The Andes Imagined: Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity

Abstract

Exploring “the contradictions that lie at the center of [Peruvian] indigenismo” (p. 1) is the main objective of this book. It builds upon work done over the last two decades by a series of authors devoted to debunking indigenista mythical elaborations, from literature specialists (Antonio Cornejo Polar and Efraín Kristal) to anthropologists (Deborah Poole and Marisol de la Cadena) to historians (Gerardo Leibner) and even to renowned novelists such as Mario Vargas Llosa playing the role of literary critic in a book adequately titled La utopia arcaica: José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo. To this rich trajectory, Jorge Coronado contributes with a penetrating analytical perspective rooted in the field of cultural studies.Coronado’s innovation lies in his understanding of indigenismo as part of a broader debate on modernity. It was from there that, in his view, indigenista intellectuals received “the impetus, indeed the mandate, to correct the colonial legacy and neocolonial reality so firmly rooted in the region” (p. 24). José Carlos Mariátegui (1894 – 1930) appears, in this sense, as the greatest figure of a movement that reached its peak in the early decades of the last century. Two of the five chapters of Andes Imagined are dedicated to the legendary founder of Peruvian socialism. His project of “subsuming the indio into his own revolutionary discourse on the Andes, in which the indio plays a key role” is examined first. He seizes upon high lettered culture, poetry in particular, “as the vehicle for legitimating the indio in the eyes of the nation” (p. 45). Mariátegui’s decision to position “lettered culture in a tutelary position to indigenous history” demonstrates “the profound difficulty that indigenismo and its visions of modernity have in escaping the long history of unequal power dynamics that structures Andean society” (p. 51). In an interesting contrast, Coronado’s analysis of Labor — the newspaper published by Mariátegui as a proletarian supplement of the famous journal Amauta — presents a later moment of the mariateguista project in which steps were taken to generate a “more encompassing representation of the region’s reality, departing from the Indian’s characterization as an “aesthetic object” (p. 121). At the very least, Coronado concludes, Mariátegui’s “move away from literary indigenismo and toward popular press marks an awareness of marginalized populations’ lack of access to literature” (p. 133).Three other figures are examined as part of this valuable reexamination of Peruvian indigenismo. Pretending to write from within indigenous society, the Cuzco hacendado José Angel Escalante, a marginal figure of this movement, appears as an effective contrast to Mariategui’s project and other progressive intellectuals who tended “to empty the indio of any inherent meaning and fill him up, so to speak, with Marxist and Marxian potential” (p. 63). Alternatively, the poetry of Carlos Oquendo de Amat illustrates a frustrated attempt to negotiate the encounter between traditional and modern worlds. The case of Martin Chambi (1891 – 1973), a famous photographer from Puno, is the most interesting of these three chapters. Analyzing a handful of his pictures (all of them taken outside of his studio in downtown Cuzco), the author presents a convincing examination of the limitations of the view of the Indian forged by the indigenista lettered culture. I particularly valued Coronado’s contrast between Chambi and his contemporary “lettered” indigenista, Luis E. Valcárcel (1891 – 1987). Whereas the latter sought a scientific legitimation of his indigenista discourse in archaeology and applied anthropology, Chambi, a self-taught photographer of Aymara origin, used modern technology to capture the images of an alternative cultural modernity in the making. Thus, his characters are “modern indigenous subjects,” not the subjects that indigenismo “sees only as indios” (p. 138).By understanding indigenismo as part of a broader debate on modernity, Jorge Coronado has made an important contribution to the history of mentalities in the Andes. His call to expand our sources in our efforts to conceptualize this influential ideological trend should be heeded. Having said this, one wonders how a new analysis of the contradictions of indigenista discourses can help us to understand the mobilizing power of its myths as expressed in various forms of Andean radicalism throughout the last century. Andes Imagined does not tackle this thorny issue; rather, it reads more as a case study of a global debate on modernity. References to this debate abound in the text, making it a bit hermetic at times and thereby rather inaccessible to the uninitiated reader.