Mulata by Miguel Ángel Asturias

First published:Mulata de tal, 1963 (English translation, 1967)

Type of plot: Symbolic allegory

Time of work: The 1960’s

Locale: Quiavicús and Tierrapaulita, Guatemala

Principal Characters:

• Celestino Yumí, a poor Guatemalan peasant who yearns for riches and importance
• Catalina Zabala, Yumí’s loving wife
• The Mulata, a haunting, lusty woman whom Yumí marries on their first meeting

The Novel

Miguel Aacute;ngel Asturias bases Mulata on a popular Guatemalan legend—that of a man who sells his wife to the devil in exchange for unlimited wealth. The novel begins with Celestino Yumí parading through the religious fairs of the countryside around Quiavicús with the zipper of his pants open, in compliance with a bargain he has struck with Tazol, the corn-husk devil. In this way, Yumí will cause women to commit sins by looking at his private parts and then compound those sins by their accepting Communion without going again to confession. Successful in luring the women, Yumí is next informed by Tazol that, to complete the bargain whereby Yumí will become wealthy beyond his dreams, he has to hand over his wife, Catalina Zabala, to Tazol. Yumí is hesitant at first, but the promise of riches, importance, and power proves too much, and he finally consents. Tazol takes possession of Catalina, or Niniloj, as Yumí calls her, and grants Yumí his fondest wishes—lands, crops, and money in abundance.

Once rich, Yumí discovers that what Tazol had told him is true: Everyone asks for and respects his opinion on anything and everything—as Yumí himself remarks, “Just because I’m rich, not because I know anything.” Yet Yumí finds that riches and power cannot compensate for the loss of his wife; he yearns for her love and takes to drinking and carousing. While at a religious festival with his friend Timoteo Teo Timoteo, he encounters the Mulata. Drunk and instantly overcome with lust for this ripe and haunting woman, Yumí marries her in a civil ceremony and carries her home. There, in their marriage bed, Yumí discovers that the Mulata, much to his chagrin and embarrassment, is bisexual and dangerous. As much animal as human, she dominates and torments him in such a way that Yumí finds it excrutiatingly terrifying to lie with her. He tries to undo the bargain with Tazol, and he succeeds in reacquiring Catalina, who has been turned into a dwarf by Tazol. Catalina comes to live with Yumí and his new wife, and the Mulata at first accepts her as a living doll with which to play but quickly tires of the idea and prefers to mistreat her. Yumí and Catalina hope to rid the household of the Mulata, and Catalina, in a clever ruse, with the help of the Mulata’s bear, lures the Mulata to the cave of the Grumpy Bird and seals her in, but the Mulata eats the bird and escapes, provoking in the process a cataclysmic volcanic eruption that destroys Quiavicús and all of Yumí’s wealth.

Now, even more destitute than before the bargain with Tazol, Yumí has no idea of what to do. Catalina, who in her dealings with Tazol and the Mulata has acquired a taste for witchcraft, convinces Yumí to journey with her to Tierrapaulita, the city where all those who wish to learn the black arts must go. Unable to traverse the devil’s nine turns, they turn back, then try again. This time, Catalina fastens to her chest a cross in Tazol’s image, fashioned of dry corn leaves, and the devil’s powers are neutralized. In this way, they make their way to Tierrapaulita with Tazol as protector, even though the devil himself fears entering Tierrapaulita.

Yumí and Catalina find Tierrapaulita such a fantastic and terrifying place that, despite their lust for the power that witchcraft will bring them, they decide to leave. Cashtoc, the Immense, the red earth demon of Indian myth, prevents them from leaving, employing other demons from Xibalba, the Mayan hell. Catalina gives birth to Tazolín (having been impregnated through the naval by Tazol) and is pronounced the great Giroma, the powerful mother witch. Taking vengeance on Yumí for his bargain with Tazol and his marriage to the Mulata, Catalina turns him into a dwarf, only to change her mind later, when, jealous of the attentions paid him by the dwarf Huasanga, she transforms him into a giant.

This act and Huasanga’s cries precipitate an earthquake during which Cashtoc calls his legions together and removes them and all the sorcerers from Tierrapaulita, destroying the city in the process. Cashtoc empties the town because he realizes that the Christian demon Cadanga has arrived and with him “the ones who will demand generations of men without any reason for being, without any magic words, unfortunate in the nothingness and the emptiness of their ego.”

Yumí and Catalina, along with other witches, wizards, and sorcerers, abandon the retreat of Cashtoc and return to Tierrapaulita, only to find that their powers are nonexistent now that Cadanga, the Christian demon, is dominant. In a nightmarish ceremony, Yumí, in the guise of a pockmarked Indian, representing the Christian demon Cadanga, does battle with the Mulata, in the form of the new sexton, representing Cashtoc. Recognizing each other despite their disguises, Yumí and the Mulata engage in a battle of wits, during which the Mulata, in order to save Yumí (who has become a hedgehog and is fighting with the priest, who has become a spider with eleven thousand legs and arms), resumes her form and with a magic mist immobilizes the combatants. In a subsequent Requiem Mass, the Mulata is married to Yumí (still in hedgehog form) for an eternity of death.

As punishment for her betrayal, Cashtoc deprives the Mulata of one leg, one eye, one ear, one hand, one arm, one lip, one teat, and her sex, then sends her crawling away like a snake. Cashtoc and his legions once again take leave of Tierrapaulita, leaving it and its citizens to the Christian demon Cadanga, who incites the populace to breed because his hell is in need of souls.

The novel ends with a horrific cataclysm in which Tierrapaulita and all of its inhabitants are destroyed by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Yumí and Catalina are crushed, and the Mulata, whole again but with her magic powers gone, quarters Yumí’s body to remove his golden bones and is set alight by the rays of the moon in the process. Only the priest survives, where in the hospital doctors are unable to diagnose what form of leprosy he has, if leprosy it is.

The Characters

Celestino Yumí, a poor, simple wood gatherer, comes to vibrant life in the hands of Asturias. Yumí, dissatisfied with his hardscrabble existence, yearns for what his friend Timoteo Teo Timoteo has: land, horses, crops, and the respect of others. Though he bargains with the corn-husk devil for riches in exchange for his wife, Tazol has to convince him that Catalina has been unfaithful to him before he finally agrees. The irony of the bargain does not escape him, since one of the reasons he wishes to be rich is to be able to make life easier for his beloved wife. As he says to Tazol, “But I’m already weeping, with all my heart, because she’s my wife, the only thing I have and I’m going to give her to you, Tazol, just because she was unfaithful to me and because I want to be rich.”

Possessed of a shrewd native intelligence, though he professes otherwise, Yumí understands a hard truth: that the rich and powerful can do practically as they want and that the poor, the powerless, have no recourse but to accept it. Once rich, he acts accordingly, throwing his wealth around, parading it proudly in imitation of others he has seen. Impulsive by nature, he acts without regard to consequences, then allows those consequences to dictate his course of action.

Like the other human characters in the novel, Yumí is a victim, a pawn of natural and supernatural forces, but unlike the Mulata and Catalina, he does not struggle or attempt (past that of bargaining with Tazol) to control his surroundings. Treated with affection and understanding by Asturias, Yumí is seen as man without guile, easily led, perhaps, but whose basic motivation is his undying love for Catalina.

Through Yumí, Asturias portrays Catalina’s character as Yumí sees her. She is a good wife, uncomplaining when hungry, good at mending, supportive of his needs, and, best of all, happy and jolly. Yet this is not all that she is. When Yumí reclaims her from Tazol, and she goes to live with him and the Mulata, it is Catalina who devises the plan to get rid of the Mulata. Resourceful and quick, when Yumí loses his wealth, she earns their living dancing with a bear. The idea to become sorcerers is hers, and when unable to get past the devil’s nine turns, it is her idea to tie a cross of Tazol on her belly in order to get through. Also, she is not above revenge. Once she becomes the mother of Tazolín and, therefore, a great witch, she has Yumí turned into a dwarf as punishment for selling her to Tazol. Unlike Yumí, she is a fighter, and in the final cataclysm, as everything is falling on her and knowing it is a futile gesture, Catalina throws her hands up “to use them against the mass of the mountains that were falling down on Tierrapaulita.”

Of the human characters in the novel, the Mulata is the most memorable. Her skin a rich, dark color, her eyes like extinguished coals, and a nature that is more animal than human, the Mulata is a haunting and haunted woman. Her eyes are what attract Yumí, and her taut, coltish body unleashes an overwhelming lust in him. A moon spirit, the Mulata is governed by the phases of the moon, and like the moon of Guatemalan legend who dares not let the sun possess her from the front for fear of engendering monsters, she does not allow Yumí to have sex with her from the front, only from the rear. The Mulata is a hermaphrodite and is in constant inner turmoil, sometimes friendly, kind, and affectionate, then without warning, savage and destructive. She laments to Yumí that she is like an animal without a proper owner. Yumí finds her both fascinating and repulsive, inspiring in him lust and fear. At night, Yumí lies awake, “always fearful that the beast would wake up and grab him unexpectedly, explosions of fury that coincided with the phases of the moon.”

Aware of her duality but unable to do anything about it, the Mulata reaches out to destroy herself and others in a vain attempt to rid herself of herself. Though in the first part of the novel the Mulata serves as punishment to Yumí for having bartered his wife, toward the end of the novel she saves his life.

Throughout the novel, Asturias treats his characters with compassion, and his affection for them shines brightly. These are people struggling against forces beyond their control in an attempt to find meaning to their lives, and though the struggle may bring tragic consequences, it may also bring a wisdom of sorts—perhaps the struggle itself means that life is not hopeless.

Critical Context

Asturias’s work has long been recognized by critics throughout most of the literary world as being in the forefront of the Latin American literary movement. It was not, however, until the English publication of Mulata in 1967, the same year that saw Asturias awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, that English-speaking readers became aware of his prodigious talent. Critically acclaimed in the United States and Great Britain, as it had been in France and throughout the Spanish-speaking world, Mulata’s success (and the Nobel Prize) led to the publication in English of Asturias’s other works. In these are found the style and themes that are incorporated in Mulata, most notably in the novels Hombres de maiz (1949; Men of Maize, 1975), Viento fuerte (1950; The Cyclone, 1967, better known as Strong Wind, 1968), and El papa verde (1954; The Green Pope, 1971).

Long concerned with what he considered the continuous isolation of man from nature and the resultant conflicts that arise from this isolation, Asturias incorporated nature into his novels, not as background setting but as a constant presence that must be taken into account. Using ancient Mayan myths and legends, many of which still carry much weight within the consciousness of the Guatemalan people, Asturias personified the different elements of nature (as did the ancient civilizations) in order to show how his characters and these elements are inextricably bound.

Though these elements have appeared in his other novels, in Mulata, Asturias achieves a more profound synthesis of myth and reality than in his other works. Through his skillful use of language, the suspension between myth and reality in which his characters conduct their lives is brought vividly to the forefront. In this way, he shows not only how wide the split between modern man and his natural elements has become but also the resultant conflicts.

Though Asturias does not preach or offer simple solutions, the inescapable truth of Mulata is modern man’s urgent need for a balance between spirit and matter, instinct and reason, a wholeness which may be achieved by a reexamination of long-forgotten or barely remembered truths inherent in the myths and legends of the ancients.

Bibliography

Callan, Richard. Miguel Ángel Asturias. New York: Twayne, 1970. An introductory study with a chapter of biography and a separate chapter discussing each of Asturias’s major novels. Includes a chronology, notes, and an annotated bibliography.

Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto. Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990. A very helpful volume in coming to terms with Asturias’s unusual narratives.

Harss, Luis, and Barbara Dohmann. Into the Mainstream. New York: Harpers, 1967. Includes an interview with Asturias covering the major features of his thought and fictional work.

Himmelblau, Jack. “Love, Self and Cosmos in the Early Works of Miguel Ángel Asturias.” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 18 (1971). Should be read in conjunction with Prieto.

Perez, Galo Rene. “Miguel Ángel Asturias.” Americas (January, 1968): 1-5. A searching examination of El Señor Presidente as a commentary on the novelist’s society.

Prieto, Rene. Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Archaeology of Return. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993. The best available study in English of the novelist’s body of work. Prieto discusses both the stories and the novels, taking up issues of their unifying principles, idiom, and eroticism. See Prieto’s measured introduction, in which he carefully analyzes Asturias’s reputation and identifies his most important work. Includes very detailed notes and bibliography.

West, Anthony. Review of El Señor Presidente, by Miguel Ángel Asturias. The New Yorker, March 28, 1964. Often cited as one of the best interpretations of the novel.