Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T21:27:50.121Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Lima the Horrible: The Cultural Politics of Theft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

In Europe, as michel foucault aptly pointed out, western identity was constituted by the privileging of time and history (understood as alive, fluid, and ontological) over space (viewed as inert and dead); Latin America has followed a diametrically opposed process. The urban and the city in particular have dominated Latin American thought since 1492. Shaped by metropolitan centers much more than cultures in early modern Europe, the great pre-Hispanic civilizations forced the conquistadors to understand the process of conquest and evangelization in terms of urbanization. It suffices to see the map of the great city of Tenochtitlán (today's Mexico City) that accompanies Hernán Cortés's second letter to Emperor Charles V, his “Carta de relación,” and to read about the awe that overcame the historian Bernal Díaz del Castillo when he first saw the sheer vastness, beauty, and order of the great Aztec center to understand the important role urban planning would play throughout the colonial period and well beyond.

Type
Correspondents at large LIMA
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bolívar, Simón. Doctrina del libertador. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1976.Google Scholar
Cortés, Hernán. Cartas de relatión. Ed. Gómez, Angel Delgado. Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1993.Google Scholar
Elmore, Peter. “La ciudad enferma: Lima la horrible de Sebastián Salazar Bondy.” Mundos interiores: Lima 1850–1950. Ed. Aldo, Panfichi H. and Portocarrero, Felipe. Lima: U del Pacífico, 1995. 289313.Google Scholar
Flores Galindo, Alberto. Buscando un Inca: Identidad y utopia en los Andes. Lima: Horizonte, 1988.Google Scholar
Flores Galindo, Alberto. La ciudad sumergida: Aristocracia y plebe en Lima, 1760–1830. Lima: Horizonte, 1991.Google Scholar
José Carlos, Mariátegui. “El problema de la tierra.” 7 ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana. Lima: Amauta, 1981.Google Scholar
José Carlos, Mariátegui. “The Problem of the Land.” Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. Trans. Marjory Urquidi. Austin: U of Texas P, 1971.Google Scholar
Miro Quesada, Aurelio. Lima. Lima: Talleres Gráficos P. L. Villanueva, 1994.Google Scholar
Monsiváis, Carlos. “La ciudad de México: Un hacerse entre ruinas.” El Paseante 15–16 (1990): 1019. Primer encuentro de narradores peruanos. Lima: Latinoamericana Editores, 1969.Google Scholar
Monsiváis, Carlos. Los rituales del caos. Mexico City: ERA, 1995.Google Scholar
Rama, Angel. The Lettered City. Ed. and trans. Chasteen, John Charles. Durham: Duke UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Sebastián, Salazar Bondy. Lima la horrible. Mexico: ERA, 1964.Google Scholar
Socolow, Susan M. Introduction. Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America. Ed. Socolow, and Hoberman, Luisa Schell. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1986. 3.Google Scholar
Villoro, Juan. “Espectros de la ciudad de México: El urbanismo como mitología.” Café de las ciudades Oct. 2005. 7 Feb. 2007 <http://www.cafedelasciudades.com.ar/cultura_36.htm>.Google Scholar