Cultures of Latin America: Readings on Society
Dr Alejandro Manara
[email protected]
June 30th-July 31st 2014
Course Information
T- TH 9-12 PM Room TBA
Bolivian Ayma President Evo Morales (2005-2013) and
Guatemalan Maya Quiche 1992 Nobel Peace Price Rigoberta Menchú
Course Description
This course will track a series of canonical readings informing about Latin
American societies. The course explores distinctive cultural aspects of
Latin America by looking at the ways it has been represented in canonical
readings spanning from the diaries written by Christopher Columbus to
the 1995 documents by the Ejército Zapatista in Chiapas. By drawing
mostly on essays, but also on letters, paintings, photographs, murals and
documentary and feature films, the course addresses a series of questions
that lie at the heart of how one thinks about Latin America. What is
exotic about “Latin America”? Why is it viewed in the extremes,
sometimes as “magical” (naïve), others as “revolutionary” (threatening)?
Is there a common identity among the many “cultures” of Latin America?
The political formation and crisis of national cultures, will guide us in
exploring these questions.
Course Content
The purpose of this course is threefold: to introduce students to problems
central to Latin America, to familiarize students with a variety of nonfictional writings in Spanish such as essay, chronicle, journalism, and
history, and to sharpen student’s skills as analytical readers. The course
will highlight four moments in History: the emergence of new cultural
forms and writing in the colonial period, the construction of national
identities in the 19th century, the emergence of the masses into political
life in the 20th century, and Neo-liberalism, globalization, and the Latin
American present years. Students are required to purchase a course
reader in BA that compiles all the assigned readings.
Course Requirements
Students are expected to read the texts assigned for class. Each student
will do one formal individual presentation. The students will write 3
commentaries (2 page long, prompt will be provided). In addition to this,
each student will be expected to make a significant contribution to the
classroom dialogue. At the end of the semester the student will take a
comprehensive final exam. The professor holds to the view that plagiarism
constitutes intellectual theft and is a serious breach of acceptable conduct.
Any student caught plagiarizing will immediately be given a “no credit” for
the course.
Grading Policy
Participation
Oral presentation
2 Response Papers
Final Exam
10
20
40
30
%
%
%
%
Required Text
Alejandro Manara, editor.
Week 1: Colonial Foundations and 19th Century Nation Building
T 6/30
Christopher Columbus “Discovers” Cuba (9-11)
Eliott, J.H. “Cortés and Montezuma” (105-108)
Bernal Díaz del Castillo. “The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico”
(selection)
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. “Royal Commentaries of the Incas” (selection)
Bartolomé de la Casas. “In Defense of the Indians” (119-22)
Werner Herzog´s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (film)
TH 7/3
Simón Bolívar “Letter of Jamaica”
José Martí. “Our America” (122)
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. “¿Civilization or Barbarism?” (80-91)
María Luisa Bemberg´s Camila (film)
Benedict Anderson. Imagined communities. (selection)
Juan Bautista Alberdi. “Immigration as a Means of Progress” (95-106)
Esteban Echeverría. “The Slaughterhouse” (107-14)
Jorge Luis Borges. “Story of the Warrior and the Captive” (127-31)
Commentary 1 Herzog´s Aguirre or Bemberg´s Camila
Week 2: Revolutionary Latin America
T 7/7 México
Timothy Brennan. “The Nation Longing For Form” (44-70)
Carlos Fuentes. “Land and Freedom: The Mexican Revolution”
Desmond Rochfort. Mexican Muralists
Juan Rulfo. “They Gave Us the Land” (465-69)
David Alfaro Siqueiros. “Art and Corruption” (492-99)
Octavio Paz. “The sons of La Malinche”.
TH 7/10 Cuba
Miguel Barnet. “Biography of a Runaway Slave” (58-64)
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Memories of Underdevelopment (excerpts)
Fidel Castro. “History Will Absolve Me” (306-14)
Julio García Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema” (458-65)
Salut les cubains (Agnès Varda. 1963) (27min)
Week 3 Peronismo
T 7/14
Daniel James. “Perón and the People” (273-95)
Mariano Plotkin “May Day and 17 of October: Political Rituals and Peron´s
charisma”, Daniel Santoro, Manual del niño peronista
Julio Cortázar. “House Taken Over”
Tomás Eloy Martínez. Santa Evita (chapters 1-6)
Solanas, Pino. The hour of the Furnaces (excerpts)
Visit to Evita Museum (Commentary 2)
TH 7/17
Rodolfo Walsh. “That Woman”
Andres Di Tella. Montoneros (documentary)
Richard Gillespie. “Montoneros: Soldiers of Perón” (377-385)
National Commision on the Disappearance of Persons. Never Again
Rodolfo Walsh, “Letter to My Friends”
Week 4:
T 7/21
Ernesto Che Guevara. Motorcycle Diaries
Walter Salles, Motorcyle Diaries
Eduardo Galeano, “Lust for Gold, Lust for Silver” (21-70)
TH 7/24
Lourdes Portillo, Señorita extraviada (excerpts)
Alma Guillermoprieto: “The Murderers of Mexico”
William Finnegan “Letter From Mexico: Silver or Lead”
Student presentations
Week 5:
T 7/28 Chile
Nostalgia of the Light by Patricio Guzman (documentary)
Student presentations
TH 7/31
Final Exam
Gisela Padovan, Deputy Chief of Mission, Brazilian Embassy, Buenos Aires.
Will talk about F-H Cardoso, Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff’s
presidencies.
Bibliography
Brennan, Timothy. “The Nation Longing For Form.” Nation and
Narration. Homi K. Bhabha, ed. London: Routledge, 1990. 44-70.
Chomsky Aviva et al. The Cuba Reader. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2003)
Elliott, J.H. “The Uncertain Impact” The Old World and the New (14291650) Cambridge UP, 1970. 1-27
Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the
Pillage of a Continent. New York: monthly Review Press, 1977.
Gené, Marcela. Un mundo feliz. Imágenes de los trabajadores en el
primer peronismo. BA: Fondo/Universidad San Andrés, 2005.
Gilbert, Joseph and Timothy Henderson, ed. The Mexico Reader.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Halperín Donghi, Tulio. Contemporary History of Latin America
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
James, Daniel. “Perón and the People.” Resistance and Integration:
Peronism
and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976. Cambridge UP, 1988.
273-95.
Kraniauskas, John. “Rodolfo Walsh y Eva Perón: “Esa mujer”. Nuevo
Texto Crítico 12: (1993): 105-19.
Levine, Robert M & John Crocitti, ed. The Brazil Reader. Durham:Duke
University Press, 2003.
Martínez, Tomás Eloy. Santa Evita. Trad. Helen Lane. New York:
Vintage, 1996.
Marysa Navarro. “Evita, una de las primeras desaparecidas políticas
de Argentina.” (JSTOR)
- - -. “Wonderwoman was Argentine and her Real name was Evita.”
Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies 24.
London: 1999. 133.
Navarro, Marysa, “Evita and the Crisis of 17 October 1945.” Journal
of Latin American Studies, 12: 1 (Feb. 1980).
Perlongher, Néstor. “Evita Live” My deep dark pain is love. Ed.
Winston Leyland. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1983.
53-57.
Perón, Eva. In My Own Words (La razón de mi vida).
Plotkin, Mariano. “May Day and 17 of October: Political Rituals and
Peron´s charisma” and The Fundacion Eva Peron, in Mañana es San
Perón: A Cultural History of Peron's Argentina. Delaware: Scholarly
Resources, año. 39-82.
Plotkin, Viviana. Cuerpo femenino, duelo y nación. Un estudio de Eva
Perón como personaje literario. BA: Corregidor, 2003.
Rochfort, Desmond. Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros. San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993.
Santoro Daniel. Manual del niño peronista. BA: La Marca, 2002.
Sarlo, Beatriz. La pasión y la excepción. BA: Siglo XXI, 2003.
Savigliano, Marta. “Evita: The Globalization of a National Myth”
(Jstor)
Soria, Claudia. Los cuerpos de Eva: anatomía del deseo femenino.
Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2005.
Soria, Claudia, Paola Cortés Rocca, and Edgardo Dieleke ed. Políticas del
sentimiento: el peronismo y la construcción de la Argentina
moderna.
BA: Prometeo, 2010.
Starn, Orin et al. The Peru Reader . Durham: Duke U. Press, 2005.
Summer, Doris. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin
America. Berlekeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1991.
Taylor, J.M. “The Myth of the Myth” and “The Power of a Woman.” Eva
Peron: The Myths of a Woman. Oxford: U of Chicago P, 1979. 1-19.