Gender, Empire and Revolution in "La Victoria de Junin"

Abstract

AFTER Simon Bolivar's triumph at the Battle of Boyaca in 1819, a Bogotano painter named Pedro Jose Figueroa hurriedly painted over a portrait of a Spanish or colonial official (perhaps Bolivar's royalist foe Commander Pablo Morillo) and painted the Liberator with his arm around feminine liberty (Pineda 5). In time, however, the phantom of the painting's first subject began to emerge, haunting the Liberator's superimposed image by appearing horizontally to it. In Bolivia, coins with Bolivar's profile were similarly fashioned by altering a pre-existing image of king Ferdinand VII. I begin with these instances of colonial residue in the discourse of Independence because they are useful metaphors for this article's re-reading of the most canonical literary text to come out of the Latin American Wars of Independence: Jose Joaquin Olmedo's epic poem about Simon Bolivar, La Victoria de Junin (1825). A close reading of Olmedo's famous poem of Independence alongside his earlier monarchical poetry reveals that may also be viewed as superimposing the image of Bolivar onto a colonial canvas or silhouette. This transposition of old and new, of emergent and residual,' is carried out through a gendered trope of dawn, which presents political authority in terms of marriage and insemination, and which maintains the structure of monarchical authority by replacing the formula of God/ king/viceroy with Sun/Huayna Capac/Bolivar. In order to re-read Olmedo, however, we need to rescue him from the relative obscurity of his vexed position in Latin American literary history, negotiating between nationalist paeans and ambivalent and dismissive assessments of its worth as a work of art. Many critics, among them J. J. Mora, who first reviewed the poem in 1826, and Ricardo Palma, author of the Tradiciones Peruanas (1872-1906), have celebrated as a republican, foundational figure. The words of Augusto Tamayo Vargas succinctly summarize this critical posture: Olmedo puso en juego los sentidos y las visiones de America en armas contra la opresion; y fue la suya poesia patriotica como alta expresion literaria de la Emancipation Americana (18). Olmedo's political service to the homeland during the era of independence and the early national period resulted in his canonization in Ecuador as a national thinker and poet upon his death (17). On the other hand, the literary merits of his masterpiece have been seriously challenged from the very inception of the work, resulting in a tarnished, secondary position in a canon that acknowledges him but rarely comments upon his work in a substantive fashion. In his first communication to Bolivar regarding his composition, in January of 1825, complained bitterly about the stops and starts of the creative process. Borro, rompo, enmiendo, writes the poet, siempre malo (Olmedo, Epistolario 244). Upon completing the poem in May of 1825, himself confessed to Bolivar that he considered the poem to be long and cold, and worst of all, mediocre (252-3). Bolivar seconded the poet's doubts in an extensive critique dated July 12, 1825, faulting the poem for being rushed and defective in design. Drawing from Boileau, Bolivar found the poem bombastic: La introduccion del canto es rimbombante: es el rayo de Jupiter que parte a la tierra a atronar a los Andes que deben sufrir la sin igual fazana [sic] de Junin. Aqui de un precepto de Boileau, que alaba la modestia con que empieza Homero su divina Iliada; promete poco y da mucho. Los valles y la sierra proclaman a la tierra: el sonsonete no es lindo; y los soldados proclaman al general, pues que los valles y la sierra son los muy humildes servidores de la tierra. (Lecuna 38) Most importantly, however, Bolivar doubted the verisimilitude of having the Inca Huayna Capac praise the cause of the patriots and took to task for having the distinguished Inca talk too much: Tambien me permitira usted que le observe que este genio inca, que debia ser mis leve que el eter, pues que viene del cielo, se muestra un poco hablador y embrollon (38). …