Paz y la Intelligentsia mexicana

Chapter 7 of “El laberinto de la soledad” revolves around the Mexican “Intelligistsia” and their contributions to education, literature, and psychology.  After the revolution the young intellectuals began to work with the new government on legal projects, government plans, education, diplomatic services, public administration etc.  This situation is very different to that of Europe or the United States, as the educated middle class's principle mission is to examine, critique, and judge the government’s actions.  Nevertheless, in this essay Paz praises many different people of that era for their admirable work about the Mexican identity.

Ramos

Like Samuel Ramos, for example, who wrote “El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México”, the first serious Mexican attempt at self-knowledge.  Although Paz states that the central idea of this book-that the Mexican is isolated, and hides himself when he expresses himself-is valid, he also asserts that it suffers from limitations, as Ramos’ resentment reduces the significance of his conclusions.



Cuesta



Additionally there is Jorge Cuesta, who coined the phrase “Frenchification” when he investigated the meaning of tradition.   In his articles of politics, Cuesta is of the opinion that Mexico either lacks a past or re-created itself in opposition to its past.  It denies both the Indian and the colonial tradition, adopting the free election of French rationalism values.  Paz refutes the idea of adapting to French rationalism, because he feels that the Mexican revolutionary movement as well as its contemporary poetry and paintings emphasize individuality.

Reyes

Alfonso Reyes is spoken about with great admiration in this essay.  Poet, critic, and essayist, Paz states that his work is a literature in itself and a lesson in expression and clarity.  Reyes writes of the dangers and the responsibilities of language, and since the roots of language are the roots of morality, writing must be pure.  The Mexican writer has a duty, beyond the fidelity of language, to express his own nature and the feelings of a confused, inarticulate people.  Reyes also asserts that a writer is broken, because although language is a social mechanism, a writer must write in solitude.  He also complains that Latin American writers must use a European language to describe a very different world, and that it is necessary to break down and then re-create the Spanish language so that it becomes Mexican without ceasing to be Spanish.

1990: Octavio Paz

Mexico City:  March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998

So far I've really enjoyed “El laberinto de la soledad, and Paz's insight on the Mexican identity.  In chapter four, Paz describes the Mexican as inscrutable and a contradiction to outsiders: courteous, but reserved, solemn, but outrageous during fiesta, a being that retracts and then repels.   He goes on to sub-categorize his people by describing the difference between a worker and a technician (eg a government employee), their roles and effects on a contemporary, capitalist society, and how it all connects to totalitarianism.

According to Paz, the worker represents the death of old society and the birth of a new one, presumably due to the industrial revolution and the migration of workers from the country to the cities.  He lacks individuality because, like his boss, “son hijos de la máquina”, and can be bought and sold.  Neither the machines that he works on nor the product that is made belongs to him, therefore he loses his human relationship tot he world.

Contemporary society is described by Paz and complex. and the condition of the worker extended to other groups, such as the technician.  Although he (being a government employee, or another white collared worker) has a higher salary, he also lacks awareness of his creations.  The workers can be considered an analogy for society that has a great efficiency but no aim, “la del mecanismo que avanza de ninguna parte hacia ningún lado”.

He goes on the ascertain that a totalitarian regime makes this concept general when looking at capitalism in a social or political sphere.  He compares mass production to totalitarian politics, such as propaganda, terrorism or repression.

Using the example of terrorism, Paz claims that although it starts with the persecution of isolated groups (like races), it gradually touches everyone.  At the onset it is treated with indifference by a society that may even contribute to the discrimination out of hatred.  With being an accomplice comes feelings of guilt.  Therefore the terrorism is generalized, and the persecuted becomes the persecuted. 

Another interesting idea introduced in chapter for is the “moral de siervo...  son rasgos de gente dominada que teme y que finge frente al señor”.  It states that the Mexican is only intimate during fiestas, while drinking, or when a death occurs, and that metaphorically they always wear masks.  Only alone do they show themselves how they really are, and their relationships are constituted by fear and suspicion.   Paz claims the Mexican is a product of social circumstances, and blames the history of Mexico (especially the colonial period) for the psyche of the people.  He states that the country has not yet overcome their social differences, the abuse of authority by the powerful, the violence, and the skepticism and resignation of the people.

1982: Gabriel García Márquez

March 6, 1927 Aracataca, Colombia-

I’m tickeled pink that we’ve arrived at the Marquez portion of the class; I love his work and La Hojarasca didn’t dissapoint.  The story revolves around the suicide of a doctor, and the memories of the family that has come to bury him.  It takes place in the course of a single afternoon in the fictional town Macondo, but through flashbacks the reader is transported to many different periods of the town’s history. 

Maquez seemlessly switches narradors throughout the story (sometimes so seemlessly that I missed it!), and in their different perspectives the reader is better able to piece together events that have taken place in the life of the dead man.  The Colonel acts as an omniscent narrador, who has witnessed events about which rumours swirl, and is sympathetic to the hated doctor.  Isabel is an observer, but with limited knowledge, and represents the town’s feeling of spite and non-understanding toward him.  The child is an innocent and un-biased however sensitive in an almost supernatural way.  By exploring the thoughts of three narradors Marquez creates a more well-rounded tale.

Time is used cleverly in a variety of ways throughout La Hojarasca.  Times in the day are repeated to suggest the simplicity (and banality) of daily life in Macundo:  The still of the afternoon when eveyone takes a siesta, the meeting of the men at the barbarshop at dusk, the 2:30pm train that passes (but no longer stops).  It is also a trigger of memory, like when the Colonel remebers that the docotr arrived in the town at 2:30 when he heard the train.  Marques also uses months of the year to suggest the passing of time:  Martin’s arrival in December, then July, the March, then July, and that the women start preparing Isabel’s wedding dress in September, and she marries in December.  Additionally, days of the week are randomly used to mark events in the story:  The doctor dies on a Wednesday, Isabel is married on a Monday, Meme and her ruffles at church on a Sunday.

The sense of smell is also an interesting isotopía in the tale.  The child with his keen sense of smell can wander around his home blind-folded, and know who’s room he’s outside of.  At the begining of the book he is unnerved by the smell of trash (death) in the room of the doctor, later on he is visited by the spirit of his dead grandmother as the Jasmine tree “comes-out”, and of course the very end of the story:

“Ahora sentirán el olor.  Ahora todos los alcaravanes se pondrán a cantar”.  

For Whom the Bell Tolls

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

Maybe I’m going crazy with this weather or something, but I finished this book absolutely furious with all the characters in it.

Like our buddy Angel-Face, for example.  With all of the confidences and plotting that he shared with the president over the years, did he really think he was going to get away with marrying the general’s daughter?  Wouldn’t you grab your wife and your savings and run, maybe start a political newspaper in a country with no extradition laws, sip espresso in a cafe with other ex-pats and plot a revolution?

Or the lawyer’s wife, who’s so surprised when they take her husband away:

“Miedo, frío, asco, se sobrepuso a todo por estrecharse a la muralla que repetiría el eco de la descarga…  Después de todo, ya estando allí, se le hacía que fusilaran a su marido, así como así, así de una descarda, con balas, con armas, hombres como él…”

Does this woman not pass the jail every single day, with the crying women outside?  Did she not hear about the general’s flight from the uncharacteristic accusations against him?  Why does she expect her fate to be any different?

These people live in a society where a mother is force-fed lime so that she cannot feed her newborn.  Where a wife cannot find out where her husband is buried, and family bar family from their homes for fear gossip.   The jails are overflowing with students and priests, and the streets amok with a secret police that is more criminals than law enforcement.  How long are you going to keep your head down in a society like this?  You have to know that one day soon they’ll come for you too.  And if you realize that there’s no hope, that your life and the lives of your family are worth nothing, what would you do?  I’d be fighting alligators, and trying to get across the frontier, not sit there until the whim of the president gets me in front of a firing squad.  Or if I was going down I'd at least try to take a few of them with me.

1967: Miguel Angel Asturias

1899-1974-Guatamala



El Señor Presidente tiene lugar en una ciudad sin nombre, que podría ser situado en cualquiera parte de América Sur.  Hay la Plaza de Armas y el Portal de Señor, donde duermen las personas sin hogar.  Hay el bazar de los turcos, el Callejón de Judío, y el Callejón del Rey, “el preferido de los jugadores”.  Hay una escuela de párvulos, un matadero (¿Echevarría, alguien?), el cuartel de ejército y “los suburbios, donde la ciudad sala allá fuera”.  Estéticamente esta ciudad es perfectamente normal, hasta pintoresca; pero hay un sentimiento intranquilo, como si está embrujado, o silencioso.

                A prima vista, la gente de la ciudad parecen que ser habitantes ordinarios, siguiendo con sus vidas: Cónyuges se pelean el uno a la otra, el panadero reparte el pan, y todos en el barrio están invitados al bautizo del bebé nuevo.  Pero nadie habla de los cárceles atestados, que están llenos de los testigos de crimines que necesitan que cambiar sus cuentos,  hombres que han sido declarado culpables de traición.   Fuera, sus mujeres descalzas “se contaban sus penas en voz baja”.

                Es una ciudad donde unos son “obligados a trabajar para ganarse el pan, y otros con lo superfluo en la privilegiada industria del ocio: amigos de Señor Presidente, propietarios de casas”.

                Mucho así en Alemania Oriental o en Big Brother por George Orwell, esta comunidad tiene por todas partes una Policía Secreta: Una organización de paisanos, cuyo trabajo es espiar a sus vecinos y realizar asesinatos por contracto en nombre del Presidente.  Es una posición moralmente reprensible, pero una que paga dinero en una época con un desempleo alto; por lo tanto es un empleo codiciado.

                Lucio Vásquez, o “Sucio Bascas”, “al que le dicen Teriopelo” es un miembro de la Policía Secreta.  Es un borracho; frecuenta muchos de los barros de la ciudad, donde cuenta los secretos del estado a sus amigos.  “La voz de Vásquez era desagradable, hablaba como mujer con una vocecita tierna, atiplada, falsa” .  A pesar de su voz femenina, es un depredador sexual, que constantemente hostiga la fondera de la Masacuate.  Participa en la tortura y el asesinato de Mosquito, el sólo hombre que no mentiría para enviar Eusebio Canales a su muerte.  También Terciopelo asesina el Pelelele sin hesitación, y está deseando para planear el secuestro de una mujer y el pillaje de su casa:

                “¡María Santísima si uno se pone que no cabe del gusto cuando se pepena algo o se roba una jallina, que será cuando se birla a una hembre!”

                Teriopelo, como un representante del gobierno, es una metáfora por el Presidente él mismo: Sin remordimientos, sin corazón, sin piedad, sin vergüenza.

Neruda is from Mars, Mistral is from Venus



“I believe in prophetic speech… still.  I believe in Cassandra, I believe in Elektra and the charming Antigone… for me they’re more alive than the intellectual co-operation and its choice group of old men.”

 –Mistral.

Although as a rule I try my best to avoid gender issues, I think that the identity of women is a huge theme in both of the authors’ works, and it needs to be discussed.

Mistral was a successful woman living in a male-controlled literary and political culture, and because of this had trouble with her own identity as well as the role of women in society.  Raised in poverty in a rural setting, she somehow broke free from the traditional fate of marriage and housekeeping and rose to the public life of poet, ambassador, and Nobel Prize winner.   Mistral was a paradox- maternal yet bore no children, an unwavering spirituality but deranged though grief and suffering, she loved her homeland deeply and yet she always lived abroad-and her issues with self-identity are evident in her work.   She wrote about women in history considered outsiders and related to them.  The characters she created-Through Hebrew Scriptures and Greek tragedies- are self-portraits, or spiritual states through which she was passing, and contain hallucination, prophecy, raving, and altered physic states.  Through these traits of “locura”, Mistral questions the possibility that a woman is not crazy in the face of extreme conditions, but merely conflicted as she attempts to break the gender molds in which she in encased.

Neruda-also a poet, ambassador and Nobel Prize winner- didn’t seem to have an issue with being a man.  He is very up-front in his poetry about his needs and feelings, and expresses love and lust and the manly emotions that come with it.  Although he idolizes the women in his poems, he also refers to them as possessions, a doll without a voice, an object.   His description of women is mainly physical: body parts compared to mountains or fruit, with lots of nudity.   Love is repeatedly described as a violent thing with negative condemnations, and the women in the poems are constantly subject to his scorn, desire, and despair.  There is little intellect in 20 poemas (one will not hear of Orestes from Elektra, for example) however the feelings are so vivid that the reader feels physically there with Neruda as he embarks on his erotic and sensual adventures with beautiful Chilean women.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.







Hell hath no fury...

Yes, we all know that love is grand, and after reading his 20 love poems it is safe to say that Neruda is a lover.  Exhaustively so.  So after over-dosing on the beauty of woman and unbridled passion for the last two weeks I was ticked pink to read The Song of Despair, a poem rich with resentment about the end of a love affair.

The relationship is a classic one that we've seen throughout the ages:  Boy is an island until he meets girl.  Boy and girl engage in a passionate, short-lived affair.  Girl distances herself from boy, the relationship dies.  Boy is super jaded, and defames girl all over Facebook.  This is essentially the plot of the poem, although it is not in chronological order.

There was the black solitude of the islands,

and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. 

In the beginning of their union, the narrator is enamored with the woman, describing her as fruit that nourished him, a miracle, his own flesh, a possession.  He describes his feelings for her with words like hunger, thirst, and the turbulent drunkenness of love, that blazed like a lighthouse. 

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,

oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

But, alas, the passionate was short lived, and the narrator implies that the relationship was tempestuous, to say the least.

How terrible and brief my was my desire of you!

How difficult and drunken, how tense and avid.

 Here's where the bad feeling start.  While the narrator is trying to make it work,

I made the wall of shadow draw back,

beyond desire and act, I walked on.

it seems that his sweetheart is just not that into him anymore, which results  in an barrage of insults.  Now his miracle is an open and bitter well, a pit of debris, an empty jar that is shattered by infinite oblivion (burn!).  He is furious at her girdled sorrow, which I decipher as her ability to hide her emotions.

The beginning of the poem is actually well after the break-up time-wise, and the narrator uses delicious comparisons to a shipwreck (debris, deserted etc) as he looks back at the relationship.

You swallowed everything, like distance.

Like the sea, like time.  In you everything sank.

Ouch.  Hell hath no fury like Neruda scorned.