Books: How greed, violence and faith shaped Latin America
Entertainment // Books
Yvette Benavides, Correspondent
Portrait of Montezuma II Tecnochtitlan (ca 1466-1520), the last king of the Aztecs, 1680-1697, painting by Antonio Rodriguez, oil on canvas. Mexico, 16th-17th century. Detail. Florence, Palazzo Pitti (Pitti Palace) Museo Degli Argenti (Silver Museum)
DeAgostin, Contributor / Getty Images
Peruvian-born author Marie Arana takes us directly to the mysterious and misunderstood center of Latin America in her latest book, "Silver, Sword & Stone: Three Crucibles of the Latin American Story."
Latin America includes Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking nations to the south of the United States. They share significant similarities because they were colonized by either Spain or Portugal. Our closest neighbor, Mexico, and other countries in Central and South America make up the region.
Arana, whose previous book was the biography "Bolivar," manages this expansive space and long history by focusing by turns on the three crucibles of the title, what she calls the "three obsessions" of silver, sword and stone, and she profiles people who are representative of each.
In the section on "Silver," for instance, Arana, in a deeply researched and reported analysis, shows the ways in which the lust for precious metals fueled Spain's conquest of America. It then created a system of slavery and other cruel exploitations and revolutions.
'Silver, Sword
& Stone:
Three Crucibles
of the Latin American Story'
By Marie Arana
496 pages, $30
See MoreCollapse
From the time of Montezuma to the story of Leonor Gonzales, a current resident of Peru, silver extraction has been the way of this corner of the world. Gonzales lives in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on Earth. She is frozen in time, it seems, still working the silver mines just as the Indians were forced to do at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Arana writes that global economists assert that Latin America is the most unequal continent in the world. What we learn about Leonor, for as compelling a character as she is, typifies that grim statistic.
Carlos Buergos is a Cuban man who fought in the civil war in Angola and lives today in Louisiana. He was among the hundreds of criminals that Cuba expelled to the United States in the Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from that country's Mariel Harbor to the United States between April 15 and Oct. 31, 1980. Buergos is caught up as both victim and agent of violence in the "Sword" section of Arana's tripartite history, where we learn about the enduring inclination of Latin America to solve problems through displays of "brutality, coercion, and an overweening love for dictators and the military."
The so-called "mano dura," or iron fist, is the abiding expedient that has existed in this part of the world since the time of Moche in 800 AD and grew even more violent in the time of the Aztec and Inca Empires. It was later institutionalized by Spain under Cortés and Pizarro and the long reign of Latin American wars in the 19th century and, more recently, state terrorism, dictatorships and revolutions, as well as "Argentina's Dirty War, Peru's Shining Path, Colombia's FARC, Mexico's crime cartels."
Arana reminds us that it was not until the 15th century that metal was used for killing. When the conquistadores landed, the native people learned quickly that silver was not just a decorative metal but a deadly one.
"Stone" is the final of the book's three concerns. Here, Arana addresses the region's zealous devotion to religious institutions, "whether they be temples, churches, elaborate cathedrals or piles of sacred rock."
The story of "stone" stretches back to pre-Columbian times 1,000 years ago, with each faction pounding the "others' gods to rubble." Faith, Arana shows us, became a "weapon of coercion" if not an "instrument of cohesion." Catholicism ultimately became the most powerful institution in Latin America, where 40 percent of the world's Catholics reside.
In this section, we meet Xavier Albó, a Jesuit priest from Catalonia, Spain. Although he considers himself an "Indian in head and heart," and knows he is an "inheritor of a checkered past, where priests marched alongside conquistadors, converting natives to Christianity, often forcibly," all in the effort to win the New World, he says he remains someone who aligns with the people rather than with the powerful.
Arana also traces the legacy of generational trauma, a collective PTSD that is the product of centuries of tumult, uncertainty and, for most of the residemts of these Latin American countries, poverty and powerlessness.
Journalist James Barrett Reston famously said, "The people of the United States will do anything for Latin America, except read about it."
That's a dismal assertion about the recalcitrance of this country as regards the 20 sovereign nations and territories that comprise fully 13 percent of the Earth's total land-surface area. It's also confounding, given the long history of the exploitation of Latin America by the United States.
Even so, it is the human face that Arana depicts through the stories of Gonzales, Buergos and Albó that helps us understand the long past, its many dates and place names and players. The sweep is enormous and complex, but Arana's storytelling and her obvious compassion guide us through the past millennium as an absorbing, even poignant, kaleidoscopic journey to places it behooves us all to comprehend.
Yvette Benavides is a professor of creative writing at Our Lady of the Lake University.
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Yvette Benavides