“The Solitude of Latin America”
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Biography: “Democracy Now” Apr 18, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzx1ms
p4-Ik
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“Eleven years ago, the Chilean Pablo Neruda, one of
the outstanding poets of our time, enlightened this
audience with his word. Since then, the Europeans
of good will - and sometimes those of bad, as well have been struck, with ever greater force, by the
unearthly tidings of Latin America, that boundless
realm of haunted men and historic women, whose
unending obstinacy blurs into legend.”
…Opposed to you I have seen the blood
of Spain rise up
to drown you, in a single wave
of pride and knives!
Generals
traitors:
consider my dead house,
consider Spain, broken:
but from every dead house burning metal flows
in place of flowers,
but from every hollow of Spain
Spain rises,
but from every dead child rises a gun with eyes,
but from every crime are born bullets
that will find you one day in the house
of the heart.
You will ask why his poetry
has nothing of the earth, of the leaves,
of the grand volcanoes of his native country?
Come and see the blood through the streets,
come and see
the blood through the streets,
come and see the blood
through the streets!
Pablo Neruda
“I Explain a Few Things”
From: ‘Tercera Residencia’
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/Neruda.h
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“…unearthly tidings” – Reality becomes
unbelievable from Euro-centric perspective.
History then becomes conflated with legend.
María de las Mercedes Barbudo
Puerto Rico
Simón Bolívar
Argentina
José Martí
Cuba
Frida Kahlo
México
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“I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just
its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of
the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but
one that lives within us and determines each instant of our
countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of
insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this
roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more,
singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and
prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that
unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of
imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of
conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my
friends, is the crux of our solitude.”
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“this outsized reality”
Extraordinary suffering
Extraordinary source of creativity
The context of Latin American lives is so tragically
unimaginable that it becomes nearly inexpressible
and thus unbelievable to outsiders
Leaving the “creatures of that unbridled reality”
isolated from those who are not part of the Latin
American experience
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“And if these difficulties, whose essence we share,
hinder us, it is understandable that the rational
talents on this side of the world, exalted in the
contemplation of their own cultures, should have
found themselves without valid means to interpret
us. It is only natural that they insist on measuring
us with the yardstick that they use for themselves,
forgetting that the ravages of life are not the same
for all, and that the quest of our own identity is just
as arduous and bloody for us as it was for them.”
Some Key Points:
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The validity of various means of interpretation is called
into question: “The interpretation of our reality through
patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more
unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.”
Euro-centric views of Latin America are often formed
from selective memory – forgetting the span of time and
bloodiness of their own historic struggles: “Venerable
Europe would perhaps be more perceptive if it tried to see us in
its own past.”
Some Key Points:
Identity must be found by those who are to hold it
and experience it.
 The struggle for identity in Latin America is not the
same for everyone (the same as Europeans? …or the
same for all Latin Americans?) but is nevertheless
just as arduous.
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“…the navigational advances that have narrowed such
distances between our Americas and Europe seem,
conversely, to have accentuated our cultural remoteness.
Why is the originality so readily granted us in literature
so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at
social change? Why think that the social justice sought
by progressive Europeans for their own countries
cannot also be a goal for Latin America, with different
methods for dissimilar conditions?”
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A Question: To which “different methods” do
you think García-Márquéz refers?
Los Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
Fidel Castro & Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara
Daniel Ortega
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“…we, the inventors of tales, who will believe
anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too
late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia.
A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one
will be able to decide for others how they die, where
love will prove true and happiness be possible, and
where the races condemned to one hundred years of
solitude will have, at last and forever, a second
opportunity on earth.”
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ…A Witch Writing
A Biography In His Own Words.
A Film by Yves Billon and Mauricio Martinez-Cavard
52 Minutes Produced by Les Films du Village
Presented by Planet Group Entertainment
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnNgjUWgrGQ