Juan G. Ramos seeks to add to our understanding of 1960s Latin America culture through a theorization of “decolonial aesthetics.” He defines this term as “a distinct Latin American perspective that intervenes and responds to Eurocentric interventions that have often sought to silence Latin American, non-philosophical ideas on aesthetics” (10). In the background of this notion of decolonial aesthetics, lies the belief that aesthetics have long had a colonizing potential in Latin America.
Ramos signals the 1960s as a key decade for the development of decolonial aesthetics, due to the explosion of literary and cultural production that occurred during those years and criticized the political status quo. Unlike many works that focus on a single country or region to discuss the 1960s in Latin America, Ramos embarks on a journey to discover a continental decolonial aesthetic, an act that necessarily requires him to look at artistic production from numerous countries. One of his most pointed critiques of scholarship on the 1960s—both that of the time and that which has come out more recently—is that it gives in to the temptation to view the “Boom,” New Latin American Cinema, antipoetry, and countercultural music as distinct movements and isolated events (11-12). The author attempts to right this wrong by viewing a wide array of media that allows him to tease out the decolonial underpinnings inherent to many otherwise disparate works. The book's ambitious scope, coupled with its excellent case studies, means that it will be mandatory reading for students and scholars in an array of disciplines.
Chapter 1, “Sensing Otherwise,” which reads like an extended introduction, makes the audacious assertion that “the rebellious artist is concerned with engagement with a wider audience, rather than how his or her work might be received by critics who build canons” (21). Here, Ramos provides his definition of aesthetics—a term that he associates more with practice than philosophy (30)—and emphasizes how art interfaces with those who consume it. The author provides several examples of 1960s artistic productions to make these definitions, and then he moves into his three principal case studies: antipoetry, nueva canción, and New Latin American Cinema.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4 will be of especial interest to scholars in the fields of poetry, sound studies, and cinema, respectively. Each chapter could easily form the core of a book-length study; nevertheless, Ramos focuses on the decolonial underpinnings that unite these genres. His discussion of antipoetry brings together an unlikely group of poets: Nicanor Parra, Mario Benedetti, Ernesto Cardenal, and Roque Dalton. Some of these poets (Parra and Benedetti) resisted through their words alone, while others (Cardenal, and especially Dalton) viewed revolutionary action as key to their poetry.
His discussion of regional music explores the work of Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Mercedes Sosa, and Silvio Rodríguez. Although these musicians performed very different types of music (nueva canción chilena, Argentine folk music, and Cuban trova), they all “contributed to an undoing of coloniality and aesthetics through sound” (94). Finally, his discussion of New Latin American Cinema engages the work of Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Humberto Solás, and Raymundo Gleyzer.
In the end, Ramos's innovative study does precisely what a good academic book must do: it identifies a new way of approaching 1960s artistic production, and in so doing it challenges the existing narratives in the field of Latin American cultural studies. The excellent discussions found in each of the chapters lay the groundwork for further inquiry from multiple genres and even different disciplinary angles. Indeed, this sophisticated engagement of so many disparate texts, genres, movements, and even theoretical approaches means that this book will leave a lasting impression on Latin American studies specifically and postcolonial studies more generally.
