Julio Cortazar

Julio Cortazar makes his reader play a game where the reader has to skip some chapters but go back and reread other chapters. The motorcycle accident occurred late at night in the middle of the street. A women tried to throw herself in to traffic and he swerved out of the way and ended up crashing and then fainting. His first dream is strange with fragrances. He smelt war where he grabbed a stone dagger. The smell was a sweet incense of guerra florida. Which is also known as the “flower war” which was a ritual war fought between the Aztec triple Alliance and its enemies of the spaniards when they arrived in 1519. In the story the protagonist believes that he is the enemy of the Aztecs and that the Aztecs are going to hunt him down so he runs away from them. The sound and smell are feared by the protagonist which is why he woke up from the first dream. The last dream is when he believed that is dreams were actually a reality. In the first two dreams he woke up from his dreams knowing that they were not actually a reality but the last one he believed he was a part of the aztec world.  

Gabriel Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez is important because he brought life to his writings. He was very imaginative when using his words that made people’s minds wonder. Baltazar was one of the names of the three wise men that went to visit the baby Jesus after he was born. Baltazar made the cage as a one of a kind for Don Chopo Montiel’s son. It was said by everyone that this cage was the most beautiful cage in the world. Baltazar’s wife was annoyed with him because he neglected his carpentry work and devoted his time to building this cage. Baltazar thought it was a big deal to make this cage because he is making it for Jose  Montiel’s son who he thinks could buy this cage for a lot of money. Turns out that Don Chopo Montiel’s son did not ask his father if he could get a cage and the father angrily dissapproves of having the cage in the house. Even though Don Chopo Montiel did not want the cage in his house Baltazar left the cage in the house and ran away. He lied to his friends that Jose kept the cage and gave him seventy pesos. He realized that this story was in some importance to the people that he actually got money out of Don Chopo Montiel so he did not care to lie to his friends. 

Pablo Neruda

Salvador Allende was a socialist president of Chile in the 1960’s who was overthrown by the armed forces and national police. Rising wages produced a boom in consumerism and Chile had to rely on imports to meet demand. Chilean government was running out of foreign sources of aid which caused a lot of strikes in Chiles. Coup overthrew Allende’s presidency and Augusto Pinochet wad named president of Chile in September 1973. 

Pablo Neruda died in the hospital from prostate cancer in 1973. The day before he was going to move abroad because he was against Pinochet’s dicatorship was when he died and it is thought that Neruda was poisoned by Pinochet’s people. 

The opinion of the poetic voice in the two poems is that the United States exploits Latin America. The United Fruit Company who had a deep and long-lasting impact on the development of a lot of Latin American countries was in fact managed by the United States where they made a monopoly out of the fruit. The oil company that the United States controls extracts production of the world and that the United States militarizes the use of oil. 

Flies are the dictators of other countries This Banana Rebulic was attractive to these dictators because it abolished free will and gave out imperial crowns. 

The Standard oil company assassinated a president and took the land and exploited it for oil.

Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo “Pedro Paramo” has been compared to James Joyce in the Ulysses because the story is a narrative where people who are dead are thinking back about their lives. In the story “Es que somos muy pobres” the narrator is a boy who is older than Tacha and they are very poor family. The reason a reader can tell that this is a poor family because the father had to have many jobs to pay for Serpentine. Loosing that cow is a big deal because paying for another cow would take a while due to the fact the father does not make that much money. Tacha means blemish which is like a small mark of flaws on someone's face. The animal is a cow and is named Serpentine. The cow is very important to the family, especially Tacha. The father does not want Tacha to end up like the older sisters who he is disgusted with by their actions. The cow is a like a dowry to marry off their daughters and if the cow gets lost going down the stream then the sister wont have anyone to marry. If Tacha gets married it is like a new and better life for her which her dad wants. 

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges has very unique sense of style when it came to his writings. They were “halfway houses between essay and a story” says Adolfo Bioy Casares. Borges had an infinite imagination when it came to the topics like detective and the use of labyrinths. Labyrinth is a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one's way which is also a maze. I think it is important in Borges stories because he likes the complex intellectual landscapes that makes a reader think about what is happening in a story. In Babilonia, men made the labyrinth and in Arabia the labyrinth was made by God which was the desert. In Babilonia the labyrinth was a scandal because confusion and wonder are operations of God and not of men. The Arabian king went in the Babilonia’s labyrinth and couldn't get out but then prayed to God which helped him find the door and get out of the labyrinth. The king of Arabia got revenge on the king of Babilonia and tied him to a camel and traveled for three days then untied him and left in the middle of the desert where he died of hunger and thirst. 

Nicolas Guillen

One of Nicolas Guillen’s first influences was Langston Hughes. I think the reason why Langston Hughes was one of Guillen’s influences is because what Hughes stood up for. Hughes leadership of the Harlem Renaissance was about giving a voice to the black artists of New York City. Guillien used that message to give a voice to the black slums of Havana. Guillen was a communist and fought on Spain’s side in the Spanish Civil War. His communist writings in Cuba on political and social grievances got him arrested several times. Then in 1953 he was exiled from his country for five years. The difference between the two grandparents is that one is black and one is white. Another difference between the two is that the black grandpa is dying in response, while the white grandpa is tired. The two are both the same size while they cry, dream, and sing. I think that the relationship between the “I” and “you” is the narrator is talking to him self or the mirror in disgust with the actions that he has made. In Balada de los dos abuelos hay anáfora porque la repetición intencionada de palabras al comienzo de frases Me canso! Me muero! Anáfora is also in No sé por qué piensas tú con the repetición sold ado due te odio yo.

Gabriela Mistral

Some reoccurring themes of Gabriela Mistral’s poems are about children that echoed of lullabies or nursery rhymes. She also has political essays that took an internationalist and feminist position. The controversy surrounding Mistral’s sexuality is that she is a lesbian and in Chile the people are very conservative so they are not fond of her being into anyone but men. “Chile has not brains or common sense yet, it has not maturity. I do not think you have to understand Mistral’s sexuality in order to know what she is talking about in her poems. Mistral talks mostly about Children in her poems and it does not matter if you are super liberal or super conservative you can understand where she is coming from about children. If you read her political works about feminism a reader would probably have to understand where she is coming from with her point of views. The themes that I see in the poem are of a mother who is watching over their child and thinking about the future for that child. I feel the mom is talking about the importance of a mother in a child's life as the narrator puts a parallel in the mother and child's life to the ocean and waves.