Juan Bosch’s “La Mañosa”. A socio-realist novel about the revolution

Abstract

This novel about autocratic (caudillista) revolutions, written by Juan Bosch under the title of “La Mañosa”, substantiates this writer’s master narrative already evident in his short stories (Camino Real, 1933), a masterful command of the written word that credits him with an eminent place in national literary circles as one of the most important writers of 20th century’s Latin American and Spanish literature. His earliest texts show a well-defined instinct for social themes: Bosch knew how to capture the living conditions of poor campesino communities, the material misery and anguish experienced by rural men and women, particularly humble farmers who worked the land from dawn to dusk and suffered the consequences of revolutions of the masses, the basis for his novel. Bosch carves out a social literature defined most precisely as socio-realist since he imprinted a social, instead of a personal, character on those conflicts portrayed in his narrative. The Dominican writer was conscious of his role because he experienced, even at a young age, a social instinct reflected in his literature. He grew up in an environment where the children of campesinos grew up practically naked, in shacks with dirt floors, drinking water from wooden bowls. Bosch was concerned for that sorrowful social reality, a sentiment reflected in his literary works.