Moros y cristianos : Performing Ideological Dissent in Benito Pérez Galdós’s Doña Perfecta

Abstract

Moros y cristianos: Performing Ideological Dissent in Benito Pérez Galdós’s Doña Perfecta Sarah Sierra Pérez Galdós’s 1876 novel Doña Perfecta depicts the breakdown of the fictional micro-society of Orbajosa as the confrontation of ideologies is played out for the reader to witness. The failure to negotiate terms of coexistence begins with the arrival of the liberal outsider, Pepe Rey, into the sanctified space of the conservative rural town of Orbajosa. Pepe’s presence incites destabilization of the socio-cultural order that concludes with his murder, the insanity of his cousin and future wife, Rosario, and the outbreak of war between the Government and the outnumbered villagers.1 The tragic denouement is typically attributed to the intransigence of the conservative inhabitants of the backwater town; however, it must be emphasized that the townspeople invoke a historically significant reference – the glorious victory of the Christian Spaniards over the invading Moors – to confront the contemporary crisis of national homogenization threatening local identity. Indeed, criticism of the novel has recognized the suggestive presence of moros y cristianos as emblematic of the ideological conflict preventing a peaceful coexistence between liberals and conservatives.2 I contend here that the presence of moros y cristianos has a more prominent function in Doña Perfecta that demonstrates the danger of cultural symbols used as ideological weapons in socio-political crises. Orbajosan identity is nourished by the act of distinguishing members from non-members of the community. This process of differentiation had been fostered [End Page 31] by not only physical obstacles that limited access to Orbajosa, but also by the legal formalities in place to protect the inner sanctity of the community from external interventions. This process of differentiation is evidenced early in the novel when Pepe Rey’s guide into the village, el tío Licurgo, laments the loss of regulatory controls that kept outsiders from entering freely into Orbajosa. He nostalgically describes a time when Caballuco, the local cacique, was legally bound to control the borders of Orbajosa: “Cuando había fielato no podían con él, y todas las noches sonaban tiros en las puertas de la ciudad… […] Favorece a los pobres, y el que venga de fuera y se atreva a tentar el pelo de la ropa a un hijo de Orbajosa, ya puede verse con él” (80–1). Doña Perfecta, likewise, had a barrier constructed in order to prevent intruders from entering her private garden, as Licurgo remarks when Pepe suggests entering through the back (84). In spite of her efforts, the physical barrier is an inadequate measure for keeping outsiders from invading the sacred space of her land and, by extension, Orbajosa. Since these barriers are ineffectual or even illegal in the new political climate, the townspeople resort to ideological methods for preventing outsiders, especially those associated with the invading centralized government, from disturbing the sanctity of its cultural world order. This analysis is specifically interested in the Orbajosans’ implementation of the concept of moros y cristianos in response to the impending siege of modernization that favored a national culture over that of local identities. It will be shown that the inhabitants ascribe to their perceived present day crisis the moros y cristianos paradigm that ultimately justifies the murder of Pepe Rey. In contemporary criticism, culture is considered as a web of meanings that are emblemized in humanly constructed or assigned symbols. However, the notion of a complex whole of meanings that constituted culture was first described by the father of Anthropology, Edward B. Tylor, in his seminal definition from 1871: “Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (1). During this same period, Spanish intellectuals began to examine different aspects of the complex whole of culture in the new field of Anthropology. The mainstream anthropologists tended to focus on physical attributes – such as body shaping – that contributed to human collective behavior. Culture, considered as a set of humanly created behaviors, was under the purview of Ethnology – one of the sub-categories of nineteenth-century...