An Interview with Marcio Veloz Maggiolo (English transcript)
This interview was conducted on May 19, 2016, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. At the time, I was a graduate student of the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, and I spoke with Don Marcio Veloz Maggiolo about his novel El Hombre del Acordeón (The Accordion Man).
-Eric O. Cintrón, PhD
INTERVIEWER
How and why do you start writing novels, stories, etc.?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
As I already explained to you at some point, the first influences were European influences, because I started by dealing with biblical themes, with two novels: Judas—The Good Thief first and Judas later—a novel made in the form of letters. But then it was that when I was more mature in literature, I thought I could make historical novels because I had accumulated many ideas about this.
The other novel I wrote was La Vida No Tiene Nombre (Life Has No Name) that was no longer biblical. There are several biblical stories, even translated into French, but this novel was not biblical. It was a novel about the American intervention of 1916. The notorious influence he left on me, Albert Camides’s novel El Extranjero, seemed exceptional to me. The novel by Camides . . .
INTERVIEWER
Camides?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Camus.
INTERVIEWER
Albert Camus, yes. From the Philosophy of the Absurd, right?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
No, the novel is El Extranjero. He tells the story of a man with almost no attributes, like in [Robert] Musil’s novel, a character who kills without knowing why he kills, who goes to see his mother who is dead, who sees her die, who does not express anything, whose friends say that he did not have sensitivity. It is the novel of total deception. The character deeply affected me because I always expected an argument and the novel is not argued. It is a situation that is presented.
Then of course, I had the information from my father and some of his friends who had been guerrillas at the time of the Dominican intervention of 1916. I heard many facts and I said: “Gee, but I can write something like that.” I always looked for a model and the novel El Extranjero arose, but it was not the same as what I thought. The novel takes place in the Eastern fields, in the cane fields, when [the American Intervention] creates the Dominican National Guard whom represses Dominicans. That world was the one that I tried to reflect in that novel [La Vida No Tiene Nombre], but not by telling the story, but like in El Extranjero, by seeing the story’s effect, always the effect of things: the effect of dictatorship, the effect of beliefs. These always seemed more important to me than reality itself.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think about the novel and you already know the end, or is it a developing process? Or is it like the poet—well, you are a poet—who writes it and leaves it because it lacks that little word that is going to conclude the poem and review it in a month or a week? What is your creative process?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
All that is true, but not in all novels. There are novels in which one knows how it will end and novels in which one does not know and cannot finish. I have a novel written about a Venezuelan singer-author from the time of the government of Luis Figueroa, of the dictatorship, and I have more than 500 pages written and I do not know how I’m going to finish it. That’s why I have not finished it.
INTERVIEWER
How does it work? Does someone make suggestions to you—you share ideas with colleagues—or is it something that torments you? Do you leave it there and something is going to come?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
No, I leave it there. I have never shared ideas. I am a literary egomaniac.
INTERVIEWER
Moving on to El Hombre del Acordeón, what was its genesis? How did this idea arise? How did this novel come about?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
That novel came after my novel Los Angeles de Hueso, which is the death of Trujillo narrated by a person at the time that Balaguer was speaking. The full speech of Balaguer is in that novel and praising Trujillo. It is a delirium tremens of a drunkard who at the same time is reinventing what Balaguer says. Then in that novel, some Haitian elements enter, the Haitian gods enter, the Dominican element enters, religion enters. It is a symbiotic novel.
This novel starts from there, but it is different. El Hombre del Acordeón is the story of a man who is supposed to have taught his son to dance merengue and is based on merengue and Dominican gallera. The Dominican gallera is the agora of the rural zone. In the Dominican gallera, people discuss problems, they discuss women, they discuss politics, so in that novel magic realism enters suddenly with the characters that work in it. In addition, you have the rayano—the border man—a man who is Dominican and Haitian at the same time or who is neither Haitian nor Dominican, but a different being. But that man has nothing to do with the history of the country and we must invent his story; when Trujillo, while in power, looks for that narrator, he is the one who invents the history of the rayanos.
So of course, that story is presented in the killing of Haitians, because the slaughter of Haitians adds some voodoo elements, such as the part when they do the desonén, a practice in which they put his spirit in a bottle and leave it there until they get revenge. Because in voodoo, the desonén exists to get someone’s spirit, to take the spirit of a dead person, save it, and at some point free it to fulfill its purpose.
So, that novel—a lot of people do not understand it.
INTERVIEWER
I thought it was beautiful from the first time I read it. I liked it a lot.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
That novel is a metaphor of the human being and well, I wrote it thinking about the other novel, the previous one; thinking that I could do something similar. But it was not similar, because here the character is from the Trujillo era, the merengue and the gallera that are mixed together in a single narration that is like a hymn to rural Dominican-ness.
INTERVIEWER
Yes, because on the border, they compose as a microcosm.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
They are a microcosm.
INTERVIEWER
Because as you very well stated at the beginning, they are not from here, they are not from there, but they converge and live there, right?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
And they share their own history.
INTERVIEWER
They are completely identical. They do not see that you are Dominican, that I am Haitian, that I am a hybrid, that I am rayano.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
There is no identity.
INTERVIEWER
Very interesting. We are in the same situation. We live here, we are poor.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
But we have a value. Because the killings [the massacre of Haitians and black Dominicans ordered by Trujillo in 1937] made it valuable.
INTERVIEWER
Exactly. And we have a common pain, which was that we lost members, family and loved ones on both sides.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
We also lost them without being Haitians.
INTERVIEWER
Correct, the father also died.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Because for the guard, the concept of identity was different. If you said, “pelejil”—which is “perejil”—you were Haitian, and they killed you. The identity was concentrated in a single word: “perejil.” That is an interesting topic, because “perejil” becomes the subsistence card of a situation, of a population.
INTERVIEWER
And if you did not know how to pronounce that word, you paid with your life.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
The Haitian does not pronounce the “ere,” they cannot say “por aquí.” They say, “pol aquí,” because in African languages there is no such sound.
INTERVIEWER
That consonant does not exist.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
It exists in some, but in others it does not. It seems to me that in Conga languages it has little use.
INTERVIEWER
Very well. You already touched on this, but to continue informing: in what literary style would you put this work? Would you only classify it as magical realism?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
No, no. I do not classify it as magical realism. [For] El Hombre del Acordeón, there is a French translation where it says that it goes into magical realism, but I do not like to pigeonhole anything. I do not think that we have to label a novel that has clear influence of magical realism. It does have García-Marquian influence, for sure. But I had a friend who said he has no influence from famous people, he has it from the corner man.
INTERVIEWER
You said it at the beginning when you were discussing your process and started with a religious background novel. I humbly think that this novel has the characteristics of historical novels. Would it be fair to say that with regard to El Hombre del Acordeón, it is a historical novel?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Well, of historical subject. Not historical, because the historical novel is a story in fiction. This is a historiated novel.
INTERVIEWER
Could it be established that the main character Honorio Lora is the voice of the conscience of the Dominican-Haitian group or of those who have been marked by the ethnic hybrids in Dominican society?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
I think so. He is the character that embodies the defense of the rayano, although he is not a rayano. In the novel he doesn’t look like one, but he seems to accept the values . . .
INTERVIEWER
He did not see identities, he only saw his compadre, his beloved. And then, he did not see . . .
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Of course. There was no conscience.
INTERVIEWER
The women of this novel, the lover that goes to the gallera–because usually in Hispanic society, the woman must be more conservative–[are] “the woman of the house.” This is not [the typical Hispanic woman]. This [one] is going [out to party]. They have intimate relationships [with men at the gallera]. It’s a different vision [of women of the time]. I feel it’s stronger, with more power.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Well, that’s who the gallera woman is.
INTERVIEWER
Ah, so, is there such thing as a gallera-woman?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Sure, because that woman goes to the cockfight and participates and bets and has her man there and supports her man. There is a lot of that.
INTERVIEWER
Okay. So is it part of a reality?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
It is a character that has never been touched, but who is there.
INTERVIEWER
There is the woman in the cockpit, but there are also others who work with voodoo. They are women who do not depend on men. They are autonomous women, powerful women, independent women in a society where there is rum, where you have the gallera, there is betting, there are horses, there is a revolver, where people fight. Which is an environment to a certain extent masculine, a virile environment. Then, all these women survive in that aspect. But then are they characters that exist?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Yes, I say, of course when you give it a category of voodoo characters, you already suppose that they exist. Not always is a novel real. A novel is part of a creation. That’s why it’s a novel.
INTERVIEWER
The novel Cosecha de Hueso by the Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat and the play El Masacre se Pasa a Pie by the Dominican author Freddy Prestol Castillo work on the same theme of the novel El Hombre del Acordeón. Are you familiar with these works? Do you have any input on these?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
I think they are realistic works. Not from the point of view of structure, they are very different, because Freddy lived at that time in the border area and noted what happened. Danticat’s is new in the subject and she then picked up the Haitian version of the killing, but is not given as a theory of the rayano. Danticat does not speak of the rayano. For her, the rayano does not exist. It is about the killing. And Freddy’s is also about the killing.
But here too the personal relationship of the world of beliefs is imbricated, which is the world on which this novel is based. The world of the type that Trujillo says: go write to me the story of those people who have no story. That’s one novel thing, or Trujillo had to have its history and the rayano had no history. Well, we are going to make one, because the dictatorship goes to these confines of inventing people’s lives, or inventing their history.
INTERVIEWER
One last question so you don’t get too exhausted. What was your goal or objective when conceiving this work [El Hombre del Acordeón]? Did you achieve this goal or objective?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Yes, I think so.
INTERVIEWER
What was your goal?
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
I tell you one thing, I hardly set goals. I start working and I find the goals on the road. The goal: I know that a topic of that type [talking about racial tension] that has not been addressed is a subject that must end. It must conclude well because there is enough material; then one has enough emotional charge to make it look good.
For example, the last part when the priest receives the little accordion in his box: that ending seems to me that it was not there, that ending appeared when I was finishing the novel. Yes, that happens to writers, who sometimes do not know how they will finish. But then they end the work.
INTERVIEWER
And that is what’s happening to him with the other work that does not find the end and then, he still cannot finish it.
VELOZ MAGGIOLO
Exactly.