Four Pillars of New Latin American Narrative (part I): Felisberto Hernández y Horacio Quiroga

Sources: https://sujetos.uy/2012/01/05/felisberto-hernandez-en-el-canon-narrativo-uruguayo/ and http://librosquearden.com/biografia-horacio-quiroga/

By: Luisa Ripoll Alberola

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

 Where does Latin American literature come from? What gave birth to its voice? The modern Latin American literature is genuine and differs notably from the occidental tradition. This was first globally manifested with the Latin American Boom–the literary movement that united many young Latin American novelists in the 60s and spread their work around the globe. The Latin American Boom seems to be the beginning of the assertion of this new voice in the literary world. And thiscould be the reason why Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar – among others – are so popular. 

I wondered if these authors had been some kind of geniuses to create such a new and original form of written expression unexpectedly. What did they read? What was their inspiration? What features were picked up from other literary movements? One day, I found the answers to these questions hiding in a prologue in the words of Carlos Fuentes. His opinion shows these influences in four essential Latin American authors. According to Fuentes; Felisberto Hernández, Roberto Arlt, Horacio Quiroga and Macedonio Fernández are the four fundamental pillars to the renewal of the 20th century narrative. 

‘Renewal that connects with the coexistence of imagination and critique, ambiguity, humour and parody, and the generating capacity of myths–whose encounter converts these aesthetic operators in disruption of the language and literary history. Also because of the establishment of a diversifyingmovement, critical and ambiguous, radically different from the perspective and aesthetic approaches of the old naturalist novel.’  1

To satisfy my curiosity, I started reading one important book per each author –these were written around the 1920s. Hereafter, I will tackle my reading experience with these not-widely-known classics of the Latin American literature. 

Felisberto Hernández

Inspired by my local bookseller, who did his doctoral thesis about him, Felisberto Hernández was the first author I approached. Uruguayan musician and writer (1902-1964), he spent all of his life in Montevideo. I read one of his more popular storybooks: Nadie encendía las lámparas (No One Lit the Lamps). His short stories are homely, calm and without overdone, dramatic effects. The characters seem to be sleeply taken by a great dream.

The style of the renewed Latin American narrative is vivid, visual, colourful and sincere. These attributes are usually related with childhood because when we were young, we received the gift of life purely and happily. As we explored the world for the first time, everything had a new colour, a new taste. Life was marked by these feelings and by the illusion of discovery. The writer, in his adultness, can get close to these memories by a combined act of remembering and imagining. Latin American writers often use this literary resource and make their readers feel alike. The genres that get closer to this innocent and childlike view of life are poetry and specially the tale. Hernández mostly explored this genre, publishing nine storybooks.

From my point of view, his definitive contribution is the intimal link between his literature and his music. Hernández himself was a pianist and a composer. The lifestyle and music in the American continent dictate a rhythm that only him was able to transcribe. It is said that his book Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling (By the Time of Clemente Colling) achieves the ‘painting of piano lessons’. This relation between sound and written word is more profound than just alluding to famous singers, as it happens in other more modern books like Rayuela(Hopscotch) with jazz.

Horacio Quiroga

I followed by reading Historia de un amor turbio (A Murky Love Story), a short novel by Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937). Quiroga is Uruguayan, but he lived most of his life in Misiones, Argentina, close to nature. He died in Buenos Aires, but his legacy lived on in the works of BioyCasares, who he influenced. In Quiroga’s work I already recognised that sincere, shoddy way of expression, that had only been used by children until then. Just as Hernández, he devoted himself to tales such as Cuentos de la selva (Jungle Tales), Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (Stories of Love, Madness and Death), among others. 

Quiroga was a cinema passionate, just like Jorge Luis Borges. He was one of the first silent films critic of his generation, and he wrote articles in different magazines (Caras y caretas, El Hogar, La Nación…)2. Films had a great influence in the visual richness of his stories and inhis notorious experimentation with time –he makes use of ellipsis of time, just as cinema does. 

One characteristic that caught my attention is that he introduces nature so decisively that it seems just like another character of the story. On many occasions, the forest, the jungle, or the river, accompany the leadcharacter in his successes and his death. In others, the main characters are animals, making notorious his influence by Kipling. Definitely, his work is deeply rooted and embedded with Latin American landscape and the tropical forest. 

But the main theme of many of his stories is love. He portrays tradition, courtship, social classes, and all the conventions surrounding love. They are stories of tangible realities. Edgar Allan Poe was another of his influences; in his stories one can take notice of his sharply descriptive style. Quiroga already has some brilliant moments in the use of metaphor and anticipation and retrospection. 

By the time I read Quiroga’s books, I had already connected deeply with my experiment. Inside me, there was plenty of energy to continue reading and reviewing Carlos Fuentes’ chosen authors. Soon you will be able to read the second part of my journey with them and share my impressions about Macedonio Fernández and Roberto Arlt.

Bibliography

1 Enriqueta Morillas, “Prólogo” a Nadie encendía las lámparas, p. 18. Editorial Cátedra, Madrid, 2010. (Thetranslation is mine)

2 Many of these articles are collected in Horacio Quiroga, Cine y literatura, editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 2007. 

Luisa is a Spanish 3rd Year Industrial Engineering student at the Technical University of Madrid. She is passionate about literature and philosophy.

Buen Vivir: an Andean indigenous challenge to modern development

Source: https://www.lostiempos.com/oh/actualidad/20191202/wiphala-simbolo-ancestral-fraude-historico

By: Nazreen Shivlani

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

Latin American politics today is generally centred around how to reach economic development. We hear about inflation, corruption, and economic growth over and over again. From either side of the political spectrum, the dominant voices debate each other over how to increase production to presumably yield a higher standard of living (with dissenting views over the importance of how these benefits are distributed across society). But these disputes conceal a greater, unchallenged assumption about human fulfilment being best realised within the structures of modern society. More practically, political discourse hides questions about society’s ends: what is development and why do we so stubbornly strive towards it? Buen Vivir is an Andean indigenous cosmology which offers unwavering dissent within the mainstream conversation.

Buen Vivir questions social goals from an integrated philosophical point of view and aligns theory with practice. The term is a rough translation of Sumak Kawsay in Quechua, or Suma Qamaña in Aymara, and translates to ‘good living’ in English. Originating from some communities in the Andes’ altiplanos, Buen Vivir’s different manifestations can be found across much of Latin America’s native cultures.

This worldview interprets well-being as the equilibrium between humans and nature. Contrary to an anthropocentric view, which, like the western one, imagines a dualism between society and environment, Buen Vivir believes both are interconnected. In its core lies the idea of living in harmony with nature and with other people in order to live a fulfilling life. The objective of society is thus to foster spiritual growth and a connection with the community and nature; it puts society in the service of people without assuming any previous modern structures like state bureaucracy or markets for consumption. In today’s context, Buen Vivir advocates for decommodifying nature and social relations by disembedding them from the structures of modern society.

Perhaps the most popularized aspect of Buen Vivir is its view of nature. Respect to the earth and harmonious coexistence are based on common sense and the belief that people and nature are part of a greater whole. Buen Vivir clearly challenges today’s post-Darwinian era, where we act as if we were so distinct from other animals and nature, and forget that we created all the modern structures that we now take for granted. The practice values nature independently of its utility to humans, opposing the view that nature is a “factor of production”. For example, we would protect a river not because it has extractable fresh water, but because, like a person, it has a life of its own. By decommodifying nature, we transcend its relegation to a means without denying its importance as one. Simultaneously, defending nature because of its intrinsic worth no longer depends on its defence as a productive life-support system for humans. This directly conflicts with the current system of production, as the latter relies on the exploitation of natural resources and must only necessarily consider sustainability when natural depletion threatens the economic system (be it due to scarcity or public pressure).

If nature is no longer a resource to be tamed and we are instead a part of it, consumption becomes about sufficiency instead of exploitation and accumulation for their own sakes. Thus, Buen Vivir allows for needs to be satisfied sustainably, undermining the ideals the market is based upon, such as the exponential growth of output and consumerism. What’s more, it recognizes material and marketable needs as part of a larger set of needs. Fulfilment and community, for example, don’tneed to be commodified and sold because human relations are prioritised over the market system that now hands them out. This defies the sanctity of markets, encouraging a vida plena (simple and full life) through collective life and conscience. It is easy to see how Buen Vivir might deem us unable to continue with the current scheme of consumption and production.

What about development? Buen Vivir negates the notion of linear evolution in which a country passes from underdeveloped to a superior, modernized state. Instead, through its notion of wellbeing, it proposes that society is under permanent construction and changes the parameters that we aspire to. Granted, living harmoniously with the community and environment requires raising the living standards of many Latin Americans – Buen Vivir does not oppose this. However, it recalibrates our way of thinking because it places raising living standards and other material outcomes strictly in the service of ‘good living’. Thus, it also changes the acceptable means of achieving them: growth cannot come at the cost of environmental destruction nor should it encourage mass economic inequality, as this would harm nature and the community. Buen Vivir thus conflicts not only with capitalist expansion but also with the European welfare state, green capitalism, and other movements which don’t demand the fundamental revaluation of capital.

Most significantly, Buen Vivir cannot be substantially rearranged to fit within the modern system. For example, we cannot dissociate its environmental principles and adapt them to the capitalist society while keeping everything else the same. This is because the philosophy is built so that each principle needs the other – it is holistic. Buen Vivir is also incompatible with the contemporary state because it violates the human rights of indigenous communities. For example, when the state supports the building of infrastructure or grants companies ownership of ancestral land, it denies indigenous people their right to Buen Vivir. The contradiction is more explicit in the lack of representation and self-determination of indigenous groups, and even more so in events of state violence in many contemporary Latin American states. Buen Vivir humanizes the question of indigenous rights, showing it as the basic necessity for the survival of fellow people, and so delivers it from the abstraction of courtrooms. Simultaneously, the clashes show its possible incompatibility with the status quo.

Chilean rappers Portavoz and Subverso put all this much more eloquently in their song ‘Lo que no voy a decir’, which talks about the Mapuche in Chile. The Mapuche’s ancestral wisdom (kimün in Mapudungun) is akin to Buen Vivir (KümeMongen), which the lyricists explain in the following lines:

“El Estado de Chile me reprime, me sigue la pista

Y está a la vista ya que su propia naturaleza es racista

Yo no soy terrorista

Me tienen odio solo porque yo me opongo a vivir de un modo capitalista

Porque no creo que los ríos son nuestros “recursos”

Sino que seres vivos que deben seguir su curso

Porque no saco de la tierra sin pedir

Y siempre trato de retribuirle todo lo que uso

Por eso es que yo asusto al empresariado

Porque mi Dios no es el dinero y no obedezco a su mercado

Me ofenden cuando dejo descansar la tierra

No ven que en este gesto muestro respeto y no flojera (...)

Lo mismo pasa con el trato entre personas

La comunidad se apoya y to’a la zona es una sola voz

Lo que le afecta a uno, afecta a los demás del lof [tipo de comunidad Mapuche]

Por eso los defiendo aunque los pacos digan “mátenlos” (…) 

Y esto es parte de un kimün profundo

Donde ayudar a los demás es siempre lo más natural del mundo”

Full song and video from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lm00GF5Faw&ab_channel=SubVersoRap 

Translated to English:

The Chilean State represses me, it follows me around

And it can be seen that its very nature is racist

I am not a terrorist

They only hate me because I oppose living in a capitalist way

Because I don’t think that the rivers are our “resources”

But living beings which should continue their course

Because I don’t take from the land without asking

And I always try to give it back everything that I use

That’s why I scare the businesspeople

Because my God isn’t money and I don’t obey its market

They offend me when I let the earth rest

Don’t they see that this gesture shows respect and not laziness? (…)

The same occurs in the relations between people

The community supports itself and the whole region is one single voice

What affects one, affects the others in the lof [type of Mapuche community]

Which is why I defend them even though the cops say “kill them” (…)

And this is part of a deep kimün

Where helping others is always the most natural thing in the world

As a whole, Buen Vivir is much simpler than all this theory. It is a lived practice whose beliefs about fulfilment through a connection with nature and society may seem intuitive if not for path dependency. In this context, the cosmology transcends the trends of Eurocentric thought which take modernity and capitalism as the only possible way. Buen Vivir makes us challenge modern society because of its impersonality; we can recognise that the seemingly impenetrable structures of modern society are self-imposed and then ask ourselves if we too want to maximise what they propose. The philosophy condemns the global injustices of the modern system as absurd because it allows for struggle where there need be none. For those of us who are privileged enough that our paths appear set our and the costs of reconsidering our purpose outside of modern ideals seems high, Buen Vivir also poses a personal challenge. But more importantly, it perpetuates ancient knowledge that the current model deems backwards in the few opportunities it is heard. In this context, we see Andean indigenous people who were previously the objects of development, as agents of Buen Vivir.

Nazreen is a KCL student interested in development, philosophy, and literature, focused on Latin America.

Bibliography

 Ancalao Gavilán, Diego. “EL PUEBLO MAPUCHE Y LA SOCIEDAD DEL BUEN VIVIR.” Mensaje . Padre Hurtado, October 4, 2019. https://www.mensaje.cl/edicion-impresa/mensaje-683/el-pueblo-mapuche-y-la-sociedad-del-buen-vivir/. 

Catrillanca, Marcelo. “El Buen Vivir Mapuche Demanda Desmilitarización, Verdad, Justicia y

Libredeterminación.” Mapuexpress , December 19, 2018. https://www.mapuexpress.org/2018/12/20/el-buen-vivir-mapuche-demanda-desmilitarizacion-verdad-justicia-y-libredeterminacion/. 

De La Cuadra, Fernando. “Buen Vivir: ¿Una Auténtica Alternativa Post-Capitalista?” Polis 14, no. 40 (March 2015): 7–19. https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-65682015000100001.

Gudynas, Eduardo. “Buen Vivir: Germinando Alternativas Al Desarrollo.” América Latina En Movimiento , no. 462 (February 2011): 1–20.

https://flacsoandes.edu.ec/web/imagesFTP/1317332248.RFLACSO_2011_Gudynas.pdf .

Gudynas, Eduardo. “Estado Compensador y Nuevos Extractivismos. Las Ambivalencias Del Progresismo Sudamericano.” Nueva Sociedad , no. 237 (2012), ISSN: 0251-3552. https://nuso.org/articulo/estado-compensador-y-nuevos-extractivismos-las-ambivalencias-del-progresismo-sudamericano/ .

León Irene. Sumak Kawsay / Buen Vivir y Cambios Civilizatorios. 2nd ed. Quito: FEDAEPS, 2010. http://www.dhls.hegoa.ehu.eus/uploads/resources/5501/resource_files/Ecu_Sumak_Kawsay_cambios_civilizatorios.pdf. 

Montalva, Felipe. “El Buen Vivir De La Cultura Mapuche.” Rebelión , June 18, 2015. https://rebelion.org/el-buen-vivir-de-la-cultura-mapuche/ .

Quijano, Aníbal. “‘Bien Vivir’: Entre El ‘Desarrollo’ y La Des/Colonialidad Del Poder.” Debate Ecuador 84 (September2011): 77–87. http://200.41.82.22/bitstream/10469/3529/1/RFLACSO-ED84-05-Quijano.pdf .

Rojas Pedemonte, Nicolás, and David Soto Gómez. “KümeMongen: El Buen Con-Vivir Mapuche Como Alternativa De Desarrollo Humano y Sustentable.” Academia.edu .Dissertation, Ponencia III Congreso social: Ecología humana para un desarrollo sostenible e integral, 2016. https://www.academia.edu/31776593/Ponencia_K%C3%BCme_Mongen_El_Buen_Con_Vivir_mapuche_como_alternativa_de_desarrollo_humano_y_sustentable_. 

Subverso y Portavoz. “Lo que no voy a decir.”

Dia de la Hispanidad, Columbus Day and Indigenous Resistance Day: The cultural battle over October 12th in Latin America

Source: https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/junior-report/20181008/452177539852/12-octubre-dia-hispanidad-fiesta-nacional-espana.html

By: Mathilde Aupetit

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

“In Spain, October 12th is called the discovery of America. In Mexico, we call it the bleeding of America” (Chiapas Support Committee, 2019). October 12th is the day that Christopher Columbus’ caravels sighted American land in 1492. However, it was not until the middle of the 20th century that this date began to stand out on the calendar. What many in Spain called ‘Dia de la Hispanidad’, or ‘Dia de la Raza’ has been questioned for years in Latin America, where the day is about seeking a new meaning that highlights the struggle of the indigenous peoples who survived the conquest, and who form a significant part of Latin America’s population and history. 

In this respect, an important number of Latin American countries changed the name of ‘Dia de la Raza’ by denominations in favor of cultural diversity (Vincent, 2018). A former mayor of Madrid made the decision to celebrate October 12th in Spain, and this day was turned into a national day both for Spain and Latin America by the president of the Ibero-American Union, Faustino Rodríguez San Pedro. He christened it ‘Columbus Day’ in an attempt ‘externalize the spiritual bond existing between the discovering and civilizing Nation and those formed on American soil’ (“Fiesta de la Raza | Día de la Raza,” n.d.). 

The origin of the controversy

In recent decades, there has been a stirring controversy surrounding this celebration. On the one hand, the concept of ‘discovery of America’ has been questioned, since, in the opinion of its detractors, it can be considered that America was discovered at the time when its first settlers, that is to say, indigenous people (Josephy and Hoxie, 1993) or Africans (Van Sertima, 1976), arrived on the continent, approximately 14,000 years ago, much earlier than Columbus himself. 

On the other hand, although the arrival of Europeans in America is frequently seen as a moment of cultural knowledge and exchange, it also means the beginning of the colonization of the continent, of a war against the original indigenous people from the region, of the imposition of the Christian religion on the autochthonous ones and, to a great extent, a subjugation of the identity traits of the original inhabitants compared to those imported from Europe (Bigelow and Peterson, 1998; Stevenson, 1992). The detractors of the celebration of this day even point out that it was the arrival of Europeans to America that caused the demographic collapse that occurred among indigenous people and that wiped out around 90% of the population, as authors such as Crosby, Dobyns, Larsen and Merbs (Crosby, 1976; Dobyns, 1993; Larsen, 1994; Merbs, 1992) have written. Among the causes of this humanitarian disaster would be the epidemics carried by the conquerors, against which the indigenous peoples had not developed biological defences, as well as massacres led by the settlers against indigenous people (Ibidem). This is why several American countries have been replacing this festival with others more in line with their indigenous cultural identity. 

Historical perspective

After some attempts in the Second Spanish Republic, it was not until almost the sixties when the dictatorship changed its name to ‘Día de la Hispanidad’. “It is the traditional desire of the Spanish people to see the anniversary of the discovery of America annually and solemnly commemorated. No other feat reaches such greatness”, reads the decree of the Franco regime dated January 10th 1958 (García Sebastiani and Marcilhacy, 2017). In 1981, the Government of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo approved the name ‘Dia de la Raza’. Still, in 1987, during the government of Felipe González, a law established October 12th as the Day of the National Holiday of Spain (Ibidem). In Latin America, however, ‘Columbus Day’ was maintained until the next century. In the wave of leftist governments, with the rise of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, the questioning over the power and Western-centrism associated with the name of this celebration started to grow.

Thus, for some communities and political parties, October 12th was turned into a celebration in favour of those who survived the conquest that began that day. As a result, some Latin American countries began to change the name of this celebration, in order to decolonize its meaning, and a decolonization of the language was employed to characterize October 12th and turn it into their day, instead of remaining a celebration which was imposed on them. 

From Argentina to Nicaragua: several meanings for plural postcolonial realities

In Argentina, former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner changed the ‘Day of the Race’ to the ‘Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity’. Former president Rafael Correa decreed that in Ecuador, the day would be renamed ‘Day of Interculturality and Plurinationality’. The governments of Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called it ‘Day of Indigenous Resistance’, and Morales in Bolivia renamed it ‘Day of Decolonisation’. In Peru, they celebrate the ‘Day of Indigenous Peoples and Intercultural Dialogue’. In 1994, Costa Rica had already begun to commemorate October 12th as ‘Day of Cultures’, “alluding to its multi-ethnic social and cultural composition” of the country, explains Contreras. In Chile, a law passed in the year 2000 modified the name to ‘Day of Meeting of Two Worlds’. These different names emphasize the lead taken by Latin American nations and indigenous people from Latin America to bring their own colonial heritage back into their hands, and cut their colonial ties from Spain, still without forgetting about their colonial past. This reappropriation, from a language to a cultural appropriation, clearly places Latin America on the path to become a postcolonial nation and to detach itself from dependency from European colonization. 

However, not all of Latin America has joined in this change. Colombia, Panama and El Salvador maintain the name ‘Race Day’. However, dozens of states and cities are eliminating this celebration and replacing it with names that honor the native peoples. For its part, Brazil does celebrate its national holiday on October 12th, but under the name Day of Our Lady Aparecida, patron saint of the country, or Children’s Day. It is the only country in Latin America that celebrates a religious festival on this date, which has nothing to do with the arrival of Columbus. Indeed, the colonization left significant wounds in the indigenous population, who, if they did not convert to their religion, would be killed by the Portuguese (del Carmen Alanís Figueroa et al., 2020; Iglesias, 2012).

Language as a powerful tool for modern colonialism?

Colonization, says Mignolo, persists in language, in social relations, in the hierarchies and subordinations that control the continent and that are governed by a certain ‘pigmentocracy’, that is a social stratification based on skin colour, by Eurocentrism (Mignolo, 1992). Even if language seems to be an abstraction, it does influence perception. It contributes to diffuse Eurocentric knowledge and ideas and also have the power to invisible other ‘subaltern’ realities through censorship. In this sense, the October 12th celebration lends itself to the same rhetoric of winning a war and perpetuating, as Spain does, by calling it Hispanic Day, this model of pride denying reality. 

In this respect, the example of the ‘Dia de la Raza’ or ‘Dia de la Hispanidad’ is an illustration of how the use of language contributes to conveying and perpetuating an idea of domination, even though colonization in the meaning it had in the 15th century, when Christopher Colombus discovered the Americas, is no longer the same. Changing the purpose of this day enabled Latin America to in a sense ‘reconquer’ its own identity and end this ‘cultural’ battle, which is actually way more than just cultural. 

This process of colonization and decolonization through language is exemplified in Quijano’s work about ‘Colonial power’ (Quijano, 2000) which illustrates the link between linguistic practices and the use of a specific colonial vocabulary, such as race, or ethnicity, to convey a colonial and racialized vision of native Latin American peoples. Quijano emphasizes the dehumanization of indigenous people, as well as their alienation behind the word ‘race’ and through the adoption of Spanish as part of a shared colonial language. The ‘Dia de la Raza’ is an illustration of this language coloniality as it blurs each indigenous massacred and indigenous individualities in a single term ‘race’, and invisibilized one side of the colonization by showing only the Spanish side of it. 

Therefore, as we can see from this analysis, it was time for a reappraisal of the ‘Dia de la Raza’. This reappraisal is now what should be celebrated, in the sense that it also celebrates creativity and use of the Spanish language against its initial colonial aim. Indeed, native Latin American peoples have achieved a paradigm shift from the ethnocentric celebration of October 12th by using the Spanish language as a ‘decolonization’ tool against the still colonial Spanish institution. The defenders of this paradigm shift maintain that, in this way, a celebration that many might consider offensive and Eurocentric can be replaced by another that is inclusive and that also addresses the vision of the ethnic groups and cultures that suffered so many abuses as a result of the remembered event.

Originally from France, Mathilde is currently a MPhil Student in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University. Before her MPhil, she completed a BA in International Relations at King’s College London, with a focus in Latin America, which sharpened her interest in the region. She is especially interested in Latin American identity politics and minorities integration.

Bibliography 
Bigelow, B., Peterson, B., 1998. Rethinking Columbus: the next 500 years. Rethinking Schools.

Chiapas Support Committee, C.S., 2019. In Spain they call October 12th the discovery of America; in Mexico we call it the bleeding of America. Chiapas Support Comm. URL https://chiapas-support.org/2019/10/18/in-spain-they-call-october-12-the-discovery-of-america-in-mexico-we-call-it-the-bleeding-of-america/ (accessed 11.6.20).

Crosby, A.W., 1976. Virgin soil epidemics as a factor in the aboriginal depopulation in America. William Mary Q. Mag. Early Am. Hist. 289–299.

Dobyns, H.F., 1993. Disease transfer at contact. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 22, 273–291.

Fiesta de la Raza | Día de la Raza [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.filosofia.org/ave/001/a220.htm (accessed 11.6.20).

García Sebastiani, M., Marcilhacy, D., 2017. Celebrating the Nation: October 12th, from ‘Day of the Race’to Spanish National Day. J. Contemp. Hist. 52, 731–763.

Josephy, A.M., Hoxie, F.E., 1993. America in 1492: The world of the Indian peoples before the arrival of Columbus. Vintage.

Larsen, C.S., 1994. In the wake of Columbus: Native population biology in the postcontact Americas. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 37, 109–154.

Merbs, C.F., 1992. A new world of infectious disease. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 35, 3–42.

Mignolo, W., 1992. La colonización del lenguaje y de la memoria: complicidades de la letra, el libro y la historia. Discursos Sobre Inven. América 183–220.

Quijano, A., 2000. Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. Int. Sociol. 15, 215–232.

Stevenson, M., 1992. Columbus and the war on indigenous peoples. Race Cl. 33, 27–45.

Van Sertima, I., 1976. They came before Columbus: The African presence in ancient America. African classicals.

Vincent, J., 2018. Decolonizing Columbus Day in the Americas [WWW Document]. Cult. Trip. URL https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/articles/decolonizing-columbus-day-in-the-americas/ (accessed 11.6.20).