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Yeison Lopez
Professor Cortez
CAS 201
11 April 2016
A New Perspective to See The World
Behind every storm, there is always sunlight behind it, waiting for the storm to pass for it
to come out and enlighten what it has destroyed. In Latin America, the birth of Modernismo
was the sunlight that people were expecting. At the end of the twentieth century, Latin America
had been suffering of fighting for their independence from the Spanish colonial rule. Citizens
wanted to see a new light; they had hope things would change. Modernismo brought prosperity
to Latin America, it made people forget about the current problems they were facing, it gave new
perspectives of the world. Although not many people could afford to be influenced by
Modernismo, to other people it brought a new life to them. Modernismo focused mainly on an
Eurocentric idea that had three main goals, the search of beauty, focused on exotic things, and
not caring about the local news but only news that affect the world.
Modernismo was the first literary movement in Latin America; it is considered that the
father of this movement is Ruben Dario. Born in Nicaragua but traveled all through the
Americas. He had unique ideas in which inspired other writers to follow his footsteps. Dario
was a man that wanted to bring new ideas to the world. The result was the birth of Modernismo.
This movement focused only in Eurocentric ideas, they believed that the capital of everything
was Paris. People took an interest of art and exotic things that were new to them. This
movement benefited more to the middle class citizens because they were the ones who could
afford everything that Modernismo was about. They wanted to discover new things like new

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culture, beauty, and exotic things. Modernismo did not give attention to citizens that were in the
lower class because they could not understand the meaning of the movement and if they did, they
could not afford living the same as a middle class person. In the time that Modernismo was
rising, it did not focused on political view or any social messages. The only importance to
Modernismo was to create art for art expression, it no longer wanted to hide message on
paintings. The authors wanted to show the real beauty of art. When it came to sculptures, they
would only bring ideas from Europe. The sculptures had a style of Greek culture, they were
fancy and having it as display at home it gave a message of higher-class society. The authors of
Modernismo wanted people to forget about the problems that had been facing and enjoy living a
better life. Ruben Darios poem suggested that beauty exist in a person and in the outside world.
In addition, Modernismo went through many transformations as we can identify through
the sample of Ruben Darios poetry. Ruben Dario had a unique way of writing poetry; it was like
he gave new meaning to the poems he would write. With the use of a unique language in his
poetry, we can discover that his poems also had a type of musicality that gave a nice rhythm to
each poem. Ruben Dario created two ways of understanding one poem. If you could not
understand the real meaning of the poem, then you will have to base the meaning through the
melody the poem had. The experiment that Ruben Dario did in his poetry generated a new
revolution to Latin American literature; it was so powerful that also reached literary production
in Europe as well. Also, Modernismo underwent several transformations because Ruben Dario
changed the type of poetry he was producing. Ruben Dario did not cared about local problems
but bigger problems that were affecting all Latin America. With the intervention of the United
States in Nicaragua, his native country, he no longer opposed of using poetry to send political
messages. He saw how the United States was taking power of all the Latin American countries

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and exploit them. He realized that if it continued it would lead to chaos. Modernismo then
shifted because of this, now it was used to help citizens understand the current events of what
happening around other countries. Modernismo was a movement that went from giving attention
to the outside world like focusing in Eurocentric ideas to focusing on the real problems in their
own country.
Moreover, Ruben Dario known as the father of Modernismo managed to change
positions from focusing on outside topics such as giving attention to having the best things in the
world. He wanted people to copy the life styles that people in Paris had; his poems were about
beauty and nature. However, as Modernismo become well known all around the world, Dario
gave another perspective of the movement. He started to focus on local news like the Unites
States controlling many countries on Latin America. He poems then address the problem of
society in Latin America. I am going to compare two poems from Ruben Dario and illustrate the
enormous changes tat he did to his literature. In winter written in 1980 is poem that describes a
beautiful woman wearing a sable coat that waits on an elegant, warm salon for a gentleman to
come. Ruben Dario manages to forget about the realism that is going outside the salon. We
know it is a slow winter and that it is snowing but Dario makes Carolina have everything she
needs to not care about what is going outside. She only cares about her man that will come soon.
Dario makes Carolina a desirable woman that any man would to have. The porcelain
jardinires from China loom up against the Japanese silk screen (Dario In Winter). Dario makes
the salon be so elegant full on foreign furniture; he tries to show people how they should live. At
the end of the poem, In Winter, the last line says, the snow is still falling in Paris. It shows
how Dario wants Paris to be the center of everything. We see that although it might be snowing
outside, a million problems can be happening, if you are inside a salon with a beautiful woman

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waiting for you and in Paris, nothing else should matter. In the other poem, To Roosevelt by
Ruben Dario written in 1904 we have a way different tone on the poem. Dario seems upset and
from line he starts insulting what we know is President Roosevelt. The whole poem explains
how Roosevelt is a person that does not care about anything but his own country. You are the
United States, Future invader of our naive America (Dario To Roosevelt). Dario shows a
concern of Latin America because he knows that the countries are weak and well developed like
the United States. He calls Roosevelt an invader because he does not care about the effects of
him controlling other countries might have; he calls him an invader because Roosevelt is taking
advantage of other countries because maybe they are not well developed like his country. The
future is wherever your bullet strikes (Dario To Roosevelt). Dario Argues that countries do not
have a chance against the Unites States, they only wait for his command because they have no
other choice. He shows how weak Latin America is because the whole passage talks about how
the United States has the power to do anything to other poor countries. This is a sign of
imperialism because Dario seems to just state what is going. He does not address any solutions
to the problem because he knows that his country could never be so developed like the United
States. Moreover, these two poems show how drastically Modernismo changed from time to
time. In the first poem, we can see a melody in the poem of calmness and happiness but in the
second poem we identify a melody of anxious, and angry. Also in the first poem I see that there
is a solution to the problem that was going outside, which was snowing, but the solution was to
be in a salon with a fireplace. In the second poem, there is no solution to stop the United Sates
from invading or controlling Latin American countries. He gives tone of lost hope; he only waits
for the Unites States to do whatever they would like to his country. The only similarity of these
two poems is the way that Dario describes the two protagonists of the poems; he manages to

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compliment both of them even though the second poem was about losing his country. Carolina
is a woman that any man would desire and Roosevelt a man with so much power that any person
would like to be in his shoes.
In conclusion, Modernismo is a literary movement that impacted most of Latin America.
Although in the beginning it only gave attention to the middle class society because they were
the only one that could live a sophisticate life. However, over the years the founding father of
Modernismo managed to shift things from concentrating only in a Eurocentric idea to more local
news. Modernismo has well impacted the lifestyle we live in today too because as a society we
are focused to live a very materialism life. We only want the best things that they can offer us
and we will not be happy for what we have because we want more. At last, if it werent for
Ruben Dario, we would never have our first literary movement in Latin America and perhaps
would not be living life like we are right now.

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Works Cited
Cortez, Beatriz. CAS 201 Survey of Central American Literature. California State
University Northridge, Spring 2016.
Cortez, Beatriz. Introduction to Central American Studies: Second Edition. California
State University Northridge: Kendall Hunt, 2015.