See Instructions below
lavset
article.pdf
SPN 100
Cultura - Unit 4
Guatemala, Food and Syncretism
Please read the following article excerpt, and view the video clips below. Listen carefully in
order to understand as much of the Spanish as you can, using the images and contextual
clues to help you get a sense of the gist of the video content. There is a transcript of exactly
what has been said in each Cultura video (written in the language used in the video)
available for your download in the Doc Sharing section of the course.
Next, write a 200-word response in English, with at least 4 paragraphs in Spanish, to the
issues raised. Make sure to address the following questions:
What is syncretism and how does it differ from the concept of the melting pot?
How is Latin America’s (Brazil and Cuba) experience with racial and cultural mixture different from that of the U.S.?
Can you give a couple of examples of syncretism in your own culture or in the U.S.?
SYNCRETISM AND ITS SYNONYMS: REFLECTIONS ON CULTURAL MIXTURE by
CHARLES STEWART
(If you would like to read the article from which this excerpt was taken, you can find it in Doc Sharing.)
The subject matter of anthropology has gradually changed over the last twenty years. Nowadays
ethnographers rarely search for a stable or original form of cultures; they are usually more concerned
with revealing how local communities respond to historical change and global influences. The
burgeoning literature on transnational flows of ideas, global institutions, and cultural mixture reflects
this shift of attention. This increased awareness of cultural penetration has, furthermore, been
instrumental in the critique of earlier conceptions of “culture” that cast it as too stable: bounded, and
homogeneous to be useful in a world characterized by migrations (voluntary or forced), cheap travel,
international marketing, and telecommunications… In this body of literature the word syncretismhas
begun to reappear alongside such related concepts as hybridization and creolization as a means of
portraying the dynamics of global social developments.
My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the present is not to enforce a standard
usage conformed to the domain of religion; nor is it my goal to promote syncretism to a position
of primus inter pares in the company of all other terms for mixture. I see my approach instead as an
attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an objectionable but nevertheless instructive
past…
Current Discussions of Mixture
Cultures, if we still wish to retain this term (and I do), are porous; they are open to intermixture with
other, different cultures and they are subject to historical change precisely on account of these
influences. This has no doubt always been the case…
2
Cultural borrowing and interpenetration are today seen as part of the very nature of cultures… To
phrase it more accurately, syncretism describes the process by which cultures constitute themselves
at any given point in time. Today's hybridization will simply give way to tomorrow's hybridization, the
form of which will be dictated by historical-political events and contingencies… As [Edward] Said
expresses it: all cultures are involved in one another, none is simple and pure, all are hybrid,
heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated and unmonolithic" [xxv]. Even traditionalist movements
mounted by minority groups or peripheral, postcolonial societies in the conscious, nativist effort to
resist "Westernization" or "Americanization" cannot escape cultural hybridity…
The Meanings of Syncretism
The term syncretism, originally coined with a positive sense… acquired overriding negative
connotations in the seventeenth century… This negative view of syncretism would remain very much
in place during the ensuing period of missionary expansion lasting well into the present century.
Syncretism became a term of abuse often applied to castigate colonial local churches that had burst
out of the sphere of mission control and begun to "illegitimately" indigenize Christianity instead of
properly reproducing the European form of Christianity they had originally been offered…
In the New World a much more positive attitude toward the concept of syncretism has long prevailed
among social scientists… Whereas most sub-Saharan African societies were still under colonial rule up
through the 1950s, most New World societies had already gained independence in the preceding
century and had long been engaged in attempts to consolidate national cultural identities. Many North
and South American countries publicly espoused versions of a "melting pot" ideology as a strategy of
nation-building. The melting pot is the analogue of syncretism in the ethno-political domain, and it
would have been difficult to criticize the one without simultaneously undermining the other…
The Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, expressed broadly similar views. Freyre considered Brazilian
society to be fundamentally a synthesis of different "races" and cultures [xiii; Skidmore, "Racial Ideas"
22]. This synthesis was facilitated by the fact that the Portuguese colonizers were themselves the
mixed outcome of a contact with a more advanced and darker people-the Moors-and hence amenable
to cultural borrowing and racial mixture…
Public acknowledgment and discussion of racial mixture was much more developed in Latin America
than in the United States, where many states still had miscegenation laws on their books in the middle
of this century… Nevertheless, in popular and political usage the Spanish term mestizaje, for example,
embraced both racial and cultural syntheses, and its political valorization was a necessary nation-
building strategy throughout Latin America.
The Cuban historical experience provides yet another illuminating example to contrast with the North
American melting pot. Cuban culture developed as various exogenous cultures (primarily Spanish and
African) met and mingled. There were only creoles. The indigenas disappeared entirely early on. This
situation prompted Fernando Ortiz, a Cuban lawyer, folklorist, and historian, to develop the idea of
trans-culturation to depict the Cuban experience of mixture [97-103; Coronil]. Transculturation
differed from acculturation in stressing that all cultures change in a situation of contact; it involves a
simultaneous loss and acquisition of culture and, in the case of Cuba, it is a matter of a continuing,
creative flux, never a finished synthesis. The Cuban example thus did not indicate assimilation to a
3
cultural or ethnic dominant standard as was the case in the US, nor did it have a teleology of
whiteness as did other parts of Latin America.
In less well-known essays brought to light by Stephan Palmié ["Out of Place"] Ortiz explicitly
dismissed the applicability of the "melting pot" concept for Cuba and likened it rather to an ajiaco, a
stew of meats and vegetables seasoned with hot pepper (aji). "The characteristic thing about Cuba,"
Ortiz contended,” is that since it is an ajiaco, its people are not a finished stew, but a constant
[process of] cooking.... Hence the change of its composition, and [the fact] that cubanidad has a
different flavor and consistency depending on whether one tastes what is at the middle [of the pot], or
at its surface, where the foods (viandas) are still raw. and the bubbling liquid still clear" [qtd. in
Palmié, "Out of Place" 35].
4
SPN 100
Unidad 4
EL CEBICHE Narrador: “¿Qué se obtiene de la mezcla de español, Inca, Africano, chino,
japonés, e italiano? Un menú peruano; un menú que ahora es considerado uno de lo más variados y sabrosos del mundo. El turismo
gastronómico es ahora toda una industria.”
Narrador: “Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, Chef de Malabar, me enseñó uno de los
ingredientes característicos de esta sabrosa cocina—el ají.”
Miguel: “Este, en forma seca, que es el mirasol, y tenemos otro ají que es el panca, que también forma parte de eso. ¿No?”
Miguel: “La chicha de Jora…” Narrador: “Este no lo puedo morder ¿No?”
Miguel: “Sí, lo puedes morder, pero…” Narrador: “¿…Pero me…me va a picar?”
Miguel:”Sí, te va a picar. Pero no mucho, ¿Ah? ¿Quieres que te corte un pedazo y te lo comes mejor? Es más, no te va a picar mucho.”
Miguel: “¡Vamos a comerlos los dos! Sí.” Narrador: “¿Entero? ¿Todo completo…? (Ja, ja, ja)…
No pica tanto. ”
Miguel: “Sí.” Narrador: “Pero Miguel tiene sus teoría sobre porque Perú es el nuevo
destino culinario del mundo.” Miguel: “Bueno, yo creo que uno de los…de lo que hace que esta cocina sea
distinta, aparte es su historia y su cultura, creo que es lo biodiverso que puede ser este país. En este país tenemos una cantidad de
ingredientes increíbles.” Miguel: “Y a la hora de bebidas, el pisco es el trago bandera.”
Narrador: “Yo intenté hacer uno, pero…” Miguel: “Ahora sí, (ja, ja) tienes que hacerte unos 30 a 60 al día.”
Narrador: “Algunos expertos califican esta cocina como el resultado de 5,000 años de historia incaica, colonial, y republicana. Pero de toda esta
variedad hay un plato típico que se destaca, y es el cebiche.” Narrador: “El Chef más famoso del Perú y uno de los más carismáticos,
Gastón Acurio, nos enseñó a prepararlo.”
Miguel: “Ese es un buen plato para…Yo necesito en negocios…Me llega una gente a mi casa… ¿Se lo puedo hacer?”
Gastón Acurio: “Por supuesto. Siempre y cuando seas escrupuloso en dos reglas únicas en realidad…”
Miguel: “Ajá.”
5
SPN 100
Unidad 4
Gastón Acurio: Primero, no que no hay pescado malo para un buen cebiche, salvo el que no esté muy fresco. Puede usar cualquier pescado.
Cualquiera está siempre y cuando muy, muy fresco. Esa es la condición—pescado congelado no sirve para el ceviche. Y tenemos, por
ejemplo, aquí una corvina que notas la frescura, por ejemplo, en el color—es transparente; en el olor que no huele a yodo. ¿Ves? Huele
solamente a mar. Y a partir de allí ya prácticamente tienes el 90% logrado de un buen cebiche.”
“La segunda regla es que los limones hay que exprimirlos en el momento, es decir…y no hay que exprimirlos mucho. Mira estos son
limones, este es el limón peruano que es para el cebiche. También, podrían, si no lo encuentran, podrían usar el limón brasileño ó el
mejicano. Pero la regla está en exprimir solamente a la mitad. ¿Por
qué? Porque la parte blanca que está aquí, si uno lo exprime demasiado, le transmite astringencia, es decir, lo hace amargo.
Cambia el sabor al final del jugo, entonces lo único que uno tiene que hacer es poner un poco de pescado cortado, en este caso estoy usando
corvina cortado en cubos, y colocarle una rodajita de ají, de este ají, que usamos nosotros que es el ají limo, que viene a ser el primo
hermano del ají habanero que hay en México, ¿okay? Y uno tiene que frotar así. Son detallitos… ¿no? que uno… ¿Para qué? Para que tenga
todo el aroma, pero que no pique demasiado. ¿Okay?” Miguel: “Entonces, ¿le estás frotando allí?”
Gastón Acurio: “Allí frotando porque esto pica bastante. Le froto un poquito. Le va a transmitir un poquito de aroma. La estrella del cebiche es el
pescado, el sabor natural del pescado, y la salsa que nosotros le llamamos ‘leche de tigre,’ y que la tomamos además en vasitos, este
jugo de cebiche. Está para realzar un pescado fresco. ¡Ho!”
Narrador: “Cocinar con Gastón Acurio es todo un privilegio sobre todo si se tiene en cuenta que su agenda ejecutiva siempre está llena de viajes a
sus restaurantes en América Latina.” Gastón Acurio: “Para mí papá ser cocinero era hacer hamburguesas en el
Wendy’s, que no tiene nada de malo, obviamente. Pero digamos, no entendía la dimensión en términos casi políticos, diría yo, de lo que
significa poder ser cocinero en un país como el Perú. ” Narrador: “Después de este plato típico peruano quedamos listos para
desplazarnos a nuestra próxima estación. Buenísimo.” Gastón Acurio: “Sí.”
Narrador: “Buenísimo.”
CNN, diana @ Perú
6
SPN 100
Unidad 4
SEMANA SANTA, GUATEMALA Canción: Tarde salimos. De noche llegamos.
Tarde salimos. De noche llegamos. Mi caballo muerto de hambre. Mi cuerpo mortificado.
Mi caballo muerto de hambre. Mi cuerpo mortificado.
Una señorita hay. Yo me la llevaré.
Una señorita hay. Yo me la llevaré. Usted se irá en mi caballo, y yo a su ladito a pie.
Usted se irá en mi caballo, y yo a su ladito a pie.
Paloma de mi amor, el tiempo ya viene. Paloma de mi amor, el tiempo ya viene.
Andar juntos por los cerros, mientras la luna se enciende. Hay palomita, abraso de un afligido.
Comparsas de Jujuy, canasta de Aymará,
Comparsas de Jujuy, canasta de Aymará, Cantando y medio llorando a orillas del Volvadera.
Cantando y medio llorando a orillas del Volvadera.
No cantan señores,
Y ¿Por qué están tristes? ¿Que no han visto que el verano
de hojitas verdes se viste?
Volamos como águilas Volamos muy altos
Alrededor del cielo Con una estela de luna
Con el Huichichayo
Con el Jayo Con el Huichichayo
Con el Jayo
Video by www.crystalavproductions.com
