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?