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The Other Country: Mexico, the United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest

2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/alh/ajl006

1468-4365

Julie C. Aleman,

Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez

The idea of the "Western Hemisphere" ... establishes an ambiguous position. America simultaneously constitutes difference and sameness. It is the other hemisphere, but it is Western. It is distinct from Europe (of course, it is not the Orient), but it is bound to Europe. It is different, however, from Asia and Africa, continents and cultures that do not form part of the Western hemisphere. But who defines such a hemisphere? In the introduction to Robert Montgomery Bird's 1834 Calavar, or, The Knight of the Conquest , an American wandering through Mexico sits on Chapultepec hill and muses on Mexico's pre-conquest history. The Toltecs first populated Mexico, the American imagines, and were "the most civilized of which Mexican hieroglyphics . . . have preserved in memory" (v–vi). Other tribes followed, but none brought civilization until the Aztecs. "[F]rom this herd of barbarians," the American thinks, "grew . . . the magnificent empire of the Montezumas, . . . heaving again with the impulses of nascent civilization" (vi). Finally, the "voice of the Old World" rolls over the eastern mountains, but instead of fully civilizing the Aztecs, the "shout of conquest and glory was answered by the groan of a dying nation" (vii). So goes Mexico's romantic history of conquest for the dreamy American. Spanish colonialism killed the "incipient greatness," the potential for new-world civilization, in the Aztec empire and left Mexico in the hands of "civilized savages and Christian pagans" (viii). Mexico must "rekindle the torches of knowledge" (viii), the American thinks out loud, and he is not alone in his idea. A Mexican curate has overheard the American's musings and agrees that Mexico must regenerate itself from its post-revolutionary "Pandemonium" of ambitious rulers and servile citizens to reassert its past, indigenous potential as a civilized new-world nation (xii). Until then, Mexico is a "gust of anarchy," the curate explains, that will "disease thy imagination, until thou comest to be disgusted with the yet untainted excellence of thine own institutions, because thou perceivest the evils of their perversion" (xiii).