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

post what?! (not) an abbreviated introduction 7
ized effect is enhanced. Such depictions of Latin America were common
in advertisements, among other things, intended to sell products to North
Americans or to draw them as vacationers to Latin America. This imagery
made Latin America out to be an inviting and bountiful playground full of
mysterious but safe sensuality. A recent book, Mexicana: Vintage Mexican
Graphics, presents a compilation of these types of images from Mexico, and
even calls them “iconic” due to the frequency and timeless consistency
with which they appeared. 3 The book shows that through the years Mexico
was displayed repeatedly in advertisements for goods and tourism as a lightskinned,
often scantily clad, sensuous-looking female. One of the images
advertised a spa (Fig. 1.4). According to Jim Heimann, author of Mexicana,
that image dates from the late 1940s or early 1950s and is similar to others
appearing in thousands of other brochures and advertisements produced at
the time that targeted U.S. tourists who were just beginning to have the
time, money, and means to travel to Mexico in greater numbers. 4 Once
again, Latin America is feminized, and a woman appears as an exterior representation
of a general principle, rather than as a fully developed, autonomous
person.
So, to what extent does the photograph of the young Salvadoran woman
capture something real about El Salvador? Our argument in this book is
that the possibility that the photograph could capture reality is moot. We
are not concerned with whether such an image is accurate or inaccurate, or
whether it depicts a real, surreal, or even false El Salvador. Instead, we are
interested in the way its representation contains multiple meanings, many
of them unintended. We do not believe that the intention of an author (or
in this case, the photographer and cover designer) or an audience must be
conscious for meaning to exist and be transmitted. For example, we assume
that neither the person who took the picture, the publishers who decided to
use it on the cover, nor the intended readership necessarily possessed conscious
knowledge of the long and complex history of young, attractive Latin
American women being presented to North American audiences. Nevertheless,
the image is inevitably charged with multiple and complex meanings.
We contend that representations like this photograph construct places like
El Salvador, rather than reveal their objective or true nature. Our goal in this
book is to study the process through which these constructions come to be.
Daniel Mato, an Argentine-born theorist now working in Venezuela,
once said, “Latin America doesn’t exist.” 5 By this provocative statement
Mato meant that Latin America is an identity and that, like all identities,
its meaning is constructed by the people who try to defi ne it. Mato decided
to dedicate his career to exploring the process by which meanings come