"My Dear Inés", [Chile] Isabelle Allende, translated by Zhu Jierong, Published by People's Literature Publishing House in July 2021, 305 pages, 49.00 yuan
When I visited the National History Museum of Chile, I noticed a huge oil painting: Donná inés Suarez Suarez in the Defense of the City of Santiago by the Chilean painter José Mercedes Ortega in 1897. Occupying the center of the picture is a sword-wielding woman with long black hair, typical of the appearance of a Spanish woman. Her suit, with a golden yellow on the upper body and a large red on the lower body, not only made her stand out among the Spanish warriors, but also could hint at her Spanish identity, which was the color of the Spanish flag. The battle in the picture is fierce and bloody, the tip of the enemy's spear is close at hand, the Spanish warriors are maneuvering muskets to return fire, and they also raise the severed head of the enemy high, which is probably also an effective means of returning fire. The panel next to the painting describes the beginnings of Chile as a Spanish colony: "Pedro de Valdivia left Cusco in 1540 and set out along the desert road that Almagro had taken on his return, towards the strip known for its barren land and hostile inhabitants. He was accompanied by a small group of Spaniard and Indian servants, in addition to the valiant Inés Suarez, the only white woman on the expedition. Inés Suárez (1507-1580), a female conquistador recognized by the official history of Chile, came to South America from Spain and participated in the expedition south from Peru, witnessing the establishment of the city of Santiago and participating in the brutal battles between the Spaniards who settled in Santiago and the local indigenous peoples. These historical facts were written by the famous Chilean writer Isabel Allende in her historical novel My Dear Inés.
Isabelle Allende
The work, first published in 2006, currently has a Spanish-language rating of 4.7/5 on Amazon and a 4.3/5 rating in English. As a best-selling author known in the Spanish-speaking world and the English-speaking world, Isabelle Allende naturally does not miss such a valuable subject. The history of Spain's conquest of the Americas has provided a wealth of creative resources for themes such as adventure, war, intrigue, love, etc., not to mention that the protagonist is still a woman! As we can see, the novel's understanding of that period of history is shattered by some of the usual prejudices: neither portraying the Spaniards as a bunch of inhuman invaders nor glorifying them as heroes who spread civilization; neither portraying the indigenous Chileans as a bunch of savages waiting to be civilized and saved, nor portraying them as heroes defending their homeland—after all, for the most part, the reader follows in Yés Suarez's perspective through what she has gone through. In Allende's own words: "Conquest is a genocide and an epic of greed and blood." This history happened 500 years ago, and I am a product of this history, because I am not An Indian, but a product of mixed races. In Allende's view, Chile was born in a bloody war between the Spaniards and the Mapuche for the latter's original living space, they were both ancestors of the Chileans, who fought and communicated, thus creating a new mixed race, just as in the novel Inés earnestly hoped: "The noble blood of the Spaniards and the unyielding blood of the Mapuche will give birth to an incomparably proud nation in the future." This conciliatory stance contributed to the novel's general popularity among Spanish and Latin American readers. The novel was also adapted into a TV series of the same name, starring actors from Spain and Chile, and released in 2020. There's an intriguing detail about the series: Filming in Chile in 2019 coincided with a social crisis triggered by subway ticket price increases that expanded from the capital Santiago to the whole country. A powerful social movement has put the revision of the new constitution on the agenda, which will replace the old constitution formulated during the Pinochet period and is still in use today, and will likely recognize the citizenship and political rights of the Chilean indigenous people, represented by the Mapuche, which have long been ignored and ignored by the Chilean authorities. Allende's historical novels can be said to be politically correct in their treatment of indigenous peoples.
Poster of the TV series of the same name
Also focusing on historical fiction about the female figure in the history of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, I can also think of the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel's Malinche, published in 2005. Both Eskivel and Allende rose to fame with a novel with a distinctly magical realism and a female perspective ("Just Like Water in Chocolate" and "House of Ghosts") and became the publisher's best-selling authors. In Marinche, Eskiver frees Marinche, an indigenous Mexican woman who cooperated with the Spanish conquistadors, from the historical charges of traitor and Leading the Way, affirming her contribution to the birth of a mestizo Mexican nation. The birth of the Mexicans can be symbolized by an event in which the Spanish conquistadors killed indigenous men, raped indigenous women, and gave birth to mixed-race offspring. The chilean birth is different. The Spanish conquistadors met the extremely difficult and warlike Mapuche in the wet and cold lands at the foot of the snowy mountains in the south of the Americas, who had never been enslaved by the Inca Empire that the Spaniards had conquered, making it difficult for the Spanish settlers to gain a foothold. The National History Museum of Chile, in its account of the birth of a Chilean mestizo, mentioned that in addition to the spaniard-fathered and indigenous women born in the Spanish settlements, there was also a hybrid born on the map of the Mapuche, which was the offspring born after the Mapuche snatched the Spanish women away.
Ines was lucky not to be forcibly taken captive by the Mapuche. In the novel, when the Spanish colonist settlement— the prototype of the city of Santiago — is attacked by the Mapuche, she takes up her sword and goes into battle like the men. But more often than not, she does some constructive work than fight and kill. Nor was she as fanatical as the male conquerors in their pursuit of gold and silver. She devoted herself to building houses with enthusiasm, directing women and Indian servants to make various living utensils, elaborately designing a food supply system that would not let anyone starve, raising livestock, growing wheat, vegetables, fruits and flowers, and willing to learn from the locals how to cultivate and water. When the Spaniards and Chilean natives were at war, her Indian maid, Catalina, would sneak out of the barracks to exchange prescriptions with local Indian women—a detail that reveals the complexity of conquest history. The Spaniards went on new expeditions not only on their own, but also with the help of the Indians they had conquered; in the process of conquest, killing and exchange took place simultaneously, and the invaders would learn and absorb the cultural achievements of the invaded, and the aggressors would learn from the invaders, and in this latter respect the Mapuche performed quite well, and they used the infantry formations stolen from the Spaniards to treat them and inflict heavy blows on the well-trained Spanish soldiers. The Mapuche's remarkable record of resistance to conquest was not made up by Isabelle Allende. They did earn the respect of their enemies. La Araucana, known as a Chilean epic, was written by Alonso de Ercilla, a Spanish soldier who participated in the Chilean conquest, depicts the indigenous Chileans as a brave, noble people. Allende's novel not only quotes fragments of the epic, but also criticizes the distortions of this literary classic. Inés said: "When we were the first Spaniards to conquer this land, Alonso was just a child in Madrid, and his participation in the conquest of Chile was a matter of later... I have a deep admiration for the heroism and love of the Mapuche people, but they are by no means models of compassion and tenderness. The romantic feelings that Alonso describes between men and women do not exist at all in reality. Each Mapuche man possessed several women, and they treated women as slaves and servants of labor, a fact confirmed by the captive Spanish women. "The polygamy of the Mapuche, which by Christian doctrine is fornication, is a manifestation of barbarism and uncivilization in the eyes of the Spaniards, and provides a justification for the conquest of Western civilization. But Ines also admitted: "The Spaniards also did not treat Indian women as mere objects of indulgence and slaves." "She will also stand in the enemy's point of view, and will do empathy." Why were the Mapuche less prone to submission than the Aztecs and Incas? Because these people who "take the heavens as the quilt and the earth as the seat" do not want to build a city and establish a business, they do not seek to be honored and superior, they just want to be free. "If a foreign country invades Spain and lets us accept their traditions and religion, what will we Spaniards do?" It will definitely fight to the end. "Ines, like a wise grandmother, made a fair judgment of history. Her vision even sees the future: "We Spaniards and Mapuche are equal rivals, brave and cruel, both destined to live in Chile. They came earlier than we did, so they do have more pre-emptive power. However, they will not be able to drive us away, and it seems that it is difficult for us to coexist peacefully at present. The question she raised, which continues to this day in Chile, is how indigenous identity was incorporated into the modern state, and has not been well resolved.
What Ines admires most about the Mapuche is their free spirit, which is what she values most. Unlike her male compatriots, she came to the New World neither to make a fortune nor to make a meritorious deed, but to live freely. In her own words, "In that new world, everyone is their own master, and there is no need to bow down to anyone; they can make mistakes and immediately start over, like another person, and live another life." ...... In that distant land, no one knows me, I am my own master. America began as a utopia in the mind of this Spanish woman and ended up being her truly recognized home. In the past, in Spanish, the word "libre", once used on women, often had the meaning of debauchery and impropriety, which shows the depth of traditional culture's bondage to women. There is no doubt that if Ines had not ventured into the New World, he would have ended up "just being a poor and blind old woman, making a living by sewing day and night." The first chapter of the novel, which tells the story of Inés's years in Spain, shows the tragic fate of women like prisoners in the old world. She did not have children, which was a major flaw in the eyes of others, but it became a favorable condition for her to break into the new world. In the New World, she experienced a rich emotional life, willingly becoming the lover of the Chilean conqueror Pedro de Valdivia, accompanying him from birth to death, and loving him vigorously. In judging the historical figure, Allende said she "challenged all stereotypes and was a very modern woman." Apparently, she deliberately injected some "modernity" into the character of inyness. Ines knows how to make decisions for himself, will strike back fiercely when he is hurt or harassed by men, and behaves like a female executive in a modern business when managing the vast affairs of the settlement... She is not afraid to reveal her bedside experience in her self-description. In the intercourse with Pedro de Valdivia, it was she who dominated the position: "I held him to my chest and felt his heartbeat, his body heat and his masculine smell. Pedro still has a lot to learn about men and women, but we are not in a hurry, and we have the rest of our lives to take our time. I would be a good teacher... Pedro has only learned the only bit of male and female knowledge from animals and military life, believing that women are always obedient and cooperative, while men are actively in control of the overall situation... Fortunately, Pedro knew how to leave the man's set outside the door and act according to my set inside the door. This Pedro de Valdivia, who was "trained" by her in the New World, also had a wife in Spain. Their "adulterous" behavior was a serious violation of Catholic doctrine. Inés Suarez's mistress identity became a historical "stain" on her, and Allende apparently wanted to give some legitimacy to her actions with "true love."
Like House of Ghosts, My Dear Inés also incorporates some magical elements in its narrative of Chile's magnificent history. On Inés's long journey to the Chilean Valley, the ghost of her deceased husband Juan appears from time to time, disturbing her. Portraying heroines, taking the politically correct route, trying not to cause difficulties for readers in the way of storytelling, and adding a little magic realism seem to be the secret of Isabelle Allende's success in the book market. However, if a writer only keeps copying his own success formula, he will eventually become mediocre. Perhaps because of this, Roberto Polanio called Isabelle Allende an "escribidora" rather than a "writer." Isabelle Allende also had no good opinion of Bolaño, feeling that the man "never says nice things about anyone". Given the tension between the two of them, I never put the works of these two Chilean writers together on my bookshelf.
In any case, for Chinese readers who want to know about Chile, "My Dear Inés" is indeed a fascinating enough story. In this story told in the first person by women, Chile was not discovered by the Spaniards, nor was it first built by the Mapuche, but was born in a bloody war between the Spaniards and the Mapuche. It is the home of Life that Inés actively chose, a piece of Eden that the Spanish expedition encountered after crossing the vast desert all the way south, and the land that the Mapuche desperately defended. Ines pursued a new life, willing to build a new home brick by brick, and eventually got his wish; the Spanish conqueror, who was bent on finding new gold mines in Chile to get rich, finally got his wish — after being captured, the Mapuche poured molten gold into his mouth. This is somewhat allegorical: Chile's bright future depends not on its underground mineral resources, but on solid construction from scratch and the establishment of an inclusive community.