Contemporary Peruvian Research Articles

País de Jauja by Edgardo Rivera Martínez

Reviewed by: País de Jauja by Edgardo Rivera Martínez César Ferreira EDGARDO RIVERA MARTÍNEZ País de Jauja Lima. Alfaguara. 2022. 640 pages. EDGARDO RIVERA MARTÍNEZ'S first novel, País de Jauja, received immediate critical acclaim when it was published in Peru in 1993. Some thirty years later, it is considered a canonical work in Peruvian letters. This edición definitiva of País de Jauja not only underscores the author's artistic excellence; it is also a tribute to his many contributions to the topic of mestizaje in contemporary Peruvian culture. País de Jauja is set in 1947 and takes place in the town of Jauja in the Peruvian central highlands. The novel follows Claudio, a teenager from a middle-class family, over several weeks of summer vacation. During this time, Claudio's life is marked by a series of events that serve as a rite of passage to a higher level of intellectual and affective maturity, including his discovery of sexuality. The protagonist's mother, who encourages his musical vocation, plays an important role in his life, as does his older brother, who promotes Claudio's literary interests. With his mother's guidance, Claudio records lyrics to Andean music that will be played on the piano. In addition, he is fascinated by Homer's Iliad, which he reads over the summer, as well as the Andean oral legends he hears from an elderly housekeeper. Thus, the boy who began his summer playing with his classmates quickly reaches a degree of maturity as he realizes his artistic vocation and, more importantly, becomes aware of his multicultural heritage. In this coming-of-age story, the town of Jauja itself is the real center of the novel. Jauja serves as a symbiotic, utopian space promoting the intermingling of cultures in a genuine process of mestizaje. Moreover, it is a mediating space between the experience of modernity rooted in Lima, Peru's capital, and the remote Andean world. In Jauja, the Apus—the tutelary gods of the mountains—and the mythical Amarus—winged serpents inhabiting the sacred mountains—still exert their influence over the lives of its inhabitants. In short, Jauja is not only a version of paradise where people from all over the world migrate for the curative power of its climate, but it is also a symbol of the felicitous union of Western and Andean values that have traditionally been considered incompatible in Peru's cultural history. Edgardo Rivera Martínez is a key name in contemporary Peruvian letters. As País de Jauja clearly demonstrates, he is a gifted storyteller who presents mestizaje in a positive light—a complex but all-inclusive process in which Peru can see itself as a diverse, multicultural nation. [End Page 81] César Ferreira University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Food Studies in Latin American Literature: Perspectives on the Gastro-Narrative by Rocío Del Águila and Vanesa Miseres

Reviewed by: Food Studies in Latin American Literature: Perspectives on the Gastro-Narrative by Rocío Del Águila and Vanesa Miseres Lara Anderson Del Águila, Rocío and Vanesa Miseres. Food Studies in Latin American Literature:Perspectives on the Gastro-Narrative. U of Arkansas P, 2021. 280 pp. ISBN: 978-1-68226-181-1. Food Studies in Latin American Literature is a welcome addition to the growing fields of Iberian, Latin American and Hispanic Cultural Food Studies/Food Studies. This volume offers many strong chapters, which look at topics such as culinary fusion at the time of colonialism, nineteenth-century modernity and transnational foodways, gender and food consumption, as well as issues pertaining to food writing. The aim of the introduction is mainly clear and well argued, that is to show how the different chapters are linked to key moments of Latin American history and Latin America literature. Although the authors state that gastro-narrative is both object of study and methodology, I would suggest that the term gastro-criticism, a recognised [End Page 157] subcategory of socio/cultural-criticism, be also used to describe the study's methodology. It is not clear how all the chapters and/or food texts fall under the rubric of literature since some are recipe books, commentary, advertising, and chronicles. If the aim of the current volume is indeed to understand the essence of Latin American literary food studies, then the focus of this study should be just on literature rather than other cultural texts as well. The texts could be described as food texts, literary or otherwise which make up Latin American Food Cultural Studies and are part of a body of texts that take part in the creation and or subversion of identities and mapping of food and foodways onto the continent. Part 1 focuses on indigenous traditions, food legacies and exchanges starting from the time of colonialism, Part 2 on 19th century food cultures, Part 3 on gender and food, and Part 4 on food writing. Chapter 1 offers a fascinating account of how the Crown used food to control the Andeans, yet there were often ways of subverting hegemonic food discourse with indigenous writings that reflected a deep pride in native cuisine. Chapter 2 which focuses on the potato has lots of fascinating material but is too broad in its focus which includes chronicles, songs, and drawings from the early modern period to film prose and poetry from the contemporary Peruvian and Chilean contexts. Chapter 3's discussion of the culinary word of Sor Juana is most fascinating and provides insight into the material culture of New Spain. Her recipes which evince a mix of European, Arab-Andalusian, and Mesoamerican culinary traditions are cultural reflections of the time and demonstrate how food texts most often transcend the kitchen. She also upturns gender dictates in her fusion of cuisine and philosophy. Chapter 4 which starts Part 2 provides a most interesting discussion of how food changed in Mexico and Peru in the 19th century because of waves of migration. Food in this context was used to show class status and domestic imported foods was one of the ways to enhance status. Chapter 5 shows how male travel writing was replete with reactions of disgust in the face of food that was considered inedible thereby reinforcing the racist logic of colonialism which was based on white male supremacy. And in a similar fashion Chapter 6 describes Eduarda Mansilla's trip to New York during which she wrote travel literature with a multitude of references to how bad American food was, she judges American eating habits poorly indeed. I have written a great deal about the potential for food to act divisively during times of conflict or intercultural conflict and these negative descriptions of other people's food culture reminds us that we must find ways of using food as a force of good. Chapter 7 provides a fascinating account of homemaking in 1950's Mexico showing how through the food discourse they read or consumed, housewives were instructed in the uptake of modernization and mestizaje, deemed as superior to traditional indigenous culinary traditions. Chapter 8 focuses on Rosario Castellano's...

Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds ed. by Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow (review)

Reviewed by: Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds ed. by Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow Nayibe Bermúdez Vich, Cynthia, and Sarah Barrow, eds. Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds. Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2020. 356 pp. ISBN 9783030525118. The vibrancy of Peruvian cinema of recent years has produced energetic waves that are slowly but gradually changing the national film scene on several fronts. Peruvian film has seen an increase in the sheer variety of narrative content and places of enunciation, numerous cinematic forms and formats, and wider alternative spheres of circulation, distribution, and consumption. Moreover, in the consecration of "Peruvian regional cinema," which has started to disrupt the Lima bubble as arbiter of film and cultural production in the country, Peruvian cinema is making large strides towards a healthier positioning in the national and global imaginations. These vibrant waves splash also onto the academic field as reflected in Cynthia Vich and Sarah Barrow's anthology, Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds, which succeeds in its goal to frame the country's cinematic landscape with rapport to the social, economic, and political context of neoliberal Peru. There is no need to rehearse here the dearth of research leading to wide-ranging anthological analyses of the cinemas of Peru. Suffice it to say that along articles disseminated in journals, magazines, chapters in global film books, online and in other media, only a nascent history of specialized research in English has scratched the surface of the field, as exemplified in Jeffrey Middents' Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Culture in Peru (2009) and Sarah Barrow's monograph, Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: History, Identity and Violence on Screen (2018). For those conversant in Spanish, Vich and Barrow's book complements and is complemented by the writings of leading experts such as Ricardo Bedoya and Emilio Bustamante, whose most recent books, El cine peruano en tiempos digitales, 2015 and Las miradas múltiples: el cine regional peruano, 2017, respectively, attest [End Page 163] to the achievements of film criticism in Peru and the new heights of Peruvian cinemas. As the first English-language compilation, and through its focus on the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Vich and Barrow's Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds comes as a fresh breath of air into Northern scholarship on Peruvian cinema and global analyses of the cinemas of Latin America. In the introduction to their edited compilation, Vich and Barrow tie the significant upsurge in Peruvian film production to the end of the war (1980-2000) between the Peruvian State and the guerrilla forces of Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso). As one of the book's stated goals, they pinpoint the showcasing of "films that, highlighting the wide spectrum of contemporary experience, lie at opposite ends of the ideological positioning toward the realities of the Peruvian nation as reinvented through neoliberalism" (6). Indeed, the editors frame their approach through a national lens that connects cinema to the diversity of Peruvian voices coming through from different cultural, gender, and socio-economic identities, to developments in the film sector, and to political and economic trends. This framework allows for the conceptualization of the cinemas of Peru as cultural artifacts that participate in and promote decentralization, diversification, and the inclusion of Indigenous cultures and languages into national dynamics. Towards this end, the collection seeks to address the relationship of production and target audience with market dynamics, while also identifying the myriad of accomplishments and the levels of precariousness that continue to plague Peruvian cinema in all areas. Under such parameters, Peruvian Cinema of the Twenty-First Century: Dynamic and Unstable Grounds is organized in two overarching categories, the first of which, "The Market Dynamics of Peruvian Cinema," comprises three sections: 'Big budget production for local entertainment,' comprising 2 articles; 'Regional low budget drama,' consisting in 3 articles; and 'Art film for festival circuits,' which constitutes the bulk of the discussion with 8 articles. What connects these pieces is the study of films whose production and consumption modes depend on market forces; while, what differentiates the contributions are the production...

Guitar Music of Celso Garrido-Lecca: Modern Projections of Peruan Traditions

The relevance of the article is to deepen the analytical aspect of knowledge about Peruan guitar music of the late 20th – early 21st centuries in the context of the renewal of genre traditions of Andean music on the example of works by Celso Garrido-Lecca. Main objective of the study is to determine the influence of Peruvian traditions on the guitar music of Celso Garrido-Lecca in the conditions of modern creative contexts. The methodology includes methods of historical, comparative, phenomenological, structural and functional analysis for: contextual consideration of the composer's creative activity; study of genre and style elements of Peruvian music traditions of folk, professional and non-academic origin in their interaction with the academic language of new music; comparison of the genealogy of rhythmic structures and their manifestations in the researched works; correlation of associative-figurative series with timbral connotations, specific genres and intonation and chord patterns. Results and conclusions. The study of the guitar music of the contemporary Peruvian composer Celso Garrido-Lecca performed by masters of academic art opens interesting pages of the new South American repertoire. Loyalty to the folklore traditions of his country, the study of timbre specificity and aesthetics of the Andean sound, the organology of ancient aerophones and local analogues of the charango, the collective practice of music making, as well as the ethnic language elements of the music of the coastal regions have affected the author's guitar works. Household traditions of Peruvian culture are identified in the sound atmosphere of the new vocabulary of the European model - polytonal “collage” music layers, constructivist modal octatonic arrangements, in the context of serial elements and polystylistic overlays of “foreign” texts. The genealogy of the rhythms deciphered in the composer's guitar opuses indicates a closeness to specific genre features: the Andean rhythm formulas of the huáyno, the Afro-Peruvian festejo, the ancient figures of the landó, the Creole samacueca, the tondero and the marinera with Iberian roots. The author resorted to quoting folklore sources in "Popular Andean Dances" with their updating with musical means of modern vocabulary; imitated the timbres of Andean flute orchestras in the cycle “Poetics” in the guitar parts; introduced the Andean charango of the Ayacuchan model into the scores of the orchestral versions of his suites; in the part of the instrumental duet of charango and guitar. In Celso Garrido-Lecca's guitar works, syntheses of archaic thinking of folkloric Andean chants, hybrid origins of poetics of local Creole and Afro-Peruvian rhythms with new language and intonation paradigms of academic art are organically embodied. Research perspectives are seen in the study of the influence of Peruvian culture on the modern non-academic traditions.

Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: History, Identity and Violence on Screen, Sarah Barrow (2018)

Review of: Contemporary Peruvian Cinema: History, Identity and Violence on Screen, Sarah Barrow (2018) London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 342 pp., ISBN 978-1-78453-821-7, h/bk, £69.00

Sentir, pensar, hacer. Conceptos creativos en los proyectos de Luis Longhi

<p>Luis Longhi, arquitecto de larga trayectoria y reconocimiento en Perú, ha desarrollado a través de los años una serie de concepciones creativas próximas a la fenomenología de la arquitectura que son examinadas en el presente artículo. Sus originales conceptos teóricos introducen proposiciones derivadas de la experiencia académica, profesional y vivencial. El presente estudio analiza estas nociones poniéndolas en relación con sus principales proyectos arquitectónicos e instalaciones, los cuales le han convertido en un referente del diseño peruano contemporáneo, con un marcado ascendente en el ámbito internacional. Las ideas de Longhi merecen un estudio particular. Examinamos el valor que concede al arte y la intuición, al diálogo dentro de la formación académica, a la cultura ancestral peruana y a la naturaleza. En la conclusión se aprecia que sus concepciones creativas están sustentadas por un fuerte vínculo entre <em>sentir</em> (lo artístico), <em>pensar</em> (lo académico) y <em>hacer</em> (la práctica profesional).</p>

The Enduring Climate of Conflict: Drought, Impoverishment and the Long Aftermath of Civil War in Peru

Abstract This article explores the relationship and correlation between climate and conflict in the contemporary Peruvian Andes before, during, and in the aftermath of the most recent civil conflict (1980-2000). Based on the combination of climatological data related to the 1982-1983 El Niño, personal testimonies, and other source documents, the following pages unpack the ecological meaning of the campesino condition as a foundational element preceding the conflict, as the pivotal object and subject of escalating social violence, and as the chief outcome of insurrectionary and counter-insurrectionary terror.

Coloniality, belonging, and indigeneity in Peruvian migration narratives

ABSTRACT Transnational lives include not only the mobility of individuals, but of racialized discourses that reinforce and sustain inequalities and exclusion. Building on the seminal work of migration scholars Grosfoguel, Oso, and Christou, this article brings together Quijano's coloniality of power with cultural critic Aviles’s insights on contemporary forms of discrimination and anthropologist Briones’s conceptualization of ‘internal Others’ to center racialization in approaching contemporary middle-class Peruvian identities across borders. I suggest that similarly to how racialization is key to the processes of creating internal Others in Peru, middle-class Peruvians seek to assert higher status in relation to other migrants in the U.S. and Canada by employing discourses of indigeneity and internal Others. These forms of status-marking through racialization and differentiation are central to contemporary peruanidad within and beyond Peru’s physical borders, and to understanding the role of race, racism, and coloniality of thought among Peruvians outside Peru.

Projekt "Sherezade": konstruowanie i reprezentacja tożsamości płciowej kobiet i mężczyzn w peruwiańskiej kulturze popularnej

Nowadays, in the era of globalization and information, the influence of mass media is of special importance in terms of the configuration of a patriarchal symbolic order, which establishes the hierarchy of genders based on the supremacy of the masculine, typical of males, over feminine, proper to women. This obstructive role division constantly recreates a stereotyped and reductionist vision of the sexes. The following study tries to approach the Peruvian feminine and masculine imaginary in two contemporary Peruvian cultural manifestations. Thus, we observe gender relations in Peru, the naturalization of cultural roles imposed by society, the permissiveness of gender violence and the construction of masculinity and femininity transmitted through two forms of spectacle in the popular cultural imaginary of Peru: free wrestling and vedettismo.

Toward a Decolonial Feminist Research on Indigeneity in Contemporary Peru

This paper proposes a decolonial feminist framework for doing research on the representation of Indigenous women in contemporary Peruvian cultural and media production. It argues for an analytical methodology that recognizes Indigenous women gendered experience of colonialism—of being subjected to violence, made invisible and muted throughout historiography, and reduced to stagnant and degrading stereotypes in current cultural representations. It appositionally reads both the modern Peruvian nation-state and Western academic research as structures of colonial figurations that obscure the gender complexity of Indigenous identity, engaging a gender perspective that considers the contested relationship between Indigeneity and Peruvian identity, while centering Indigenous women’ political and cultural mobilities shed light on the complexities of identitarian politics and the role of hetero—and ethnonormative neoliberal regimes.

Creando la frontera culinaria: un examen crítico de las narrativas de los chefs peruanos sobre alimentos perdidos/descubiertos

This article examines the narratives of lost and discovered foods prominent Peruvian chefs employ to frame their work as chefs and to promote Peruvian food more generally. It argues that many foods framed as recently lost/discovered were not lost but instead unknown, unvalued, or neglected by elite consumers. Tales of lost foods obscure the work of the many people who have produced and consumed these foods, while tales of discovery exalt white, male, elite chefs as protagonists with the vision and expertise to see value in “undervalued” ingredients and dishes. Linking contemporary Peruvian chef’s narratives about their work and Peru as a culinary frontier to heroic tales of Enlightenment thinkers and eighteenth-century travelers, the article shows how the same metaphors of vision, travel, and masculinity that wove their way through early heroic stories of discovery also define contemporary tales of Peruvian chefs seeking out novel ingredients. It argues that even as Peru’s emerging class of celebrity chefs work to subvert colonial culinary hierarchies that hold up European cuisines as exemplars of gastronomic excellence, they ultimately reproduce colonial relationships of power through their narratives of discovery that frame chefs as the arbiters of “good food” and erase the labor of the actors who actively produced and consumed the foods prior to their discovery.

La memoria en la ciudad de Juvenal Baracco. Los estudios sobre la ciudad de Lima como herramienta para el proyecto de arquitectura

In the middle of the 20th century, Lima grew rapidly due to migrations from rural areas to the unoccupied peripheries of the city. The new neighbourhoods, self-built and self-managed, quickly became the landscape of poverty, incorporating into their urban structure forms of traditional architecture that adapt to the context of the capital. On the other hand, the modern functionalist architecture acts on the consolidated city, destroying the traditional colonial architecture without respecting its scale or urban layout. Both cities come together from the seventies, converting Lima into a superposition of historical, urban and social layers and, drawing the attention of sociologists, architects and anthropologists who study how the unplanned growth of the city is spontaneously building the Peruvian identity. The article presents the critical point of view of one of the most important contemporary Peruvian architects, Juvenal Baracco, who proposes a methodology for the study of the developing city and translates it into a particular building, the School of the Air Force of Peru, located in the Peruvian capital. The study of Lima that makes in the workshop of the Ricardo Palma University, as well as his architectural proposals act on the idea of a growing city from which the final form is not yet know.

Alteridad, viajes y conquistas en la ciencia ficción peruana y boliviana

This article aims to analyze the short stories Persistencia (1974) of Jose Adolph, El primer peruano en el espacio (2013) of Daniel Salvo and in the novel De cuando en cuando Saturnina. Una historia oral del futuro (2004) of Alison Spedding, two recurring themes in the history of science fiction: alterity and travel. These are arguments offer a chance to reflect on contemporary Peruvian and Bolivian society. Science fiction becomes a tool for denouncing social inequalities, processes of colonization and can become a space to reflect on the encounter with the other.

The powers of water-user associations: on multiplicity, fluidity, and durability in the Peruvian Andes

In this article we use insights from institutional bricolage and actor network theory to make sense of an Andean water user association (WUA) and its bricoleurs in the Region of Ayacucho, Peru. Rather than being designed and clearly defined, we see natural resource institutions as continuously performed and patched together, through heterogeneous elements and practices, by those that live, experience and enact these institutions every day and by those who make sense of them. We present three cases, three supra-community efforts to secure water livelihoods, in which the Ayacucho water user association is enacted differently. Similar actors and practices like, water law, local customs, water bodies, and ecological services are performed in alternate ways for diverse purposes. It is this range of co-existing performances or enactments and the fluidity of actors and bricoleurs which enables an institution to adapt and adjust. We hold that an Andean WUA can be a bureaucratic imposition, but in many ways the WUA is something else too: a strategic ally; a prerequisite for subsidy consideration, a marketplace for exchanging goods and services and more. In the setting of the contemporary Peruvian Andes, the durability of natural resource institutions can be understood through the fluidity and multiplicity of performances and purposes. This has normative and political implications for researchers and policymakers as to what enactment they consider and target.

State Evocations, Affect and Indigenous Organizations in Contemporary Peruvian Amazonia

In this article, I offer an ethnographic and historical analysis of an alternative governmental project emerging in Ampiyacu basin, a highly biodiverse tropical area in Peruvian Amazonia. By considering the ways in which the Bora and Huitoto communities produce and deal with procedures and documentation that evoke the traditional structures of the State bureaucracy, I seek to understand the complex means by which these communities relate to the State’s forms of authority in their attempts to self-regulate logging activities within their claimed territories. I argue that the governmental project advanced by these communities is interwoven in a dialectical relationship between authoritative claims formulated through State evocations and the contingency of everyday affects. While any form of regulation ultimately depends on the uncoordinated actions and partial agreements achieved among indigenous dwellers, such regulations continuously produce innovative ways of interpreting the State’s forms of authority and experimenting (with) liberal democratic institutions. I show how different forms of biopolitical production take place in this process, and how this alternative governmental project is not reducible to either State’s forms of authority or to the commonalities of affective immaterial labour. Rather, I seek to draw attention on the ways in which State authority is evoked, appropriated, transformed and disputed in the contingent flow of life in common in Ampiyacu basin.

Beings: Contemporary Peruvian Short Stories by Anna Heath, tr.

62 WLT JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2015 world literature in review As a reader, I was unable to put this collection down. I was enchanted from the first line—“So, have you made your mind up yet?”—of Lane Ashfeldt’s first story, “The Boat Trip.” I was captivated, and the author kept me captivated until the last line of the last tale, “Outer Banks Riptide”: “It is late into the night, that time after the moon is done when the stars burn brighter than ever, making little points of light in the still water ahead of her as well as in the sky above.” Janet Mary Livesey University of Oklahoma Beings: Contemporary Peruvian Short Stories. Anna Heath, tr. London. Berforts Information Press. 2014. isbn 9781908616739 This anthology of contemporary Peruvian short fiction, beginning in the 1950s, is comprised of eight short stories by wellknown authors and includes several present -day writers. During the middle of the twentieth century, a new generation of writers emerged in Peru. While still committed to depicting social reality, they were also concerned with the modernization and renovation of literary expression by moving away from traditionally realist fiction . The result of that new writing was neorealism, which favored urban settings linked to the incorporation of technical developments of mainstream European and American fiction. Julio Ramón Ribeyro is Peru’s most notable exponent of short fiction in the twentieth century. His story, “Alienation,” depicts Peru’s deep-rooted social and racial tensions, as seen in the tragically comic life of a youngster in Lima who struggles to deny his Afro-Peruvian identity in order to become an American. In New York, his encounter with the American dream tragically falls apart and eventually leads him to his grave on a Korean battlefield. Along with this masterpiece , it is worth noting Luis Loayza’s “Cold Afternoons,” a story about a love affair between a university professor and a member of the upper class. Vaguely set in the late 1960s, Loayza’s tale is as much a chronicle of false social appearances as it is of Lima’s slow transformation into a modern city. While seemingly cheerful and romantic during the summer, Peru’s capital ultimately proves to be a melancholic and somber place for the characters in the story. Youth and sexual initiation are at the center of Fernando Ampuero’s “Bad Manners .” Set in Lima in the 1960s, the firstperson narrator recounts the lives of a group of friends at a summer resort and their coming of age, centering on a beautiful yet distant young girl who is the source of great mystery and nostalgia. Also included in this anthology are three accomplished writers who first published in the 1980s: Guillermo Niño de Guzmán, Jorge Eduardo Benavides, and Alonso Cueto. In “No More Than a Shadow ,” Niño de Guzmán explores the psychological scars left by a frustrated past through the casual encounter of two lovers. Benavides’s story, “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way,” is a masterfully concise and sexually charged narrative of subtle deceit and lust. Cueto displays his storytelling talents in “The Love Artist,” a fast-paced piece that not only profiles countless amorous adventures of an ordinary office employee but also underscores the protagonist’s meaningless existence and solitude. Two recent writers whose works deserve attention are Ricardo Sumalavia and Gunter Silva. Sumalavia’s “The Offering” is a well-crafted narrative of hidden jealously and desire with a surprisingly violent ending . Silva’s “Homesick” is a compelling story of migration and the marginalization of Latin Americans struggling against all odds to survive in London. Ably translated by Anna Heath, this anthology is a welcome and timely contribution that makes available some of the best short fiction to come out of Peru in recent decades. Her translation will surely be of interest to readers of Latin American fiction in English. This book has been subsidized by the Fundación para la Literatura Peruana (Foundation for Peruvian Literature ), a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create greater visibility for Peruvian contemporary fiction. César Ferreira University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Mehdi Dadsetan. La danse des ombres. Nice. Éditions Rod. 2014. isbn 9791093467023...

Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars: Huayno Music, Media Work, and Ethnic Imaginaries in Urban Peru by Joshua Tucker (review)

Reviewed by: Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars: Huayno Music, Media Work, and Ethnic Imaginaries in Urban Peru by Joshua Tucker Francisco D. Lara Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars: Huayno Music, Media Work, and Ethnic Imaginaries in Urban Peru. By Joshua Tucker. (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. [viii, 232 p. ISBN 9780226923956 (hardcover), $90; ISBN 9780226923963 (paperback), $30.] Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Joshua Tucker’s Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars is a much-welcome addition to the growing literature on music and identity in contemporary Latin America. Drawing on extensive field research (2001–8), Tucker explores how the highland Peruvian genre of music known as huayno, specifically the stylistic variant associated with the city and department of Ayacucho, has implicated complex, dynamic, and historically-situated categories of ethnicity and class in its development, circulation, and consumption since the early twentieth century. His focus on radio broadcasting and radio DJs as agents negotiating the boundaries of tradition, modernity, class, and ethnicity in shaping and defining new markets and audiences illuminates more precisely the relationship between music and identity in Peru, as well as the role of media and media producers in the construction, mediation, and circulation of social categories. Timely and relevant, his approach, arguments, and conclusions will appeal to music, culture, and media scholars and students interested in the intersection of music, identity, and technology as well as in the issues of ethnicity and national identity in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin America. Huayno presents a unique case study through which to understand the dynamics of identity construction in Peru. As a general term referencing various regional variants of music and dance originating in the Peruvian highlands and now heard throughout Peru, huayno demarcates a long-standing division in the national ethnic imaginary between the predominantly indigenous and mestizo (of mixed indigenous and European ancestry) highlands and the criollo (American of European descent) coastal region. Yet, as Tucker shows, the same discourses constituting the perceived divide between highland and coastal Peru likewise serve to differentiate the refined huayno of Ayacucho and its upwardly-mobile urban mestizo listening audience from other types of huayno and emergent popular music hybrids, such as chicha, commonly associated with the rural indigenous and proletariat populations. In attending to local discourses of Ayacuchano huayno in their convergence with broader discourses of identity and place in Peru, Tucker reveals how certain discursive tropes and practices, specifically at play in the commercial recording and radio broadcasting of the genre, reify existing social categories while mediating contemporary notions of a more cosmopolitan highland Andean identity. Gentleman Troubadours therefore also addresses the issue of globalization and presents a more nuanced perspective on the related notions of tradition and modernity as they relate to music and identity. Tucker explores the topic and convincingly develops his arguments over the course of six concise yet thorough and well-written chapters, the final of which is an epilogue. Chapters 1 and 2 contextualize the study in terms of the major issues addressed, the theoretical framework employed, the primary arguments posited, and the current Peruvian soundscape within which Ayacuchano huayno is situated. [End Page 666] Here, he calls for closer attention to the ways in which media circulation builds “communities of shared reference rather than shared substance” (p. 32) and shows how currently-operational social categories in Peru that index notions of class and ethnicity constituted during the colonial period are mapped onto the contemporary Peruvian music scene. Chapter 3 discusses Ayacuchano huayno specifically and addresses the ways in which the genre was consciously inscribed with a distinctly regional elite social status cultivated by a growing, upwardly-mobile highland mestizo middle-class listening audience through the work of the Ayacuchano Cultural Center during the early twentieth century. Of significance in this chapter is his discussion of huamanguinismo, a term that makes reference to the Spanish heritage and refined social values and aspirations of Ayacucho’s urban mestizo middle class, and its implications for Ayacuchano huayno composition and interpretation. Chapters 4 and 5 present Tucker’s analysis of the role of the recording industry and radio broadcasting, respectively, in the creation of new consumer audiences for contemporary Ayacuchano...

Mining History: Mobilizing The Past In Struggles Over Mineral Extraction In Peru

This paper examines how the past is constructed and mobilized within contemporary Peruvian mining politics. Beginning with an exploration of tensions existing within the mining industry's relationship to its history, I analyze how mining proponents have sought to both naturalize today's mining expansion by locating it within a national history of extraction, while also working to break free from certain negative aspects of the industry's past. The paper then examines how the past is remembered and invoked within the context of on‐the‐ground struggles at a large‐scale gold mine in the region of Ancash. I address the contradictory ways in which local history is constructed in these struggles and document how memories of past experiences with mining inform how area residents understand and critique the “new” mining economy. This paper underscores the need to understand the complicated, selective, and often‐contradictory ways in which the past is made present in extractive industry conflicts.

The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi (review)

Reviewed by: The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi César Ferreira Riger Tsurumi, Rebecca. The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2012. Pp. 313. ISBN 978-1-55753-607-5. The theme of The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature is the role of Japanese culture in contemporary Peruvian letters. Rebecca Riger Tsurumi posits that Peruvian writers present conflicting views about Japanese culture and its place in mainstream society. Japanese characters are seen either negatively or as the object of satire or victims of Peruvian nationalism after WWII. She also examines Nisei (second generation) writers who provide perceptions of immigration and personal experiences. While documenting Japanese emigration to Latin America at the end of the nineteenth century, the author also focuses on initial literary expressions of Japanese culture by contextualizing Japanese immigration that was triggered by the lack of manual labor. Even though Japanese assimilation was difficult throughout the twentieth century, Japanese-Peruvians came to the forefront when Alberto Fujimori, a Nisei son of emigrants from Japan, became president in 1990. The Nisei are the largest group among the approximately 80 000 Peruvians of Japanese descent. The first manifestations of oriental imagery in Latin American literature appeared in modernista prose and poetry by Rubén Darío, José Martí, and others, who first stressed the ideographic nature of Japanese literature and haikus in Spanish. In another chapter, the author examines Fushía, a Japanese-Brazilian adventurer in Mario Vargas Llosa’s La casa verde (1966). His dark past begins in Brazil and ends in the Peruvian Amazon. After becoming a cult figure that plundered Indians and routinely kidnapped women, he is ravaged by disease, persecuted by the authorities, dying, and seeks refuge at a leper colony. Riger Tsurumi questions this portrayal of Fushía, who undermines the traditionally positive image of the Japanese community in Peru. In passing, she also examines two minor female characters in Vargas Llosa’s Travesuras de la niña mala (2006). The author proceeds to examine images of Japanese people in the stories “Matavilela” and “Muerte de Sevilla en Madrid” by Miguel Gutiérrez and Alfredo Bryce Echenique, respectively. Gutiérrez explores social tensions by examining the persecution of Japanese-Peruvians during World War II; seen through the eyes of a child, this story narrates an assault on a store owned by a Japanese family in the 1940s. In contrast to this hard-core realism, Bryce Echenique tells the story of a Japanese tourist who accompanies the protagonist Sevilla in a humorously absurd trip to Spain. According to Riger Tsurumi, the tourist’s caricaturesque portrayal and the protagonist’s tragic journey illustrate the thorny lack of communication between East and West. [End Page 162] In other chapters, the author focuses on Las dos caras del deseo (1994) by Carmen Ollé and Puñales escondidos (1998) by Pilar Dughi. Ollé’s novel examines the role of a young Japanese descendant, who seemingly embodies traditional Japanese values, but her youthful approach to race and sexuality permits the novel’s protagonist to abandon her monotonous lifestyle and deal with her lesbian desires. In Dughi’s novel, Japanese literature also serves as a catalyst for change for the protagonist. This thriller explores her personal transformation through Japanese writers Endo Shusaku, Abe Kobo, Dasai Osamu, and Mishima Yukio, which stimulates her to rethink traditional views about society, religion, and love. In another chapter, the author discusses two short novels by Mario Bellatin, who questions the relationship between reality and fantasy in his works. El jardín de la Señora Murakami (2000) focuses on a young female whose misfortunes typify the contradictions between tradition and modernity in Japanese culture. And irony and satire abound in Shiki Nagaoka: Una nariz de ficción (2001), which tells the story of an aspiring writer whose fascination with text and photography make him a cult figure upon his death. Known for his experimental writing and his explorations of Japanese culture, Bellatin’s fiction always draws attention to the art of storytelling. While several writers discussed in this study depict Japanese culture from an...

L'Ambition by Iegor Gran

Ron Butlin The Magicians of Edinburgh Polygon This collection of poems from Edinburgh’s poet laureate gives a fresh face to an old city. The Magicians of Edinburgh is a moving presentation of the Scottish capital city, exploring many of its most characteristic attractions: the Parthenon on Carlton Hill, the Walter Scott Monument, and (of course) whiskey. This new collection is particularly timely as Scotland considers the future of its national identity. Mongo Beti Cruel City Pim Higginson, tr. Indiana University Press Experimental and controversial, the 1971 groundbreaking Cameroonian novel Ville cruelle is finally available in English translation. The conflict between the expectations of a traditional French readership and the honest representation of postcolonial Africa are reflected and explored through the story of the villager Banda and his journey through a changing Africa. Nota Bene Years later, Adrián remembers that one of his father’s last wishes was for him to search for Miriam, for whom the colonel apparently had developed a true affection. At that point, the protagonist embarks on a long, personal journey that takes him away from his well-to-do lifestyle and confronts him with Peru’s true social reality, including the scars left from the war that had killed some 69,000 Peruvians. Adrián’s anguishing search for Miriam is not only a discovery of Peru’s poor people but also a quest to answer the dark mysteries surrounding his father’s wrongdoings. Personal redemption proves to be a complicated task for the protagonist; in reality , it becomes a cumbersome exercise of soul-searching that unexpectedly involves his own family history. Cueto’s riveting, fast-paced novel, impeccably translated by Frank Wynne, starts out as a political thriller and turns into a wellcrafted and gripping psychological drama of a son attempting to come to terms with the painful ghosts of a father he never really knew. On a broader scale, this novel seems to suggest that social reconciliation is also a pending task in Peru after this violent period of its history. The Blue Hour joins an important corpus of novels that in recent years deal with Peru’s violent political past, and it is the first major novel by the author available in English. A prolific and talented writer, Alonso Cueto is an important name to remember in contemporary Peruvian letters. César Ferreira University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Iegor Gran. L’Ambition. Paris. P.O.L. 2013. isbn 9782818017555 The hero of Iegor Gran’s latest novel, histenthforEditionsP.O.L,isatwentysomething Parisian man named José. When his girlfriend leaves him, citing his lack of ambition as her reason for breaking things off, José is forced to examine himself and his situation in life. Certainly, he is less accomplished than he might have expected to be at this stage. He has a part-time job in a third-rate computer repair shop. He sells vintage trinkets and baubles on the side, barely recouping the money he invests. He shares an apartment with a young man far more ambitious than himself, and he always comes up short when the rent is due. In his studies, he wagered upon computer science, thinking to become the next Mark Zuckerberg; but that field is now utterly saturated, leaving no place for a fellow of moderate intelligence and middling energy like José. By a twist of chance, he falls into a job tutoring an underachieving high-school student in mathematics , but he quickly discovers that his tutee is more able than he. In short, the train has left the station, and he is not on it. Sometimes José wonders if his ambitions serve more to motivate the people around him, rather than himself. His roommate is clearly prospering; his ex-girlfriend, Cécile, seems to be doing well; even his tutee appears to be on the road to success. Gran weaves several subplots in the interstices of José’s story. He gives us a few glimpses of Cécile’s postJos é life. He casts his glance back to the Neolithic era, showing us one of José’s ancestors, a man who is just as belated as his descendant, refusing to abandon his hunter-gatherer practices when everyone around...