En medio de esta decadencia aparente del carácter nacional, se descubren de cuando en cuando ciertas señales de antiguo espíritu; ni puede ser de otro modo: querer que una nación se quede con solas sus propias virtudes y se despoje de sus defectos propios para adquirir en su lugar las virtudes de las extrañas, es fingir otra república como la de Platón.
— Cadalso, Cartas marruecas XXI
It is unrealistic that a country should keep its own virtues, and replace its defects with the virtues of other places, said a Spanish writer in the 18th century. Yet this is precisely what many Latin American modernists wanted to do (when they did not try to recodify what had been seen as defects, as secret virtues).
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Cadalso is quite traditionalist and mistrusts modernity as fetish or fashion. He also laughs at tradition invoked for its own sake, and points out that Spanish traditions are often not Spanish in origin.
I see Vallejo everywhere: opposed to avant-garde trappings, suggesting that if a thing is to be modern it must be so from the inside.
I also glimpse a contemporary indigenous point of view: we want our traditional cultures but we want to use the modern things we like, to our purposes.
I am reaching here, of course, but it is fun; people do keep talking about similar things.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 