Category: Arguedas and Asturias

Popular Culture as Folk Culture

Post author By Brian
Post date February 2, 2009

Last week we spent quite a bit of time in class discussing how popular culture is an expression of the resistance of those people dominated by people in higher powers. I kept this in mind while reading this week’s articles, and in doing so, I found many examples of expressions of resistance in the assigned readings. I also want to mention that I really enjoyed the readings this week, and found that time seemed to pass quickly while reading them!

In the legends told by Miguel Angel Asturias, I feel that they in themselves are expressions of resistance. In the first legend, the Legend of the Singing Tablets, the story is based on the lunar cycle, which was followed by the indigenous people. By including the lunar year in this legend, the indigenous people are able to keep their calendar alive, even with the Spanish introduction and imposition of their calendar. In the Legend of the Silent Bell, there are many references to Christianity, for example Jesus Christ is mentioned, as well as his crucifixion and resurrection. However, these Christian references are made in the context of an indigenous legend, and are therefore adapted to indigenous customs, as we discussed in class last week. I also felt like there was a moral to each legend, a lesson to be learned in the end. I believe that the lessons learned from reading these legends perpetuate the values that are considered most important to the indigenous people, thus also representing a form of resistance to the imposition of a more modern, urban, or European value system.

The story “The Pongo’s Dream”, told by Jose Maria Arguedas, portrays resistance but also the uprising of the oppressed against their oppressors, which in this story is the serf against his master. The story again portrays the imposition of Christianity on the indigenous people, as the indigenous serfs are made to recite “Hail Mary” and “Our Father”. However, in the end, the pongo is able to stand up for himself and rise up against his master, the oppressor, in the telling of his dream. I really enjoyed the fact that, while this story also showed resistance of the oppressed people, similar to the legends of Asturias, it showed this resistance in a clever, witty way, all the while feeding the ego of the oppressor!

Arguedas and Asturias Responses

Popular culture as Folk Culture

Post author By Brian
Post date February 2, 2009

The authors of this week’s readings were apparently both committed to Indian social protest and resistance. On the one hand we have Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) who is described everywhere as a giant of Guatemalan Literature. He even won the Nobel Prize. He was very interested in Pre Colombian cultures, an interest that was celebrated when he died because he had been buried under a Mayan Totem. His writings were very tightly related to politics and impregnated of his opinions. Indeed he claimed openly his opposition to the dictatorial regime of Jorge Ubico and lived on exile for many years. He was also a fervent defender of the Indian cause and identity threatened by imperialism. On the other hand, we have Jose Maria Arguedas (1911-1966) who was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. He was originally Mestizo and learned Quechua before learning Spanish. The topic which seems to have obsessed him all his life was the clash between white “civilization” and the indigenous, “traditional” way of life. In this he was part of the Indigenista movement in South American literature and tried to show in his writings the violence of race relations in rural Peru. Being very pessimistic at the end of his career, he has been criticized by new generation for his romanticism when portraying the situation of indians.

Knowing a little bit more about these two writers really helped me to get the aim of their writings. I have to acknowledge that not being native English speaker did not help me to go through Asturias legends, although the Pongo’s dream was far easier to understand.

With their own way, both these writers tried to protect Indigenous and Ancient Native cultures of their Latin American countries. Asturias rewrote Mayan mythological stories and his legends are very marked by indigenous beliefs. Arguedas wrote a large part of his novels in Quechua, the Peruvian Indian language. Moreover they both oriented their writings towards social and political contestation. Doing so they also tried to make their fiction looks like a possible and hopeful future. Arguedas’ writings are however far more realistic and explicit than Asturias’ prose impregnated of magic and complex undercurrents. Arguedas clearly hope for the day when Justice would come and destroy the feudal order, punishing the oppressor. By the way I really laughed when reading the fate of the tyrannical Master! Asturias makes allusions to exile, modernity and technological peril, religious fanaticism. We could also assume that the condemnation of Utuquel for his heretic speech or the immensity of the sacrifice done by the nun Clara of the Indians were examples of the Indians’ oppression. I will prevent myself to make any more assumptions about Asturias’s prose because I really need some explanation before being able to fully understand its deep meaning.

However, my final idea is that these readings answer to this week’s title – Popular Culture as Folk Culture – in the sense that they emphasize the importance of ancient, traditional and native cultures undermined by colonizers. We get one more time this idea that indigenous cultures are being threatened and that this is the whole identity of a people which is in danger and might disappear. Here again, popular culture is defined as the culture of an oppressed and authentic people, as it was similarly suggested in our former readings.

Arguedas and Asturias Responses

Popular Culture as Folk Culture

Post author By Brian
Post date February 1, 2009

Popular Culture as Folk Culture
I liked the readings for this week. I think that the first readings by Miguel Angel Asturias had kind of a moral advice. In the first one the “legend of the signing tablets” Utuquel says that to create is to steal. I kind of got a sense that he was saying that rather than to invent things people sometimes just recreate based on existent ideas. I king of agree with this idea in that culture at first was like a “creation” but then people reinvent culture and therefore cultures become a mix of many different aspects. At the end when the rainbow is formed from all the tablets, in my opinion could mean that at the end in this case in folk culture the mixture of different aspects result as something positive , in the story, it was the rainbow.
I also enjoyed reading the second story “legend of the Crystal Mask.” In this story how the author writes that “the one who adds creatures of artifice to creation must know that these creatures are rebellious. See, they have buried him, yet they remain.” After reading this part the word that came to my mind was technology. Human beings have created many things to make our life easier, and I am not saying is bad but at the same times we are so dependent on technology that sometimes instead of benefiting us, it affects us. It is like the story he created all of those figures and at the end they killed him.
In the “legend of the silent bell” I like the part where all the nouns are giving their jewels that are material goods and then how the Indigenous noun gives her eyes. I got the impression that the author was kind of showing that personal sacrifice or like “emotional sacrifice” is different to “material sacrifice.” It is here hard here for me to stay since for some people it is really a sacrifice to give away things such as money and for others is more important to donate time or feelings that are not “material things.”
The really liked the last reading. It made me thing of the saying that says that the one that laughs at the end gets to laugh harder. I think that those kinds of stories are part of the resistance of all the marginalized groups in different societies. It gives people hope that at the end things will change and that things can get better.