I would like to focus this week’s blog post on Rubén Dario’s poem titled “To Roosevelt” and the meaning behind it. Even during the “modernization” of Latin America, countries depended on their relationship with the United States to further progress their nations. For an exchange of exporting valuable resources and goods, America would provide up […]
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In the lecture video for this week, professor John talked about how modernization in Latin America tended to be superficial, and “trouble was brewing” under the surface. In the article about Diaz by Creelman, we read last week, Mexico seems to be a stable and peaceful region with no crisis in sight. Yet, reading this […]
This weeks readings shed more light on another perspective of the development of Latin America in the early 1900s. It is interesting to read from the perspective of the people from Latin America in literary forms that exist outside the sphere of the elites. It is refreshing to try to understand history from perspectives thatContinue reading “Week 8: Belonging to nowhere”
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Reading through Rubén Darío’s To Roosevelt (1867-1916) makes it clear the attitude against President Roosevelt and the United States’ actions during his years as president (1901 – 1909). The emotions and the principles addressed by Darío within this poetic article are themes that, unbeknownst at the time, would remain relevant for years to come. Darío contextualizes the hypocratic irony of America having such a progressive leader, for example animal rights or opposition to Tolstoy (L10), Darío goes on to acknowledge Roosevelt’s “cultured” and “skillful” (L10) state. To an extent, Darío uses Roosevelt as synecdochal for the whole of the United States. The mastery in the fight for equality on subjects that directly concern the people’s immediate interest. Rubén Darío describes the United States’ as a “future invader” (L6) of states not void of Indigenous people, in particular, Central America. He further depicts a historically ironic insult that the United States “lack[s] one thing: God” (L51), even though the United States is rich, and is godly in it’s presence, it lacks the relation to God through their natural surroundings which Darío reminds the audience has an expansive and lively history that Euro-United States hasn’t been long involved in which makes Central America superior in the conduct and affairs of it’s proper business.
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with blogpost8, Rubén Darío, UBC, week8
Having never learned or heard of Porfirio Diaz before last week’s reading, I genuinely thought he was a good leader and human being. In some respects, Diaz was a good leader, he was able to “modernize” Mexico and stabilize the economy. However, his government was anything but a democracy, it was a dictatorship with its …
