The document that struck me the most in this week’s readings was Ruben Dario’s “To Roosevelt” poem written in 1904. This poem seems to principally highlight the differences between the United States and the rest of Latin America (which is to say, the majority of the rest of America excluding Canada…). After all, and as Dario points out, the U.S. is an imperialist nation, with imperial dreams, the “future invader of our naive America” in line 6. While gracing the United States with adjectives such as “strong,” “proud,” and “cultured and able,” Dario is stating truths about a nation powerful like the U.S., while still using the words with a more negative connotation, pointing out by comparison with the “naive America” that the U.S. is possibly godless, and without moral.
These comparisons characterize Latin America as a place with heart, and soul, and compassion, and dreams. I believe that because of this, it is a successful and beautiful poem. It seems as though Dario is not characterizing Latin America in the stereotypical sense of “passionate” that we have discussed in class, but rather as a place that still has ethics and has not been overwrought with power and greed as the U.S.’s imperial nation has been. It is interesting to read this text from a contemporary standpoint, particularly with light towards how extremely the U.S. did invade the Americas, backing numerous dictators, but also regarding current US-Panama relations, which are quite good.
Nicole Gross
November 30, 2016 — 5:23 pm
I agree that the poem used excellent satire to turn the US’s good qualities against them while portraying Latin America in a positive light. I wonder how accurate the poem is, though, in terms of noting that Latin America is a place with morals and good ethics. While no country is perfect in this area (nor will they ever be), you can’t deny that recent and current events in Latin America make the region seem to be anything but moral and ethical. Dawson mentions that Latin America is now one of the most dangerous places on earth, with extremely high homicide and abduction rates; many Latin American countries are also well-known for corruption and barely-democratic structures of governance. Thus, while at the time of the poem, Latin America my have been ahead of the US in terms of ethics and morals, I do not think that this continued to be the case – not because the US is moral, but because Latin America has shown too many examples of how its own countries are not moral.