The Book to Lament the Biblical Connections A review of The Book of Lamentations Rosario Castellanos (© 1998, Penguin Books, ISBN 014118003X)

 

The perilous relationships between the Mayan Indians who occupy Mexico and those of Spanish decent who invaded their world provide a backdrop to lament the horrors of a distorted Christianity in Castellanos’ novel, The Book of Lamentations. The story mirrors biblical characters along with defective duplications of biblical events—including a crucifixion.

 

Much of the book is about misapplied and dashed hope. From the beginning, an Indian girl, Marcela, has a simple hope to sell her pottery. Instead she walks into a nightmare of rape by a Spaniard (Leonardo), beating by her mother when she returns home without her pottery, and pregnancy. Marcella is then used by the person who “rescues” her, Catalina, a barren Indian shaman who tricks Marcela into a wasted marriage to a mentally deficit man and takes the girl’s rejected child as her own.

 

Marcela is probably the only character in the book who earns reader sympathy, yet this book is not about her. She is one of many characters, Indians and Spaniards, who all have dashed hopes, who cannot connect with one another to make progress in their relationships or in the situation in Mexico between the two groups and their offspring. Marcelo’s rape provides the innocent, mestizo child, Domingo (God), who will be crucified in a Mayan attempt to mimic the Christian Savior for redemption during Holy Week.

 

The Christian Catholics in the story provide little hope. The priest, Manuel, hopes to set the Indians straight about their idols, but in the end he also is murdered. His bishop, Don Alfonso, has nothing to offer in the way of hope. He sees pain and guilt as “the two banks of the river of adversity” (267). Don Alfonso’s only redeeming quality is that he agrees with Manuel’s sister that he was responsible for Manuel’s death by allowing Leonardo to talk him into sending Manuel, with his quick actions and judgments, into a volatile situation. Alfonso self-inflicts his own penance. This one redemptive, confessional trait is far too little hope to assuage the horrendous situations in this novel.

 

Where religion has failed, Communism attempts to provide hope. Fernando is a reformer who has come to give hope of a new life for the Indians, but he has mistakenly put his hope in a people who think less of themselves than he thinks of them. He incites hope for returned land taken by the Spaniards, but mistrust and fear prove more powerful. “For their part, the inferiors carried the feeling that inferiority was their authentic condition so deeply in the marrow of their bones that they were offended by those who tried to foist a new burden on them: dignity” (148). Even with Fernando’s idealism, he “hadn’t learned to tell one Indian from another” (293). He doesn’t really see the Indians; he simply wants to impose his ideals onto them. His lack of foresight causes many deaths as the Indians and Spaniards must now sort out these new concepts of equality while missing much of the meaning behind the positions of the other side.

 

The story’s climax is the crucifixion of young, innocent Domingo. Unlike the Christian Christ, Domingo doesn’t realize until it’s too late what is going on. Both Indians and Catholics miss the true message of Christianity, but on different levels. In fact, this book is mostly about such disconnects.

 

Castellanos’ personal battle with depression is reflected in her fiction. Her own death by electrocution while she was Ambassador to Israel was, for a time, suspected to be a suicide. The Book of Lamentations is a disturbing reminder of what shattered hopes can do to individuals and to a country. There is no closure in this novel, only attempts to save face. The ongoing conflict of the two people groups in Mexico and the merging of those groups through violence and through children of rape, still cry out for the need of an authentic Savior.

 

Unfortunately, like the characters, much of Christianity has stooped to saving face. The distorted biblical parallels in this novel provoke thoughts of how Christianity with its bloody redemption must look to outsiders. They miss the message. Those reading the novel will see either the contrasts or similarities, depending on their own relationships with hope and despair.

 

by Rachel Ramer