Spanish Final

En El Mar*

*

Se Me Permiten Hablar*

*Domitila Barrios de Chungara Domitila's book of direct testimony of what it meant to have been born and grown up in the miserably poor mining villages, and her growing political awareness of exploitation, resonated with readers in many countries. In Let Me Speak! (the Spanish title Sí me permiten hablar is much more tentative, and reflects the nervousness Domitila said she felt when she first stood up to speak at the 1976 conference) she writes of the death of her mother when she was only ten years old, and how she had to then start looking after her young sisters, with little help from her father. When he remarried, she soon found herself thrown out of the house, and in turn wedded a miner from the famous Siglo XX tin mine, high in the Bolivian mountains. The book describes what became her daily routine, similar to that of many thousands of other miners' wives in their one-room shacks: 'My day begins at four in the morning, especially when my compañero is on the first shift. I prepare his breakfast. Then I have to prepare the salteñas (pasties), because I make about a hundred of them a day and sell them in the street... The night before we prepare the dough and at four in the morning I make the salteñas while I feed the kids... then the kids who go to school have to get ready, while I wash the clothes I left soaking overnight.' These wives saw how their husbands and sons were organising to try to prevent the military government of the 1960s taking away their hard-won rights. In 1961, the women at Siglo XX formed the 'Housewives' Committee' to fight alongside their partners. The struggle was often bitter, and Domitila details the two massacres that took place in 1963 and 1965, when scores of miners were shot down by the army on the orders of the dictator of the day. As with many others, the repression only served to make Domitila even more determined that things must change. To her, it was simple: the profits from the mineral riches of Bolivia went into the pockets of the imperialists from other countries, who used their allies and the army inside Bolivia to stifle any demands for better treatment. She was equally clear that the victims were not just the miners but also their wives and children. Domitila was convinced that the only solution was to organise and fight for a socialist revolution. It was after Che Guevara's murder in Bolivia in 1967 that things turned even more dangerous for Domitila. Accused of being a 'liaison with the guerrilla' she was taken into custody and beaten so badly she lost the baby she was expecting. Some of the most harrowing pages of Let Me Speak! cover those awful days, and how she was saved thanks to the kindness of a doctor and a colonel who was friends with her father. In spite of these experiences, she returned to the mining region and continued to press for better wages and conditions, particularly after General Hugo Banzer seized power in 1971. Her prominence as a leader of the working women of Bolivia led to her invitation to speak at the Mexico forum, and this in turn led to her book, produced from lengthy interviews with the Brazilian sociologist Moema Viezzer. Domitila's uncompromising account of life among the poor miners of Bolivia found an echo in both the United States and Europe. She became in great demand as a speaker, and toured many countries. She was always conscious that her main task was to help her own people in whatever way she could, and in a 1978 postscript to the book she insisted that all the information should be available back in Bolivia, so that 'we'll be able to do things better in the future, guide ourselves better, direct ourselves better, to see the reality of our country and create our own instruments to improve our struggle and free ourselves definitively from imperialism and establish socialism in Bolivia.' It was also in 1978 that Domitila and other mining women started a hunger strike for the release of imprisoned miners, the withdrawal of the army from the mines, and free and fair elections. Their strike won massive support in Bolivia and abroad, and was part of a movement that forced the military dictator Hugo Banzer to accept a democratic opening. Paradoxically, when a left-wing movement proclaiming socialism did come to power in Bolivia in 2005 under President Evo Morales, it was thanks to the organised peasant movements, among them the coca‑leaf growers, rather than the miners or their wives. By this time, Domitila was suffering from chronic ill health, and in 2008 she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died on 13 March this year.

La United Fruit Company*

*Pablo Neruda When the trumpet sounded, All was prepared on Earth And God divided the world between Coca-Cola, Anaconda Copper, Ford Motors, and other companies. To the United Fruit Company Went the juiciest piece, The central coast of my world, The sweet waist of the Americas. It rechristened these lands "Banana Republics," And over the sleeping dead, Over the restless Conquering heroes, The liberty and the flags, It established a farce: It outlawed free will, It handed out imperial crowns, It unleashed envy. It attracted a dictatorship of flies, Trujillo flies, Tacho flies, Carías flies, Martínez flies, Ubico flies, flies wet With the blood of the poor and marmalade, Flies drunk and buzzing Over the graves of the people, Circus flies, flies Well-versed in tyranny. Among the bloody flies, The Fruit Company made landfall, Pillaging the coffee and the fruit. In fleets like serving trays, The treasure of our sunken lands Slipped away. Meanwhile, In the sugary depths of the ports, The fallen Indians were buried In the morning mists: A tumbling corpse, a nameless Thing, a forgotten statistic, A bunch of dead fruit Tossed into the trash.

Axlotl

An unnamed man living in Paris becomes fascinated by an axolotl, a creature that he observes in the aquarium of the Jardin des Plantes. (A salamander noted for its permanent retention of larval features, such as external gills, the axolotl, or axolote, is found in lakes near Mexico City, where it is considered edible.) Despite its association with the everyday, the creature gradually assumes a mysterious quality as the narrator's fascination with the animal intensifies. He visits the exhibit every day and feels a growing affinity between himself and the creature. His description of the axolotl is realistic (the axolotl is like a lizard, about six inches long, with a delicate fish tail and paws), but he adds some eerie details. The creatures have humanlike nails and eyes with unfathomable depth. After the narrator describes the axolotl in the fourth paragraph of the story, the first hint appears that the affinity between him and the axolotl goes beyond that of a naturalist's love for the object of his study. Suddenly the narrator starts speaking in the first-person plural, as if he himself were an axolotl: "We don't like moving around too much, and the aquarium is so cramped; we hardly move and then we bang our tail or our head into another one of us; then we get problems, fights, tiredness. Time is less oppressive if we stay still." The narrator is projecting himself into the mind of the creature that he is observing; it is the first indication that he is slowly being sucked into the axolotl's universe. As the narrative continues, it moves—more and more disconcertingly—between the objective eye of the human observer and the internal universe of the axolotl. The narrator goes on to describe his fascination with the creature's eyes, in which he glimpses a "sweet, terrible light" and "an unfathomable depth which made me dizzy." As he becomes intrigued by the idea that the axolotls are, deep down, human, he imagines that their eyes are telling him: "Save us, save us." He visits them religiously every day, behavior so odd as to cause the guard to take notice. The narrator cannot keep his mind off the animals; he starts dreaming about them, feeling that they are devouring him with their eyes. Then the unthinkable happens. One day, as the narrator is pressing his face against the glass, looking into the eyes of an axolotl, he suddenly turns into one and sees his own, human face pressed against the glass instead of that of an axolotl. At this point the narrative takes a new tack by focusing on the narrator trapped within the body of an axolotl. The last paragraph of the story is ambiguous; it raises the possibility that the narrator and the axolotl are the same person, leaving the reader wondering who is who. The man visits the aquarium less frequently now because "the bridges between him and me are broken." The narrator is consoled by the thought that perhaps the man will "write about us, that he will write all this about the axolotls down believing that he is imagining a story."

Chac Mool

The narrator begins: Filiberto murió ahogado en Acapulco (191). He seems to know why he drowned - he was tempted to go, then swam too much for his age. Filiberto is to be transferred in his coffin via truck, and the narrator is going to deliver him. The narrator looks through Filiberto's briefcase and finds his journal ... "Filiberto's journal begins normally: he meets with a lawyer about his pension and dines in a café. He talks with his friend Pepe about religion and work, where someone died the water red. "He also has an affinity for certain forms of indigenous Mexican art. He's been looking for a reasonable replica of Chac Mool, the Mayan god of rain, which he finds in la Lagunilla. He is very skeptical of its originality - although it looks so elegant, it has tomato sauce smeared on it to sell its authenticity. He puts Chac Mool in his basement. "The plumbing broke, putting water in the basement. Chac Mool becomes covered with moss. That night, Filiberto begins to hear moans from the basement; the night they stop, more rain water inundates the basement. Scraping off the moss was difficult - it seemed to have become part of the stone already. Also, the figure grew softer; the skeptical Filiberto thinks the statue was actually plaster. Later, though, he notices the figure is the texture of flesh, of rubber, and that Chac Mool has hair on its arms. Of this impossibility, Filiberto writes, "Tendré que ver a un médico, saber si es imaginación, o delirio, o qué, y deshacerme de ese maldito Chac Mool" (198)." Filiberto's handwriting deteriorates to that of a child here. "What is real and what is imaginary? ... the line between the two is indistinguishable. The Chac Mool has become smooth, elegant, and golden, almost as if indicating he is a God. He begins to awaken; one night, Filiberto opens his eyes to see a grotesque, noisome creature at his bed; entonces empezó a llover (200)." In the real world, Filiberto is pinned with rumores de locura y aun robo (200). "Chac Mool has fantastic stories about myths and his birth, but has an inhuman stench that emanates from flesh that isn't flesh. He desires soap and sleeps in Filiberto's bed. "When the dry season begins, Chac Mool demands water; says Filiberto, debo reconcerlo: soy su prisionero (202). Chac Mool wears his clothes and is used to being obeyed. Filiberto discovers Chac Mool leaves the house at night to hunt for dogs, rats, and cats for food; later in the dry season, Filiberto is forced to order out rice with chicken. He also has to run trips to get water; if he tries to flee, he will be struck down by Chac Mool, also god of lightening. Filiberto also notices that Chac Mool eventually has to turn back into stone, that he is getting more irritable, and that he is falling into human temptations. Also, Chac Mool wouldn't die and leave Filiberto alive; Filiberto thus must flee. "He decides to flee to Acapulco at night; he plans to swim away with his little remaining money. He is sick of Chac Mool: a ver cuánto dura sin mis baldes (buckets) de agua (204)." The diary of Filiberto ends, and the narrator arrives at the terminal. When he gets there, the door opens; a yellow Indian appears; his appearance is repulsive, his face is covered in powder, he reeks of cheap lotion, his lips are smeared with lipstick. This man (Chac Mool?) says: "Lo sé todo. Dígales a los hombres que lleven el cadaver al sótano" (205).

Una Carta A Dios

The only thing the land needed was some rain, at least one strong downpour, the kind that leaves puddles among the furrows. Doubting that it would rain would be the same as disbelieving in the experience of those who, by tradition, determined the specific day of the year on which the seeds were to be sown. The whole morning, Lencho, who knew the land well, and adhered with dogged belief to the old ways, had done nothing more than stare at the sky in the direction of the northeast. "Now the rain really is on its way, woman." And the woman, who was preparing the midday meal, answered: "God willing." The bigger children were clearing the weeds out of the crops, while the smaller ones were scampering around near the house, until the woman shouted out to all of them: "Come in and get it!" It was during the meal when, just as Lencho had predicted, fat drops of rain began to fall. Great mountains of clouds rolled in from the northeast. The air smelt of fresh water. "Just imagine, lads," exclaimed the man while he revelled in the joy of getting drenched, using the excuse of picking up some belongings left on a stone wall outside, "that they're not drops of rain that are falling; they're new coins. The big drops are ten peso coins and the little ones are five..." And he ran his eyes with satisfaction over the field ready to ripen, adorned with the leafy rows of beans, all sheathed now in the transparent curtain of rain. But suddenly, a strong wind began to blow and amid the drops of rain began to fall hailstones the size of acorns. The hailstones really did look like newly minted silver coins. The kids, out in the rain, scampered around and picked up the biggest of the frozen pearls. "This is bad, very bad," exclaimed the man. "Hopefully it'll pass soon..." It didn't pass soon. For an hour, the hail pelted the house, the garden, the hillside, the cornfield and the whole valley. The ground looked as white as a salt mine. The trees were stripped of their leaves. The corn was torn to shreds. The beans left without a flower. And Lencho, with a troubled heart. When the storm had passed, standing amid the furrows, he told his children: "A cloud of locusts would have left more behind... The hail hasn't left a thing. Not a single cornstalk will give us a cob, not a single bean plant will give us a pod..." It was a night of weeping and wailing: "All our work, wasted!" "And nobody to turn to!" "We'll go hungry this year..." But in the very depths of the souls of those who lived in that solitary house in the middle of the valley, there was one hope: that God would come to their aid. "Don't whip yourself over it too much, as bad as it is. Remember that nobody every dies of hunger!" "That's what they say: nobody every dies of hunger..." And as dawn approached, Lencho thought a lot about what he had seen in the town church on Sundays: a triangle, and inside the triangle an eye, an eye that looked huge, an eye which, he had been told, sees all, even what lies in the bottom of our hearts. Lencho was a rough man, and he himself always said that life in the country dulls the senses, but he wasn't such a brute that he didn't know how to write. And when daylight came, and taking advantage of the fact that it was a Sunday, having convinced himself that there really is someone who looks out for us all, he began writing a letter that he himself would take into town to deliver to the post office. It was no less than a letter to God. "God," he wrote, "if you don't help me my family and I are going to go hungry this year. I need a hundred pesos to buy new seeds to sow and survive until the next harvest, because the hail..." He wrote "To God" on the envelope, put the letter inside, and headed off to town, still with a worried heart. In the post office, he put a stamp on the letter and dropped it into the mailbox. An employee at the post office, who was mailman, clerk and everything else, laughed out loud as he took the letter to his boss. He showed him only that the letter was addressed to God. Never in all his years as a mailman had he seen a letter addressed this way. The postmaster, a fat, affable man, also began to laugh, but shortly thereafter he drew his brows together and, as he tapped the letter on the table, remarked: "Faith! Whoever wrote this letter has faith! Ah, to believe like he believes! To hope with the conviction that he has! To maintain a correspondence with God!" And so as not to betray this treasure of faith revealed in a letter that could not be delivered, the postmaster came up with an idea: to answer the letter. But once he opened the letter, he realized that the answer would require something more than good will, ink and paper. Yet he did not let that sway him from his purpose: he called upon his employee to make a donation, put in a part of his own salary and asked several other people to make a small contribution "to a most worthy cause". He was unable to raise the hundred pesos that Lencho had asked for. He had to settle for sending the farmer what he had been able to collect, which was a little more than half. He put the money in an envelope addressed to Lencho, along with a sheet of paper that had but a single word by way of a signature: GOD. The following Sunday, Lencho came to ask, a little earlier than usual, if a letter had come for him. It was the same mailman who delivered him the letter, while the postmaster, besieged by the joy of a man who has done a good deed, spied at him through the frosted glass of his office door. Lencho showed not the slightest hint of surprise on seeing the money - so assured was he - but an expression of fury clouded his face when he counted it... God could not have made a mistake, nor could he have refused what he had asked of him! At once, Lencho approached the window to ask for some paper and ink. He settled down to write at the table for customers, his forehead furrowing with the effort to put his ideas down on paper. When he'd finished, he went to ask for a stamp, which we moistened with his tongue and then fixed on the envelope with a punch of his fist. As soon as the letter fell into the mailbox, the postmaster went out to collect it. It read: "God, Only sixty pesos of the money I asked you for reached my hands. Send me the rest, because I really need it; but don't send it via the post office, because the employees there are a bunch of thieves. Lencho."

Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías*

*Federico Garcia Lorca At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A trail of lime ready prepared at five in the afternoon. The rest was death, and death alone. The wind carried away the cottonwool at five in the afternoon. And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel at five in the afternoon. Now the dove and the leopard wrestle at five in the afternoon. And a thigh with a desolated horn at five in the afternoon. The bass-string struck up at five in the afternoon. Arsenic bells and smoke at five in the afternoon. Groups of silence in the corners at five in the afternoon. And the bull alone with a high heart! At five in the afternoon. When the sweat of snow was coming at five in the afternoon, when the bull ring was covered with iodine at five in the afternoon. Death laid eggs in the wound at five in the afternoon. At five in the afternoon. At five o'clock in the afternoon. A coffin on wheels is his bed at five in the afternoon. Bones and flutes resound in his ears at five in the afternoon. Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead at five in the afternoon. The room was iridescent with agony at five in the afternoon. In the distance the gangrene now comes at five in the afternoon. Horn of the lily through green groins at five in the afternoon. The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon. At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon! 2. The Spilled Blood I will not see it! Tell the moon to come, for I do not want to see the blood of Ignacio on the sand. I will not see it! The moon wide open. Horse of still clouds, and the grey bull ring of dreams with willows in the barreras. I will not see it! Let my memory kindle! Warm the jasmines of such minute whiteness! I will not see it! The cow of the ancient world passed her sad tongue over a snout of blood spilled on the sand, and the bulls of Guisando, partly death and partly stone, bellowed like two centuries sated with threading the earth. No. I will not see it! Ignacio goes up the tiers with all his death on his shoulders. He sought for the dawn but the dawn was no more. He seeks for his confident profile and the dream bewilders him He sought for his beautiful body and encountered his opened blood Do not ask me to see it! I do not want to hear it spurt each time with less strength: the spurt that illuminates the tiers of seats, and spills over the corduroy and the leather of a thirsty multitude. Who shouts that I should come near! Do not ask me to see it! His eyes did not close when he saw the horns near, but the terrible mothers lifted their heads. And across the ranches, an air of secret voices rose, shouting to celestial bulls, herdsmen of pale mist. There was no prince in Sevilla who could compare to him, nor sword like his sword nor heart so true. Like a river of lions was his marvellous strength, and like a marble torso his firm drawn moderation. The air of Andalusian Rome gilded his head where his smile was a spiked of wit and intelligence. What a great torero in the ring! What a good peasant in the sierra! How gentle with the sheaves! How hard with the spurs! How tender with the dew! How dazzling the fiesta! How tremendous with the final banderillas of darkness! But now he sleeps without end. Now the moss and the grass open with sure fingers the flower of his skull. And now his blood comes out singing; singing along marshes and meadows, slides on frozen horns, faltering souls in the mist stumbling over a thousand hoofs like a long, dark, sad tongue, to form a pool of agony close to the starry Guadalquivir. Oh, white wall of Spain! Oh, black bull of sorrow! Oh, hard blood of Ignacio! Oh, nightingale of his veins! No. I will not see it! No chalice can contain it, no swallows can drink it, no frost of light can cool it, nor song nor deluge of white Lillie's, no glass can cover it with silver. No. I will not see it! 3. The Laid Out Body Stone is a forehead where dreams grieve without curving waters and frozen cypresses. Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets. I have seen grey showers move towards the waves raising their tender riddle arms, to avoid being caught by lying stone which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood. For stone gathers seed and clouds, skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra: but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire, only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls. Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone. All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face: death has covered him with pale sulphur and has place on him the head of dark Minotaur. All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth. The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest, and Love, soaked through with tears of snow, warms itself on the peak of the herd. What are they saying? A stenching silence settles down. We are here with a body laid out which fades away, with a pure shape which had nightingales and we see it being filled with depth less holes. Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true! Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner, nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent. Here I want nothing else but the round eyes to see his body without a chance of rest. Here I want to see those men of hard voice. Those that break horses and dominate rivers; those men of sonorous skeleton who sing with a mouth full of sun and flint. Here I want to see them. Before the stone. Before this body with broken reins. I want to know from them the way out for this captain stripped down by death. I want them to show me a lament like a river which will have sweet mists and deep shores, to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself without hearing the double planting of the bulls. Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull, loses itself in the night without song of fishes and in the white thicket of frozen smoke. I don't want to cover his face with handkerchiefs that he may get used to the death he carries. Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing Sleep, fly, rest, even the sea dies! 4. Absence of the Soul IV The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree, nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house. The child and the afternoon do not know you because you have dead forever. The shoulder of the stone does not know you nor the black silk, where you are shuttered. Your silent memory does not know you because you have died forever The autumn will come with small white snails, misty grapes and clustered hills, but no one will look into your eyes because you have died forever. Because you have died for ever, like all the dead of the earth, like all the dead who are forgotten in a heap of lifeless dogs. Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you. For posterity I sing of your profile and grace. Of the signal maturity of your understanding. Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth. Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety. It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure. I sing of his elegance with words that groan, and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees

El Hombre Muerto*

*Horacio Quiroga "The Dead Man" reflects Quiroga's perennial preoccupation with death, nature, and the darker side of the frontier experience, and it offers a perfect illustration of his narrative technique. The plot may be summed up in three words: a man dies. While clearing weeds from his banana plantation, a farmer falls on his machete and takes approximately half an hour to die. The title of the story precludes any attempt to build suspense or supply a twist in the ending. Rather, it suggests that the outcome has been decided long in advance. MAC Perfume Shop MAC Turquatic. Classic, Sea Inspired Perfume. Official Site. maccosmetics.com | Sponsored▼ The short story is a particularly appropriate vehicle for Quiroga's choice of subject matter. Concentrated and intense, the short story singles out and focuses on a moment of crisis. Quiroga uses this medium to depict human beings in extreme situations. The struggle between humans and nature is a constant theme of the short story, and Quiroga's characters are engaged in a perpetual struggle with their environment. Occasionally they are successful ("The Incense Tree Roof," 1922); more often they are defeated ("The Son," 1935). Nature never appears as mere background in Quiroga's stories: the Paraná River, the jungle, the natural hazards of heat or flood—all are part of human existence, obstacles to be overcome, dangers to be conquered. There is no reward for the fight, the quality of an individual's life is in the struggle, and this alone is the meaning of existence. Nature is mutely present throughout the story—the Paraná River "sleeping like a lake"—but capable of great damage should it awake—the midday sun so hot that the farmer's horse is covered in sweat, the virgin bush lying in wait beyond the fenced-off land. The wire fence, mentioned eight times in the text, is simultaneously a symbol of the man's unceasing attempts to keep nature at bay and of the futility of his efforts. We might compare this with "The Son," in which a young boy trips over a wire fence and blows his head off with a shotgun. It is almost as if nature were showing the pointlessness of a person's attempts to fence it off. The dead man is never named. Quiroga always shows his protagonists in action, either carrying out a task or going on a difficult journey, and this man is defined by his work. He is first described as satisfied with the work he has completed so far; then, as he lies dying, he contemplates the results of "ten years in the woods": the fence he has put up, the grass he planted, the paddock it took him five consecutive months to clear, "the work of his own hands," the flood ditch, the banana grove—"work of his hands alone." From the outset he is linked to the tool that kills him: "the man and his machete had just finished clearing the fifth row of the banana grove," and "they still had two rows to clear." The machete is an extension of the farmer and an actor in the drama, while the man, who believes himself in control, becomes an object, or victim. Short stories frequently depict a moment of revelation or an epiphany, and "The Dead Man" is no exception, presenting the protagonist's growing awareness that he is no longer in control, that his life is ended. From the initial mood of complacency, there is the realization that he is fatally wounded. This is immediately followed by his refusal to accept his predicament. As he lies on the ground, surrounded by his possessions, within earshot of his family, he is conscious of the normality of external events in contrast to the abnormality of his situation. His perspective changes, and he now perceives himself as a small figure lying on the grass, with the insignificance of his life and labors marked by the repetition of the adjective "trivial." There are no superfluous elements in a Quiroga short story. All the parts of the narrative work together to produce the single effect that he, like Edgar Allan Poe, sought to achieve. His style is economical and terse. None of the paragraphs is particularly long, and some are extremely short in order to make a specific point or create a contrast. The first paragraph sketches in as much background as the reader requires, with no lengthy preliminaries, merely setting the scene, while other details are inserted at later stages. The narrative fulfills two functions: it tells the reader about the last 10 years of the dying man's life, and it shows his growing awareness of the futility of those years. The story is narrated from an omniscient third-person point of view, interspersed with paragraphs containing either the narrator's philosophizing, marked by first-person plural verb forms, pronouns, and possessive adjectives, or the dying man's last conscious thoughts. Through the camera eye of the narrator, there is a slow-motion sequence of the fatal accident, a series of panning shots from the place where the man lies dying, and, finally, an overhead shot that shows the small, crumpled body of the dead farmer on the grass below. The chronological time of the narrative is fairly short, half an hour at most, in contrast with the psychological time, much greater because of the digressions that represent the fluctuations of the man's consciousness and his growing awareness of precisely what has happened to him. The imperfect tense provides a backdrop, the preterit advances the action, and the present, present perfect, and future tenses denote his growing awareness. Deictics locate the action in time and space, reinforce the time scheme and point of view, and underline the helplessness of the man as he lies dying—he is surrounded by his possessions, but they cannot prevent his death. Adjectives are normally determinative in the more clinical third-person narrative stretches and qualifying in the subjective stream-of-consciousness paragraphs. Quiroga relies quite heavily on adverbs, not just for deixis but also to intensify, reinforce, and affirm emotional attitudes. Accumulation is an important device in his writing, either by repetition of certain key words, such as "wire fence," or by the triple structure of three adverbs, adjectives, or nouns placed together: "coldly, fatally and unavoidably." Irony is also a key factor in Quiroga's narrative. The man plans to enjoy a well-earned rest, but "rest" in the story becomes a euphemism for death. He takes great pride in his work and possessions, but in the end they kill him. Quiroga does not glorify his pioneer; for this man, as for so many others, the frontier becomes the final resting place. Human life and effort are presented as puny and ephemeral, and only the land achieves permanence and grandeur.

La leyenda del Pishtacu

According to folklore, a pishtaco is an evil monster-like man—often a stranger and often a white man—who seeks out unsuspecting Indians to kill them and abuse them in many ways. The legend dates back to the Spanish conquest of South America. Primarily, this has been stealing their body fat for various cannibalistic purposes, or cutting them up and selling their flesh as fried chicharrones. Pishtaco derives from the local Quechua-language word "pishtay" which means to "behead, cut the throat, or cut into slices".[2] The preoccupation with body fat has a long tradition in the Andes region. Pre-Hispanic natives prized fat so much that a deity, Viracocha (meaning sea of fat), existed for it. It is also natural for the peasant rural poor to view fleshiness and excess body fat as the very sign of life, good health, strength and beauty. Many illnesses are thought to have their roots in the loss of body fats, and skeletal thinness is abhorred.[3] With this, the conquistadores' practice of treating their wounds with their enemies' corpse fats horrified the Indians.[4] Spaniards, are also said to have killed Indians and boiled their corpses to produce fat to grease their metal muskets and cannons, which rusted quickly in the humid Amazon.[5] Andean Aboriginals feared Spanish missionaries as pishtacos, believing the missionaries were killing people for fat, thereafter oiling churchbells to make them especially sonorous.[6] In modern times, similar beliefs held that sugar mill machinery needed human fat as grease,[7][8] or that jet aircraft engines could not start without a squirt of human fat.[9] Pishtaco beliefs have affected international assistance programs, e.g. leading to rejection of the US Food for Peace program by several communities, out of fears that the real purpose was to fatten children and later exploit them for their fat.[9] Natives have attacked survey geologists working on the Peruvian and Bolivian altiplano who believed that the geologists were pishtacos.[10] The work of anthropologists has been stymied because measurements of fat folds were rumoured to be part of a plot to select the fattest individuals later to be targeted by pishtacos.[8] In 2009, the pishtaco legend was cited as a possible contributory factor in the apparent fabrication of a story by Peruvian police of a gang murdering up to 60 people to harvest their fat.[11]

Casa Tomada

'House Taken Over' is narrated by a 40-year-old Argentinian man who lives with his sister in a house they inherited from their parents. The brother used to be engaged, but his relationship ended. The sister has never married, although she had several offers. Nothing very exciting happens to either of the siblings during the first part of the story. Aside from taking care of their home, the siblings engage in their relatively uninteresting hobbies: the sister knits, while the brother reads books. Then the house is taken over. At first, it begins mundanely with noises. The siblings refuse to go in the parts of the house where the noises originate from. The siblings even abandon their possessions in parts of the house taken over by 'them.' Eventually the siblings are completely driven out of their house when the mysterious entity takes over the last section. The siblings leave their ancestral home at the end of the story rather than confront whoever or whatever has taken over their house.

Gallina Degollada*

*Horacio Quiroga The story contains the three elements of the title of the collection: love, madness, and death. A couple, deeply in love, marry and have children. Their four sons all sicken and are reduced to a state of idiocy because of congenital disease. They later have a daughter who is healthy and normal, but this child is butchered by her four brothers. The narrator focuses on a particular moment in time, the day before the tragedy occurs. He sets the scene briefly but with precise detail (the ages, physical and mental condition of the children, and the state of their parents' marriage) and then steps back in time to fill out additional background, all of which is intended to prepare the reader for the eventual outcome of the tale. There is then a shift to the present time of the narrative, with a relentless progression towards the ghastly climax. The story is not just about madness and violent death; it chronicles the breakdown of a relationship through the loss of respect, affection, and hope. Clinical description ("Their tongues protruded from between their lips; their eyes were dull; their mouths hung open as they turned their heads") alternates with more subjective matter marked by qualificative adjectives ("pro-found despair"), rhetorical questions, and exclamations intended to convey the parents' fears and anguish. ("So it was their blood, their love, that was cursed! Especially their love!") With the birth of their first son all their hopes seem to have been fulfilled. At the age of 20 months, though, the child is overtaken by illness and is damaged to the point of imbecility. The doctor attributes the illness and its effects to hereditary disease, which the reader may deduce to be syphilis. At the same time the child's mother is showing the first signs of consumption. The couple feel guilty and bereft but place their hopes in a second child. At 18 months this son also suffers convulsions and is left an idiot. When the couple try again, Berta gives birth to twins with exactly the same result. The young parents love their subnormal offspring and care for them as best they can. After three years, however, they begin to long for another child to make up for the four "beasts" they have already produced. Because Berta does not conceive right away they become bitter and resentful, no longer supporting one another but making veiled accusations about who is to blame for the children's illness. Husband and wife eventually become reconciled, though, and have another child, this time a daughter. By now they have shifted from "great compassion for their four sons" to overt hostility, demonstrated by the increasingly strong language used to describe the boys—"monsters," "four poor beasts"—and the fact that they are kept in the yard. On her fourth birthday little Bertita falls ill, having eaten a surfeit of sweets; in contrast with her brothers she is spoiled and overindulged. The parents have a violent argument in which the accusations are no longer veiled. Berta openly blames Mazzini's father for the children's idiocy, and he blames her consumption. The little girl recovers from her indigestion, but on the next day Berta coughs up blood. One horror has receded, but now another threatens their happiness. The couple decide to go out for the day with Bertita. During the morning the four sons see the maid killing a chicken and are fascinated by the sight of blood draining from the bird's neck. In the afternoon Bertita escapes from her parents and wanders into the yard. Her brothers seize her, carry her off into the kitchen, "parting her curls as if they were feathers." The parents hear her screaming for help but arrive to find the kitchen floor covered in blood. Quiroga makes use of foreshadowing and irony. The relevance of the title is not immediately apparent, but it does presage a violent death, as do the descriptions of the boys' animal behavior, particularly when they see the chicken slaughtered. Nor does the fact that Berta coughs up blood portend a happy ending. The irony lies in the fact that the couple's only healthy child dies at the hands of her brothers on the very day when they have cause for celebration: Bertita has come through her illness unscathed. There is also a kind of reverse symbolism. Light and sunshine normally represent positive qualities, virtues, but here the sun becomes a symbol of the boys' bestiality, and the day of the tragedy is splendid and sunny. It is possible that some of the inspiration for "The Decapitated Chicken" came from Joseph Conrad's short story "The Idiots," first published in 1898. In the Conrad tale a couple have four idiot children (twin boys, another boy, then a girl), the wife kills her husband because he tries to force her to have another child, then commits suicide by leaping from a cliff. Both tales depict growing hopelessness and the breakdown of a once happy marriage. Like Conrad's idiots Quiroga's "monsters" are never given names or any individualizing characteristic: they function as a collective, almost a herd. In Quiroga there are eight references to animal qualities: they live in the "deepest animality," make mooing noises, and all their feelings and responses are "bestial." In Conrad's tale the children are described as "worse than animals who know the hand that feeds them." Both sets of parents grow to detest their children, keeping them out of sight as far as possible. Religious themes run through both stories. In Conrad the anticlerical Jean-Pierre seeks a solution to his problems in religion. When neither solution nor solace are forthcoming, he turns against the church with renewed anger. In "The Decapitated Chicken" Mazzini and Berta try to "redeem once and for all the sanctity of their tenderness" and are desperate for the "redemption of the four animals born to them." In both stories there are hints of the biblical idea that the sins of the father are visited on the children and their children's children. In Quiroga there are comments such as "paying for the excesses of their grandfathers," "the terrifying line of descent," "rotten progeny." In "The Idiots" Susan's father was "'deranged in his head' for a few years before he died," and Susan's mother "now began to suspect her daughter was going mad." "The Decapitated Chicken" illustrates how Quiroga's essential themes and narrative technique work together to produce the greatest possible effect—in this case, one of horror and repulsion. Disaster is inevitable; all that remains to be revealed is the unfolding of the tragedy.

El Delantal Blanco*

*Sergio Vodanovic This story is about the classism of a woman in society. In the play are the lady with her son Alvarito, and the employee. The woman realizes that her son, who is 4 years old, has a lot of control, and is dominant on the beach. Although it destroys the sand castle of a little girl, the mother does nothing. The employee describes him as a fighter. On the beach, the lady wears a toweling blouse and swimsuit. The employee wears a white delatal uniform. The lady then explains that she is tired of being on the beach, because her husband has not arrived, and all her friends have already returned home. This shows that the woman does not have a good relationship with her husband and has only married him for the money. Then the lady realizes that the maid is very white, and the maid explains that it is not to be in the sun. Also the lady mocks the magazine because it has famous people who make a fool of themselves. He also wants the maid to go to Alvarito. At one time they are friends, and in another the lady is only interested in appearances. The lady does not understand much about the life of the countryside because she thinks they had everything very easy. He does not understand that to live, he has to work, and that's why the maid has left. He has a very arrogant view. He tells her that it is better not to get married because now she has everything she needs, less creatures. The lady makes fun of the magazine because she does not think they are real aristocrats because of their appearances. They all dress badly. The lady believes that the aristocracy comes natively, like her son with his mandates, and the clothes. The lady says that when she changes her clothes, the world looks totally different. He asks the maid how she feels in her clothes, and the maid says it's like sand, or clouds, because they're all white. Then the lady tells him to change his clothes. The lady puts on her white apron, and the employee puts on the swimsuit with the smock. The maid starts taking care of her nails and puts on sunglasses, acting like a real lady. The lady gets a little angry, when the employee tells her to take care of Alvarito herself. Then the lady gets angry with the employee for treating her that way, and a fight starts. The people on the beach take the real lady, thinking she is the employee, and an old man approaches the employee and tells her that it is communism's fault that the employees behave like that. At the end of the story, the employee makes er that now she is the mother of Alvarito.

Emma Zunz

Emma Zunz chronicles the revenge taken by the title character when she receives word by mail that her father, Emmanuel, has committed suicide. She blames Aaron Loewenthal, the once-manager and now co-owner of the mill where her father worked, for his death. Her father was arrested for charges of embezzlement leveled against him by Loewenthal, and before he was taken to prison, he told Emma that it was really Loewenthal who had embezzled the funds and framed him. Because of this secret she has kept since that moment when he was taken away, Emma resolves to avenge his suicide. She does not sleep that night, and spends the following day with her best friend, Elsa Urstein, and some other girls, at a women's health club. They speak of boys and, as usual, Emma expresses no interest though she is now 19. Emma and Elsa end up joining the club. Emma forces herself to sleep that night in preparation for her tasks the following day. Emma first calls Loewenthal to suggest she has something to tell him regarding the strike currently taking place at the mill. She then goes to a bar near the docks to find the crew of the Nordstjärnan, a ship which she read would be docked in port that day. She deliberately chooses a man of short stature with a foul mouth to solicit for sex. He takes her to the back and has sex with her, an event she perceives as out of time except for a moment when she recognizes that this was what her mother and father did. She then dresses, goes to Loewenthal's office, and gives him names of workers she insinuates are involved in the strike. Her resolve to kill him wavers, yet she wants justice; he leaves to get her a glass of water, and returns to find her holding his revolver, at which point she immediately shoots him. She tries to explain to him the justice of her act, but he is already dead. She then calls the police and reports that Loewenthal lead her to his office under the pretense of the strike, raped her, and she subsequently killed him. It is believable because her shame and hatred were real, as well as her outrage - as the narrator says in closing, "all that was false were the circumstances, the time, and one or two proper names" (219).

La leyenda del chupacabras

Leo San Juan has a nightmare of a man wearing a black charro uniform, claiming that he is "The Boy". Before the man could do any harm, Leo is awoken by Mandujano and a group of travelers, telling old war stories in a wagon heading to Leo's hometown, Puebla. When they reach a random checkpoint guarded by Spanish royalists, one of the men, Galeana, is forced to flee. It turns out that he is a high-ranking member of the opposing insurgency, and so are the men who are undercover cadets. Mandujano, the active lieutenant, explains that they are part of a great war for the sake of their freedom from the oppressive forces of the Spanish Empire. Leo agrees to keep their secret as they approach the soldiers. They succeed in the check, until one of the soldiers spots Galeana fleeing in the distance. This causes the insurgents to engage in a standoff. One of the soldiers, Licona, takes Leo and holds him at gunpoint, forcing the insurgents to surrender. They are taken into custody along with a decrepit and pale-faced ringmaster named Dr. Merolick, to be brought forth in front of the ruthless Royalist General Torreblanca. He offers Leo in exchange of information for freedom. Leo remains silent, enraging the general. Thus, Leo is taken in with the insurgents to an abandoned monastery in the mountains and is sentenced to be executed in the morning. On the route to their cells, Leo discovers that his older brother is a member of the Royalist army. Leo and the other men are taken to their cells and plot their route to freedom. Meanwhile, back in Guanajuato, Alibrije and Evaristo are having their own antics about having a girlfriend, but it all backfires on them because of a huge misunderstanding. Back at the monastery, two soldiers stand guard at the chapel, converted into a supply room, including a wagon owned by Merolick. However, they are both attacked by a winged creature and are killed, due to the creature sucking the blood from their body. After escaping their cell, with the help of Nando, they find the corpses of the guards. Merolick reveals that the creatures are chupacabras, winged beings that suck the blood from all living things to satisfy their hunger. Now they must escape the monastery without being caught by the surviving guards and chupacabras.

La leyenda de la Llorona

The legend is said that in a rural village there lived a young woman named Maria. She came from a poor family but was known around her village for her beauty. One day, an extremely wealthy nobleman traveled through her village. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Maria. Maria was charmed by him and he was taken by her beauty, so when he proposed to her, she immediately accepted. Maria's family was thrilled that she was marrying into a wealthy family, but the nobleman's father was extremely disappointed that his son was marrying into poverty. Maria and her new husband built a house in the village to be away from his disapproving father. Eventually, she gave birth to two sons. Her husband was always traveling and began to stop spending time with his family. When he came home, he only paid attention to the sons and as time passed Maria could tell that her husband was falling out of love with her. One day, he returned to the village with a younger woman, and told his sons farewell, ignoring Maria.[1] Maria, angry and hurt, took her children to a river and drowned them in a blind rage. She realized what she had done and searched for them, but the river had already carried them away. Days later, she was found dead on the river bank. Challenged at the gates of heaven for the whereabouts of her children, she was not permitted to enter the afterlife until she finds them. Stuck between the land of the living and the dead, she spends eternity looking for her lost children. She is always heard weeping for her children, earning her the name "La Llorona."[1] It is said that if you hear her crying, you are to run the opposite way. If you hear her cries, they could bring misfortune or even death. Many parents in Latin America use this story to scare their children from staying out too late.[citation needed] La Llorona kidnaps wandering children at night, mistaking them for her own. She begs the heavens for forgiveness, and drowns the children she kidnaps.[2] People who claim to have seen her say she appears at night or in the late evening by rivers or lakes, wearing a white or black gown with a veil.[3] Some believe those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for death or misfortune, similar to the Gaelic banshee legend.[4] Among her wails, she is noted as crying "¡Ay, mi hijos!" which translates to "Oh, my children!" or "Oh, my sons!" She scrapes the bottom of the rivers and lakes, searching for her sons. It is said that when her wails sound near she is actually far and when she sounds distant, she is actually very near.[5]

El presente perfecto del subjuntivo

The present perfect subjunctive is also used to talk about things that are expected to be done by a point in the future. The present perfect subjunctive can also be used to talk about actions that happened in the past but are relevant in the present. It's very common to see it used to talk about things that just happened. present subjunctive of haber + past participle yo haya tú hayas él, ella, usted haya nosotros hayamos vosotros hayáis ellos, ellas, ustedes hayan + -ado/-ido

El presente del subjuntivo

The present subjunctive (presente subjuntivo) is used in dependent clauses to express wishes, doubt, personal opinions and feelings in the present or future. present subjunctive stem = yo form of present indicative minus o ending -ar e es e emos en -ir/-er a as a amos an For example: TENER tenga tengas tenga tengamos tengan

El Eclipse

When Brother Bartolomé Arrazola felt lost, he accepted that nothing could save him anymore. The powerful jungle of Guatemala had captured him, merciless and definitive. When he awoke, he found himself surrounded by a group of indifferent natives who were preparing to sacrifice him before an altar. Then an idea flourished- He recalled that that day a total eclipse of the sun was expected. "If you kill me," he said, "I can make the sun darken in its height." Two hours later, the heart of Brother Bartolomé Arrazola dripped its vehement blood on the sacrificial stone (bright under the opaque light of the eclipsed sun), All of which the astronomers of the Mayan community had foreseen and written down in their codices, without the valuable help of Aristotle.