Pedro Lilienfeld

The current immigration upheavals in the U.S. has gotten me thinking about the image that Latin America presents to a large fraction of the population of our country. That view is being distorted by the relentless focus on illegal immigration, ICE roundups, Venezuela’s oil exploitation issues, Cuba’s travails, El Salvador hellish dictatorship, Mexicos’ and Colombia’s drug cartels, etc. In addition, contact with Latinos, except within academic environments, is usually restricted to the working class, cleaning crews, yard maintenance personnel, vendors, etc.

Symptomatic of the disregard, if not contempt, evinced towards the Latin American community residing in the U.S. is the coining of the label Latinx that has appeared in the last two decades. Here are parts of the relevant Wikipedia entry: “Latinx is a neologism used to refer to people with Latin American cultural or ethnic identity in the United States. The term aims to be a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina by replacing the masculine ⟨-o⟩ and feminine ⟨-a⟩ ending with the ⟨-x⟩ suffix. The plural for Latinx is Latinxs or Latinxes. The term was first seen online around 2004; it has since been used in social media to advocate for non-binary and genderqueer individuals. Latinx does not adhere to conventional grammatical gender rules in Spanish, is difficult to pronounce for Spanish speakers, and is criticized as showing disrespect towards the Spanish language as a whole. The Royal Spanish Academy style guide does not recognize gender-neutral language for the Spanish language as grammatically correct. Reception of the term among Hispanic and Latino Americans has been overwhelmingly negative, and surveys have found that the vast majority prefer other terms such as Hispanic and Latina/Latino to describe themselves with only 2–3% using Latinx.

The typical white North American is largely unaware of the more educated Latin American population whose existence is unknown and ignored. This barrier, in many cases, is bidirectional; the Latino intellectual elite often tends to distance itself from its northern neighbors.

This is an unfortunate separation that has resulted in a distorted impression that often descends into contempt directed at our southern neighbors. This disregard is also embodied in the American chauvinism that tends to disregard the rich history of Latin America. The average U.S. citizen knows little or nothing about that history. Who were Hernán Cortez, Francisco Pizarro, Francisco de Orellana, Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, Bernardo O’Higgins? What were the Tahuantinsuyo and the Gran Colombia? Who was executed at Querétaro, Mexico in 1867? And so on.

Most Americans are ignorant of the vast diversity of the peoples to our south. Although a common basic language unites that population, their ethnic mix, customs, history, vernacular expressions, politics, etc. are quite varied. Geography often underlies that diversity. Even within a particular country it is not uncommon to find significant cultural, behavioral and other differences such as those encountered in Ecuador, a relatively small nation on the Pacific coast of South America with which I am well acquainted. Ecuadoreans of the highlands are predominantly of mestizo indigenous/Spanish stock, tend to be reserved and traditional, and use a significant fraction of Quechua derived words, whereas the coastal population exhibits a noticeably black ethnic component, tends to be extroverted and its speech elides the letter s similarly to that of the Caribbean population such as the Cubans.

Americans are also largely unaware of the size of the Latin American population which is about double of that of the U.S. There are about 470 million in Spanish speakers in Latin America and 215 million Portuguese speakers in Brazil. Considering that large Latin population, we hear very little about it except in negative terms mostly related to drugs and cartels, as mentioned above.

Where the largest lacunae of awareness can be identified is in the cultural arena, especially in what concerns literature. We can barely expect a reasonably educated Anglo-American to evince some acquaintance with Gabriel García Márquez, however, without any inkling of the concept of magic realism he is famous for. I will take this opportunity to enlighten the ignorant about that genre. AI defines it thus: “Magic realism is a literary and artistic genre where fantastical, mythical, or supernatural elements are seamlessly blended into a realistic, mundane setting without causing surprise or requiring explanation. Characters accept these magical occurrences as part of everyday life, using them to explore complex themes like post-colonialism, identity, and social critique”.

There is, in fact, a long literary in tradition of magic realism in Spanish writing that precedes that of the Latin American writers. It was probably created by Cervantes more than three centuries earlier within his groundbreaking novelistic masterpiece, Don Quijote. Just remember the scene where the obfuscated paladin attacks the windmills. 

The fact that during the last hundred years — no pun intended with respect to García Márquez’s masterpiece — there has been a truly remarkable literary efflorescence, from Mexico down to Argentina and Chile, what is known as the boom. To be fair, that boom already started in the late 19th century and, to some extent is still underway.

I venture to state that this outpouring of writing may not have had any parallel in the entire literary history, barring the literature in any language. Among the contributors of the boom we can cite six Nobel prize winners:

• Gabriela Mistral, Chile (1945)
• Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemala (1967)
• Pablo Neruda, Chile (1971)
• Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia (1982)
• Octavio Paz, Mexico (1990)
• Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru (2010)

That Nobel list should have included, at the very least, the two Argentinian literary giants: Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar who did not garner the prize.

Wikipedia also lists no less than 126 of the most outstanding works of Latin American literature, produced between 1888 and 2019.

As an example of the prolificness of Latin American notable writers I can cite even those of one the smallest of South American countries: Uruguay with a meager population of only 3.5 million. Wikipedia lists no less than 53 important writers from that nation. Symptomatic of the cultural depth of that country was the experience I related in my autobiography of a visit to my high school in Quito, in the 1950s, by the then Uruguayan minister of education who, before a gathering of upperclass students, preceded to declaim poetry by Federico García Lorca, the great Spanish poet assassinated by the Franco Falange during the Spanish Civil War.

It is worth reflecting on the timeliness of some the novels of these great writers in their deep and acerbic criticism of the social and political afflictions of Latin American autocracies. Magical realism becomes a weapon by which such writer as García Márquez (Et Otoño del Patriarca, The Autumn of the Patriarch) in Colombia and Augusto Roa Bastos (Yo El Supremo, I The Supreme) in Paraguay satirize the governance of ruthless dictators. The former of these, is a tour de force written in long paragraphs with extended sentences that go on for several pages.

Although I realize that the true enjoyment of reading these authors in their original Spanish, by most Anglo American readers, remains unfulfilled, some very good translations of many of these works into English are available.