From Miracle to Montage: The Interpreter Figure in the Narratives of Latin American Travelers to the New China

This article analyses the role of the figure of the language interpreter in Latin American travel writing on the People’s Republic of China during the 1950s and 1960s, early decades of cultural diplomacy efforts between these regions. Through an examination of the crónica China 6 a.m. (1954), by Colombian anthropologist and writer Manuel Zapata Olivella, and the novel Los ojos de bambú (1964), by Chilean novelist Mercedes Valdivieso, this article argues that the interpreter figure, far from an invisible conduit of information, played a significant role in how Latin American travelers experienced the Chinese Revolution and negotiated their ideals of individual and collective transformation. Through the analysis of the interpretation act as an embodied, affective experience, beyond a sole cognitive transfer of meaning, Zapata and Valdivieso’s texts shed light both on the PRC’s mechanisms of soft power in Cold War geopolitical struggles, as well as the travelers’ aesthetic and political pursuits in a global context of revolution.

accounts of what they had witnessed, often in positive -even ecstatic -tones. In doing so, they functioned as non-state actors for cultural diplomacy, who mediated the political relationship of soft power between these regions years before formal diplomatic relations were established (Ahumada 7).
In this article I delve into the notion of linguistic-cultural mediation in these spaces of cultural diplomacy, especially given that, as Jorge Locane argues, the entire relationship between Latin America and the PRC during these decades was "un fenómeno de intercambio cultural sin precedentes que implicó una compleja empresa de traducción cultural a escala Sur-Sur" (Locane 57,my emphasis). While the circulation in the Americas of the print culture that resulted from this exchange has begun to receive increased attention, the act of translation itself, specifically the role of the language interpreter, is somewhat overlooked. In part this may be because many of these travelers, when writing their accounts, tended to partially silence or gloss over the role of their language interpreters to strengthen their own authorial voice and personal testimony about what they were observing in the PRC (Montt Strabucchi "Writing about China", 112). However, as I argue here, given both a lack of knowledge of the local languages and the state's attempt to control the travelers' experiences, translation was a crucial element in the construction of the image that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wanted to give of the new China, as well as in how the Latin American visitors understood and processed their time in the PRC. By translation, however, I am referring not only to the transfer of information but rather the complex negotiations of power and authority between the traveler, the interpreters and the state, between socialist ideals, gender dynamics, and orientalist imaginaries that took place in their encounter. In order to analyze the role and significance of this form of mediation in the experience of Latin American travelers to the PRC, this article examines two autobiographical or semi-autobiographical texts that center the figure of the interpreter and the interpretation scene: China, 6 a.m. (1954)

by Colombian doctor and writer Manuel
In considering the political nature of the interpreter at an ideological and affective level, certain concepts from the field of translation studies might be pertinent. First, it is important to recognize the act of interpretation as linguisticcultural mediation, that is, as beyond solely information transfer and, instead, within its social and cultural contexts, responsive to the power dynamics in which both sides of the relationship are inscribed in (Payàs and Zavala 12). Doing so would challenge the supposed invisibility of the interpreter, seen traditionally as an automatic conduit of information and not as an agent who is affectively and physically invested in the mediation (Cronin and Delgado Luchner 93). Current arguments in the field have sought to change this understanding: as Gertrudis Payàs points out in her study of interpreters of Mapudungun in colonial Chile, for instance, interpretation is not an autonomous activity but a "service" or "contractual relationship" that is requested or mandated and agreed upon by all parties, and which, given its employment by necessity, is also built upon dynamics of trustand by extension, mistrust . Because of the contractual nature of the interpreter's role, this figure is not "between" two parties but "for" one or another; in other words, interpretation is ideological and not impartial or neutral as its origins in diplomacy might frame it (Pöchhaker 205). Another key aspect is what Michael Cronin calls the "embodied agency" of the interpreter, that is challenging the notion of interpretation as a purely rational, intellectual endeavor and rather recognizing the physical presence of this figure and its corporeal involvement in the act of mediation (Cronin 78). These three ideas -trust, ideological commitment, embodiment-will be key in reading the scenes of linguistic-cultural mediation in China 6 a.m. and Los ojos de bambú, where the interpreters actively construct an image of the new nation by inscribing their own lives within its revolutionary process. At the same time, as both texts evidence, mediation is never a one-way street, and the travelers measure the interpreters' accounts against their own sets of values and experiences in China. In doing so, they negotiate their authority, reaffirming or questioning the contractual relationship, and responding physically and emotionally to the interpretation act. In this way, the practice of interpretation  (1945)(1946)(1947)(1948)(1949) or the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945), and that this influenced them to join the CCP's diplomatic efforts by learning Spanish. In fact, as Ting Guo has documented, during the aforementioned military conflicts the CCP hired young members of the Party as interpreters of Russian and English, putting them through language schools in order to serve in military and diplomatic roles.
Going back to the point regarding the ideological nature of their work, these interpreters were not independent professionals but rather, Guo explains, understood their function as part of their political affiliation and status. In doing so, Party cadres relied on the interpreters as a resource in negotiating international support, while for these the role of mediation was a way of proving their loyalty and thus vying for better positions within the government  There was, to be sure, a highly performative nature to these diplomatic manifestations and PRC hospitality more generally. As Julia Lovell has argued, Mao-era hospitality towards foreign guests was an enterprise in itself, meant to showcase a society leaving behind feudalism and successfully embarking in a radical transition to socialism. This "hospitality machine" encompassed the planning of visitors' arrival well in advance by carefully selecting the places they would see, choosing the people they would interview, and making sure they would not come into contact with the tragedies taking place because of failed economic policies (such as the famines caused by the Great Leap Forward in the late fifties) (Lovell 144). The goal was, writes Lovell, that these visitors become "international friends" who would report back their experiences in the best light possible; in treating them as honored guests, the CCP hoped to create a feeling of indebtedness that could pay off in the geopolitical power struggle of these decades (Lovell 146 beyond Eurocentric political and aesthetic parameters (Locane 60). Or, in parallel, for new ways of configuring and interpreting the world beyond capitalist models (Ortega 2051). In this search, I argue, the interpreter figure and the interpretation scene capture the struggle over the meaning of liberation and revolution at a time when a new political superpower was emerging in the geopolitical organization of the Cold War.

A miracle of communication
Manuel Zapata Olivella (1920Olivella ( -2004  This relation between translation and revolution becomes most evident in the China 6 a.m.'s arrival scene, with the delegates' landing in Chinese soil. As they descend, they are greeted at the airport by a display of hundreds of green flags with Pablo Picasso's drawing of the peace dove, symbol of the conference, and by children carrying flowers in welcome. When Zapata exits the plane, he is rushed by a young girl who, smiling and holding a bouquet of chrysanthemums, grabs on to him and kisses him on the cheek. The child, emanating warmth and love for humankind, in the narrator's description, turns to speak to him; at this point, a readily available interpreter steps forward, Zapata writes, "para realizar el milagro de la comprensión." The child then asks about the children of Zapata's country, to which he doubts how to respond: "Me quedé mirando sus ojos más brillantes con la expectativa de su respuesta. El joven intérprete esperaba también mis palabras" Then, he tells the child via the interpreter that children in his country suffer so much that he is not used to seeing one smile: La pequeña dejó de mirarme para fijar sus ojos en los labios del intérprete. Esperaba ver en su cara el cambio doloroso que mis palabras le producirían, pero su rostro no se enturbió y mirándome, respondió aún más sonriente: "Nosotros también hemos sufrido mucho con la guerra, pero ahora somos felices". (Zapata 36) Elated by the girl's response, the traveler then turns to the interpreter, who begs forgiveness for any translation issues he may have, since he has only been studying Spanish for two weeks. At the end, Zapata harkens on the young student's "humildad," as he exalts the hospitality with which they are received: "Por todos los medios se esforzaban en testimoniarnos que eran ellos los honrados con nuestra presencia, cuando en verdad éramos nosotros quienes recibíamos el homenaje de su calurosa bienvenida" (Zapata 36). Following the processual nature of this first scene, the remainder of Zapata's narrative is rhetorically structured in three stages that bring the traveler from doubting to trusting the interpreter qua embodiment of the Revolution. It begins with the moment of discovery and surprise as the traveler encounters an can exist in a socialist society. The interpreter, always understanding and "con paciencia," asks his interlocutor to accompany him aboard one, explaining that this is due to the slow -but steady-transformation of the country, and that the rickshaw drivers continued to work in this manner until they could be relocated to bicycle and automobile factories (Zapata 40). In this way, the narrator's initial ambivalence is cleared away, as he feels "vergüenza por la manera brusca como había expresado mi sorpresa por la subsistencia de las rickshaws," and his discomfort turns to happiness as he realizes these are just the growing pains of a revolutionary nation (40). Throughout, the interpreter remains a guiding figure, his calm demeanor further reinforcing the pedagogic feel of the scene. Like in the arrival scene, translation becomes an embodied, affective process, flowing from the narrator's pain to shame and then to exaltation, guided by the gestures that accompany the teaching moment: the interpreter's slight smile at the traveler's doubts, his vivacious responses, his worried glances as he fears Zapata may not understand his limited Spanish. At the end the miracle is successfully carried out, as the traveler comprehends both the translation of language as well as the inner workings of the revolutionary process.
As shown in the arrival scene these interpreters were not professional translators but had received some language training, either in recent conflicts or immediately before the peace conference, and came from different sectors of society. Zapata even provides the names of some of these young men and women lenguas extranjeras no solo un medio de comunicarse con el extraño, sino un instrumento político puesto al servicio de la paz y la fraternidad de los pueblos" (Zapata 127). As stated earlier, it is likely that many of these interpreters saw in their role the possibility of gaining status within the CCP, reaffirming Pöchhaker's argument about the ideological nature of interpretation; for Zapata, however, what is significant is that their dedication comes not from following Party directives to show the best of the PRC, but rather from their own modesty and total commitment to the cause of peace. As he gets ready to leave the conference, an interpreter asks the traveler if he thinks they have done their job appropriately: "Habríamos querido hacer mucho más, el triunfo de la paz significa para nosotros la vida misma de nuestra patria" (129). This portrayal of the interpreters as selfless guardians appears again when Zapata tells of how two of the young language students stayed at the bedside of two sick delegates in a clinic, "atendiendo la menor solicitud de los enfermos como no lo hubieran hecho sus propios hijos. Día y noche, cada suspiro, cada palabra pronunciada entre sueños era recogida por aquellos amigos en vigilia como centinelas en un puesto de avanzada" (130). Like in the rest of the account, the imagery of war and conflict is used here to demonstrate a commitment to peace, where successful communication is likened to a battle and, simultaneously, to the act of caregiving that follows. To be sure, here as elsewhere in his account Zapata falls back on orientalist tropes to describe the interpreters, saying for instance that their modesty is "heredada en tantos milenios de sabia humildad" (128). Yet this characterization does not supersede that of the interpreter as the watchguard ("centinela") of the Revolution, in their multiple roles as soldier, worker, teacher and caregiver. For Zapata, these language warriors stand as the ultimate examples of a revolutionary attitude in the struggle for peace.
China 6 a.m. ends in an emotional note. The closing scene shows the delegates boarding their plane, waving goodbye to their translators and unable to hold back tears, given that "se habían convertido en algo más íntimo que nuestros propios corazones" (Zapata 130). This is a fitting end to a travel account characterized by these forms of affective responses, as smiles, laughs and tears, and In fact, at one point while talking to some workers in a mining camp about the changes in their labor conditions, the traveler remarks that the interpreter asked the miners to slow down because he couldn't take notes fast enough, and yet, "el calor de sus frases no lograba perderse en los cambios de traducción" (102). The warmth that the worker irradiates is just enough for Zapata to understand him, even without comprehending his words. Language, then, does not contain this revolutionary joy, which overflows verbal comprehension and bursts through as pure affect that envelops the traveler and grants him understanding of the struggle for peace.
However, this does not mean that the interpreter's role has ceased to be relevant, as the next line makes clear: "Me habría gustado entender directamente el idioma de aquel hombre para gozar de la palabra emocionada con que entusiasmaba a sus compañeros oyentes" (102). Ultimately, it is spoken language that, for Zapata, can best communicate the revolutionary experience, the "palabra emocionada" that translator must find a way to ferry across. The struggle the young interpreter faces to do so strengthens his position as a language warrior.

A montage of friendship
Mercedes Valdivieso (1924Valdivieso ( -1993 was a Chilean writer often regarded as representative of to the so-called "generación del 50" and whose work dealt primarily with the role of women in a patriarchal society. Unlike earlier Chilean feminist writers whose work tended towards introspection, Valdivieso's novels, starting with her 1961 La brecha, outwardly challenged the societal roles demanded of a woman as wife and mother, disrupting ideals of femininity by foregrounding themes such as divorce, adultery and abortion (Guerra 8 Hotel, according to state authorities (through Wang), was meant to give the "amigos extranjeros" a total "Western" comfort (Valdivieso 34). However, Clara grows increasingly restless in the environment, as the Hotel comes to represent her alienation from the outside, "real" China, as well as the pressure she feels to conform to state directives and aesthetic models: "una indefinible angustia que parecía brotar de los pasillos interminables, de la curiosidad ajena, del cemento gris, helado y repetido en los numerosos bloques cuyo conjunto componía el Hotel Internacional, construidos tras una inmensa área cerrada, lejos de la ciudad" (35).
Despite the discourse of friendship that Party officials reiterate, the Hotel becomes a hostile space for Clara, who in addition to feeling continuously watched begins to develop physical malaises and artist's block, which impedes her from painting at all during her stay. As her friendship with the PRC loyalist Germán becomes strained, she grows closer to Fanny, Vicente and Marta, all of whom share, to varying degrees, her uncertainties and discomforts. This separation between "friends" and "enemies," according to Carl Schmitt the distinction at the core of politics, comes to dominate how the relationships in the Hotel are demarcated. This is also where Wang comes in, as he repeatedly tries to advise Clara to steer away from Vicente and remain closer to Germán, "un gran amigo de China" (141). 6 As Clara's assigned interpreter and guide, Wang's objective is to make her stay comfortable, that is, to make her feel like a true friend of China. This entails, therefore, a role as linguistic-cultural mediator who, in addition to translating the language is also tasked with clarifying the Revolution and the emerging socialist nation to the artist, much like Zapata's interpreters discussed above. Wang is twenty-four, the seventh son of a working-class family from Shanghai who had wanted to study a technical career but who, seeing the country's need to "hablar con el mundo" had chosen to enter the Foreign Languages Institute instead (Valdivieso 67). As critics have noted, Clara's descriptions of Wang reveal an orientalist gaze, as she tends to infantilize and essentialize the interpreter even when she discovers he has been reporting on her (Montt Strabucchi 2020, 108). In fact, out of all of Clara's relationships at the Hotel, her friendship with Wang is perhaps the most fluctuating, since it oscillates between her expressions of tenderness ("ternura") towards the young man and his efforts to learn Spanish, and distrust and anger as she discovers his official mission. Though never changing her view of him as a "buen muchacho," she nevertheless cannot but be taken aback by the "irrefrenable soberbia" of his "mundo hermético y limitado" and the CCP leadership's "principios inflexibles" he would not betray (Valdivieso 69). On their relationship, Lorena Amaro has argued Wang's reporting on Clara demonstrates that, even if the protagonist had at first felt herself superior to the young man, his reveal reinforces a patriarchal order in which he obtains control over her, much as in the other male characters in the novel attempt repeatedly to do (Amaro 260). To this I want to add that Clara's growing realization of the theatrical montage of 6 It is also important to note the broader geopolitical implications of this discourse in Los ojos de bambú, especially in the context of the Sino-Soviet split and the PRC's support of the Cuban Revolution, both of which occur during the course of the novel and generate strong sentiments of repudiation towards the Soviets and solidarity with the Cubans. Already from the opening moments of the novel, Clara begins to feel physically and emotionally burdened by the presence of her interpreter. During a visit from the deputy director of the Fine Arts museum, her host institution, Wang begins to fulfill his duties, translating for Clara the official's desire for the mutual understanding between their people, to be made possible concretely through himself, the interpreter. The protagonist, who by this early scene has already expressed her frustration and inability to work, wishes she could speak to the deputy directly, without the need for Wang, in order to gain a more direct understanding of the Chinese art world, which she ascertains the man possesses. In fact, "mantener una conversación por intermedio del muchacho se había convertido para Clara en una especie de tormento. Sentía que la calidez del contacto humano se helaba a través del interprete. Esa charla indirecta de le hacia molesta y fatigosa al cabo de un rato" (Valdivieso 56). Far from Zapata's first interpretation scene at the airport, characterized by warmth and physical connection between all parties, here Clara feels "cold" and "tormented," unable to establish a bond with the official and, through him, Chinese culture and a renewed drive to paint. The role of the interpreter functions here like a barrier that impedes understanding and collaboration, paradoxically for Clara undoing the deputy's wish stated moments earlier. Matters are made worse soon after when, in a conversation with Fanny, Clara discovers that the deputy speaks English (a language they have in common) but had chosen to utilize the interpreter to talk to her. Her feelings when she learns this further capture her realization of the theatrical nature of her visit: "Le parecía de pronto que la habían engañado, burlado, y sintió crecer en ella una rabia súbita e intensa. Apretó los puños y los párpados y contuvo la respiración" (Valdivieso 59 when Clara decides to go out with Fanny and explore that "real China" she so longs for, she once again doubts whether to call on the interpreter to accompany them. Her friend laughs off the idea: "¿Te imaginas su cara en estas correrías?" (129).
Again, Wang becomes unnecessary, and his language skills serve as a barrier rather than a channel to understanding. reason why a young man would choose to enroll in a position of service to the state.
Her lack of need for the interpreter shows her disenchantment with the Party, and foreshadows her resolution to leave the PRC.
Clara's decision comes as she realizes that China's position in the global stage is not one of friendship or collaboration but of influence. In its attempt to reach out to the socialist world, wresting power away from the USSR in the context of the Sino-Soviet split, the Party commissions Wang to translate a propaganda article into Spanish. The interpreter then asks Clara to serve as his editor and correct the most glaring translation mistakes in the text, which German has signed off on for publication. In doing so, she discovers that the text "daba consejos y normas revolucionarias desde la cima de su 'verdad indiscutible'…siempre la imposibilidad de equivocarse, la posesión de la verdad absoluta"   (Valdivieso 195).
In the case of the doctor and writer Zapata, traveling in the early years of the Chinese Revolution, his visit was marked by the assurance that liberation could only be achieved by the masses. The political climate in Colombia after the Bogotazo and his perceived failure of the Communist Party had led him to look for alternative revolutionary models from below, and in China, he met everyday people who found joy by taking part of the antiimperialist, socialist struggle for peace. In the face of this joyful struggle, Zapata understands for himself that his role as a socially committed intellectual must come by way of literature and culture, rather than medicine, which he grows to reject as purely empiricist. Learning about stories of Chinese scientists turned writers, he determines he must "encauzar todas mis fuerzas en la lucha del escritor contra las condiciones sociales que agobian a los hombres," since their example "constituía una crítica violenta a mis vacilaciones" Though Valdivieso's stay came only a few years after Zapata's, she was nevertheless more closely exposed to the cracks in the PRC's hospitality machine.
If, as it has been argued here, Clara is an extension of the author's own experiences and discoveries, then the protagonist's slow realization of the montage she is being put through might also shed light on Valdivieso's visit. In her position as "friend of China," Clara begins to see that the narrative of joy and peace is clouded by the famines caused by the Great Leap Forward and the breakdown of internationalism brought by the Sino-Soviet split. There is even, towards the end of the novel, a foreshadowing to the Cultural Revolution and the radicalization of youth in the purge of the enemies of Mao. Going back to the Hotel one night, she is attacked by children who think her a Soviet citizen; "¡Mala! ¡Mala! ¡Mala!" they yell as they throw snowballs at her, in a clear departure from the teary-eyed children that embraced Zapata as he got off the plane (Valdivieso 184). It is this ideological nature of friendship and enmity that Valdivieso's novel attempts to disentangle and, ultimately, break through. In doing so, she reaffirms her commitment to the unity of mankind, one that would no longer be separated by geopolitical distinctions, or on ethnic or gender grounds, but framed by a common struggle for human dignity.