Every book can be summarized in 6 paragraphs….
- Economic Culture Fund. Edition 2012
- Author: Isidore Löwenstern
- Book for interested in: 19th century Mexico, colonial independence processes, history.
- What will? An Austrian nobleman crosses Mexico in 1838 And the recently independent country that finds.
Paragraph 1
Exists, in consecuense, A European Travel Bibliography that denigrates America, seen through the lens of ideology and preconceived images. On this, Löwenstern is just a member of more than a vast group that arrives in foreign lands provided with entrenched prejudices, And it is limited to corroborating them with the known reality during their trip.
This paragraph, which is part of the prologue of the book written by writer Margarita Pierini, Explain in part the work. Just in that fierce criticism is the most negative and most interesting part of the book. The Austrian nobleman, A monarchical convinced, The new homeland is unreasonable with a supremacist look that does not intend to understand another social reality but to judge it from a watchtower of moral and intellectual superiority. And that vision is precisely the one that gives some interest to the work.
Paragraph 2
Mexicans bury their dead in the churches without placing the slightest signal in the place of the grave and the only cult of the deceased is the one that imposes religion. The memory of the one that no longer exists is lost at the same time as his life: Test of lightness of your character, Unable to house any deep and durable feeling.
Löwenstern demonstrates with this paragraph one of the challenges facing travel books: The writer can, In a short time and with little information, draw precipities hasty from casual encounters, specific passage zones or concrete moments that he elevates to the category of general certainties throughout the country. Death in Mexico, From before and after the arrival of the Spaniards, It is an explosion of indigenous and Catholic syncretic rites that make the ancestors part of the families.
Paragraph 3
In the capital numerous newspapers are published, Most of the extremely demagogic and dire for a town with so few principles and so easy to lead to evil.
It is striking that in 1838 The Austrian will point out a problem that continues to be discussed today. Mexican media are accused of yellow and normalize and foster violence teaching it without taping on newspaper or news covers. Violence remains the big problem of the country.
Paragraph 4
Our good Anglo -Americans, that they never miss the opportunity to get in every place where there is any hope of Money Making (Ear money).
There is a very famous phrase in Mexico similar to this Austrian attributed to the dictator Porfirio Díaz, that will show power decades after the löwenstern trip: ‘Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States ’. The authorship of the phrase is much discussed in the country, Its meaning no.
Paragraph 5
The indolence of these men does not have the same: The whole day is used in their hammocks while their women work the scarce corn and the few beans that integrate their food (…) The sweetness that seems to distinguish the Mexican is more apparent than real, Like the one observed in the African.
Löwenstern's vision was a global vision, of other times and other ways of narrating what was considered an underdeveloped world, where the European outside the continent was traveling so he considered wild land. It is not any case a European exclusive phenomenon, but it occurred among all kinds of cultures in which the most advanced part looked at the other with superiority. I think you should not read a book of the nineteenth century with the ethical parameters of the 21st century. The great value of this book, In addition to the enormous field work that contains, is to strive, still without sharing, To understand those visions.
Paragraph 6
The federalist party, whose greed yearned for the assets that his descendants bequeathed, agreed by his sovereign as poor reward for his distinguished merits, He mutinied a fanatic populace against the memory of the great man and took advantage of his ignorance to make him see the hero as his first and oldest oppressor.
The Austrian book was forbidden in Mexico for being considered contrary to independence and a furious attack on the new homeland. The paragraph, however, denounces something that Mexican historians and intellectuals fight to achieve today: get the figure of Hernán Cortés from the political ring and return his place in history. Mexico is Cortés, With his successes and his mistakes, And the ladenseed Löwenstern so constantly indicates in his book.
| Style | 6,00/10 |
| Content | 6,50/10 |
| Valoración | 6,25/10 |
