Retamars Caliban - Essay Example

Retamar's Caliban Latin America's identity has been the main of many important figures from politicians to to revolutionary figures.Roberto Fernandez Retamar, -a Cuban poet, essayist and the spokesman for the Castro revolution1-, asks himself the question: "Does a Latin American culture exist" In "Caliban: Notes Towards A Discussion Of Culture In Our America", Retamar attempts to answer this question by tracing back the process of identification throughout times marked by the Spanish colonialism and later the American (USA) neocolonialism.

The author uses Shakespeare's The Tempest to represent Ariel and Caliban as the two opposite characters that have been used to identify Latin America. 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".3The 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. "In his influential essay, Fernandez Retamar suggests that the entire history of Latin American cultural production can be viewed through the lens of these binary forms of consciousness" (Saldaana-Portillo).4If Latin America is more identified with the rebellious slave Caliban, then its identity cannot be separated from its unique history and from the influences of all those who have participated in it; from the Spanish conquerors, to the black slaves, to the North American invasion.

This does not mean, however, that the Spanish America will define itself from its conquerors; but from the reactions to them, the rebellious spirit that Caliban embodies.The dialectic of the Caliban is at the heart of Latin America's search of its identity. And language is one of the most important manifestations of this process; it is part of the revolutionary weapons that participated in the independence and the establishing of free countries.The passage's significance strives in that it illustrates the complexity of finding an identity.

A Latin American culture is still in process of defining itself. It is a continuous process of assuming one's history and building a shared set of values that define who we are. Bibliography:1. Retamar, Roberto F. Caliban and Other Essays. 1989. University of Minnesota Press. 139 pp. 2. Kazanjian, David. The Colonizing Trick- National Culture and Imperial Citizenship in Early America. 2003. University of Minnesota Press. Available at: Google Books. 3. Saldaana-Portillo, Maria Josefina. The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development. 2003. Duke University Press.

Available at: Google Books.4. Fernandez Retamar, Roberto. Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature1995.Merriam Webster.