Indigenist and Heterogeneous Literatures

Abstract

In last few years, literary criticism-from various and sometimes differing perspectives-has identified urgent of adapting principles and methods of our critical work to specificity of Latin American literature. I am referring to what Mario Benedetti (1972) calls necessity of self-interpretation, or, in more emphatic terms, of founding a truly Latin American criticism.' I will not attempt to determine scientific and social validity of this obviously complex and risky project-a project that is nevertheless essential for development of our criticism. Instead, believing in its legitimacy, I will try to demonstrate one of many ways in which this criticism may be realized, specifically with respect to critical treatment of literatures that share a dual sociocultural status. Jose Carlos Mariategui-actively involved in polemic of late 1920s on indigenist literatures-spoke about urgency of shaping a critical system capable of explaining heterogeneous literatures (1976). He affirmed that the still unresolved dualism of Quechua-Spanish makes our national literature an exceptional case that cannot be studied with methods utilized for organically national literatures, e.g. those born and raised without intervention of a conquest (1963b). Mariategui's analysis can be extended to other Latin American literatures, illuminating not only ruptures stemming from conquest-in those cases where native stratum was not annihilated by impact of metropolis-but also clarifying other forms of heterogeneity, for example, those heterogeneous forms resulting from establishment of slavery in Latin America. This phenomenon that so concerned Jose Carlos Mariategui can be seen in indigenist literature of Andean nations, negrismo of Central America and