The Latin American Identity and the African Diaspora: Ethnogenesi ...

controversy: Africa is a vibrantly integral aspect of Latin America's reality both culturally and spiritually, and presents evidence of her physiognomic incursion into the area.

From another point of view, the Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz deftly characterizes this vision of the reality of an Afro Latin existence with a style that stretches the boundaries of the interplay between the magical and the real. It is the technique with which he interprets his observation of Africa's influence in the life of the Dominican characters in his 2007 work The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Africa's spiritual reality makes a decisive entry into the overall thematic drive of Diaz's creation with a magical presence. This dual imagery of the factual and the marvelous is perceived with the very first words that introduce the context and concept of this novel: “They say that it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved”(1).

Although this stereotypical “it” is introduced without a solid shape or form, it does have a name and a purpose when it sets foot in the New World, that is, Hispaniola. Hispaniola is unquestionably the site, the epicenter, and the ground zero of the author's cultural reality. It is likewise the area where Spanish invaders first set foot in the Americas and concomitantly introduced African slavery to the New World. This introduction brought with it the mystical and spiritual force of the enslaved African. Coupled with a name and purpose, the author has also designed a destiny for this metaphysical expression. The reader intuitively grasps the force of the Diaz “it” as he, the author, defines and reveals the concept's drive and purpose by means of the actions of being, of doing, of perceiving, and being perceived. Thus an African puissance, so to speak, is transformed, in this sense, into a dual ontological energy of commencement and conclusion. Consequently, not only the actions of Diaz's characters, but their physical being and, not surprisingly, their fates are all driven by the “it” that has been established as the force majeure of the context: “Maritza, with her chocolate skin and slanted eyes, already expressing the Ogún energy that she would chop at everybody with for the rest of her life” (14; emphasis added). Ogún is found in the pantheon of gods (i.e., Orichas/Orixas)