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Signs of Crisis in a Gilded Age

The documents in “Signs of Crisis in a Gilded Age” all illustrate a common paradox of being secure in and proud of the Latin American identity, but insecure and vulnerable with regard to Latin American sovereignty. It seems that Latin American academics and writers express wanting more for their people, yet face internal conflict that […]

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Commerce, Coercion and America’s Empire

I found the texts and films to be very interesting as it was able to provide different perspectives on the relationship between the United States and Latin America. In the first text, Sandino provides a more traditional perspective and shows less of a concern with the parochial battles between liberals and conservatives than about the […]

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Commerce, Coercion and America’s Empire

I found the texts and films to be very interesting as it was able to provide different perspectives on the relationship between the United States and Latin America. In the first text, Sandino provides a more traditional perspective and shows less of a concern with the parochial battles between liberals and conservatives than about the […]

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Echenique and Sagasta

The most interesting primary sources for me in chapter 3 were by Echenique and Sagasta. After having read them both, It seemed that the very ideals Echenique was pleading women to change in order to achieve a higher status in society were those still held by Sagasta. To illustrate this point, I want to quote what I felt was Echenique’s most important sentence in her work Brushstrokes, which is as follows:
“Our heart rebels against the ideas of spirituality, sensibility, and poetry that, as cultivated by women, have callously contributed until now to women’s delay on the road of progress and the improvement of their condition”
Echenique highlights that the ideals of women as pertaining to the private sphere of society, instead of outside the household, contributes to women’s slow progress for improvement. Echenique emphasizes the already existing ideals of the sensibility and spirituality of women, as main factors to their position in the household. Women were the mothers, the caring sensible side that nurtured the children while the men ventured outside the home. Echenique goes further in her critique of women, adding that it is necessary to be more philosophical and infused in the love for the arts and sciences. Echenique pleads, “Less sensibility and more reflection!”

Sagasta, on the other hand, argues against Echenique and considers women’s place in the household as important and worth continuing. Sagasta feels that it would be harmful for the emancipation of women to be attained. She firmly believes that women with as much independence as men would lose their greatest features. Furthermore, Sagasta is a clear example of a woman that believed difference was natural, that men and women were created differently by God and therefore have different paths in the world. This is most clearly shown when Sagasta states, “the destiny of women is not, as has mistakenly been said, equal to the destiny of men, because the former are weak and tender in their spirit and their bodies cannot endure the difficult hardships to which men are subjected.” It was interesting to read both texts with completely different points of view, as it illustrates the difficulty women in Latin America would endure to achieve citizenship rights.

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Echenique and Sagasta

The most interesting primary sources for me in chapter 3 were by Echenique and Sagasta. After having read them both, It seemed that the very ideals Echenique was pleading women to change in order to achieve a higher status in society were those still held by Sagasta. To illustrate this point, I want to quote what I felt was Echenique’s most important sentence in her work Brushstrokes, which is as follows:
“Our heart rebels against the ideas of spirituality, sensibility, and poetry that, as cultivated by women, have callously contributed until now to women’s delay on the road of progress and the improvement of their condition”
Echenique highlights that the ideals of women as pertaining to the private sphere of society, instead of outside the household, contributes to women’s slow progress for improvement. Echenique emphasizes the already existing ideals of the sensibility and spirituality of women, as main factors to their position in the household. Women were the mothers, the caring sensible side that nurtured the children while the men ventured outside the home. Echenique goes further in her critique of women, adding that it is necessary to be more philosophical and infused in the love for the arts and sciences. Echenique pleads, “Less sensibility and more reflection!”

Sagasta, on the other hand, argues against Echenique and considers women’s place in the household as important and worth continuing. Sagasta feels that it would be harmful for the emancipation of women to be attained. She firmly believes that women with as much independence as men would lose their greatest features. Furthermore, Sagasta is a clear example of a woman that believed difference was natural, that men and women were created differently by God and therefore have different paths in the world. This is most clearly shown when Sagasta states, “the destiny of women is not, as has mistakenly been said, equal to the destiny of men, because the former are weak and tender in their spirit and their bodies cannot endure the difficult hardships to which men are subjected.” It was interesting to read both texts with completely different points of view, as it illustrates the difficulty women in Latin America would endure to achieve citizenship rights.

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Echenique and Sagasta

The most interesting primary sources for me in chapter 3 were by Echenique and Sagasta. After having read them both, It seemed that the very ideals Echenique was pleading women to change in order to achieve a higher status in society were those still held by Sagasta. To illustrate this point, I want to quote what I felt was Echenique’s most important sentence in her work Brushstrokes, which is as follows:
“Our heart rebels against the ideas of spirituality, sensibility, and poetry that, as cultivated by women, have callously contributed until now to women’s delay on the road of progress and the improvement of their condition”
Echenique highlights that the ideals of women as pertaining to the private sphere of society, instead of outside the household, contributes to women’s slow progress for improvement. Echenique emphasizes the already existing ideals of the sensibility and spirituality of women, as main factors to their position in the household. Women were the mothers, the caring sensible side that nurtured the children while the men ventured outside the home. Echenique goes further in her critique of women, adding that it is necessary to be more philosophical and infused in the love for the arts and sciences. Echenique pleads, “Less sensibility and more reflection!”

Sagasta, on the other hand, argues against Echenique and considers women’s place in the household as important and worth continuing. Sagasta feels that it would be harmful for the emancipation of women to be attained. She firmly believes that women with as much independence as men would lose their greatest features. Furthermore, Sagasta is a clear example of a woman that believed difference was natural, that men and women were created differently by God and therefore have different paths in the world. This is most clearly shown when Sagasta states, “the destiny of women is not, as has mistakenly been said, equal to the destiny of men, because the former are weak and tender in their spirit and their bodies cannot endure the difficult hardships to which men are subjected.” It was interesting to read both texts with completely different points of view, as it illustrates the difficulty women in Latin America would endure to achieve citizenship rights.

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Mariategui “The Problem of the Indian”

Jose Carlos Mariategui was a Peruvian Marxist. He wrote that the wars of independence did not bring a new class to power in Peru and did not change the landholding system. Indigenous serfdom was eliminated in the law, however it remained after the revolution. It remained because its ties in colonialism which continued on. Peru […]

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Latin American Studies 2014-10-21 23:26:00

I would like to write about the third document in this weeks reading, which is an excerpt from La raza cosmica by Jose Vasconcelos in 1925. This document was about three stages of social progress: The first being of material and war, the second of inte…

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Latin American Studies 2014-10-21 22:26:00

I would like to write about the third document in this weeks reading, which is an excerpt from La raza cosmica by Jose Vasconcelos in 1925. This document was about three stages of social progress: The first being of material and war, the second of inte…

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Latin American Studies 2014-10-21 22:26:00

I would like to write about the third document in this weeks reading, which is an excerpt from La raza cosmica by Jose Vasconcelos in 1925. This document was about three stages of social progress: The first being of material and war, the second of intellect and politics, and the third of spirituality and aesthetics.    He argues that societies naturally flow through this step by step progression to a society of fantasy and feeling. He claims that his society at the time is on the cusp of the third stage. To my understanding, he argues that the reasoning for a society  to be stuck in the lower stages is due to arranged marriages where people have no choice but to stay in a relationship with someone they do not love, for political reasons. In the second stage, people put too much trust in intellect and in turn limit the nation and individuals’ actions.  he suggests that this lack of freedom for “taste” is what breeds ugliness in people, and that ugliness causes inferiority rather than race. So, if people are given the freedom of choice in their partners, other’s wouldn’t be offended by inter-racial marriage since eventually, do to an evolution of selection, they would both be beautiful people (like a goddess and god) and it wouldn’t matter to them. I couldn’t help but ask myself “am i reading this correctly?”(please correct me if i am not!). Vasconcelos first disagrees with eugenics saying that they are ‘based on incomplete and false data”, but his own theory seems just as superficial. I will acknowledge that perhaps he is not speaking of physical beauty but of love, which emanates beauty. According the the textbook like Dario, Vasconcelos was addressing the United States in particular, accusing their racist norms belonging to a lower social stage, and compares Latin America’s more accepting attitude towards racial mixing to be a trait which will send them into the next social stage. Also, like in Dario’s poem ‘ To Roosevelt’, Vasconcelos speaks of a godliness which they possess that is unreachable to the US. To me, this document expresses his pride of his nation, and a certainty for success.

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