Marie AranaRecensioni

No matter your views about what America is or should be, what makes up American culture, and immigration into America, one thing proves impossible to deny: the United States of America is becoming ever more Latin.

Perhaps part of our challenge has been our denial and ignorance regarding the presence of Latino/a Americans for generations. Marie Arana seeks to present the history and present of Latino/as in America in LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority (galley received as part of early review program).

The author is of Peruvian descent and has found great success in America and has worked at the highest echelons of the American publishing industry. Her writing is thorough and compelling. She interviewed a great number of people and their experiences provide a lot of color and depth in her narrative.

Throughout the author recognizes the challenge of speaking about “LatinoLand” as a coherent unity: as indicated at the end, perhaps there is greater unity today in terms of the experience of Latino/as in America than before, yet the various groups of Spanish speaking people from previously Spanish dominated nations remain quite different and often at least somewhat mutually antagonistic. Some might feel more affinity with white Americans or Black Americans than some other groups of Latino/as; woe to anyone who would act as if all Latino/as are essentially the same.

The author began with the basic historical outline: Columbus, the Spaniards, colonization and Catholicization, exploitation, and oppression. Then came the white Americans and the conquest of Texas and much of the rest of what was northern Mexico and which is now the American Southwest.

She ultimately will profile almost every national community: some aspects of their unique history and what conditions on the ground would motivate them to want to immigrate to the United States. She of course discusses the fraught nature of immigrating to the United States, whether by some kind of student or work visa or by crossing the border by means of coyotes, and presents examples.

She discusses the constant depredations and degradations which came at the hands of the white Americans: invitations to work in substandard conditions, willingness to expel not only undocumented but also documented Latino/a immigrants when it proved convenient to do so, with even some American citizens getting deported in the process. She does not shy away from demonstrating how many times the dire conditions which compel Latino/as to risk so much to come to the United States and live as undocumented stem from our misbegotten intrusions into their political systems and as the fruit of our seemingly bottomless demand for illegal drugs.

But the author is also not sparing about challenges within Latino/a cultures: the celebration of whiteness and the desire to “whiten the race”; prejudice between communities; the very divergent political trajectories of different groups of Latino/as, and the historical and modern reasons why plenty of people whose ancestors might have come from Spanish colonized areas do not identify as Latino/a but as white.

In this book I learned that not only did FDR et al detain Japanese-Americans and detain them in concentration camps, but our government also put pressure on our Latin American allies to round up their citizens of Japanese descent and to send them to the United States so we could detain them in those camps as well. Apparently the former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, thus spent time in an American concentration camp. Tragic.

The author also addressed how Latino/as both attempt to belong and the challenges of trying to belong in American society. She well explored religion among Latino/a populations: the historical legacy of Catholicism; the surge of interest in Pentecostalism; how the “evangelication” of the Latino/a population has proven significant over the past forty years and what changes have attended on account of it.

She explores various ways of thinking in Latino/a cultures, but also emphasized how diligently Latino/as labor, and how well known they are for their work and work habits. She also highlights the many contributions made in almost every discipline, from academia to the sciences, music, television, movies, publishing, government, etc., by Latino/as. She laments how these Latino/as are poorly known and their contributions left unacknowledged as well as how poorly Latino/as are represented in corporate governance, governance in general, the highest levels of academia, etc., relative to their population in the United States.

The book might be long but is well written and easy to read. If you want to understand the great growth of Latin American cultures in the United States, and want to better understand and appreciate Latino/a presence and contribution to these United States, I highly recommend this book.

Family Drama

I highly recommend Marie Arana's 'Latinoland', even for those well-versed in literature about Latino culture and history. Having loved her 'Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story', I had high expectations, even if I figured that it might not bring me any new insights. Well, it turns out that I learned *a lot* I didn't know, especially regarding the role of religion in Latino life and Latino figures in sports.

One of Arana's strengths is her ability to weave history through the narratives of individuals, ranging from everyday people to lesser-known yet significant figures. This book not only enriched my understanding but also highlighted the underrepresentation of our people in mainstream narratives. It's an insightful and engaging journey through Latino history and culture. Read it.½

What struck me the most about Bolivar was his adamancy. And nowhere is this more better reflected than when Bolivar was taken to meet the Pope by a contemporary. The latter insisted he kiss the Pope's sandals for he was the primary representative of God on Earth post-Christ. Bolivar swiftly retorted that if this indeed was the case then why did the rock of Christ have Christ's sacrosanct cross on his sandals? This hallmarked Bolivar's tendency to overcome all odds. Uncompromising and just, Simon Bolivar's adamancy witnessed him precipitate revolution after revolution in the Americas; to free his people and ensure their progress.

Arana's narrative was comprehensive as well as flowing. She avoids browbeat jargon and crafts an elegant account of a man who is deified in each and every South American nation. And indeed, what a man! The pinnacle of all revolutionary zeal. Bolivar, a handful of revolutionaries who precipitated a tectonic shift in human history. Bolivar, the son of the conquered who rose to become conqueror. Bolivar, we have still not heard the last of him.

Marie Arana infuses her history of Latin America with individual stories that make this book interesting and informative without being dry. However, there are little errors here and there that, without detracting from her overall narrative, made me wonder how slipshod the editing process was. That is what prevents me from giving this a full four stars.

This is a history of Latin America from 1492 to the present.

The title sacrifices some accuracy for the sake of alliteration: a better title would be "Gold, Blood, and Christianity." The book is divided into three parts. The first part focuses primarily on the years that the Spanish colonized Latin America in pursuit of gold. The second part discusses the violence endemic to Latin America, going all the way back to pre-colonial times, but focusing mostly on the constant cycle of revolution and violent despotism after the Spanish left. The third part is about the role of Christianity in Latin American history, especially the Jesuits and the current popularity of evangelical Protestantism.

The structure of the book is both a strength and a weakness. By dividing the history into three themes, Arana ends up going over the 500-year history three times, even if she does focus on different time periods in each section. Arana also tries to humanize the history by interspersing each section with details about the life of a contemporary person who lives in Latin America and whose life reflects the theme she is discussing. Those biographies are interesting, but I found them to be a distraction from the larger narrative.

This would probably not be a good book to use in a classroom, but it is a good book for someone who is curious about Latin American history - by grounding the history in three themes and the lives of three people, Arana makes the history easier to digest and remember. There is a lot of detail in the book, and sometimes I wish that instead of, for instance, detailing the revolutions that happened in each country one by one, she had focused on a larger narrative, but other readers might appreciate the level of detail.

A novel about a relationship ultimately doomed both by cultural preconceptions and individual expectations. A well written book, capturing the changing flavours of Lima during the late 20th century. I am left wondering if either of the main characters changed at all, or simply passed time together.

If, like me, you don't know too much about Simón Bolívar even though the guy has entire countries and political movements and so on named after him, then this biography is a good place to start. It ably covers all the standard origins activities who he banged legacy stuff, although I found the international context a little lacking, in that I would have appreciated a little more quantification of the comparison between Bolívar's liberation efforts and someone like George Washington's, or even Napoleon's. Arana is at pains to mention that Bolívar's job was, on paper, even more difficult than Washington's, but you don't feel like you really grasp why South American society was so much more difficult to unify than North America's was, except at the most basic level, because the main character of this book is Bolívar, and the continent is merely a background for him to run around on.

Speaking of international comparisons, it's tempting to play armchair quarterback since Bolívar's Gran Colombia fell apart instantly whereas Washington's United States did not. While granting that the geographically vaster, more racially and economically mixed lands of South America would be way tougher for any one to liberate and administrate (and keeping in mind that those two skills are very rarely combined in one person anyway), it seems like Bolívar would have benefited from following a few management/leadership guidelines:
- Try to keep your womanizing separate from your revolutionizing. There's one part where Bolívar holds up an entire invasion fleet that's halfway to its goal for three days so that he can retrieve his mistress Pepita from her island and then sleep with her while everyone sits around and twiddles their thumbs. Later in the book his "permanent mistress" Manuela becomes a politically divisive figure in classic court-politics style. I get that being the father of a nation (or six) has its privileges, but try to keep your eye on the prize.
- Don't retain and promote provably disloyal subordinates. The second half of the book, and even to some extent the first half as well, is an endless string of betrayals, backstabbings, and double crosses, to the point where it seems like the only one who didn't turn against Bolívar is his manservant. I don't know if the historical record is just spotty, or if Arana is garbling everyone's motives, or what, but it certainly seems like Bolívar could have avoided a lot of heartache by refusing to hand out amnesties like candy and just straight up exiling/executing high-level malcontents. I get that forgiveness is a good way to retain support from crucial allies, but there's got to be a point where you realize that you're just setting yourself up for yet another rebellion/coup/assassination attempt a year down the line.
- To that end, be vigilant about your underlings' independent means of support. One of the interesting things that Cyrus the Great did in Persia, with a similarly large and ethnically varied empire, was to post administrators in different parts of the empire than they were from, so that they couldn't build their own power bases. Mixing the various elites of Peru, New Granada, Venezuela, etc., might have led to a greater feeling of continental solidarity. Of course the US also had its own problems with federalism that wouldn't get even partially resolved until the Civil War, but it's important to do what you can to make your administrators feel like your empire is better to administrate than to liquidate.
- Don't waste too much time on paperwork. After about the third or fourth one, you get the impression that Bolívar was addicted to constitutional conventions. While legal institutions are very important (as he himself predicted, Napoleon's civil code has outlasted his empire by centuries), getting bogged down in minutiae can be lethal, especially when there are more pressing matters to attend to, like enemy armies or the collapsing economy. Additionally, Bolívar's attempt to include a President-for-life in his constitution is so stupid it beggars belief - try not to throw out your single selling point over the monarchy you just overthrew!

Still, for all his faults, Bolívar comes across as an incredible figure, and it's hard to make the argument that anyone else could have achieved any more than he did. Now that UNASUR is slowly becoming a reality, he's one of those rare figures who you can truly say was ahead of his time.

Very informative, thrilling, and romantically told. I had no concept at all of what a huge mess South America faced - I knew Spain sent some conquistadors, i knew about Incas, then my knowledge jumped several hundred years to the cold war. This book blew my mind. The Haiti connection, all the classic/roman influences, the Liberator's wife? What a tale. I closed this book feeling amazed. Great intro for beginners to the topic.½

Bolivar is sometimes referred to as the Washington of Latin America so I think it behooves Americans to read this book and decide if the label fits. I don't think it does. This biography tells a story with lots of warts on it. However, the account I think is balanced and fair; Bolivar brought independence to all of Spanish-speaking South America but the cone of the continent.

Marie Arana grew up in an intercultural family with a South American father born in Peru, and a North American mother. Her parents met in Boston, Massachusetts of all places. This all sounds exotic and fun, but it wasn't always easy for Arana to know how to fit in on either side of the cultural divide.
The very first sentence of American Chica sets the entire tone of Arana's memoir, "The corridors of my skull are haunted" (p 5). Indeed, Arana's family history hides ghosts and her story prods proverbial skeletons out of closets. I won't give away the details but there was one moment in Arana's story that had me holding my breath. She has a brush with impropriety that is tinged with the guilty question of did I bring this on myself? Is it somehow my fault? I could relate.The most poignant pieces of Arana's writing was when she was remembering her innocence; the times when prejudice didn't darken her childhood.½

48. Bolívar : American liberator by Marie Arana
published: 2014
format: 468 page hardcover (603 with notes in bibliography)
acquired: Library
read: Aug 25 - Sep 13
rating: 4

This is a terrific book and a larger than life real-life story, but, goodness, there is so much to tell, I don't know where to begin, or how to sum up. I can't explain Bolivar in a simple straight way without wandering off on convoluted discursive paths in an effort to clarify.

Simón Bolívar was a wealthy and unruly orphan from Caracas who was educated by a random but fascinating assortment of characters, was connected to the highest society, would play badminton with the crown prince of Spain, and later, in Parisian and Italian high society meet many of the leading figures of the day, including Alexander Von Humbolt (who "judged him a puerile man").

Simón Bolívar was a failure, part 1, 2 & 3. His most impressive role in the First Republic of Venezuela was to be exiled instead of executed. The Admirable Campaign that initially made him famous and led to him being named the Liberator and that mostly took place in Colombia, created the Second Republic of Venezuela. This one was wiped out by the Legions of Hell (that's their actual name), a marauding army of ex-slaves loyal to Spain that would rape and pillage through the second republic, massacring a large portion of revolutionary supporters. Bolivar wound up in Jamaica and Haiti. Having finally figured out that he needed to manage the slave revolt if he were to get free of Spain, he invaded again, freed the slaves, promised to undo the racial favoritism and saw his invasion quickly wiped out again. He was chased out by his own revolutionary allies and almost gutted by an ally who was so upset he swung a sword a him to kill (and would later be a loyal supporter of Bolívar).

Simón Bolívar was in a weird place. Spain had done some strange stuff to keep the masses in check in New Spain. The European descendants, Creoles, like Bolívar, were divided from the natives, and from the slaves and a large population of mixed race in what came to be tension driven freezing-in-place of the system. It was these kind of tensions that led to the Legions of Hell to fight against the Creole rebellion, and that made these new rebellious colonies impossible to manage, leading to a variety of regional warlords who no one actually liked. No one liked anyone else, except somehow everyone like the Liberator, Bolívar. So he became to only possible leader. This is just the beginning.

Simón Bolívar was special. It's only at this point that we say he was what the myths say - energetic, elegant, educated, graceful, charming, tougher than everyone else, deeply dedicated to his cause with full integrity, insightful, and finally savvy enough to be dangerous.

Simón Bolívar was the revolution. From this point Bolívar made it happen almost single-handed. His energy was the motor of the revolution, his integrity disarmed, his charm brought devout enemies to join him, his physical prowess won over his army (which included large contingents of British veterans out of work after Waterloo), his personality won over the most intransigent resistance to cooperation, his strategies, many psychological, would set the victories in place. Finally, his statesmanship won over whatever was left.

Simón Bolívar was a butcher. Outside the 800 Spanish prisoners he ordered beheaded over a few days because of rumors of a prison revolt, he lost several armies, saw populations of entire regions drop by 1/3, economies completely break down.

Simón Bolívar was a notorious womanizer. Briefly married, he met widowhood by finding prominent lovers in France, notably the married Fanny du Villars. He took with Josefina "Pepita" Machado almost as a war prize, and once held an entire invasion fleet on hold in port for several days until she could join him. She disappeared somewhere in the Venezuelan wilderness, on the way to meet him. And, most famously, Manuela Sáenz, the married Peruvian who became his final mistress, saving his life during an assassination attempt.

Simón Bolívar was a failure, part 4. He would momentarily reach an amazing high tide where he had freed future Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia from Spain, had charmed his rival liberator, San Martín, Liberator of Argentina, out of the picture, was writing his own constitutions and had in a place a very talented successor, Antonio José de Sucre. Alas, his constitution with its life-time president left about everyone horrified, including Henry Clay, his most devout supporter in the unsupportive United States and Lafayette, one his most valued European supporters. Regional animosities, an assassination attempt and tuberculosis finally led him to resign all powers and try to flee his own country, shortly after saying in an important speech, "I am ashamed to admit it, but independence is the only thing we have won, at the cost of everything else." He would die several month after giving up the presidency. He was nearly alone, poor, out of power, unwanted, and finally broken by the news of the assassination of Sucre.

Simón Bolívar is a legend. Quoting Arana, "But, for all his flaws, there was never any doubt about his power to convince, his splendid rhetoric, his impulse to generosity, his deeply held principles of liberty and justice." and later, "The intervening century had made Bolívar a good Catholic, a moral exemplar, an unwavering democrat—none of which he had been during his life."

And, worst of all, Simón Bolívar has become a rallying cry of populist autocrats the like of Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolution: "Bolívar purported to hate dictatorships—he claimed he had taken them on only for limited periods and as necessary expedients—but there is little doubt that he created the mythic creature that the Latin American dictator became."

What an insane life.

I picked this up because I had just read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel [The General in His Labyrinth], based on Bolivar's last several months of life, living on little money, very ill and essentially rejected by his continent.

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6579922½

Dreadful. Every cliche and then some.

Wow! When Don Juan decides to make cellophane in his remote jungle paper factory he is unprepared for the result of success. The product’s transparency infects the Don and all those who live on the hacienda; there are plagues of truth and desire as a result. No one has secrets anymore. Passions are revealed. Lies cannot be told. The characters rush to action based on their perceived truths, but no one sees all clearly.

This is a very Latin book with curanderos, tribal wars, jungles, and military juntas. Arana’s magical realism includes visually stunning imagery.

UPDATE, July 2009 - Our book club found much to discuss in this charming, vividly written, humorous fable. I like it just as well (if not more) on this second reading as I did when I first picked it up 3 years ago.

A serviceable biography of Bolívar, very readable, containing sufficient background information to provide context for those unfamiliar with South America's wars of liberation from Spanish rule.

Fascinating and witty story of power, love, and loss

Dom Victor Sobrevilla is an engineer in the 1950’s in Peru. As a child with his aunt, he receives a prediction: “There are those who think you are a dreamer…the more a man sees, the less he will know…Let go, and gain the world. Victor keeps this tattered piece of paper his entire life. Leaving the civilized coast of Peru with his family, he heads into the interior of Peru and establishes a paper factory using the materials of the jungle and the men of the jungle as workers. His wife, Marianna, plays the part of the loyal wife whose family comes first. Oldest daughter Graciela marries a lout but has two beautiful children. Middle daughter Belin’s life is tied to books, and son Jaime marries an heiress of a sugar magnate who lives in a fantasy world but finds love with a Peruvian native. Victor’s paper mill is very successful but he is always inventing and learns to make cellophane. Then the world changes.

First there is the plague of the tongues in which everyone speaks the truth and long lost secrets come to the surface. Next there is a plague of the heart when sexual tensions run high and finally the plague of revolution as the workers in the factory turn against Victor.

This is a fascinating blend of Catholicism, primitive shamans, wealth, poverty, love, sexual antics, strange characters, and a setting far from civilization. As a lover of realistic fiction, I normally prefer it without the magic, but the magic is pure delight in this beautifully told tale of a man who finally learns to let go.

This memoir was filled with interesting stories, history, and poignant observations about the adventures and difficulties of having a mixed background. I was the first person in my family to be born in the U.S. Although both of my parents are from the same country, I identified greatly with the author's feeling of not belonging in either country, always an "other." In Colombia, I am a foreigner; in the U.S., I am a minority. I am too "Americanized" for my family, having adopted values of American culture: independence, belief in equality, and a non-traditional approach to gender, family, and marriage. I liked how the author tied things together in the final chapter, even though it seemed a bit rushed compared to other chapters. Overall, I think it's a good book for readers who have experienced being "outsiders" in one place or another.½

The writing style is similar to Garcia Marquez'. The story itself was interesting, but it dragged at some points.

This is a truly outstanding book that captures how infatuation might turn to love and later to hatred. The story begins in 1986 Lima, with the Shining Path guerrilla movement beginning to flex its muscle, which elicits a more acute awareness of class and race differences and the discrepancies of how well "white" Peruvians live compared to their indigenous counterparts. A white, upper class, slightly reprobate, business and family man (Carlos) falls for a girl (Maria) from the slums in a Tango bar. Twenty years later, they're still together but their initial lust and love has turned into something far bitter. Concurrently, the Peruvian government managed to conquer the Shining Path, but nothing much seems to have changed in Peru regarding the way poor, indigenous people are treated. This has implications for how Maria will fare against Carlos; but she also may exact a price from him before their vicious machinations against each other conclude. This book will keep you glued to the pages and guessing to (literally) the last page the outcome of Carlos and Maria. Be prepared to stay up all night.

How do you rate a collection? Is it the selections that matter? How well they tie together as a theme? Is it the introductions to each selection? Marie Arana succeeded in all of these areas. I enjoyed every essay, especially the ones by James Michener, Ray Bradbury, Carol Shields, Patricia Cornwell, Wendy Wasserstein, Michael Korda, and Julian Barnes. The career path for writers has changed over time. What remains constant is that every writer finds a distinctive way of viewing the world and masters the often painstaking craft of sharing it with others.

Een excentrieke ingenieur is gefascineerd door papier en zet in het hart van de peruaanse jungle een papierfabriek op

This book came to me from Elle Magazine and is defiantly not a book that I would pick up. However, that being said, once I got in about 70 pages, I was hooked and really wanted to know what happened with Carlos and Maria.

I had a hard time with the Spanish in this book, but it really added to the book. I just wish that I knew what was being said all the time. I found that I had to just read over it. I'm not familiar with customs and culture, but I found some things in this book to be very different. The fact that people are so prejudiced to others is amazing. I'm sure that this is truly the case in places around the world, but here in the U.S. everyone is so tolerant of mixed race relationships. I guess maybe that was one of the things that I found interesting about the story.

The ending was not at all what I expected. It just seemed to stop. Very suddenly and kind of left the reader to end the book in their own head. It's so hard to explain because there was a little of a conclusion, but it left a lot to the imagination.

Overall, a pretty good book. I'm glad that I had the chance to read it.½

Carlos Bluhm, a middle-aged Peruvian of German descent, comfortably married to Sophie and father of Rudy and Fritz, enjoys one-night sexual stands from time to time, and outings with his three friends. All come from Lima, from the same German descended background, all are solidly middle class, and all know that indigenous women--Indians--are good for one thing only--casual sex.

Until one night Carlos meets Maria, a 15 year old Indian girl in a tango bar, and his life is changed forever.

The novel is a story of the lengths two people are willing to go in order to satisfy sexual obsession and calculating need. A story of 20 years of living together and having no idea of who the other is.

Arana writes of chasms of non-understanding so deep and so broad that her characters don’t even know where to start to find a bridge. One goes to a shaman, the other to its equivalent in the modern world, a psychiatrist, but in the end, neither witch doctor can help.

It’s well written, but strangely without emotion, more or less paralleling the lives of the Carlos and Maria themselves. It’s a story that should move, should make a connection but did not do so for me. Arana made the characters so unfathomable to each other that they became, then, equally unfathomable to me, leaving me pretty indifferent to their fates, once I knew what they were. That’s about how I feel about the book, too--indifferent. It was a good try that didn't work.

Lima in 1986 is a pluralistic society of race, economics and social class. Carlos Bluhm, white, married and father of two sons, comes from money and lives in a mansion. Maria Fernandez, a marginalized member of the city is a Peruvian with dark-skin who lives in the slums. She struggles to survive by working two jobs. At night, Maria works in a tango bar, where she is hired to dance with the male customers. The salacious dance club is in a seedy section of the city and Carlos happens to be there one night when Maria is working. After meeting Maria he becomes obsessed with a monomaniac drive to be with her. He even goes so far as to make a comparative checklist to weigh pros and cons between Maria and his wife. The game begins as Carlos wonders what can he be thinking? In his mind he knows they are diametrically opposed in all ways.

My favorite character was Maria who demonstrated a vivacious spirit and tenacious will, with a personality full of contradictions; complex yet simple, young yet wise, childlike yet mature, poor yet rich.

This book had me flipping pages frantically expecting a great finish, as the author crafted increasing suspense. As the story ended, I felt like I ran into a brick wall. Lima Nights is a wonderful sensual love story depicting racial and class prejudice and society’s intolerance. Arana’s obsessive lovers, have an allure and chemistry that will steam glass with their passion.

Carlos Bluhm and Maria Fernandez are from different worlds. Forty-four year old Carlos lives the good life in an affluent upper-class part of Lima. He has the proper wife, two proper sons attending the proper school, and proper friends. But, he's bored and takes it all for granted. Sixteen year old Maria is from Lurigancho, the slums of Lima. She works days in a supermarket and nights as a dancer in a tango bar called Lima Nights. Lima Nights is where Carlos meets Maria. To Carlos, Maria seems exciting, spontaneous, dangerous...everything his life is not. To Maria, Carlos is her ticket out of the slum and into a better life. Carlos quickly becomes obsessed with Maria and they begin a passionate affair which destroys his marriage and the only life he has ever known. Twenty years later, Carlos and Maria are still together. Carlos has tired of Maria. She is desperate to keep her place in his home and the two embark on a dangerous game of cat and mouse that could have tragic consequences.

This was the first book I've read by Maria Arana. While I didn't find Carlos or Maria to be the most likable of characters, they were written so well that I could understand the desperation of each which led them to take the actions they took. I enjoyed reading this book. It hooked me from the start and held my interest throughout, and the ending was very satisfying. I would like to read more by Marie Arana.½