Writing the Sexual-Cultural Encounter in the Andes: La hora azul by Alonso Cueto

Abstract

This article studies the scene of sexual-cultural encounter in Peruvian narratives. It takes the circumstances of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's birth as a historical model in order to describe the structure of this encounter, the power relationships at play and the presence of discourses in tension. Then, a close reading of La hora azul (2005) by Alonso Cueto discloses the particularities of this encounter in the context of the Peruvian Internal War (1980-2000). This novel addresses the relationship between an upper-class lawyer and a young peasant woman held as a sexual slave during the war by the lawyer's father. The objective here is to analyse the discourses this encounter makes visible in terms of (Oedipal) kinship and bourgeois morality; the sense of responsibility and its political significance; and the assessment of the Internal War as a historical event that the novel suggests in a world context of globalization.