Restoring the marginalized voice of self in El fracaso de las sombras de Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel

Juan Thomas Avila is the most representative contemporary playwright in Equatorial Guinea, the only African country to speak Spanish. This study investigates Juan Thomas Avila Laurel's play, The failure of the shadows(2004), from the postcolonial perspective. Thus, we examine, in this play, the process of the African people's postcolonial discourse against the distorted colonial discourse that justifies the colonial system.First, this play, summoning the Mibili tradition of Equatorial Guinea, deconstruct the existing colonial class order and the absoluteness of Christianity. In this play a sorcerer who lives with the traditional customs and religious rituals of Equatorial Guinea, brings the soul of an African woman(Javina), who resists the invasion and exploitation of Western imperialism and restores the lost voices of Africa. She symbolizes the resistance spirits, opposing against Josefina who pursues the perpetuation of colonialism and the 21st century neo-imperialism.Avila Laurel showed the author's willingness to completely exclude Western voices and establish the uniqueness and identity of Equatorial Guinea in the era of neo-colonialism, where the dominance of U.S. and multinational oil companies in collusion with dictatorships as tyrannical as the colonial system.