Word: spanishness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Ocean toward the coast of South America. In his role as an undercover agent, Maturin hopes to encourage nascent nationalists in Peru and Chile to declare independence from Spain. Success in this mission would achieve two goals that Maturin, half-Irish, half-Catalan, passionately desires: a blow to the Spanish oppressors of Catalonia and a setback for Napoleon, since the newly liberated countries would presumably owe allegiance to Britain rather than France for their freedom...
Cultural colonialism has been a touchy issue ever since Governors appointed by Washington before World War II attempted to impose English through the school system. (Spain ceded the island to the U.S. after the Spanish-American War of 1898.) "There was resentment, trauma, about being forced to learn all subjects in English years ago," says Ricardo Alegria, executive director of the Center for Advanced Studies in San Juan. Those memories, he speculates, cause many to resist learning English even today. Insular identity remains sacrosanct. Last week, after Madonna caressed herself with the Puerto Rican flag during a San Juan concert...
...also all the responsibilities" of statehood. While he makes the transition sound easy, his opponents predict corruption of Puerto Rico's soul and destruction of its economy. They also argue that the vote is moot in any case: the U.S. Congress will find a way to reject a poor, Spanish-speaking land that would enter the Union with a secessionist faction. If statehood wins with only a small majority, Congress may find ways to delay confronting the question of union for years...
...first it seems rather surprising that a translator as extraordinarily gifted as Edith Grossman should have rendered the title of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's new book, Doce cuentos peregrinos, as Strange Pilgrims. The Spanish literally means something like "Twelve Peregrine Tales." Yet a Spanish/English dictionary will tell you that "peregrino," besides "pilgrim" or "peregrine," also means "strange," "exceptional," and "perfect." It's easy to sympathize with Grossman, for there is no way to convey these connotations in one word. However, all those words are perfectly applicable to Garcia Marquez's first book since The General in His Labyrinth...
...first story in the collection, "Bon Voyage, Mr. President," introduces a deposed Caribbean leader living in exile in Geneva. His circumstances are reduced, his health failing and he has no friends save a man who wants to sell him a funeral package. The President is a product of the Spanish power structure in the Americas. Dictators like Diaz and Rosas merely continued what the conquistadors and the Spanish monarchy had begun. And so the President is an exile in Europe, the place that engendered his kind, and paradoxically it is not until he returns to Latin America that he finds...