Jorge Bruce

OJO: I will soon come in and clean up this blog. Really and truly.

On May 26 and 27 I posted to my wall on Facebook a series of links and comments on Jorge Bruce’s NOS HABIAMOS CHOLEADO TANTO. I have not finished the book or figured out how it fits into everything else but I think Bruce is onto something and that a lot of the reactions miss his point. I will try to reproduce the Facebook material here so that I do not lose it over there.

Tanaka:
http://martintanaka.blogspot.com/2008/03/blog-post.html

Zona de Noticias:
http://zonadenoticias.blogspot.com/2008/03/cuestin-de-piel-narrativa-peruana.html

Puente aéreo [I LIKE THIS BLOG]:
http://puenteareo1.blogspot.com/2008/03/silenciosa-vigencia.html

On FB, I said:

But, re this book: I bought it over others because it appeared to be onto something and I think it is.

Vislumbro que a lot of the negative buzz around it is because it is challenging. Bruce says racism affects everyone in Peru, and some people say (like Americans who don’t… Læs mere want to be called racist because racism is a sin and makes you trashy) — oh no, not me, I’m not racist, he is too negative, what is he doing, condemning the whole country… I have to look more into this but I think I, too, am onto something.

This is one of the responses I mean. I think it misunderstands what Bruce means by looking at racism as a pathology (which I don’t think he actually does … he talks about it as a psychic wound and that is not the same as saying it is a sickness).

http://bloodyhell-la.blogspot.com/2008/03/racismo-ep1-bruce-vs-tanaka.html

Here is a quotation from one of my favorite posts on the matter (nice weblog, too, good Peruvian links):

Cuando Jorge Bruce dice que no es bueno confundir los “discursos oficiales y legales, por un lado” y, por otro, “las pr… Læs mereácticas de la vida diaria de los peruanos”, está diciendo una verdad meridiana, que describe por completo el error de Tanaka. Quizá el ejemplo más sistemático esté en los estudios de Roberto Schwarz acerca de la discrepancia de décadas entre la hegemonización del discurso antiesclavista liberal en Brasil, su virtual universalización en cierto momento, su conversión en sentido común de la época, y el instante, muy posterior, en que empezó (sólo empezó) a generar frutos reales, cotidianos y visibles en la vida diaria brasileña.

http://puenteareo1.blogspot.com/

Luis Aguirre does not like the book:
http://bloodyhell-la.blogspot.com/2008/03/racismo-ep1-bruce-vs-tanaka.html

And there was apparently a huge discussion of it, all over the papers and blogs and so on, and if you know Peru at all you see that many of those weighing in are rather well known in their own right.

And apparently there was a review of it in the Sunday supplement of El Comercio by one Joel Calero, but I have not found it yet.

I WISH I could find a similar hot discussion or fight about Sansone’s RACE WITHOUT ETHNICITY but all I have found so far are the rather bland and careful not to offend academic reviews.

And that Peruvian Internet is just HOPPING with discussions of race and racism, somebody should write a dissertation on it for a Communications degree or something, I do not exaggerate at all.