Indigenismo y nación: Los retos a la representación de la subalternidad aymara y quechua en el “Boletín Titikaka” (1926–1930)

Abstract

Many Latin American intellectuals and politicians of the early twentieth century grappled with the “Indian problem” as a central element in their national projects. In Peru, as in other countries, capitalcity elites dominated the debate. Provincial actors participated as well. Cuzco, with its Incaic heritage and continuing role as educational and administrative center, was one focal point. So too was Puno, the isolated capital of a heavily populated and overwhelmingly indigenous highland department. Indigenismo y nación examines one progressive, yet problematic, manifestation of provincial discourse: Puno’s Boletín Titikaka. The Boletín reflected the artistic, social, and political proclivities of the “Grupo Orkopata,” an informal cluster of local intellectuals that included about half a dozen core members and as many again less regular participants. The Grupo published 34 issues of this four-page, reasonably regular monthly journal between 1926 and 1930. The original title, Boletín Editorial Titikaka, persisted for two years and reflected an initial emphasis on publicity for the Grupo’s “Editorial Titikaka.” The contents always included laudatory national and international reactions to Editorial Titikaka’s limited output, plus an increasing quantity of original articles, artwork, and poems.Zevallos Aguilar’s study in particular probes the tensions inherent in the Grupo Orkopata’s unstated multiple agenda. It begins with a lengthy conceptual exploration of the contradictions that emerged as a group of provincial mestizo intellectuals sought at once to describe indigenous customs and beliefs, represent Indian priorities and needs, and prescribe public policy. The Grupo, moreover, laid claim to this multifaceted vanguard role as indigenous leaders and groups were themselves acting ever more assertively. Zevallos Aguilar also discusses divergent concepts of nation and nation building, both as perceived by different groups in early twentieth-century Puno and with reference to those who would today assess subaltern representation and agency.Zevallos Aguilar rehearses his theoretical landscape with detailed clarity. Nonetheless, at least two questions arise as he fleshes out his case: Was the Grupo Orkopata sufficiently coherent, productive, and distinct for its Boletín to sustain so close an analysis? And is Zevallos’s textual commentary sufficiently informed by the broader contexts of contemporary Puno to support his conceptual contentions? Indigenismo y nación draws upon intense and, at times, overly intentioned readings of some 22 short pieces from the Boletín. Only 7 of these articles were produced by individuals that Zevallos identifies as core members of the Grupo Orkopata (p. 24). Moreover, these brief contributions provide very sketchy representations of positions that their authors, in almost all cases, developed elsewhere at far greater length. A single-page piece by Cuzco’s Luis E. Valcárcel, to cite only one example, reflects but poorly that intellectual’s massive scientific, political, and polemical output. The presumed alignment between the Boletín Titikaka and the Grupo Orkopata may, for all these reasons, be too tenuous to sustain an argument that presupposes the Grupo’s programmatic (or participatory) coherence.The book’s cursory acknowledgements of Puno’s historical and intellectual contexts are problematic as well. The text only mentions in passing the arguably transformational impacts of (for instance) rail links to Cuzco and the coast, the pioneering missionary and social activity of the Seventh-Day Adventists (whose local consequences included a proliferation of Indian private schools and whose persecution catalyzed national legislation for religious tolerance), a host of Indian “rebellions” with widely varying goals, scale, and leadership patterns, and structured programs to make Puno’s core livestock industry more productive and profitable. These shifts, and others as well, helped to delimit the range of programmatic and analytical possibilities apparent to the provincial indigenistas who sponsored the Boletín Titikaka, as well as for their contemporaries.The work similarly overlooks the Boletín’s intellectual and literary environment. For example, Peru’s southern highlands were, at this time, awash in educational initiatives, most associated with nation-building projects and many preoccupied with Indians. A teacher-training program geared to indigenous education had been launched at Puno’s Colegio Nacional “San Carlos”; several members of the Grupo Orkopata were themselves normalistas. North American educator Albert Giesecke was, in the 1910s, appointed rector of Cuzco’s national university, sparking both institutional reform and a burst of academic and social activism. Arequipa, the urban hub of Puno’s hinterlands, continued its own strong traditions of political independence and sporadic radical commentary. Zevallos simply fails to acknowledge this local and regional context of intense intellectual effervescence.Indigenismo y nación promises provocative insights into a complex interplay of aspirations, agendas, projects, and events. Unfortunately, the focus is narrow, and the work’s historical and documentary groundings are weak. With barely one hundred pages of text, this study is in all respects slim.