"One Day of Life" One Day of Life: Argueta’s Post-colonial Manifesto Manlio Argueta’s One Day of Life is a novel of El Salvador that covers the span of fifty years, and centers its plot during the 1970’s; a period marked by violence and brutality. Though El Salvador gained independence from its original Spanish colonizers in 1840, the indigenous people of this country continue to suffer and fight against the crushing forces of oppression and discrimination from the remaining Spanish aristocracy, resulting in civil war funded by the United States (Timeline). The 20th century in El Salvador may be viewed as a period of “neo-colonization,” by the United States socially, culturally, and economically as the process of modernization dramatically affected the future of the country and gave the aristocracy a stronger stance. One Day of Life portrays this peasant struggle against violent Western influence, and simultaneously presents key post-colonial issues that permeate El Salvadoran culture. Through the recollections of the protagonist, Guadalupe Guardado, Argueta demonstrates the dilemma of the Catholic Church in relation to the rapidly changing El Salvadoran regime. The book, divided into chapters labeled by the twelve hours of Guadalupe’s day, begins with her awakening to a typical day as a peasant woman. No more than a page later, Guadalupe begins to reminisce about her past. Much of this novel is conveyed through these memories, many of which narrate the evolution of the Catholic Church. In the third chapter “Lupe” recalls, Once upon a time the priests would come and hold Mass in the Detour’s chapel…they’d tell us not to worry, that heaven was ours, that on earth we should live humbly but that in the kingdom of heaven we would be happy. That we shouldn’t care about worldly things….they’d recommend resignation….We have never gotten anything from the church. Only given…it simply taught us resignation…. (Argueta 20 and 31). This attitude on the part of the Catholic priests is one that is complacent in regards to injustice, and submissive to the oppressive rule. Their “methods” can be easily explained in milieu of El Salvador’s religious history. The priests Lupe first talks about belong to a very conservative order of the Catholic Church which did not meddle with the conditions of the peasant peoples (Spirituality 1). They do nothing for the people outside their priestly orders, thus they are in essence ruling under the oppressive power, hindering the possibility of any kind of improvement for their laity. Soon, however, Lupe claims that her world began to change as did the face of the El Salvadoran religion and regime. Instead of turning their backs to injustice, the priests too, began to change. She states, “And when they changed, we also began to change. It was nicer that way. Knowing that something called rights existed. The right to health care, to food, to schooling for our children. If it hadn’t been for the priests, we wouldn’t have found out about those things that are in our interest” (Argueta 31). Lupe then goes on to explain how the death squads hated these priests because they were putting ideas into the peoples’ heads, and called them “reds” or “commie priests” (Argueta 35-36). This response of hatred from the death squads is logical according to their oppressive mentality. Death squads were trained by American men, and were thus thoroughly convinced that any opposition to authority was a manifested form of communism. Though this may seem highly irrational, in the 1930’s the “red scare” permeated the United States, and in this novel, it appears to have reached El Salvador. Furthermore, “a form of Catholicism called Liberation Theology emerged in the 1930’s in response to political repression and hardships. Luis Chavez Gonzalez, archbishop from 1939 to 1977, also encouraged peasant co-operatives” (Spirituality 1). As Catholicism took a turn in Latin America, the priests of El Salvador were now educating the people and opening their eyes to the oppressive power; religion no longer supported injustice and priests took the role of liberationists. Lupe makes references to this change in education and also reveals that these priests would come out and talk with the people, give their children presents, and aid the peasant men when they were ill-treated. Consequently, the Vatican II renewal of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960’s also called for a more drastic and “overtly political movement” in Latin America (Spirituality 1). This created the “grassroots communities” Lupe recalls. According to a source, “these communities were created to encourage church members to work actively for political and social change. Priests and other religious workers met with parishioners to study the Bible and discuss how the parishioners could work to improve their lives” (Spirituality 1). This movement directly correlates with Lupe’s descriptions of the new and involved young priests. The people are able to gain momentum to oppose injustice through this Church reform. It is at this point in the novel that Lupe talks about how her husband Chepe, and the other men of their small town, Chalate, began to form unions with the help of these new priests. Just as the priests began to inform the peasant men of their rights, Chepe too begins to make Lupe aware of their dangerous situation and prepares her for the hardships to come. He tells her that she and the rest of the women in the Chalate community have to be strong in order to withstand the pain they will suffer in their struggle for human rights. Clearly, Argueta demonstrates that religion plays a key role in the communal awakening of the peasant peoples in El Salvador. The post-colonial concept of self-betrayal manifests itself in the characters of the “authorities,” as they have been brainwashed by a racist Western world. This is one of the most horrific and disheartening illustrations in One Day of Life. Interspersed throughout the novel of Lupe’s day are three different monologues which “likewise provide details and insight into the violence permeating Salvadoran life” (Contemporary Authors 1). In a monologue labeled “The Authorities,” a young man says, “We latinos are neither here nor there in this nice little bullshit color of ours. It would have been better had we been either Indians or whites, without any in-betweens. It’s necessary to define oneself….” (Argueta 94-95). This young man (later revealed to be Private Martinez, son of Lupe’s neighbor) has been brainwashed enough to see the differences of his Mestizo peoples as an inferiority, causing him to feel hatred and turn against his very own race. His self-hatred extends to the point of stating, “We had the bad luck of being conquered by the Spanish, who are nothing but drunkards….What’s more, the English killed off the Indians but the Spaniards didn’t. That was a big mistake” (Argueta 94). This concept of self-hate is one that is very common among colonized peoples. Despite the fact that El Salvador has been independent for more than one hundred years, these brainwashed death squad members still feel inferior to other “pure bred” races. It is not helpful that the Civil War in El Salvador was supported by the United States, which consequently gave $6 billion in military aid to this small country, making it the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid next to Israel (Moakley 1). In addition to monetary aid, American military volunteers trained several of the death squads in El Salvador. Now these oppressed individuals saw a new race, in addition to the Spanish aristocracy, to which they also felt inferior: a successful and predominantly Caucasian Western race. It is not a surprise then, that the officials in One Day of Life embrace anything Western with an eagerness that may seem ridiculous; their self-betrayal causes them to grasp on to anything that would elevate them to a higher status, even if it means joining a death squad. In response to others, even their own families, the authorities coolly explain, “One must be ready to defend the country against its enemies even at the expense of our own brothers…even at the expense of our mother…the Western world is in danger and we know that the worst danger to the Western world is what they call ‘the people’” (Argueta 92). Thus, their self-betrayal further extends to a betrayal of their own people, of their own mothers. A critic writes, The novel also shows how members of death squads can rise from the ranks of peasants themselves… ‘Reading the letters is depressing because they throw into sharp focus the fear and suspicion that the authorities harbor toward their own people. The man himself is a peasant but after months with his ‘foreign’ instructors he regards his own people with icy contempt’ (qtd. in Contemporary Authors 4). The authorities’ disrespect does not stop with the peasant peoples. They mock the Church and commit horrible brutalize the priests; in their presence, no one is safe from their wrath. Disdain is not kept from their own country as they perceive it to be backward and ignorant in contrast to the Western world. Armed with machine guns and hatred, their self-betrayal allows them to commit ghastly deeds, blind to the fact that they are in turn lowering their status in the eyes of their own race. Feminism plays a key part in One Day of Life as the female protagonist, Lupe, represents a minority within the larger minority. Caslin writes, “both discourses [feminism and post-colonialism] are predominantly political and concern themselves with the struggle against oppression and injustice” (Caslin 1). Perhaps Lupe herself is neither physically harmed nor abused by the death squads, but she represents the head of a family that has experienced merciless brutality. Throughout her day, and in the midst of her daily chores, Lupe recounts the violent incidents of her son’s death, her son-in-law’s imprisonment, and her own husband’s cruel humiliation. She does not, however, fail to mention the machismo and disrespect towards women characterized by the authorities as well; several times they refer to the women as “whores” or animal-like sexual beings. The authority writes, “Well, look, all these women are whores; to be a woman is to have been a whore….my sisters are nothing different. They, like all women have been going around searching for husbands from when they were little; I mean at fifteen they were hankering to go off with someone….” (Argueta 128 and 131). The women are unjustly labeled whores, and Caslin says, “Both women and ‘natives’ are minority groups who are unfairly defined by the intrusive ‘male gaze’ (Caslin 1). Argueta chooses to place Lupe as the heroine of his novel because she overcomes the oppressive death squad forces by not letting them see her shed a single tear over the death of her son, or the fatal beating of her husband, Chepe. Additionally, she is able to surpass the gender discrimination, a “double-colonization” that has become a factor of her daily life by choosing to ignore the insults of the authorities (Caslin 2). In regards to the character of Lupe, a critic suggests, “By describing her situation the author highlights the formerly ‘invisible beings’ living in El Salvador and Central America” (Dictionary in Literary Biography 6). Upon further reading, one discovers that the novel also centers on Lupe’s granddaughter, Adolfina. Adolfina is a character that embodies feminism on the rise. Through her monologue it is made clear that Adolfina, a mere adolescent, has already participated in two union demonstrations with the men of her community to demand workers’ rights. She does not tolerate the authorities’ insolence, something which worries Lupe very much. Lupe realizes, however, that she cannot detain Adolfina from fighting for her rights; deep inside Lupe understands that Adolfina is the outspoken version of herself. This is evident towards the end of the novel when Adolfina fails to recognize her disfigured grandfather the authorities drag to her grandmother’s hut. She handles the authorities’ questions with dignity, and boldly tells them that they are merely “wasting her time.” Lupe, however, does recognize her nearly-dead husband, but denies knowing him, just as he had once instructed her to do. Though she did not realize that the man was her grandfather, Argueta chooses to show Adolfina’s intuitive side as she tells her grandmother of a vision she often sees in which one of the authorities is violently beaten. The novel ends with Adolfina saying, “My heart told me, and up to now my heart has never lied to me,” Lupe then confesses, “A shiver runs through my body as I light the candles” (Argueta 215). Adolfina had spoken the very same words that Lupe once delivered to Chepe. In this, Argueta shows the strength and power of a woman’s intuition, and foreshadows changing times. More than one hundred years after its independence from Spain, El Salvador is still beset with the inner turmoil that post-colonial issues often bring. One Day of Life showcases this struggle of the colonized peasants against an old aristocratic regime to the world through its richly embedded post-colonial concepts. Religion, self-betrayal, and feminism are just a few of many issues that continue to plague Latin American countries. Yet, it is through novels like Argueta’s that one can begin to understand the experiences and repression of other cultures as a result of post-colonialism.
Works Cited
Argueta, Manlio. One Day of Life. Trans. Bill Brow. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.
BBC News UK Edition. Timeline: El Salvador. 2004. 10 March 2005.
