University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott

Protocol 1
Cinema and Literature
Aesthetical

change

and

the

transformation

of

Latin

American

modernity

If we consider Latin American modern history in general, it

is possible to claim that the 20th century started up with
the Mexican revolution as a historical event related to the
social transformation of modern Mexico. It is an event that
expressed the eruption of social movements (peasants and
member

of

the

new

working

class)

that

could

not

be

contained any longer within the traditional social contract

and

the

repressive

State

of

the

19th

century

(el

Porfiriato). By the same token, this century would have

reached its closure with the coup dtat in Chile, which
represented

the

exhaustion

of

the

Chilean

Road

to

socialism and, along the way, the general exhaustion of

Latin

American

reformist

(or

revolutionary)

political

agenda. Obviously, before the Mexican revolution there were

many

insurrectional

processes

of

similar

nature,

and

after the Chilean coup we can even name the Salvadorian or

Nicaraguan insurrectional processes, but from a historical
viewpoint what was at stake in both processes, the Mexican
and

the

Chilean,

the

revolutionary

and

the

counter-

revolutionary, is the regions long trip into modernity.

Modernity is not only the name of a historical age, but

also the regions object of desire. Since its inception
at

the

republics
deferred

beginning
have

of

been

condition

the

XIX

oriented

regarding

century,
to

the

Latin

correct
European

its

American
so-called

(and

lastly,
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott

American)

model

of

society.

oppositions

such

as

landscapes

and

metropolitan

Consequently,

Civilization

and

binary

Barbarism,

areas,

rural

developed

and

underdeveloped economies, etc., have been of regular use in

representing such a deferred condition. If the 19th century
governments
ideological

sought

legitimation

understanding

of

appealing

history,

as

to

this

civilization

implied progress and social well-being, so the 20th century

governments appealed to modernity as the final stage of
history and as a secret desire to incorporate Latin America
into Universal History.

From an institutional perspective, modernity was related to

the

normal

functioning

representative

powers.

of
From

Constitutions,
a

States

socio-economic

and

viewpoint,

however, modernity was not related to the well being of

Latin American population, to democracy and social justice,
but

to

economic

modernization

(urbanization

and

industrialization) a process which will bring with it the

desired

modernity

in

full

(a

cultural

version

of

the

trickledown theory). Therefore, more than a cultural and

social understanding of modernity, what was imperative and
hegemonic in the political agenda of the 20th century, was
this

economic

idea

of

modernization.

As

complementary

cultural dimension to this logic of economic development,

through the 20th century, Latin America witnessed different
aesthetics and cultural processes, from social to magical
realism, being the so-called literary Boom of the sixties
its highest moment.

The literary Boom, magical realism and the aesthetics of

political

engagement

were

all

influenced

by

the

Cuban
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott

revolution and the configuration of a leftist culture in

the region, a culture that found in the Mexican revolution
an important antecedent. However, as the history of cinema
in the region shows, cultural practices are more complex
than what we can expect, and the interaction between style,
ideology
levels.

and
It

technology
would

be

expresses

relevant

itself

to

keep

in
in

different
mind

this

complexity, precisely because the problem at stake here is

the

overlapping

technological

between

dimensions

the
of

aesthetical,
the

Latin

cultural

American

and

social

imagination.

After

the

Cuban

revolution

(a

turning

point

in

Latin

American modern history), cinema evolved in many different

ways, being the political and the vernacular two of its
main expressions. Soon, after that, the coup dtats in the
Southern Cone and the civil wars in Central America and
other

countries

in

the

region

produced

radical

transformation of the political agenda of modernization.

The New Deal was not any longer the classical program of
industrialization,

but

the

reduction

of

the

State,

the

liberation of economy, and the implementation of the socalled neo-liberal policies at large. This also affected
Latin American cinema, at least in two ways:
1) The reduction of financial supports from the State,
if not its total cancellation, regarding the national
industry

of

cinema.

This

reduction

cancellation

produced a crisis of this national cultural industry

and

the

subsequent

necessity

for

new

financial

sources, which at the same time, implied moving cinema

toward a more commercial kind, in agreement with the

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott

expansion of consumption brought about by financial

globalization in the region. If censorship, political
repression and exile were crucial to understand the
transformation of Latin American cinema after the 70s,
where

testimonial

cinema

became

fundamental

practice, the step to a post-ideological (but deeply

ideological at the same time) and commercial kind of
cinema is due to the financial needs of filmmakers who
were not able to produce the classical political or
experimental

features

of

the

sixties,

in

this

new

context.
2) Cultural transformations related to the end of the
Cold War period, and the transitions to democracy in
the whole region, by the 1990s, were also important to
redefine

cinemas

new

face.

The

aesthetics

of

the

revolution as well as the aesthetical most predominant

tendencies
related

to

of
the

the

twentieth

so-called

century

modernism.

are

very

much

Modernism

(and

avant-gardism), in general, is a cultural movement of

experimentation

and

improvisation

that

implied

strong criticism of the tradition and its classical

patterns. A sort of iconoclastic style, modernism was
somehow the cultural complement of industrialization
and economic modernization. In this sense, we might
consider Latin American modernity as a pendulum that
oscillates

between

modernization

and

modernism.

The

highest expression of this modernism is, of course,

magical realism and the literary Boom, which continued
the avant-gardes that emerged at the beginning of the
century. However, the current face of Latin American
cinema differs a great deal from modernism, both in

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott

its ideological connotations as well as in its forms

and aesthetical characteristics. To put it in other
words, current Latin American cinema seems to be a
skeptical manifestation of modernitys failures in the
region (the exhaustion of socialism, revolution, and
the Boom).

Cultural

critics

cultural

have

elaborated

transformations

with

upon

categories

Latin
such

American
as

social

hybridism, cultural heterogeneity, and post-modernism. Born

in the art galleries of New York by the end of the sixties,
and

as

tendency

architecture

(and

that
art

in

opposed

the

general),

glamour

of

modern

post-modernism

soon

became a general category to explain the new conditions of

the western world. In very general terms, if modernism was
related to an epic understanding of history, to a notion of
universal and rational history that can be transformed by
the action of a universal political subject (as the working
class for traditional Marxism), and to the very idea of
rationality, universality and necessity, post-modernism is
the expression of a radical crisis of modernity, where no
universal reason neither history is possible anymore. Late
capitalism,
others

late

categories

modernity,
to

express

post-industrial
such

society

transformation.

are
As

Fredric Jameson has put it early in the nineties, postmodernism could be considered as the cultural logic of late
capitalism.

If post-modernism has been described as the end of the

meta-narratives (such as Marxism and emancipation), the end
of universal history, reason and subjectivity; it is also a
cultural

process

of

disarticulation

between

culture

and
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott

politics

(which

main

example

is

the

current

crisis

of

national universities and the demolition of the Humanities

that

characterizes

liberal

the

flexible

institutions

of

curriculum

higher

of

the

education).

neoThis

disarticulation has many consequences for the practices of

literature, art, and cinema, some of them will be apparent
in the movies we will see in class.

Testimonial narratives (La batalla de Chile, La noche de

los lpices, La hora de los hornos), epic representations
of history (Alsino y el condor, El Che, La estrategia del
caracol, etc.), along with more experimental cinema (as in
Glauber Rocha and Raoul Ruiz), were followed by anti-epic
representations of everyday life, small-time criminals and
new

urban

realities

associated

with

the

impact

of

globalization and the changes in Latin American cultural

imagination (Amores perros, Ciudad de Dios, Taxi para tres,
Nueve reinas, etc.). Gangs and drug dealers, narco-corridos
and mercenaries are now occupying the place before assigned
to the heroes of Latin American history and cinema.

This

also

implies

aesthetical

change

production:

in

the

the

style

breaking

and

of

goals

the

of

lineal

temporality, the overlapping of different narratives, the

exacerbation of speed and violence as an aesthetical device
by

itself,

emergence

of

the
new

de-historization
phenomena

of

related

the
to

plots,

and

the

globalization

and

regional immigration, will be part of the new face of Latin

American cinema. Also, melancholia and cultural amnesia as
well

as

comedy

and

the

aesthetic

of

cynicism

will

proliferate in new cinema and literature.

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott

We still need to think carefully what kind of relationship,

if any, can still be established between Latin American
cinema,
modern

literature,

and

understanding

finally,
practices

what

to

of

do

regarding

history?

aesthetics

with
a

How

to

reformulate

and

politics?

contemporary

non-conventional

visual

our
And,

arts

understanding

and
of

politics or, as Jacques Rancire would have put it, a new

distribution of the sensible?

End of protocol