Aura By Carlos Fuentes: Mexican History

What is magical realism? Magical realism by definition is: A literary genre or style, especially associated with Latin America that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into an otherwise realistic fiction, this is according to Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11 Edition). What this means is that the majority of the novel is real, but there are obviously fictional parts that we must accept as real. How is magical realism used in the book Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel? This essay, we will discuss three different incidences of magical realism in the book written by Ms. Esquivel.

Many stories embody the cultural aspects of Mexican-Americans and their struggles with living in a discriminatory society. Stories like With

Many cultures have different beliefs and different stories of how the world was created but the Aztec creation story is an interesting story to read. According to the myth the Aztecs have a story in which deals with the elements and how they came to be. The Aztec Creation Myth contains the following archetypes: the ritual, The unhealable wound, the battle between good and evil, and the task. The Aztec myth starts with a dual god named Ometecuhtli/ Omecihuatl creating themselves then he/she has kids (Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Xipe Totec) who represent the four directions.

Mexican immigration has been a controversy in the United States before 1980. According to Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, Mexican immigration can be divided in three waves: the first one, before World War two, the second one started with the Bracero program, and the last one after it. Nevertheless, Mexican immigration can be seen as something threat or as the opposite, a benefit to the country and it all depends on which side you want to be. The American, Cesar Chavez who was a farm worker, also creator/leader of the United Farm Workers Union, influenced ad contributed to United States history by using Mexican’s “dignity” and nonviolent strategies to showed Americans that Mexicans could accomplished hard work and being successful for the country. Mexican’s deal with discrimination since 1962, schools, minorities, and farmers were the main target, this guide Chavez to create the National Farm Workers Association, now the United Farm Workers Union.

Flores utilizes a vast array of evidence to prove his argument including giving the actual history of the Alamo, comparing the two women who helped create the Alamo—Clara Driscoll and Adina De Zavala, and analyzing the representations of the Alamo in film. The way that Flores structures his argument is interesting; he starts by presenting a social theory to explain why and how the Alamo represents a class and racial control then moves onto a chronological layout of the history of the Alamo. Flores concludes with a

The films “The other conquest”, “Jerico”, and “I the Worst of All” are all a depiction of what life would be like during the Spanish Conquest. These films give different point of views during the Spanish Conquest. The films give a person a well-rounded view of how the world really changed for different people during a historical movement. After watching these films, one is able to assess and determine their own truth about what exactly happened to Amerindians and Spaniards during this time.

We hear the word romance and instinctively, we think about love, passion, marriage, and women. In his essay “Mexicans, Foundational Fictions, and the United States: Caballero, a Late Border Romance,” Jose E. Limón describes how the novel Caballero exemplifies different aspects of the historical romance genre, including the idea that the marriages presented in the novel between American men and Mexican señoritas can be seen as a “consolidation of the groups they semi-allegorically represent” (Limón 350). I agree with Limón’s interpretation of the intermarriages between the Mendoza y Soria girls and the Americanos symbolizing both cultures coming together and foreshadowing change. However, I would add that González and Raleigh present the intermarriages as characteristic of the two subcategories of the historical romance genre: fantasy and realism. By analyzing the passion and sexual desire, as well as the political and social changes prevalent in the time period, González and Raleigh are able to fully develop the narrative of a Mexican American historical romance novel.

Pan’s Labyrinth: Analysis Ofelia and Captain Vidal in Cronus Complex Abstract Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth locates the story within the context of the Spanish post-civil-war. Mythical elements play a leading role in the film when the totalitarian system of social control that Francisco Franco’s fascist system established during the post- war period function as the underlying reference in the film’s narrative. Ofelia, the child main character, enters a mysterious world to escape the horrors of the reality she is forced to face. Playing with the traditional fairy-tale literary formula, del Toro’s work not only offers a contemporary creative representation of the state of ‘Franquismo.’

Like Mildred, many others of their society have been washed into believing that books are horrific, dangerous, bad. The nation has turned into an anti-social community that has been confined to staring at a television set for hours with no interaction. With doing so, most of the people have confronted to depression and even suicide. Mildred is so oblivious that she turns against her own husband, Montag, by yelling, “Books aren’t people. You read and I look all around, but there isn’t anybody” (Bradbury, 69).

CHANGING SELVES AS A MODE OF SURVIVAL: TRICKSTERISM AND SHAPESHIFTING IN CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI’S THE MISTRESS OF SPICES Dr Sulagna Mohanty (Assistant Professor, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita University, Coimbatore,Tamil Nadu) sulagna2008@gmail.com ABSTRACT In the scenario of socio-economic, political, and cultural globalization, myth is used as a postcolonial tool to connect various Native cultures together from a regenerative perspective.

“ El Senor De Los Cielos” as many may know Amado Carrillo Fuentes. He was known as the Lord of the Skies because of his method of transporting drugs. He would transport drugs using jets all around the world. He was in charge of the Juarez Cartel for just a couple months, but in the short amount of time he got control of this cartel he was becoming more powerful. Amado wanted to become more in life.

In Voices and A People’s History Bartolome de Las Casas, voice intrigued me most. Bartolome spoke with such concern for the Indians, as he described how the Indians were beaten, tortured, turned into slaves and treated with great malice. Bartolome explained how gracious the Indians were to see the Spaniards when they first arrive believing that they were sent from the heavens. Reading his words made my heart bleed out for the Indians, to read that the people they worshipped only cared for the gold, causing several million people to lose their lives.

In the story, “The Myth of a Latin Woman” is about the author Judith Ortiz Cofer talking about her life and growing up as a Puerto Rican girl. She talks about the struggles she had to go through, like always being under heavy surveillance by her family. She would be under their watch because she was a girl and was expected to protect her family’s honor and to behave like in her family’s terms “proper senorita”. I agree that she was forced to mature fast just at her teenage years; a point that needs emphasizing since so many people believe Cofer could never act her age.

I discovered my love for English throughout my Puente classes. It exposed me to my passion for writing and learning new things. An example of this was when we read “ Borderlands” by Gloria Anzladúa which deals with how we identify ourselves composed of poems and written text. Explaining her story of being a Chicana; someone who is Mexican American dealing with the differences of both cultures.