Latin American racing and literature - but mostly literature

Fans of the game know there is a grand tradition of horse racing in many Latin American countries. Even if not specifically, racing fans have a sense of it. We see who gets the work done on the backstretch. We see South American horses win major stakes and titles in the States. In many Spanish speaking countries (and in Brazil, for that matter) racing is far more a part of the fabric of the culture than it is in the U.S. today.

To prepare for an annealing into Latin American racing, I was inclined to lop every book off the shelf about racing and thoroughbreds set in any of our neighbors to the south. But before I could execute on this strategy, Jorge Borges convinced me otherwise.

In his essay The Argentine Writer and Tradition, the great Argentine man of letters responded to criticism that he was not adequately advancing a distinctly Argentine literary school due to his failure to bludgeon all his works with tangos and gauchos. Mark Frisch in You Might be Able to Get There from Here distills the point well.

"El escritor argentino y la tradición" (The Argentine Writer and Tradition) most clearly and distinctly portrays how Borges views his role in regard to dominant Western culture, and illustrates his purposes in dealing with the Western cultural heritage. That essay, along with a number of his stories, highlights that he not only sought to create a space where Argentine and Latin American Cultures could define their distinct qualities, but that he also viewed Latin American writers as playing a significant role in the redefinition of Western culture. Taking issue with those who claim that Argentine writers should focus on their indigenous material and their gaucho tradition, he argues that self-reflexive attitude is limiting and artificial. He refers to Gibbon's remark that there are no camels mentioned in the Koran....

In his essay, Borges says "there is no reason to emphasize camels in the Arabian work; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page."

Similarly, racing is part of the backdrop, part and parcel, first coronet in life's score in Latin America. I'd do better to watch the whole film, listen to the full ensemble, and not carve out one integral thread in the grand tapestry.

If you will indulge me, I will post a passage or two that strike me from Latin American writers over the next few weeks, regardless of whether they address racing directly. The context may even be more valuable than a surgical snapshot of racing in a vacuum.