Chiapas Cycle Blues: Rosario Castellanos's Fictional Prose as Affective Mapping

Abstract

Rosario Castellanos published three works of fiction set in Chiapas, Mexico: Balún Canán (1957), Ciudad Real (1960), and Oficio de tinieblas (1962). This article contends that each exhibits affective mapping, a term coined by Jonathan Flatley to describe the application of affect, emotion, and feeling to a space or time to confront a problem. In Castellanos' own words, the problem is the misery with which she perceives Chiapas to be imbued, especially in Maya Tzotzil and Tzeltal communities. From the mid 1960s nearly until her death, Castellanos voiced dismay in epistolary, essays, and op-eds at the inability of Official Indigenismo—Mexican state policy designed to improve the conditions for Indigenous peoples—to resolve this misery. Crafting complexly emotional fictional characters and dialogues allowed Castellanos to map affect and trace the misery which so troubled her back to prevailing systems of social inequality in a Chiapas dominated by ladinos—the state's wealthy non-Indigenous landowners. It is ladino affects;—anger, rage, fear, and anxiety—which Castellanos' fiction cites as the point of origin for the Chiapas status quo. This article argues for an affect studies approach to Castellanos' works as a productive means of both broadening and deepening readings of her corpus.