America is pleased to announce our formal partnership with Mirada Global, a multilingual Web site that brings together articles from Jesuit publications in North and South America. Like America, Mirada Global is for the general reader, not academics, and covers a variety of subjects, from religion and politics to culture and ecology. Criterio (Argentina), Mensaje (Chile) and Accion (Paraguay) are among the magazines that contribute content. (See the full list here.) Mirada Global is edited by Antonio Delfau, S.J., and features content in English, Spanish and Portugese.
Beginning in summer 2010, America will link to one article from Mirada Global each week. We begin with a literary reflection on Argentina's recent bicentennial, written by José María Poirier, the director of Criterio:
[v]ery often literature pursues the harsh task of founding or “justifying” the homeland. This is both an audacious and a noble task, which we, in the West inherited from Homer, Virgil and Dante Alighieri. Manuel Mujica Laínez was well aware of this, and in the stories of his book Misteriosa Buenos Aires he made an effort to endow our city with legends. This city beside Eduardo Mallea’s “still river” is often the synonym of homeland, the same one of which Borges said: “It smacks of fiction that Buenos Aires was ever founded / I judge her to be as eternal as the sea and the wind”. That is why Marechal, in his masterpiece speaks of a first man, Adam, whose surname is Buenosayres. Everything was foundational, as if Pedro de Mendoza and Juan de Garay hadn’t been enough and the country awaited for those who had to praise it in song. In this sense, the poet’s vocation calls on him to intertwine earthly difficulties with heavenly destinations: only the religious dimension would seem to justify human history.
Tim Reidy
This is a very welcome development. Some of the best writing on the socio-economic and political realities of Latin America can be found in the Jesuit publications listed above. Lamentably, access to some of them, such as Chile's excellent Mensaje, requires subscription. This limits readership and a link to one article each week via Mirada Global is a small contribution. Let's hope that America finds a way to expand greater (if not complete) access to all the Jesuit journals. Is there any plan to do?