After finishing each of this weeks readings I think I can safely say that I have no idea what is going on. About half way through Peron’s writing I decided to do some research on her and found out a lot about her history and her husbands political career. Reading about her life and subsequent death was pretty astounding especially the funeral procession that Argentina held for her. To be honest I had never heard about her or her husband at all in my life but my quick wiki browsing left me quite intrigued and I learnt a lot about Argentina.

In terms of her writing I did enjoy reading it but after a while it got kind of boring. It feels like a speech and I’m sure that if I had been listening to someone read this in an invigorating and passionate tone (which probably isn’t hard, this piece is very heartfelt in my opinion) I would be captivated and inspired by her words. The messages she sends the people are anti-imperialist and pro workers reform especially in agriculture and industrial setting. Her strategy of demonizing the oligarchs probably won her a lot of favour with the working class that was being exploited.

Reading Borges at 1 am was probably a bad idea because I literally have no idea what is going on. I’m not sure if it’s me fading in and out of sleep but the best I could gather from his writing was that he was expressing opposite views of Peron. Borges achieves this by writing a story of one mans adventures which ultimately lead to the unwarranted death of another. The writing is difficult to follow unlike Perons and provides a ficticous account of the negatives of group mentality in order to critique the followers of Peron.

Of both these writings I much preferred Perons but I will be going back later this week to try and reread Borges. During my readings I learned much about the political history of Argentina in the 20th century and I’m excited to discuss the readings and politics that contextualize the readings for this week.