Del posmodernismo al Boom

Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 was a movement of the middle class that protested against the dictatorship of President Porfirio Díaz in Mexico and  in the end established a constitutional republic. Díaz was ousted from power and exiled to France. Led by Pancho Villa in northern Mexico and Emiliano Zapata in southern Mexico. 

La novela de la tierra has two important influences which are careful style and the heathen style of modernism, and the issues that rose in politics as well as socio-economics of the XX time period. A big part of these novelas are realistic. The authors try to explain the life around them. Fight against nature and often the landscape or nature itself is the protagonist

The Russian Revolution and the Mexican Revolution influenced the literatura indigenista.  Some of the themes that were discussed were the conditions of the socioeconomics of the mass population especially of the indigenous and the farm peasants. Another theme is expressing the protests of the abuse, poverty, exploitation, and treatment of being insignificant. 

Diferentes el vanguardismo y el posvanguardismo, es vanguardismo emphasizes relations of people in general and the theme is very universal, while posvanguardismo has to deal with existentialism which puts emphasis the existence of the individual person determining their own development through acts of will.

Horacio Quiroga

The reason why Horacio Quiroga is called the Edgar Allan Poe of South America is because that is who Quiroga’s earliest influence of writing came from. Quiroga shows a morbid obsession with death and violence just like Edgar Allan Poe does in his writings. 

“El conductor del rápido” states that 108 conductors were admitted to a mental institution. An insane asylum is a psychiatric hospital that specializes in the treatment of serious mental illnesses. I believe the purpose of an insane asylum is to keep the patient safe as well as the people that the patient may come in contact with. The narrator of this story is in an insane asylum who thinks he is still he works on the train because he has dementia. He goes to the doctor to get examined which he thinks the doctors visit is part of the train company. The rapid conductor leaves the fate of the train up to the train itself so he puts the speed range all the way to a high point of 248 miles per hour. The narrator cannot take it anymore so he puts on the red breaks which he saves the train as well as 125 lives because the narrator says that we feel a sense of duty that is deeply rooted in a nature of man. 

Alfonsina Storni

Alfonsina Storni was one of the few women who made an impact in the male dominated arenas of literature and theatre, who held a valuable voice in Latin American women’s poetry. Storni was a radical playwrights of her time period. At that time she was writing there were no other women writing and her playwrights were about class and gender tension which went against the norms in Argentine theatre. 

The cage is the metaphorical word for men’s way of thinking that a women should be, the oppression that is put on women, and the man represents the men dominating society that man should let women live their lives like they want to and go out to be free to explore. 

I believe the “tu” of the poem is an older family member who is passing down the knowledge to the speaker. the “yo” is the younger family member who is learning about her family members. The tear is venom because tears are a sign of weakness but men can be strong and kill the venom while the women cannot take the venom and it kills them in the end. Venom for guys they can pass it while the women are frail and their should cant bear all the burdens from it. 

Rubén Darío

Dario is still has some presences in today’s contemporary poets. He is a symbol of national pride inspiring Latin American writers and artists across the region. Dario was a significant inspiration to young people because one his important pieces appeared when he was barely 21 years old. 

Swans represent beauty, balance, elegance, and purity. A story that gets told to little kids is the ugly duckling becomes a swan. Where the ugly duckling turns in to this beautiful, elegant bird that is a swan. “The new poetry is under the white wings of the swan” I think Dario is saying that a new poetry is about to be born from the wings of the swan that is going to change how the world looks at poetry. Dario created a body of literary work of revolutionary power and drive that changed Hispanic American culture. He lead a renewal of the Spanish language that showed off his extraordinary literary abilities.

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States, who supported the move that United States invaded Latin America that made Dario angry. President Roosevelt supported a 1903 revolution in Panama that said the Panama Canal was the United States territory. Roosevelt was convinced that Latin America was vulnerable to European attack. The president then added his own coorollary to the Monroe Doctrine which said the United States military should watch over Latin America. 

Ariel

Latin America should not imitate the United States because of their unitarianism tendencies. People lack spirit and art in the United States. Latin America needs to stray away from the United States tendencies so it can develop character and keep its spiritual basis. The united states is a danger that is posed because it is an ambiguous powerful nation this is seeking to build an empire of its own. Such success will have the countries of the south loose their quest for national identity because those countries will want to imitate the United States. The southern countries will not have their own culture because they will take in the United States culture instead. 

I think in a sense Rodó is right in what he says about imitation. “Civilisation, modernity and the nation are all defined by Europe” because a lot of Latin American influences were brought over from conquistadors that were from Europe. Also, before the conquistadors came over their was the ancient civilizations that had their own culture and their own way about doing things. I think that the people who came over from Europe and the natives came together and made their own twist on their own culture. Yes, their culture has a little bit of European influence but there is also the natives who added their own culture to make their country be set a part of Western civilizations. 

Nuestra América

José Martí is a Cuban national hero and is an important figure in Latin American Literature. 

José Martí spent most of life fighting for Cuban’s independence. While he is fighting for the country’s independence he helped the people out as well by trying to unite and reconciling them. 

The new America that José Martí is talking about in "Nuestra América” is the Latin American countries. Which was written about the conflict of Cuba wanting to be independent and not apart of North America.

The problem with the universities in America is that they produce governors but those governors do not know the key components to the different countries. The universities do not teach the basic principals of the art of government. 

Martí says that the young governors go out and wear a yankee or french spectacles and hope to solve problems. Whoever is governing must not brush aside any part of the truth to the country because otherwise they would be doomed to fail. 

Uncultured will govern because it is their habit to attack and resolve doubts where the cultured has failed because they do not know the basics of government. Uncultured are lazy and timid and want to be governed well, but if the government is bad they will end up governing themselves. 

El matadero

Juan Manuel de Rosas was a man who was the governor of Buenos Aires (1835-52). He was head of the federalist party and held a 17 year old dictatorship. After the battle of Caseros Rosas was forced to flee to England where he spent the rest of his life as a farmer. Unitarios wanted a centralized government with no participation of other provinces. The Federales supported the distribution of the external commerce taxes among the provinces. The church was a willing ally when it came to the federalists. El matadero is written towards the end of the 1830’s. It was during Lent, and Buenos Aires was in a shortage of meat. Church has taken over both consciences and stomachs, Church should be able to forbid wrongdoing. Echeverría describes el matadero as fierce and outspoken story that opposed the Federalist regime. Federalist worked in the slaughterhouse where they slaughtered Unitarians. The bull was used in a metaphor to describe how the Unitarians were acting. At the end of the story, the Unitarian was tied down to a table in the form of a cross started gushing out blood from his mouth and his nostrils and poured out on both sides of the table.

De la Independencia al posmodernismo

During 1820 and 1920, most of Latin American countries were getting their independence from Spain, making their own culture that is different from the Spain. Difference between Puerto Rico and Cuba to the rest of Latin America is that Puerto Rico and Cuba were still trying to get their independence from Spain. In a war between the United States and Spain, Cuba got the recognition of an independent country but Spain gave the United States Puerto Rico as a territory.  Realism emphasized observation and attention to the everyday life of ordinary people. Romanticism thought realism was not personal enough and artificial, which favored personal sentiments and spontaneity. Realism laid the foundation for naturalism, which was about observation but also stressed the importance of scientific investigation and the desire for social reform. The writing style that was effected the most was poetry. Poets that were apart of the modernism time period added the use of synesthesia and metaphors which made the work come more alive in their writing pieces. Poetic language came to be more elegant, musical, and sensual to the senses. Modernism effected a lot of people, did not only effect Hispanic Americans but also the effect extended out to Spain. 

Redondillas (Hombres necios)

La voz poética es mujer enojada. En las tres primeras estrofas, mujer está culpando hombres por poner malos pensamientos en las mentes de las mujeres. Hombres hablan mujeres abajo, pero quieren mujeres to act like nothing is wrong and that men weren’t just treating them unfair. Lucretia is a women who was raped and then killed herself because she was commited to only her husband in the Roman time period, which helped play a major role in making the roman empire into a Republic. Thais was a prostitute before she became a saint. In the poema, when a man is courting a woman, he wants her to be like the actions of a prositute to him, but when the woman falls for the man, she has to be lady like. I think the meaning of “a una culpáis por cruel / y a otra por fácil culpáis” is the double standard that men have towards women. Men say one thing about a women but yet another women can do the same thing and that is alright. I think this poem is relevant to today. There was just women’s march on Washington couple weeks ago. The march was about how women are not being treated equally to men, which is what this poema is all about. 

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is a woman who was born in New Spain which is now Mexico. She wanted to know more about anything. So she begged her mom to be allowed to dress like a boy and go learn in Mexico City. Her mother only agreed to send her daughter if she goes disguised as a scholarly priest. She was very hard on herself and if she did not meet her expectations she would cut her hair short. In her letter she sounds very annoyed. She pretty much calls men a coward and that men hold women to a double standard that men want one thing from a women but then complain about how women act. Men want women to be a certain way and pressured in to always doing the right thing. In the poem it is noted that men are very good at blaming women for faults that men have made themselves. I think this poem is very interesting because it is very modern and feminism is a pressing topic in recent current events. Even in today’s society it is shown that women are still held to a double standard that women are less than man. 

de la colonia a la independencia

1. La literatura hispanoamericana está dividida en dos subperíodos: Primero es la época colonial en 1600-1750, y entonces hubo el período de la ilustración en 1750 - 1825. 
2. Conceptismo refiere prosa con sus manera inteligente de palabras y ideas. culteranismo describe el estilo en poesía con el uso figuras de lenguaje y palabras sofisticado. Conceptismo y culteranismo ambos fueron usados en el periodo barroco 
3. En la época colonial, no había novelas y otras obras de ficción porque prohibieron la importación a tierras americanas. Poesía es la extensa obra en prosa con un nuevo estilo, el uso de neologismo, Con muy pocas excepciones a poesía. Escritos saltaron el la oportunidad y comenzaron a escribir poesías. 
4. El despotismo ilustrado is a type of government, from the reign of Borbones, where the minority selects the government officials and decides rationally changes in administrative and reforms without popular participation. The complexity, and the excessive linguistic ornamentation that had characterized the baroque was taken out of the writings and replaced with policy and reason. 
5. What influenced las guerras de independencia en la literatura hispanoamericano , at this time period a lot of Latin American countries were trying to get their independence from España. El escritos wrote about history and how they lived through the time of countries that struggled for independence.Bolivar specifically wrote about the liberation of America from Spain and the present and future of America. Jose Joaquin Olmedo wrote about the battle of Junin. Bello wrote about the natural beauty of America and the problems of the Castilian language.