T
he Argadini Association has, since 2008, held a series of annual literary contests (certámenes literarios) in which people with disa-bilities submit their own original work: short stories, poems, and drawings. The full title of the first contest was ‘Primer Certamen Literario Rosetta para personas con discapacidad intelectual’ [First Rosetta Literary Contest for people with intellectual disabilities], while that title was later amended as ‘personas con disacapacidad intelectual o trastornos del espectro del autismo’ [people with intellectual disa-bilities or autism spectrum disorders] for subsequent contests in 2009 and 2010 (see Rosetta 1, Rosetta 2, and Rosetta 3).Featuring categories such as ‘poesía individual’ [individual poetry],
‘poesía grupal’ [group poetry], ‘narrativa individual’ [individual narra-tive], ‘narrativa grupal’ [group narranarra-tive], ‘otros formatos individual’
[other individual formats], and ‘otros formatos grupal’ [other group formats]—and, in the third contest, with anywhere from three to five prizes awarded in each category—the Rosetta contests are a great way to encourage the production of creative works by people with disabili-ties in Spain. In the first three contests 68 prizes were awarded, and the prize-winning works have been published online in three files totalling 284 pages. The first contest alone drew over 200 submissions (Barrón).
Significantly, some but not all of the submissions deal explicitly with autobiographical issues of disability. For example, the poem titled ‘Confesión’ [Confession], written by Cuba’s Luis Lexandel Pita García—third honorable mention in the Individual Poetry section of Rosetta 2—seems to capture the unwanted attention the narrative voice attracts from those around him in the city. Comprising eight poetic lines separated into three grammatical sentences, the second four lines echo the first four, in the process marking a narrative shift from the objective paradigm to a more subjective one:
Los habitantes de mi ciudad dicen que soy una criatura terrible y despreciable y en verdad tienen razón.
Terrible y despreciable ha hecho de mí la poesía.
Pero tranquilos, señores habitantes, que sólo a mí suelo hacerme daño. (12)
[The people who live in my city say that I am a thing
terrible and contemptible and in truth they are right.
Terrible and contemptible through poetry I have become.
But be still, good people of my city, for I commonly do harm only to myself.]
The first sentence delivers a concise snapshot of the social stigma attached to disability, much as described by the father-narrator in chapter 3’s discussion of Quieto. Its matter-of-fact tone conveys the banality of the power often attributed to external definitions of the self and begs for/sets up the expectation of a complementary self-definition to come. The next two lines affirm this self-definition of being
‘terrible y despreciable’ [terrible and contemptible], but reappropriate it, now as a product of the narrator’s connection with the threat-ening marginality of poetry. The final two lines bring the reader ever further into the subjective world of the poet by turning the social gaze initially expressed in lines 1–4 on its ear. Now speaking from a newly found power—perhaps, as line 3 of the Spanish intimates, the product of the self-definition and perspective offered by the poet’s grounding in the world of poetry—the poetic voice is in the posi-tion of being able to offer advice to the people of his town. In this context, the solace subsequently offered—‘Be still, good people, for I commonly do harm only to myself’—seems intended to threaten as much as calm the townspeople. It may, of course, be only natural to harbor resentment toward those who participate in limiting your autonomy and freedoms.
other prize-winning submissions more directly grapple with issues of practical and juridical importance to disabled populations. The title of the first honorable mention in the category of Individual Narrative from 2008, ‘La protección de las personas con discapacidad’ [The Protection of People with Disability], by María Fernanda Zahinos López, strongly underscores the goal of self-advocacy. Divided into 15 parts spanning eight pages (Rosetta 1: 31–38), each section of the submission features a brief (auto)biography describing a different person with disabilities.6 Similarly, the fourth honorable mention in the same category, by Frolia Torres Triñanes, is titled ‘La biografía de una chica con discapacidad intelectual’ [Biography of a Girl with Intellectual Disability] (Rosetta 1: 45–50). The short story ‘Dos mundos’ [Two Worlds], by Purificación Campa Palacio (‘Individual
Poetry,’ Rosetta 2: 22–24), foregrounds the issue of autonomy in love, as did the film Yo, también (from chapter 1).
Although the topics of these contributions are too varied and their significance too great to be adequately covered in this epilogue, I draw this book to an end through one final reference. In the group poem ‘yo quiero,’ submitted by the Centro ocupacional Las victorias-Afanias [occupational Center of Las victorias-Afanias] in Madrid, the verses speak to the basic desires of people with disabilities—one verse reads:
‘yo quiero disfrutar / reir llorar… / por el parque pasear / y con mi novio ligar’ [I want to enjoy (life) / to laugh to cry… / to stroll through the park / and get it on with my boyfriend] (Rosetta 3: 22; compare the desires voiced by characters with Down syndrome in the class-room scene of León y Olvido, chapter 1).
As I have tried to show throughout this volume, these fundamental desires are often and perhaps even routinely frustrated by a Spanish society in which people with intellectual disabilities face difficult paths to social integration and enjoy relatively little autonomy. It is my hope that these brief vignettes—together with the four previous chapters—may lead to further publications in the Disability Studies subfield of Hispanic Studies.
notes
1 I maintain that this sort of comment speaks to the paucity of readers capable of addressing cultural studies of disability within Hispanic Studies: there is no indication that the anonymous reader cited had any knowledge whatsoever of studies of disability, let alone the field of Disability Studies as such. The other anonymous reader did indeed seem to be familiar with the field and produced immensely helpful editorial comments, although the editor did not see it as appropriate to discount the first review.
2 See the volume written by Williams and Shoultz (We Can Speak For Ourselves) as well as the Self-Advocacy section of Down Syndrome: Visions for the 21st Century edited by Cohen, Nadel, and Madnick featuring essays by Burke, and Illarramendi et al. Note that these sources are integrated into chapter 1’s discussion of the filmic representation of people with Down syndrome in Spain. See also Carlson, Faces 7.
3 In fact, the self-governors of Grupo AMÁS list six reasons for undertaking to create their comics: 1) ‘Para que se nos vea’ [So that we may be seen], 2) ‘Para que se conozca nuestra realidad’ [So that others may come to know our reality], 3) ‘Para que se eschuchen nuestras demandas, nuestros sueños y nuestros anhelos’ [So that our demands, our dreams, and our desires may be heard], 4) ‘Para que se conozcan nuestros derechos y nuestros deberes’ [So that others may come to know our rights and responsibilities], 5) ‘Para que se conozcan qué son los grupos de autogestores y lo que pueden llegar a hacer’
[So that others may know what self-advocacy groups are and what they are able to do], and 6) ‘Para demonstrar que podemos hacer todo aquello que nos propongamos si creen en nosotros y con los apoyos suficientes’ [In order to demonstrate that we can accomplish whatever we put our mind to if we are believed in and receive sufficient support] (2).
4 The text balloons read (from top to bottom): ‘Nos reunimos cada semana para hablar de nuestras cosas’ [We meet every week to talk about what we are doing], ‘Queremos que la gente nos conozca’ [We want people to get to know us], ‘Somos iguales a todo el mundo’ [We are just like everyone else],
‘Queremos reivindicar nuestros derechos’ [We want to defend our own inter-ests], ‘Dibujamos’ [We draw], ‘Hacemos visitas’ [We go places], ‘También hemos grabado un corto que se llama “Calcetines”’ [We’ve also created a short film titled ‘Socks’] (9).
5 The character of Supergestor is first introduced in the second comic (p. 11), where he appears just in time to allow the group members to attend the concert smiling, his arms folded and taking up half of the frame.
6 Perhaps unexpectedly, each mini-narration begins with a name accompanied by a percentage of disability, such numbers being frequent in the clinical cate-gorization and diagnosis of disabilities. For example, Lucía (1st part) has a 70% disability, Alba (2nd part) has a 67% disability, Jesús (3rd part) is blind and has an 80% cerebral paralysis, Ana María (4th part) is 33 years old and has a 66% disability, and so on.
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