Latin America – serie

Dependence, Independence, and Death: Toward a Psychobiography of Delmira Agustini depicts the life of Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini (1886-1914) based on her poems and other writings. These works give evidence of two constructs related to a psychological conflict in her life. The first is a dependence/independence dichotomy, thematized as a polarized love relationship between speaker and Other, who can represent two individuals or dual aspects of the poet’s self. The second involves the poet’s fascination with death, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when she is murdered by her ex-husband at the age of twenty-seven.

Confronting Patriarchy: Psychoanalytic Theory in the Prose of Cristina Peri Rossi examines three works of the contemporary Uruguayan author who lives in exile as she dialogues with the psychoanalytic discourse endemic to patriarchal society. Peri Rossi’s prose, structured like unconscious productions that give free expression to desire and passion as emanating from the forbidden recesses of the psyche, powerfully reveals the message as a treatment for an «ill» society. The language in the three works studied facilitates and reveals the male protagonist’s interaction with the desired female object as a regression to a semiotic, pre-oedipal state in a type of «return of the repressed» of consuming desire that has been written out of mainstream patriarchy and that serves to challenge its rational, symbolic order. It is from this vantage point that the author attempts to re-write the conclusions obtained through Lacanian and patriarchal discourse so that woman can emerge as a subject in her own right.

National Trauma in Postdictatorship Latin American Literature: Chile and Argentina examines the traumatic experiences of Chile and Argentina under authoritarian regimes and argues that in order for postdictatorship countries to successfully implement transitions to democracy, they must confront the past. This book employs the research of psychologists Bessel van der Kolk, Judith Herman, Donald Dutton, Elizabeth Loftus, and Cathy Caruth, in order to better understand the emotional and psychological effects of national trauma in the works of Chileans Diamela Eltit and Ariel Dorfman, and Argentines Ricardo Piglia and Griselda Gambaro. The themes and characters transcend national boundaries – the abuse, torture, paranoia, anguish, and shame are common to all human beings oppressed by tyranny. The inclusion of theater is necessary in global times for the art of drama has the power to ignite a repressed consciousness to emerge and contribute to progress and change. National Trauma in Postdictatorship Latin American Literature: Chile and Argentina proceeds with the reality that it is possible to heal from past trauma and become – once again – dignified citizens of the world.

For the many poor and working-class Northeastern Brazilians who have been displaced from their home region for economic reasons, the music of forró is a redemptive attempt at establishing an immanent relationship to history and community in the diaspora. The redemption explored in this book is multifaceted, including a desire to return home as part of a larger workforce in a sustainable economy, the desire to see the region’s rich culture celebrated throughout Brazil, and to ensure that its traditional legacies are both preserved and further enriched through respectful innovation. The acute perceptiveness of forró musicians in portraying the diasporic experience of Northeastern Brazilians is elaborated in various chapters, including: one chapter focused on lyrical, musical, and collective representations or manifestations of diasporic nostalgia (saudade), another chapter analyzing the lyrico-musical representation of rural workers’ alienation from – and resistance to – life in the urban centers, and a third chapter which contextualizes forró’s descriptions of the experiences of Brazil’s internal migrants, utilizing an array of testimonials and academic studies on the subject of interregional migration to reveal both the wisdom of forró lyricists and some of their blind spots. The study also includes a historical analysis of this Northeastern genre’s transformation from a rhythm called baião that symbolically represented the Northeast as a simple, coherent entity, to forró, a more allegorical representation with a greater appreciation for the class, gender, racial, and generational complexity of the region. The development of the genre, as well as the circulation of theory related to cultural production and identity, are contextualized in a global economy.

This book studies the adoption and diffusion of gender quotas in Latin America and beyond. Gender quotas are institutional mechanisms intended to increase the proportion of women rapidly and effectively in key decision-making political posts. Since the 1980s, gender quotas have been implemented in various governmental bodies and, more commonly, in legislatures. Starting in Northern Europe, these policies have expanded to other European countries and later to thirteen Latin American countries. Yet, whereas gender quotas in most European countries – with the exception of Belgium and France – have been adopted voluntarily by some political parties, in Latin America national legislation mandates all parties to include in their lists a quota for women candidates to legislatures.Although recent scholarship on gender quotas has been devoted to the adoption of gender quotas in a variety of countries, little has been done on Central and South America, despite the fact that the legislative «quota wave» originated there. Diffusion of Gender Quotas in Latin America and Beyond remedies that situation and provides a rich comparative analysis of this policy proliferation in Latin America as well as outside this region by also examining the adoption of legislative quotas in Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia.

Over the last half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, rising secular liberalism led many Catholic Church leaders in Latin America and Rome to believe that the Church was in a state of crisis. As a solution, they focused on improving clerical education by reforming Latin American seminaries and by sending the best students to the Colegio Pío Latino Americano in Rome. This book examines the experiences of young clerics in Rome and the effects of their Roman education on their home dioceses after their return. Roman Virtues contributes to our understanding of the role of the Catholic Church in Latin American society and the relationships between local Latin American churches and the papacy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I, Hernán Cortés: The (Second) Trial of Residency is a literary analysis of the most important documents in the Hernán Cortés trial of residency (juicio de residencia) using some proposed literary tools created for that purpose and the original documents in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville as well as a great variety of books on Hernán Cortés. Francisco Manzo-Robledo reveals how Hernán Cortés re-creates himself, from being the first illegal immigrant in the continent to becoming, for a short time, the highest authority in New Spain before falling into a legal limbo in the Council of Indies. This book is useful in any course dealing with Spanish colonial history or literature.

Written shortly after the capture of the Inca Atahualpa at Cajamarca, Peru, True Account of the Conquest of Peru by Francisco de Jerez, Francisco Pizarro’s secretary and notary, is the most influential of the early accounts of the conquest of the Andean region. This fascinating text brings to life Pizarro and his men’s arrival in the central Andes of South America and their capture of Inca Atahualpa, the ruler of one of the continent's largest and most powerful civilizations. Injured during the massacre that took place immediately after the capture of Atahualpa but wealthy thanks to his share of the ransom offered by Atahualpa for his freedom, Jerez published his account of the events just months after arriving in Seville in 1534.The present edition is based on the English translation Reports on the Discovery of Peru published by Clement Markham in London in 1872 and also includes his translations of the Letter from Hernando Pizarro to the Royal Audience of Santo Domingo and the Report on the Distribution of the Ransom of Atahualpa by Pedro Sancho. This volume is an invaluable tool for scholars, professors, and students of Latin American studies and students of history and literature interested in the history of the conuest of the Andean region as well as a must read for those fascinated by the history, civilization, and culture of Peru and the Andean region in particular and the Americas in general.

The question «What is Latin America?» has been at the heart of writing from and about Latin America from Columbus’ conquest to present-day discussions and nationalising projects. What this belies is the inherent question «What is Latin America compared to Europe?» This book lays bare the underlying logic of a Latin Americanist discourse through some of the continent’s most influential thinkers, including Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Martí, José Enrique Rodó, José Vasconcelos, Fernando Ortiz, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Néstor García Canclini, and Walter Mignolo. Civilisation and Authenticity presents case studies of two of Latin America’s most renowned and representative twentieth-century writers, the Cuban Alejo Carpentier and the Argentine Julio Cortázar and reveals how desire to define Latin America is entwined throughout their groundbreaking experimental novels, focusing on Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos (1953) and Cortázar’s Rayuela (1963). New research into the poetics of these authors and jargon-free analyses of their fiction outline how the Latin Americanist discourse persists in both writers’ representations of the Latin American landscape and people as either Europe’s «authentic» and marvelous «Other», or its «civilised» and modern counterpart. Civilisation and Authenticity presents new research for experts on Carpentier and Cortázar and will be indispensable to students of Latin American literature. Its delineation of the Latin Americanist discourse makes it an ideal reference for anybody studying Latin American cultural studies.

Subaltern Writings focuses on one of the most important Brazilian novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, Graciliano Ramos, and critically examines two of his novels, Caetés and Angústia. The analysis is based on the premise that the reader must bring to the forefront the notion of a subject that is close to non-subjectivity and must develop heterodox forms of cultural production as Ramos himself sketches them. Rather than insisting on the protagonists’ assumed mediocrity or derangement, which has been the norm in previous critical readings of the novels, Subaltern Writings reconstructs how their attempts at composing fictional texts constitute examples of subaltern approaches, often standing alongside «high» cultural production. Unable to enter a circuit of literary writing that silences subaltern speakers, the novels’ protagonists create narratives that, instead of becoming finished objects of consumption, end up as fragments or notes. In this sense, Subaltern Writings consists of exercises in reading an object that resists becoming one. This book will be of great interest to researchers and students of Luso-Brazilian and Latin American studies.

Comunidades efímeras estudia una de las vetas más interesantes, y menos visitadas por la crítica, de la imaginación literaria hispanoamericana: la representación novelística de pequeños grupos de vanguardia y neovanguardia que transforman la vida en arte, conspiran contra las instituciones oficiales y experimentan con nuevos modelos de existencia social. Este libro ofrece lecturas críticas de la imagen ficcional de estos grupos en novelas de Roberto Arlt, Leopoldo Marechal, Julio Cortázar, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Fernando del Paso y Roberto Bolaño. Comunidades efímeras propone que el etos de las vanguardias históricas es transfigurado en el contexto hispanoamericano por dichos cenáculos, los cuales llevan a cabo el doble proyecto de estetizar su vida comunitaria y de producir campos culturales alternativos, extraoficiales, tal vez secretos. En estos espacios de alteridad estética y vital, se desafían los relatos hegemónicos del arte, la política y la pertenencia nacional. Comunidades efímeras será de interés para los investigadores de la novela hispanoamericana, la vanguardia y las neovanguardias, y los estudios latinoamericanos en general.

En este libro Eduardo Gonzalez Castillo presenta el estudio de una de las manifestaciones de la cultura popular urbana menos estudiadas en el Mexico contemporaneo: el medio sonidero. Desarrollado por los habitantes pobres de ese pais y por algunos de sus inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos, este medio de consumo cultural representa un caso ejemplar del modo como las culturas juveniles, las practicas de economia popular y la industria cultural convergen en la definicion de las practicas subalternas dentro de la sociedad mexicana. Un marco teorico multitematico permite al autor tanto explicar los origenes de este medio asi como entender los significados que los jovenes "sonideros" de la ciudad de Puebla asocian al mismo. Rico en consideraciones de tipo historico y etnografico, el estudio muestra por que ahora mas que nunca los estudios sobre cultura popular son necesarios para entender la evolucion de la sociedad mexicana. La lectura de este libro sera particularmente util para los investigadores y profesores universitarios interesados en los estudios culturales y en la cuestion de lo popular en America latina.

Poema heroyco hispano-latino (1687), a national chronicle or “epic poem,” commemorates the founding and greatness of Lima, Peru. Its unique rhymed quatrains can be read in either Latin or Spanish with equal meaning, and its insightful marginal notes interpret the city’s cultural history. Rodrigo de Valdés (1609–1682) underscores the decadence of peninsular Spanish letters in contrast to the compositions of New World writers. The poem is a tribute to the superiority, versatility, and interchangeability of Spanish and Latin as instruments of power that led to Spain’s world dominance, and to Lima as the locus of marvels and a quasi biblical garden of delights. Lima has occupied without exception a privileged space within the colonial situation, as a metaphorical sovereign of new-world experiences and potentialities. Influenced by the spirit of Baroque sensibilities and Creole pride in his patria, Valdés bequeathed to Lima a staged panegyric that served as King Charles II’s introduction to the bounty of his American colony. Valdés, acting as commentator, guides the reader through a journey that spans centuries of Peru’s illustrious history. Working within the classical tradition of laus urbis or the praise of cities, Valdés depicts America as a paradise found with Lima at its center. In tracing the poem’s relationship to the genre of classical panegyrics, Neal A. Messer and Jerry M. Williams argue its literary merits and elucidate how it enriches the colonial family of Latin American texts. Republished for the first time, this critical edition introduces Valdés to students and scholars of Ibero-American letters.

Este trabajo estudia a fondo la producción dramática de Rosario Castellanos. Con este estudio se pretende rectificar el vacío crítico existente en torno a la dramaturgia de esta importante autora mexicana del siglo veinte. La organización cronológica de este trabajo, comenzando con su primer drama Tablero de damas (1952), seguido por sus poemas dramáticos Salomé y Judith (1959), hasta concluir con su última obra, El eterno femenino (1975), permite rastrear el desarrollo de las ideas de la autora respecto al lugar que la mujer ocupa en el imaginario mexicano, tema central de sus dramas, y el desarrollo de su perspectiva feminista. En su dramaturgia se observa su esfuerzo por entender la conexión entre el importe simbólico de los mitos sobre la mujer y las consecuencias que dichos mitos tienen en la vida de las mujeres, aún a pesar de las nuevas oportunidades que se habían abierto a la mujer como resultado de la Revolución y modernidad mexicanas. Dado su alcance y profundidad, este estudio es indispensable en cursos universitarios de literatura latinoamericana y mexicana, escritura de mujeres, drama, poesía y cursos especializados en Rosario Castellanos. El enfoque en la mujer y su lugar en la sociedad, hace de este estudio un aporte singular a los estudios de género y procesos de formación nacional. Profesores y estudiantes de licenciatura y de posgrado se beneficiarán de la penetrante lectura de la obra dramática de esta importante escritora mexicana feminista del siglo veinte.

Casa en que nunca he sido extraña. Las poetas hispanoamericanas: identidades, feminismos, poéticas (Siglos XIX-XXI) reúne artículos de destacados académicos y estudiosos de Europa y América con aproximaciones a relevantes autoras de la poesía de América Latina desde el siglo XIX hasta la actualidad, a partir de tres perspectivas: las identidades (entendidas en su relación con las naciones latinoamericanas, así como en su dimensión subjetiva), los feminismos y las poéticas. Los capítulos se dedican a las siguientes poetas: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Laura Méndez de Cuenca, Juana Borrero, Mercedes Matamoros, Delmira Agustini, Alfonsina Storni, Gabriela Mistral, Juana de Ibarbourou, Dulce María Loynaz, Josefina Plá, Blanca Varela, Nivaria Tejera, Carmen Naranjo, Isel Rivero, Lina de Feria, Magali Alabau, Elvira Hernández, Eugenia Brito, Piedad Bonnett, Alicia Genovese, Verónica Zondek, Ivonne Coñuecar y Gabriela Wiener, entre otras. El libro se completa con un Anexo de textos literarios: la lectura de Josefina de Diego de fragmentos de Pequeñas memorias, texto autobiográfico inédito de Fina García Marruz, y poemas inéditos de prestigiosas autoras hispanoamericanas actuales: Magali Alabau (Cuba), Márgara Russotto (Venezuela), Carmen Ollé (Perú), Elvira Hernández (Chile), Piedad Bonnett (Colombia) y Alicia Genovese (Argentina).

This book develops the main political lessons that the Mexican Neozapatismo movement brings us, in its almost 30 years of public life. Thus, beginning by defining the singular concept of Autonomy that the Neozapatista movement proposes, different from legal, anthropological or political definitions, and conceived as real global autonomy. Then the content of the Neozapatista oxymoron ‘Mandar Obedeciendo’, ‘To Lead by Obeying’ is explained as identical to the idea of popular self-government. A new concept of autonomy is linked necessarily with the idea of ‘Other Politics’ and ‘Other Democracy’. The book also presents how Neozapatismo embodies a project of modernity that, having been constructed as a modernity of resistance for five centuries to the dominant modernity imposed by the Spaniards in Mexico, has now been transformed into a project of a real alternative modernity to capitalism.