Latin American Literature & Film
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In the early nineteenth century the Latin American liberator Sim=n Bolfvar had posed important questions about who the land belonged to and how progress could be reconciled with liberty and justice. But the questions remained unanswered in the societies that Bolfvar's initiative had liberated. Thus, little more than a century later, the Mexican Revolution posed essentially the same questions. The government of Mexico was as corrupt as possible and the system of peonage in the country not only reduced the peasants to lives of serious want and oppression, it also undermined any hope the nation had for a modern economic system. The Mexican revolution came from many directions from the many parties who felt that they had not only been exploited by the Diaz regime but had been defrauded by its 'revolutionary' successor. Operating from the demand for land in the south to the demand for democracy in the north--and many gradations in between--the revolutionaries struck repeated blows in favor of liberation but with little conception of how a modern Mexican state should look or who should run it. Mariano Azuela's novel Los de abajo (1915) and Luis BuŠuel's film Los Olvidados [The Dispossessed] (1950) demonstrate the unanswered state of Bolfvar's important questions--before and after the Revolution. Other stories, by the modernist Latin American writers Marfa Luisa Bombal (Chile) and Juan Rulfo (Mexico), show aspects of the split in the societies and cultures that either divide
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of unending poverty. The relationship between Pedro and his mother shows how one of the most basic of human bonds can be rendered ineffectual by the brutality of their way of life. Pedro's mother refuses to love him or to feel anything for him because he was the child of rape. He craves her love and, because it is never given in any fashion, his obsession with the absence of affection allows his incestuous desire for her to flourish rather than being repressed as, in Freudian explanations, it would have been in the course of a normal childhood. And she acts out this desire from the other end, punishing him by taking up with his friend Jaibo. In the surreal dream sequence Pedro's monstrous mother thrusts a handful of raw meat at him--signifying the sexuality he desires and the violence of his conception. This conception symbolizes the fact that Pedro can never escape from this terrible life and will live in violence and die violently--just as he was conceived.
The anonymous rapist--a man capable of the lowest most brutal and violent of actions--is the true spirit of oppression in these people's lives. In the life of his son he is balanced by the other 'outside' force, the director of the reformatory to which Pedro's is se
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Demetrio Macfas, Virgin Talpa--at, Mexican Revolution, Juan Rulfo, Revolution Reforms, Latin America, Sim=n Bolfvar, Rulfo Mexico, Olvidados Dispossessed, Latin American, latin american, mexican revolution, contemporary latin american, pat mcnees york, york fawcett, mcnees york, ed pat, pat mcnees, fawcett columbine, columbine 1974, york fawcett columbine, mcnees york fawcett, marfa luisa, contemporary latin, american short stories,
Approximate Word count = 1663
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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