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Nostalgia by Cristina Rivera-Garza + The Threshold by Cristina Peri Rossi

Daniela Morales Italia Salgado

“In both Cristina Rivera Garza´s Nostalgia and in Cristina Peri Rossi´s The Threshold, a male partner dreams and in doing so abandons his female partner. Thus, the act of dreaming is understood as a form of privilege that allows the narrators to act as the creators of both private and collective words.”

Yes, in Cristina Peri Rossi’s The Threshold, the woman is not allowed to dream and her husband or partner, can dream and she feels frustrated. She describes “A dream is a piece of writing,” she says sadly, “a work that I don’t know how to write and that makes me different from others, all the human beings and animals who dream.”It’s a private world she isn’t allowed to enter. Her partner says before leaving, “I have to go on. I’m at the end of the pathway, my eyes are closing. I can’t talk anymore.” The woman feels like she can’t enter to this amazing door of parallel worlds. “She doesn’t have the door of dreams that opens every night to question the certainties of the day. Nor the door of dreams which we enter into the past of the species, where once we were dinosaurs among the foliage or stones in the torrent.” It doesn’t matter what she does, she will never be able to enter. “She stays at the threshold, and the door is always closed, refusing her entrance. I tell her that in itself is a dream, a nightmare: to be front of a door which will not open no matter how much we push at the latch or pound the knocker.”

In Cristina River-Garza’s Nostalgia, the main character lives in the world of dreams, as is stated clearly since the beginning and he himself observes in the following quote: “Instead, he took off his cashmere sweater, rolled up his shirtsleeves, picked up the briefcase sitting on the passenger’s seat and, with a wry smile, thought to himself that those drastic temperature changes only ever occurred in dreams” (Rivera-Garza, p. 131). This effectively establishes that the story takes place in his head, and that he is nostalgic for something that he can no longer attain in real life, or a part of his past, as well as running away from the present, a luxury that, at the end of the story, we find out his wife doesn’t have and that she doesn’t realize he has in the first place until the very end, leaving her heart-broken as she has spent her married life with a man who would rather live in dreams, an ability she doesn’t have. “Gradually, it was all so obvious, and the realization forced her to close her eyes and cover her face with the pillow. She felt an enormous emptiness in her stomach. She wanted to vomit” (Rivera-Garza, p 156). What gives the impression he wanted to run away from reality -besides the obvious fact that the whole story takes place in his imaginary world- is how he immediately runs away from the woman with children in the first scene (a possible representation of his family) and continues running throughout the tale, chasing after the gangly boy and feeling an overall sense of urgency, as stated when he is once again confronted with the whitewashed house: “Sooner than he expected, he’d been compelled to start his car and step on the gas with a great sense or urgency, what a relief he’d been unable to rent that apartment, he thought again. In silence, he thanked his lucky stars” (Rivera-Garza, p. 141).

When looking at both tales, it is clear both authors thought of a way to show privilege that wasn’t as in your face as most modern writers do. While decipherable, it is also subtle because in Nostalgia at least, you don’t even realize there is a wife until the very end, and the fact that she can’t dream or at least, doesn’t dream often is implied in her reaction to her husband’s tantrum when waking up. A similar idea runs throughout The Threshold, as the narrator points out that she can’t seem to go through the door to a parallel world, meaning she doesn’t have access to it, either. Whether it is a question of male privilege or simple ability to dream is a mystery, but it is a possible reading we might find given the discourse of power and machismo that is rampant in Latin American literature.

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Daniela Morales

Italia Salgado

Description of the activity: Make a Facebook profile for Julian with all the evidence from the text evidencing his internal, intimate voice considering how do we externalize our internal understanding of our identity on social media (remembering we tend to be both sincere and aspirational (less sincere>insincere) in this medium)?

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When women love men

Italia Salgado Daniela Morales

Create three columns as below as select all the references to colour or smell and put them in a column. When you have finished, comment on your findings.

We found that the two characters share a connection to silver, as there are many references to the color that are unclear as to who of the two it refers. However, they are clearly related to the color of their skin, with Isabel Luberza’s skin described as milky white, and her physical features described as those of a white woman through light colors and and association to white in her clothing as well. While Isabel La Negra also has connections to white, it is mostly associated to her fantasies of belonging to the upper class and being accepted. She herself is described as “the black pearl of the south” because of how beautiful she is. However, unlike Isabel Luberza’s case, she is associated with livelier colors, reflecting her negro culture and her lifestyle. The one time she is associated with a lighter color, she is associated with gray. Something else that they share is that they are always described as beautiful, no matter their skin color.

Citations

“Was it Isabel Luberza the champion of the Oblates, carrying a tray with her own pink tits”

“Was it Isabel the Black Pearl of the South”

“So many years of anger stuck like a lump in my throat, Ambrosio, so many years of polishing my fingernails with Cherries Jubilee because it was the reddest color in fashion at the time.”

“Isabel Luberza, having such refined tastes, should like the shrill and gaudy colors that Negroes usually prefer.”

(Isabel la Negra) “It’s balcony of long silver amphorae will be painted shocking pink; its balusters aligned along the street like happy phalluses; its snow white, garlanded facades, which now give the impression of cakes coated with heavy icing, spread stiff and sparkling like the shirt of debutante, will then be washed in warm colors, in chartreuse green fused into chrysanthemum orange, in Pernod blue thawed into dahlia yellow; in those gaudy shades that persuade men to relax, to let their arms slide down their slides as though they didn’t have a care in the world.

“The walls of the house, which are now elegantly gessoed, will be painted a bottle green, so that when you and I stand in the main hall, Ambrosio, everything will be revealed to us.

“The sacred body of Isabel Luberza will file past my door today, a body which had never before been exposed, not even a sliver of her white buttocks, not even a shaving of her white breasts.”

“But her yearning to live in the house, her dream of sitting out on the balcony behind the silver balustrade, beneath the baskets of fruit and garlands of flowers.”

“Handsome man dressed in white linen and Panama hat, who stood leaning out on the balcony next to a beautiful blond woman, elegantly dressed in a silver lamé gown.”

“That vision was the only gray cloud, the only elusive thorn that distrubed Isabel la Negra’s contentment in her approaching old age.”

“The odor of Fleur de Rocacille, her overly sweet perfume, brought me back to reality.”

“I began to place your napkin in a silver ring next to your plate, to sprinkle lemon juice in your water goblet,...”

“Since I’d never seen her, I invented her to my heart’s content. I thought of her as bewitchingly beautiful, her skin dar as night when mine was milk at dawn…”

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The Challenge, by Mario Vargas Llosa

Italia Salgado / Daniela Morales 

Do you consider The Challenge by Mario Vargas Llosa to be a celebration of masculine/macho culture? Provide reasons from your opinion with reference to the text.

Luego, entre los tres lo cargamos al hombro en dos hileras, como a un ataúd, y caminamos, igualando los pasos, en dirección al sendero que escalaba la orilla del río y que nos llevaría a la ciudad.

-No llore, viejo -dijo León. -No he conocido a nadie tan valiente como su hijo. Se lo digo de veras.

Leonidas no contestó. Iba detrás de mí, de modo que yo no podía verlo. A la altura de los primeros ranchos de Castilla, pregunté.

-¿Lo llevamos a su casa, don Leonidas?

-Sí -dijo el viejo, precipitadamente, como si no hubiera escuchado lo que le decía.

In a way, it emphasizes macho culture as an acceptable thing, meaning that dying -as is the case for Justo- is justified if it was in the name of upkeeping this image of unfailing masculinity, to the point that despite knowing the odds, even his own father -Leonidas- does nothing to stop him from going, and is only there to give his son counsel and actual encouragement, even when the fight is clearly lost and Justo is dead on his feet. In any other country or region outside of Latin America, the plot would have revolved around talking the protagonist out of it. Also, throughout the story, all we see is acceptance from the townsfolk, and the only ones whose opinions are shown are those of men. This is quite telling in itself, because through the absence of women, the emphasis of macho culture as something inherently latin american is even stronger because it also shows that women have no real voice, at least not in towns like the one where the story takes place.

-¿Quieres que yo vaya? - me preguntó.

-No. Con nosotros basta, gracias.

-Bueno. Avísame si puedo ayudar en algo. Justo es también mi amigo

In this part of the text I’d like to point out the brotherhood man have, and is a characteristic of the masculine culture. Girls try to have a sisterhood but they somehow always are criticizing and hurting other girls that aren’t their friends.

-Vi a Justo, solo, sentado en la terraza. Tenía unas zapatillas de jebe y una chompa descolorida que le subía por el cuello hasta las orejas. Visto de perfil, contra la oscuridad de afuera, parecía un niño, una mujer: de ese lado, sus facciones eran delicadas, dulces.

The macho culture makes stereotypes. Can’t a man have delicate features without being considered a woman?

-¿Eres muy hombre? -gritó el Cojo.

-Más que tú -gritó Justo.

-Quietos, bestias -decía el cura.

Is there something such as being more of a man? In macho culture, those who are rough and tough are considered “more machos” and those who are more delicate and sensitive are more like a girl.

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11 questions on Chac Mool

Who narrates the story/How is the story narrated? The story is narrated through Filiberto’s diary, which is being read by a friend of his.

Who is Filiberto? What does he do? What class is he from? What might he represent? He is a middle class office worker. He represents the average mexican who, in a way, “settled” for an inane existence inside an office and is constantly searching for meaning and different things in his collection of statuettes.

What is a Chac Mool? (internet investigation) A Chac Mool is a sculpture depicting a reclining figure that supports itself on its elbows and has its knees propped against the floor. It usually holds a bowl or disc on its stomach, and often signified warriors that were killed in rituals as offerings to mesoamerican gods.

How does what you find coincide and not coincide with the descriptions given in Fuentes’ story? The general figure is the same, what changes are the colors. Fuentes describes the story’s Chac Mool as being covered in green paint and a splash of tomato sauce where the offerings would traditionally be. He also describes it as being made of plaster rather than stone, making it more fragile than its real life counterparts.

Who was the Le Plongeon referred to on pg 5? Le Plongeon was a british photographer and arqueologist, known mostly for his studies of pre-colombine civilizations and his three-dimensional photographies of ancient cities like Uxmal and Chichen Itzá. His actual writings resemble today’s conspiracy theories, trying to relate Egypt, the mayas and Atlantis and tie them into a single large civilization.

How can we interpret Fuentes’ re-telling of Le Plongeon’s act? He re-tells it as if it were a despicable act of dishonor. As if he (Chac Mool) was stolen from his proper place, rendering him miserable.

What does the line “El sabe de la inminencia del hecho estético” mean? According to Borges, “el hecho estético” implies that any work of art, regardless of its origins, is trying to tell us something that’s been lost or is about to be lost. In context, it means that the Chac Mool was well aware of what removing him from his place meant, and what his current appearance -dirty and suffering from the weather, like all art forms do- implies about the meaning of his own existence: decadence.   

Describe the Chac mool. What is he like physically? What is his personality like? At first, he is described as a wise figure, with knowledge of ancient stories and myths that Filiberto enjoys. As the story goes on and he stops receiving enough water, he becomes more erratic and desperate in every single one of his actions, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself in this day and age. He reeks of confusion and tries to adapt to modern times by taking characteristics he associates with modern humanity, but all that happens is that he becomes more confused as time goes by and begins abusing his god-like powers in regards to Filiberto because he is the only one he has any power over in this day and age, because he is the only one who believes (to an extent).

How do you interpret the description of the “indio amarillo” in the final paragraph? What does it mean? My interpretation is that Chac Mool is trying to asimilate modern mexican culture but failing spectacularly, much like we attempted to emulate the american way of life and failed during our economic boom because our historical baggage is not the same. This implies that what works for one culture does not work for the other, and the end result, according to Fuentes, at least, is a caricature of what we used to be using modernity as a mask to hide behind in an attempt to keep up with the times.

Is this story an allegory? What allegorical readings might be possible? It definitely is an allegory. A possible reading is the loss of our own culture in favor of the one brought by the spanish during La Conquista. However, I think rather than losing it, it is more as if it were still there, present in our physical characteristics -like the color of our skin, which is emphasized in Chac Mool’s case- but we were trying to hide it and failing spectacularly at it. Hence why in the last paragraph the Chac Mool is described as a veritable hot mess because he has no idea what he was and what he is, because he doesn’t understand who he was anymore, and doesn’t understand who he wants to be either.

Do you find any relationship between this story and Paz’ essays? If anything, they are related in that they try to explain what is means to be mexican, what it implies to be mexican in a world were the past is fetishized and seen as exotic, a myth, rather than actual history and what it entails to the descendants of those cultures. With Paz, we have La Chingada and Nobody, our mother and we, her descendants who carry her “sins” with us. Carlos Fuentes gives us the Chac Mool, bringing down a god-like figure and humanizing it to the extent that he is no longer recognizable as a god by the end, but as a human who is pretending to be something he isn’t.

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Poniatowska - La noche de Tlatelolco

1. Provide a discussion of whether Poniatowska's text should be considered literature or not, providing reasons and consequences. This is not so much a question of providing a correct answer, but of demonstrating our ability to interrogate the concept of literature and its significance/role in the world by analysing Poniatowska's text.

If you look at the meaning of literature, it can have several connotations:

1.- Writings in prose or verse, especially writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2018) 2.- Novels, plays, and poetry are referred to as literature, especially when they are considered to be good or important (Collins Dictionary, 2018) 3.- Written artistic works, especially those with a high and lasting artistic value (Cambridge Dictionary, 2018)

From this point of view, La Noche de Tlatelolco cannot be considered literature, but rather a chronicle of the events that took place in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas. However, if you look at its publication date, the definition of literature had been changing throughout the 20th century. An early example can be Burroughs’ Junky: the definitive text of junk (1971) and other works of the beat generation, due to their focus on re-telling and framing real life events as they were, although they still retained this more personal perspective on events. Poniatowska’s text, although in a more periodistic vein given that it depends entirely on eyewitness accounts, does meet the criteria of literature in terms of “expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest” and being “good or important” as well as having “high and lasting artistic value”, because it changes the way we see literature and the sharing of ideas. It expresses ideas of universal interest because the struggle of students against the government is universal, unrestricted to any country. It is important due both to the historical context in which the event took place (with the world’s attention on the country due to the Olympics and being part of a global wave of similar student movements that were met with violence). While the “high and lasting artistic value” is debatable due to its form, it can be considered to meet that criteria because it defies the idea of form and of anthology (it can be seen as one due to quotations of texts by Castellanos and Martí, as well as another anonymous sources). 

In other words, it is significant for painting a picture of what it was and what happened through the eyes of the people who actually lived it, simply writing it down for others to read as it was, making it a chronicle and a work of periodistic value as well as a work of literature due to its relevance as an expression of a movement and an idea that is universal. 

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Borges’ Funes el Memorioso

1. What do you think is the most important sentence in this story? Why?

Pardon my loose translation, but I believe the line “I suspect, however, that he was not capable of thinking. To think is to forget differences, to generalize, to abstract” is the most important one. This is due to how Funes’ incredible memory relies on finding and remembering every single detail he’s ever seen or perceived, meaning that he is incapable of generalizing and in Borges’ terms, incapable of independent thought.

2. How does the story of Funes relate to the concept of the archive? (you can look up the definition of archive to help you here)

“a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people“. Funes, given how he cannot move anymore, has become a human archive thanks to his memory, and is a living embodiment of the concept not only through his ability to retain all of that information, but also because of his inability to interpret it and correctly relate the distinct pieces of information he has access to others, as shown with the numbers and his own “original system” of enumeration that involved names. 

3. What connections can you make between Funes and various aspects of digital culture?

When you think about digital culture in a certain way, it is simply a huge archive of human thought in all aspects. Therefore, very much like the internet, Funes is only capable of reciting the information that is asked of them, and it is up to the person/reader to interpret and give sense to what has been presented which, in the case of internet culture, implies a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunication problems.

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I’m so glad I managed to get a seat in this conference, not only because Clouthier is such an important figure, but because I really, really hate Borges (it’s a thing since high school, maybe it’s my teacher’s fault, because I know I’m not the only one from my high school class who despises him).

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When looking at the poem in a certain way, the use of space is very interesting, for when looking at it in a horizontal angle you could mistake each line for a stalk of corn. When it comes to grammar and punctuation, they are both used effectively, giving the poem a certain flow and cadence that is easy to follow and easy to recreate when reading aloud despite not having heard it before. Grammar is mostly correct, and there is no unconventional use of it to emphasize anything, it’s only use to give shape to the poem and let it flow. The sound of the poem is very interesting, because as observed in the table made as a group, the only words that have graphic accents are those with a deep connection to Latin American culture, which was probably on purpose to make the words stand out as it was read. As with the grammar, the poem’s syntax is only there to make the poem flow, helping create the image -in my opinion-, of the corn stalks flowing with the wind. Given the description given, of laughing and being blind and the particular emphasis given to arms, the poem paints an image of a child -probably Mistral herself- wading through the cornfields. Figuratively speaking, this could represent her struggle with her Latin American identity, with the corn being the overwhelming history of Latin America and the child in the image being her trying to figure it out with the hope of coming out victorious. The combination of all of the above make Mistral’s El Maíz a very important poem that paints the image of the Latin American struggle in a very personal way through the use of words as sounds, and space as a way to paint a picture in words.

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Octavio Paz Labyrinth of Solitude

1. Find the part that you think is most true... the sentence or paragraph that resonates the most with you, that expresses something you might have once thought. Write down and explain to yourself why, what was it in those words, where have you seen that in your experience... 

Esta concepción —bastante falsa si se piensa que la mexicana es muy sensible e inquieta— no la convierte en mero objeto, en cosa. La mujer mexicana, como todas las otras, es un símbolo que representa la estabilidad y continuidad de la raza. A su significación cósmica se alía la social: en la vida diaria su función consiste en hacer imperar la ley y el orden, la piedad y la dulzura. Todos cuidamos que nadie "falte al respeto a las señoras", noción universal, sin duda, pero que en México se lleva hasta sus últimas consecuencias. Gracias a ella se suavizan muchas de las asperezas de 13 nuestras relaciones de "hombre a hombre". Naturalmente habría que preguntar a las mexicanas su opinión; ese "respeto" es a veces una hipócrita manera de sujetarlas e impedirles que se expresen. Quizá muchas preferirían ser tratadas con menos "respeto" (que, por lo demás, se les concede solamente en público) y con más libertad y autenticidad. Esto es, como seres humanos y no como símbolos o funciones. Pero, ¿cómo vamos a consentir que ellas se expresen, si toda nuestra vida tiende a paralizarse en una máscara que oculte nuestra intimidad?

2. Use both texts to piece together the tale of Nobody. Re-tell the story as one, as if you were explaining it to somebody who hasn’t read the text. 

‘La Chingada’ is, in a sense, a representation of the abused mexican woman who has children, and whose own experiences directly affect the development of her offspring, shaping them into what we see in the story: a nobody, who constantly denies their own self-worth and or important parts of who they are in order to not get hurt. In a way, if you look at the origin of the conquest, it’s all about broken trust. The people of Tabasco gave 20 slaves to the Spanish after they lost a battle, probably hoping to be left alone as their customs dictated. What they received in turn was probably, in their own minds, a fate worse than death. The people who survived the initial battles didn’t even survive from a certain point of view. They began to hide their culture and their identity and their own sense of self so they could survive. They were no longer tlaxcaltecs, or aztecs, or mayas or huicholes. They were Nobody. And so, as their descendants, we are all Nobody.

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Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America

1. In the first section: “Lust for Gold...”, how do the Spanish conquerors describe Latin America and its inhabitants? (Quote their words)

“At his first landing on San Salvador atoll, Columbus was dazzled by the transparent hues of the Caribbean, the green landscape, the soft clean air, the magnificent birds, and the youths “with size and with good faces and well made” who lived there.” (pg. 27)

“They knew nothing of swords, and when these were shown to them they grasped the sharp edges and cut themselves. Meanwhile, as the Admiral relates in his logbook, “1 was very attentive to them, and strove to learn if they had any gold. Seeing some of them with little bits of metal hanging at their noses, I gathered from them by signs, that by going southward or steering round the island in that direction, there would be found a king who possessed great cups full of gold, and in large quantities.” (pg. 27)

Later Amerigo Vespucci, an early sixteenth-century explorer of the Brazilian coast, reported to Lorenzo de Mëdicis: “The trees are of such beauty and sweetness that we felt we were in earthly Paradise.” (pg. 28)

“There was indeed gold and silver in large quantities, accumulated in the Mexican plateau and the Andean altiplano. In 1519 Cortés told Spain of the fabulous magnitude of Montezuma’s Aztec treasure, and fifteen years later there arrived in Seville the gigantic ransom— a roomful of gold and two of silver— which Francisco Pizarro had made the Inca Atahualpa pay before strangling him.”

2. What was the Requerimiento? Why did it exist?

The Requerimiento consisted of a long text that the conquerors were expected to read, without translation, to the indigenous people before they took any military action. The goal was to coerce them into converting to the catholic religion based on exhaustive and detailed threats of what they would to to them if they didn’t (genocide, torture, murder... among other things). An excerpt as seen within Galeano’s text is below.

If you do not, or if you maliciously delay in so doing, I certify that with God’s help I will advance powerfully against you and make war on you wherever and however I am able, and will subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their majesties and take your women and children to be slaves, and as such I will sell and dispose of them as their majesties may order, and I will take your possessions and do you all the harm and damage that I can.

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✨-Xolito Mexicano-✨

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hall on foucault and what i think about it

I believe discourse and power are intimately linked in Foucault’s views in terms of how he sees and provides meaning to even the smallest interactions. As I understood it, power -like discourse- is not static, changing its appearance and nucleus with time. Say, a father does not have the same power in a family and its affairs -say, the managing of family finances, the power to arrange marriages, etc- today as he does in the 21st century. This is a direct consequence of the evolution of discourse, as language and practice has changed to reflect a completely different set of values. So, discourse has a direct effect on how we view power, giving things, actions and words a new meaning thanks to perspective and what we as human beings wish were true.

Unlike anything seen before, Foucault believes in a circle of power, with it being a fluid substance, an object that is completely malleable and capable of changing its shape, weight, and form. This means that it is present in every social sphere -the micro-physics of power, as he names it- and that it has its roots in behaviors that we might not even notice we have. 

Pre-Foucault, the subject was simply viewed as “an individual endowed with a consciousness, an independent, authentic source of action and meaning”. In lay-man’s terms, it means that the subject was the origin of the meaning in the first place. His conception completely changed everything. Once he explores the idea of the subject, his use of the constructionist theory of meaning and representation means that while all around us exists, it lacks any meaning if there is no discourse whatsoever. Say, in this point of view, a cup of coffee by itself means nothing, but once it becomes a part of something, it suddenly gains meaning by symbolizing something or being a plot device, all within a certain context. This was so innovative before, where the cup would have meaning simply because it existed.