Literature and society: another judgment on Tomás Carrasquilla, Fernando González and Sanín Echeverri. Essay on the process of massification of Medellín.

Abstract

Abstract. This article tries a method of comprehension of the complex process of urban massification in Medellín between 1910 and 1940, taking advantage of the literary and intellectual production of the period. It examines in a systematic manner those elements that reveal social change perceived and emphasized by such important authors as Tomás Carrasquilla, Fernando González, and Jaime Sanín Echeverri. Without being exhaustive, nevertheless this examination offers a method of analysis and reveals the more suggestive and meaningful symptoms of changes in urban culture and the thinking of its different elites. The paradox could not be more insinuative for scholars of the region: from the work of Carrasquilla to that of Sanin Echeverri, one sees a growing criticism of the modernization processes, from an ironic contemplation of the change in customs and social-cultural habits in the author of Grandeza to a crude ideological denouncement in fascist tones by the recognized conservative leader Sanin Echeverri. It represents the forced march of a conservative regression that contains the intransigent criticism of bourgeois values, of the cosmopolitan tradition, with a extrem conservatism, that ended making Colombia unbearable during the years of the Violence; in other words, ended fulfilling the role of the anticipated fragments of cultural violence.