Top Identity Essay Example

One thing that changed the culture was literature and stories. Instead of taking on the more European style literature, authors started writing and honoring the landscape and attitude of Latin America. Miguel Angel Asturias turned to surrealism to portray the Latin American culture. From his time in Paris, he was able to write articulately and draw on the key differences between democratic France and dictatorship in Central America (Echevarria 99). In his work, Hombres de maiz, Asturias writes about the legendary Maya and writes how the west has overrun the culture of the ancient Mayans. The Peruvian Jose Maria Arguedas writes about the split in Peruvian society and inequality. Writers like these two helped shape the ideas and politics of the area their works presided in. In Carlos Fuente’s La region mas transparente, he focuses on several social trends such as different social classes, multiculturalism, and criticizes Mexico (Echevarria 101). In the 1960s, the Latin American novel changed in style as it adopted techniques from Spain. Cuban Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s work Tres tristes tigres was written in local city slang, and it helped define popular culture in forms such as films, soaps, radio, gossip, and songs (Echevarria 102). Latin American literature has also separated itself from European works because of its translatability. The problems of this translatability mean that the writer needs to take into account of how foreigners will interpret their works (Echevarria 103).

Another way literature shaped Latin America was through fiction to “wake up the Latin American reader from false daydreams and alienations followed developments in Europe and the United States” (Echevarria 87). Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario “absorbed” foreign literatures and created their version of it to native readers. This inadvertently created a tradition of appropriation that some call transculturation (Echevarria 87). Fiction in the classic Latin American novel is much more serious than other fictions in countries such as North America and Europe. These fiction writings enabled Latin American natives to discover themselves. Realist novels were easily read while it transitioned into a more patriotic message into the coming years. For example, Peruvian novelist Ciro Alegria wrote about slaves in a region, and this was a more partisan and realist novel version of the time (Echevarria 89).

The main turning point in Latin American literature was probably the realization that readers were mostly urbanized citizens, and they were very much in touch with the rest of the world. Writers had to learn how to play to their sense of patriotism while not exactly closing off other parts of the world (Echevarria 99). In the 1950s, R.H. Moreno-Duran attacked critics who saw Latin America as rural, and many novelists followed (Echevarria 100). For instance, Roberto Arlt wrote about a “burgeoning megalopolis” and set his fiction in settings of the cities and focused on themes such as “anarchism and immigration” (Echevarria 100). Leopoldo Marechal wrote a novel, Adan Buenosayres, where the suburb of Villa Crespo houses rabble-rousers and troublemakers. The novel depicted Buenos Aires and characterized it as a chaotic cultural center (Echevarria 101).

Literature has evolved in Latin America and has shaped what the world looks like today. It has shaped the way people think and the way governments work. Writers have had to not only write for audiences in touch with local news but also writers in touch with the global, worldwide news. Writers have had to adapt to the increase in a globalized world as well as an increase in national identity.