Eurocentrism has robbed Central America of the opportunity to define its own identity. Even its namesake is European, an Italian colonizer named Amerigo Vespucci. Upon return from their exploitative expeditions, the Spanish colonizers would publish fantastical descriptions of “the New World”, illustrating foreign creatures and the beauty of the continent. These publications spread like wildfire throughout Europe. People exalted at the discovery of a ‘utopia’. Because of the positionality of the United States, our perception of foreign cultures is implicitly affected by this colonial model of reality. The very fabric of this perception is based in exploitation and illusion.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel 100 Years of Solitude is a resounding example of a foothold to Latin America culture. In his Nobel prize acceptance speech, the author stated “our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.” This is the experience of the consequences of Eurocentrism. Ethnocentric culture is not something that can be adequately defined by a Wikipedia article or textbook, but rather by the essence of the creativity that arises from it, the ‘unique rhythm’ of a culture’s drum as Wade Davis puts it. It is a universal human act to express that which lives internally, emotionally, in a way that others can understand and relate to. This process is called aesthesis, the creation of material forms to render abstract truths perceptible to fellow humans. For anyone that seeks to gain a closer understanding of the diversity of culture on our planet, aesthetics provides a strong foothold of immersion within the culture.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. 2000. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated by Gregory Rabassa.
