portrays the salvager of boats, Tarlton, a cardsharp who spends most of his time. drinking in Punta Arenas. His Chilean companions make fun of Tarlton's faulty Spanish and hate his bullying attitude. In spite of his well-known vices, he is always hired to salvage wrecks by the English company because he is an Englishman. The foreign engineers are so much disliked that the workers revolt against them, according to Marín, who claims that the Chileans do the work but that the real owners of the region are the English, who control most of the stock of the companies and the markets in which the products are sold.

Marín also criticizes the large absentee landowners, who have built in the city of Punta Arenas large houses surrounded by lawns and flowers that can grow in this rugged climate only with expensive care, but who spend most of their time in pleasure spots abroad. Marín says that these millionaires, as well as the foreign stockholders, are utterly indifferent to working conditions on the sheep ranches from which their wealth comes.

The

Marín pleads the cause of the underdog. To move the reader, he pictures with stark detail the life of the worker. Chilote, who has slept on the deck of a boat in order to make the trip down from his far-away island, is soon disillusioned. The climate is cold, the bosses are described as unjust, cruel, and even criminal. In the short meat-freezing and shearing season he is often not able to earn enough money to return home for the rest of the year, and so has to spend the winter in a miserable Punta Arenas boarding house.

There is a note of naturalistic fatalism that seems to rule the lives of the workers in Marín's stories. The Chilote struggles in vain against economic exploitation. He usually succumbs. "Everything and

everyone struggles, lives and dies, car on by inescapable fate, one devour the other." In Marín's books all people who are good at heart are kil by stronger and trickier men.

Coloane also has a pessimistic philosop of life, but the struggle in his books primarily that of man against natur sucking quicksands, deep snowdrifts, bit winds, tempests on the sea-or a strug against wild animals or fierce men.

Even the animals of the region are fier especially in the stories of Coloane. the spring the eagles eat the new-bo lambs. In summer sea gulls tear ap the birds called caiquenes. In winter t caranchos peck out the sheep's eyes a later eat the sheep which can't find th way back to the camp. There is also t story of a wild horse that used to wat the colts being butchered. Even after was tamed he still had a strange malicio look in his eyes, and finally succeeded throwing and killing his master, as thoug out of revenge.

Both Marín and Coloane speak of th dogs, which are sometimes the men's on companions, and suffer the same har ships. Each shepherd has half a doze that run behind his horse. With gre intelligence they learn to drive the sheep and to protect them against storms an attacks from other animals, and they ofte save their masters' lives. The most hard hearted shepherd is gentle and even tende toward his dog and grieves bitterly whe his companion dies.

All of the authors stress the fact that i the Tierra del Fuego region men an animals have to struggle not only agains the inclemencies of nature and the violen instincts of others, but also against the utte solitude of the vast uninhabited wilds The most normal people do strange thing when living here alone. The shepherds get to the point where they talk conti

nually to their dogs and horses, or often address themselves to the wind. Others lose their ability to utter intelligible words when a stranger suddenly comes to see them. Even shepherds who have some companionship lose their minds in the long winters from the constant howling of the wind and the relentless snowstorms. This is the case with the shepherd Denis, in Cabo de Hornos.

Coloane's stories complement the struggle for life stressed in Marín's stories. Marín emphasizes the social and economic handicaps of the worker in the city, in the meat-packing plants, and at the ranch houses, the class struggle of worker against

boss or of native worker against foreign capitalist. The poor people and the good people lose out in this struggle, whereas Coloane's characters wage an individual struggle against a personal enemy, whether it be nature, man, or beast. The good man puts up a brave fight, and the hero often wins.

There is something truly epic in the struggle for life in the Land of Magellan. One feels the joy of living under difficult conditions. It is the same spirit found in Bret Harte's Californian miners, and in Jack London's Alaskan adventurers. It is the real frontier spirit-at the other tip of the Americas.

IT IS difficult to understand or evaluate any aspect of contemporary art in Haiti without first recognizing the unique cultural background of European and African traditions out of which it has developed.

Like all "official" art in Latin America since colonial times, Haitian art evolved within the narrow framework of European

art and, with some local variations, reflected European trends. Its models were for the most part French. Here, as in those other countries of Latin America where no great native genius emerged to rescue it, this approved academic art is dull, lifeless, monotonous, and generally characterized by sterile mannerisms in imi

The approval and acceptance of this folk art as evidenced by recent publicity, exhibitions, and sales, cannot be viewed entirely without suspicion, since it is the current fashion to admire or profess to admire primitive painting and primitive art. Actually, Haitian folk art does not fall into this large general classification if we accept the definition of primitive art as an embryonic form from which a more complete and perfected one is to evolve.

It cannot be denied that popular or folk art in Haiti is the work of people with little if any academic training and no bookknowledge of art techniques. Nevertheless, this painting and sculpture possesses

It

a high degree of feeling for design; a lively sense of poetic mysticism; an occasional sly, quiet humor; and an innocence of vision not to be confused with naïveté. also expresses, in intensely personal idiom of genuine merit, what the individual artist knows and feels rather than what he actually sees. Neither can it be denied that from an academic and realistic point of view there are technical deficiencies which may make appreciation difficult for those whose standards are based upon the admiration of superficial skill and virtuosity. However, despite these technical limitations, the popular, or folk, artists are developing a vigorous, fresh style which breaks away from European pictorial tradition, documents existing Haitian cultural patterns, and expresses the essential plastic qualities of the Haitian landscape.

Because this popular art is a compelling and intimate expression closely related to every-day life, it also reveals fine shades of the Haitian Negro's character. It discloses his esthetic aware

nesses and intuitive sensitivity; his capacity for penetrative thinking and deep. feeling; his ability to organize and to interpret his own experiences in his own time. This popular painting is the expression of a well-defined and well-developed mentality, which is manifested in a way of life differing from our own in religious, social, and psychological outlook, as well as in history and environment. It is a way of life which we shall be the richer for having understood.

To make that understanding clearer, it is necessary to dispel certain misconceptions concerning the important folk religion of Haiti, which is known as Vodun,1 and which, like other religions in other times and with other races had served, and here still serves, as a strong stimulus to artistic expression. (See Plate 1.) Vodun, sometimes called the common or second religion in Haiti, is a set of specific, established, deeply-ingrained beliefs and practices impregnated with the African traditions of the Haitian Negro's ancestry. The very name Vodun is of African origin. It is a Dahoman word meaning deity or spirit, and is attributed to a Congo tribe.

As the non-academic, unconventional tradition of a folk art has existed and

1 The author adopts the spelling of voodoo used by Mr. and Mrs. M. Herskovits, authorities on the culture of the New World Negro.-Editor

BAZILE

Another example of the use of folklore and its vivid imagery. The loup-garou is the werewolf.

PLATE 3. DETAIL OF CONTEMPORARY PAINTING: "DAMBALLA," BY PIERRE PROSPERI

Damballa, represented in Haiti as a red constrictor, is the deity of spring and of rain. Like the serpent symbol in other cultures, it symbolizes fertility and virility. It is one of the oldest and most powerful of Haitian deities.