Cuzcatlan: Where the Southern Sea Beats

by Manlio Argueta, Clark Hansen (Translator)

A young doctor working in a hospital emergency room finds himself becoming numbed by the harshness of his routine and the drugs he administers to himself

Genres: Latin American, Fiction

255 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 1987

About the author

Argueta was born in San Miguel (El Salvador) on November 24, 1935. Argueta has stated that his exposure to “poetic sounds” began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from his childhood imagination. Argueta’s interest in literature was strongly influenced by the world literature he read as a teenager. Argueta began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Pablo Neruda and García Lorca as some of his early poetic influences. Although he was relatively unknown at the time, Argueta won a national prize for his poetry around 1956, which gained him some recognition among Salvadoran and Central American poets. As he became more involved with the literary community of El Salvador, Argueta became a member of the "Committed Generation". Because of his writings criticizing the government, Argueta was exiled to Costa Rica in 1972 and was not able to return to El Salvador until the 1990s. Argueta currently lives in El Salvador where he holds the position of Director of the National Public Library.

He belonged to a literary group by the name of Generación Comprometida (Committed Generation, referring to political and social commitment), also known as Círculo Literario Universitario (University Literary Circle), created by Italo López Vallecillos (1932-1986). Other members of the group included Roque Dalton (1935-1975), Alvaro Menen Desleal (1931-2000), Waldo Chávez Velasco (1932), Irma Lanzas (1933), Orlando Fresedo (1932), Mercedes Durand (1932-1998), Ricardo Bogrand (1932), and Mauricio de la Selva. Members of the group were revolutionary in both their writing and their political views, though some members claim that "Generación Comprometida" and "Círculo Literario Universitario" were two different groups, it's been said that "Generación Comprometida" would be formed three or four years after the "50's Generation", a group which would be formed by those writers whom started publishing between 1950 and 1952 and had been members of the “Cenáculo de Iniciación Literaria” such as Mercedes Durand, Irma Lanzas, Orlando Fresedo, Italo López Vallecillos, Waldo Chávez Velasco, Álvaro Menéndez Leal, Mauricio de la Selva and Ricardo Bogrand. The group sought to create social change in terms of the treatment of the lower class. But they also initiated rediscovery of cultural heritage to a certain extent. Manlio Argueta and his Committed Generation were heavily influenced by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist ideas. Existentialism is an outlook on life that emphasizes the existence, freedom, and actions of the individual. This perspective tends to be atheistic and stress human freedom and experience as a definition of existence as opposed to scientific definitions. Existentialists also do not believe in the existence of objective moral values.

Some of Argueta’s works include El valle de las Hamacas (Editorial Ariel, Buenos Aires, 1977), Un hombre por la patria (poetry, Editorial Universitaria, San Salvador, 1968), En el costado de la luz (poetry, EU, San Salvador, 1968), Caperucita en la zona roja / Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District (Casa de las Américas Prize 1977, various editions), Un día en la vida / One Day of Life (1980), Cuzcatlán, donde bate la mar del sur / Cuzcatlán, Where the Southern Sea Beats (1986), Milagro de la Paz / A Place Called Milagro de la Paz (San Salvador, Istmo Editores, 1995) Siglo de O(G)ro (San Salvador, DPI, 1997). A characteristic of Argueta’s writing style present in the majority of his works is the use of Salvadoran Spanish vernacular and slang. Argueta considers this a way to express and preserve some of El Salvador’s cultural identity.

Argueta is best known for his book One Day of Life, which has been translated into over 12 languages. The book takes the reader through one day of the life of Lupe, the main character. Lupe is a grandmother in a small vi

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Venceremos, pero cuando ?

Bhaarat, Zhongguo, Nihon, Hanguk, Misr, Hayastan---these are the names of old countries, well-known throughout the world as ancient civilizations, but by different names, names bestowed by those who contacted them from Europe---India, China, Japan, Korea, Egypt, Armenia. But there are other countries, smaller and poorer, not so much in the world's eye, that also bear the names given by others, mostly conquerors---Ichkeria, Kollasuyo, Aotearoa, Quisqueya, Cuzcatlan. Do these ring a bell ? Usually not. Chechnya, Bolivia, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador are what we know them as. And not only were these lands given new names, but their peoples were often conquered, pushed off their lands, exiled or even massacred. CUZCATLAN is a poem in prose, dedicated to the long-suffering people of "El Salvador", who were treated like cattle for centuries, butchered when they got in the way, fed on tortillas and salt---even beans were a luxury---with hardly any land, obliged to carry out feudal duties, no school, no health care, no rights, and no hope but to carry on. The book celebrates the beautiful land and its people; portrays the brutality of the ruling classes and the army/the guardia who enforced the rulers' will. The story follows a particular family through multiple generations, jumping back and forth in a rather confusing manner (not helped by the fact that several people have the same name) up to 1981, when the final incident takes place. Civil wars ultimately bring families face to face on opposite sides. What does justice dictate in such cases ?

While having every sympathy with the Cuzcatlan struggle for social justice and basic human rights, I would have to say that this novel is far from the best I have ever read. It reminded me of a mural by Rivera or Orozco, with heroic figures painted large and bright, surrounded by birds and flowers. The characters are very one-dimensional and the author's portrayal of them, not only repetitive but simple. You could read this because you want to know a local author's view of the tragedy of his country, but not because you are in search of great literature. Rather than a book by some gringo war correspondent, you could get a view from `the horse's mouth' so to speak, but it is full of platitudes, full of earnest but self-evident statements. Perhaps the translation could have been better---I don't know. I doubt if, even now, some 25 years after the end of the civil war, the poor people of Cuzcatlan have achieved what they dreamed of. Gangs have proliferated out of sight. By reading Argueta's novel, you may learn, at least, why they fought.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Manlio Argueta is a poet, which is a problem for “Cuzcatlan” (the name derives from an pre-Columbian Indian civilization in the area of what is now the coastal region of El Salvador). Not that there isn’t compelling material here – perhaps a surplus of it – a riven family, a bitter and brutal civil war, illness, death, bone-breaking poverty. Fate is to choose between indigo mills or disappearing into a mine. Even driving pigs to market can be a hazardous proposition. The family at the center of the novel counts as upwardly mobile in this region – they have figured out how to making a living out of carving rock into grinding stones. It all has the makings of interesting fiction—vital characters facing complex situations--but the narrative jumps around in time between the thirties and the eighties of the last century. Just as a section starts to gather momentum, we are suddenly thrust twenty years into the past or the future. The adolescent of one section suddenly becomes the aging patriarch or matriarch of the next. That kind of modernist artificiality can work; in this novel it tends not to. The technique disorients, even alienates the reader. Not that Arguedas is obliged to write another a novel that lopes along with the vicissitudes of the family, a la Buddenbrooks. But because the characters of “Cuzcatlan” do not have a sustained trajectory, the climactic act, already somewhat forced, is robbed of the impact it might otherwise have had. The political situation is never quite explained, which results in a generalized atmosphere in which the military and police do the violent bidding of the Salvadorean rich. That may have been true, but surely there were differences between various regimes. The one thing that changes is that a few of the characters in the chapters set in the eighties are working with the guerrillas. But even here there is little to none of the larger canvas of civil war and terror of those times. It was an era when guerrillas controlled large swaths of the countryside, students and union eladers were persecuted and assassinated, an Archbishop was assassinated while celebrating mass. Of this larger tapestry, only the American advisors are mentioned occasionally as sinister off-screen presences. The lack of greater context and the jumbled chronology are deliberate in Argueta’s search for greater focus, but they instead of revealing a coherent texture, these techniques disrupt it.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Thoughts are guardian angels."

"Memories are dreams seen from the other side."

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It follows four generations of a family living in rural El Salvador. Rather than just a simple narrative, Argueta weaves in aspects of magical realism, one of my favorite parts of Latin American fiction. This story also felt relevant to me at this moment because of the heightened racial injustice and police violence in the United States. We consider ourselves to be a better country, but reading about the authoritarian regime it is hard not to draw parallels to today.

[Andy Daitsman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange to read this book forty years after it was written and with all that has happened in El Salvador since then. Yet by looking deep into the experiences of Salvador’s poor over the short Twentieth Century it helps us understand how the gangs succeeded in collapsing state authority in the early Twenty-First Century. Out of print now, but it is very much worth reading for its literary quality and for the window it opens into the lives and culture of the country’s people.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had such high hopes for this book. First of all the description is not what the book is about. The book is about the El Salvadorian Civil War. In particular, a family that is followed through decades of the war. The book goes back-and-forth between the 1930s the 1960s and 1980s. Difficult to read as it seemed a repetitive commentary regarding the poverty of the peasants, the brutality of the soldiers and the misery of the life of these people.

[Jennifer Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great writing. Difficult story to follow through a few generations of family, although I grasped the gist. The people created from corn will survive, they will live on.