Colonialism And Culture In Latin America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Colonialism And Culture In Latin America - Essay ExampleCultural productions of this period, such as Sarmientos (1868) Civilization and Barbarism were put into dialogue with international debates over the nature and place of primitivism in a country undergoing transformation as a bourgeois and modern state.ii For Sarmiento and like minded intellectuals, progressive thought was sanctioned with moral concepts related to social intervention and ultimately, domination. Mastery of all things inhering and untamed included everything from domesticating the frontiers of the pampas to the monitoring of an ever increasing and potentially dangerous underclass and finally, universal management of hysterical behaviors by children, women, the infirm and insane.iiiModernity in genus Argentina was not, and has never been, just a narrative about the progressive enlightenment of self-disciplined citizens it has always depended on the coercive re-ordering and management of nature. Women, children and indigenous good deal were all classified within a hierarchical arrangement in varying distances from what it meant to be a fully realized human and individual citizen. The flexibleness of civilization narratives allowed for a knitting together of otherwise incompatible models of thought. Working toward the Arcadian arrival of a progressive, pacified, and rational social order, civilization provided a right on rallying point for Argentines. The convergence of territory and citizenry into a utopian patriotics of Argentinidad was a specifically Argentine amalgamation of national cultural perspectives.Integral to Argentinas modernity was the authority of the Catholic Church.iv Perhaps the singularly most powerful institution dedicated to the inherency of colonial Argentina, the Churchs participation in the mission of modernity in the post-independence era, while not circumscribed as Modernist,