Pablo Milanes

Andres Reynaldo is against what Pablo Milanes stands for politically. It seems to me that Andres Reynaldo thinks Milanes is contradicting himself when it comes to his political views. He opposes American influence in Cuba but praises Castro and how he takes away most of Cuban’s basic rights. Milanes is a juggler of oppression because he wants to be revolutionary in Cuba and is in advocate for freedom in Latin America but he backs Fidel Castro in the policies he makes and Castro stands for an oppressive government. I think the reason Barnet y Milanés comparan Che Guevara con un poeta because the poet writes the poem and gets to have a say on how things are, Che Guevara uses being a political figure that he uses his power to control how life could be like for the Cuban people while him being a part of the revolutionary movement in Cuba. Son de Cuba a Puerto Rico is about how Puerto Rico fell and got taken for a territory for the United States. Cuba will always support Puerto Rico but the country is disappointed that Puerto Rico is now under the control of the United States. The reason I think Cuba feels this way is because Cuba and the United States has never really been allies. The theme of Pecado original is two men who love each other. 

Victor Jara

During Augusto Pinochet’s coup Victor Jara and many other people who sympathized Allende were corralled into a sports stadium in the capital of Chile which is Santiago. Barrientos was a personnel was stationed at the stadium and is accused of torturing and shooting Jara at close range there. Both wrists were broken and his face was disfigured from beatings and was shot 44 times. The kids in the story played with rag balls. They eat earth and worms. The poetic voice says that the Lurchin children are like animals. A prayer is a message to a higher power asking for the higher power to do something. In this poem it is a prayer to a farmer asking for equality and freedom from the bad things on the earth. Me gustan estudiantes y Móvil Oil Special son similar porque it is about students being revoultionary and going against the norms fighting against the imperialist because they want something to change in their country. A "paco" in Chile is a cop. "guanaco" a water-cannon. The singing is a dove which flies to reach and burst open to fly. Canto alcanza gente y cada nota el volumen vuela para obtener mayor. Her song doesn't end and every chain in the middle is the chorus. verse being a dove is looking for nesting. verse is looking for a meaning to take off from. 

Patricio Manns

People are divided among the people who believe Bob Dylan should have won the award to people who believe he should not have won the award. I think it was alright for Bob Dylan to win the Nobel Peace prize. I think musical lyrics are the same thing as poetry because poetry is how poets express themselves and music is how musicians express themselves. Manns was shocked that Bob Dylan won a Nobel Peace prize. Usually musicians do not win the award but poets and writers win the Nobel Peace prize. He never imagined that would happen, it's the same story that a Negro would never get to the White House The American dream is immigrants coming over to the United States and making a better life for them a part from a bad life they left in their country. El sueño americano de Patricio Manns is cuenta that say talks about globalization and the bad and terror conquistadors have made to the Americas. The poetic voice wants the new world to be a great place but it is not all the poetic voice wants it to be. In Altalanza I believe the song is about fighting that happens all over the Americas. the poetic voice wants it to be ours but it is not in that moment. guerrilla is the warfare that has been going on in the Americas. 

Violeta Parra

Violeta Parra es un folk singer who was the leading figure in the Nueva Cancion movement that when viral across Latin America in the 1960s. Some themes that she included in her songs were  political concerns and powerful compositions. Mi favorito cancion de Violeta Parra es Pupila de Aguila. The rhythm of this song is the only one that actually stuck with me out of the other nine songs that I listened to of Parra’s. The song has an interesting message of inspiring societal change through a bird. The problem in Los pueblos americanos is that the borders are keeping people distressed so they need to remove the border to make people happy. The poetic voice likes the students because they do different things than the norm by breaking social norms. I do not know of anyone that goes outside of their way to stand up to the government. La jardiniera is directed to her lover. She is angry at the person who she is burying because he betrayed her. What lies at the center of injustice is Chile. The men do not get paid enough for their work in a month. People are dying of hunger and the misery is very prominent in the country. 

Eduardo Galeano

In the era of 1964-1970 Chile got their first Christian Democratic president Eduardo Frei Montalva. He beat Salvador Allende porque "Chileanization" of copper which ended marxism in the country. In 1970 Frei stepped down and Salvador Allende was inaugurated November 3, 1970. He restructured Chilean society along socialist lines. He weakened foreign investors confidence in his government within his reign. Allende also printed large amounts of unsupported currency to erase some of Chile’s debt which made the whole country go in to a major depression. In March 1973 Allende retained the support of many workers and peasants and won the congressional elections. In September 11,1973 Augusto Pinochet led a military coup that overthrew Allende’s government. In the last speech President Salvador Allende says that he disappointed in the people who did not follow him he will pay with his life the loyalty to the people. As well he thanks the people who followed him especially the women and workers of the country who defend  their farms and their privileges and advantages of a few capitalist society. The message Allende and narrator see is with Frei poor children will have shoes and with Allende there will be no poor children. The narrator explains the lack of milk and other things have gone missing. Eduard Galeano’s book “The Open Veins of Latin America” has been very popular sold more than a million copies and is used as a textbook in some universities. Galeano disowns the book and does not even want to read it himself. There are people who defend him and say no this book is good  the way it is and then there are people who do not like the book and call him an idiot. I believe what a lot of the professors do in this blog that they should still study the book but see how we see and interpret events at different points in time. 

Luisa Valenzuela

Luisa Valenzuela is disturbed when she hears Americans call her fiction surrealist. She says that Latin American writers think of reality in a wide sense and they explore the shadow side of literature. When Valenzuela was young she thought that politics should not be included or anywhere near her writings but now she sees it differently. The only way to deal with politics in literature is to avoid the message at all costs. Juan works in el Departamento de Censura del Ministerio de Comunicaciones because he wants to intercept the letter that he wrote to Mariana. Juan starts out the story with wanting the job just so he could get pass along the letter to Mariana which would not be able to go through without him. As Juan works up the line at his job he starts changing in the job is more important than anything else and he is there for the job only. When he finally sees his letter from Mariana he throws it out because of his devotion to his work. I think this story is a critic of the communism society. Where a single authoritarian party is controlling the means of production. The censors are following these rules that the government made in notion that the government knows everything that is coming in and going out of the country. 

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende's concept of truth is what is truer than truth is a story. She wants to share what is truer than truth about our common humanity. The protagonist of Isabel Allende’s stories are strong and passionate women. Belisa Crepusculario had a rough home life at the age of 12 she had to fight to survive from the hunger and fatigue. She found a newspaper and couldn’t read it so she paid a priest to teach her how to read. Colonel kidnaps Belisa. Belisa is used by the Colonel because he wants to win presidency in the December election so he asks Belisa to sell him a speech he could make to win voters over. Colonel does great getting the voters to like him. As time went on he obsessively kept on saying the two words that Belisa gave to him, he could not stop saying them. Mulato went to find Belisa so the Colonel could give her, her words back. Belisa put Colonel under a spell with the two words that made the Colonel fall in love with Belisa. The colonel’s puma eyes soften when he gazed at Belisa. In my opinion the two words in this story is Belisa’s name because he keeps saying the two words and then thinking about her. 

Carlos Fuentes

Latin American boom is the explosion of Latin American literature that took place between 1960s and 1980s. A lot of the writers were modernists who wanted to do things in literature that have never been done before. Carlos Fuentes’s works were told from the perspective of multiple narrators that were meant for the personality of the characters and introduce complexities of a human or national personality. 

Some things out of the story of Chac Mool that represent Mexico’s past and present are the religion. Spaniards arriving in Mexico and bringing their religion that is why Mexican’s worship Christ and not Buddha or Mohammad. The Mexican Indian art that represents the Aztecs which are a civilization in Mexico’s past. Filiberto was a crazy man who lives alone and makes special room in his basement for Chac Mool. The narrator seems to think that some of Filiberto’s writings are written from another person like a child. 

Just like noche boca arriba in Chac Mool’s ending made a reader think is his dream a reality. All the time the narrator thought Filiberto was just crazy and that Chac Mool could never be real, at the end of the story the narrador makes the reader think that Chac Mool is actually real.