Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Is Dario Calling Out Roosevelt?
It seemed to me, after reading "To Roosevelt," Dario is challenging the United States. This negative view of the U.S. is like no other of the Latin American authors we have read in the past. In the beginning of the poem, Dario claims that the United States is intending to invade South America. However, he compliments Roosevelt many times through out the piece. He tells the President "You are a strong, proud model of your race; you are cultured and able, you oppose Tolstoy." Then, he will claim the Roosevelt's policies are crazy, like his environmental polices. "You are a professor of Energy as the current lunatics say." Next, he tells Teddy how powerful and intimidating the U.S. can be: "The United States is grand and powerful. Whenever it trembles, a rpofound shudder runs down the enormous backbone of the Andes. If is shouts, the sound is like the roar of a lion." Clearly, Dario has some kind of respect for the U.S. as a whole for its size and strength. Although, he has this respect, Dario also feels that South America has great potential and cannot be controlled by the U.S. "A thousand cubs of the Spanish lion are roaming free." He feels that God is on their side and that before the U.S. decides to invade South America, they had better become powerful enough to do so or God will stop them from taking Spanish America. "Roosevelt, you must become, by God's own will, the deadly Rifleman and the dreadful Hunter before you can clutch us in your iron claws. And though you have everything, you are lacking one thing; God!" Obviously, Dario has a solid amount of confidence in his own continent unlike people like Bolivar and Bello as times have changed. It is an odd coincidence or clever pun that Dario called Roosevelt a "Rifleman" and "the dreadful Hunter" because Roosevelt was such an avid hunter even though he was all about environmental protection.
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2 comments:
One thing that is very important that you point out is that times have changed since Bolívar and Bello were writing. The events surrounding the Mexican-American war in the middle of the 19-century, the Spanish-American war in 1898 and the 1903 taking of Panamá, were especially key to altering the view that many Latin American intellectuals had of the US. Very quickly a country that had once been a "brother" in the creation of new republics turns into an imperialist threat. Be careful.. You include the comment about Tolstoy in your list of compliments. Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, was perhaps the worlds most well known pacifist. So by opposing him, Darío is pointing to what he sees as Roosevelt´s warlike policies.
I don't think that Dario is "challenging" the United States as much as he is pointing out its strengths and faults. I think that Dario feels that the U.S. is going to be a dominant force in the Western World during the 1900s. He wants the U.S. to be able to become an almighty power, but he feels that in order to do so, the U.S. has to change some of the things that it does. He feels that the U.S. lacks religion, which usually stands for organization and order in Latin America. He thinks that the U.S. already have strength and are cultured too. He thinks that they need more order and if they do get that order, they will become a powerful nation and a good role model for Latin America.
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