Arguedas and “The Pongo’s Dream”

I definitely found satisfaction in the way the story ended, even though you felt throughout the reading that justice had to be coming.  I think this story is interesting because I Wikipedia-ed Arguedas and it said that he came from a fairly well-off family.  Since his father was often absent and he didn’t get along well with his step-family, he spent a lot of time with the house servants.  This makes me wonder if his cruel and distasteful depiction of the lord in his tale was supposed to be reflective of his impression of his own family.  I also thought it was interesting to glimpse the bits of Catholicism woven into the story in the references to the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the judgement at the end.  It exemplifies the point from the Rowe, William, and Schelling reading how bits of European culture (i.e. Spanish Catholicism) were adopted into the fabric of Latin American popular culture, making it impossible to extract colonial influence from “pure” Latin American culture; it has all become intertwined over time.

Asturias Legends

The descriptive detail in Asturias’ legends is impressive; almost a little overwhelming sometimes.  In Legend of the Singing Tablets, I liked the number of senses that are engaged while reading.  At points, however, I thought it was a little hard to pick out what detail was important to the build up of the story and what was added richness.  This is what I pulled from it:

On page 84, Utuquel declares “to create is to steal,” suggesting the practice of re-purposing the work of others.  But later he says, “All works of art are foreign, and belong to those who borrow them from the interior of themselves,” implying that the person also steals from their own soul, which is somewhat disconnected from their physical being. On page 88, Asturias writes “many are the poets condemned to deposit white cloudlets in the craters of volcanoes, seeds left over from the colors that the sun steals from the moon, the price that must be paid for the tablet, in order to form the rainbow.”  These various quotes together suggest that art and poetry can be short-lived and sometimes heartbreaking careers for the physical person of the artist and the creative soul within each artist, but it is the accumulated contributions of these “suffering artists”, if you will, that leads to great beauty.

I’m still working through the reading; as other people noted, it’s pretty long.  However, I think this reading is a really important one since it traces the roots of “popular culture” in Latin America back to the cultural practices of native tribes prior to colonization.  This is a cool concept since the term “pop culture” is associated in my mind with much more contemporary times.  However, this reading reminds me that 1492 was once considered “contemporary” and there were popular aspects of culture then just as there are today.

Right near the beginning on page 52, Rowe and Schelling write “…it is important, when considering the ways in which the past is used as a resource for imagining an alternative future, to bear in mind that the peasant population of the Andes… do not hold standard Western notions of time and history.  Their ideas are imbedded in everyday life, and it is on this level that we need to look if we are to appreciate how Andean conceptions of the world are experienced and passed on.”  This reminds me of the Ben Highmore reading we looked at, which emphasized that culture is normal; phenomenon we consider foreign about other people’s cultures to them may simply be aspects of their everyday lives they don’t think twice about.  Another example of this is in the lack of translations for certain Spanish words, such as art pieces that are neither “popular art” nor “folk art” but posses more cultural significance than “handicrafts” (page 68).

It also seems like the antagonism that we discussed last class in relation to populism has existed in Latin America dating back to the arrival of the colonists in 1492.  I feel like this reading has given me a sense that there has always been an ongoing struggle by some group of oppressed people for adequate representation.  For Evita Peron, the struggle was between the corrupt in power and the populists.  In this reading, the oppressed people started out as the groups of Incan, Mayan, Andean, and Aztec people struggling against the white colonists.  The reading also describes how, over time, the people became more assimilated to European culture and industrialization progressed.  Conflict emerged between those pushing capitalism in the cities cities and the poor rural laborers and those left unemployed in the midst of urbanization.

I began reading Evita Peron’s My Message this week.  The first thing that stood out to me was the ease with which I could read her writing.  I think that her style ties in well with her message that she is a person for the people; her simple way of writing makes her accessible to larger audiences of varying levels of education.

A few of her phrases also struck me as particularly notable.  On page 57, she writes, “Fanaticism turns life into a permanent and heroic process of dying; but it is the only way that life can defeat death.”  In general, I think her use of the term “fanaticism” is intriguing, since it is a word that can hold both positive and negative connotations depending on how it is used in context.  Evita Peron chooses to interpret the term in a positive sense.  This quote left an impression on me since it presents fanaticism as both the path towards dying and the way of overcoming death, which is rather contradictory.

Her comparison of fanatics, enemies, and those who are indifferent is also worth mentioning.  Peron seems to oppose “the indifferent” more than she opposes individuals who she perceives as “enemies” of the people.  On one hand, this makes sense because at least enemies present stronger emotional sentiments and voice/take action on what they believe.  In contrast, the indifferent show no passion one way or the other.  However, I still don’t think it is logical for her to so strongly oppose the indifferent in reality, since they pose an obstacle to her desire to empower the working people.  While the indifferent show neither support nor threat to her cause, I feel like it is practically backwards for her to speak more negatively towards them than towards those who are active enemies of the people.

In the Jorge Luis Borges reading, I am confused about who/what “the monster” is.  Since Borges writes, “What I didn’t figure on was that member of the opposing team, healthy patriotism”(p. 203), is the monster a dictator of some sort?  While the casual terms that Borges uses make the text more difficult to comprehend (since I couldn’t always tell when he was using one of his own terms and when he was using the real word for something), they also made me smile when I was reading.  Is he supposed to be portraying a particular ethnicity?

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Hi!

My name is Maya Redlinger and I’m a first year at UBC.  I’m in Arts, still totally undecided in terms of major so I’m shopping around with my classes right now.  I’m not Latin American in any way shape or form (many people think I am and come up to me speaking Spanish; I’m really Austrian and Japanese) but in general I enjoy American studies and I think Latin American culture is pretty intriguing!  I’m from San Francisco but Vancouver’s got me kind of hooked.  The goals for 2017 are to get better at bass guitar and learn how to snowboard.