Introduction of Burnished Mahogany Between Two Mirrors: Latin America and Scandinavia

UT Permian Basin Assistant Professor of Spanish, Antonio Moreno, recently published a book that shows Latin America and Scandinavia attractive geographies, as well as the vitality and diversity of their cultures. Below is the introduction to "Burnished Mahogany Between Two Mirrors: Latin America and Scandinavia." It will be availbe in bookstores in March 2022. 

This book the reader is now holding is the result of a rhetorical question prompted by the copious amounts of snow accumulated over five days of continuous icy flurries. I posed it, almost two decades ago, as my friend Hernan Garcia and I were making our way home, caught in the winter storm. At the time, we were pursuing our doctoral studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Before hitting the road, as we were waiting for the blizzard to die down, we looked on from the office window as the piles of snow progressively expanded. The accumulation drew us into a state of most detailed observation, much like watching a drama unfold on a theatre stage. Previous to coming up with the question, I made the comment that for those of us born in the tropics—or, to be more precise, in Latin America (to use the label invented by the French in the XIX century to divide the continent into an Anglo-Saxon and a Latin world)—snow was an eccentricity, a museum artifact, an extravagance that had little more function tan to adorn the peaks of sky-reaching mountains.

The question I posed to Hernan was: “What do Scandinavians really think of us?”

The Scandinavians: people who have it all resolved by the welfare state in which they live. Us: by virtue of the telluric shocks provoked by recurrent economic crises, people who have learned to disbelieve, with ruthless thoroughness, all the myths surrounding social utopias and the longed-for modernity. Also, us: people who are paid salaries so meager that we frequently scramble at the end of the month, never quite making ends meet. On another point of impossible comparison, Scandinavians coexist with snow in their own special way while we have learned to live with an exuberant and menacing ecosystem which now is threatened by the effects of climate change. In other words, mine was a question that did not seek answers. It emerged as a reaction: an association between the snow, which was rendering exceptional beauty to our immediate surroundings, and a very specific region of the planet which at that time was unfamiliar to me.

In Latin American literature there’s a scarcity of references to snow: the white-covered peaks of Mexico’s high mountains make an appearance, and so does the permafrost on the icy crests of the Andes, as well as the glaciers found in the extreme South of the continent. They are all decorative; a part of the world where nothing consequential ever happens to move along the plot of fictional stories. An exception is One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) where the tenacity of Colonel Aureliano Buendia’s memory of ice manifests at the final moments of his life – and thus not only exhibits but underscores the accessory value of snow.

Geographic and climatic characteristics reveals a lot, helping us understand how we and the Scandinavians differ when it comes to a collective culture and the feeling of belonging.

This book is an exploration of the epiphany of travel.

Travel narratives are not a minor undertaking nor an easy task. They force us to implement a range of techniques and a variety of devices to describe the landscape and to both make immediate and transcendent that specific moment when the traveler connects profoundly with the place and the people. Among the numerous notions of a voyage that the great travelers of the XX century have bequeathed to us, I am most drawn to the one brought forth by Paul Bowles, a tireless nomad between cultures and languages, who emphasizes exactly that bond to place and people which can affect any wanderer. To transcend said bond, one must practice searching, negotiating, interacting, crossing… and must be open to barter. A text narrating a voyage is completely questionable if rooted in stereotype, prejudice, and an underestimation of the visited culture.

There are many examples, from both sides of the spectrum.

Let’s take, for instance, Mexico: An Object Lesson (1939), by British writer Evelyn Waugh. Its pages reveal that the reasons for the 1938 trip described by Waugh had nothing to do with pleasure, aesthetics, or gastronomy; they were political. The translation of the title into Spanish speaks volumes: México: robo al amparo de la ley (2009) / Mexico: Theft Sanctioned by Law. The translator’s interpretation of the title confirms that Waugh was traveling as a correspondent both for the British Crown and for the British oil companies – very much the same way employees of the famous East India Company did a century prior. The British author was not a traveler with a desire to learn lessons from a vast country he knew nothing about. His views on Mexico provoke indignation. He maintains that it is a country in ruins, plunged into chaos, dependent on the rich nations, and—as if that were not enough—a country lacking Enlightenment-fueled ideas. Waugh aims to impose his ideological point of view, one of an English conservative and colonialist (though one who, at least, writes devilishly well) as he assesses the effects of the oil appropriation that President Lazaro Cardenas had set in motion, thereby impacting Great Britain’s investments and interests on Mexican soil.

As a counterpoint it is fitting to highlight Eating in Hungary (Comiendo en Hungría, 1969), a surprisingly original book co-written by Pablo Neruda and Miguel Angel Asturias. The authors are the ideological opposites of Waugh. In addition, they enjoy as true epicureans a country that lays the table for them with its best dishes and—most importantly—with a lot of wine. Those two sixty-something, stout, double-chinned gentlemen (affectionately nicknamed “The Turkeys”) are unrepentant gobblers, passing through a country that is territorially devastated after the Second World War, but possessing as national heritage some of Europe’s most surprising foods. The unusual concoctions and combinations in Hungary’s traditional cuisine are no barrier to these two for whom nothing is strange among what travels from plate to mouth. The events described take place in 1965: Neruda is on his way to Yugoslavia, to be elected president of PEN International; Asturias, on the other hand, is headed to Moscow. Although both are in transit, they are declared guests of honor by the government seated in Budapest (those who have never visited that city should know that it inspires a desire to never leave).

Returning to Bowles’ ideas, he points out that a travel book is nothing more than “the story of what happened to one person in a particular place” (Days and Travels, 1993). Therefore, the main topic of the best travel books is the conflict between the writer and the locale.

As much as I wish to grab Bowles’ idea by the horns, I am overcome by a sensation of dizzying fragility, in view of what he makes obvious when it comes to conflict: it is not only what impacts and overwhelms us.; it is, by extension, what bothers and even irritates us once we establish contact with a place and its living culture. Bowles

himself is an example of adaptation and total immersion in a language and culture different than his own: in other words, an example of how, with the passage of time, an upper-middle class American could manage to acculturate. Morocco in general and the city of Tangier were not cultural landscapes that were completely foreign to him, given the linguistic splendor which he employed every day in his interactions. He knew how to interpret their multiple realities by virtue of unrelenting and constant contact over the course of 52 years.

It would appear, then, that travel is more complex than it seems. Although travelers have their own specific purposes, each different from the other, they all share the experience of a process framed by a start and an end, thus fueled by two determining impulses which one cannot avoid nor escape: human will and philosophical reflection. Ostensibly, travel is one of humanity’s greatest passions, rooted in a curiosity that implies the desire to visit a certain place, which in turn is a propitious element informing preemptive interactions, whenever they occur. Without them, travel loses all attraction and meaning. There are two types of travelers: one who hits the ground running, and the other who, like Paul Bowles, chooses to drop anchor. Different as they may be, both types require specific abilities (such as the capacity to use description, mnemonics, association, and imagination – to name a few), among which the most salient is the talent to witness a moment, to make it eternal, and—most importantly—to sublimate it. No matter how limited the time may be to look around, travelers know in advance that their writing can reveal the specific perspective of a small slice of a country, a city, or a village.

There is no established poetics of travel. Each traveler proposes it, in accordance with their way of recounting adventures and depicting contemplations. From Sofia Carrizo Rueda (Poética del relato de viajes / The Poetics of Travel Narrative, 1997) we know that the term Itinerarium not only is linked to travel, but also possesses ever-changing meanings. On the one hand, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the term denoted a list of villages, towns, cities, and mail stations of the Roman Empire, with the distances between them. Such lists were built according to fundamentals and knowledge adopted from Greek cartographers, for the exclusive use of the empire’s private and official travelers. On the other hand, the term relates to a certain Clergyman John (also known as John from Rome) and his visit to Rome in the VI century. He could well be named the father of religious tourism. In service to Queen Theodolinda, the clergyman filled several flasks (ampullae) with oil from the lamps that were burning at the tombs of saints and martyrs. Each flask had a strip of papyrus attached to its neck, describing the origin of its contents. After labeling the ampullae, John created a list of the churches and the respective tombs from which he procured the oil samples. All this together, the labels and the index, Clergyman John dubbed Itinerarium.

From the semantic and historical records of the term Itinerarium we are left with the notions of trajectory and transit, so eminently present, that today’s readers invariably assume a passage from one place to another. The priority of this dynamic lies in the assumed pact between author and reader: the result of an itinerary is not the product of a fanciful trip of the imagination, but rather it is a road traveled. The dispute and disagreements around what really distinguish a tourist from a traveler—while seeking a diagnosis based on the symptomatology of the practice of tourism or while aiming to validate the halo attached to those who cross geographical boundaries more boldly than others—is not even remotely of interest to the scope of this book. Nowadays travelers or tourists go on journeys surrounded by princely comforts, and we know not whether these optimal conditions are in fact lamentable and detrimental to the participatory dynamics required by all travel, even by trips undertaken just for pleasure, as argued by one of the great British travelers, Freya Stark, who traversed with dozens of suitcases the inhospitable but dazzling lands of Luristan in Northwestern Iran. The main point that unites both practices (journeying either as a tourist or simply as a traveler, with opposite motivations if you like) is that they legitimize and keep alive the nomadic nature of human beings: going on a voyage, returning, and recounting an experience orally or in writing. Because traveling, as it has been reiterated, basically implies the existence of an inner life.

Owing to the way the experiences compiled here are put in writing, it should be noted that—to avoid any confusion—we decided to call these narratives travel texts rather than travel chronicles. In any case, it is not with the intention to deny recognition to any of the literary genres: a play, a poem, or an essay project and evoke the same intensities as a travel chronicle. All travel texts in this book capture moments, examine the native or vernacular knowledge of the residents of the visited place, express amazement at nature, discern aromas, detail aspects of daily life, use like antient spells phrases in a language not understood, describe the pleasures of food and drink, exorcise monsters from the political spectrum, and conjure up the ghosts of writers. But, above all, they are texts that, by showing the Other in a particular ecosystem, allow the authors to unveil themselves. That is what it’s all about.

The title of this book (Burnished Mahogany Between Two Mirrors: Latin America and Scandinavia) suggests these inevitable encounters. Like the one popularized by Jorge Luis Borges in one of his most celebrated writings about the meeting between Colombian professor Javier Otálora and the enigmatic Scandinavian Ulrikke from the eponymous story (The Book of Sand, 1957). Latin American and Scandinavian writers present travel texts with varied norms and agendas; the political commitments, aesthetic aspirations, personal tastes, and literary abilities of each are included equitably and without prejudice. It is an encounter like the one Borges’ characters had in York, England (a city founded and fortified by the Romans): as Ulrikke shows her pride in being Norwegian, professor Otálora strengthens if not the Latin American identity, at least—metaphysically—his self-confidence and the recognition of his origins.

Without the anomalies brought forth by nationalisms of various sorts, when Ulrikke asks what it means to be Colombian, Otálora replies that it is an act of faith. “Just like being Norwegian,” she responds and acknowledges gracefully. From a postcolonial perspective, the book is also a political and cultural allegory. The travel texts don’t try to hide the paradoxes and flaws that generate so much damage when believed; they are narratives that don’t presume the hegemony of a transcendental eurocentrism with a trajectory that runs contrary to Latin American expectations; they are writings that don’t assume that Scandinavia stands above a region where vicissitudes and chaos drown out aspirations. Obviously, the two regions are antipodes – and it is not meant in geographical terms. In general, Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland) has achieved significant societal progress – there is no doubt about it. But despite being a region that takes first place in the world on many markers, when it comes to the mental health and happiness of its inhabitants, it can’t be said that it is the earthly paradise. Because, according to professor Otálora, it is a matter of faith. On the other hand, Latin America must strengthen the trust of its inhabitants in their institutions and must implement more effective strategies to reduce poverty and, mainly, to be able to palliate economic inequality.

This book proposes a change in the way we see each other. In addition to the significant differences between one region and the other, there are exigency-driven problems such as terrorism, pandemics, the heightening of extremist ideologies, the effects of global warming, which make us all face the same dilemmas.

A would like to express my appreciation to all collaborators for participating in this endeavor and for their patience. Also, I would like to thank our editor, Ramon Geronimo Olvera of the Autonomous University of Chihuahua, for putting his trust in this project. And finally, this book is dedicated to Peruvian writer Pedro Félix Novoa

who will not be able to witness the materialization of this collective publishing effort in which he participated enthusiastically. I mourn this painful loss, deeply saddened that he is no longer with the people close to him.