Imperialism

As I was reading the article about imperialism and decolonization I thought a lot about was it means to be "history." First, I thought the point about feminism breaking the word down to his-tory was intriguing but it seemed like kind of a stretch to me. I think the fact that the word can be deconstructed that way is more a coincidence than anything. It's true that women have been treated poorly and misrepresented throughout history but so have a bunch of other people - basically every minority in every conflict. Don't they always say the winner writes history? This sort of transitions into the next thing I wanted to talk about. Can we really trust "history?" What is history? Is it the Monday night special on the History Channel? The textbook they assign for History 4A? The story of your family that your grandfather or grandmother tells you as a child? It seems like there are so many things in our culture that we take to be history, but when we examine it closely, how can we be sure that they are accurate? History is something that we exalt, especially in the United States, so one would think that it would be critical for such a powerful thing to be accurate. We base moral lessons and even future actions off of previous historical events and when we do so I feel like we're assuming that the retelling of the event is true. I think these questions regarding the characteristics and quality of history have an important setting in this class because one of the largest themes, decolonization, fits right into the issue of what is history. Back to "the winner writes the history", I think that very valid statement should make us consider the source of indigenous history. Because if it's indigenous history written by the "winner" (Western culture), can it ever really be genuine/accurate?

Word Choice

I chose the title PurpleBalloons because it is completely random. I like balloons.

When reading "Sculpted Stones (Piedras Labradas)" by Victor Montejo the word choice caught my attention more than anything.  Yes, the poem communicates the results of colonization on indigenous peoples and their struggles for preservation, but more importantly it succeeds in strong characterization in only a few lines. Montejo characterizes the Maya as strong and western culture as weak. In the first stanza we see "...several millennia/ of history,/ and forgotten by men/ shinning millenia/ of victory." Millenia is a strong word choice (in contrast to alternatives like 'many years') and it, along with the adjective shinning, it reinforces the depth and strength associated with having a history, like the Maya do. Victory is another obvious designation of the Mayan strength. The only characterization of Western culture in this stanza is forgotten. To forget something critical is a trait of the weak, not the strong.

In the second stanza Montejo tells us that the Maya culture "stand[s] as one" and "bares its teeth" at the "easy going...tourist...[and] onlookers." Standing as one and baring teeth indisputably create an image of strength and easy going tourist makes us of think of a naive traveler: either unaware of the greatness he is witnessing or too self absorbed to respect it. 

Finally, the Maya are characterized in the last stanza as vigilant, another positive trait. The whole of western culture is labeled a traveler. Traveler may or may not denote being unwelcome but it definitely means non native and maybe even out of place. Montejo succeeds in establishing an "Us vs Them" dynamic in this poem. We, the Maya, have millenia of history, are victorious, stand as one while baring teeth and are vigilant. They - the western civilization - are forgetful, easy going, tourists, onlookers and travelers floating through the cobwebs that have developed following the destruction of a glorious, indigenous empire.