective, giving Puerto Rico a civilian government, and March 2, 1917, when the Jones Act gave Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, the non-citizen U.S. nationals in Puerto Rico also became citizens of Puerto Rico, but without international legal standing and for residency purposes only. They continued under the protection of The United States, but with minimum rights.
After passing the Jones Act, non-citizen U.S. nationals became collectively naturalized U.S. citizen, except those who declined it. The classification of Puerto Rican citizenship ceased with the Jones Act. It was not until 1927 that it was reestablished for residency purposes only. From March 2, 1917 to January 13, 1941, children born to those who became U.S. citizens under the Jones Act were considered U.S. citizens. (jure solis - blood relationship, not by naturalization). They, however, could not run for U.S. presidency because they were not natural born.
The 1940 Nationality Act of January 13, 1941, applied the rule of jure solis to persons born in Puerto Rico after that date by including Puerto Rico within its definition of The United States for purposes of immigration laws. In 1952, the act specifically applied the rule of jure solis to persons born in Puerto Rico on or after January 13, 1941, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. They were now considered natural born U.S. citizens. These natural born U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are not qualified to run for the U.S. presidency because they do not meet the constitutional requirement of residence with The United States because they were born in a U.S. territory, not part of The United States for all constitutional purposes. For the same reason residents in Puerto Rico cannot vote for the president of The United States and members of Congress.
The historical truth and juridical reality is that Puerto Rico has always been, and still is, an ethnic and sociological entity, a “pueblo”, a possession and an unincorporated territory of The United States, with its sovereignty and future political status in the hands of the U.S. Congress.
Sánchez also grew up at a time when Puerto Rico and the rest of Latin America was in its final stages of industrialization, mostly export, which strengthened its external dependency with The United States even more. It was also a time when Puerto Ricans were divided among three political ideologies: statehood, commonwealth and independence. It was a time when people were concerned and argued against each other regarding how to best adapt to the island’s growing economic and cultural dependency on the U.S.
Theatre in Puerto Rico would clearly reflect the political stage. Established in 1965 by the Cultural Institute of Puerto Rico, the International Theatre Festival focused on Puerto Rican dramaturgy to stimulate the creation of theatrical literacy, the art of theatricality and professional theatre work. Theatrical productions developed in Puerto Rico during the mid 1900’s are characterized as having the desire to go deeper into the social realities of the island, deeper into the conscious and unconscious being of the Puerto Rican. By reading Teresa Tió’s account on theatre in Puerto Rico (El cartel en Puerto Rico, p 325 –26), we can glimpse into the system in which these theatrical ideologies were born:
“La politización de las instutuciones culturales se sumó una actitud cada vez más acusada de suspicia e intolerancia entre los administradores de las instituciones culturales y los artistas. Actitud provocada en parte por la polización ideological, que incidió negativamente en la produción de los talleres y que llevó a muchos artistas a romper sus vínculos contractuales con las agencies de gobierno en las que trabajaban. También fue determinante la creciente demanda del público por los carteles, que fue parte propicío que los artistas optaran por independizarse para buscar nuevos ámbitos de creacíon, libres de presiones burocráticas y salarios míseros”.
“En el cámbio de la política cultural gubernamental se pueden encontrar las causas de algunos problemas. Esa política emanaba, por un lado, de la vision imlementada a través de los programas culturales del Instituto de Cultura, según era esbozada por su Director Ejecutivo y por la Junta de Directores. Desde su creación en 1955, el Instituto dio inicio a un amplio programa cultural de divulgación y afirmación nacional que incidió positivamente en el aprecio y conocimiento de la cultura nacional y, expersiones de dicha cultura. Tanto por el prestigio intellectual de los miembros de la Junta de Directores del Instituto, como para la hábil y visionaria gestión de Ricardo Alegría, Director Ejecutivo del Instituto desde su fundación en 1955, hasta 1973, la institución llevó a cabo su labor al margen de presiones políticas que pudieran alterar los propósitos y deberes que la ley les había encomendado”.
“Pero la misma ascendencia que alcanzó la gestión programática del Instituto de Cultura fure en parte causante de que los grupos identificados políticamente con el movimiento estadista vieran en esa gestión cultural un escollo para adelantar la asimilación política de Puerto Rico a la Unión Norteamericana. Es por eso que al ganar las elecciones generales en 1976, el partido que promovía la estadidad para Puerto Rico, surgió una relación de mutual suspicacia entre la Rama Ejecutiva y el Instituto de Cultura Puertoriqueña que culminó en 1980, con la renuncia del Director Ejecutivo del Instituto, Luis Manuel Rodríguez, sucesor de Ricardo Alegría. La renuncia de Rodríguez Morales fue motivada por la aprobación de las leyes que creaban la Administración para el Fomento de las Artes y la Cultura (AFAC), y que subordinaban al Instituto de Cultura al juicio de un admministrador plenipotecario que dirigiría la administración de la cultura en el país”.
“Durante los cuatro años previos a la renuncia de Luis Manuel Rodríguez Morales como director del Instituto, periodo en el que el partido pro-estadidad (Partido Nuevo Progresista), estuvoo en el poder, no puede hablarse de abierta intromission política, sino de una tension persistente entre las partes, que llevó en ocasiones a la dirección ejecutiva y a la Junta de Directores del Instituto a conceder prerrogativas y responder a peticiones que vulneraban la autonomía del Instituto de Cultura. El primer intento legistlativo para minar las prerrogativas del Instituto de Cultura fue un proyecto “para despojar al Instituto de su Programa para el Fomento de las Artes Populares”, al que siguió otro que hacia inoperante el importante Programa de Monumentos Históricos. (Nota: La bibliografía en torno a la llamada lucha cultural es extensa. La prensa recogió una parte sustancial del sentir de los escritores, poetas, dramaturgos, artistas, actores, investigadores, artesanos, además de las academias, los setenta y siete centros culturales, y otras organizaciones culturales, sociales y profesionales que rechazaban la legistlación de la AFAC, a la que dieron el nombre de las leyes de la ‘incultura’. Entre los documentos reveladores de ese sentir están las ponencias presentadas antes la s Comisiones de Educación y Cultura del Senado y la Cámara de Representantes, así como editoriales y artículos de prensa escritos por Ricardo Alegría, Arturo Morales Carrión, Salvador Tió, Jaime Benítez, Luis Muñoz Marín, Elsa Tió, Rafael castro Pereda, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Edwin Reyes, Juan Sáez Burgos y Francisco Arriví, entre otros.)”
“Luego de la renuncia de Rodríguez Morales, y el nombramiento en agosto de 1980 de la profesora universitaria Leticia del Rosario para sustituirle, finalmente se descubrió la indención del poder ejecutivo de minar las bases ideológicas de la institución. Este nombramiento respondió a los reclamos politicos del partido en el poder, que consideraba necesario sustituir el enfoque de afirmación de la puertoriqueñidad por uno de carácter universalista que interpretara las expresiones de la cultura nacional como formas pintorescas, carentes de relevancia, e inferiors a la ‘gran cultura universal’. El Nuevo enfoque que se le dio a la cultura nacional se expresó desde todos los frentes de poder que el partido de gobierno controlaba, incluyendo la Universidad de Puerto Rico.”
“Desde el inicio de la gestión administrative de Leticia del Rosario comenzó a gestarse una cruenta lucha ideological cuyas primeras bajas fueron los directores de los programas del Instituto, seguidas por el despido de dieciséis profesores de la Escuela de Artes Plásticas, así como la inactivación de las juntas asesoras de varios departamentos; la eliminación de las juntas editoras del Programa de Publicaciones, y la cancelación de la revista Imagen, entre otras cosas.”
“La pasión según Antígona Pérez” was first staged in 1968, the same year it was written, during the 11th Puerto Rican Theatre Festival. It made its United States premier in English on May 18, 1972 and in Spanish during the summer of 1972 with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre’s laboratory production under the direction of Pablo Cabrera. Both were successful productions according to Alberto Alonso of El Diario/La Prensa, Anthony Mancini of the New York Post and Tom Morrow from the Daily News.
Antígona reflects the political hypocrisies of a dictatorship which rules a people under a so-called democracy. The oppressed countries’ cultural and social forms further echo these hypocrisies. Sánchez uses his language to include texts and images used by newspapers to narrate the different perspectives people (government officials and common people’s views) are surrounded by and are limited to believe. The newspapers are a cry or reflection of an oppressed people and at the same time are arbitrary in their beliefs and in the way they condemn Antígona.
The title of the play is an immediate indication that this story is about a suffering Latin American Antigone. But the use of “según” (according to), instead of “de” (of), is a clear indication that this is not Antígona’s suffering, but that it is a story of collective suffering, of her people’s suffering. The title also uses “passion”, which corresponds to a Judeo-Christian belief in the passion of Christ. As Christ, Antígona also endures her own suffering with the hope of liberating her people by giving her life for others. The choice of words in the title express the drama’s tragic actions and unharmonious personalities Antígona lives among and confronts, like Aurora, who “worries about perpetuating the values and myths imposed by the established order” (Zayas, p. 92), or Irene, Antígona’s best friend, who sells herself to the dictatorship for a ‘happiness’, a fictitious harmonious fantasy covering up the realities of man.
Antígona knows that there is a legacy associated to her name. Sánchez, who writes the play with a popular perspective in mind, gives her a Hispanic common last name so she feels and identifies herself as a person of the people, which she is proud of, as we see when she tells the Monseñor, “Dejeme el Pérez común y manoseado que así me siento más en mi tierra”. She does not want to be recognized by her second last name, Santisteban, which she feels carries “falsos orgullos” (false pride), which tie her to her father, a government official, who we later on learn was killed by the powers of his brother, Creón. She does not want to be associated with the social ties of that last name, which represent injustice. But as fate would have it she is related to the tyrant by blood, an association Creón reveals in hopes of endearing her and make her willing to confess. This information does the complete opposite. Being related to Creón is a stab at her person, a cruel reality that gives her even more strength to carry on with her will to stand against him and what he represents. The Pérez name humanizes her and makes her more accessible or representative of someone from a Latin American country.
Antígona steps out of the action to comment and tell the audience about the events of the play, such as the violence, censorship, bribery, robberies, and persecutions occurring, “and before each act and prior to several scenes she summarizes what was going to take place, similar to the chorus in Greek tragedy”(De La Roche, p. 69). News reporters announce the reality in which Latin American countries are living and dominated by across a 10-year period. This reality is one of a consumerist society that lacks human dignity. It is one in which Luther, Che Guevara, Juan Veintitrés, De Gaulle and President Kennedy are assassinated. It is of an America in which the United States allies itself with dictators for economic reasons, in which countries participate in un-announced wars, of a society which tortures its political prisoners. It is one in which news about Jacqueline Kennedy spending her vacation in the Swiss Alps or Pierre Cardin’s new male line of clothing is mixed with deformed versions of events regarding Antígona. Sánchez uses the press to show us that men pay more attention to the trivialities of society, imposed by those in power and with means, than revolutionary activity, a human reality which tries to be hidden and ignored. This is different social reality than Antigone’s. Antígona’s reality is symbolic of the times being lived in by Latin American countries and its peoples (including Sánchez).
The play begins with Antígona knowing her death, as her destiny, awaits her. We endure her last days as she develops and evolves as a political prisoner. We learn that she is in a basement jail because she will not seek pardon nor reveal the whereabouts of the bodies of her two revolutionary brothers, the Tavárez, who die not because they confront each other, but because they conspire against the despotic government embodied by Creón Molina. As in Sophocles’s Antigone when she buries Polyneices, Sanchez also illuminates the act of burial as a statement against violent conflicts within a house, within a family, within a society and within the tormented hearts of survivors. It is clear that Antígona’s act of placing the dead back into the earth is to open the heart and the bonds of tradition that embrace human brotherhood and sisterhood. It is a regenerative act that preserves memory, phychic healing and cultural continuity. It is an act that Creón Molina knows will destroy him.
Antígona is unwilling, in the name of love for liberty, to reveal the bodies’ whereabouts
or to repent for her acts in continuous defiance against the tyrant Creón Molina. She is not driven by a traditional sexual love for man. It is a love for brother a love for comrade, a love for solidarity and one’s people, which is stronger than what Creón assumes her and women in general are only capable of: a sexual relationship. The only other kind of hope for love she had left ended up betraying her. Fernando, her fiancé, ends up working for Creón, but worst of all, as the person who authorizes Antígona’s visitors and who becomes her friend Irene’s lover. Such a blow to the soul, yet Antígona is able to take it with a strong exterior. Now that she no longer has anyone who loves her and no one to love, she has left all hope and the only thing left is death, her way of loving, as she tells Pilar, Creón’s wife, “To die is to give love.” Death will give her salvation. Her blood will give new blood and life the bitter veins of America.
Antígona struggles because she wishes to end the injustices done by the government of the imagined republic of Molina. Her struggle or defiance is in the name of those who live, those who need to be saved from the absurd and criminal laws of Creón Molina, which are consuming the people. She fights for her people, but it is the people, as relayed by the media, who do not understand the deception that makes them the victim. Now that the Tavárez brothers are dead, she is alone in her rebellion, in her fight. Sánchez supports the fact that we as a people from the Americas must see the reality and engage in her cause. In her sacrifice lies the hope of the oppressed. She represents what is to come: others who will come in Creón’s way to interrupt the principles he goes by. This is a fight Creón will have to confront until he dies, because her ideas will not simply go away.
Creón imposes himself and his authority on men. But he can’t do this to life after death nor to the life that comes out of someone’s heroic death. He realizes this is completely out of his power, but wants to keep the lid on the pressure cooker (the people) as long as it takes before their knowledge forces them to burst out against him. He knows people are against him, but he must do all he can to keep the power and not appear as not being able to impose or have authority any longer. The fact that he can’t control heroic acts that live on is what destroys him. He tries to get Antígona to confess where she has buried the two bodies in order to protect himself and his government. He starts rumors about Mario Tavárez and she being lovers. He tells her she is a young, silly and naïve girl. Then he sends the Monseñor to meet with her, as he also would suffer the consequences if Creón Molina’s government fails, who Antígona has seen drinking the fine Chilean wines in the company of Creón. One would imagine that a visit from a religious official would intimidate or convince Antígona to confess, but his visit is of no value if not ironic. She knows that this man has sipped the finest Chilean wines in the company of Creón, which changes the symbolism of the redemptory blood and the solemn part of a mass ceremony into an element of bribery. (“lo que convierte el símbolo de la sangre redentora y parte de la solemne ceremonia de la misa en elemento soborno”, Vargas, Abréu, pg. 25). Creón also tries to scare Antígona about Fernando’s destiny and concludes his manipulative strategies by telling her that he is her uncle. But against all that she is strong and confident in her beliefs and actions and is not intimidated by Creón. Instead she knows that these schemes are only part of Creón’s games.
As a woman, she is the keeper of collective memory, of what is true. She is the embodiment of hate people have against the oppressor. She is a vessel that tells a story; she does not write about it, she lives it. She does not archive her thoughts, but practices them. She embodies action, the journey to achieving: life, hope, integrity, dedication, and collaboration. She is forced to function in a paternalist, self-interested, violent and sexist nation. But she is the one that puts in flux the idea of power, thought of as flawless and authoritarian, by forcing it to interact with her directly. Through HER we can see US. Through her and this play we can see how national allegories are out of sink with political and cultural realities. Through a national US we can re-think and re-read our own nation and its figures individually.
Her path against Creón Molina represents the path that Sánchez suggests we, the people, take: a conscious chosen path that is fair and benefits the values and interests of a people, not of a tyrant. First, the people must be aware of their reality in order to awaken and fight against violence, censorship, oppression, and tyranny of governments like those of men like Creón Molina. Antígona’s death not only symbolizes the belief and sacrifice for universal goals but also her and her movement’s humanity. Her death is the beginning of a movement. Her death symbolizes the beginning of a people’s movement, a new beginning, a calling to a true and committed fight for freedom. Her death gives life/birth or time/space to a people’s movement. Her death is the first step in liberating the people. After her death people will see the symbolism and value of her death more clearly and will finally understand and fight her/their cause.
We are presented to Antígona with physical descriptions to create an image of who she is.
Maybe done for the same reasons Diana Raznovisch does in El Desconcierto, we are given her age as a way to make her seem naïve or maybe ill prepared to face her struggle or to point out how struggling and suffering from government ills have aged her more than time could ever do. Referred to as a young and weak 28 year old who is wasting her time trying to fight or win against Creón, Antígona, as a woman, regardless of being surrounded by fear and abandoned by those who are closest to her, like her mother, boyfriend, best friend and even the town people, is a just and honest woman, who does not trust the people who say they want or can help her like the Monseñor and Creón. Antígona is a woman who defends equality amongst all classes, not like her mother, for whom she has sympathy, but does not represent Antígona’s present. She will sacrifice her life in order to save and free others’ lives. We know this from the very start and so does she. What gives her strength to fight any suffering she may undergo is her belief of defending her rights.
Luis Rafael Sánchez uses Antígona Pérez to express what he believes to be Puerto Rican’s reality. He portrays them as also being victims of a tyrannical and dictatorial government who have suffered the abuse and assaults of Spanish, North American and even Puerto Rican colonizers/conquerors/rulers. Antígona Pérez at the same time represents universal victims who have suffered and sacrificed in the struggle to free their people from oppression through out the centuries in many republics. Antígona is meant to awaken people’s consciousness about humanity and has become a symbol of the fight for Puerto Rican’s freedom.
Bibliography
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Edition, www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no6/rabassa.html