The tongue of the conquistadors? Bullshit

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [R-P] The tongue of the conquistadors?  Bullshit
=46rom: Nestor Gorojovsky <[email protected]>

CITANDO LA FUENTE,EL MATERIAL DE ESTA LISTA ES DE LIBRE REPRODUCCI=
=D3N

LA Times on literacy effort in Venezuela:

"Ignorant of Spanish, the tongue of the conquistadors and Venezuela's
only official language, [people in a tiny island on the Orinoco...]"

"The tongue of the conquistadors"...

What a stinking turd (sorry, ladies).

Yes, Cortez, Pizarro and Almagro spoke Spanish.  But, unlike the
original languages of South (or North) America, and certainly unlike
the language of the murderers of "redskins" in the North, Spanish is
also, and essentially, the tongue of Creole and miscigenated Indo-
America, the tongue of Bol=EDvar, of San Mart=EDn, of Artigas, of
Morelos.  The tongue of Francisco Solano L=F3pez and Felipe Varela.
The tongue of Cervantes,  Lope de Vega, Mart=ED, Dar=EDo, Hern=E1ndez=
 (both
Miguel the Spanish and Jos=E9 the Argentinean).  The tongue of Neruda=
,
Lugones, Arlt, Garc=EDa M=E1rquez.  The tongue of Arbenz, Bosch, Gait=
=E1n.
The tongue of Per=F3n, Velazco Alvarado, C=E1rdenas.  The tongue of T=
upac
Amaru (who never suggested to return to Quechua), Zapata, Sandino,
Fidel, the Che.  And the list is unfair to dozens of artists,
politicians and fighters.

That is, while Spanish once was, long centuries ago, the "tongue of
the conquistadors", it has become in a common tongue of art,.
rebellion and revolution for most of Latin America, long ago.

Why not calling English "the tongue of slave-owners"?  Why not
calling Quechua "the tongue of a ruthless Empire that would massacre
any population that opposed conquest"?  Why not calling the language
of the Aztecs "the tongue of the offerers of living hearts to the
thirsty Gods"?

There is a reason for this ill-treatment of Spanish.  The reason is
fear.

Only Spanish and/or Portuguese can unify Latin America.  At most, and
limiting myself to South America (I can't speak about the linguistic
map of Central and Northern Latin America), Quechua, Aymara and
Guarani should be included in a list of eventual official languages.
But these will be regional in scope.  Spanish and Portuguese (and,
hopefully, with the centuries, a new language produced by the mixture
of both, such as it is slowly beginning to happen among some social
layers in the Atlantic seabord of the Southern Cone) are the only
candidates to glue our peoples in a single bunch.   This is the
perspective the American bourgeoisie hates and fears most.  This is
the perspective the Latin American peoples struggle for.

No surprise that the LA Times will subtly deride Spanish or
Portuguese.  If the Yanomani had been able to read Portuguese, they
might have been better informed and thus less unable to defend
themselves from the American anthropologists who intentionally sent
them to war with other peoples, so they could "study" their
"specimens" in an ant-house style of "social studies".

It is not a matter of chance that the arch-sepoy Gonzalez de Losada,
the Bolivian President of the Rockefeller Group that has been
recently requested by a mighty popular rebellion to leave the
country, took pride in speaking Spanish with American accent.  He
even went as far as to say that "the worst Spanish spoken, the better
President would be he or anyone for Bolivia".

Of this kind of "anti-conquistador" rant, among other beautiful gifts
by American bourgeoisie, Rub=E9n Dar=EDo wrote:

"=BFSeremos entregados a los b=E1rbaros fieros?
Tantos millones de hombres hablaremos ingl=E9s?"

["Oda a Roosevelt"]

N=E9stor Miguel Gorojovsky
[email protected]

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"S=ED, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Sim=F3n Bol=EDvar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

--=20
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
=09=09--Brecht.


_______________________________________________
Rad-Green mailing list
[email protected]
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green