As Noble Prize winner, Jose Saramago once said, “Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard”. While powerful nations like the United States were increasing their national income by taking advantage of the recourses their neighboring countries had to offer, it was destroying the economic balance within those countries by making the rich more successful and the poor suffer more. Throughout the novel One Day of Life, Manlio Argueta portrays the Cold War in Latin America as a time of desperation for the poor and as a time of capital greed. Through the eyes of the main character, Lupe Guardado, this novel illustrates the daily internal
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Immediately as you begin to read this novel you become clear of the type of lifestyle the Guardado’s were forced to live in, full of fear and lost hope. “Most families were so poor that every night for breakfast, lunch, and dinner they had the same exact thing, a tortilla with salt. “Coffee and hot salted tortillas for breakfast. This is our life; we don’t know any other. That’s why they say we’re happy”(Argueta 8). They have learned to accept poverty for what it is but even then they cannot avoid the problems that come their way. Within the novel One Day of Life, it not only shows the horrific living conditions most Salvadorian families had to endure but also the mental wear of the possibility loved ones who had gone missing will return unharmed and alive, but as you soon find out there is no happy ending in these stories of poverty. “I can see the morning star through a little hole. I know it because it’s so big. It flickers, on and off, on and off. At first I cant see it; then it arrives at the little hole as the stars and the moon and the sun walk across the sky” (Argueta 4). Lupe’s family, like most families in her town, were forced to live in a homes that were hand made from the tihuiolte trees bark and sticks; a tree that does not attract termites and has high durability. Besides living with the daily battle with maintaining ones health, …show more content…
Lupe stated, “I’m the one who’s supposed to provide for them, and even if I have to struggle, ill get them something, be it only one of those clay whistles—they’re cheap…”(Arugeta 10). This is a perfect example of knowing there is little she can do with her life has given her but accepts what she has as and not what she doesn’t. On top of living in poverty most people were being brainwashed with beliefs and ideas because they were simple fixes to problems they faced; making them believe death was a gift from god, which made them feel separated from their true emotions. “The priest would tell me to keep the faith, and that if the child were not saved, it would be because of someone’s carelessness… We couldn’t do anything, only accept; it was God’s will. Sometimes we didn’t even cry over our children”(Argueta 21-22). While the civil guards were creating all type of havoc they had them believing death was better than life, making death more acceptable in their society. Latin American countries were being taken advantage of not only for their fine exports, but also for the lives of the people they took form this earth and never gave a chance to find happiness. These are the problems that Latin America had to undergo which ultimately shaped their ideas and views on the Cold
Immediately as you begin to read this novel you become clear of the type of lifestyle the Guardado’s were forced to live in, full of fear and lost hope. “Most families were so poor that every night for breakfast, lunch, and dinner they had the same exact thing, a tortilla with salt. “Coffee and hot salted tortillas for breakfast. This is our life; we don’t know any other. That’s why they say we’re happy”(Argueta 8). They have learned to accept poverty for what it is but even then they cannot avoid the problems that come their way. Within the novel One Day of Life, it not only shows the horrific living conditions most Salvadorian families had to endure but also the mental wear of the possibility loved ones who had gone missing will return unharmed and alive, but as you soon find out there is no happy ending in these stories of poverty. “I can see the morning star through a little hole. I know it because it’s so big. It flickers, on and off, on and off. At first I cant see it; then it arrives at the little hole as the stars and the moon and the sun walk across the sky” (Argueta 4). Lupe’s family, like most families in her town, were forced to live in a homes that were hand made from the tihuiolte trees bark and sticks; a tree that does not attract termites and has high durability. Besides living with the daily battle with maintaining ones health, …show more content…
Lupe stated, “I’m the one who’s supposed to provide for them, and even if I have to struggle, ill get them something, be it only one of those clay whistles—they’re cheap…”(Arugeta 10). This is a perfect example of knowing there is little she can do with her life has given her but accepts what she has as and not what she doesn’t. On top of living in poverty most people were being brainwashed with beliefs and ideas because they were simple fixes to problems they faced; making them believe death was a gift from god, which made them feel separated from their true emotions. “The priest would tell me to keep the faith, and that if the child were not saved, it would be because of someone’s carelessness… We couldn’t do anything, only accept; it was God’s will. Sometimes we didn’t even cry over our children”(Argueta 21-22). While the civil guards were creating all type of havoc they had them believing death was better than life, making death more acceptable in their society. Latin American countries were being taken advantage of not only for their fine exports, but also for the lives of the people they took form this earth and never gave a chance to find happiness. These are the problems that Latin America had to undergo which ultimately shaped their ideas and views on the Cold