Sensorial Techniques in Lucas Guevara
Marisol Marcin, Binghamton University, New York.
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Sensorial Techniques in Lucas Guevara Published in 1914 by Alirio Díaz Guerra, an early Colombian immigrant to New York, Lucas Guevara is considered the first Spanish-language Hispanic immigrant novel written in the United States (Kanellos and Hernandez 2001). Like many subsequent Hispanic immigration novels, it features a character who becomes disillusioned after realizing that the future he came chasing after was a mirage. The novel revolves around a character named Lucas, a naïve young man who has left his comfortable life in Santa Catalina, a provincial town in an undisclosed country, to search for a better education. When he arrives in New York City, he encounters several shady individuals who are set on profiting from his innocence and who introduce him to the grim realities of immigrant life in this city. Like a bird fallen in mud, Lucas cannot lift himself up from the misery that entraps him, cannot return to his homeland, and resolves to end his life by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, which from the beginning of the narrative is presented as a symbol of the city and all it encompasses.
This paper explores the color techniques and other sensorial devices used by the author to highlight visually the idea of frustrated hope endured by the optimistic newcomer to the great metropolis. Color and tone serve to emphasize the differences between Santa Catalina (green, blue) and New York (gray, yellow) as well as the transformation of the character throughout the story. Eventually, as the character’s hopes and dreams vanish, he is associated with an overall grayness of tone, which separates him from the bright “natural” hues that we see at first in his garment and his ideas of home. The depiction of the gray tone of the big city corresponds to the loss of his colorful naïveté, loss of home, and eventual demise. Lucas’s initial “greenness” does
not merely signify the gullibility of the new immigrant full of dreams and hopes, but it also hints at a system of color coordination that Diaz Guerra combines with other sensorial techniques (such as the use of animals) to disrupt the myth of the American Dream.
Alirio Díaz Guerra, the author of “Lucas Guevara” was born in Tunja, Colombia in 1962. This old colonial city has been birthplace to many literary and revolutionary leaders who have shaped the history and prose of Colombia throughout the centuries. (Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango del Banco de la Repubica, n.d.). As many of his compatriots, most of Diaz Guerra’s young adult life revolved around politics, he was a member of the Liberal party at a time when the Conservative party ruled the country. In 1885 he was exiled to Venezuela, and ten years later to the United States, where he lived there until his death, sometime in the late 1930’s. In reading the novel “Lucas Guevara”, published in 1914, I find the author has great ability to convey much more than one story line. He uses color, animalization and symbolism to convey the life of Lucas, a young man who leaves his country after his father, Don Andres, is convinced that Lucas must abandon his provincial town and travel to New York to pursue a better education. After Lucas’ arrival, he meets many shady characters who profit from his naïveté and gradate his values by introducing him to the crudest realities of immigrant life in this city. Through many events, he becomes disillusioned as he learns that the “thrilling” experiences of his life in this city have eclipsed his home values, darkening his outlook and eventually causing him to take his life.
The novel also relates Diaz Guerra’s own conflict and personal feelings about the exile he was forced to endure for pursuing his political ideals. On yet another level, that I will not explore in this document, this novel seems to tell the story of a country that is forced to change its noble, if rudimentary ways, through deceitful illusions of a better future.
We will first explore the main storyline; here the author uses multiple techniques to emphasize the main character’s transformation as well as to contrast his home town with New York City. “Lucas Guevara was a young man of just twenty years of age, hailing from Santa Catalina, a humble village in a province of the Republic of ***.” (2003, p. 2) In the beginning of the novel, Lucas is described as a young man who spent his first “springs” in his father’s coffee farm working in the fields and helping with his father’s business (p. 9). When his father decides to inquire about the possibility of Lucas’ travel, he takes his favorite mule to a provincial town in order to consult one of his close acquaintances (compadre) (p.3). This initial description, and his choice of words, allows us to imagine a character who lives close to nature. It evokes lively colors as they best relate to natural surroundings.
By contrast, the day Lucas arrived to New York City is described as dark and foggy and the sounds of the city as deafening. “It was a cloudy day and the panorama which spread out before the passenger’s eyes concealed its contours among undulating waves of fog.” (p. 12), “Hundreds of ships from all the nations of the world flow into and set sail from that harbor, parading from their masts the various colors of their flags and deafening the area with foghorn blasts, whose hoarse cries seem to be the universal
salute to the spirit of progress embodied in this colossal North American country…”(p.5), Here, the author uses dim colors and loud noises, as if to announce to the reader that nature is about to crash against some force of opposite characteristics and possibly unequal power.
In addition to color, we see animalization used to emphasize the characteristics of both places. When Lucas arrived to New York City, his outfit consisted of a gaudy gray suit, a red necktie spattered with green polka dots, a slimy yellow leather strap for a belt, and an imitation beaver skin felt hat with broad, floppy wings (p. 11). This description conveys the colorful qualities of an animal such as a macaw, which would of course be out of place in a city, but would befit the jungle where it comes from. By contrast, the characters of the city are described with canine and even rodent qualities. For example, during the first night at the boarding house, the people at the table are described “… one was quite pudgy and had the face of a bulldog, the other, though not entirely pleasant to look at, was considerably less fleshy, but she did have a more prominent nose” (p. 34), “ [about another boarding house guest] with his beard crammed into the crease of a napkin he had wrapped around his collar like a scarf, peered out the jittery, piercing, beady little eyes of a diminutive old man”, and later “…this personage, who stared obliquely into space, did not say a single word and confined himself to simply gobbling down his food like a rabid rabbi”. To emphasize this ecosystemic collision, the author adds “…what sort of creature is this?” In the Spanish version: “Qué clase de animal será este?” [sic] (Díaz Guerra, 1914, p. 54) One of the ladies had the unmitigated audacity to turn her head and look behind Lucas, as if trying to convince herself that he was not afflicted by a prolongation of the coxal appendage.”
(p. 36). In reading this scene, one can imagine animals from different biomes who by chance have been placed in the same environment. Theirs, is just natural the curiosity of the local creatures in relation to the new species. Additionally, when describing the city and the elements in it, Diaz Guerra’s choice of words emphasizes an ecosystem where insects and pests coexist. Words like plague (to refer to the people that live in the Bowery), night butterflies, leaches, and swarm of swindlers, paint a dark, even dirty place. By contrast, when describing Santa Catalina, the author talks about the smell of ferns, the clucking of hens, and even when he admits that Lucas prefers New York City to Santa Catalina, a clear statement is made by his choice of adjectives to contrast the “tempestuous city” with the “tranquil life of Santa Catalina” (p. 77).
Later in the story, Lucas starts to transform, he starts to be a part of his new environment. As it happens we can see how his health deteriorates and with this, he loses his natural color “… the great big bags found under Lucas’ eyes upon waking up each morning, and [by] the particularly incriminating look of fatigue which was something unusual for a young man of Guevara’s age…” This is only an early stage of his transformation; after his imprisonment, his description “With congested cheeks and eyes burning like two balls of fire…” presents a rather enraged individual. This change from defenseless animal to predator is clearer later, when he meets Cesareo Albornoz, one of his closest friends at the beginning of the story and later a sworn enemy due to a pecuniary disagreement. “On more than one occasion, Guevara had the misfortune of accidentally running into Señor Albornoz. Like two leopards ready to devour each other,
they sized each other up from head to toe; they cast sparks at each other with their eyes”. By varying color and animalization, Diaz Guerra emphasizes, not only Lucas’ adaptation to his new environment, but also the changes in his destiny. Since his arrival to a gray, foggy city (p. 4), to the change in his life from sorrowful and uncertain to tranquil and rosy (p.145), to the moment when the black bird of death slapped Lucas with the flapping of its wings (p. 180) and the prism by which he had perceived the New York shattered, letting him see the relentless, murderous and hideous phantom that the city was to him (p. 188), to the very end when he takes his life at twilight, obscuring one last time his narrative as he jumps into the impassive waters of the East River. Now, let’s explore another story line in the same book. Alirio Diaz Guerra was, as stated above, an active member of the liberal party in a time when the conservative faction had control of Colombia. In 1884 he founded the newspaper “El Liberal” which opposed the ruling conservative group. In 1885, he had to flee the country after his involvement in a failed attempt to overthrow the government. Diaz Guerra lived in Venezuela for 10 years, time during which he developed friendships with the Venezuelan government and continued to support the revolutionary efforts of the liberal party in his homeland. At the end of those years, he had to seek exile in the United States when an indiscretion exposed his active role in the revolutionary movement of Colombia and threatened to deteriorate the relationship between Colombia and Venezuela. Diaz Guerra convinced the Venezuelan president to evict him as a way to clean his name and prevent any conflict between the two nations. (Diaz Guerra, 1933).
I find many resemblances between the books “Lucas Guevara” and “Ten Years in Venezuela”, a personal account of Diaz Guerra’s life after his exile from Colombia. The first one is the departure by boat of the main characters from their homeland. Alirio states in this autobiographical account that his youth gave him the resilience to survive the though trials of his exodus. He expresses that youth, in the character of Lucas Guevara, in his naïveté, in his trust of people and in his greenness when arriving to the United States. Guevara, was like Diaz Guerra initially placed in a humble room in a boarding house. Alirio describes his as “a modest bedroom with a folding bed, a chair, table and tripod basin” (p.14) while Lucas describes his as “a narrow hallway more than a room with a folding iron bed; a table, which played the triple role of escritoire, nightstand, and washbasin; and, finally a stool which had played companion to some piano in a bygone era. Lucas was afforded friendships because of his parental connections just as Alirio was able to establish himself in Venezuela because of his political allegiance, and although Diaz Guerra’s friendships were much more loyal and fruitful than Lucas’, they introduced them both to the realities of life in their new countries.
One more similarity, the one that made me see all others is the way in which Lucas’s life ends. The last chapter of Lucas Guevara starts with a praise to the Brooklyn Bridge. He explains how this place is one of the wonders of the world and one of the greatest manifestations of human spirit. The author is not only alluding to the beauty of this monument, but to the strength and tenacity of the people and the nation
represented by it. It is from this bridge that Lucas decides to end his life. Diaz Guerra “ended” his life in Venezuela by choice. While it is true that the circumstances forced him to take this path, it was he who planed his exile to the United States. I see in the ending of the book Lucas Guevara, a likeness of his own life. Diaz Guerra jumped into the unknown, he submerged into the waters of his new exile leaving behind all the people and places of his past life. Knowing that he could not go back to his homeland, his compatriots and his ideals, just like Lucas could not reclaim his previous, simpler life. It is not a mere coincidence that the place where Lucas dies is the point of entrance of Alirio Diaz Guerra to his last home, the United States.
References Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango del Banco de la Repubica. (n.d.). Tunja en el mundo Hispánico. Retrieved from Tunja Memoria Visual: banco de la republica: http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/modosycostumbres/tumv/tumv02.htm Diaz Guerra, A. (1933). Diez años en Venezuela. Caracas: Editorial Elite.
