Chac mool carlos fuentes pdf skin#

Chac mool carlos fuentes pdf skin#

He loses the stone exterior and begins to develop the yellow skin of a native. As the story continues his physical appearance begins to change, becoming more and more human like. What is he like physically? What is his personality like?Ĭhac Mool is originally described as a stone statue with red sauce smeared over the belly. In this line the author clearly shows his dislike for Le Plongeon’s choice to remove the artifact from is historical site, removing a piece of Latin American history.ĭescribe the Chac mool. He knows about the imminence of the aesthetic deed” (“Chac Mool”). I think that Chac Mool will never forgive it. The clearest sign is him using the characters to speak unfavorably about Le Plongeon’s actions: “His spirit has lived in pitcher and storm, naturally his stone is something else, and to have taken it from its hiding place is artificial and cruel. How can we interpret Fuentes’ re-telling of Le Plongeon’s act?įrom Fuentes’ statements in the story he seems to look down upon Le Plongeon’s actions.

He was the person to first give a statue of the native population of Latin America this name and created the trend to name all further statues and deities the same name. Le Plongeon is the man who made the first discovery of a ‘Chac Mool’. Who was the Le Plongeon referred to on pg 5? When the first of these statues were discovered by Le Plongeon he gave it the name of ‘Chac Mool’, which has resulted in using the same term in the subsequent naming of other unrelated statues. What is a Chac Mool? (internet investigation)Ĭhac Mool is a general name given to statues and deities found in Latin America. Much like the people of Latin America, the characters in this story are forced to deal with the current world and its issues, while at the same time dealing with a past they don’t fully understand. The story represents how even actions hundreds of years before can cause a lasting impact on the lives of the current people due to the brutality caused by ripping the native people from their homes and beliefs. Chac Mool is only in Filberto’s house because the man who discovered the statue, Le Plongeon, removed it from its historical site, choosing to take Latin America’s history for himself, even though he had no ties to the land. I believe Chac Mool in this story represents the lasting effects of the conquistadors in Mexico and its identity. He also seems to have the funds to purchase non-essentials, such as the Chac Mool, leading to the assumption that he is earning more than enough money to support himself. He has inherited a house big enough to have multiple empty rooms and lives there alone. His journal gets progressively harder to understand as he claims the statue comes to life and torments him, leading to the odd behavior his friend had been curious about.įiliberto appears to be from an upper middle class. The story follows through his journal entries as he buys a Chac Mool statue he believes to be a fake, only to discover it contains the soul of the God of Rain. Who is Filiberto? What does he do? What class is he from? What might he represent?įiliberto is the main character of this story, whom we discover has died in the first line. The story switches from the present to the past as this friend reads through Filiberto’s journal as he attempts to understand what happened.

The story is narrated through a friend of the main character who is tasked with collecting Filiberto’s body and possessions.

They responded to a self-affirmation of the authors' autonomy and individual/national approach against Soviet and Cuban revolutionary impositions.Who narrates the story/How is the story narrated? Second, magical realism and other modernist formal experimentation used by the Boom authors, rather than being a nod to anti-communist US propaganda during the Cold War era, were a direct and personal reaction precisely against the strict internationalist political dictums coming first from the Soviet Union and then from Cuba. First, independently from a potential influence of CIA-backed political propaganda in Latin America, they were an inevitable outcome of the direct literary influence of US and European masters.

Magical realism, as well as other Boom aesthetic choices, including modernist experimentalism, responded to two separate developments. Instead of seeing Boom authors as the beneficiaries of international economic developments and marketing campaigns or as passive victims of US political propaganda during the Cold War, it would be wiser to acknowledge their ideological and literary agency.