This week topic was the Latin-American boom and how this affected different sectors of the population. I have decided to comment an essay and a book which in my opinion reflect the social context of the boom.

In Seven Essays by Aldo Mariategui, the author explains his position about “gamonalismo” and centralism. Mariategui position is clear, he believes in the political empowerment of the indigenous population, he writes in his essay “ Peru has to choose between the gamonal or the Indian”, being the gamonal the individual who exploits the Indian. As Mariategui many other figures where known by their anti-capitalist positions. They believed that modernization was only enlarging the social and economic gap because the authorities continued with the same oligarchic policies from the colonial times by not distributing the gains fairly.  On the other hand, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in “One hundred years of solitude” describes how postcolonial and industrialization affected and changed the identity of Latin-American citizens. He creates a city which name is Macondo which recreates every Latin-American city during a century in which cities became more industrialized, modernized and globalized. Macondo is also affected by the revolution, its people’s identity is shaped by a violent context, a variety of expanding economic activities such as the construction railways and the arriving of outsiders. In both texts, it is shown how Latin societies are affected by modernization. Furthermore, they explain how authorities have been able to take advantage of people who have been silent and how as the time have passed this people became unsure about their identity.

How can modernity come hand by hand with brutality?

The topic of this week was centred around the 19th century debate of how gender and ethnicity affected human rights such as political rights, nationality and citizenship.

As we discussed in class, indigenous people in Latin America have had a different concept of nation and state than creoles. Indigenous people are divided and recognize themselves as part of different communities which have their own language, cultural practices and historical views. However, during the 19th century under the propositions of the European scientific views on race, physical appearance was the most important factor in order to classify humanity and allow the exercise of rights according to the social status provided by racial categorization. Therefore, indigenous people and Africa descendants who helped achieving independence passed from being slaves of the Spanish colonies to become slaves of the industrial revolution and their governments. As we can see the governments of the Independent Nations in Latin America used a system similar to the Spanish “encomienda”. Their native disposition towards their territory was not considered as a right because of their “race” and it was not uncommon to see indigenous people being enslaved by the companies which exploited their lands. Furthermore, it is important to analyze the South American society differently than most nations in Central America. For example Peru had strongly divided social classes by using the caste system even after their independence, not everyone was considered citizen and those noncitizen were Conformed by a large variety of ethnicities . While in Some countries of the Caribbean most of the populations were children from black slaves who lived in a territory that was mostly clean of Indians making the social dynamics different.

Gender dynamics of the 19th century are also important to analyze in order to understand nowadays Latin American rates of feminicide, adolescent pregnancy and gender violence. Maria Eugenia Echenique anti feminist position could sound retrograde from a 21st century perspective however her fundamentalist conviction of the role of the Christian woman is similar to nowadays Latin American sexist perspective of gender dynamics. I believe other Latin Americans would agree with me when I say that it is not estrange to witness society justifying rape and feminicide. It is not rare to watch our parlaments debating the morality of women right over their own bodies based on catholic views which are the same than centuries ago Echenique shared.

“El Matadero”

I decided to focus in  “The slaughterhouse” because in my opinion even though the text alludes to the political system of Argentina, it can be used to analyze the socio-political context of any Latin American country that has begun to develop as an independent nation during the 19^th century. I believe that through our history Latin-American politics and activists have in numerous occasions idealized and seen Europe as a developing utopian society. Therefore, Echevarría presents the slaughterhouse as a metaphor of the Argentina’s socio-cultural dichotomy between civilization and barbarism. Being civilization, the group of progressive ideals, exemplified in European socioeconomic and political structures. Furthermore, the text implies that in the author’s perspective these ideals oppose Rosas’ Regime, which becomes “barbarism”.  He also suggests that the political perception of barbarism is limited to certain ethnic and cultural groups and therefore alludes to an innate savagery. “The Slaughterhouse” proposes that ethnic, social and religious elements allow to contrast civilization and barbarism. Therefore, in the text, the slaughterhouse is a place where the workers have a certain socio-cultural status which relates to an ethnicity that has a tradition of not having enough education to be considered, in the social context of the nineteenth century, as citizens equivalent to the academics as Echevarria, who has the capacity of analyze and understand the political reality. At the same time, the interactions of the individuals of the slaughterhouse are morbid, barbaric and harmful for society.   The author manages to expose the relativism of the differential notions of the same society. The popular conviction of the creoles which explains that Latin America nature of pseudo civilization and political barbarie are the result of the means in which the political elite leads without aiming to achieve foreign models and the certainty that is in the idiosyncrasy of native Latin-Americans to oppose development.

I have always being amazed of the complexity of Eehevarria work but I yet do not understand how his analysis could be so complex but expose really simplistic racist perspectives. Perhaps it is possible that Echevarria as many other creoles could have suggested that indigeneity was an obstacle for civilization?