Los desvíos de Calibán

emancipación y lenguaje en Reinaldo Arenas

Abstract

During the 1960s and ’70s, the pressure of politics over cultural
practices had crucial effects on literature. One of them was the rereading
of foundational texts that had, historically, provided the
metaphors to interpret the past, and, consequently, the meaning of the
present. The colonial allegory displayed by Shakespeare’s The
Tempest was one of these texts. In 1972, Roberto Fernández Retamar
recovered the opposite pair of Calibán and Próspero in his essay
Calibán. However, contrary to Rodo’s Ariel reading of the drama,
Retamar made Calibán a symbol of the imminent emancipation of the
continent. Nonetheless, in this (in) version of Shakespeare’s story,
Calibán also remained a slave, as he was perpetually committed to
demonstrate the Truth of an essential entity, the People of Latin
America. This paper discusses some other ways of imagining
Caliban’s emancipation. I will focus on Reinaldo Arena’s re-writing of
emancipation in “El Central” and the short story “El reino de
Alipio”.