California Western School of Law

Requena, Marta

English

Activities of the Council of Europe in the Field of Family Law

Benner, Laurence A.

Samarkos, Charles T.

Searching for Narcotics in San Diego: Preliminary Findings From the San Diego Search Warrant Project

Marcelli, Enrico A.

Economic Growth and Inequality in San Diego County: Evidence and Policy Implications

Bowermaster, Janet

Symposium: Creative Problem Solving Conference -- Conference Transcript Excerpt -- Session 3: Mobilizing Creative Problem Solvers

Berkman, Mark P.

David, Jesse, National Economic Research Associates

Water Subsidies in Southern California: Do They Exist and Have They Contributed to Urban Sprawl? A Comment on an Article by Steven P. Erie and Pascale Joassart-Marcelli Titled \u27Unraveling Southern California\u27s Water/Growth Nexus: Metropolitan Water District Policies and Subsidies for Suburban Development, 1928-1996\u27

Aceves, William J.

EPILOGUE: CANTO PARA LATINOAMERICA
WILLIAM J. ACEVES"
Literature often presents the most intimate and accurate portrayals of
life and history. It captures the spirit and the soul of human existence-
features often lost in legal scholarship. As we contemplate the past of Latin
America, experience its present, and contemplate its future, we can look to
literature for a narrative of our journey.
The work of two Latin American Nobel laureates provides a compelling
portrait of this region during the twentieth century.1 While they often wrote
of love, and lost love, their work also explores the political world. In this
discourse, each writer is both subject and object-they chronicled the world
around them and were, in turn, captured by that world. Their observations,
however, came at a price. For the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, it meant exile
abroad. For the Mexican writer Octavio Paz, it meant resignation from the
Mexican diplomatic service.
While each author wrote from a distinct vantage point, unique in time
and space, their work shares similar features. From the destruction of in-
digenous traditions to the repression of political discourse, each author found
that the goals of modernization and social order exacted a heavy toll on the
land and people of Latin America.
This brief literary respite provides a distinct lens through which to con-
template the past, present, and future of Latin America. To legal scholars,
such ventures can provide important historical and emotional context. In-
deed, its themes of power and inequality, of life and death, should be central
to those who purport to study the development and role of law and legal in-
stitutions in Latin America.
Throughout its history, Latin America has struggled with totalitarian re-
gimes, both foreign and domestic. This is, perhaps, the greatest legacy of the
Old World. In The Dictators, Pablo Neruda conveys, in stark terms, the vio-
Associate Professor of Law, California Western School of Law.
1. Five writers from Latin America have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature:
Gabriela Mistral, Miguel Angel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. Of course, this list does not exhaust the remarkable group of writers to emerge from
Latin America in the twentieth century. See generally TWENTIETH-CENTURY LATIN AMERICAN
POETRY (Stephen Tapscott ed., 1996); THE BoRzoI ANTHOLOGY OF LATIN AMERICAN
LITERATURE (Emir Rodriguez Monegal ed., 1977).
1
Aceves: Epilogue: Canto Para Latinoamerica
Published by CWSL Scholarly Commons, 2000
442 CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 30
lence and death perpetrated by these regimes! It is carnal imagery, as death
becomes alive for the reader.'
An odor stayed in the cane fields:
carrion, blood, and a nausea of har-
rowing petals.
Between coconut palms lay the
graves, a stilled strangulation, a fes-
tering surfeit of bones.
A finical satrap conversed with
wineglasses, collars, and piping.
In the palace, all flashed like a
clock-dial, precipitate laughter in
gloves, a moment spanning the pas-
sageways, meeting the newly killed
voices and the buried blue mouths.
Out of sight, lament was perpetual
and fell, like a plant and its pollen,
forcing a lightless increase in the
blinded, big leaves.
And bludgeon by bludgeon, on the
terrible waters, scale over scale in the
bog, the snout filled with silence and
slime and vendetta was born.
Ha quedado un olor entre los
cahaverales: una mezcla de sangre
y cuerpo, un penetrante pdtalo nau-
seabundo.
Entre los cocoteros las tumbas
estdn llenas de huesos demolidos,
de estertores callados.
El delicado sdtrapa conversa
con copas, cuellos y cordones de
oro.
El pequeho palacio brilla como
un reloj y las rdpidas risas enguan-
tadas atraviesan a veces los pasillos
y se retinen a las voces muertas y a
las bocas azules frescamente enter-
radas.
El llanto estd escondido como
una planta cuya semilla cae sin ce-
sar sobre el suelo y hace crecer sin
luz sus grandes hojas ciegas.
El odio se ha formado escama a
escama, golpe a golpe, en el agua
terrible del pantano, con un hocico
leno de ldgamo y silencio.
While writing from the Chilean experience, Neruda's imagery captures
scenes from throughout the continent. Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, or Peru-the killing fields scar the land like
stigmata. The only requiem for the disappeared is the silence, the deafening
silence, which marked their departure. In various forms, however, the finical
satrap remains-and the odor lingers, and the vendetta festers.
Similar themes are conveyed in the work of Octavio Paz. Indeed, politi-
cal repression was the dominant reality of Latin America in the twentieth
century. In Interruptions From the West (3) (Mexico City: The 1968 Olym-
piad), Paz expresses his anger following the brutal massacre of the student
movement at Tlatelolco in October 1968, shortly before the Olympic Games
were held in Mexico City.
4
2. See PABLO NERUDA: FIVE DECADES (A SELECTION) 89 (Ben Belitt ed. & trans., 1974).
3. See id. The translation process is itself a violent act. It is artificial and no translation
can ever do justice to the spirit and meaning of the original word. See id.
4. See THE COLLECTED POEMS OF OCTAVIO PAZ 225-26 (Eliot Weinberger ed. & trans.,
1991) [hereinafter PAZ]. Paz resigned his appointment as Mexican Ambassador to India fol-
lowing the massacre.
2
California Western International Law Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 [2000], Art. 12
https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cwilj/vol30/iss2/12
CANTO PARA LATINOAMERICA
Lucidity
(perhaps it's worth
writing across the purity
of this page)
is not lucid:
it is fury
(yellow and black
mass of bile in Spanish)
spreading over the page.
Why?
Guilt is anger
turned against itself:
if
an entire nation is ashamed
it is a lion poised
to leap.
(The municipal
employees wash the blood
from the Plaza of the Sacrificed.)
Look now,
stained
before anything worth it
was said:
lucidity.
La limpidez
(quizd valga la pena
escribirlo sobre la limpieza
de esta hoja)
no es limpida:
es una rabia
(amarilla y negra
acumulaci6n de bilis en espahol)
extendida sobre la pdgina.
iPorqug?
La vergiienza es ira
vuelta contra uno mismo:
si
una naci6n entera se avergiienza
es le6n que se agazapa
para saltar.
(Los empleados
municipales lavan la sangre
en la Plaza de los Sacrificios.)
Mira ahora,
manchada
antes de haber dicho algo
que valga la pena,
la limpidez.
Blood stains. To Neruda and Paz, it is both noun and verb. It scars the
hands of the killer and the soul of his victim. And it leaves its indelible mark
on the earth. As Augusto Pinochet Ugarte recently discovered, time does not
heal all wounds.
In Latin America, a symbiotic relationship often existed between totali-
tarian regimes and multinational corporations. Indeed, neocolonial policies,
supported by nativist regimes, existed long after the formal vestiges of colo-
nialism receded from memory. Multinational corporations have become the
new colonialists, an extension of their imperial predecessors. In The United
Fruit Co., Pablo Neruda describes the power, corruption, and indifference of
one such entity.5
When the trumpets had sounded and
all was in readiness on the face of the
earth, Jehovah divided his universe:
Anaconda, Ford Motors, Coca-Cola
Inc., and similar entities:
the most succulent item of all, The
United Fruit Company Incorporated re-
served for itself- the heartland and
Cuando son6 la trompeta, estuvo
todo preparado en la tierra,
y Jehovd reparti6 el mundo
a Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, y otras entidades:
la Compaiia Frutera Inc.
se reserv6 lo mds jugoso,
la costa central de mi tierra,
5. See NERUDA, supra note 2, at 79. The infamous history of United Fruit Company is
long and well-known. See generally RICHARD H. IMMERMAN, THE CIA IN GUATEMALA: THE
FOREIGN POLICY OF INTERVENTION 68-82 (1982).
2000]
3
Aceves: Epilogue: Canto Para Latinoamerica
Published by CWSL Scholarly Commons, 2000
CALIFORNIA WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 30
coasts of my country, the delectable
waist of America. They rechristened
their properties:
the "Banana Republics "-and over the
languishing dead, the uneasy repose of
the heroes who harried that greatness,
their flags and their freedoms, they es-
tablished an opgra bouffe:
they ravished all enterprise, awarded
the laurels like Caesars, unleashed all
the covetous, and contrived the tyranni-
cal Reign of the Flies-Trujillo the fly,
and Tacho the fly, the flies called
Carias, Martinez, Ubico-all of them
flies, flies dank with the blood of their
marmalade vassalage, flies buzzing
drunkenly on the populous middens: the
fly-circus fly and the scholarly kind,
case-hardened in tyranny.
Then in the bloody domain of the flies
The United Fruit Company Incorporated
sailed off with a booty of coffee and
fruits brimming its cargo boats, gliding
like trays with the spoils of our drown-
ing dominions.
And all the while, somewhere in the
sugary hells of our seaports, smothered
by gases, an Indian fell in the morning:
a body spun off, an anonymous chattel,
some numeral tumbling, a branch with
its death running out of it in the vat of
the carrion, fruit laden and foul.
la dulce cintura de America.
Bautiz6 de nuevo sus tierras
como "Repablicas Bananas,"
y sobre los muertos dormidos,
sobre los haroes inquietos
quo conquistaron la grandeza,
la libertad y las banderas,
estableci6 la 6pera bufa:
enajen6 los albedrios,
regal6 coronas de C~sar,
desenvain6 la envidia, atrajo
la dictadura de las moscas,
moscas Trujillos, moscas Tachos,
moscas Carias, moscas Martinez,
moscas Ubico, moscas htimedas
de sangre humilde y mermelada,
moscas borrachas que zumban
sobre las tumbas populares,
moscas de circo, sabias moscas
entendidas en tirania.
Entre las moscas sanguinarias
la Frutera desembarca,
arrasando el cafg y lasfrutas,
en sus barcos que deslizaron
como bandejas el tesoro
de nuestras tierras sumergidas.
Mientras tanto, por los abismos
azucarados de los puertos,
caian indios sepultados
en el vapor de la mahiana:
un cuerpo rueda, una cosa
sin nombre, un namero caido,
un racimo defruta muerta
derramada en el pudridero.
In this new era of globalization and growing interdependence, of maqui-
ladoras, most-favored nations, and multinational corporations, these images
are neither dated nor obsolete. Throughout the continent, indigenous people
continue to struggle. If a peasant falls in the forests of Brazil, does anyone
hear the crash? The land itself is also victim to desecration. Rape and geno-
cide are acts of violence when committed against any species.
These poems convey a brief history of a continent-its problems, fears,
and aspirations. In some countries, these poems will provide the only re-
minder of a violent past, of a century where the oppression of peoples and
the repression of states was gradually overcome, but at a heavy cost. In other
countries, however, these problems maintain a contemporary relevance. For
these countries, the work of Octavio Paz in Interruptions From the West (2)
(Mexican Song) remains as a poignant interrogatory.6
6. See PAZ, supra note 4, at 223.
4
California Western International Law Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 [2000], Art. 12
https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cwilj/vol30/iss2/12
CANTO PARA LATINOAMERICA
My grandfather, taking his coffee, would
talk to me about Judrez and Porfirio, the
Zouaves and the Silver Band. And the
tablecloth smelled of gunpowder.
My father, taking his drink, would talk
to me about Zapata and Villa, Soto y
Gama and the brothers Flores Mag6n.
And the tablecloth smelled of gunpow-
der.
I kept quiet.
Who was therefor me to talk about?
Mi abuelo, al tomar el caft,
me hablaba de Judrez y de Porfirio,
los zuavos y los plateados.
Y el mantel olia a p6lvora.
Mi padre, al tomar la copa,
me hablaba de Zapata y de Villa,
Soto y Gama y los Flores Mag6n.
Y el mantel olta a p6lvora.
Yo me quedo callado:
ide quign podria hablar?
2000]
5
Aceves: Epilogue: Canto Para Latinoamerica
Published by CWSL Scholarly Commons, 2000
6California Western International Law Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 [2000], Art. 12
https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cwilj/vol30/iss2/12


California Western School of Law

Not a member yet

Activities of the Council of Europe in the Field of Family Law

Searching for Narcotics in San Diego: Preliminary Findings From the San Diego Search Warrant Project

Economic Growth and Inequality in San Diego County: Evidence and Policy Implications

Symposium: Creative Problem Solving Conference -- Conference Transcript Excerpt -- Session 3: Mobilizing Creative Problem Solvers

Epilogue: Canto Para Latinoamerica

Essay: Access to Justice 1.1

Relationships Between Family and Government

The New Aspects of Russian Family Law

Yugoslavia: The Medico-Legal Issue of Transsexuality

2,052

2,208