SOURCE: Winkler, Julie A. “Insiders, Outsiders, and the Slippery Center: Marginality in Los recuerdos del porvenir.” Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures, no. 8 (spring 1996): 177-95.

[In the following essay, Winkler examines the concepts of marginality and centrality in Los recuerdos del porvenir.]

Los recuerdos del porvenir, the novel many consider Elena Garro's best achievement, has furnished material for a wide array of critical approaches as well as a wide variety of readings. Winner of the prestigious Villaurrutia prize in 1963, Los recuerdos del porvenir has since provided its author with no small measure of respect in the literary field, both within Mexico and beyond. Indeed, evidence abounds to show that the novel is rapidly taking its place in the literary canon of the twentieth-century Mexican novel. While readers have not always known what to make of a town as narrator/character, nor have they always been able to agree on explanations for why various characters in the novel behave the way they do, most unanimously praise the novel for its poetic language, for its creative presentation of cyclical time, and for its sympathetic yet in many ways sharply critical portrayal of a rural town and its people at a difficult juncture in Mexican history.¹

While several critics have commented on marginality as a theme in this novel, the direct relation between theme and technique has not been fully explored.² Furthermore, analysis of marginality—both in this novel and in general—has been limited most often to specifically marginalized groups. This study also begins with an emphasis on the marginal groups, women and Indians in particular. But then the emphasis shifts from just the marginalized groups to the systemic view, by utilizing definitions of what margins and centers really are, and by bringing into focus the dynamics between center and margin. The same dynamics are then applied to the novel's structure to determine whether a center exists there. Last, analyses of the technique and structure not only reveal how marginality is represented in Los recuerdos del porvenir but also how readers are encouraged to adopt a unique and active role vis-à-vis the social meaning of marginality. This shows how Garro's presentation of marginality in theme and structure makes possible multiple interpretations—indeed, even demands them—in the reading process.

Women comprise the first and most obvious of the marginalized groups in Los recuerdos del porvenir. First are the women who would normally be pushed to the perimeters of “good” society: namely, the town prostitutes and the queridas kept in the Hotel Jardín by General Francisco Rosas and his soldiers. The town prostitutes are so outcast that they are not even permitted to walk the streets of the town, at least not during daylight hours. By contrast, the queridas sun themselves on the hotel balcony by day and stroll around the plaza by night. Thus, they occupy a rung a bit higher on the ladder of social acceptance than the prostitutes, because of their somewhat exotic status as relative newcomers to Ixtepec, and probably due to the fact that their services cannot be bought by one and all. Francisco Rosas's querida Julia Andrade is the most beautiful one and the source of the most speculation, but is also the one most marginalized, in part because she seems oblivious to the fact that the townspeople both envy and despise her.

These groups of women would be expected to exist on the outer fringes of society, given the nature of their profession. Yet all the female characters in this novel, even those who enjoy higher economic and/or social status, lead marginalized existences to varying degrees. For example, two women, Conchita Montúfar and Isabel Moncada, occupy positions as members of respected middle-class families, but at the same time they also are marginalized as females in a patriarchal society. As a child, Conchita is taught by her father that women's talkative nature makes them not only unbearable but inferior, and the lesson, “¡En boca cerrada no entran moscas!” (175), becomes ingrained. Although she discovers that the townspeople's plan—distracting General Rosas and his soldiers with a party while the Moncada brothers help the town priest escape—is doomed to failure, she is unable to overcome the lesson of her childhood in order to speak out and warn anyone of what she knows. For her part, Isabel chafes against the idea that the only acceptable path in life for a woman is to marry. Her reaction is to rebel, and indeed she seems to go out of her way to marginalize herself, incurring society's and her family's wrath by giving herself to Rosas, the enemy.

Even though women of all social classes are marginalized from the center of Ixtepec society, Indians occupy a space even more on the fringes. The attitude of many in the town comes through in anonymous comments such as “¡Ah, si pudiéramos exterminar a todos los indios! ¡Son la vergüenza de México!” (25). And as an Indian and also a woman, Inés, a servant in doña Elvira and Conchita Montúfar's household, exists on probably the remotest of fringes of Ixtepec society. Doña Elvira discusses openly the town's plans for the party for Francisco Rosas and the soldiers within earshot of Inés, as if overhearing were of no consequence. Inés, in turn, mocks doña Elvira's underestimation of her, passing along the information to her lover, one of the soldiers. While her actions do not draw Inés any closer to the center than she was before, she is able to wield a previously unknown power that results in the destabilization of the center.

This analysis of margins leaves open one very big question, since where there is a margin, by definition, it follows that there also must be a center. As Norma Claire Moruzzi quite rightly maintains: “The concept of marginality is useful as long as we keep in mind that no margin exists as the boundary to a void. At most, the margin is the unclear area between two worlds, and probably more than two, each preserving its own dominant reality” (110). Jacques Derrida has pointed out that structuralist notions and models assume that every structure must have a center, which functions to “orient, balance, and organize the structure—one cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized structure—but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the freeplay of the structure.” He goes on to say that “even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself” (247-48). It has already been seen that several separate marginal groups exist in the fictional world of Los recuerdos del porvenir. What remains is to explore further where the center lies in this novel, or if indeed there is a center, and if so, what individuals it embraces.

A case could be built to maintain that, since in this novel several marginal groups consist of women and Indians, it must follow that the center would likely be made up of mestizo men. To be sure, in some ways this does seem to be true, since Conchita, Isabel, Julia, the mistresses and prostitutes, and the Indians are all silenced and/or censured by a society represented in part by mestizo men. Therefore, men such as Francisco Rosas, Martín Moncada and Juan Cariño would seem to occupy the central position of authority. However, a closer inspection of several of these males shows that the center as presented in Los recuerdos del porvenir is a bit too slippery to grasp so easily.

At first glance, Juan Cariño and Martín Moncada would seem to fulfill at least some of the qualifications for a central authority figure. Juan Cariño at some point apparently served in an official capacity in Ixtepec, as evidenced by the fact that he is also known as “señor presidente.” However, whatever authority he might once have enjoyed seems to have evaporated completely long ago, and the narrator now refers to him as the best “loco” the town ever had (49). Juan Cariño now spends his time literally on the sidelines of Ixtepec, living in the brothel on the edge of town and dedicating himself to a “secret mission” of which only the narrator is aware:

Su misión secreta era pasearse por mis calles y levantar las palabras malignas pronunciadas en el día. Una por una las cogía con disimulo y las guardaba debajo de su sombrero de copa. Las había muy perversas; huían y lo obligaban a correr varias calles antes de dejarse atrapar. Le hubiera sido muy útil una red para cazar mariposas, pero era tan visible que hubiera despertado sospechas. Algunos días su cosecha era tan grande que las palabras no cabían debajo de su sombrero y se veía obligado a salir varias veces a la calle antes de terminar su limpieza. Al volver a su casa se encerraba en su cuarto para reducir las palabras a letras y guardarlas otra vez en el diccionario, del cual no deberían haber salido nunca.

(59)

Clearly, as a “loco” who spends time sweeping up bad words in order to return them to the dictionary, Juan Cariño does not represent a figure at the center of Ixtepec society anymore, if indeed he ever did.

Appearances are also deceiving in the case of Martín Moncada. As a member of a respected middle-class Ixtepec family, he would seem to possess some authority. Yet, he is portrayed as a failure by his own standards, a misfit in society:

No entendía la opacidad de un mundo en cuyo cielo el único sol es el dinero. “Tengo vocación de pobre,” decía como excusa para su ruina progresiva. Los días del hombre le parecían de una brevedad insoportable para dedicarlos al esfuerzo del dinero. Se sentía asfixiado por los “cuerpos opacos” como llamaba al círculo que formaba la sociedad de Ixtepec: se desintegraban en intereses sin importancia, olvidaban su condición de mortales, su error provenía del miedo. El sabía que el porvenir era un retroceder veloz hacia la muerte y la muerte el estado perfecto, el momento precioso en que el hombre recupera plenamente su otra memoria. Por eso olvidaba la memoria de “el lunes haré tal cosa” y miraba a los eficaces con asombro. Pero “los inmortales” parecían satisfechos en su error y a veces pensaba que sólo él retrocedía a aquel encuentro asombroso.

(33)

Although by virtue of his family name and his economic status he belongs to the middle class, don Martín has never participated fully in the class into which he has been born. The passage demonstrates the extent to which he feels isolated from his fellow ixtepequeños, even those of his own class. He fails to comprehend the motivations behind their actions, and he also cannot understand how they fail to see what he sees. In contrast with his peers, who take advantage of every minute to attain success according to the standards of their society, don Martín is incapable of living by, or assigning importance to, either clock time or calendar time. His is the world of memories.

If neither Juan Cariño nor Martín Moncada represents the center of society, then certainly Francisco Rosas possesses the attributes that would place him at the center, given that he exerts more authority and power than anyone else in the town. However, it becomes clear through the course of the novel that not even he, despite the influence he wields over the town and the fear he inspires, occupies center space. In fact, Rosas is what René Girard refers to in The Scapegoat as a “marginal insider.”³ Girard points out that while it is a simple matter to understand the marginal status of those “at the bottom of the social ladder” (18), marginality becomes less easy to see when it relates to the rich and/or powerful. Yet, in times of crisis, the old rules no longer apply:

In normal times the rich and powerful enjoy all sorts of protection and privileges which the disinherited lack. We are concerned here not with normal circumstances but with periods of crisis. A mere glance at world history will reveal that the odds of a violent death at the hands of a frenzied crowd are statistically greater for the privileged than for any other category. Extreme characteristics ultimately attract collective destruction at some time or other, extremes not just of wealth or poverty, but also of success and failure, beauty and ugliness, vice and virtue, the ability to please and displease. The weakness of women, children, and old people, as well as the strength of the most powerful, becomes weakness in the face of a crowd. Crowds commonly turn on those who originally held exceptional power over them.

(19)

Rosas, then, fits into this category of marginal insider. Due to the excessive sway he holds over the people of Ixtepec, and given the hate and fear he inspires in them, when their situation reaches a crisis point, rebellion is bound to occur.

If the men in Los recuerdos del porvenir do not make up the center, then, the question remains: where is the center? The answer would seem to be inextricably bound up with the plot, which follows a back-and-forth pattern between order and disorder. By briefly summarizing a few key elements of the plot, it becomes clear that whenever some individual or group tries to impose order, one of the marginal individuals or groups reacts in a way that causes disorder. Thus when the Moncadas try to impose society's values on Isabel, suggesting that her only purpose in life is to marry, she reacts first by verbally refusing to go along with their expectations, then by taking Julia's place as Francisco Rosas's mistress. Conchita obeys her father's rule that women should not speak, yet by her silence at a crucial moment, she fails to avert catastrophe. Conversely, Inés does speak out at a time when the rules dictated that she should remain silent, and she causes the townspeople's plan to unravel. Finally, at the novel's end, Isabel destroys Francisco Rosas and the order that he has tried to force upon Ixtepec, causing utter chaos. The result of this pattern of order to disorder is that everything exists in a constant state of flux, thereby affecting where the center can be found at any given moment. In other words, what occurs is Derrida's concept of “freeplay” (247-48). In this novel, the center, which in theory (in Derrida's words) should function to “orient, balance, and organize the structure,” changes from one moment to the next. Those who momentarily occupy the center position never succeed in holding on to their power for long, because the marginal groups are constantly making demands from their places outside the borders, thus creating chaos by pushing and pulling at the edges of that slippery center. Consequently, the constant shifting of centers calls into question the very concepts, not only of center, but also of margin. Molly Hite affirms that “to call attention to this margin is to render it no longer marginal and consequently to collapse the center in a general unsettling of oppositional hierarchies” (122). This, then, is what occurs in Los recuerdos del porvenir. The marginal groups “call attention” to themselves by creating disorder, and each time this happens it presents a challenge to the center. Little by little, the center's authority and power are chipped away. The result is that with each challenge, the center becomes more slippery, while the marginal groups become a bit less marginal as they appropriate some of the center's power for themselves.

The same elements that form the basis for the first part of this study—marginality and differing perspectives—also repeat themselves at the level of structure. Marginality is an important component of the narrative voice in Los recuerdos, and, by examining the effect it has on the reading of the novel, it becomes clear that no one perspective is privileged over another.

Elena Garro's choice of a town to narrate Los recuerdos del porvenir has caused some consternation among critics. Although in Mexico in its Novel, John S. Brushwood terms it “[p]erhaps the best novel of 1963” as well as “mature, profound, sensitive, and written with professional assurance that is apparent from beginning to end” (52), he also states that the narrative technique used—the semi-personified, first-person voice of the town—is a drawback (53). Later, in The Spanish-American Novel: A Twentieth-Century Survey, Brushwood elaborates upon his appraisal of the technique: “Garro employs one narrative device that does not work very well. Her town, Ixtepec, tells its own story. The immediate problem is characterization of the town clearly enough to give the narrative voice an authentic tone. The author never really achieves this desirable goal” (258). Cynthia Duncan notes that Joseph Sommers and Walter Langford also judge the device harshly (52).

Other critics, however, have recognized that the technique has merit. Carmen Salazar sees the use of a town-narrator as an advantage, because it allows for more omniscience than a narrator-character would, and also because it permits a “penetrating vision of human behavior” (51). Cynthia Duncan also regards this narrative technique as an effective one, stating: “The collective memory of the town is able to narrate events beyond the scope of a single human life, and to see relationships between the past, present, and future, which are not immediately discernible to individual characters” (32). Duncan also concurs with Salazar's appraisal of the near omniscience of the narrator, since “collective memory” translates to almost infinite memory and permits the narrator to perceive more than any one individual. And Jean Franco sheds light on yet another aspect of the collective nature of the narrative, pointing out that “[t]he choice of this collective protagonist has the advantage of giving voice to all the marginalized elements of Mexico—the old aristocracy, the peasantry … the indigenous, and women; in sum, all those left behind by the modernization and the new nation” (Plotting Women 134). I shall return to Franco's comment at a later point.

Despite differing assessments regarding the success of the narrative voice, however, on the level of the fantastic, it would seem to be a device that complements other elements of the novel. After all, Ixtepec is a town where inanimate objects seemingly have more life than the supposedly “living” inhabitants of Ixtepec. Many times these personified objects move with an agility and a purpose unknown to ixtepequeños: disembodied voices float through the streets (87), words take on an existence of their own (157), the hands of a clock snatch words from the air and transform them into an army of spiders (26), and anger melts in the heat (269), to mention only a few of the examples that illustrate Garro's poetic capabilities. Additionally, many readers of this novel have noted that magic often occurs in Ixtepec, especially in relation to Felipe Hurtado: he produces lighted cigarettes out of thin air (38-39), he keeps himself dry and keeps a lamp lit in the midst of a storm (105), and, most magically, he also manages to steal Julia Andrade out from under Francisco Rosas's nose, carrying her off into the breaking day while Ixtepec remains shrouded in darkness (144-45).⁴ Somehow it seems fitting that in a setting where such occurrences become commonplace, a town would narrate its own story. Seen in this light, the technique ceases to be quite such an oddity.

In this novel, the town of Ixtepec serves a double function as both narrator and character, relating its own story as well as that of its inhabitants. However, several ingredients combine to create a sensation of distance between the semi-personified town-narrator and the townspeople, rather than closeness. Further exploration of this distance helps reveal the parallels between marginality as it occurs at the level of characterization and as it occurs at the level of narration.

The first paragraphs of the novel introduce the theme of marginality. Here, Ixtepec looks down upon itself and its inhabitants simultaneously, but from far away:

Aquí estoy, sentado sobre esta piedra aparente. Sólo mi memoria sabe lo que encierra. La veo y me recuerdo, y como el agua va al agua, así yo, melancólico, vengo a encontrarme en su imagen cubierta por el polvo, rodeada por las hierbas, encerrada en sí misma y condenada a la memoria y a su variado espejo. La veo, me veo y me transfiguro en multitud de colores y de tiempos. Estoy y estuve en muchos ojos. Yo sólo soy memoria y la memoria que de mí se tenga.

Desde esta altura me contemplo: grande, tendido en un valle seco. Me rodean unas montañas espinosas y unas llanuras amarillas pobladas de coyotes. Mis casas son bajas, pintadas de blanco, y sus tejados aparecen resecos por el sol o brillantes por el agua según sea el tiempo de lluvias o de secas. Hay días como hoy en los que recordarme me da pena. Quisiera no tener memoria o convertirme en el piadoso polvo para escapar a la condena de mirarme.

(9)⁵

In addition to the physical distance, however, psychological distance also plays an important part. As stated earlier, in Jean Franco's estimation the town-narrator gives a voice to all the marginalized groups that normally would not have a voice. Perhaps this explains why Garro chose to have a town as narrator. Neither man nor woman, neither mestizo nor Indian, the town conceivably could represent each social class, ethnic group, and gender without running the risk of showing partiality.

Yet Ixtepec enjoys somewhat limited success at delving into all its people's minds, due to its inability to overcome the psychological distances between itself and them. As an example, Ixtepec states: “Mi gente es morena de piel. Viste de manta blanca y calza huaraches. Se adorna con collares de oro o se ata al cuello un pañuelito de seda rosa. En las tardes, al caer el sol, canta” (10). While this clearly is a reference to the Indian inhabitants of the town, the reality is that focalization occurs much less often through the Indian characters than other (i.e., mestizo) characters. In fact, as Harry Enrique Rosser observes: “There is no attempt to convey class origins or social status through the use of speech with the result that the characters sound much the same throughout the novel” (291). Marta Portal also calls attention to the limitations of Ixtepec's capacity for seeing through its inhabitants' eyes: “Reflexiona, opina, encomia o censura con la mentalidad de ‘los principales’ del pueblo. Nunca se piensa como ramera o como indio ‘descalzo y ahorcado’” (262). She later states that “[l]a gente humilde del pueblo son los grandes ausentes de la memoria del pueblo” (263). While this could be explained as a conscious choice by Garro, in order to have a narrator blind to such things as class differentiation, it could also be seen as the inability of the narrator to perceive any differences among its people. This, consequently, provides a further indication of the distance between the narrator and its subjects.

In addition, several important plot developments are not reported by the narrator as they occur. Rather, the reader learns of them after the fact, either as the narrator becomes privy to the information, or when the facts are relayed by other characters as second-hand information. For example, as Duncan points out, Ixtepec (the narrator) does not witness Julia and Felipe's escape at the time it occurs, but rather, hears about it afterwards from a muledriver who happened to be entering Ixtepec at that precise moment (37). Neither does Ixtepec witness first-hand what transpires when Isabel runs away from Gregoria at the end of the novel, an episode that will be discussed later in more detail. And finally, the betrayal by the Indian servant Inés—one of the most important plot developments, which was already mentioned—is never reported by the narrator at all, but rather is related much later by another character, Conchita. Whether or not the narrator was aware of these incidents at the time they occured remains unclear, but the importance of the matter lies in the inability of Ixtepec to tell the “whole story” of all its inhabitants.

Failure to disclose fully the preceding events could be written off as simply oversights on the narrator's part. Yet on occasion Ixtepec the narrator admits its own lack of omniscience. For example, when the town's priest disappears under mysterious circumstances, Ixtepec is reduced to speculation about what might have taken place: “El padre Beltrán despareció. Decían que había huido. ¿Por dónde? ¿Por el camino de Tetela, por el de Cocula? Yo no lo vi salir ni sabía que anduviera por mis montes” (164). Neither does Ixtepec claim to always understand, any better than the people of the town do, the effect that memory has: “La memoria es traidora y a veces nos invierte el orden de los hechos o nos lleva a una bahía oscura en donde no sucede nada. No recuerdo lo que ocurrió después de la entrada de los militares” (197). Although Salazar is of the opinion that Ixtepec “feigns ignorance” and “pretends not to remember” (53), which in effect forces the reader to reevaluate the narrator's credibility, limitations provide a better explanation for Ixtepec's failed omniscience. As Amy Kaminsky points out, “in the novel we come to understand that Ixtepec's knowledge, though vast, is incomplete. There is no ultimate perspective that allows for the truth” (81). And Duncan affirms that the narrator's knowledge, limited as it is to only that which exists in the collective memory, is therefore subject to inaccuracies (33-34). Thus, it becomes clear as the novel progresses that Ixtepec's knowledge is limited by two factors: the inability to know anything that goes on beyond its physical borders, and the inability to know absolutely everything its inhabitants do, say, or think. In other words, just as Ixtepec's people are marginalized from one another, Ixtepec is equally marginalized from its own people. Ixtepec the narrator really is, after all, still just a town, not an actual character that can interact on the same level as the other characters do.

Ixtepec's application of the first- and third-person pronouns provides further evidence of distance between narrator and characters. Several critics have found the use of the “yo” and “nosotros” disconcerting, given that Ixtepec is inanimate and therefore could not in reality refer to itself in the human form of “I,” nor could it include itself as part of a “we.” Marta Portal's observations on this point provide one perspective:

Cuando Ixtepec dice “Yo me quedé triste,” esa supuesta tristeza no suscita la connivencia del lector, ya que la humanidad del sentimiento se recibe muy diluida en lo que de contorno tiene ese Yo. En cambio, cuando dice “mis gentes se quedaron tristes,” lo humano íntegro se conserve y conmueve. Es decir, se produce formalmente un contrasentido emocional: el yo confesional aleja y deteriora la comunicación, en tanto que los pronombres de la tercera persona operan con mayores posibilidades evocativas y solidarias.

(260)

On the other hand, Salazar looks at the pronoun question from a different standpoint. In her estimation, the use of the “nosotros” creates a type of “chorus” effect, which she refers to as a “town narrator,” while the use of the “yo” indicates an “anonymous narrator” who is also a character and a participant in the action (53-55). In contrast with Portal, Salazar finds the first-person usage believable: “The use of a participant narrator tends to create verisimilitude when the narration shifts from an inanimate narrator” (55). These two differing opinions represent opposite extremes, but they also serve to prove my point, because what the novel's readers perceive as extremes can be seen as integral to the narrative technique of Los recuerdos del porvenir. Put simply, at times Ixtepec includes itself in with the story of its people, using the first-person plural. At other times, however, Ixtepec refers to itself separately from its inhabitants, or conversely, it uses the third-person to refer to its inhabitants separately from itself. This is especially true when Ixtepec wishes to criticize some behavior, such as the mestizos' actions over the years: “Cuando se reunían se miraban desconfiados, se sentían sin país y sin cultura, sosteniéndose en unas formas artificiales, alimentadas sólo por el dinero mal habido. Por su culpa mi tiempo estaba inmóvil” (25). Ixtepec does not always agree with what its residents do, just as frequently it is unable to exercise complete omniscience, because there are limitations to its capabilities and also because of the barriers between its people and itself. The use of third-person pronouns serves to illustrate separation and distance in a concrete way.

Ixtepec's lack of omniscience and its marginality from its characters take on even more importance in light of how two principal events of the novel are presented. Both of these events are related from various perspectives, yet the narration does not give one viewpoint priority over the other. The final result is that in many cases information gaps remain unbridged, for as Kaminsky asserts: “Frequently even collective knowledge is not sufficient, and only conjecture is available even to the narrator who, after all, is multiple but not infinite” (83). Ultimately, the reader is left not only to piece together those facts which are available, but also to interpret them to the extent that this is possible.

The first of these opportunities for reader interpretation stems from the portrayal of the party given by the townspeople in an effort to distract General Francisco Rosas and his men so that the village priest can elude capture. The events of that night are presented from three different perspectives; in chapters seven, eight, and nine of the second part, the viewpoints of several prostitutes, soldiers and townspeople are presented. Putting together the varying points of view from these chapters allows nearly complete knowledge of everything that took place, but the precise chronology of all the events is difficult, if not impossible, to attain. Moreover, some bits of information are never fully explained. Further, there is no effort on the part of the narrator to gather up any loose ends, nor to impose its own interpretation as the best or most correct one.

The case of Isabel Moncada's so-called betrayal offers another opportunity for multiple interpretations. Isabel offers herself as a replacement when Francisco Rosas's mistress Julia runs off with Felipe Hurtado, and she remains with Rosas even after she becomes aware that he is responsible for her brother Juan's death. At the novel's end, Isabel decides to leave Rosas, but at the last moment she loses her resolve and determines to see him one more time. She runs away from the old servant, Gregoria, who was accompanying Isabel to ask the Virgin to help her disentangle herself from Rosas. Later Gregoria supposedly finds the young woman at the bottom of a hill, turned to stone; she then decides to put an inscription on that stone, written as if the words were Isabel's:

Soy Isabel Moncada, nacida de Martín Moncada y de Ana Cuétara de Moncada, en el pueblo de Ixtepec el primero de diciembre de 1907. En piedra me convertí el cinco de octubre de 1927 delante de los ojos espantados de Gregoria Juárez. Causé la desdicha de mis padres y la muerte de mis hermanos Juan y Nicolás. Cuando venía a pedirle a la Virgen que me curara del amor que tengo por el general Francisco Rosas que mató a mis hermanos, me arrepentí y preferí el amor del hombre que me perdió y perdió a mi familia. Aquí estaré con mi amor a solas como recuerdo del porvenir por los siglos de los siglos.

(295)

Gregoria, then, not only put words into Isabel's mouth, but she carves them into stone for all of posterity to see and to wonder about.

Isabel's actions, along with the words she supposedly left behind as an epitaph, have served for a myriad of speculations. Most have tended to present her in the worst possible light, as an unrepentant traitor of her family, her class, and her town, all for the love of Francisco Rosas, the enemy. Several Garro critics share Daniel Balderston's view of those words written in stone:

The “aparente piedra” will in the future recall Isabel, but the phrase of her epitaph also gives us an impression of what she was thinking at the moment she turned to stone. She realizes that she is the cause of her parents' misfortunes and the deaths of her brothers, knowing at the same time that she loves the author of these misfortunes.

(44)

Sandra Messinger Cypess also is of the opinion that Isabel's actions constitute treason, commenting that “Isabel betrays her family and, in her mind and that of her society, causes the death of her brothers by her traitorous acts. She rejects her family … in favor of the enemy, Rosas, by taking Julia's place in his bed” (123). Evaluations similar to these, most often referring to Isabel's betrayal and conversion into traitor, have made up a large part of the criticism written on this novel. Trying to explain, justify, and rationalize Isabel's behavior is central to these studies. Indeed, even the narrator accepts the inscription on the stone as being Isabel's last words, full of guilty regret and repentance for her behavior.

Yet, as both Kaminsky and Duncan persuasively assert, there is another way to look at Isabel's behavior. For one thing, the words are Gregoria's, not Isabel's. As Duncan observes, there is no evidence that Gregoria was a confidante of Isabel's, nor an intimate friend capable of knowing what was in Isabel's mind (“Time” 40). What is more, as Kaminsky states, Gregoria is an “unreliable narrator” because in reality she had lost sight of Isabel, and only after the fact did she find a stone, which she then named Isabel (94). I would even go one step further and question the very significance of the stone itself. Gregoria's interpretation of Isabel's disappearance after her headlong rush down the hill came about only because she could not think of another way to explain it. Besides, the explanation seems to follow along nicely with other myths of disobedient people who are petrified in punishment, such as the Biblical story of Lot's wife; perhaps Ixtepec's people are so quick to latch onto Gregoria's story because they want to believe that Isabel received her just punishment—petrification—at the hands of God. Also, as Duncan notes, Gregoria's rendition of what happened gains such easy acceptance among the townspeople in part because it fits in with their preconceived notions about the treacherous Isabel, whose wanton ways prevent her from following the straight and narrow (40), yet no physical description or details are given about this “Isabel stone.” Perhaps the stone resembles the actual shape of Isabel's earthly body, which explains why Gregoria might have believed it to be her. At the same time, the stone must have a somewhat flat shape in order to serve as a suitable seat for Ixtepec to sit upon at the beginning of the novel. All of this, however, remains unclear. Furthermore, Ixtepec uses the qualifier “aparente” in describing the stone, which creates more doubt and leaves room for some flexibility in interpretation. Perhaps “aparente” means that the stone is not really a stone at all, but rather a petrified human body, or perhaps by “aparente” Ixtepec means to say that by accepting this story part of the mystery still is left unsolved. After all, in this novel very little is as it seems.

Kaminsky also calls into question the generally accepted idea that Isabel's actions make her a traitor. As she convincingly argues, “Isabel did not betray [her brother] Nicolás by taking Rosas as her lover; she and her brother maintained their connection through their hold on Rosas, and together they compelled him to destroy them and himself” (94). Duncan echoes this idea, arguing that Isabel, motivated to become Rosas's lover by revenge rather than love, in essence destroys Rosas by depriving him of Julia's memory, just as he deprives Isabel of the memory of her family.⁶ In Duncan's estimation, this is why Isabel wanted to see Rosas one more time; he represents her last hope for re-establishing contact with her lost memory (48-50). While it might be easy to pin the label “treachery” on Isabel, going beyond that too-easy apparent meaning behind her behavior, in a search for deeper explanations, uncovers a much more complicated and therefore interesting character.

Many of the characteristics and techniques of Los recuerdos del porvenir, especially its emphasis on the marginal, place it comfortably within what has come to be designated postmodern. In fact, Linda Hutcheon, in A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, cites the tendency toward decentering as one of the most salient characteristics of this movement. Hutcheon also points out the predominance of the “ex-centric,” which she defines as having no centering force, in many of these novels, and she states that many recent postmodern novels have even demonstrated a preference for the ex-centric in their settings: “Another form of this move off-center is to be found in the contesting of centralization of culture through the valuing of the local and peripheral: not New York or London or Toronto, but William Kennedy's Albany, Graham Swift's fens country, Robert Kroetsch's Canadian West” (61). The same could be said of Elena Garro's Ixtepec.

Yet, this novel does not call for the triumph of the marginal at the expense of the center. In fact, it becomes evident by the end of Los recuerdos del porvenir that Elena Garro does not glorify margins as places of inherent correctness or goodness. Sidonie Smith's assessment of the value of margins in relation to centers seems to apply to this novel:

We can guard against romanticizing marginality by remembering that my margin of visibility is not necessarily your margin, even if we are both women, or black, or lesbian. Each of us … inhabits margins and centers simultaneously. These competing marginalities and centerings chafe against one another as well as against the marginalities and centerings of others. They even change position on us as we move through different experiences: a marginality in one locale becomes a centering in another. Let us, then, not insist on stable centers and stable margins but recognize constant instabilities, constant rumblings at the edges, boundaries, borders, horizons—to multiply metaphors. Through the chafings of our conflictual centerings and marginalities and the interplay of our positionalities and mobilities, spaces of rupture and resistance, of reproduction and representation will emerge in our individual and collective webs.

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By the same token, if Garro does not exalt the marginal, neither does she advocate the idea that centers are always inherently wrong or bad, nor does she propose that centers should be destroyed by the margins. In fact, in this novel, all the pushing and pulling by marginal groups results in the complete destabilization and ultimate destruction of the center, and, by the end, Ixtepec and its people are decimated, leaving behind only memory. But the tone of the novel is one of sorrow and regret at what might have been, not joy at the disappearance of the center.

There is a recognition in this novel that if the center vanishes, it leaves behind a vacuum, and that margins cannot exist on the edge of an empty space. There is also a recognition that too many margins, all demanding their own piece of power, can lead to chaos. Here, Jean Franco's words, warning against the danger resulting from an inflexible preference for a school of thought that disdains all centers, seem particularly appropriate: “[E]l pluralismo también tiene sus riesgos: si todo es válido, nada importa” (“Apuntes” 42). What this novel does seem to propose is that these constant rumblings from the edges of the margins, along with the instabilities that result, are inevitable. Again, Hutcheon's words help to explain the effect of the postmodern and the ex-centric: “Postmodernism does not move the marginal to the center. It does not invert the valuing of centers into that of peripheries and borders, as much as use that paradoxical doubled positioning to critique the inside from both the outside and the inside” (69). Garro critiques from inside Ixtepec society by showing what happens when the “insiders” deny the possibility of multiple perspectives and explanations. Yet, she also critiques from the perspective of the “outsiders”—those at the margins of society—by showing that too much multiplicity can bring disaster. The end result is a work of fiction in which the margins and the slippery center cease to exist without the other.

Notes

1. In particular, Frank Dauster, Cynthia Duncan, Harry Rosser, and John Brushwood mention the poetic quality of language in Los recuerdos del porvenir. For other studies featuring language, see Peter G. Earle and Margarita León Vega, and Carmen Salazar and Marta Portal for in-depth treatments of narrative technique. Time is highlighted as an element in the Dauster and Duncan studies, as well as those by Robert Anderson. Several critics, such as Amy Kaminsky, Adriana Méndez-Rodenas, Sandra Boschetto, Jean Franco, Marta Aída Umanzor de Yoshimura, Kay García, and Teresa Anta San Pedro, also take feminist approaches, or concentrate on the female characters. Daniel Balderston and Sandra Messinger Cypess approach the novel from a historical standpoint. I merely touch on power in this study; for more detailed studies on this theme, see Patricia Montenegro, Cristina Galli, and Luz Elena Gutiérrez de Velasco.

2. In particular, the ideas on marginality in Los recuerdos del porvenir expressed by Kaminsky, Duncan, and Franco most closely coincide with my own. Brushwood, Rosser, and León Vega also mention marginality.

3. León Vega argues a point along the same lines, referring to Rosas as an “antihéroe” (401).

4. Duncan in particular discusses Felipe Hurtado's magical presence in the novel. Others who highlight Felipe and Julia's escape include Rosser, Balderston, Dauster, and Brushwood. Duncan also provides an excellent analysis of temporal perspective, relating how the people of Ixtepec look back at unusual occurrences surrounding Felipe, and, in retrospect, apply the adjective “magical” (37-38).

5. Margarita León Vega also discusses the distance of the narrator in her study of social discourse.

6. As Duncan observes, Gregoria imbues her account with romantic and even sexual overtones, and this is the interpretation accepted by the townspeople as well (50). Cypess also figures among the critics who attribute Isabel's actions to romantic passion (127-28).

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