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

206 reframing latin america
Despite the reasons she had for loathing Altamira, Doña Ascunción
[Santos’s mother] had not been willing to sell the ranch. Her soul was the
robust, unchangeable soul of the Plainsman, for whom there is nothing like
his native soil, and although she had no thought of returning to the Arauca
country, neither had she considered breaking the bond which joined her to
it, especially as the ranch, managed by a loyal and honest overseer, brought
her an excellent income.
“Let Santos sell it when I die,” she used to say. But when she was dying,
she said to him:
“Don’t sell Altamira as long as you can avoid it.”
And Santos kept it, out of respect for his mother’s last wish, and because
the income made it easy for him to cover the expenses of his temperate
existence. Otherwise, he would have had no struggle in parting with
the land. His native soil had no attraction for him, neither Altamira nor all
the rest of it, since in losing his feeling that he was a part of that territory, he
had lost all feeling for his fatherland. Urban life and intellectual habits had
barred from this spirit all urge toward the free and savage life of the ranch.
At the same time, however, they had produced an aspiration which that city
itself could not permanently satisfy. Caracas, with all its excellencies, was
far from being that ideal city, intricate and perfect as a mind, in which all
movement becomes converted into ideas, and every reaction bears the seal
of conscious efficiency. And as this idea seemed to be realized only in the
aged civilization of Europe, he embraced the plan of permanently expatriating
himself as soon as he had completed his studies at the university.
But as no one wanted to make himself Doña Bárbara’s neighbor, and
moreover, the revolutions had impoverished the Plain, he spent considerable
time trying to fi nd a purchaser.
On the journey, before the spectacle of the deserted Plains, he thought
of doing many things: settling on the ranch to struggle against the enemy;
defending his own property and his neighbors’, outraged by the chiefs of the
country, of whom Doña Bárbara was but one of many; struggling against nature
herself, against the unhealthful conditions which were wiping out the
race of Plainsmen, against the alternate fl oods and droughts which fought
over the land all during the year, against the desert which shut off the Plain
from civilization.
These, however, were not yet plans, but thoughts, the soliloquies of a
man reasoning; and an optimistic mood would be succeeded immediately
by pessimism.
“To carry all this out,” thought Santos, “needs something more than the
will to do it. What good will it do to put an end to the authority of Doña