SPN 100 Cultura - Unit 4 Guatemala, Food and Syncretism Please read the following article excerpt, and view the video clips below. Listen carefully in order to understand as much of the Spanish as you can, using the images and contextual clues to help you get a sense of the gist of the video content. There is a transcript of exactly what has been said in each Cultura video (written in the language used in the video) available for your download in the Doc Sharing section of the course. Next, write a 200-word response in English, with at least 4 paragraphs in Spanish, to the issues raised. Make sure to address the following questions:  What is syncretism and how does it differ from the concept of the melting pot?  How is Latin America’s (Brazil and Cuba) experience with racial and cultural mixture different from that of the U.S.?  Can you give a couple of examples of syncretism in your own culture or in the U.S.? SYNCRETISM AND ITS SYNONYMS: REFLECTIONS ON CULTURAL MIXTURE by CHARLES STEWART (If you would like to read the article from which this excerpt was taken, you can find it in Doc Sharing.) The subject matter of anthropology has gradually changed over the last twenty years. Nowadays ethnographers rarely search for a stable or original form of cultures; they are usually more concerned with revealing how local communities respond to historical change and global influences. The burgeoning literature on transnational flows of ideas, global institutions, and cultural mixture reflects this shift of attention. This increased awareness of cultural penetration has, furthermore, been instrumental in the critique of earlier conceptions of “culture” that cast it as too stable: bounded, and homogeneous to be useful in a world characterized by migrations (voluntary or forced), cheap travel, international marketing, and telecommunications… In this body of literature the word syncretismhas begun to reappear alongside such related concepts as hybridization and creolization as a means of portraying the dynamics of global social developments. My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the present is not to enforce a standard usage conformed to the domain of religion; nor is it my goal to promote syncretism to a position of primus inter pares in the company of all other terms for mixture. I see my approach instead as an attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an objectionable but nevertheless instructive past… Current Discussions of Mixture Cultures, if we still wish to retain this term (and I do), are porous; they are open to intermixture with other, different cultures and they are subject to historical change precisely on account of these influences. This has no doubt always been the case… 2 Cultural borrowing and interpenetration are today seen as part of the very nature of cultures… To phrase it more accurately, syncretism describes t.

1. SPN 100
Cultura - Unit 4
Guatemala, Food and Syncretism
Please read the following article excerpt, and view the video
clips below. Listen carefully in
order to understand as much of the Spanish as you can, using
the images and contextual
clues to help you get a sense of the gist of the video content.
There is a transcript of exactly
what has been said in each Cultura video (written in the
language used in the video)
available for your download in the Doc Sharing section of the
course.
Next, write a 200-word response in English, with at least 4
paragraphs in Spanish, to the
issues raised. Make sure to address the following questions:
the melting pot?

2. n America’s (Brazil and Cuba) experience with
racial and cultural
mixture different from that of the U.S.?
culture or in the U.S.?
SYNCRETISM AND ITS SYNONYMS: REFLECTIONS ON
CULTURAL MIXTURE by
CHARLES STEWART
(If you would like to read the article from which this excerpt
was taken, you can find it in Doc
Sharing.)
The subject matter of anthropology has gradually changed over
the last twenty years. Nowadays
ethnographers rarely search for a stable or original form of
cultures; they are usually more concerned
with revealing how local communities respond to historical
change and global influences. The
burgeoning literature on transnational flows of ideas, global
institutions, and cultural mixture reflects
this shift of attention. This increased awareness of cultural
penetration has, furthermore, been
instrumental in the critique of earlier conceptions of “culture”
that cast it as too stable: bounded, and

3. homogeneous to be useful in a world characterized by
migrations (voluntary or forced), cheap travel,
international marketing, and telecommunications… In this body
of literature the word syncretismhas
begun to reappear alongside such related concepts as
hybridization and creolization as a means of
portraying the dynamics of global social developments.
My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the
present is not to enforce a standard
usage conformed to the domain of religion; nor is it my goal to
promote syncretism to a position
of primus inter pares in the company of all other terms for
mixture. I see my approach instead as an
attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an
objectionable but nevertheless instructive
past…
Current Discussions of Mixture
Cultures, if we still wish to retain this term (and I do), are
porous; they are open to intermixture with
other, different cultures and they are subject to historical
change precisely on account of these
influences. This has no doubt always been the case…

4. 2
Cultural borrowing and interpenetration are today seen as part
of the very nature of cultures… To
phrase it more accurately, syncretism describes the process by
which cultures constitute themselves
at any given point in time. Today's hybridization will simply
give way to tomorrow's hybridization, the
form of which will be dictated by historical-political events and
contingencies… As [Edward] Said
expresses it: all cultures are involved in one another, none is
simple and pure, all are hybrid,
heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated and unmonolithic"
[xxv]. Even traditionalist movements
mounted by minority groups or peripheral, postcolonial
societies in the conscious, nativist effort to
resist "Westernization" or "Americanization" cannot escape
cultural hybridity…
The Meanings of Syncretism
The term syncretism, originally coined with a positive sense…
acquired overriding negative
connotations in the seventeenth century… This negative view of
syncretism would remain very much
in place during the ensuing period of missionary expansion

5. lasting well into the present century.
Syncretism became a term of abuse often applied to castigate
colonial local churches that had burst
out of the sphere of mission control and begun to
"illegitimately" indigenize Christianity instead of
properly reproducing the European form of Christianity they
had originally been offered…
In the New World a much more positive attitude toward the
concept of syncretism has long prevailed
among social scientists… Whereas most sub-Saharan African
societies were still under colonial rule up
through the 1950s, most New World societies had already
gained independence in the preceding
century and had long been engaged in attempts to consolidate
national cultural identities. Many North
and South American countries publicly espoused versions of a
"melting pot" ideology as a strategy of
nation-building. The melting pot is the analogue of syncretism
in the ethno-political domain, and it
would have been difficult to criticize the one without
simultaneously undermining the other…
The Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, expressed broadly
similar views. Freyre considered Brazilian
society to be fundamentally a synthesis of different "races" and

6. cultures [xiii; Skidmore, "Racial Ideas"
22]. This synthesis was facilitated by the fact that the
Portuguese colonizers were themselves the
mixed outcome of a contact with a more advanced and darker
people-the Moors-and hence amenable
to cultural borrowing and racial mixture…
Public acknowledgment and discussion of racial mixture was
much more developed in Latin America
than in the United States, where many states still had
miscegenation laws on their books in the middle
of this century… Nevertheless, in popular and political usage
the Spanish term mestizaje, for example,
embraced both racial and cultural syntheses, and its political
valorization was a necessary nation-
building strategy throughout Latin America.
The Cuban historical experience provides yet another
illuminating example to contrast with the North
American melting pot. Cuban culture developed as various
exogenous cultures (primarily Spanish and
African) met and mingled. There were only creoles. The
indigenas disappeared entirely early on. This
situation prompted Fernando Ortiz, a Cuban lawyer, folklorist,
and historian, to develop the idea of

7. trans-culturation to depict the Cuban experience of mixture [97-
103; Coronil]. Transculturation
differed from acculturation in stressing that all cultures change
in a situation of contact; it involves a
simultaneous loss and acquisition of culture and, in the case of
Cuba, it is a matter of a continuing,
creative flux, never a finished synthesis. The Cuban example
thus did not indicate assimilation to a
3
cultural or ethnic dominant standard as was the case in the US,
nor did it have a teleology of
whiteness as did other parts of Latin America.
In less well-known essays brought to light by Stephan Palmié
["Out of Place"] Ortiz explicitly
dismissed the applicability of the "melting pot" concept for
Cuba and likened it rather to an ajiaco, a
stew of meats and vegetables seasoned with hot pepper (aji).
"The characteristic thing about Cuba,"
Ortiz contended,” is that since it is an ajiaco, its people are not
a finished stew, but a constant
[process of] cooking.... Hence the change of its composition,
and [the fact] that cubanidad has a

8. different flavor and consistency depending on whether one
tastes what is at the middle [of the pot], or
at its surface, where the foods (viandas) are still raw. and the
bubbling liquid still clear" [qtd. in
Palmié, "Out of Place" 35].

9. 4
SPN 100
Unidad 4
EL CEBICHE
Narrador: “¿Qué se obtiene de la mezcla de español, Inca,
Africano, chino,
japonés, e italiano? Un menú peruano; un menú que ahora es
considerado uno de lo más variados y sabrosos del mundo. El
turismo
gastronómico es ahora toda una industria.”
Narrador: “Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, Chef de Malabar, me
enseñó uno de los
ingredientes característicos de esta sabrosa cocina—el ají.”

10. Miguel: “Este, en forma seca, que es el mirasol, y tenemos otro
ají que es el
panca, que también forma parte de eso. ¿No?”
Miguel: “La chicha de Jora…”
Narrador: “Este no lo puedo morder ¿No?”
Miguel: “Sí, lo puedes morder, pero…”
Narrador: “¿…Pero me…me va a picar?”
Miguel:”Sí, te va a picar. Pero no mucho, ¿Ah? ¿Quieres que te
corte un
pedazo y te lo comes mejor? Es más, no te va a picar mucho.”
Miguel: “¡Vamos a comerlos los dos! Sí.”
Narrador: “¿Entero? ¿Todo completo…? (Ja, ja, ja)…
No pica tanto. ”
Miguel: “Sí.”
Narrador: “Pero Miguel tiene sus teoría sobre porque Perú es el
nuevo
destino culinario del mundo.”
Miguel: “Bueno, yo creo que uno de los…de lo que hace que
esta cocina sea
distinta, aparte es su historia y su cultura, creo que es lo
biodiverso
que puede ser este país. En este país tenemos una cantidad de
ingredientes increíbles.”
Miguel: “Y a la hora de bebidas, el pisco es el trago bandera.”
Narrador: “Yo intenté hacer uno, pero…”
Miguel: “Ahora sí, (ja, ja) tienes que hacerte unos 30 a 60 al

11. día.”
Narrador: “Algunos expertos califican esta cocina como el
resultado de 5,000
años de historia incaica, colonial, y republicana. Pero de toda
esta
variedad hay un plato típico que se destaca, y es el cebiche.”
Narrador: “El Chef más famoso del Perú y uno de los más
carismáticos,
Gastón Acurio, nos enseñó a prepararlo.”
Miguel: “Ese es un buen plato para…Yo necesito en
negocios…Me llega una
gente a mi casa… ¿Se lo puedo hacer?”
Gastón Acurio: “Por supuesto. Siempre y cuando seas
escrupuloso en dos
reglas únicas en realidad…”
Miguel: “Ajá.”
5
SPN 100
Unidad 4

12. Gastón Acurio: Primero, no que no hay pescado malo para un
buen cebiche,
salvo el que no esté muy fresco. Puede usar cualquier pescado.
Cualquiera está siempre y cuando muy, muy fresco. Esa es la
condición—pescado congelado no sirve para el ceviche. Y
tenemos, por
ejemplo, aquí una corvina que notas la frescura, por ejemplo, en
el
color—es transparente; en el olor que no huele a yodo. ¿Ves?
Huele
solamente a mar. Y a partir de allí ya prácticamente tienes el
90%
logrado de un buen cebiche.”
“La segunda regla es que los limones hay que exprimirlos en el
momento, es decir…y no hay que exprimirlos mucho. Mira estos
son
limones, este es el limón peruano que es para el cebiche.
También,
podrían, si no lo encuentran, podrían usar el limón brasileño ó
el
mejicano. Pero la regla está en exprimir solamente a la mitad.
¿Por
qué? Porque la parte blanca que está aquí, si uno lo exprime
demasiado, le transmite astringencia, es decir, lo hace amargo.
Cambia el sabor al final del jugo, entonces lo único que uno
tiene que
hacer es poner un poco de pescado cortado, en este caso estoy
usando

13. corvina cortado en cubos, y colocarle una rodajita de ají, de este
ají,
que usamos nosotros que es el ají limo, que viene a ser el primo
hermano del ají habanero que hay en México, ¿okay? Y uno
tiene que
frotar así. Son detallitos… ¿no? que uno… ¿Para qué? Para que
tenga
todo el aroma, pero que no pique demasiado. ¿Okay?”
Miguel: “Entonces, ¿le estás frotando allí?”
Gastón Acurio: “Allí frotando porque esto pica bastante. Le
froto un poquito.
Le va a transmitir un poquito de aroma. La estrella del cebiche
es el
pescado, el sabor natural del pescado, y la salsa que nosotros le
llamamos ‘leche de tigre,’ y que la tomamos además en vasitos,
este
jugo de cebiche. Está para realzar un pescado fresco. ¡Ho!”
Narrador: “Cocinar con Gastón Acurio es todo un privilegio
sobre todo si se
tiene en cuenta que su agenda ejecutiva siempre está llena de
viajes a
sus restaurantes en América Latina.”
Gastón Acurio: “Para mí papá ser cocinero era hacer
hamburguesas en el
Wendy’s, que no tiene nada de malo, obviamente. Pero digamos,
no
entendía la dimensión en términos casi políticos, diría yo, de lo

14. que
significa poder ser cocinero en un país como el Perú. ”
Narrador: “Después de este plato típico peruano quedamos listos
para
desplazarnos a nuestra próxima estación. Buenísimo.”
Gastón Acurio: “Sí.”
Narrador: “Buenísimo.”
CNN, diana @ Perú
mailto:[email protected]
6
SPN 100
Unidad 4
SEMANA SANTA, GUATEMALA
Canción: Tarde salimos. De noche llegamos.
Tarde salimos. De noche llegamos.
Mi caballo muerto de hambre. Mi cuerpo mortificado.
Mi caballo muerto de hambre. Mi cuerpo mortificado.

15. Una señorita hay. Yo me la llevaré.
Una señorita hay. Yo me la llevaré.
Usted se irá en mi caballo, y yo a su ladito a pie.
Usted se irá en mi caballo, y yo a su ladito a pie.
Paloma de mi amor, el tiempo ya viene.
Paloma de mi amor, el tiempo ya viene.
Andar juntos por los cerros, mientras la luna se enciende.
Hay palomita, abraso de un afligido.
Comparsas de Jujuy, canasta de Aymará,
Comparsas de Jujuy, canasta de Aymará,
Cantando y medio llorando a orillas del Volvadera.
Cantando y medio llorando a orillas del Volvadera.
No cantan señores,
Y ¿Por qué están tristes?
¿Que no han visto que el verano
de hojitas verdes se viste?
Volamos como águilas
Volamos muy altos
Alrededor del cielo

16. Con una estela de luna
Con el Huichichayo
Con el Jayo
Con el Huichichayo
Con el Jayo
[email protected]
Video by www.crystalavproductions.com