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Near the end of Mexican author Rosario Castellanos's novel Bali'tn Canan (1957), the sevenyear-old unnamed narrator and her brother play the 'juego de la fivntera " with their two cargadoras. The idea is simple: One of the cargadoras, calling herself "Guatemala," locks arms with, and then pulls against, the other - "México" - until one or the other is forced to let go. The niña throws her arms around the waist of a cargadora to help pull for one side, and her brother Mario does the same for the other. It's a game, but even so, they all put so much energy into it that it is possible to see it as emblematic of the critical opposition in the novel: a young girl pulling against her family heritage in order to form an identity apart from the patriarchal society that privileges males like her brother. The struggle is fierce. The values of the girl's ladino landholding family have been affirmed from Colonial times by traditional class-bound economic and social power. The girl is pressured particularly by her mother to conform to these values. However, her indigenous nana - also unnamed in the text - is her advocate and gives her access to a world view that can potentially aid her in resisting the repression she experiences as a female.
Bah'in Canán is largely autobiographical, drawn from the author's difficult personal experience growing up as the daughter of a prominent family in Comitán, Chiapas, amidst the social and political conflict precipitated by the attempts at agrarian reform of the Cárdenas government of the 1930s.1 The novel draws on Castellanos's close relationship with her tojolabal nanny, Rufina, and relives the childhood death from appendicitis of Castellanos's younger brother Benjamin.2 It relies on the rhythms of the Castellanos household with the evoked commotion of its many indigenous servants, and on the routines of her Catholic girls' school in Comitán. El Rosario, the Castellanos ranch situated south of Ocosingo, becomes "Chactajal."3 The narrative relives the terrifyingly violent indigenous land invasions and rebellions of the time of Castellanos's childhood. Of this experience the author says, "Balún Canán es la narración de mi infancia; es, además, un testimonio de los hechos que presencié en un momento en que se pretendió hacer...