Spinning wool into silver

Abstract

The novel Aves sin nido (1889) by Clorinda Matto de Turner has been principally read as a dramatization of the clash between modern civilization and backwards traditionalism. This article reconsiders this interpretation by situating the novel in the context of the economic boom in wool exports in the southern highlands of Peru. Reading Aves sin nido as a “romance of capital investment,” the article proposes that the central conflict animating the novel is the encounter between a liberal utopian vision of capital investment—exemplified by silver mining—and the violent on-theground realities of the wool export economy at the periphery of nineteenth-century global capitalism.