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Advocates and Autocrats: Week 5 Reading
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The position of caudillo, as Dawson describes, fills in the role traditionally occupied by the King of Spain as an intermediary between local elites and the marginalized groups of country and city. My impression is that a lot of the vitriol against the Unitarians in Esteban Echeverria's story, El Matadero is traditional Spanish colonial class tensions given an ideological paint job. The revolution transitioned Latin America from a dependent colonial society to an independent republic, but failed to address some of the basic inequities that led to revolution in the first place. One major bone of contention in the struggle between the merchant classes and the working class was when the urban intelligentsia attacked the Catholic Church, which is considered by many peasants to be a vital institution of philanthropy in their remote areas without the tax base or government initiative to provide secular public works. The role of the caudillo was to act as an advocate for the disenfranchised masses of the hinterland against the machinations of the perceived power-mongers that lived in the capitals. Unfortunately, demagoguery tends to create corrupt short-run despotisms that pay mere lip service to democratic ideals and, when a demagogue senses his end, he frequently resorts to violent scapegoating and confiscating the property of newly invented "enemies of the state" to salvage the loyalty of his followers. While the caudillo can be a vital bulwark against the exploitation of the peasantry, historical example demonstrates that it is in practice a role dedicated to repressing the natural tendencies of liberal democracy, and thus caudillo governments consistently have a benevolently autocratic flavour.
Echeverria's story contains a myriad of metaphors and allegories that I find satisfactory to demonstrate the biases of the literate intelligentsia of the United Provinces of La Plata during the reign of Juan Manuel Rosas towards him and his Federalist faction. The author clearly has disdain for the role of the caudillo, drawing a not-so-subtle comparison between caudillos and the cattle yard judge. He describes the judge as "an important personage, the caudillo of the butchers, who wields supreme power over this small republic" and describes of his office as, "such a small and shabby building that no one in the corrals would give it any importance but for the association of its name with that of the feared judge." This is meant to assert that that the influence of the caudillo has no legitimacy except through the use of emotional leverage, whether joyful, fearful or wrathful, over the dissatisfied rural population. Echeverria also speaks with disdain for the "hideous, filthy, malodorous, and deformed" urban proletariat, and as the chapter mentions earlier, he belonged to a class of people that found the idea of racial equality abhorrent. His insistent mockery of the Catholic Church is meant to offer a criticism of their complicity with the regime, using superstition to stoke anti-Unitarian sentiment. It is a well-written and highly symbolic work that is valuable both as art and artifact of the Latin American past.
read full post >>The Center of the Federation
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As a political activist, Esteban Echeverría grapples with the collision of barbarism and civilization in Latin America in his short story The Slaughterhouse. He was banished from Argentina for his devotion to the demise of the caudillo of Buenos Aires (where the story takes place), and wrote this piece while in exile. It clearly references the state […]
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read full post >>The Slaughterhouse
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The short story El Matadero (The Slaughterhouse) by Esteban Echeverria is a reflection of the caudillo period in the 19th century. El Matadero uses sarcasm and vivid imagery to convey his view points on the political systems of Buenos Aires during the dominance of Juan Manuel de Rosas. The story portrays the injustices, as a liberal view, imposed on the people of Buenos Aires by the church – which I believe represents Rosas and his ‘Holy Federation’. The story set in a time of Lent, a season of scarcity that the church imposed on the people of Rio de La Plata, restricting them of meat intake. The slaughterhouse is where the meat was produced and distributed through the caudillo. When the flood subsides there are 50 cattle that returned to the slaughter house which people of the town, in barbaric imagery, fought over the meat that returned to the town. Corruption is shown by the point that Echeverria makes that the gringos and the ‘Restorer’ had the first servings of meat and the rest was left for the proletariat. The bull, which is the last left of the returning cattle, is a compared to the Unitarian at the end of the story and represents the resistance of the Unitarian liberals. The author describes the rage of the bull and then immediately after describes the rage inside the Unitarian that they captured. This to me is an obvious linkage between the two and symbolizes the feelings of the Unitarians during the time of Juan Manual de Rosas. Something I found interesting in the story was the way in which the peole of the town were represented. There are two times were women were compared to “mythical harpies” and “ugly as the vigaros of legend” in the second description they were along side boys and in the first description they are compared with birds. This is interesting to me because I am not sure what the point of describing them in this way has to do with the main theme of the story? Perhaps I am missing something.
read full post >>The Slaughterhouse
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The short story El Matadero (The Slaughterhouse) by Esteban Echeverria is a reflection of the caudillo period in the 19th century. El Matadero uses sarcasm and vivid imagery to convey his view points on the political systems of Buenos Air... read full post >>
The Slaughter House
Posted by: feedwordpress
This weeks reading of the Slaughterhouse was quite interesting. The author remarks upon the brutality of the Federalists in an almost satirical matter. He seems to tell the story from an almost sympathetic point of view at first glance. As the story pr... read full post >>
The Slaughter House
Posted by: feedwordpress
This weeks reading of the Slaughterhouse was quite interesting. The author remarks upon the brutality of the Federalists in an almost satirical matter. He seems to tell the story from an almost sympathetic point of view at first glance. As the story pr... read full post >>
"Slaughterhouse" as a Political Allegory and in Hindseight
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It is made apparent that "The Slaughterhouse (El Matadero)" by Esteban Echeverría is a political allegory. The men of the slaughterhouse represent the federalists and Matasiete could be Rosas. The bull and the young man who is tortured represent Unita... read full post >>
week 5: The Slaughterhouse
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The reading this week included a short story written by Esteban Echeverria called “The Slaughterhouse.” It is a brutal, graphic story in which the people of a province of Buenos Aires engage in the butchering of steers, and later, in the death of a innocent passerby. Echeverria describes his witness to this experience as, “a simulacrum in miniature of […] read full post >>
The Slaughter House
Posted by: feedwordpress
This weeks reading of the Slaughterhouse was quite interesting. The author remarks upon the brutality of the Federalists in an almost satirical matter. He seems to tell the story from an almost sympathetic point of view at first glance. As the story pr... read full post >>
"Slaughterhouse" as a Political Allegory and in Hindseight
Posted by: feedwordpress
It is made apparent that "The Slaughterhouse (El Matadero)" by Esteban Echeverría is a political allegory. The men of the slaughterhouse represent the federalists and Matasiete could be Rosas. The bull and the young man who is tortured represent Unita... read full post >>
