The Shipwreck of Identity in North America: A Cervantine Take
The Shipwreck of Quebec: A Cervantine Take
In a 2023 science fiction story by Cuban-Canadian author Francisco García González, a Quebec fishing trawler harvesting “endangered plastic” off the Atlantic coast of Canada is broadsided by a floating hotel that has become unmoored due to tectonic shifts. As the harvesters’ ship takes on water, they are approached, first, by a French war frigate and then a Canadian coast guard cutter, both of which offer to rescue the Francophone sailors from the shipwreck. The Quebecers steadfastly refuse both, preferring to sink to the bottom rather than accept European or Canadian aid, in French or English. It is a brutal if largely accurate parable for a province whose conservative government has been tacking ever more inward, as evidenced by recent laws outlawing public servants from wearing “religious symbols” (mainly hijabs but definitely not crucifixes); barring entry into English junior colleges to students whose parents did not receive English schooling in Canada; opposing hikes in the number of immigrants legally taken into the province; and strengthening already restrictive language laws to compel said immigrants to prove their fluency before gaining entry to Canada let alone legal status. The laws also greatly increase the number of French classes junior college students are required to take, which is having a devastating effect on foreign language offerings, which will then impact university programs and courses. Perhaps most affected are Quebec’s Indigenous populations, who learn their native languages before learning a second language, usually English. In short, the populist nativism of François Legault’s conservative CAQ party is having tragic effects on actual native populations in the province, while standing in direct, and hypocritical, opposition to political rhetoric stressing truth and reconciliation regarding historical federal and provincial genocidal policies and practices towards the First Nations.
This political and legislative program arises from two principal factors: on the one hand, disinformation concerning the supposedly fragile status of French as well as the supposed resistance of immigrants to learning French; and on the other, the refusal of Legault’s government to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism anywhere in the province. The findings of Statistics Canada reports that are cited as evidence of the decline of French fall within margins for statistical error. And Legault’s manipulation of the data doesn’t stop there, as his party is primarily focussed on francophones whose “mother tongue” is French and who speak French in the home, a condition that is virtually impossible to address through legislation. Thus, those of us who are functional in French, work in French, or whose children have graduated from French high schools, junior colleges and universities do not count as fully francophone and, thus, full citizens of Quebec. All the while, the historical decline of English in what are now largely enclaves of francophone speakers, such as Quebec City, is completely ignored, along with persistent cases of systemic racism in hospitals, schools, and of course law enforcement.
Most recently, he has effectively doubled university tuition for out-of-province students and raised tuition for international students in English universities, in a clear statement that if you are not from Quebec, you are not welcome in Quebec. However, if you do choose to come, we will be glad to use your tuition to educate students in French universities. No matter that fact that international tuition has been systematically clawed back by the province to fund the Francophone network (most international students come to study at English universities); no matter that fact that there is already a labor shortage in Quebec; no matter the fact that the economic and tax revenue engine of the province, Montreal, will see its economy severely affected by the lack of out of province and international students. It’s pretty clear that the vast majority of these students will look elsewhere, not being linguistically qualified to study in the francophone institutions. It is one thing to attempt to steer a leaky ship; quite another to systematically remove planks from said leaky hull.
In an increasingly global economic and political context, one that is seeing “native” population declines across Europe and North America, Legault’s is a short-sighted and yet politically expedient campaign that panders to nativist and nationalist voters in a bid for re-election, all the while hobbling the future of the province with underpopulation and political, economic, and linguistic isolation. Absurdly, as García González’s story lays bare, the most negatively affected individuals with respect to the ‘tectonic’ changes in educational policy are Legault’s francophone constituents, whose freedom to choose their institution of higher learning is determined not by their academic and professional achievements or aspirations, but by the educational record of their parents. In like fashion, the so-called “law to protect secularism” is solely focused on what the government considers religious symbols and their elimination from public institutions. It is instructive that a large crucifix hung above the Speaker’s chair in Quebec’s National Assembly from 1936 until 2019, until its glaring contradiction with the new law, passed by that same legislative body, made its continued display unpalatable. Ironically, Legault had argued to keep the symbol by declaring it a cultural as opposed to religious symbol, which, of course, is largely accurate in a secular society with a Catholic history. Tragically, or blindly, he and the rest of the lawmakers were unable to apply this same definition to the hijab, which is the only so-called religious symbol to have been prosecuted under the law, resulting in the dismissal of a Muslim elementary school teacher during a severe shortage in professional teaching personnel.
It was in this social and political context that I was invited to help organize and participate in an event celebrating Muslim Awareness Week, in the fall of 2022. The public encounter brought together a diverse array of speakers, including a philanthropic donor, a provincial political candidate, two academics, and a cultural attaché from Oman, all around the theme of Muslim dress. The approaches varied from a historical survey going back to the Middle Ages, to a current series of snapshots from Oman, to my presentation on Cervantes’s literary representation of Moors and Moriscos. The latter’s nuanced portrayals of these cultures provided, and continues to provide, a pointed and useful critique of laws and discourses that stifle freedom of language, dress, gender identity, etc., across the globe then and now.
The Moor shows up very early in book I of Don Quixote when Alonso Quijano’s neighbor finds the newly christened knight beaten to a pulp and unable to move. Previously in the episode, a group of merchants had refused to recognize the superior beauty of Dulcinea without seeing a picture of her, saying that they would, however, be inclined to honor Don Quixote’s demand, even if the portrait showed her “blind in one eye and oozing yellow bile from the other.” Faced with such insolence and laughter, the enraged knight charges the merchants, whereupon Rocinante trips, throwing his master to the ground; adding insult to injury, a young muleteer then beats the fallen knight with his own lance. When this concerned neighbor tries to help Don Quixote, the vanquished knight compares himself to Rodrigo de Narváez, the Moorish protagonist of El Abencerraje, who is only defeated after besting a whole platoon of Christian knights in single combat. The allusion to Moor’s plight and eventual infinite debt of honor to his Christian overlord provides a curious introduction to Don Quixote’s epic saga as the embodiment of Christian heroism bent on making Spain great again, comparing his ignominious defeat with that of the virile and love-struck Moor.
Later in book I, we listen to the Captive’s Tale, the story of a Christian soldier who is kidnapped by pirates and held for ransom in Algiers. After several unsuccessful escape attempts, Ruy Pérez is seduced with money and promises of marriage by Zoraida, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy renegade, into helping her escape to Spain, where she will live a Christian life as Pérez’s wife. Although it is a delightful love story, it raises more questions than it answers. How can an aspiring Christian woman deceive and betray her own father? Will a Moorish woman who converts to Christianity in a country dominated by paranoid racist politics ever be truly accepted? Will a Spanish man who brings a Moorish woman back from Algiers ever be trusted by that same society?
Book II is even more provocative. After Sancho’s brief and painful stint as the Governor of Barataria, he falls in with a group of travelers dressed as pilgrims supposedly on their way to Santiago de Compostela. When one of the pilgrims approaches him, it takes Sancho some time to recognize him as his Morisco neighbor, Ricote. Ricote has defied the 1609 expulsion decree of King Philip III to sneak back into Spain to recover his buried treasure and his daughter Ana Félix. Here, Cervantes introduces the stereotype of the greedy Arab, who then surprises the reader with a sincere recitation of the king’s racist rationale for the expulsion. David Castillo calls Ricote’s self-hating embodiment of racist othering an ironic example of “excessive orthodoxy.” In the words of the novelist Lorrie Moore, “there is no disenthralling a determined creature.” But that is precisely Cervantes’s intent in having an exiled and reviled other mirror the determined reader’s racist thoughts back to him.
The exiled Morisco’s daughter is another story altogether. While her father was preparing a new life for his family in Germany, Ana Félix’s uncles headed south to northern Africa, bringing her with them. The problems begin when the young Morisca’s Christian and noble suitor, the beautiful Don Gregorio, joins the political refugees in their flight. When they arrive at their destination, the King of Algiers’s curiosity is piqued by the stunning young woman and the rumored riches in her possession. And when his aids tell them that an attractive young man has accompanied them, his interest becomes even more intense and heated. In order to save the young man’s honor, Ana Félix tells the king that he is actually a she in disguise, which dampens the king’s enthusiasm; but he quickly pivots by stating that he will save the young lady for his superior, the Great Turk. And so, Gregorio, now dressed as a young maiden, is put under the protection of a venerable lady of the court. Ana Félix, in the meanwhile, is sent back to Spain at the helm of a frigate while disguised as a pirate captain—which has suddenly reminded me for some reason of the ‘dread pirate Roberts,’ from The Princess Bride.
She looks so much like a pirate, in fact, that when she returns to the Spanish coast, the viceregal navy of Barcelona gives chase to the pirate ship. They are quickly captured, but just as she is about to be hung from the lanyard in the presence of the viceroy, the young woman reveals her true identity, recounts her harrowing story, and embraces her now weeping, now fainting father. Incredibly, the viceroy pardons both father and daughter, effectively nullifying their exile. Where Ricote has performed a colonial and racist discourse against his own ethnic and cultural identity, the representation of monarchical authority comes to recognize the nobility of the people he is legally charged with persecuting. Both speeches are absurd in their own way, which is of course the point; racist ideology has perverted everyone’s ability to see the flesh and blood people victimized by the expulsion edict as well as unveil those who benefit from it by masking their desire for personal power behind fictional identity constructs built on linguistic, cultural, and racial contingencies.
In North America, whether we are talking about Ron DeSantis’s attempts to outlaw critical race theory and erase the history of racial violence from US education, François Legault’s legal erasure of Quebecers whose mother tongue is not French, or Donald Trump’s hateful and dehumanizing caricatures of, well, anyone who opposes his attempts to use any and every means to appropriate US democracy under his sinking brand, the couching of racist discourse in nativist and fictional notions of identity ultimately flows from a personal and undemocratic will to power. Their persistent mouthing of ideals of cultural integrity, historical truth, and national rebirth in the very act of destroying culture, peddling historical lies, and dismantling any sense of collective belonging provides an exemplary model of gaslighting. These attempts to lead by demonizing and cutting ties with vital elements of our history and within our societies can only lead to disaster, as exemplified by García González’s insightful resuscitation of the metaphor of the shipwreck, brilliant in its tacit memorialization of the European discovery and conquest of America. By linking this trope with the theme of piracy and the Barcelona viceroy’s embrace of a fake pirate, Cervantes adds the lovely touch of larceny to the whole enterprise: stolen stories, stolen lives, stolen futures…
