Amores Perros

Ignacio M. Sanchez-Prado’s article, Amores Perros: Exotic Violence and Neoliberal Fear, discusses the film entitled Amores Perros and its connection to violence and fear with regards to Latin American culture. Sanchez-Prado’s discusses how viloence has become an influential category in Latin America culture when he states, “Violence is a category that has become increasingly used in Latin American cultural

analysis. It has permitted the construction of a new cultural cartography whose axes are

urban experience and a sense of social instability, both of these instances of the shaping

of a new sense of community” (Sanchez-Prado 2). Sanchez-Prado discusses how Latin America’s urban middle class views themselves. He says that their interests are modified based on “new urban configurations” as well as certain myths which are created regarding the marginalized sectors which is a way of reiterating societies “fears”. Sanchez-Prado reveals the type of violence that is displayed in the film when he states, “Unconsciously, the cinematographic discourse found in Amores perros does not escape Tarantino’s metageneric tendency. It is, partly, a simulacrum of costumbrismo and, partly, an aesthetization of soap-opera melodrama. It is in not Gonza´lez In˜a´rritu was ‘It is part of our nature, unfortunately. It is painful for those who deliver it or receive it, and also confusing. This being against our nature forms part of us.’ Not social, not political, not economic. The violence in Amores perros is natural. And aesthetic” (Sanchez-Prado 49-50).

John Beverly "The Real Thing"

In this blog post I wanted to discuss John Beverly’s , The Real Thing. Beverly’s article discusses Rigoberta Menchu’s “I, Rigoberta” and the notion of the subaltern and this idea of authenticity. Beverly analyzes the fact that the book refers to the narrator as Rigoberta not RIgoberta Menchu or Menchu. Beverly makes the point that it is informal since we have not formal met Menchu herself. Beverly continues to discuss the question, “Can the subaltern speak?” and compares the work to Elzbieta Sklodowska. Beverly discussed Sklodowska ideas when he states, Elzbieta Sklodowska has something similar in mind when she criticizes what she feels is the appeal in accounts of testimonio, including my own, to the authenticity of a subaltern voice. Such an appeal stops the semiotic play of the text, she implies, fixing both it and the testimonial subject in an unidirectional gaze that deprives them of their reality”. Beverly discusses the subaltern in a negative connotation. I don’t know if this question can truly be answered. Menchu’s text forces the reader to confront not only the subaltern as a represented text but also as the agent of a transformative project that reaches to be hegemonic in its own sense.

I, Rigoberta Menchú

I, Rigoberta Menchú is diverse from any text we have examined so far. It is a biography, which could be debated, that sheds light on Rigoberta Menchú’s life as well as the lives around her. The book depicts what it was like to be a person of Indian descent in Latin America, specifically Guatemala. For tomorrows lecture we are concentrating on the second half of the book. Menchú’s experiences continue to startle me, it was truly astonishing all the hardships the Indigenous people of Latin America had to face. An example of one of these hardships is in chapter 30 when she states, “

But when the murderer Carlos Garcia did was to send his fathers bodyguard to kill the woman in her house. But he told the bodyguard not to shoot her but to hack her to death with a machete. Naturally the bodyguard did as he was told and went to the woman’s house and, catching her by surprise, hacked her up with his machete” (Menchú177). This consequently occurred because a son of a finca owner pre sued the poor woman and she refused to be his mistress. These conditions where truly horrific and disgusting.

Menchú continues on discussing the rest of their struggles. She explains how in order to adapt to society she had to learn spanish. Menchúmakes the reader feel like they are being told a very sacred part of history. It is almost like we are flies on a wall in this distinct time as well as area of history.

Moraña's Current Era

In "The Boom of the Subaltern" Mabel Moraña argues that "the current era could be interpreted as the way in which the left that lost the revolution intends to rebuild its agenda, its historical mission, and its lettered centrality, looking to define a new 'otherness' in order to pass -- 'from outside and from above" -- from representation to representativeness" (651). It would seem then that, after the fall of a number of dictatorships, Latin America's lettered left took up a dictatorial position by subjugating the subaltern as a field of study. I wonder though, what is the relation between the lettered left of Latin America and the lettered left of the North. Does the study of subalternity by Latin American academics merely align themselves with the purpose Moraña sees in their Northern counterparts, namely "intellectual exercise  from which one can read...the history of representational hegemony of the North, in its new era of postcolonial re-articulation" (650). Do they lose their sense of Latin Americanism? Perhaps the answer is yes, that even if the academics reside in Latin America, the separate position from which they examine the subaltern echos the actions of the North, and therefore blurs the notion of national boundaries.

"The Space In-Between"

In Silviano Santiago’s The Space In-Between he examines the issues of hybridity and the so-called “space in-between” in postcolonial Latin American culture. Santiago discusses the issue of original versus copy when he states, “It is a curious truth that preaches the love of genealogy and a curious profession which, with it’s gaze turned toward the past and to the expensive of the present, establishes value as dependent on the discovery of a contacted debt, a stolen idea, or a borrowed image or word. The prophetic, cannibalistic voice of Paul Valery calls us: “nothing more original, more intrinsic to itself than feeding on others. But it is necessary to digest them. The lion is comprised of ingested sheep”” (Santiago 32). In other words, Valery is saying that it is crucial for a country to considered and be informed of outside countries in order to be a strong well-rounded country. He also brings up the idea of dominant and dominated culture but also acknowledges how problematic European historical influences can be in Latin American culture. One of my favorite quotes from Santiago’s text is when he states, “Somewhere between sacrifice and playfulness, prison and transgression, submission to the code and aggression, obedience and rebellion, assimilation and expression there, in this apparently empty space, its temple and its clandestinity, is where the anthropophagous ritual of Latin American discourse is constructed” (Santiago 38). This quote caught my attention because it basically sums up Santiago’s text. He is talking about the in-betweeness and how Latin American culture is a consumption of all those things and in-between.

Tropicalia links

Hi guys, I've been meaning to post these links for a while:

Caetano Veloso, "Alegria, alegria"

Gilberto Gil, "Domingo no Parque"

Polar’s Indigenismo and Hetergeneous Literatures: Their Double Sociocultural Statute

Antonio Cornejo Polar’s Indigenismo and Hetergeneous Literatures: Their Double Sociocultural Statute is extremely dense. To be honest I had to reread a few different quotes and sections of the piece. Polar’s piece was a little complicated for me so I did my best to pick out a couple of his ideas and discuss those. What stood out to me in Polar’s piece was when he does into depth about Latin American historical textual ideas. It was extremely interesting to me when Polar state Retamar thoughts on the “three stages of regional intercommunication: romanticism, modernism and avant-guardism, which underpinned the most solid unity forged by the new Spanish American narrative. Polar believes that this model would be sufficient for comprehension because the system is divided up into smaller divisions. Polar continues to discuss the framework of Latin American Literature through the eyes of Alejandro Losada. Losada has proposed to delimit three literary system: the realist, the naturalist, and the subjectivist. This general structure of Latin American culture creates a very wide range of autonomy. This greater structure can be divided into smaller divisions, more specific, and these diverse structures do not have to be necessarily contradictory but yet similar frameworks. In conclusion, he finishes the topic, entitled The Question of National Literatures, by saying, “In fact, even literatures from conflicting social groups vying for power correspond to a social structure that, not because of its stratification, ceases being unique and absolute” (Satro, Rios, Trigo 104).