How Roosevelt’s Personality Lingers Today

 

 

This poem by Ruben Dario is dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Rider, epitome of masculinity and energy and symbol of the emerging power of the US at the time of the writing of the poem.  Roosevelt represents all the jingoistic characteristics of the US for Latin Americans at the time of the Spanish American War.  This has not changed much in the one hundred years hence, although there have been Presidents who have made an effort to listen to our southern neighbors, not just overwhelm them with money and arms for acting in our best interest.

The references to historical and mythological places and people are innumerable in the poem and certainly require a classical education to understand the deeper meaning of the poem.  It’s understandable that the modernistas did not find a large reading public in Latin America for their style combines so many terms from different eras, Pre-Colombian and Colonial history, Western Hemisphere politics at the turn of the 20^th century, names from antiquity, and mythological people and places.  The reader must be well educated to begin to understand all the references. 

And while Dario criticizes the US for its attitude toward Latin America, the Spanish conquistas were certainly at least as cruel, single-minded and rapacious in their conquest of Latin America as their North American neighbors.  I only have to think of Pizarro’s words to the Inca king: “Where’s the gold,” to be reminded how greedy and uninterested they were in the indigenous peoples of the New World. 

So one hundred years later, the US is still seen as the bully of the New World.  And, while Dario makes reference to the potential ascendancy of the Argentines and the Chileans, these are currently not the countries considered strongest in Latin America, A good case could be made for the success of the Chilean economy and government, but the real powerhouse today appears to be Venezuela because of the liquid gold that they control.

In spite of all of this, the attitude of the poet toward the US and its overbearing approach to Latin America is understandable. But it certainly seems to be a subjective view of the contribution of the Spanish to the area, which still suffers from the way the countries in Latin America were ruled prior to independence.