Cultural Complexes of Latin America: South and the Soul explores the theory and embodied reality that cultural complexes are powerful determinants in the attitudes, behaviour, and emotional life of individuals and groups.
The contributing authors, all from several Latin American countries, present compelling historical, anthropological, sociological, mythological, psychological, and personal perspectives on a part of the world that is full of promise and despair. Latin America is a region marked with psychic “fault lines” that cause disturbances in its populations on issues of social class, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and even geography. Many of these “fault lines” appear to have their origins in the “basic fault” that occured with the conquest and colonization of the region, primarily by the Spanish and Portuguese.
This “basic fault” and its subsequent “fault lines” reside not only in various groups that compete for status, power, wealth, and meaning but in the psyche of every Latin American individual who carries the emotional memories and scars of conflicts that have coursed through their mixed blood for generations.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Latin America
Introduction
Thomas Singer
Part 1: Brazil
1. South and the Soul
Gustavo Barcellos
2. Cordial Racism: Race as a Cultural Complex
Walter Boechat
3. Non Ducor, Duco, I am not led, I lead
Denise G. Ramos
4. São Paulo and the Cultural Complexes of the City: Seeing Through Graffiti
Liliana Liviano Wahba
5. The Cultural Skin in Latin America
Brain Feldman
Part 2: Chile
6. At the Far End of the World: Exploring the Chilean Cultural Isolation Complex
Claudia Beas and Javiera Sánchez
Part 3: Colombia
7. In the Shadow of the Virgin Mary
Maria Claudia Munévar
Part 4: Mexico
8. The Right to Exist: Mexico’s Spiritual Colonization
Jacqueline Gerson
9. The Broken Bridge: Exploring the Mythic Core of Mexican Cultural Complexes
Claude Juvin and Rocio Ruiz
Part 5: Uruguay
10. The Official Story of Uruguay: Cultural Complexes Underlying What Was and Was Not Included
Pilar Amezaga and Pablo Gelsi
Part 6: Venezuela
11. The Gringo Complex
Áxel Capriles M.
12. Latin America: A Region Split by its Cultural Complexes
Eduardo Carvallo
13. Venezuela: Cultural Complexes in Contemporary Context
Margarita Méndez