In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

CENTER VS. PERIPHERY 275
tric position in the European context. He explores "the possibility of
accomplishing a raid [a long-distance flight] that would make the greatness
of Spanish aviation known beyond our borders and that [would
confirm] the indisputable glory won on the fields of Africa. Looking at
a map of the world and examining the possible routes for such a raidwhich
would reveal not only the merit of the pilot but the achievements
of scientific research, and which would establish norms for future aerial
navigation from one continent to another across seas and deserts-I
understood that the flight to the Plata combined all this with the dangers
of the ocean and of the equatorial region, a great incentive for any
aviator. The enterprise would thus tighten the union between Spain and
the young Castilian-speaking nations on the continent discovered by
Columbus" (Franco, 5-6). [see Airplanes] Just as Franco conceives his
project within a completely Eurocentric mapping, so the French travel
writer Paul Morand has no doubt that America's Pacific Coast is the end
of the Western world, "the Western Land's End" (Morand, 23). At the
other extreme of the map, Morand describes a review theater in China
but sees in it only a "tragically bad imitation" of the European model
(67f£.). [see Revues, Roof Gardens]. Perpetuating age-old traditions of
intellectual arrogance, these authors feel no ambivalence about the project
of fighting "always and definitively the American despiritualization"
(Heinrich Mann, 309). In even more aggressive tones, the Fascist novelist
Mario Puccini defends the "simple, homey, provincial" elements of Italian
culture against any influence of American Artificiality (259).
Very few voices from the Periphery ever challenge such views of
Europe as the implied Center. Somewhat surprisingly, the inhabitants of
Buenos Aires and Argentinian politicians enthusiastically play along with
the staging of Franco's flight to South America as the revival of a distant
colonial past (Gumbrecht, 179f£.). For the Uruguayan-French novelist
Jules Supervielle and for his Uruguayan-born hero Colonel Bigua, who
seems to live in political exile in Paris, even the most gloriously romanticized
image of the Periphery is still the image of a colonial space: "The
colonial house with its old habits awaited him there beneath the sky, so
blue, without a crack. Ah! To hear at Las Delicias ... , passing by his
room three times a week, the live chickens that the shopkeeper held too
tightly under his arm while taking them to the kitchen" (Supervielle,
211). Ramon del Valle-lncLin certainly comes close to political reality
when he has the fictional Latin American dictator Banderas justify his