# Folktales, Racist Discourse, and Class Struggles in Afro-Venezuelan Literature. Part V

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Brer_Rabbit_and_the_Tar_Baby.jpg/399px-Brer_Rabbit_and_the_Tar_Baby.jpg [Fuente](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brer_Rabbit_and_the_Tar_Baby.jpg)</center>

*Greetings, everybody*
*Thank you for accompanying us in the development of this topic. To finish the series, let us now take a look at the last novel, **Nochebuena Negra,** and how the folktale characters are used here.*

You can check the previous publications in the following links:
Part I:
https://steemit.com/powerhousecreatives/@hlezama/folktales-race-and-class-struggles-in-afro-venezuelan-literature 
Part II: 
https://steemit.com/powerhousecreatives/@hlezama/folktales-racist-discourse-and-class-struggles-in-afro-venezuelan-literature-part-ii 

Part III: 
https://steemit.com/powerhousecreatives/@hlezama/folktales-racist-discourse-and-class-struggles-in-afro-venezuelan-literature-part-iii 
Part IV
https://steemit.com/powerhousecreatives/@hlezama/folktales-racist-discourse-and-class-struggles-in-afro-venezuelan-literature-part-iv 

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# Conejo de Nochebuena Negra 

<center>http://www.elperroylarana.gob.ve/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/nochebuena_negra.jpg [Fuente](http://www.elperroylarana.gob.ve/nochebuena-negra/)</center>

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<div class = "text-justify">Juan Pablo Sojo’s <em>Nochebuena Negra</em> (1943) has been praised as <B>“the most important fictional affirmation of black culture published to date in Venezuela” </B> (Lewis 2). It shares the same artistic and social elements most Venezuelan novels on the subject have (<em>realismo mágico, costumbrismo</em>, historical references, miscegenation, tragic mulattoes, etc); yet, Juan Pablo Sojo’s approach does not privilege white culture; on the contrary, Sojo considers the possibility of preserving Afro-Venezuelan traditions, and criticizes the dominant culture for perpetuating the socio-economic gap and succumbing to “whiskey, dances, tennis, and elegance. The whole history of a Society” (176).</div>

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<div class = "text-justify"><B>Luis Pantoja</B>, the newly arrived administrator at the Sarabias’ hacienda, is Don Gisberto’s nephew. His appointment is a surprise for <B>Crisanto Marasma</B> (the butler), who feels fooled because Don Gisberto did not grant him that promised position. Crisanto is the father of <B>Pedro</B> and Deogracia. Pedro, the progressive son who left Barlovento to pursue an education and a better life in the capital, becomes a key character in the novel. He would fall in love with <B>Consuelo</B>, Don Gisberto’s niece. <B>Because of class and racial issues, this romance will be forbidden and the two lovers will have to conform to the social norms and continue their lives separate ways</B>.</div>

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<div class = "text-justify">But, this romance is marginal to the more transcendental events in the novel. There are at least five parallel stories that are told and all of them are inter-connected by the racial and class tensions that drive the characters’ world. We read, like déjà vu, phrases that resonate from other Afro-Venezuelan texts: <em>“they were all ingenuous people, ‘poor blacks’ from Barlovento”</em>  (16); <em>“the soul of blacks is like the soul of singing springs, clear and ebullient”</em>  (17); <em>“[no matter for how long I worked]I never ended paying back the one hundred and fifty pesos that Dr. Goyo paid for me...”</em>  (42); <em>“It is the office that has evoluved in them,  a race of tree felling peons, or head-choppers in the civil war raids”</em> (44); or <em>“The Indian is vile to death”</em> (78).</div> 

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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V-R1bYvQZSc/SuxDkyhon_I/AAAAAAAAAAM/UvBLTUXnTm4/s320/barrancas2foto2a.jpg [Source](http://proceresdevenezuelaseccion832.blogspot.com/2009/10/nacido-en-caracas-en-1530-y-guerrero-de.html)

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<div class = "text-justify">Thus, in the same way we see fierce animosity against the <em>zambos</em>  in <em>Pobre Negro</em>, en <em>Nochebuena Negra</em> it is against the Indians that some of the attacks are directed. And, it is precisely through a Tío Conejo story that the author chooses to set up the scene that will pretty much define the tone of the novel. <B>Lino Bembetoyo</B> is the Negro Malo of Sojo’s novel. He is an oversexed black, and he takes pride in it. He hates whites as much as he hates Indians; but his dislike of Indians comes more from ignorance and prejudice than from actual experience. <B>Guaraco</B>, his brother in law, is an Indian. He was a foreman at the hacienda of Dr Goyo. <em>“He came running away from the hacienda after swimming across the Tuy [river] and show up at Lino’s shack...”</em>  (27). Lino could hide his in-law well enough not to be found in days, but he could not stand Guaraco’s sneer.</div>

http://d.facdn.net/art/kenket/1192715653/1192715653.kenket_brer.jpg [Fuente](http://www.furaffinity.net/view/849769/) 

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<div class = "text-justify">Thus, during a gathering at his house, Lino decides to get even at Guaraco, who had subtly alerted his sister that Lino was flirting with one of the guests (28). <em>“This is a tail of when animals could  talk,”</em>  he begins. <em> “Rabbit, who was the most Indian of the herd, for his cunning, went to father God and told him...”</em>  Thus, Lino tells his version of how rabbit got his big ears. The rabbit, according to Lino, having successfully completed the tasks, despite his physical disadvantages, earned Papa Dios’ cautionary remark: <em>“‘Indian and rabbit are the same thing because of their cunning! If I make you bigger, my son, what would be of the other animals, if being as little as you are now you have done everything I asked from you?’... That’s why you can’t trust either a rabbit or an Indian!”</em> Lino concluded.</div>

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<div class = "text-justify">As I mentioned in early in the series, Guaraco’s smile had to do with his listening to the praising his boss was receiving; he, who had worked for the doctor, knew what kind of a trickster Goyo was. After Guaraco tells Lino the details of how Dr Goyo got rich <em>“out of extortions and criminal expropriations,”</em> and all the things he became a victim of, <em>“Lino understood the hatred and despise hiding behind that sneer of the Indian. Guaraco had a man’s heart”</em>  (43).</div>

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<div class = "text-justify">By allowing Lino and Guaraco to become allies against a common enemy, Sojo denounces the pernicious divide-and-conquer practice surreptitiously imposed by centuries of racist colonization. The fact that the animosity among non-white groups can lead them to recur to what otherwise could be used as their folk hero to denigrate one another, demonstrates the extent to which dominant ideologies and classicist/racist essentialism permeates the most fundamental layer of cultural manifestation to become part of the psyche of those who are meant to always be subjected.</div>

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<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Zambo.jpg/350px-Zambo.jpg [Source](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambo_(casta))</center>

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<div class = "text-justify">Despite the alleged lack of racism in Venezuela, we know that the colonial discourse established the foundations for a profound disregard for any skin pigmentation other than white and that, “interpolated” by this discourse, both whites and non-whites (<em>mestizos</em>, blacks, Indians, and <em>zambos</em> —probably in that hierarchical order) have historically attacked or (at best) competed against each other. Tío Conejo stories have been part of this dynamic/discourse; it has been appropriated by multiple voices, for multiple purposes; he has become, then, some kind of liminal space, the wanted/rejected inheritance, associated at times with the best/most subversive part of the Venezuelan roots, but often times with what Venezuelans, as a post-colonial nation, think is the worst of their racial mixture: the cunning of the Indian, the laziness of the mulatto, the untrustworthiness of the <em>zambo</em>.</div>


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# Thanks for your visit

## <center>Obras Citadas o Consultadas</center>

**Arraiz**, Antonio. Tío Tigre y Tío Conejo. Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1980.
**Díaz** Sánchez, Ramón. Cumboto. Caracas: Editorial Panapo, 1997. 
---. Paisaje Histórico de la Cultura Venezolana. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1965.
**Gallegos**, Rómulo. Pobre Negro. Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1945.
**Lewis** Marvin. Ethnicity and Identity in Contemporary Afro-Venezuelan Literature. Columbia: U. of Missouri P., 1992. 
**Piquet**, Daniel. La Cultura Afrovenezolana. Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1982.  
**Ramos** Guedez, José Marcial. El Negro en la Novela Venezolana.  Caracas: UCV, 1980.
**Sojo**, Juan Pablo. Nochebuena Negra. Caracas: Editorial General Rafael Urdaneta, 1943.
**Wright**, Winthrop R. Café Con Leche. Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela. Austin: U. of Texas P., 1993.



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