Author Archives: David Peckham

Epilogue (Conclusions)

Taking this course was really refreshing for me, because of the liberty and autonomy that it gave me for reading and writing about the novels and authors that were presented. Compared to some of my other other courses, SPAN 312 made me engage with the ideas and themes in each story in a meaningful way, rather than reading them to memorize certain characters of information about them. The course definitely inspired me to read other works and authors from Latin America, I already have a few other books from Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende that I am very eager to read. I took this course because it gave me credit towards my degree in Latin American Studies and it seemed an interesting and fun alternative to taking another history, anthropology or Political Science course on Latin America, as Spanish 312 gave me the opportunity to explore prominent authors from Latin America in their own words, in a way.

I would definitely recommend this course to students who want an academically non-demanding course, which still invites them to thoughtfully engage and participate in the ongoing discussion and exploration of literature from the past 150 years in Latin America, While this is not the first Spanish literature course I have taken at UBC, it is the first Spanish literature course which I have taken in English, and while there are certain elements which do get ‘lost in translations’, I appreciate the way that Professor Jon Beasley-Murray, still relays the ideas that the authors themselves had about their works, while at the same time contributing and encouraging further examinations into them. Hopefully, I can use the techniques, ideas and information that I have learned about Latin American literature in this course and apply it to other works in that genre and social environment in my pursuit of Latin American Studies.

I guess as a final discussion question, even though there is no specific text to look at here, what ultimate thoughts or ideas do you have coming out of this course, how did it impact your own understanding of what Latin American literature is?

Week 13: Taiga Syndrome (Rivera Garza)

6 Replies

In the past texts that I have read throughout the duration of the course, various metaphysical, philosophical and spiritual topics have been presented and discussed, but Taiga syndrome feels the most esoteric. We never know the name, or even the gender, of the detective that the story of the novel focuses on, almost as if the character themself is not important, only their ideas and their experiences. The main focus of the Taiga Syndrome, is the clash and interconnectedness of humanity and nature, as the man who contracts the detective to find his missing writes, even says that the Taiga kind of ‘consumes’ the person that steps foot inside of it. The taiga acts as a completely sterile environment, not sterile as in ‘clean’ as there as plenty descriptions of blood, sweat, urine, semen, vomit, bile, saliva and fecal matter, but sterile as in completely isolated from the ‘civilized’ world and social hierarchies. There is not a clear authority in the novel, perhaps the only authority is the Taiga itself, each character that is presented, both human and non-human, lives their own separate lives in complete freedom, and while it can be self-destructive as with the foreign couple or the feral child, it can also be liberating such as with the detective and translator.

While the theme of this week is the relationship between humanity and nature, I would say that Taiga Syndrome, shows how nature can corrupt humanity and how humanity can corrupt nature. The feral child is interesting, because of how it is describe as both a wolf and a human, living a dual existence in an isolated world, while the lumberjack is a conqueror of nature who creates a swimming pool and visits the bar and brothel, however even in the brothel it is shown that humans succumb to their ‘natural’ desires.

My overall impressions of this novel are somewhat mixed, and I cannot decide if I ‘enjoyed’ in the sense that it made me laugh or took me on a pleasant adventure, but I did ‘enjoy’ it in a spiritual sense about what is important in life, the objects and physical location we associate with, or the people and social relationships that we maintain and seek out, perhaps it is neither and the only thing that gives ‘life’ and substance, is our desires and what we each individually decide is important to us?

My question for discussion is: What do think is the symbolism behind the wolf attack, why did the detective say that the wolf gave them a compassionate or graceful look before attacking them?

Week 12 – My Tender Matador (Pedro Lemebel)

1 Reply

The story of My Tender Matador, takes place in the Chile of 1986, having read Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star, which is partly set in Chile in the immediate aftermath of the coup of September 11. Lemebel’s novel feels like a continuation of the story of the struggle against the military junta over a decade later. Along with the chronology of these two stories, another comparison I could make is in the characters themselves, while Distant Star is about university students having to experience the oppression and cruelty of the military’s dictatorship, My Tender Matador, is about the experience of those who are not directly connected to the conflict, but innocent bystanders who become unwilling participants in the struggle. While there are multiple characters in the novel, there are four principal characters who’s actions the novel focuses on, the Queen, Carlos, Lucia/Lucy and Augusto.

Although Lemebel’s book is set in the Chilean military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and Pinochet himself is a character, I would argue that the story of the novel is not about him at all, but rather about Queen and her romantic relationship with Carlos. I find the relationship between Queen and Carlos to be really interesting, as someone who identifies as queer myself, because of its authenticity and it emotional weight. I use the word romantic relationship instead of sexual, because to my understanding, to Queen and Carlos their connection to one another is completely romantic, while both characters express sexual interest in each other at times throughout the story, that is not the primary concern between them. While the both of them want each other, in both physical and spiritual ways, by the end of the novel it becomes clear that they need each other. In a physical sense, Carlos needs Queen’s apartment to hide the maps and weapons for the revolutionary movement, and Queen needs Carlos’ physical company. In the spiritual sense, Carlos needs the reassurance and joy that Queen brings to his life and Queen needs the same from Carlos.

In my mind, Pedro Lemebel wrote My Tender Matador for a queer audience, because the ideas and experiences can be only understood in a queer context. The novel not only acts as a piece of literature against the military regime, but also as a piece of queer and feminist literature for Chile.

My question for this week is: What did you think of the idea of the ‘importance of appearances’ that appears throughout the novel, do you think that Lucy/Augusto are similar to Queen/Carlos?

Week 11: Distant Star (Roberto Bolaño)

3 Replies

Roberto Bolaño’s novel is really interesting because of the way that he treats the main character of the novel, Alberto Ruiz-Tagle/Carlos Wieder. While the events of the story are obviously meant as symbols for the subversive, seductive and destructive actions of Carlos Wieder and the Chilean military dictatorship, Bolaño never tries to lay it on the reader that Wieder and his supporters are incredibly bad, he leaves it up to us to reach that conclusion. One of the reasons why I use the word ‘seductive’ in describing Wieder, is because of the way that Wieder portrays his outward persona to the public. As Ruiz-Tagle, Wieder is popular, intelligent and finely dressed, probably personifying everything that Arturo, Bibiano and most Chilean poets of the 20th century wished they were. As Carlos Wieder, our protagonist is still popular, intelligent, and finely dressed, but his secretly cruel and sadistic side is celebrated and rewarded by the new regime. What I think was the main ‘moral’, that Bolaño tried to get across was that, instead of dictatorships creating horrible people, it is horrible people who create dictatorships, even if their cruelty is not obvious.

To me Roberto Bolaño added various themes of how individuals react and act in the world and society that they live in. The themes that I identified in Distant Star are, grief, friendship, social amnesia, love, familial relationships, art and passion. But if I was asked what broad theme Distant Star is about, I would say that the story is about memory overall, and how we choose to interpret the events of the past retrospectively. An example of social and individual memory are, the Messerschmitt 109 that Wieder flies over the prison and the portrait of Ivan Chernyakhovsky kept by Juan Stein, what I think that Roberto Bolaño wanted to show with these, is that the effects of the Second World War and its fascist/communist divide and collective trauma still impacted the Chile of the 1970s in a lot of ways.

Overall, I enjoyed Roberto Bolaño’s novel, partially because I like reading and watching media about manipulative villains, because they make for good detective stories or psychological thrillers and I just find them personally intriguing. But I also appreciated the way that Roberto Bolaño tried to use his novel as a way to remember the people who were disappeared during Pinochet’s rule, and the struggle against tyranny and oppression and how art can be used to support or dismantle these regimes.

My discussion question for this reading is: How did you interpret the character of Carlos Wieder, were you disappointed that we never know his final fate in the novel?

Week 10: Rigoberta Menchu

2 Replies

This week’s text is different in its (semi-) autobiographical nature, while other authors introduce themselves into their stories, or create characters which mirror their own lived experiences. For Rigoberta Menchú’s novel I had to take a step back in a way and do some reflecting on what I have learned about Indigenous peoples in Latin America here at UBC (I am hoping to make Latin American Studies one of Majors), and what I know from my own cultural background as a Mexican-Canadian. Last term I took Anthropology 205 which focused on revolutions, and one of the units was focused on Indigenous protests and revolution in the context of the Central American Dirty Wars. While my class did not study Guatemala, we did look at the situation of El Salvador at the time, by watching a U.S made documentary (I forget the name of the documentary, or anything about the film crew, but I do remember that Martin Sheen narrated the film). Many of the scenes and interviews of the leftist revolutionaries, match almost exactly the description of events by Menchú, such as the distribution of pamphlets and the role of Catholicism. Unfortunately, because of my previous study of the topic, I am also familiar with the government’s brutal oppression, and pretty much genocide, of rural and Indigenous communities, primarily through the actions of Death Squads, as we see when they come and pretty much destroy Rigoberta Menchú’s village.

I, Rigoberta, also made me self-reflect on my own background as a non-Indigenous Spanish and English speaking person. As Elizabeth Burgos-Debray informs us, that Rigoberta Menchu’s testimonio, is an Indigenous form of literary tradition which is separate from the Western and Colonial novel and literary tradition. Because of the Western form of literature, which up until this week was the only literature we have been reading, I was naively expecting Menchú’s “novel” to follow the same structure, as say for example, Mama Blanca. However, I was surprised about intrigued, about the way that Menchú narrates her personal story, many of the major “events” of her life, as secondary or at least only partially focused upon, when compared to the description of traditional Kiché customs, such as the making of traditional clothing or the making of tortillas. I also find it interesting that Menchú, gives a thorough explanation of why she and her family members speak or act in a certain way, as although this is a testimonio by an Indigenous woman, Menchú intended for her story to be told to non-Indigenous peoples, such as myself.

My discussion question is: What did you think of the mentality that Menchú’s Kiché community has, in always being prepared for death, are there any other situations that this mentality can be applied to, such as in stressful events?

Week 9 – Mario Vargas Llosa

2 Replies

I quite enjoyed reading Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, as Mario Vargas Llosa wrote it as a clear satire and almost parody of the popular spy novels and movies of his time. The story of Captain Pantoja actually reminded me of other comedic parodies like Austin Powers and sketch tv comedies like Monty Python and SNL, because of the way that they bring often ‘taboo’ subjects like sexuality and intimacy into, sometimes overtly, serious action and thriller stories. The way that Captain Pantoja and the Special Service is written is also an interesting literary decision by Mario Vargas Llosa, in that the ‘novel’ changes structure each chapter, chapters that alternate between dialogue scenes which parallel and interrupt each other, fictional letters written in first person narration, and imaginary news journal articles and military dispatches. Overall, these different styles of writing work surprisingly well to create a coherent and well-written story about the so-called ‘special’ service. Although the novel is a piece of satire, at times it almost felt like surrealist, in a way similar to Pedro Paramo and One Hundred year of Solitude. Events like the crucifixions by the Amazonian cult, The Brothers of the Ark that Panta’s mother falls prey to, and the hundreds of prostitutes that go into the Amazon, and the use of substances like alcohol and ayahuasca feel so alien to my own lived experiences that they sound fantastical.

The background of the novel itself is interesting, especially if you, as an informed reader, know the history of Peru during the 20th century. The time period which Mario Vargas Llosa writes Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, is rather uneventful for the country of Peru, in the early part of the century up until the 1940s, Peru was fighting wars with its neighbors, Ecuador and Colombia and indeed the characters of Pochita and Mama mention that the region that the Amazonian garrison is protecting is bordered against territory in Colombia that used to belong to Peru. After the 1950s when Captain Pantoja takes place, Peru would be then be led by a Leftist military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, which would then be replaced by a conservative dictatorship which fought with communist guerrillas in the 1980s and 1990s. Understanding this context to what was happening in Peru during the fictional events of Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, is important I believe, because it makes us understand why the Peruvian military and generals even bother to entertain their troops in the novel in the first place.

Question: Do you believe that Pantoja changed his personality because of the “heat” as Pochita describes, or was he always a little more loose than the persona that he used in his professional and personal life?

Week 8: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabo) Part 2

2 Replies

As we saw last week, the first half of the novel is based upon the consequences of José Arcadio’s actions, following the arrival of the Gypsies. The second half of the novel follows the direct consequences of Colonel Aureliano Buendia’s actions during the war against the Conservatives. It is because of his womanizing during his military campaign against the conservatives, that he produces over a dozen offspring, all named after him. I find it ironic that his direct heirs are deemed worthy enough to be called “Segundo”, despite the fact that the other Aureliano’s are more capable and more responsible in their actions towards Macondo. Aureliano Segundo displays the same negative characteristics as his father, while Arcadio Segundo displays the positive characteristics of his father, but without his courage or sensibilities. Of the two brother I like Arcadio Segundo slightly more, but that is only because of the somewhat immoral actions of Aureliano Segundo. I was also somewhat surprised by the return of Rebeca, not as another character named Rebeca, but as the original Rebeca from the first half of the novel, I find it interesting how she has become trapped in the past, unable to move on while still wearing her clothing and living in the same house, almost forgotten by all, except Ursula.

I like to think that Garcia Marquez divided his novel into three parts, with the first being the introduction of the Gypsies to Macondo and the origin of the Buendia family with the original José Arcadio. The second part of the novel are the actions of Colonel Aureliano Buendia during the war against the Conservatives, and the creation of the little gold fish. Finally, the third part of the novel is the slow decline, and eventual and inevitable ruin of the Buendia family and ultimately the world.

Relating back to my idea of the “Gabo-verse” from my last week’s blog post, I have a really interesting theory that Gerineldo Marquez is the colonel from No one writes to the Colonel. A few reasons why is because, Garcia Marquez wrote No one writes to the Colonel directly after One Hundred Years of Solitude, and because the two colonels have the same attitude about what happened during the civil war. The colonel from No one writes to the Colonel, is despondent and wants to forget about what happened during the war, but still wants his pension, while Gerineldo Marquez reacts similarly, especially after Colonel Aureliano’s call to war, again, with the Conservatives after the death of his sons. Although, the this theory is just a personal favorite of mine.

My question is: Why do you think the only person to remember Rebeca is Ursula, what happened to her after her marriage to José Arcadio?

Week 7: Hundred Years of Solitude, Part 1 (Gabo)

5 Replies

Having previously read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s works, specifically his short stories, I was already familiar with his unique writing style, which I personally really enjoy. The stories that I have previously read, which I like to call the Gabo-verse (named because of the nickname that he his lovingly known by in Latin America), are No one writes to the Colonel and Chronicle of a death foretold. Not only was I struck by the obvious names and references to characters mentioned in A Hundred Years of Solitude (In No one writes to the Colonel, the Colonel is mentioned as having fought in the Revolution with Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and in Chronicle of a death foretold, the girlfriend of Santiago is forced to marry a wealthy cousin of the Buendia family), but I was also struck by the similarity in pacing and writing between these two stories. I have yet to read Love in the time of cholera, but I am curious to see if Gabriel Garcia Marquez continued his unique style of writing in this later story, and if he included references to A Hundred Years of Solitude. By having also read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s other stories, I could not help but think of Jon’s statement in the lecture video, that Colombian writers have a hard time getting out of Gabo’s shadow, and I wonder if Gabo himself could not get out of the shadow of his iconic and successful novel, later in his career as an author.

Talking about the story itself, it reminded me of the contrast of nature vs. civilization that has often talked about in literature, especially Latin American literature. José Arcadio Buendia especially embodies the unique relationship between nature and civilization. I found it interesting how he tries to change nature in a way by introducing fancy and new technology, brought by the Gypsies, to transform the ‘swamp’ that eventually becomes Macondo. This early relationship between the town of Macondo and the Buendia family with Nature, informs us of the reason why various strange and natural wonders come to each of them. I was particularly intrigued by the burial rituals of Macondo on page 50, where although the importance of religion is established early on with the sign that says ‘God exists’, traditional elements of religion such as proper funerals, are discarded when instead of creating a cemetery, the people of Macondo instead choose to intern their dead in bags.

Overall, I enjoy reading A Hundred Years of Solitude and Gabo in general and I cannot wait to finish reading it this week and next, perhaps I will read Love in the time of cholera next. The discussion question for this week is: What do you think of José Arcadio’s and Rebeca’s marriage, should they have married in the first place or would they be better off apart from each other?

Week 6: Pedro Paramo (Juan Rulfo)

2 Replies

Going into this weeks lecture, I was somewhat fascinated and disturbed by Juan Rulfo’s description of Comala and the Mexican rural countryside that Juan Preciado moves through during his search for his supposed father Pedro Paramo. I went into the text having listened to Professor Jon’s lecture and his introduction for the ghostly and almost surrealist landscape that Rulfo created. I can see why Gabo cited Pedro Paramo as a great influence on his own Magical Realism works, as the world of Pero Paramo is inhabited by an almost, but not quite, unearthly collection of ghosts that still have a great impact on the living. The story of Pedro Paramo reminded me a lot of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, where the principal character who takes the first name of the author, journeys across the afterlife in search of love and sense of being regardless if dead are actually dead or not, as they act as if they were simply still alive.

Just like with Dante’s works, I find that Catholicism plays an important part in the story and the ideas of Catholic Morality are the principal driving force behind the attitudes of the priest towards the dead and Juan Preciado’s quest to find his father. The priest’s attitudes towards the now dead inhabitants are driven by a sort of Catholic Guilt and blame towards Pedro Paramo, as he blames Paramo and his selfish greed for leading the townspeople astray. Juan on the other hand portrays a more positive side of Catholicism, through the idea of forgiveness for his father, as although his father is arguably the reason that his mother’s life and his own life fell into ruin, he does not necessarily blame his father for the fate that befalls him halfway through the novel, but rather forgives him so that Paramo can rest peacefully in the land of the dead.

What I also find interesting is the relationship that Juan Rulfo shows between Mexican rural society in the cacique system and the new gender roles and norms that arose during the Mexican Revolution. While Pedro Paramo represents the old way of caciquismo and machismo in Mexico before the revolution, Juan Preciado represents the new, more modern Mexico that treats gender roles less rigidly. Another way that Pedro Paramo represents gendered social relationships, is through the interactions of Susana San Juan and Pedro. I can say that I was somewhat surprised by the mostly positive portrayal Pedro and Susana’s relationship throughout the novel, as although they do not meet an entirely happy ending, it is definitely better than the ending of other female characters in other works of Latin American literature, Gabo’s short story Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, come to mind.

My question for this week’s discussion is: Do you think that Juan Preciado will stay in his grave, or is he still wondering Comala after his death?

Week 5: Jorge Luis Borges

2 Replies

As much as it pains me to say this, I legitimately enjoyed reading the collection of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories in Labyrinths, because of terrible it is, like a bad movie that you are compelled to watch despite its mediocrity. However, before I discuss the negatives that I found in Borges’ work, I should appropriately point out what Borges’ does right in his stories, as such this part of my blog post will be more of an opinion piece and review compared to my previous weeks blog posts. Borges uses his knowledge of Hispanic literature, history, religion, Argentine and then-contemporary events in an imaginative way to weave colorful tales of the human experience. However, Borges’ completely misses the mark in what made these previous stories, that he draws upon, great. The results of his boasting and irritating arts trivia knowledge, is an incoherent mess that leaves he reader of his stories not only awe struck, but utterly dumbfounded and unable to process the messy layers that he weaves into his stories. To draw upon Borges’ as inspiration in my use of references, his work resembles that of Jackson Pollock than Pablo Picasso, in that what he thinks is clever, is actually incomprehensible.

While I do believe that Borges’ is a great writer when he wants to be, and a decent person overall when he wants to be, his methods of creating really entertaining and thought provoking stories are often bizarre and he gets carried away with himself at times. I was first exposed to Borges’ when I had to read Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, which is one of my least favorite pieces of fiction of all time, in the original Spanish for a Spanish literature course last year. While a writer writing in the persona of a French writer writing in the persona of Don Quixote might make a good premise for a hilarious rip-roaring comedy film or play, Borges’ takes this one one-hundred-percent seriously and unfortunately in the format of a short story. Perhaps my first experience of Borges’ was soured by this encounter, as I had little to no context as to what I was getting myself into, but reading Borges’ other works, this time in English, I am beginning to doubt this assessment. Maybe I should read some of his other works in other short story collections, but seeing as this is his most famous, I really do not think that the third-time will do it for me.

To end this nightmare,

Why do you think Borges’ writes the way that he does?