Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

identity construct #5: latin america 163
colonizers, attempting to recover the difference effaced as the “native”
culture was suppressed and subjected to European “reason” through the colonial
process. This endeavor is always complex because of the changes colonization
makes in the structure of “native” society. It is especially difficult
in Latin America because the great variety of cultures brought into contact
there during the long colonial period formed a heterogeneous culture. The
large-scale decimation of indigenous populations and their displacement
from the center of society, along with complex patterns of immigration
and miscegenation, made it difficult to differentiate between “native” and
“foreign.” Paradoxically enough, the post-Independence leaders who fi rst
framed the debates on national culture were largely members of white,
European-educated, colonial elites, who sought the culture they termed
“civilization” in European (and particularly French) models. Cultural identity,
then, does not emerge as a given, preexisting “essence” but as an arena
for struggle. The concept of identity itself needs constant redefi nition as the
terms that contribute to it—gender, race, class, nation, continent—come
into confl ict and shift in relation to one another.
Unity and Diversity
The search for cultural identity and the struggle for political and economic
autonomy functioned jointly in the endeavor of post-Independence Latin
American nations to take control of their own futures. As is well known,
however, the post-Independence era brought a continued European economic
hegemony and increasing political and economic infl uence from
the United States. In the realm of high culture, many Latin American artists
and intellectuals still looked to European models, even after Europe’s
economic power waned. In response to this lingering legacy of colonialism,
the concept of cultural union has often been invoked, even long after
Independence was formalized. José Enrique Rodó’s essay Ariel (1900) was
ground- breaking in that it affirmed not only the uniqueness but also the
value of Latin American culture. In the 1920s the poet Oswald de Andrade
insisted in his Manifesto Pau-Brasil (“Brazilwood Manifesto”) and Manifesto
Antropófago (“Cannibal’s Manifesto”) that his native Brazilian culture
is different from, but as valid and as rich as, the European; and Vasconcelos
asserted that, since so many cultures have come together in America, it is
here that civilization will culminate.
The unity that such nationalist projects presuppose is real, but the imperative
to unity elides “an interior diversity which is a more precise defi nition
of the continent.” In a context where cultural identity is linked in so