Letters
Culture and Politics ean Franco's article [September/October 1994] on how television and popular music have displaced the printed word as cultural guide seems a bit out of context....
...For the Right, the eradication of opposition meant wiping out these cultural attachments...
...It was not my intention to pass judgment on these concerns and debates, but rather to bring them to the attention of readers of the NACLA Report...
...Latin America remains the dumping site of Disneyesque culture and social analysis...
...Second, to consider the adoption of the "American" look and rock music as a display of "inventive cultural bricolage" without locating this in a political context shows the shallowness of Franco's exploration...
...Taking rather different approaches, Richard and Sarlo, in the books I mention above, see the social sciences as complicitous with the status quo and therefore look to some revitalization of the aesthetic...
...The Latin American Left has tried to link its political cause to the rediscovery of local art and music because it understands that popular culture is a very effective tool for the dissemination of ideas...
...Unlinking cultural changes from politics and history is not worthy of serious scholars...
...Recent books by Nelly Richard (The Insubordination of Signs) and Beatriz Sarlo (Scenes of Postmodern Life) reflect the increasing hostility of literary and art critics to what they see as their displacement from the public sphere of discussion and the media's monopoly of this sphere...
...The charge that "I am unlinking cultural changes from politics and history" betrays the writer's ignorance of the fact that in 40 years of teaching and writing, those links have been my main concern...
...It also implies a nonexistent Latin American homogeneity...
...At the same time, I do not believe that an emphasis on culture (particularly in today's environment) necessarily means a retreat from politics...
...Rather, it means that politics now has to be remapped to include these crucial cultural questions...
...Beyond that, the mass media in Latin America decided to promote "new and foreign" artists at the very point when countries were engulfed in internal social and political problems, and state terror was rife...
...Juan Alonso Crosby SUNY - Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY Jean Franco responds: Juan Alonso confuses description and endorsement, and compounds it by not recognizing irony...
...This helps explain why Argentine "rock nacional" and the ban on Mercedes Sosa occurred at the same historical moment...
...The lack of a clear sense of national identity is a major reason why we Latin Americans have not been able to control our destiny...
...For Latinos, looking "American" is a cathartic exercise-a way of leaving behind their material poverty to enter a "better" world...
...To say, however, that "Latin America remains the dumping site of Disneyesque culture and social analysis" is a dangerous simplification, because it ignores the role of Latin American media giants-Mexico's Televisa, Brazil's TV Globo, the Glusberg empire in Argentina-in disseminating neoliberal principles, and thereby ignores the questions of agency and access that arise in consequence...
...My article was certainly not intended as a celebration, but rather as a description of the issues at stake in contemporary culture wars as a consequence of neoliberal policies...
...First, the notion that Celia Cruz has replaced Sim6n Bolivar or Jos6 Marti as the apostle of Latinity overlooks the fact that Celia Cruz' popularity-like that of another Cuban artist, Gloria Estefan-is a commercial phenomenon...
...The claim of Cuban immigrants that they are the representatives of Latin American views has a lot to do with their political interests and position within the United States...
...Following French theorist Pierre Bourdieu, critics based in the social sciences have tended to emphasize consumption and use as productive activities, rejecting older manipulation theories...
Vol. 28 • January 1995 • No. 4
