Equatoguinean Literature in Spanish - Independence and Exile

Independence and Exile

These small shoots of a literary tradition were uprooted when, only months after being democratically elected, Francisco Macías Nguema installed a dictatorship, termed "Afro-fascist" by the historian Max Liniger-Goumaz. As a result of this regime of terror, a third of the Equatoguinean population had gone into exile in neighboring countries or in Spain by the mid-1970s. The writer Juan Balboa Boneke refers to this as the "lost generation."

Madrid and the other places where the diaspora settled were foreign and sometimes hostile lands, which is reflected in the literature. Madrid was not like Paris was for African authors of the 1930s; there was no support for artistic endeavors or for public speech about the Guinean tragedy. The works of this time period circulated on single sheets of paper or in notebooks, or in limited-edition magazines and leaflets published by the refugees; consequently, this literature did not reach the Guinean public or the Spanish public. These pieces were usually written in poetic form and carried a forceful message, as shown by the poem "Vamos a matar al tirano" (Let Us Kill the Tyrant) by Francisco Zamora Loboch, or sometimes a message of nostalgia for the writers' homeland, such as the poem "¿Dónde estás Guinea?" (Where are you, Guinea?) by Juan Balboa Boneke.

Writers from the diaspora also wrote narratives of exile: for example, El sueño (The Dream) and La travesía (The Crossing) by Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo (Niefang, Río Muni, 1950-), La última carta del Padre Fulgencio Abad, C. M. F. (The Last Letter of Father Fulgencio Abad, C. M. F.) by Maplal Loboch (1912-1976), and Bea by Francisco Zamora Loboch (Santa Isabel, 1947-). These stories focus on the violent uprooting, both physical and spiritual, of the protagonist, connected with the history of the African continent before independence.

Also, essays were written that focused on the political situation in Equatorial Guinea and the tragedy of its people; for example, Historia y tragedia de Guinea Ecuatorial (History and tragedy of Equatorial Guinea) (1977) by Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo and ¿Dónde estás Guinea? (Where are you, Guinea?) (1978) by Juan Balboa Boneke.

Raquel Ilonbé (Corisco, 1938?-) (pen name for Raquel del Pozo Epita), whose mother was Guinean and whose father was Spanish, is a unique figure in this movement. Ilonbé moved away from Guinea before she was a year old, grew up in Spain, and returned to Guinea after she was married to search for her roots. She wrote a collection of poems entitled Ceiba (Kapok) between 1966 and 1978; its theme is the search for identity, not personal suffering or the trauma of exile.