Abstract
Eljaiek-Rodríguez analyzes how the figures of the vampire and the zombie (the undead) are used in horror cinema of the Caribbean. Considering that the cannibal and the zombie are figures created by Europeans in Caribbean contexts, the author analyzes how contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican horror films reappropriate them. This reappropriation is read as a way directors suggest the complexities of historical and political events relevant to Cuba and Puerto Rico. Through this analysis, the author problematizes the colonial principle in which the hot-lands of the Caribbean are synonymous with Otherness and barbarism.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Padrón in Vampirenkommando, this exile occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.
- 2.
Jose Celestino Mutis was a Spanish priest, scientist, and botanist. He led the Spanish Royal Botanical Expedition in 1783, an enterprise that extended for a period of 25 years and “contributed to the reinvention of Equinoctial America” (Pérez Mejía, 19, my translation). He maintained an active correspondence with different scientists around the world, particularly with Linnaeus (Pérez Mejía, 18), as well as with Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland. These expeditions reshaped the idea of the continent and the approaches that Europe and other colonial powers would adopt in relation to South America. According to Mary Louise Pratt , “Alexander von Humboldt reinvented South America first and foremost as nature” (120).
- 3.
During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the United States maintained an active political and military interventionism in Latin America, particularly in Central America and the Caribbean. A series of invasions and occupations started with the American government in Cuba in 1898 (along with the second rule of the island from 1906 to 1909, and then again from 1917 to 1922). Some “highlights” of this period were the construction of the Panama Canal in 1903, and the occupations of the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924, Haiti from 1915 to 1934, and Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933. Given the difficulty of displaying a military intervention in South America, the approach was more at a representational level. As stated by Salvatore, “during the period 1890–1930, a variety of representational practices converged to constitute South America as a textual space for the projection of the cultural anxieties of an expansive commercial culture and power, the United States” (93).
- 4.
Vampirism as a metaphor for exploitation is a recurrent trope in gothic novels since the nineteenth century. Many protagonists of vampire novels are noble members of ruling classes: Dracula is a count, Varney is a nobleman (protagonist of Varney the Vampyre [1847] by James Malcolm Rymer), and Orlok is a count as well (protagonist of the film Nosferatu [1922] by F.W. Murnau, loosely based on Dracula).
The use of the vampire as a metaphor for exploitation can also be found in non-literary sources, such as Marx’s and Engels’s writings. According to Timothy Robinson, “Marx associates vampires with the British bourgeoisie, calling their exploitation of the working class ‘vampire-like’ […] In the same vein, Frederick Engels also uses the vampire as metaphor in his essay ‘Labour Movement’ (1845)” (76).
- 5.
The book is a criticism of American colonialism, and of some of its more iconic cultural products. Highly influential in the 1970s and 1980s, it is considered one of the seminal works of Latin American cultural studies. Referring to the asexuality of the Disney universe, the authors affirm that “is a universe of great/uncles, uncles, nephews, cousins, and also in the relation male-female an eternal engagement” (24, my translation).
- 6.
The term mestizo is used to denote the mixture of elements and cultures that Padrón intersects in his protagonist. According to Ilona Katzew , “mestizo referred to culturally mixed peoples in general and to the combination of Spaniards and Indians in particular” (43).
- 7.
Gerardo Machado was the fifth president of the Cuban Republic, in office from 1925 to 1933. Machado favored the ruling classes to the detriment of an impoverished population which he violently repressed. Repudiated as a dictator by the Cuban opposition and by the US government, his deposition was used as a way to strengthen American interventionism. As Stephen Randal and Graeme Mount assert, “during and after the protectorate, the U.S. sought to contain the stirring of Cuban nationalism and the perceived dangers of a labour movement, a danger to both American capital and U.S. control over Cuban political agendas. Such concerns were strong in the early 1920s when there were frequent labour disputes and reached a crescendo in the late 1920s and early 1930s when the lengthy and increasingly repressive administration of Gerardo Machado (1925–1933) unraveled and in its wake left several years of political uncertainty as contending forces of the right, left and centre maneuvered for pre-eminence. That uncertain environment of course provided an opening for more radical labour and political elements, with the result that Washington greeted with relief in 1933 the emergence of a conservative, military-backed regime under Sergeant Fulgencio Batista as a replacement for the more liberal but ineffectual government of Grau San Martin” (63–63).
- 8.
According to Peter Hulme , the entry in Columbus’s journal on 23 November 1492 “is the first appearance of the word ‘canibales’ in a European text, and it is linked immediately with the practice of eating human flesh. The journal is, therefore, in some sense at least, a ‘beginning text’” (17).
- 9.
Rey del mundo is an eternally drunk, possibly homeless secondary character that appears both in Vampires in Havana and in More Vampires in Havana. Although that is not his real name, the denomination comes from the fact that he uses the expression “rey del mundo” to address everyone in the street, when asking for cigars. His name is also a comedic reference to the famous Cuban-owned brand of cigars “Rey del mundo.”
- 10.
Boredom in the case of Interview the Vampire and solitude in the case of Vlad.
- 11.
The expansion is figured out by how far it moves from centers of contemporary zombie representation, like the United States and Europe.
- 12.
Dayan makes it clear that the use of horrific images to justify imperialist claims goes far beyond the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century: “The film White Zombie (1932), and books like William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929) and John Hutson [sic] Craige’s Black Bagdad helped to justify the ‘civilizing’ presence of the marines in ‘barbaric’ Haiti ” (37–38).
- 13.
Bishop classifies this film among the apocalyptic kind: “Apocalyptic narratives, then, particularly those featuring zombie invasions, offer a worst-case scenario for the collapse of all American social and governmental structures. Once people start to die at an uncontrollable rate, panic rages through all levels of the government and the military […] and most are more interested in saving themselves and their families than simply doing their jobs” (23).
- 14.
Christian Evangelicals firmly believe in an apocalyptic “end of times,” a period of tribulations and destruction that, allegedly, can be foreseen in political struggles and natural disasters. Tara Isabella Burton defines this period as “a time when, according to some evangelical traditions, believing Christians will be suddenly and unexpectedly ‘raptured’ up to heaven before the events that presage the end of the world. In most accounts of the rapture, believers go straight to heaven, while nonbelievers are left behind to undergo a period of political chaos and personal torment.” For her “the narratives around the ‘end times’ and the ‘rapture’ are largely an American phenomenon.”
- 15.
“Boricua” is a Puerto Rican demonym. It refers to the Taino name of the island, Borinquen.
- 16.
For Halberstam “sexuality [is] the dominant mark of otherness” in gothic narratives, encompassing racial, national, and class differences in itself. In his book Skin Shows she suggests that “where the foreign and the sexual merge within monstrosity in Gothic, a particular history of sexuality unfolds” (7).
- 17.
María was a category 5 hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico on 20 September 2017. One of the worst natural disasters recorded on the island it caused hundreds of casualties and billions of dollars in material loses. Despite the official body count of 64, news agencies such as the New York Times, CNN, and Vox as well as researchers in Puerto Rico and the United States have estimated more than 1000 deaths (including the victims of the subsequent blackout and of the diseases caused because of the flooding). The governmental response was highly criticized, including the initial negative waiving of the Jones Act. According to Oxfam America’s president Abby Maxman, “Oxfam has monitored the response in Puerto Rico closely, and we are outraged at the slow and inadequate response the US Government has mounted.” He added that “Oxfam rarely responds to humanitarian emergencies in the US and other wealthy countries, but as the situation in Puerto Rico worsens and the federal government’s response continues to falter, we have decided to step in.”
- 18.
In 1974 Andy Warhol produced and Paul Morrissey directed Blood for Dracula, a very peculiar version of the story where a sick Dracula travels to Italy in search of virgin blood. Udo Kier famously portrays this 70s-looking Dracula .
- 19.
By making clear the plagiarism—Celestino exclaims, interrupting Nicolás’s discourse on love, “Oh, that is Ovid in Ars Amatoria”—Sánchez mocks the gothic genre, a movement famous for faking ruins and using images of an idealized antiquity.
- 20.
As a wink to the audience, the last name of the vampire hunter—Krank—is the German word for “sick” or “ill,” a fact that could refer to the old age of the character, but given the tone of the movie more likely refers to his excessive interest in sexual topics.
- 21.
This woodcut print was made in Strasbourg in the 1500s, and is based on an account by Matthias Hupfuff.
- 22.
The Chupacabras is a cryptozoological monster first described in Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s. After the initial description, it was adopted in several other Latin American countries, sometimes as a sign of resistance to American interventionism. According to Benjamín Radford, “descriptions of the chupacabra vary widely, but many accounts suggest that the creature stands about four to five feet tall. It has short but powerful legs that allow it to leap fantastic distances, long claws, and terrifying black or glowing red eyes. Some claim it has spikes down its back; others report seeing stubby, bat-like wings.”
- 23.
In Night of the Living Dead the only African American protagonist, and lone survivor, is shot by police officers at the end of the film.
- 24.
However, as stated by Subero , there are characters that exist only to ensure that Juan and Lázaro are even more visible: “La China y el Primo primarily serve as smokescreens for traditional notions of machismo and compadrazgo as they are understood in mainstream society. The type of queer masculinity that such characters display will ensure that homosocial relations between the two main protagonists […] always remain at the interstice of, or beyond, same-sex desire” (165).
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Filmography
Celestino y el vampiro. Dir. Radamés Sánchez. Radolcam, 2003.
Dawn of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Dawn Associates, 1978b.
Fido. Dir. Andrew Currie. Lions Gate Films, 2006.
I Walked with a Zombie. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. RKO Pictures, 1943.
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. Dir. Neil Jordan. Geffen Pictures, 1994.
Juan de los muertos. Dir. Alejandro Brugués, 2010.
Más vampiros en la Habana. Dir. Juan Padrón, 2003.
Night of the Living Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Image Ten, 1968.
Salem’s Lot. Dir. Tobe Hooper, 1979.
Shaun of the Dead. Dir. Edgar Wright. Universal Pictures, 2004.
The Green Inferno. Eli Roth. Worldview Entertainment, 2013.
The Walking Dead. Cr. Frank Darabont. American Movie Classics (AMC), 2010–2018.
Vampiros en la Habana. Dir. Juan Padrón, 1985.
White Zombie. Dir. Victor Halperin. United Artists, 1932.
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Eljaiek-Rodríguez, G. (2018). Caribbean Monsters: Gothic Migrants in the “Hot-Lands”. In: The Migration and Politics of Monsters in Latin American Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97250-3_2
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