La Violencia Genera mas Violencia

Al final de ¨Inés del Alma Mía¨ de Isabel Allende, me quedé pensando en el daño que la conquista de América causo en la historia del continente.

Allende describe en detalle como Pedro de Valdivia murió a manos de Lautaro, el destacado líder militar de los Mapuches. Los detalles son aterradores. Según Allende, Lautaro le hizo tragar oro derretido a Valdivia, en venganza por el sufrimiento que el metal hizo pasar a su pueblo. Allende escribe que en parte estos hechos de violencia estaban justificados. O al menos, los Mapuche tenían una venganza en mente por los tormentos que los Españoles les hicieron pasar.

Según los describe Allende, los Españoles les cortaban las narices, los brazos y la punta de los pies. Pero los Mapuche no se rendían, seguían peleando por su tierra, cojos y mancos. En la novela, Inés Suárez, la narradora de la historia, comenta que ella hubiese hecho lo mismo hasta el final. Prefería morir peleando por su tierra, que vivir bajo el mando de los invasores.

Décadas después, los Mapuche siguen teniendo una presencia en Chile, pero no lograron sacar a los huincas de su región como Lautaro se lo propuso.

Los invasores de América entraron y salieron con violencia en un ciclo que duró décadas. Las cicatrices de estos estragos siguen vivas en nuestro continente.

Hace falta que todos los americanos sanemos. Esta tierra fue fundada a punta de sangre.

Mexico claims its relics from Austria

Last week, I felt very inspired because my Mexican art history professor talked about the intentions of a group of Mexicans who want to recover the feathered headdress of Moctezuma II from Austria, and I knew about this because I read it in “The Sum of Our Days” by Isabel Allende.

In the book, she mentions Alfredo Lopez Lagarto Emplumado, who in the book is one of Tabra’s (Allende’s friend) boyfriends, and is part of the group of people soliciting the government to recover the Aztec relic from the Austrian government. Allende writes about his quest to recover the feathered headdress from the European empire.

Since Allende published the book earlier this year, the headdress has yet to return to its rightful owners — the descendants of the Aztecs.

However, the efforts to recover it have not stopped. I found an article about some of the efforts of the Mexican people to recover the crown in a Mexican newspaper called El Sol de Puebla. The article talks about a manifestation in Vienna, Austria, to reclaim the prehispanic crown. It also mentions that in May 2005, the former Mexican President Vicente Fox asked the Austrian government for the return of the crown.

In the article, which was published over a year ago, it says that the dancers and activists think that the crown could return to Mexico in the next three years.

If it is ever returned, the crown will be displayed in the Anthropological National Museum of Mexico City, which is built over the remains of Moctezuma’s residence.

Too much information

As of last night, I’m done with “The Sum of Our Days” by Isabel Allende and even though I really liked the glimpse of her life in California, I think she gave out too much information.

The book picks off from her memoirs in “Paula,” where she tells the story of her daughter’s death, and goes into her life in California with her husband Willie and the rest if the “tribe.” However, I agree with the book review from The Oregonian in that Allende reveals too much.

Readers are allowed to poke through just about everything inside, from minor family tiffs to episodes of adultery and sexual identification, with drug abuse, physical ailments, travel to exotic locales, aging bodies, grief over lost children, and financial prosperity or lack thereof in between.

I liked to see more about the life of one of my favorite writers. It made her more human to me. But it reached a point where I felt very sorry for Nico, her son, because Allende couldn’t leave him alone. She kept talking to his ex-wife, Celia, after she left him for a woman (yes, her daughter-in-law turns out to be gay); she found him a new wife after she saw he was lonely; and the most disturbing factor, was when she told him that they had been married in another life. This sounded way too Oedipal to me.

However, nothing was worse than the last chapter, “A Quite Place,” when it comes to disturbing.

Allende closes her memories with a conversation with her husband inside a jacuzzi. Yes, she was at a retreat with her husband in the desert and they were on a jacuzzi together (naked!) and they talk about what the future may hold for them. The literary image of Allende was shadowed for a brief moment by the image of an older woman in a jacuzzi with her husband.

But it wasn’t all bad and disturbing. Another review from Entertainment Weekly was a little bit more upbeat and held some true to it.

At the end of this funny, tender book you may find yourself wanting your own invitation to sit and laugh and scream at the author’s table

I too was feeling close to Allende by the end of the book. More so than with “Paula” where she was concentrating on her suffering. In this book, I find a more human Allende that reminds me of my own mother with her will to have all her “tribe” re-united and jumping obstacles to make everyone within her inner circle happy. This book even made me call my own meddling mother several times.

My place as a resident of the United States

Last night I was finishing “La Suma de los Dias” , or “The Sum of Our Days,” by Isabel Allende and she worded my own worries. On the last chapters she explained how she had finally reunited her “tribe”, which consists of her immediate family and her friends in California, to have them scatter again thanks to the irresponsibility of President George Bush’s administration.

I’ve seen this myself.

When I came to the United States from Colombia eight years ago, I came with my whole family that consists of about 20 people and we all settled in South Florida. Now, after years of struggle trying to get a green card, most of my “tribe” left the United States and headed back to Colombia because of the same reasons Allende discussed in her book.

Allende has similar fears. In the book, she mentions her friend Tabra, an American, who decided to leave the United States and go to Costa Rica just like she left the country during the Vietnam War to protest Richard Nixon’s administration.

Allende also mentions two relatively recent instances when the United States has violated human rights without much consequence: Guantánamo Bay , Cuba, and the incident of the Abu Ghraib prison. The New Yorker published a story about torture at the prison complex the same year Bush was re-elected and some of the wrongdoings that were reported are:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

I really don’t think that any of the above mentioned abuses of authority fit into the Geneva Convention agreements dealing with the treatment of war prisoners.

Such atrocities against humanity are really bothering me, and Allende is in tune with me on these issues. Like me, she is a legal resident of the United States and lives here while she stays in touch with her own country. However, she is indirectly (or directly) part of this country. Residents of the United States pay the same taxes citizens pay but have no power over the electoral process. Only citizens of the United States are allowed to vote.

Allende really made me wonder about my place in the United States. Outrages like these ones really make me wonder if someday I want to become a citizen. However, thinking about the power that United States’ citizens have by voting in the upcoming elections somehow makes me reconsider. This is definitively a right I don’t want to pass on.

Literary brain drain

There is a common denominator among my favorite authors: they are all in exile.

As I pondered about this fact, I thought about what is wrong with Latin American countries that governments are so messed up that the brightest minds are fleeing the countries (and in many cases, they don’t go back).

Right now, I’m reading “The Sum of Our Days” by Isabel Allende. In this book she is narrating her life in California, where she lives with her American husband, Willie. When I finish this book, which is her latest, I will let you know what I think about it. But for now, I am going to examine why the brilliant minds are leaving Latin America to go elsewhere.

Mainly, I believe their prominent status as literary geniuses in their countries leads them to get too involved. In other cases, they are forced to flee because of their connections with a vanquished regime.

As much as I like to think about myself as a citizen of the world, I realize my identity lies in Colombia. This really leads me to wonder about these people. How do they live in anonymity after spending years as local celebrities?

I came across a very thoughtful story mentioning Isabel Allende and her loss of identity. This piece also talks about Allende’ status as an expatriate and how one is not really adopted into another country. Also, the person’ status as a native of his or her own country, changes radically. This results in people not being from any one place. Somehow, expatriates are left in the limbo of citizenship and identity. When one returns to the country of origin, everything falls out of place and many times it is easier to live in the memory of the country, with all the former glory of the past.

In “My Invented Country”, Allende also talks about Chile and its former glory. She explores her own nationalism and her reaction to San Francisco when she arrived. The Chile she describes is the Chile of her memory.

When I read Allende’s books, I always wonder how different the Chile she is describing looks now because the Colombia of my childhood, is a very different one to the blooming one that I see every time I go back. Maybe she prefers the glory of old Chile, but I really want to know how she is really adapting to her new life with an American husband, without the decorations of a memoir for her daughter Paula, who died in the mid nineties. It really leaves me wondering of how much of the fantastic elements make their way into this “factual” piece.