Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization

Notes

233 Notes Introduction 1. For background on the terms “Latino,” “Hispanic,” and “Latin American,” see Oboler; Aparicio (“[Re]constructing Latinidad” 39–43); Flores (7–8, 192–195); Flores and Yúdice (80 n. 1, 2); Gruesz (Ambassadors 213 n. 3); Mignolo (163 n. 3); PérezTorres (“Ethnicity” 538–541); and Verdecchia (26–27, 79 n. 3). Although “Latino” contrasts to “Hispanic,” a census term with “assimilationist rather than pluralist connotations ,” it is also a “fictive construct” (Gruesz, Ambassadors 213 n. 3, xi). I use “Latina/o” and “Latino” interchangeably, the latter for simplicity, in reference to persons of Latin American descent living in the United States. 2. “The idea of ‘Latin’ America is being detached from fixed territorial contours,” Mignolo writes, obviating “distinction[s] between an Anglo North and a Latin South” (134). Taylor notes the “interconnections of populations in the Americas, where the Third World is in the First World and the other way around” (1427). De la Campa similarly cautions against the myth of the “North/South divide” (“Latin, Latino, American ” 374). Although these are legitimate admonitions for avoiding oversimplifications, Broken Souths shows that some North/South divisions have also retrenched under neoliberalism . “Latin America,” like “Latino” and “America,” is an invention. It came into usage in the late nineteenth century. 3. See Fukuyama’s End of History and Mills’s “Letter to the New Left” for background on these contexts and constructs. 4. For more on Fronteras Americanas, see Worthen and Adams (ch. 6). 5. Margaret Thatcher is credited with “there is no alternative.” See Harlow on “elsewhere.” I prefer “otherwise” because it encompasses space and time rather than primarily space. 6. In Argentina, those tortured for resisting neoliberal restructuring during the “Dirty Wars” in the 1970s and 1980s were called quebrados (broken ones). See Klein (138). 7. The relationship between postmodernist cultural modes and neoliberal ideological tenets can be sketched as follows: the former’s multiplicity, indeterminacy, dispersal , ludic energies, critique of metanarratives and modernist projects for collective emancipation, and celebrations of diversity, fragmentation, popular culture, the individual , and mobility serve the latter’s promotion of the individual and market-based organization of society. De la Campa writes that postmodernism and neoliberalism have 234 • Notes to Pages 7–13 “a logic that fuses marketing, culture, and politics into a performative doctrine not far from a new metanarrative” (Latin Americanism 150). See Hopenhayn on postmodernism and neoliberalism in Latin America (77–93). I use “postmodern” to clarify literaryhistorical contexts, but the term often fails to illuminate Latino literary practices. 8. Smith and Cohn follow similar logic in choosing “New World Studies” as a field signifier. 9. “Neoliberalism” refers to the recuperation and dramatic extension of the principles of classical political economy as delineated by Adam Smith. Because economic liberalism differs from political liberalism, delinking capitalism and democracy is essential . See McChesney’s summary of neoliberal logic and consequences. “Neoliberalism ,” de la Campa writes, is “not commonly used by cultural critics in the United States to describe the reigning political philosophy of globalization” (Latin Americanism 150–151). Broken Souths names neoliberalism specifically, and capitalism broadly, because each is effaced in discussions of “globalization” and the “free market.” Even “capitalism,” Boltanski and Chiapello note, has largely disappeared from post-1968 discourses, while Foster, Clark, and York outline the consequences of substituting “free market” for “capitalism” (30–31). This is due in part to terminology. “In most of the world,” Klein writes, this “orthodoxy is known as ‘neoliberalism,’ but it is often called ‘free trade’ or simply ‘globalization’” (17). Derksen clarifies the terms by saying that “the cultural logic of globalization” is “the imposition of neoliberalism’s ideology of economic growth as progress” (17–18, 10). Eagleton simply calls it “the new capitalism ” (5), describing the “shift” and “vital changes” in the capitalist system beginning in the early 1970s as intensifying capitalist exploitation (3–11). Comaroff and Comaroff call it “millennial capitalism” to capture its eschatological qualities. Finally, neoliberalism is often called “American-style” capitalism. 10. In 1947, Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ludvig von Mises, and others founded the Mont Pelerin Society, where neoliberalism was born. See Harvey’s Brief History of Neoliberalism (19–22) and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. The Latino writer Francisco Goldman’s Long Night of White Chickens alludes to Friedman’s status in Latin America: “one exclusive rich kids’ private university” in Guatemala City was “run like a temple to the worship of Milton Friedman” (123). See Carvalho’s Puerto Rico Is in the Heart for...