Recommended Reading

Well to be very blunt I know nothing about Colombian society, culture, literature or peoples. Fact is I don’t know if I remain ignorant so as to keep an open mind but it must help to annoy the stereotypes. I am currently reading The Penguin History of Latin America but I think it has a very pragmatic approach to the matter and I believe we are a metaphysical people so I wouldn’t recommend it.

I think to comprehend Latin American character it is better to read the following:

Miguel de Unamuno: A must read The Tragic Sense of Life, it is the bible rewritten by a Spanish Catholic heart that never had the faith. Unamuno does a wonderful depiction of the impossibility of our people, why we are not rational and why being rational is anti life. Thus from there it becomes easy to understand why we will never be productive and consumers regardless of material enticements.

Sense I believe that we Latinos have a vivid intent in defeating life, Jorge Luis Borgess is another fantastic fellow, and certainly a must read, particularly his collection Labyrinths. There you will find what is perhaps the best short story ever written: The Immortal. It is a masterly depiction of our metaphysics and why Latinos are generally unable to pickup after themselves and why they wont lift a finger to help anyone else. It sort of doesn’t matter in the grand scope of things, hence the reason why we would never write a book like say “Being in Time” we are never on time because we don’t tick to a calendar.

To read another one of our finest philosophers you must enter into the realm of Jose Ortega y Gasset, he wrote a book that I thought particularly illuminating, “The Revolt of the Masses” a fine elitist point of view, you will find it absolutely hilarious; more important it depicts what our Latin founding fathers believed, that they know what is best for us all.

I don’t want to sound a classicist but if you have plenty of time in your hands Don Quixote de La Mancha is the fictionalization of Unamuno’s philosophy though ironically Cervantes came first, but as Unamuno correctly pointed out he died and Don Quixote lives on.

As you might take notice I don’t stay within the continent to define the literature of our character. This is because I have a globalized ability to stereotype, our people start in Spain, trip over Portugal and flow from Mexico down the throat of the Yucatan Peninsula strait throughout the Amazon until hitting bottom at Tierra del Fuego. The fact is that there aren’t as many peoples as there are countries.

ricardo