Latin American Literature - Page 2

Argentine Women’s Contribution to the Knowledge of India in Latin America

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Gustavo Canzobre

Headmaster, Hastinapur Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September 2022, Pages 1–10. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.03

First published: September 20, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the themed issue “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”)
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Argentine Women’s Contribution to the Knowledge of India in Latin America

Abstract

Argentina has been interested in the Eastern cultures in general, and in India in particular, since the very beginning of the nation. Although often not taken into account, that interest, and its subsequent influence, does not begin in the 20th century but goes back to the first half of the 19th century. Argentine intellectuals were influenced by European Orientalism, but they developed their own approach toward the Eastern world, free from any colonialist influence. The first half of 20th century shows the strong influence of Indian culture in Argentine culture. The contribution of men in this process is well recognized, however, women’s fundamental contribution to spread knowledge of India’s culture in Argentina has not received proper attention nor rightly emphasized. Half a dozen Argentine women, from Victoria Ocampo, born in 1890, to Adelina del Carril, Indra Devi, Myrta Barbie, and Ada Albrecht, still alive, have significantly contributed to understanding India not only in Argentina but also in all Latin America. In the current paper, this aspect will be discussed and an attempt will be made to present a proper trajectory of Argentine women’s contribution to the dissemination of Indian Knowledge in Latin America.

Keywords: Adelina del Carril, Ada Albrecht, Argentine women, India , Indra Devi, Latin America,  Victoria Ocampo

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Octavio Paz Meets Malay Roychoudhury: The History of El Corno Emplumado and the Evolution of a Poetics

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Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay1 & Alfredo Zárate-Flores2

1&2 Universidad de Guanajuato

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September 2022, Pages 1–10. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.02

First published: September 20, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the themed issue “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”)
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Octavio Paz Meets Malay Roychoudhury: The History of El Corno Emplumado and the Evolution of a Poetics

Abstract

In this article, we explore how the destinies of some poets were intertwined in the history of publications of El Corno emplumado, a Spanish-English bilingual literary journal that was edited by Octavio Paz among others and published in Mexico from 1962 to 1969. The epistolary relationships that El Corno emplumado engendered contributed to the writing ethic of an entire generation. The poets developed the flipped metaphor as a descriptive fall for differential semantics, as a rhetorical figure or strategy which endows words with sensations that differ from the immediately embodied or corporeal moments they represent. El Corno thus unites Allen Ginsberg, Octavio Paz, Ernesto Cardenal, Malay Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay, and others in the recognition of a global style or poetics. We discuss epistolary contents from within the orbit of El Corno Emplumado to understand how the dialogue between Paz and Malay offers hermeneutical insights into the surreal, Hungry poetics born in the middle of the last century. Above all the history of Malay Roychoudhury’s poetic rebellion, his incarceration, and the bitter protest against this incident in USA and Latin America strikes a chord of union in the dialogic narrative of the two vast continents of America and India.

Keywords: El Corno Emplumado, Eroticism, Interior experience, Hungryalist, Surrealism

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Leveraging India’s Goodwill in Latin America as ‘Soft Power’

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Hari Seshasayee

Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, and Trade Advisor, ProColombia.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September 2022, Pages 1–10. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.01

First published: September 20, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the themed issue “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”)
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Leveraging India’s Goodwill in Latin America as ‘Soft Power’

Abstract

Although India commands considerable goodwill in the Latin American region, it does little to leverage this to conduct economic diplomacy. It is imperative to study the nature of India’s image and goodwill in Latin America, and subsequently, differentiate it from how the region views other countries, before examining if and how this can be leveraged as soft power. Based on interviews with select experts in Latin America, we can gather certain insights that separate India’s image from other countries in the region. Perhaps the biggest point of consensus amongst all the experts interviewed is the sheer lack of knowledge about India amongst the general population in Latin America – with the caveat that many niche segments, including businesspersons, journalists and academics have a reasonable amount of knowledge of India, including the contemporary, ‘New India.’ The Indian government can work together with stakeholders in Latin America to help increase awareness of the country, including the elements of the old and the new, be it yoga, Ayurveda and literature or the New India’s IT, pharmaceutical and manufacturing investments in the region, as well as the reach of Indian cinema and entertainment.

Keywords: goodwill, India, India-Latin America relations, Latin America, soft power

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Editorial Introduction to “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”

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Ranjeeva Ranjan1 & Mala Shikha2

1Department of Educational Foundations, Faculty of Education, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile.

2Department of Spanish Studies, School of Languages, Doon University, Dehradun, India.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September 2022, Pages 1–2. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.00

First published: September 20, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This editorial is published under the themed issue “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”)
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Editorial Introduction to “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”

Rupkatha Journal in collaboration with Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile and Doon University, India has published this special issue on the theme “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”. The volume is edited by faculty from Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile and Doon University, India along with a team of experts from the Rupkatha Journal. This special volume titled “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India” intends to shed light on the trans-axial South-South history that implicates academic, cultural, intellectual, commercial and political exchanges between India, Spain, Portugal and Latin America. This special issue is an attempt to fill in the existing void in the academic literature on the theme, by exploring the bonds between the two cultures, so distant from each other and yet continuing to contribute towards the process of mutual understanding of their respective societies and thus reinforcing socio-political and cultural relations between these two regions. We propose to record segments of the crucial dialogue that imbricates these extraordinary geo-cultural entities through their various interactions and evolution in far and recent history.

In the current special issue, papers were invited from distinguished scholars working in areas of expertise related to the theme of the issue. We received seven invited papers; the other papers were selected from the call of the journal for this special issue. As this special issue is being published in a continuous mode, we shall be reviewing some more papers, which could add value to this debate on the relationship between Spain, Latin America and India.  In our selections for this special issue, the main focus was on articles that did not just present a comparative study from different points of view (literary, political or social) but rather incorporated a critical historiographical analysis of the themes.

As mentioned, the papers in the special issue deal with different themes. For example, Castillo and Bhaumik in their paper discuss the idea of the border in the digital age. The paper illustrates different types of borders, citing examples from films. It also discusses how historical narrative and mediation influenced the concept of nation and border, primarily in the context of the border as an intellectual entity both in Mexico and India. It further elaborates on the concept of virtual ethnicity, and digital citizenship in the context of posthuman presences and projections. Óscar Figueroa presents a unique and first-hand empirical study on the representation of India in two works of the nineteenth-century travel writer from Mexico, Ignacio Martínez. The paper also underscores the difference between the representations of India in Ignacio Martínez perceptions of the region before it emerged as an independent nation and the representation of India in the writings of Mexican intellectual Octavio Paz, who reflects on India’s consciousness and symbolic projection of itself as a newly independent nation. Canzobre in his paper underlines the Argentine women’s contribution to the knowledge of India’s culture in Latin America. López Torres and Fierro Concha in their article analyse the representations of Indian culture in the writings of two of the Chilean writers Pablo Neruda and Juan Marín. We also include one article by Seshasayee who provides an overview of the encounters between these two geopolitical regions on various levels of cultural signalling and responses. Through interviews of diplomats, journalists, businesspersons, he presents a Latin American perspective of India.

The collection of scientific manuscripts included in the issue highlights the strong interdisciplinary methodology that is always promoted at Rupkatha, an approach which draws from diverse fields like literature, politics, gender, culture etc., to address and focus on the human question as a contested projection and intersection of narratives. This special issue represents dialogue and exchange of ideas from two distant regions and is true to the objective of Rupkatha that the history of humanity can no longer be analysed in terms of its singular objectivity but as a contending hierarchy of discourses emerging from multiple or variable branches of knowledge like as in intersections of economics and travel writing, politics and poetry, culture and information science. We are happy that the issue includes authors from different parts of the world, thus, also embodying the reflections of an international community with significant commitment to a Latam India dialogue. We would like to thank all the contributors, the Chief Editor of Rupkatha, Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay and the Editor, Tarun Tapas Mukherjee, for providing an opportunity to publish this special issue on a theme that has not received fuller consideration as of yet and for creating the freedom of space for aspiring scholars like us who are ever committed to a refreshing dialogue and synthetic view of cultures who are weaving together in the fabric of a closer and more bonded narrative of human values, discoveries and critical understanding of the need for coming together on the same platform.

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Sexual Revictimization: Reflections from Contemporary Feminism

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Leyla Torres-Bravo

Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos,Universidad de Talca (Chile). Email: ltorres@utalca.cl

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.66

Abstract

This article reviews the concept of revictimization taking into consideration several interdisciplinary perspectives.  Based on this premise, we analyze how contemporary feminism expands on violence against women.  After the said analysis, we explore recent studies on sexual revictimization to study how feminism has reflected and intervened in society and academia to provide greater visibility to the multiple phenomena involved in revictimization.

Keywords: revictimization, sexual revictimization, violence, contemporary feminism, survivors.

Implementation of Tax Incentives to Avoid Unemployment Caused by the Economic Situation due to the COVID-19 Health Emergency in Mexico

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Mariangel Salazar

Autonomous University of Queretaro. Email: mariangelsalazarsoto@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.64

Abstract

Since the end of March 2020 millions, as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged as a health emergency, working people had to stay at home, telework or had to face consequences of the crisis such as low wages or layoffs.[i] In Mexico unemployment became a major problem for the economy. Although the country took measures to contain the imp act of the pandemic on the labor market, these have not been sufficient; the development and implementation of activities that create incentive or promotions are indispensable components of the recovery or sustainability of industries in times of crisis[ii]. According to Article 25 of the Political Constitution of Mexico[iii], the State is responsible for guiding national development and ensure that it is comprehensive and sustainable; the State shall, according to the Constitutional provision, ensure the stability of public finances and the financial system to help generate favorable conditions for economic growth and employment[iv]. I shall argue however that the fiscal policies implemented to contribute as determining factors in the sector of growing unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic have not been adequate even though the optimal measures were being taken under a more socialist system of governance in place during the two years.

Keywords: Unemployment, COVID 19, national development, economic growth, Tax Incentives, Mexico

[i] Feix, N. (2020). México y la crisis de la COVID-19 en el mundo del trabajo: respuestas y desafíos. Organización Internacional del Trabajo, 2. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—americas/—ro-lima/—ilo-mexico/documents/publication/wcms_757364.pdf.

[ii] Hernández, N., Clark, P., & Torres, L. (2021). El mercado laboral mexicano tras un año de pandemia.  Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad, A.C., 10-12. https://imco.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/202518-IMCO-analiza-Mercado-laboral-tras-un-an%CC%83o-de-pandemia_Documento.pdf.

[iii] Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Diario Oficial de la Federación, México, 05 de Febrero de 1917.

[iv] Estrella, V. (2021). Tras pandemia, solo cinco estados amortiguan desocupación al cierre del 2020. El Economista. https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/estados/Tras-pandemia-solo-cinco-estados-amortiguan-desocupacion-al-cierre-del-2020-20210121-0150.html.

A New Airport in Mexico: Feasibility of Socialist Style Infrastructure in a Private Capital Economy

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Budhaditya Mukherjee

Autonomous University of Queretaro. Email: budhadityamukherjee2000@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.63

Abstract

This paper is based on the positive correlation between projects of infrastructure developed by the government, and the indicators of general well-being of populations in adjoining areas where such constructive changes have been effected. To study the multifactorial effects of the development of a welfare state, we have studied the economic projections associated with the construction of AIFA (Felipe Angeles International Airport), a new airport in Mexico, which was undertaken completely as a government-funded project and developed as a national infrastructure project by the military establishment. Information on projected investments and downstream investments and local employment from the Secretary of Agrarian Development and Tourism (SEDATU) and the Secretary of Public Finances (Forbes) for the new airport AIFA are compared and analyzed with similar projects in other privately developed infrastructure projects and their calculated impact in order to suggest how well-being (achieved through such indices as employment and the generation of micro-enterprises) would pan out for the economy in the State of Mexico, where the new public-funded projects are envisioned. Projections based on available information suggest that the construction of a public infrastructure module can be achieved under economic constraints, focusing on lower spending from the public budget; however, there is a lack of information and transparent policy decisions to indicate growth for entrepreneurs in the local economy, and neither any projected information on opportunities of further private or public investments associated with the airport.  A socialist-style public investment project, engineered by the state military, may need more transparency and engagement on behalf of entrepreneurs.

Keywords: Mexico, welfare state, new airport, general well-being, micro-enterprises, national infrastructure, privately developed infrastructure, socialist-style public investment project

Contemporary Art in Applied Dimensions: A Reflective Review of Art as Therapeutic Process

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Oscar López

Master of Arts, University of Guanajuato. Email: oskr_caleb@hotmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.62

Abstract

A common perception about contemporary art is the perception that it excludes a majority of people as being its legitimate viewers or judges, by virtue of the fact that it contains exclusive or encrypted messages. A small, privileged group of experts grant value, acceptance and endow public popularity of such works for the market and media. In this research we seek to provide an insight into a cluster of contemporary abstract art forms and show how such art forms anticipate closer and more common sensory and hermeneutic experience. Art like that of Hamish Fulton is built on experiences that enables us to connect with them, thereby redefining the concepts and ideas of these arts through an alternative phenomenological experience of their methods and processes of making art. Fulton’s art is based on a visual translation of his experiences of healing walks through mountainous terrain. We may build a personal, general methodology of interpretation by building personal synergistic links with the methods of creation – that could in turn generate therapeutic effects both in the viewer or in the interpreter of such art, through self-reflection and re-construction of the concepts proposed in the framing. Likewise, we will reflect briefly on art therapeutic projects that we studied for patients with ADHD. We analyze the expressions and suggest a method of therapeutic art creation based on similar processes as in Fulton.

Keywords: Contemporary art, experientiality, hermeneutics, method, phenomenological therapy

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A Kaleidoscopic Gaze of India through Julio Barrenechea’s oeuvre

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Mala Shikha1 & Ranjeeva Ranjan2*

1Assistant Professor, Doon University, Dehradun, India. maladoon@gmail.com

2*Assistant Professor, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile. ranjan@ucm.cl

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.61 

Abstract

Latin American intellectuals have included India in their imagination since the advent of Modernism, a turn-of-the-century movement in the early 20th century. Nevertheless, the idea of India in Latin American imagination has been primarily mediated through a rather fixed European lens. Within the body of Latin American scholarly encounters, the works of Julio Barrenechea are worth mentioning. They have not been critically examined extensively in academia. The present study is an attempt to reflect upon the works of the author that resulted from his experiences during his sojourn as the Ambassador of Chile in India. He wrote Sol de la India, which was published in 1969 in New Delhi, during his stay in India. Another work titled La India no misteriosa based on his Indian experience was published posthumously in 1982 in Santiago. The first work is a collection of poems while the latter is in prose. Barrenechea has described with grace and sympathy the spiritual greatness of India but at the same time, he engaged critically with the distressing social and economic realities of the nation. In the present study, the researchers analyze the theme of his works encompassing India, which as such incorporate an essentially “Chilean gaze”.

Keywords: Barrenechea, Chilean gaze, Sol de la India, La India no misteriosa, Kaleidoscope, European lens

Who Remembers those “Undocumented Minors”? Locating the Genealogy of the Oppressed in Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends

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Indrajit Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Nistarini Women’s College, Research Scholar, Vidyasagar University. Email ID: perfectindrajit.mukherjee@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.35

PlumX Metrics

Abstract

We can always look upon the intersection of history and events as an exciting façade, full of deceptions, half-baked truths, and awkward reconciliations in the framework of cultural studies. The Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends (2017) attempts to trace the evolution of a set of social, political, and cultural circumstances that are pregnant with significance in the traumatic past of millions of Latin-American children refugees in the United States. First, the article will unpack how Luiselli’s impalpable domain tries to connect the unresolved experiences of the violent wounds of those children’s deportation and dislocation from Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico with their unfortunate encounters in the foreign land. Second, it will attempt to dismantle, disrupt, and deconstruct the construction of America as a heteroglossic space around the challenges of those displaced children by displaying some questions addressed to them at the immigrant court. Finally, the proposed paper will critically scrutinise how this non-fictional work follows the creeping imperialist approaches of the United States through the hazes of childhood recollections, making a heartfelt appeal to everyone to halt discrimination, racial hatred, and poisonous ignorance. Applying Agamben’s idea of the homo sacer, such a study will bring to the fore the dialectics of postcoloniality in the United States, where undocumented children’s claims to identity formation and self-determination processes would be at odds with the more comprehensive national identity in contemporary times.

Keywords: History, Refugees, Heteroglossic, Imperialist, Homo Sacer, Identity.

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