Photo: Antoninho PerriJosé Alves de Freitas Neto - Full professor at the History Department of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) and executive coordinator of the Permanent Commission for Entrance Exams (Comvest). Author of “Bartolomé de Las Casas: tragic memory, Christian love and American memory” (Annablume) and co-author of “The Writing of Memory” (ICBS) and “História Geral e do Brasil” (Harbra). He is the author of several articles and chapters on culture and politics in Latin America (19th and 20th centuries).

 

Latin America and its labyrinths

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Illustrated by: luppa SilvaLatin America is the land of infinite impossibilities, according to writer Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980). The territory where reality and fantasy intersect is experiencing a moment of peculiar and unpleasant surprises. The news that arrives from the different countries that make up Latin America takes us back to a series of economic crises, violent political and social processes that threaten small achievements or that rekindle fears of authoritarian and dictatorial practices. Latin American countries live, as in several suggestions in literature and political essays, in their labyrinths. The image of the labyrinth is emblematic of a continent that is lost in itself and cannot find a way out of some impasses that have persisted for centuries.

Mexico is troubled by disputes with drug trafficking and the absurd idea of ​​a border wall made by the United States. In Central America, the former Sandinista revolutionary leader, Daniel Ortega, governs like a former caudillo who concentrates power, persecutes the opposition and adopts the practices of the dictatorships he fought in the past. In Venezuela, the decline of Nicolas Maduro's government is accompanied by the intensification of the political crisis, with the arrest of opponents and the murder of more than 70 people at political demonstrations in recent months. In Argentina, Macri's government is involved in obscure cases of hiding money in tax havens, in addition to the inefficiency of economic adjustments that increase unemployment and, in a sensitive topic for the university community, promote a disastrous dismantling in the area of ​​science and technology . In Chile, the economic crisis and corruption scandals undermine Bachelet's popularity. In Paraguay, attempts at political arrangements aroused the anger of the population, which set the National Congress on fire.

The list could go on to confirm the idea of ​​widespread chaos and the observation of disenchantment in a continent traditionally marked by pain and hopes of overcoming.

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Coffins at the US-Mexico border: Remembering those who couldn't cross

The questions, of course, do not indicate a simple picture. But the metaphor of labyrinths expressed, for example, in Borges, García Márquez and Octavio Ianni, indicates more than the existence of societies trapped in themselves. It indicates that there is a question of internal discoveries, fragmentations and stories that are not shared or recognized by groups and individuals. Identifying yourself in a labyrinth is not the same as being condemned to an insoluble plot. But it is, above all, the possibility of seeking to overcome fatalistic discourses that deprive people of the agency of their own stories.

The current crises in Latin America are in dialogue with structural issues and a lack of understanding about the knowledge and histories of very diverse peoples and societies. Identity constructions marked by failure and the weight of the Iberian colonial legacy are a way of undermining creative solutions and reception practices that exist in different parts of the region. Crises and labyrinthine models come, above all, from States, from the elites that manage them, from explicit dependency ties in relation to external models and, above all, from a feeling on the part of ruling groups that insist on ignoring or recognizing the plurality of histories, experiences and resistance of the people of this continent with more than 625 million inhabitants.

Brazil, resistant to seeing itself as part of the Latin American experience, interprets that the rest of Latin America is a homogeneous whole that speaks Spanish, has a large presence of indigenous cultures, has unstable political cycles and watches melodramatic soap operas. America is much more than that. Identities are constructed from an imaginary that denies ethnic, social, cultural and gender differences and projects some similarities. In the search for elements that we seek to incorporate or deny, we perform fragmentations and junctions that decontextualize the historical-cultural references that produced them.

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On the streets of Caracas, the Venezuelan capital: the crisis worsens, with deaths and arrests of opponents | Photo: Reproduction | Google Images

In Latin America this process is marked by long silences and uniformities. The term “Latin”, for example, is an invention that praises the legacies of European tradition and obscures the participation of the natives of this continent and the Africans brought to these lands. An affiliation is created that dates back to Roman origins and that says little about America. Today, the adjective “Latin” is associated with economic underdevelopment and precarious democratic institutions highlighted by ECLAC since the 1950s, as demonstrated by professor Héctor Bruit, who taught at Unicamp until his death in 2007.

But, as we aim to reflect in our columns, America is much more than that. Hispanic America is not just a universe of failures or exoticism. It is a land of coexistence that puts tension on models and seeks to reinvent themselves in the face of dreams and aspirations that are not always made clear. The vision of instability, which is commonly attributed to America, is a judgment made through lenses that are unaware of the nuances and articulations of a continent with many ills and potentialities.

In order not to maintain a stereotypical view of Latinity, it is essential that we expand our knowledge about historical processes, including discussions and information from countries that have a history that deserves to be studied and that are in our daily lives. Unicamp annually receives groups of students from neighboring countries for undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Internationalization policies are directly related to other Latin Americans.

The issues of Latin America, therefore, must be explained and demonstrated in the strength of its culture, in the development of science and knowledge, in the dynamics of its history and its contradictions. The exit from the labyrinths, if it is a desire of societies and peoples, can only occur when they can look in the mirror and know how to recognize themselves beyond externally imposed models. As in the group's song Calle 13, which accompanies this inaugural text, we are “A pueblo without legs, but it walks.”

In times of chaotic integration and estrangement, the warning is: it is very difficult to think of any form of integration based on ignorance and unworthiness! And perhaps the labyrinths encourage us, as in the literary universe reference, to think about paths that are not insurmountable.

 

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