Critical Junctures: Politics, Poetics and Female Presence in the Avant-garde in Peru

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Notes

 [1] In Argentina the avant-garde movement in the 1920s coalesced in martinfierrismo and in Mexico, in estridentismo. For more about these and an overview of the avant-garde in Peru see Verani (1990).

 [2] For example, Estuardo Núñez (1938) and Luis Monguió (1954). These critics produced text-based, linear readings of the avant-garde that defined its contradictions as shortcomings and the genre as a whole as transitional.

 [3] He claims that it began with the publication of the avant-garde journal Flechas, in 1924, and came to a close in 1930 with the change of political regime and economic collapse.

 [4] The Civilistas were in power for almost 50 years from 1872. After the Pacific War (1879–83) they took it upon themselves to rebuild the nation through economic development based on British and US loans and investment. This intensified under Leguía. The economic collapse after 1929 reveals all too clearly the over-reliance on foreign creditors. See Lauer (2001b, pp. xxviii–xxix) and Chavarría (1978, pp. 91–97).

 [5] According to Jorge Basadre (1970, p. 246), the population of Lima and provincial capitals almost doubled between 1920 and 1931. As Rodrigo Quijano (1995) and Steve Stein (1986, pp. 82–83) have revealed, this was at odds with the rate of economic growth, thereby strengthening social divides and paternalistic relations. Population growth was also at odds with political reform. Flores Galindo and Burga (1979, p. 126) indicate that only 5% of the population had the franchise at this time.

 [6] Economic power shifted from one set of landowners and import–export capitalists on the northern coast, to another in the southern sierra and coast. See Efraín Kristal (1991, pp. 177–180) for more about this.

 [7] For another explanation and exploration of this concept in relation to Peruvian sociocultural processes and practices see Santiago López Maguiña (2003).

 [8] Some of the most influential of these provincial intellectuals were: César Vallejo, from La Libertad; Alberto Hidalgo, from Arequipa; Carlos Oquendo de Amat, Alejandro Peralta and Gamaliel Churata, from Puno, and Serafín Delmar, from Huancayo.

 [9] In the 1920s, the leading exponents of Hispanism and Indigenism were José de la Riva Agüero, and Federico More and Luis E. Valcárcel, respectively. By the mid-1930s a route out of this impasse was glimpsed, particularly with the publication of El nuevo indio, by José Uriel García, in 1930, and the emergence of a discourse of mestizaje.

[10] As Flores Galindo (1991, pp. 85–104) has emphasized, Mariátegui's early involvement in journalism and the literary group Colónida shaped his ideas and gave rise to his participation in the student–worker alliance of 1919, led by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, before his trip to Europe at the end of that year.

[11] Despite his Hispanist leanings, seen in his nomination of José Santos Chocano, a modernista, as Poet Laureate in 1922, Leguía introduced a series of Indigenist reforms in the sierra and had his palace and public buildings in Lima embellished with Incaist motifs. This Indigenism may have been a veneer, but it enabled Leguía to co-opt and exert control over a reservoir of Andean symbolic capital. See Majluf & Wuffarden (1999, pp. 37–49).

[12] Patricia D'Allemand (2001, pp. 25–57) highlights that Mariátegui makes the connection between politics and art in an earlier political essay, ‘El hombre y el mito’ (Mariátegui, 1974b, pp. 28–34), of 1925, by talking about the socialist revolution in the language of art.

[13] These groups are the Martin Fierro group in Argentina and Colónida in Peru (Mariátegui, 1978, pp. 78–79).

[14] The journal ran for a further two years after Mariátegui's death in 1930 under Ricardo Martínez de la Torre.

[15] As D'Allemand (2001, pp. 25–57) points out, from 1925 Mariátegui turned his attention to national realities, making prolific use of the terms ‘lo nacional’ and ‘lo peruano’ in his articles. Indigenism became a vehicle not only for nationalism in politics and the arts, but also for an Indo-Americanism that would provide the continent with a bulwark against US imperialism.

[16] Yazmín López Lenci (1999, pp. 171–173) has identified no fewer than 45 journals circulating between 1920 and 1930. Those from provincial centers, such as Arequipa, Puno, Cusco and Huancayo, outnumbered those from Lima.

[17] See Amauta, 16 (1928), and Amauta, 21 (1929), respectively for the homages to Gónzalez Prada and Eguren. In the words of Flores Galindo, the journal acted as a ‘nexus’ (1991, p. 104) within and between Peru, LA and Europe.

[18] The abundance of terms such as ‘dialéctica’, ‘revolución’ and ‘materialista’ reveal this all too clearly. In contrast, the first editorial placed equal emphasis on politics and art, and thus endorsed the independent position of the intellectual.

[19] Haya de la Torre and César Vallejo were driven into exile in 1923, César Moro in 1925, Xavier Abril in 1926, and Magda Portal in 1927. Mariátegui was arrested twice in 1924 and 1927, and Amauta was closed down for six months in 1927. The separation between Haya de la Torre and Mariátegui, and the dominance of the Unión Revolucionaria in 1930 further fragmented the opposition.

[20] As Flores Galindo indicates (1991, p. 104): ‘Amauta terminó por ser algo más que una revista: fue la antesala del partido’. In many ways Amauta can be seen as both antechamber and chamber of the Socialist Party, which was formed halfway through the journal's trajectory.

[21] For example, Magda Portal and Miguel Angel Urquieta. See Lauer (2001c, pp. 64–81).

[22] Vallejo attacked their lack of critical thinking, or ‘sensibilidad nueva’, regarding this lexis. See Vallejo (2001, p. 184).

[23] The subject of Indigenism itself was also polemical as the debate between Mariátegui and Luis Alberto Sánchez in 1927 demonstrates (Flores Galindo, 1991, p. 90).

[24] Middle-class women became politicized through the press and provided a fledgling feminist movement with leadership from 1911. From 1919, however, this movement was weakened by internal divisions and co-option by either of the political parties. See Villavicencio (1992).

[25] Mariátegui (1972, p. 322) signalled Portal as Peru's first ‘poetisa’. Her poetry-writing phase ended with her deportation to Cuba by Leguía in 1927. She abandoned poetry for essays soon after but went back to writing poems just before and after she left Apra in 1948, publishing two more collections, Costa Sur, in 1945, and Constancia del ser, in 1965.

[26] Myriam González Smith (2002, p. 204) explains that ‘vermouth’ was the term given to early evening (7 p.m.) film performances in Lima in the 1920s. The idea of twilight is reinforced by the image of the inside of the cinema.

[27] Daniel Matthews (1994, p. 48) emphasizes that the notion of an ‘eternal present’ becomes a means of countering linearity and logocentrism for Portal.

[28] This is in contrast to the Indigenism, or Incaism, which was promoted by the state in an attempt to regenerate painting and develop a national school. Painting was the dominant visual genre in Peru, but, according to Lauer (1976), the lack of institutional support and an internal market, and the heavy influence of Hispanism, soon led to its stagnation.

[29] Under the leadership of Daniel Hernández and José Sabogal painting became more institutional than innovative in Peru in the 1920s and 1930s, but the graphic arts reveal a heterogeneity of genres, ranging from art nouveau to Indigenism, and registers that set them on a different course.

[30] I would like to thank the British Academy for generously funding a research trip to Peru last year to collect material for this article.