I Am Mirror: A Historical Critique Essay

Claribel Alegr? a in Nicaragua in 1924 and a stratum later her family was exiled to El Salvador because of her fathers support of Nicaraguan rebel leader Augusto Cesar Sandino, Alegrias family was forced into exile by Anastasio Somoza, a Nicaraguan politician who later became commander-in-chief of the Nicaraguan army and eventu eithery the nations president. Her poem I am Mirror was translated in 1978. And is the topic for this critique. In 1978 Alegr? a would be in the United States she left El Salvador in 1943 to study at George Washington University.From 1924 to her departure to the United States there was frequently violence in her home country in 1932 there was a walloping in which over a period of eight eld thirty thousand peasants were estimated to be slaughtered by the vastly superiorly armed El Salvador army. The country also has vast disparity of wealth with cardinal fractional to one percent controlling ninety percent of the nations wealth.The poem states Water spar kles on my skin and I dont feel it water streams down my back I dont feel it I rub myself with a towelI tinge myself in the arm I dont feel panic-struck I look at myself in the reflect she also pricks herself I begin to get dressed This is identifying that loaded portion of the population that controls 90 percent of the countrys wealth. It is describing their lack of humanity to allow the emit of the population to suffer in great poverty. The author uses this lack of aroma to question if their humanity has been lost. Given that Claribel was able to afford an American cultivation like many of the wealthy amilies did it stands to wonder how untold she associated herself with the wealthy.Perhaps its contributed by her support for non-violence and the poor habituated that she did come from some simile of wealth herself. In the following stanza it gives evidence that the quotation of the poem was wealthy I wander through the streets children with dirty faces ask me for charity The children could be desperate enough to be asking anyone but the character given that they were doing better than most at the time.But because again it does verbalise paint a pretty desperate picture with child whoredom and shouts like lightning bolts Military enforced oppression was the times. The use of a reflect as a metaphor could also be alluding to the killing of one and wounding of five students protesting the establishment spending of one million dollars to conduce the Miss Universe pageant to El Salvador. Of course during the program all that was shown were the beautiful sandy beaches and failed to show the massive poverty or array security around the contest.This is a portion from the poem I am a blank mirror that nothing penetrates my surface is hard is magnificent is polished I became a mirror and I am fleshless merely preserving a vague memory of pain. This demonstrates how the government oppression and the atrocities resulting from the oppressive military r ule were covered up by the government. Going back to the massacre of 1932 the government swiftly removed all accounts of the event from the libraries and replaced them with more well-heeled accounts.It was the way of life in El Salvador. The poor see much of the same everywhere they go poor. While rich control so much of the wealth they can afford to shield themselves from it. And the atrocities they never happened because the government says they didnt. As it says in the poem I simply reflect what happens at my side the tanks are not tanks nor are the shouts shouts The above demonstrates the denial that the mint form even goes as far to describe them as phantoms with how they do nothing to change.Which leads me to one of my favorite lines I hurt, therefore I endure which is likely an adaptation of Descartess I think therefore I am. In this situation she is saying that the lack of humanity of those who are the oppressors have stripped them from their existence. Furthermore as y ou read the poem it seems as if the character is coming to an epiphany but then recedes back right after the stanza I think, therefore I exist. This is probably used to show how permanent the stories wear in the media how quickly something like the killing of the student protester external of the Mrs.Universe can become a national headline and then slip from the attention of any news outlet.The symbolism of a mirror is also further represented with how a mirror project a current image but does not contain any of its past. In 1979 a year after this poem was translated and Alegr? a was awarded the Casa de las Americas poetry dough for Sobrevivo. It is also the same year that the National Liberation overthrew the Somoza government. She continues to write just about El Salvador and Nicaragua politics and resides in El Salvador, Spain and Nicaragua.