Spanish American Literature Research Articles

Архетип гаучо в художественной культуре Латинской Америки

<p>The article examines the role of representatives of a specific ethnic group of inhabitants of the South American steppes-Pampas — pastoralists-Gaucho nomads in the formation, formation and development of national Spanish-American literature based on its genres such as oral folk art, lyrical and epic poetry, drama, realistic and psychological novel. The existence of this ethnic type can be traced back to 1775, but the process of turning a Spanish shepherd into a half-breed Gaucho is still largely unclear. The formation of Gaucho literature can serve as an example of the emergence of folk literature in the countries of Spanish America. Gaucho poetry reached the culmination point of its development with «Martin Fierro» by H. Hernandez, however, it did not take much time for the gaucho theme to turn into prose: drama, short story and novel. The transition from poetry to prose, as well as the transition from oral to written poetry, did not take place immediately. Gaucho poetry continued to develop and gained prominence for the reworking of the legend of Santos Vega, but new forms of Gaucho literature were already supplanting poetry. The novel about the gaucho arose from a primitive popular print, but the popularity gained by the very first attempts to create a novel about the gaucho testified to the prospects of this genre, which soon attracted the attention of truly talented authors. Thus, the Gaucho gave his native land a regional literature, which became a model of cultural and spiritual independence for all countries of Spanish America. Having formed a whole trend in literature, the Gaucho archetype has left a noticeable mark in other forms of art and, perhaps, will serve as an example to national forces called upon to make the transition from imitation of European models to literary Americanism.</p>

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature by Lesley Wylie (review)

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature by Lesley Wylie (review)

The Politics of Literary Prestige: Prizes and Spanish American Literature by Sarah E. L. Bowskill

Reviewed by: The Politics of Literary Prestige: Prizes and Spanish American Literature by Sarah E. L. Bowskill Will H. Corral SARAH E. L. BOWSKILL The Politics of Literary Prestige: Prizes and Spanish American Literature New York. Bloomsbury Academic. 2022. 215 pages. SARAH E. L. BOWSKILL'S succinct study deals properly with the "never-ending network" discussed in her eighth and last chapter, which is ultimately the ample partisan positioning that is the subtext of the Spanish-language literary prizes she analyzes. In a 1981 press release on the misfortune of being a young writer, Gabriel García Márquez, no stranger to prizes and aware that they reveal who readers perceive as your peers, regrets young writers' "almost childish enthusiasm" [End Page 94] for national awards and fashionable fame. For him, with those prizes the publisher "not only mugs the novice writer, but the publisher uses [him] to become richer with little effort." Bowskill examines the politics behind such machinations, and her fine introduction encapsulates her methodology and goals. Her first chapter evaluates the relation among literary prizes, controversy, and the state in Spanish America; the second, how Spanish publishers intensified their cultural and economic influence during the Franco years with awards to Spanish American authors. In a strict chronology of those developments, the first chapter should follow the second, followed by the fifth (on Spain's Biblioteca Breve prize and "the forgotten women of the Boom," rightly rescuing "Ana Mairena" and Nivaria Tejera), even though the sixth chapter, "Women Winning Prizes: A No-Win Situation?" dovetails smoothly from the previous one, asserting that prizes are no country for younger women. This redistribution is as academic as The Politics of Literary Prestige but reinforces Bowskill's optimistic view of the relatively unknown writers she marshals in the seventh chapter, "Prizes for Literatures in Indigenous Languages." Evidently a sociological study (Pierre Bourdieu is ever-present) conceptually framed by James English's The Economy of Prestige, Bowskill has a fine eye for detail and information that may seem "gossipy." Her attention and dependence on digital resources, charts, and archives is impressive, leading her to conclude that "As the prize network colonizes more and more positions in the literary and political fields, there remain few options for authors wishing to remain beyond the network," although she avers that "caution must also be exercised when proclaiming the freedoms of publishing online as this space is increasingly colonized by corporations using our data for profit." Her ideological stance is well considered when ChatGPT could write books, or this review, and the humanities are losing prestige. At this state of the art, likening literary and political fields, or emphasizing "colonization," is better served by questioning the dependence on those terms, for concrete and ideological reasons. If Spanish America has not yet produced a Sherman Alexie, who writes in English, what network would judge literature in what Indigenous languages? Would such a web replicate the wheeling and dealing of mainstream prizes based on "a discourse of globalization rooted in Europe," in which exoticism and condescending attitudes still prevail? What to do with scandal-ridden prizes like the Planeta, or that since 1969 only six women have won the Anagrama prize, facts absent in Bowskill's analysis? She is right that women-only prizes or "the transcultural, transnational pan-Hispanic identity created and envisaged by the Premio Alfaguara" are not the solution as a counterdiscourse to anglophone acculturation. For the Colombian Héctor Abad Faciolince, who has lost prizes for over forty years, the statistics for gender equity, "official literatures," and conspiracy theories prove the senselessness of affirmative-action solutions for Spanish America. For the fourth chapter—which seeks common ground among Roberto Bolaño, Carmen Boullosa, and Fernando Iwasaki, writers with vastly different talents, as the reception of the latter two shows—putting in perspective other writers could have benefitted from Discípulos y maestros 2.0: Novela hispanoamericana hoy, much of which deals with emerging novelists' ethics vis-à-vis contests; and an earlier compilation, The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel: After Bolaño, which contextualizes almost all the recent novelists Bowskill discusses. If she proposes the notion of "network" to understand how prizes shape a wider literary...

Cultural Capital: Reflections from a Latin Americanist

<i>Cultural Capital</i>: Reflections from a Latin Americanist

MODERNIDAD Y DESMITIFICACIÓN EN “EL OTRO ASTERIÓN” DE JOSÉ WATANABE

José Watanabe is one of the most notable poets of Peruvian literature and Spanish-American literature in general. In his production, the desacralizing tone stands out, often linked to humor, through the use of irony and satire, and other times in which he opts for a solemn or serious tone, as we will see in this study. Thus, demystification translates into a process of distancing and updating that allows the meaning of a text to be reinterpreted from the present. In this way, the analysis of the poem “El otro Asterión”, from the book Banderas detrás de la niebla (2006), shows us a break with the western mythological discourse that is linked to the theme of modernity, intermittent, in turn, to all the Watanabe’s lyric production.

“The Last Time” by Guillermo Martinez: Latin American boom and its assessment after 60 years

The article attempts to trace the general dynamics of the development of Latin American literature before and after the Latin American boom through the prism of Guillermo Martinez’s recently published novel “The Last Time” (2022). Well learned Latin-American literature of “boom” in some sense eclipses the following generations. The purpose of the article is to show the general picture of the development of Latin American literature before and after, to comprehend the processes taking place in Spanish American literature over the past 60 years and to summarize them. The recent novel by argentine writer Guillermo Martinez “The last time” represents some kind of farewell, an attempt of looking to the “golden generation” from long distance and appreciate it in the terms of postmodern poetic. From the Martinez’s point of view the writers of boom were conspirators, and there books were passwords. These conspirations and passwords could ne comprehended as confirmation of their specific reality described throw unique code, precisely mythopoetic. The article deals with the story of search for Latin-American identity and the way towards mythopoetic, witch is analyzed as connected with archaic mentality and archaic categories of myth and magic. The following generations of Latin-American writers gradually returned to plain reality of human world: magic realism turns into naked and dirty. Simultaneously the tradition of Borges and Cortazar brings the literature of continent into the configuration of western postmodern.

Wonder, Refuge, Promise: Explorations and Discoveries of America in Maria Irene Fornes' Final Plays

Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus' voyage to the Indies, scholar John Brushwood delineated the three main offerings of America as presented in Spanish-American literature: wonder, promise and refuge. Maria Irene Fornes' dramatic collection, Letters from Cuba and Other Plays (2007), includes three pieces that correspond to the last stage of her long career as a playwright. The trilogy presents different versions of America at the turn of the millennium, all of which share the motif of the voyage across the Atlantic, although the three journeys vary in direction, length, and implications. The article argues that, despite the obvious differences in style, tone, and theme, these plays respond to preoccupations about the meaning of "discovery" and "exploration" facilitated or triggered by the Atlantic. The effective use of palimpsest, hybridity, and simultaneity as instruments for exploration in each of the three texts, combined with the concepts that Brushwood proposes, render a new cartography for the notion of America at the end of the twentieth century.

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature, by Lesley Wylie

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature, by Lesley Wylie

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature by Leslie Wylie

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature by Leslie Wylie

Hughes Davies, Lloyd. Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture

<scp>Hughes Davies</scp>, <scp>Lloyd</scp>. <i>Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture</i>

R. González Echevarría, &lt;i&gt;Celestina's Brood: Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish and Spanish American Literature&lt;/i&gt;

N/A

Mit o Ledi i labudu posmatran kroz prizmu Rubena Darija („Leda”) i Delmire Agustini („El cisne”)

The literary movement modernismo originated in Spanish America and gave birth to very important poets in Spanish American literature, bringing about novelties in poetry. Topics originating from classical history and mythology, Eastern civilizations and pre-Hispanic America were treated in an original way, which is one of its main novelties. That is also the topic of this paper, which considers the treatment of the Greek myth from the point of view of Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (1867–1916) and Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini (Delmira Agustini, 1886–1914). The myth in question is about Leda and the swan, and the corpus includes the poems "Leda" ("Leda") written by Darío and "The Swan" ("El cisne") written by Agustini. The aim of this article is to point out the similarities and differences in the treatment of the aforementioned myth. Bearing in mind that Delmira Agustini is a part of the second generation of modernists, the so-called postmodernists, and Ruben Dario is the most important representative of modernismo at its peak, it is interesting, on one hand, to compare their interpretations and visions of this Hellenic myth, and on the other hand, to point out the extent to which mythological and symbolist elements are adopted, surpassed and, ultimately, matched in selected poems. Their interpretations of this myth differ greatly, and we came to this conclusion through a systematic analysis of the mentioned poems. Key words: Rubén Darío, Delmira Agustini, Greek mythology, Leda, swan.

La alegr�a del capit�n Ribot by Armando Palacio Vald�s (review)

Reviewed by: La alegría del capitán Ribot by Armando Palacio Valdés Gustavo Pérez Firmat Armando Palacio Valdés La alegría del capitán Ribot (1899). Tomo XI. Madrid: Librería general de Victoriano Suárez, 1920. Project Gutenberg Open Access. [Invited retrospective review essay]. More than a Hispanist's "bucket list," this commentary is a "book shelf" list, since my bucket contains books. Not the ones I'd like to read or write, but those I'd like to write about. Now in the tercera edad of my academic life, I've been writing about books or authors whose company I have prized, that I have read over and over, but that have not been relevant to my research or my teaching. Writing about them is a way of memorializing our acquaintance, tying the knot of readerly affection. The list is not long, mostly limited to works generally within my competence, modern Spanish or Spanish American literature, and many of my favorites fall outside this field. So far, I've taken about half a dozen items out of the bucket. I have a few more left. Next up is La alegría del capitán Ribot (1899), one of Armando Palacio Valdés's most widely read novels, whose popularity lead to its prompt appearance in English the next year and century as The Joy of Captain Ribot (1900). I acknowledge that my temperament makes my task a bit harder. In literature, as in life, I shy away from complexity, ambiguity, tension, suspense – some of the features of literary works that give [End Page 241] scholars pasture to feed on. Instead, I favor intelligent sentimentality. To Unamuno's El Cristo de Velázquez, I prefer his Teresa. To Neruda's "Alturas de Machu Picchu," I prefer "Poema 20." One of the Cuban poets formerly in my bucket, José Ángel Buesa, was said to write for cooks and chauffeurs. Another, Dulce María Loynaz, likened her poems to ripples of water glinting in the moonlight. When it comes to fiction, my inclinations run along the same soft lines: Pereda, not Pérez Galdós; Valera, not Pardo Bazán. And Palacio Valdés. The Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins's recipe for writing fiction was simple: Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait. I would add a fourth imperative: Make me happy. My poets and novelists do. Some will conclude that my bucket is full of treacle. Sure, but their treacle is my treat. If I am to trust my gap-stricken journals, I first read La alegría del capitán Ribot in the summer of 2010 while on vacation in Duck, a resort town on the outer banks of North Carolina. That was a difficult summer, and Palacio Valdés helped me get through it. Since then I've reread it many times. I'm not sure how many because recently I've been reading it on Kindle and my highlights are not dated (or if they are, I don't know how to locate them). With every reading, the Captain's alegría rubs off on me once again. Some of Palacio Valdés's novels bear ironic or misleading titles: El idilio de un enfermo is hardly an idyll. The title of La alegría del capitán Ribot means what it says. My problem is this: I love this novel, I want to record my gratitude to its author, but I don't know what to say about it. Not because it has been the object of abundant critical commentary, it hasn't. Like much of Palacio Valdés's fiction, La alegría del capitán Ribot is viewed with gentle condescension. Some scholars have labelled it a novela rosa, the kiss of death for serious fiction. A few years ago, I wrote about another of his rose-scented works in my bucket, Sinfonía pastoral (1931). Written in his late seventies, no one had ever taken it seriously, an incentive for me to do so. I would like to do the same with La alegría del capitán Ribot. My rule of thumb: If I like it...

The New Man in Spanish American Essay and Literature at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century

This paper aims to show how the “New Man” was defined in different literary and political conceptions that abounded in Spanish American culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Although both Americas were perceived through the stereotype of newness from the very beginning of the colonial era, it is at the end of the 19th century when the necessity to integrate the extremely heteregenous Spanish American societies brought forth a variety of renewal propositions. Focused on the spiritual or economic aspects of a given social or ethnic group (the elites, implicitly white, for Rodó or the working classes, mostly Indian, for the Indigenistas), those conceptions were not able to provide overall solutions for the Spanish American republics, struggling with a deepening neocolonial dependency. Nevertheless, many tendencies and formulas defined in that period – idealistic or politically subversive – have survived through the 20th century and resurfaced in new forms (e.g. the nuevo hombre bolivariano in Venezuela at the beginning of 21st century).

Configuración del microrrelato mexicano a través de Micronopio

Dentro del proceso dinámico en que se insertan las formas artísticas, analizamos la consolidación del microrrelato como género literario a través de “Micronopio”, una serie audiovisual que dirigió César Abraham Navarrete Pérez para la Agencia de Noticias 22 de Canal 22. Analizamos a través de las entrevistas mantenidas con más de una veintena de escritores mexicanos (de una argentina y de un uruguayo) los hitos más destacados en la historia, institucionalización y consolidación de este género literario en este país, la repercusión de la labor realizada por sus precursores y primeros cultivadores en las letras hispanoamericanas y los canales de difusión del género a través de publicaciones, talleres, concursos, periodismo cultural, antologías, etc.

Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina by Adam Joseph Shellhorse

Reviewed by: Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina by Adam Joseph Shellhorse Patrick Thomas Ridge Shellhorse, Adam Joseph. Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 2017. 258 pp. ISBN: 978-08-2296-447-6. Anti-Literature offers an important contribution to the field of Latin American studies. Critical analyses of what Shellhorse deems "anti-literature"—multidisciplinary and minoritarian writings that emphasize affect and perception over representation—aim to reconceptualize the idea of Latin American literature. As Shellhorse further explains, the anti-literary text "recaptures form as an assemblage of expression, an interplay between media, that effectuates subversions of the sensible" (194). Case studies demonstrate how these works from Brazil and Argentina—this includes the visual arts, concrete poetics, and film scripts, among others—experiment with form to express their subaltern, feminine, and political dimensions, thus countering the region's historical state-centered and identitarian literary projects. Furthermore, the volume's heightened focus on Brazilian writers, as well as critical dialogue with the field's most influential theories, call for a more interdisciplinary and inter-American understanding of regional literature. From the outset, Shellhorse examines Clarice Lispector's A hora da estrela (1977), suggesting that the anti-literary text distances itself from traditional regimes of representation by exploring the writing of subalternity and the feminine. Accompanying these observations, facsimiles of the author's manuscript illuminate her subversive compositional mode. Next, Anti-Literature shifts its attention to Argentina's David Viñas, emphasizing the role of affect and cinema in his hybrid work Dar la cara (1962). Screenshots from José Martínez Suárez's film adaptation advance Shellhorse's argument surrounding Viñas's radicalized medium and montage narrative technique. A substantial part of the analysis considers the anti-literary tendencies of Brazil's concrete poets, a notably understudied chapter of the region's literature. Different from the existing scholarship that underscores the identitarian framework of Oswald de Andrade's anthropophagia, Shellhorse redirects critical attention to the cannibalistic poetics that employ "a powerful syntactic and sensory sabotage of the discursive codes of official culture" (71). Once more, readings and visuals of works by Andrade, as well as Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari, and Augusto de Campos, demonstrate, as Shellhorse posits, how the concrete poets created a "multimedial defiance of representational logic" (71). The study concludes with extensive analyses of Osman Lins's "Retábulo de Santa Joana Carolina" (1966) and Haroldo de Campos's "O anjo esquerdo da história" (1996). Reinforcing his main thesis, Shellhorse argues that the texts' subaltern elements and experimental form complicate dominant understandings of Latin American literature. Accordingly, the study highlights Lins's cannibalization of baroque ornamentation to narrate the violence of subalternity in the Brazilian Northeast. A convincing reading of Campo's revolutionary poem, inspired by the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre, notes the experimental use of language combined with subaltern affect. Paired with images of the MST occupation taken by Sebastião [End Page 166] Salgado, one of Brazil's most renowned— and, at times controversial—photographers, Shellhorse dissects Campos's manipulation of typography and punctuation to produce a sensorial experience of this struggle that challenges the official discourse of the State. By focusing on experimental countertraditions, particularly the Brazilian avantgarde, Anti-Literature adds a new layer to Latin American criticism. Shellhorse's study not only sparks new discussion surrounding Brazilian and Spanish American literature, but its combination of close readings and engagement with current literary theory offers an innovative interdisciplinary formula for future textual analyses. Patrick Thomas Ridge Virginia Tech Copyright © 2019 Department of Romance Languages, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self by Sergio Franco

Reviewed by: Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self by Sergio Franco Rafael Saumell Franco, Sergio. Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self. Translated by Andrew Ascherl, Cambria, 2017. Pp. 286. ISBN 978-1-60497-979-4. Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self is a superb collection of essays on the topic of autobiography. Originally, it was published in Spanish under the following title: Pliegues del yo: Cuatro estudios sobre escritura autobiográfica en Hispanoamérica (Cuarto Propio, 2015). The book has an Introduction, four subsequent chapters, a bibliography, and an index. The subjects discussed are “The Emergence of Autobiographical Discourse in Spanish America,” “Visual Culture and Autobiographical Writing in Latin America,” “Precocious Autobiographies,” and “Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s La tentación del fracaso.” From the onset, Franco clarifies what “autobiographical” means for the purpose of his thesis: “a zone of expression that includes not only autobiography in the strict sense but also causeries, diaries, memoirs, and reminiscences of various kinds” (ix). Immediately after establishing the definition, he goes into documenting the genre’s historical precedents, and the theoretical frame he has adopted, citing scholars such as Philippe Lejeune, Leigh Gilmore, and Jean Starobinski among others. In chapter 1, the author dedicates his inquiries to the topic of autobiography in the twentieth century in Latin America. In this case, it is commendable that Franco devotes critical attention to authors from different periods, literary schools, and political engagements. He supports this approach by stating that during the century, “autobiographical writing and memoirs emerged as a significant part of Spanish American literature, both for the quantity of texts and for reasons of aesthetic relevance” (3). It is important to notice that Franco pays attention to what is known as literary testimonios, particularly relevant according to him because they articulate “their own difference (of ethnicity, sexual orientation, race),” and political discourse as well (9–10). Chapter 2 is unique because it takes the reader to a critical dialogue between writing and photography. Franco presents here three important premises: “1) photography as supplement of writing; 2) photography incorporated into the diegetic text; and 3) autobiography as . . . a comparison between the photographic act and the act of writing” (26). The chapter’s subtitle is “Three uses of the Photographic.” Three works are studied here: Gabriel García Márquez’s Vivir para contarla (2002), Augusto Monterroso’s Los buscadores de oro (1993), and Mario Vargas Llosa’s El pez en el agua (1993). Chapter 3, subtitled “Nuevos escritores mexicanos presentados por sí mismos,” is centered on the autobiographies of a few young Mexican writers whose first works were published in the sixties. As Franco rightly observes, “critics at the time did not seem to notice the homosocial character of the group, which was completely devoid of women” (77). His main argument consists in expressing that “this generation was oriented toward the formal renovation of the arts, intimacy, aesthetic cosmopolitanism, the expression of new urban environments, suspicion toward nationalism, and denunciation of the unkept promises of the Mexican Revolution” (91). Finally, chapter 4 is the only one dedicated to a single author: Julio Ribeyro’s La tentación del fracaso (1992). In fact, as Franco points out, this is a collection of diaries whose first volume was printed in the year previously mentioned. In addition, he stresses, “the diary is an ideal space to examine the different tropological combinations whose repetition, combination, and recombination create the effect of a unified life through metonymic contiguity” (180). Of importance is the analysis that Franco makes of a very significant topic in diaries, autobiographies, and memoirs: “the body and its illnesses” (189). Here Franco makes a remarkable contribution to the examination of diseases in Spanish American Literature, a subject that to this moment has not been sufficiently investigated by scholars of the field. One can think of few relevant examples, such as Jorge Luis Borges’s blindness, Frida Kahlo’s physical sufferings, etc., but the fact is that there are not many titles on this matter. [End Page 134] For its variety of authors and types of autobiographical writing, its theoretical rigor and methodological approaches, and its impressive bibliography, this is...

La Araucana como texto fundacional en el canon hispanoamericano: La novedad, la extrañeza y la otredad

This paper analyses the epic poem The Araucaniad by Alonso de Ercilla in terms of its foundational role in the canon of Spanish-American literature. Published in three parts in the 16th century, this poem distinguishes itself on the basis of certain aesthetic, ideological, and socio-historical features that help to define both it and the canon to which it belongs. Departing from these features, this analysis identifies three key concepts exhibited in The Araucaniad — newness, strangeness, and otherness — and traces their development from the same up to the works of Spanish-American authors of the 19 th and 20th centuries including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Horacio Quiroga, and Pablo Neruda. In doing so, this paper demonstrates the indelible presence of The Araucaniad in much of Spanish-American literature, thus establishing its legacy as foundational text in that canon. The results of this analysis are threefold: 1) that these concepts of newness, strangeness, and otherness are indispensable in identifying, discussing, and developing a distinctly Spanish- American canon; 2) that the same concepts have their roots in this key text of the Spanish Golden Age of literature, and; 3) that The Araucaniad and its interpretation are crucial in Spanish-American literary discourse given its foundational nature.

La experiencia sefardí en Latinoamérica: Tres novelas de Teresa Porzecanski y Rosa Nissán

En los últimos veinte años el campo de la literatura hispanoamericana se ha incrementado notablemente por la diversidad de autores que se leen y se estudian. Una de las manifestaciones de esta corriente ha sido la publicación de obras de autores de minorías étnicas, quienes al representar sus experiencias han ampliado el concepto de la cultura hispana. Las tres novelas que analizo en este ensayo -Perfumes de Cartago (1994) de Teresa Porzecanski, y Novia que te vea (1992) e Hisho que te nazca (1996) de Rosa Nissán- tratan del proceso de adaptación de las mujeres sefardíes en Uruguay y Argentina. Al mismo tiempo tales textos constituyen un valioso documento de la vida sefardí en esos países, prácticamente desconocida por los lectores hispanos.

El destino del Inca Garcilaso en el cuento hispanoamericano

This article recreates the figure of the historical Inca Garcilaso de la Vega as a fictional character. In its first part, the paper exposes the importance of the humanist writer as introducer of the literary tale in Spanish-American literature. Thus, the concept of fabula historial is presented by him in his Comentarios reales. The second part of the article explores the presence of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega as character in a tale by the Argentine writer Manuel Mujica Lainez.