I once read a statement about the work of Ricardo Güiraldes by an Argentine author who said that he admired the book Xaimaca even more than Don Segundo Sombra. While I can't remember the context or the source of this statement, I did make a note to myself that I should read Xaimaca some day, because I really like Don Segundo Sombra. I finally found a copy and read it. I would have enjoyed it, too, if not for a rather ominous dark cloud that hung over the sometimes-inspired travel writing of Mr. Güiraldes. Marcos, a young Argentine, sets out to travel up the Pacific coast, meets a brother and sister named Peñalba and Clara, falls in love with Clara, and decides to continue on with them on a boat to Jamaica instead of parting ways in Peru. He documents his travels in diary form, with their ship passing through the Panama Canal and continuing on to the island of Jamaica. Clara, and his increasingly passionate feelings for her, eclipse his observations of the seas that surround their traveling vessel, and the journal becomes more romantic than documentary in nature as their romance blossoms, hidden from their third companion, Peñalba.

Things pick up when they get to Jamaica: Marcos and Clara's feelings for each other are in full bloom, and the description of their lush island surroundings, told from the perspective of a young man in the throes of a budding romance, are spectacular. The entire island is alive, and the world of mountains, ocean, clouds, trees, rivers, streams and forests revolves around Marcos as if it were an animate being. I enjoyed this section of the book, where his sensations are hightened by his emotional state, and he channels his romantic feelings into his observations of the new world around him. His writing, and the human characteristics and actions that he assigns to the natural world around him, remind me of Oliverio Girondo. The two were contemporaries, and they were both avid travelers, so perhaps they influenced each other's writing. For Güiraldes, a bungalow in Jamaica "opens its empty arms to us as we leave the hotel's dining room, with the secret illusion of concentrating the silence of the equinox," "sugar refineries exhale a sticky odor of molasses," and "my window, full of wonder, opened its square mouth to the night." Statements like this, rolled off one after another, reminded me of Girondo's “Taverns that sing with the voice of an orangutan” or “Caravans of mountains camping out in the outskirts." I enjoy this method of personification, and was glad to encounter it again in the writing of Güiraldes. It works well with travel writing, complementing the wonder and novelty of the sights and sounds of foreign places.

Alas, the dark cloud hovering over this book is a racist dark cloud. Marcos makes many horrible, indefensible comments regarding the indigenous and black people that he sees during his trip. It's an angry, beligerant racism, and it appalled me. The indigenous women who come on their boat in Peru to sell their wares are representative of an earlier, less-developed humanity whose vestigal existence in the Marcos's "civilized" world is unfortunate and lamentable. Black people are dirty, untrustworthy, simian, fear-inspiring and, basically, a scourge upon his otherwise hygienically-sound journey through Panama and the Caribbean. I imagine his character greeting Nazi Germany's racial policy with great enthusiasm, and one gets the feeling that he would whole-heartedly support the extermination of races that he considers to be less-civilized than his own. I was greatly disappointed to read these comments. The book does appear to be a somewhat-autobiographical account of a journey that Güiraldes himself made with his young wife, and I have a hard time imagining that Marcos's views don't mirror Güiraldes's own. I had previously held the author in high regard, based on his Don Segundo Sombra and also on his influential role in Argentine literature. I certainly can't respect a man with these views, and I think that I will try to investigate a bit more into his life and see if I can find more information about him. I know that he dabbled in Hinduism and other spiritual stuff later in life, so it's possible that he at some point renounced any racist feelings he previously held. However, it's still shocking to see statements like the ones made by the narrator of this book, written by a writer who was so celebrated and respected by the Buenos Aires literary circles of his time. It makes me wonder: how many Argentine writers read this book and didn't bat an eye, or even worse, nodded their heads in agreement? ( )