“In the Land of God and Man” by Silvana Paternostro
I have delayed writing about this book for sometime now. This is the “Backlash” Susan Faludi equivalent for Latin American women that I mentioned reading while in Pana back in late May.
The reason for the delay?
An intense amount of material written about Latin America, and Guatemala specifically, is so negative. The area and the country have much work to do; socially, politically and emotionally. But with the American fear of travel, especially post 9/11, I tend to struggle a bit now and then when a place’s amazingness overrides its danger and naughty side. Guatemala is this kind of place for me. But then my honest streak kicks in. As does my need to share things that are relevant, interesting and telling. This book is just that.
The author, Silvana Paternostro, is a Columbian who moved to the US to attend university, and stayed on for the long haul. Having this Columbian upbringing she is able to dig into Latin American culture in a way that a gringa would never be able to do, no matter how much time was spent in this culture. It’s amazing how some of us spend our lives fascinated with other cultures, only to focus on our own in the long run. I digress.
The author states her reasons for writing so candidly and sometimes with a necessar harshness about her own culture’s behavior towards women:
p. 37
“Marriage and motherhood, although important parts of who we are as women, cannot be the sole and total path to our identity as women.”
Here are some poinant parts from the book:
p. 35
“If there has been attention to women’s issues…it is not because our governments decided they are concerned about women. It is because foreign dollars will not come if they continue to be embarrassed by these reports.”
(these reports being media reports of rapings, domestic violence, etc)
p. 83
“In 1880, more than one hundred years ago, Soledad de Samper, a privileged Columbian woman, wrote: ‘A woman’s hard is composed in equal parts of candor, poetry, idealism of feeling, and resignation. It has four epochs in its lifetime: during childhood it vegetates and suffers, during adolescence it dreams and suffers; during youth it loves and suffers; and in old age it understand and suffers.’ Sadly, if suffering was a constant in the hearts of Latin American women a century ago, it is not much different today.
p. 292
“The world of foundations and of the World Bank is funneling billions of dollars into programs targeted to “empower women” in ways ranging from giving women access to bank credit to teaching them how to negotiate safe sex. Yet it is curious that, regardless of these efforts, there is still no word for “empowerment” in Spanish. Empderamiento would be the transliteration, but it just does not sound right. It sounds unnatural. I have never heard anyone use it-not even the experts.”
But just as in Faludi’s masterpiece, this isn’t all negative. The author’s intentions are to bring to life things that are still not quite right in a culture in an effort to change them, bit by bit, to make them better. Oh, she says it so much better here:
p. 311
“The answer to patriarchy is not matriarchy. The answer is having a society where only men are free to be sexual is not having men ignorant of what to do “except put themselves inside women” as Poniatowska writes of the gender roles in Juchitan. …An equal society is not achieved through a battle of the sexes but through a sharing of power between them. It is about giving girls and boys the same things, be they education, nutrition, knowledge and understanding of their bodies their country’s laws and institutions.”
Tags: books, Guatemala, Latin America
