Retamars Caliban Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Retamars Caliban - Essay Example Unlike Rodo who depicts Latin America identified as the spiritually-driven Ariel, Retamar reads into the role of an apparent barbaric, savage Caliban to find Latin American culture as a heroic, rebellious people. "Retamar rereads Caliban's barbarity as the organic revolutionary consciousness of the popular classes" says Maria Josefina Saldaana-Portillo2. The fragment chosen for this essay clearly exemplifies this dichotomy. A word (mambi) imposed by conquerors is re-significated to give identity and to rebel against those same conquerors. As David Kazanjian explains: "Caliban becomes the sign of the possibility of using the language and practices of the colonizer against colonization".3 The problem with defining a solid Latin American culture is that it is in continuous transformation. It has been influenced from the moment Cristobal Colon first encountered the people of Latin America, viewing them in a superficial dualistic fashion, as either the docile, reasonable, European-like Ariel; or the cannibal, irrational, ferocious Caliban. According to Retamar, this moment was defining, since it began the dichotomous interpretation of Latin America.