Introduction
Through the eyes of a British man Paraguay is pictured as a country of eccentricity and contradiction, of beguilingly individualistic men and women.
As this TP was written my points of view was the most important information source, disagreeing with the author in some of his statements.
He describes a dirty country, and in my defence it is not like that.
In relation to the title, in the cover of the book is the photo of a pink pig. It does not say why, but I suppose that it would be on sale in the market and called his attention. Or perhaps, the Inflatable Pig was a premonition of its book: Great by outside, emptiness on the inside.
AT the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig
Is a book about Paraguay written by John Gimlette, an English lawyer who has come here in Paraguay for visit. But from its beginning, the book is full of errors and plagued of hatred towards Paraguay.
“Paraguay is not merely isolated, it is almost impenetrable”, why does he said that? Our country is open to travel in and out, for my personal experience, Paraguay is neither isolated nor impenetrable, and I would travel with no problem at all, if I had the means. Commerce in general terms is good here, we import as much as we export. “It has become a refuge to Nazis, cannibals, strange sixteenth-century Anabaptists, White Russians and fantastic creatures that ought long ago to have been extinct”. “The Paraguayans describe their landlocked nation as ‘South America’s Switzerland’. In truth, it is its Cinderella”. I do not know anyone who thinks that Paraguay is the ‘South America’s Switzerland’ as he mentioned. “A by-product of Paraguay’s strong kinship and oral traditions is that no one agrees on anything. History is largely a matter of opinion”, again, he is completely wrong, why he did not ask some of the good, excellent historians that this country has.
It describes the life in Paraguay of that time so excellently that it is peculiar that a man so misinformed as Gimlette that writes a book plagued of errors, has called the attention of the “elite press”, North American.
The book was published originally by Hutchinson in London, in 2002. The U.S.A. version just got out. -- This is the second book recently written by an English about Paraguay. In both, the writers did not scrimp poison.
An International Conference, October 18, 19 and 20 2001., Museo Del Oro, Casa Simón Bolivar, Historic Center of Cartagena, Cartagena De Indias, Colombia. Toronto, Canada: Department of History at York University, 2001. Print.
Palmas, at this time, took the task of retelling a traditional religious tale with his own twist, and that twist allowed him to entertain as well as criticize his own material. Criticizing religious folklore with methods of “costumbrismo” was vital in teaching his Latin American audience to be able to find the humor and irony in what they absorb through literature, and that is especially important with religious text. In a time when social and political reform went hand in hand with Latin American writing, Palmas did not just want to entertain with this humorous and enthralling piece, he wanted his audience to learn to be able to challenge religion in literature, and finally and most importantly, within the government in order to form a more liberal, secular
Burns, E. B., & Charlip, J. A. (2007). Latin America: an interpretive history (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Burns, E. B., & Charlip, J. A. (2007). Latin America: an interpretive history (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
These words immediately make the following paragraphs and pieces of insight feel more real to the reader. It is often easy for individuals to dissociate themselves from factual representations of history since they seem as if they are simply stories of a time long since passed. Yet, modern issues no matter how far their roots reach into the past enlist a different response. Hearing the stories of people who currently are or recently were victims of continuing racism is strikingly raw and provoking. Raquel Aristilde de Valdez, a half Dominican half Haitian woman, shows how racism is not simply a social issue. The people have made her feel as if she does not belong, and the government has wrongfully taken away her legal representation of belonging. The legal issue of her validity as a Dominican was resolved, yet it can be inferred that the issues that come with loosing that belonging cannot be fixed as easily. In a similar situation, Cherlina Castillo Pierre found her heritage to mean more than her personal worth. Despite Pierre’s athletic talents in soccer she’s restricted from her rightful chance to play for her birth-countries team simply because of a prejudice. An individual is more than a birth certificate yet, in a country that sees the word Haitian analogous to insignificance, thats all Cherlina Castillo Pierre became. Despite the discouraging stories of natural born
Benjamin Keen, Keith Haynes. A History of Latin America Seventh Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston New York, 2004.
Family is one of the most important institutions in society. Family influences different aspects of a person’s life, such as their religion, values, morals and behavior. Unfortunately, problems may arise when an individual’s belief system or behavior does not coincide with that of family standards. Consequently, individuals may be forced to repress their emotions or avoid acting in ways that that are not acceptable to the family. In the novel The Rain God, written by Arturo Islas, we are presented with a story about a matriarchal family that deals with various conflicts. One major internal conflict is repression. Throughout the novel the characters act in strange ways and many of the family members have internal “monsters” that represent the past that they are repressing. In his article, “The Historical Imagination in Arturo Islas’s The Rain God and Migrant Souls”, Antonio C. Marquez’s implicitly asserts a true idea that The Rain God is a story about repression. Marquez’s idea can be supported from an analysis of secondary sources and a reading of the primary text.
With assertive shouts and short tempers, the prominent character, Ricardo, is characterized as a feisty townsman, doing nothing except trying to protect his town and its members from the judgments of the western world. For example, the characterization of the “‘…quaint’” man is exemplified through the simplicity of his life and the fact that he is “‘…employed’” and is full of knowledge, not a “‘cow in the forest’” (55, 29, 32). Ricardo desperately wants to establish the notion that he is not a heartless, feebleminded man, only an indigent, simple man striving to protect his friends and family from the criticisms of callous cultures. Incessantly Ricardo attempts to make it clear to the photographer the irritation elicited by his prese...
Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Translated by Cedric Belfrage. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997.
Burns, E. B., & Charlip, J. A. (2007). Latin America: an interpretive history (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Mignolo, W. D. (2005). The Idea of Latin America (pp. 1-94). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Rock, D. (1987). Argentina, 1516-1987: From Spanish Colonization to Alphonsín. Berkley: University of California Press.
Julia Alvarez was an example of how a Latina writer identified herself in a new culture outside of her comfort zone. She, as a Dominican Diaspora, had to reinvent herself as she migrated into a new scenario. Her assimilation into the United States culture allowed her to understand and relate to the reader’s needs and points of interests. After all the effort, Alvarez kept in mind that she could not comfort to all the reality that she lived in, so she re-reinvented herself all over again to process her thoughts and beliefs into her life. She put her perspective on her writing so that the new wave of readers, even if they did not understand, could relate in some way and appreciate the differences. The sole purpose of her writings was for everyone to change their perspective from “walk to the other side of the street in order to avoid sharing the same sidewalk” to “I do not know them, but I do not avoid them because I do not know them”. She instilled in her reader’s mind how ordinary events were viewed differently through other cultures’ eyes. Her story Snow was a great example of how she portrayed her technique.
Powers N. R., 1992, The Transition to Democracy in Paraguay: Problems and Prospectus, University of Notre Dame
Schoonover, Thomas. The French in Central America: Culture and Commerce, 1820-1930. Wilmington DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2000. Web 10 Jan. 2012.