LAS DOS ORILLAS

Considerations from Preliminary Reading of Las Dos Orillas [novella de El Naranjo FUENTES 2000] p.43-80

• Experimental in nature: consider the narrative techniques used
• Complexity of plot
• Values that inform culture and offer insights into past and future possibilities
• Relationship between the imagination and the construction of a historic truth

Narrative techniques

• Those that draw in the reader
• Those that reflect on language: POWER ISSUES
• Those that reflect on process of recording memory: HISTORY
• Those that deconstruct chronology

• Flashbacks
• Fragmentation into small episodes/episodic incidents
• Multiple perspectives of the same episode: cinematic technique

• Those that reconstruct/recast history

Concerns

• Power
• Deceit, Suspicion, Loss: Trust, Memory: Can you believe the written word?
• Denial
• Destruction
• Man’s insignificance
• Image of city: linking past with contemporary visions/images: complexity and chaos: historic metaphor: a vision of Mexico- section 10 compared to section 0 with a vision of Spain
• Dominance of language: ensuing fight over the word is metaphoric reference to the fight for new identity, quest to survive: POWER

La ciudad enterrada de nuevo, la ciudad edificada sobre ruinas que están presentes como memoria de un pasado desaparecido, tiene en el texto de Fuentes una perspectiva utópica que nos dirige la atención. Sobre las ruinas de la antigua ciudad emergieron los trazos de la nueva, los edificios primeros, una arquitectura colonial que también tiene su relevancia utópica, desde el principio además, desde la contraposición de los dos universos que se encontraban.

• una mirada hacia la ciudad contemporánea
• La idea de ciudad de Fuentes surge de la reinterpretación de sentidos que entrelazan visiones del pasado con lo contemporáneo. La reflexión sobre las ruinas se articula como metáfora histórica, mientras las visiones contemporáneas nos dan cuenta de la vida compleja y caótica de la ciudad de México.

Thematic concepts/references represented in each sub section

10

• Christianity references
• Reference to city
• References to memory (chronicles)
• Reference to purity of race and impurity of mestizaje: explicit destruction/implicit creation
• Expressions of AND consequences of

• Destruction
• Deceit/Suspicion
• Loss
• Denial/Guilt
• Doubt

• Insignificance of man/Man’s fate

• The Human Condition: an attempt to understand man’s fate, the condition of being human in a social, cultural and personal context. A search for purpose, a comment on the inevitability of isolation and eventual death. André Malraux 1933: an attempt to understand man’s fate on this earth, to understand himself and his place within this universe. Existentialism, absurdism, self-awareness, malaise

• Link with existentialism: the search for meaning in a meaningless act is suggested by Fuentes himself: in an interview in 1966 with Emir Rodriguez Monegal, “Mexico is a country of the instant. The future is totally improbable, dangerous [..] you live in the present because the future is improbable.”
• Absurdism: first person narrative delivered by dead protagonist from his grave
• Self-awareness: the representations of Jeronimo’s senses and thoughts: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, he feels (yet he is dead), he speaks, he remembers.

• At times these modes of self-awareness are couched in dialogue or in scenes but Fuentes also draws the reader into this experience repeatedly narrowing the gap between reader and story to give the reader a sense of immediacy or involvement in the fictional text. Fuentes also employs interior monologue and stream of consciousness
• Further exploration of the writer’s reflections on writing (meta fiction) are also of interest. Fuentes writing on writing signifying the author’s self-awareness/introspective view

9

• Conquest of Mexico: historic facts
• Injustices
• Jealousy
• Cortés
• Brutality

8

• Guatemuz: the last emperor of Aztecs: poetic license in descriptions: symbolic reference (plata/oro/luna/sol)
• Betrayal: of Spain (Cortés)
• Power of word: introspective search for meaning
• Injury: la herida- recurring theme
• San Hipólito
• Duplicity/dichotomy
• Guilt is attributed to Malinche

7

• Image of horse: mystical imagery: tapping into native’s beliefs and superstitions: conceptualisation of memory
• Teúl: mythical references
• Bestiality of human
• Image of Spanish
• La Malinche
• Class systems p.52 enanos p.56
• Spain and Mexico share the same problem: una mitad del país perpetuamente muriéndose de la otra mitad
• Second tongue pg. 53 Maliche POWER
• Cortes and Moctezuma: their interaction: power at stake but words create void: Moctezuma is now questioning his own lack of power- do his words no longer hold power p. 55
• Moctezuma sees his people as subjects not humans
• La ciudad enterrada de nueva: newly buried city: utopian perspective

6

• Narrador links to reader p.56 and 57 NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
• Writing about writing: introspective view: subtleties of language: power- yet author also submitting reader to the same power relationship: believe my story  p.56 and 58 (Cortes as lover understands more than language, taps into sensual knowledge of people) META FICTION
• p.57: cuando palabra, imaginación y mentira se confunden su producto es la verdad: Quest for truth
• Chronology: p.57, story going too Fast for pen/ p.59 vino la derrota que ya conté
• Introspection of author/narrative techniques employed draw in reader

5

• Cholula:

• melting pot of all beliefs, all gods worshipped

• tlaxcaltecas: warriors from Tlaxcala awaiting outside Cholula
• beliefs: stars, sun, moon, planets: mysticism
• calendar
• all demonstrations of a highly civilised society in existence
• amidst all the confusion and chaos, the toing and froing of p 60, Aguilar realises he is no longer required
• uses violent language to describe the castration of the language
• removal of power of Jeronimo
• explicit sexual language: very little left to imagination, symbols used la joya , el fierro
• Aguilar questions if in fact Cortes had the beard as a way to deceive the Mexicans of his likeness to Quetzacoatl
• Power of language again: more fertile than sex itself
• His tongue bifurcated: split by his multicultural being: he highlights the identity crisis

4

• Cholula: allowed entry
• Power of words changed the geography of Cholula: setting changed and is compliant with treachery/ misty/clouded: Pathetic fallacy
• Malinche betraying her people/Jeronimo his
• Complicit act to mis-interpret is made clear/explicit
• Religion bottom of page 63: ambiguity
• Wanted to change course of history, that Cholula would be his burial
• Imposition of European calendar and Christianity: Modernisation
• Tale of story: if in doubt, Spanish would kill
• Moral for J Aguilar: if in doubt, Cortes believed Marina

3

• Tabasco: reliance on JA whose immediate reaction from beginning was to protect the indigenous
• Acts of betrayal p 65
• Melchorejo, first interpreter: disappeared; he had seen that the Spaniards talk to animals and therefore saw this as a sign of greatness: myths/legends/beliefs
• First encounter with Malinche
• Lust: power of female: me dejó admirarla
• Malintzin: penance: Marina: Transformation to Malinche
• Embodiment of the land
• Betrayal
• Anger

2

• Jeronimo: identity crisis: questioning who is?
• Meeting Cortés
• Does not betray his colleague
• P.69- reference to El Naranjo: multiculturalism
• P.70 – reference to the fruit of the tree: la naranja (fertility, destruction, creation)
• Intention: that the Indian world would triunfase sobre el mundo europeo
• Love of and for people and their way of life demonstrated
• Modern concept of multicultural society? Integration?

1

• 8 years ship wrecked with Gonzalo Guerrero
• P 75 conquest to be answered by conquest

0

• Apocalyptic imagery: Fall of Andalucia
• Not just mixing identity

• Racial mestizaje
• Religious mestizaje
• Multiculturalism

The Temple of San Hipólito, located on the crossroads of Paseo de la Reforma and Hidalgo avenues, is a site of great historic and cultural significance, and constitutes one of the most important centres for religious pilgrimage in Mexico City.

The temple was built on the site where the Spaniards suffered the greatest number of casualties registered during the Battle of the Sad Night, which took place on July 1st 1521 and in which the Aztecs inflicted one of the main military defeats on the Spanish troops to the point where they were on the verge of behing annihilated. The survivors fled through the Calzada de Tacuba (today Puente de Alvarado) and found refuge at the site known as the “Tree of the Sad Night” located 4 kms to the west of the Temple. After the Spanish took Tenochtitlan, a sanctuary was built upon the space that the Temple occupies today to commemorate the men who died in battle. In 1559 they started to build a larger temple as part of a complex which would also include a hospice for mental patients. The construction was concluded in the late 17th Century.

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