This dissertation focuses on the analysis of Costa Rican literature from 1885 to 1930 in order to explore the problematic configuration of national heroes in the construction of the modern Costa Rican social imaginary. Costa Rica was unique among Central American nations in that its participation in the regional campaign against William Walker (1856-1857) served as a foundational moment for its national project in the 1880s. Two major figures emerged as potential symbols of national heroism: Juan Rafael Mora Porras and Juan Santamaría. Authors Carlos Gagini, Manuel Argüello Mora and Ricardo Fernández Guardia were the only writers who tried to narrate Mora Porras and Juan Santamaría's lives and legacies between 1885 and 1931. In addition, as intellectuals of the liberal elite, their works had to address the consolidation of a national discourse characterized by a desire to highlight distance from, and superiority to, the other Central American nations. According to that vision, Costa Rica could be singled out as racially white and politically peaceful, both attractive traits for enticing foreign investment. Interestingly the paradox of writing on war heroes in this context has not been explored in academia. In fact, publications and academic writing about Costa Rica's military conflicts and heroes are scarce. Within the field of literary criticism, which may have considered these topics taboo, I propose to begin filling this void by analyzing the liberal elite's literary writings on heroism within the context of constructing modern nationhood. My intention is to demonstrate how the literary representations of heroes fracture Costa Rican national discourse, thus explaining the intellectual's resistance to writing on the topic and giving voice to Santamaría and Mora Porras, regardless of the importance of their roles for the foundational "social drama". If we avoid studying how national discourse suppressed violence from its origins and cut short the narrative representations of heroic figures, we deny the possibility of understanding and embracing the need for reinventing traditions and heroes in the 21st century. / text

In my dissertation I adopt an interdisciplinary approach to explore a crucial moment in the intellectual history of Ecuador and Brazil and the way in which late 19th and early 20th century writers articulate a representational discourse that reveals the contradictions of liberalism and modernity. I argue that after entering the modern world-system, Ecuador and Brazil undergo a comparable modernization process, which entails the emergence of the cities of Guayaquil and Rio de Janeiro as new centers of political and economic power. The study of the coincidences and discrepancies between the two national processes sheds light on antagonistic cultural systems coexisting within the realms of the new metropolis. My dissertation consists of an introduction and five chapters. In the introduction, I present the theoretical framework and explain the key concepts that are common currency in contemporary attempts to articulate cultural analysis with its social and historical reality. Chapters 1 and 2 look at the origins of Ecuadorian and Brazilian identities in the works of writers José de Alencar and Juan León Mera. I intend to trace budding national identities in each of their essays about language, race, and politics, as well as in their foundational fictions, Iracema: Lenda do Ceará (1865) and Cumandá: un drama entre salvajes (1879). Chapters 3 and 4 problematize the ways in which the novels O cortiço (1890), by Brazilian Aluízo Azevedo, and A la costa (1905), by Ecuadorian Luis A. Martínez, are linked to the intricate local debates about slavery, internal migration, and the participation of both national economies in the modern world system. I contend that the narratives of Azevedo and Martínez become “hinge-novels” for glimpsing the “national” within the “liminal,” even though they fail to foresee the disencounters between the dominant and the subaltern classes. In Chapter 5, I explore the locus of enunciation from which Ecuadorian Jorge Icaza attempts to represent marginal social groups. I argue that Icaza’s Huasipungo (1934) reveals the ineffectiveness of the liberal project and helps establish the agency of marginalized groups in the Andean hacienda. The incorporation of these marginal discourses into his narratives constitutes the first endeavor to provide subaltern groups with a voice. / text