As a literary critic, surely my best source of information on "globalization" is literature and I hardly need to say that this subject is thematic in a great many works of contemporary Latin American fiction. In fact, Latin American literature includes a long tradition of cultural theorizing that addresses the nature and effects of cultural contact, and thus the processes of globalization avant la lettre. Since the first decades of the twentieth century, indigenista movements considered cultural (and racial) difference and contested the cultural homogeneity imposed by European and U.S- colonialism; indigenismo valorized indigenous traditions and practices, and reconstituted the question of cultural inclusiveness. The movement was led by the Peruvian intellectuals Jose Carlos Maridtegui and Jose Maria Arguedas, with related discussions of transculturation and national identity by Ezequiet Martinez Estrada in Argentina, Gilberto Freyrc in Brazil, and Fernando Ortiz in Cuba. Jose Vasconcelos, more than his contemporaries, celebrated the process of cultural contact: racial mestizaje had its apotheosis in the 1920s Vasconcelos's nationalistic concept of la raza casmica ("the cosmic race") Alejo Carpentier dramatizes this discussion: from his first novel in 1933 he recommends not that cultures struggle against colonialism to remain discrete in their differences, but, rather, that that they recognize cultural otherness and embrace it. His formulation of the neobarroco or New World Baroque provides an overarching structure to incorporate European, African, and indigenous cultures into a shared Latin American identity. In his 1975 essay "Lo barroco y lo real maravilloso* (The Baroque and me Marvelous Real"), Carpentier asks: "And why is Latin America the chosen territory of the baroque? Because all symbiosis, all mestizaje, engenders the baroque. The American baroque develops along with — the awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being criollo; and the criollo spirit is itself a baroque spirit". Carpentier, and following him the Cuban writers Jose Lezama Lima and Severo Sarduy, understood the irony of engaging the Baroque forms of the Spanish colonizers to construct a post-colonial identity and they turned effectively the neobarroco, or New World Baroque, into an instrument of contraconquista (counterconquest). The Neobaroque is an aesthetics and ideology of inclusion by which Latin American and Latino artists have defined themselves against colonizing structures, and continue to do so.

Questions:

53. The word "addresses" in line 4 probably means .

A. includes B. concerns C. relates D. talks

54. Indigenista movements most probably voiced the feelings of

A. the colonizing B. the colonized

C. the European D. the American

55. According to the author, minor nations and races

A. welcome globaliztion B. fear globaliztion

C. resent cultural contact D. needs cultural contact

56. The term "cultural otherness" probably means

A. difference in cultural identity B. cultural separation

C. hostility among nations D. cultural misunderstandings

57. "The cosmic race" probably refers to .

A. the incorporation of races B. the communication among races

C. marriage among races D. creation of a new race

58. "Baroque spirit" means the willingness to_____________.

A. recognize and embrace differences B. study foreign cultures with caution

C. D. protect local integrity