Colonialism And Culture In Latin America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Colonialism And Culture In Latin America - Essay ExampleCultural productions of this period, such as Sarmientos (1868) Civilization and Barbarism were put into dialogue with international debates over the nature and place of gaucheness in a country undergoing transformation as a bourgeois and modern state.ii For Sarmiento and like object intellectuals, progressive thought was sanctioned with moral concepts related to social intervention and ultimately, domination. Mastery of all things lifelike and untamed included everything from domesticating the frontiers of the pampas to the monitoring of an ever increasing and potentially dangerous underclass and finally, universal solicitude of hysterical behaviors by children, women, the infirm and insane.iiiModernity in Argentina was not, and has never been, just a yarn about the progressive enlightenment of self-disciplined citizens it has always depended on the coercive re-ordering and management of nature. Women, children and indigenou s community were all classified within a hierarchical arrangement in varying distances from what it meant to be a fully realized human and individual citizen. The flexibility of civilization narratives allowed for a knitting together of otherwise incompatible models of thought. Working toward the Arcadian arrival of a progressive, pacified, and rational social order, civilization provided a regnant rallying point for Argentines. The convergence of territory and citizenry into a utopian patriotics of Argentinidad was a specifically Argentine amalgamation of national cultural perspectives.Integral to Argentinas modernity was the authority of the Catholic Church.iv peradventure the singularly most powerful institution dedicated to the inherency of colonial Argentina, the Churchs participation in the mission of modernity in the post-independence era, while not circumscribed as Modernist,