Anita de Monte Laughs Last

Xochitl Gonzalez bases the character of Anita de Monte on the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. Gonzalez stays relatively true to Mendieta’s life, and many of the novel’s details reflect various aspects of Mendieta’s history, her work, and the controversy surrounding her death. Mendieta was born into an affluent family in Havana, Cuba in 1948. Her father was an attorney who rose to prominence in the pre-revolutionary regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista, and her mother, a chemist, was the granddaughter of a prominent sugar mill owner. Shortly after the revolution, Mendieta and her sister were sent to the United States as part of the Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) flights, a CIA-backed initiative that allowed Cubans who opposed the new, post-revolutionary Castro regime to send their children to be educated in the United States. Because Mendieta’s family was persecuted by Castro for their devout Catholicism, they sought to save their children from the ideological indoctrination that had become part of the Cuban school system.

After their arrival in the United States, Mendieta and her sister settled in Iowa. Mendieta eventually earned a BA, an MA, and an MFA in painting from the University of Iowa. She drew inspiration from the avant-garde movement of her day, but her work was deeply personal, and her pieces reflect her interest in feminism, spiritualism, and the hybrid, Afro-Caribbean culture of her native Cuba. In addition to creating art that reflected her own identity and the rich traditions of Cuba, Mendieta used her work to raise awareness for serious social issues like sexual assault and violence against women. She was popular amongst proponents of the women’s rights movement, and she quickly became a prominent figure within the art world. She is still considered one of the most influential Cuban artists of the 20th century, and her work is shown regularly at various museums across the Americas.

Mendieta’s art uses multiple media and often makes use of organic materials. During her lifetime, she was a sculptor, a painter, and a performance artist, and she even created several films. Over the course of her career, she created large-scale pieces in Cuba, Mexico, the United States, and Italy. One of her most noteworthy works, Rape Scene (1973) was a performance piece in which Mendieta made use of real chicken blood to comment on the brutal rape and murder of a fellow student. In another famed series of pieces, the Silueta Series (1973-1985), Mendieta uses mud, sand, grass, and other natural materials to create silhouettes of female forms. Her broader message with this series is that women in particular are intimately connected to the earth.

Mendieta was married to the minimalist sculptor Carl Andrea, and in 1985, she fell to her death from their apartment window during a heated argument. Andrea was charged with murder but acquitted in a non-jury trial, and Anita’s death rocked the art world. Although many (typically male) artists remained supportive of Andrea throughout the trial and its aftermath, Mendieta’s work appealed to many of the ideas central to the feminist movement, and many women did not believe that Andrea was innocent of Mendieta’s murder. The events surrounding her death were damning: The bitter argument that precipitated Mendieta’s fall was heard by many of their neighbors, and several even reported hearing Mendieta scream “No!” immediately before she fell. Additionally, when the police arrived, they found Andrea’s face covered with scratches. In his 911 call, Andrea noted that he and his wife had been fighting about the fact that he was more successful than she was. This bizarre statement was particularly striking to Mendieta’s supporters, and various groups staged protests of Andrea’s work in the months and years after his acquittal.