Sobre el autor y la obra
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Icaza
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Ecuador,
1906-1978
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One of the most internationally famous of the
Ecuadorian realists (Franco 238)
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Indianist novel
Comps Example Questions
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The development of Spanish American identity and
issues of race, class, and gender in numerous authors (although they occur in
much earlier periods, as well as in the present). Authors: Martí, Rodó, Icaza, Vasconcelos,
Mariátegui, Guillén, Burgos, Neruda, etc. Some suggested readings: Cornejo
Polar, Meyer, Castillo, Stabb.
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Indigenismo. Definition, origins, thematic elements and
representative works that characterize the genre (Works: Matto de Turner,
Varela, Icaza, J.C. Mariátegui and R. Castellanos), or Indigenismo avec Indigenous self-representations.
What Franco says (Chapter 8, pg. 238-239)
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Main theme was the exploitation of the sierra
Indian and the situation of the cholo
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Uncompromising style with little lyricism;
“style is terse and the concentration wholly on the sordidness of life”
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Not necessarily as objective as other realist
writers
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Uses dialect and transcription of Indian
pronunciation much more than other Ecuadorian realists
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“Infrarealism” – realism that concentrates on
bases aspects of life
What Cambridge Companion: Latin
America says (Chapter 2, pg. 55)
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This was Icaza’s best-known novel (55)
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Icaza – Ecuador; life: 1906-1978 (55)
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Scathing condemnation of Ecuador’s insertion
into the global economy and the brutal exploitation of indigenous workers (55)
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Native protagonists are so thoroughly crushed
under the dominant economic system that they seem incapable of taking effective
action on their own behalf (55)
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Native characters are infantilized and
animalized; their speech is reduced to primitive enunciations and the result
makes indigenous cultures appear deficient in analytical categories and
historical perspective (55)
Key traits of indigenismo (Cambridge L.A., Chap. 7, pg. 143-144)
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Indigenismo = movement of vast ideological and
aesthetic projections early in the twentieth century; seeks to reassert the
cultural values of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, vindicate their
social and economic interests, and reveal their authentic being and reality
(143)
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Indigenista literature was written for and by an
emerging middle class and produced in an urban environment; deals with themes
about the Indian but does not allow the Indian to express himself (143)
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Indigenista literature – distinctive features:
(144)
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Tone of social protest aimed at undoing
immediate evils
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The imposition of ideology on plot and character
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A black and white construction of good and evil
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Little stylistic preoccupation
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Little or no character development
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Superficial description of folklore and customs
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Principal intent is to portray oppression
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Pessimistic vision of world
Characters
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Alfonso Pereira – patriarch of the land-owning
family, is in debt
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Julio – Alfonso’s uncle, who wants him to
resolve debt
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Lolita – Alfonso’s daughter, who has a baby out
of wedlock
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Andrés Chiliquinga – Indian farmhand,
representative of the Indian who is forced to work
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Local priest – helps Alfonso (landowner) to
manipulate Indians
Summary (from Franco, Chapter 8, pg. 244-245)
“The novel takes place on
the estate of Alfonso Pereira who, having found himself in financial
difficulties, decides to accept help from an American petroleum company. But
this is only given on condition that he build a road through his property and
clears away the Indian huasipungos or
holdings in order to make way for buildings. The novel describes this operation
in which many Indian lives are lost on the road-building and in which famine
hits the village when there is no longer food produced on the land. The Indians
finally rise in protest, only to be defeated by the troops sent against them.
Icaza is not concerned with showing human Indians since the situation he
describes is essentially inhuman. Both oppressor and victim had become
degenerate, and the Indians are invariably used as if they are animals or
objects. For instance, the wife of an Indian is taken as wet nurse by the white
woman and her own child starves. In places too difficult for horses to pass,
the Indians carry their masters on their shoulders. The degradation reaches its
lowest when the Indians steal rotten meat to satisfy their hunger and one of
them dies. The first glimpse of the Indian village almost at the beginning of
the novel sets the note of sadness and sordidness which pervades the whole
book… The whole village and everything in it is pictured as crouching down in
humiliation; animals and men live on the same level, and the high Andes,
magnificent as the mountains are, only serve as a wall which encircles the
prison of the village.”
More detailed summary
The novel begins by detailing the land-owning Pereira family. The
patriarch, Don Alfonso, has fallen on hard times and so he is forced by his
debt-holding uncle, Julio, into striking a deal with some gringos. This will involve clearing some of Alfonso’s land, which
will also necessitate getting rid of the huasipungeros,
or natives, that live on the land. So, Alfonso and his family, including his
recently-deflowered daughter Lolita and his wife, Blanquita, go off to the
family hacienda to set about clearing
out the Indians. After the Pereira
family gets to their place, we get to know Andrés Chiliquinga a bit, who lives
with his Indian wife in the middle of nowhere. I guess he is a farmhand.
Anyway, he beats his wife but they have awesome make-up sex and fall asleep.
Lolita has her baby without any trouble, but she can’t
nurse for long. They enlist the help of an Indian girl, but she runs away after
her infant son, carelessly left by the majordomo Policarpio in the care of his
mistress, dies. So, he goes out and looks for another wet nurse. In that scene,
the narration describes the horrible circumstances in which Indian women work
and Indian children live. No one is healthy because no one has enough food to
eat or enough nutrition. Alfonso becomes friends with the local priest, who
helps him buy more land and get more Indians to work for him. Eventually, after
Chiliquinga has been forced by Policarpio to go work far away, his woman is
taken and made Lolita’s wet nurse. Not long after, because he often sneaks home
at night even though it is 2 and a half hours away from the work site,
Chiliquinga is so angry when he discovers this that he becomes stupid the next
day while chopping at a tree with an axe and cuts his foot. It becomes infected
badly and so he is taken back to the hacienda.
Rodriguez is the notable Indian foreman, who has only one eye.
After being healed by a witch doctor, Chiliquinga is lame
and charged with watching the field of corn. One night, the cows escape through
their fence and trample part of the corn. It is charged to Andrés of course.
That same night, Alfonso rapes Cunshi, Chiliquinga’s wife. After awhile, the Pereira women go back to Quito and Alfonso hangs out with Jacinto (the
sheriff) and the priest, drinking at the sheriff’s place. After sending the
sheriff off for more booze, the landowner and the priest both rape the
sheriff’s wife. Later, Alfonso begins to get delusions of grandeur. He is
arranging big spectacles with the priest in order to draw more workers into the
creation of the road necessary for the gringo
employees to come in and withdraw whatever natural resources are there. When
Policarpio suggests that the Indians will not move their huasipungos out of the way, Alfonso decides that he will flood them
out by not unclogging the nearby dam. Later, the inaugural spectacle attracts a
ton of people that get to work alongside the Indians that have already been
forced to start working.
The next part describes the arduous construction of a
road that claims the lives of a number of Indians. The cholos leave when the
work gets too hard but the Indians don’t ever stop. They are abused by
Rodriguez and Alfonso, who care nothing for their lives. The engineer who has
been hired wishes to quit, but Alfonso convinces him to stay by noting that his
professional future could be at stake here. Eventually a road is constructed
and Alfonso is hailed by the newspapers as a patriot. Indians are not mentioned
in the articles at all. Eventually there is a flood, which some Indians believe
were caused by one man’s inability to raise enough money for a 100 sucre Mass to be said, and the huasipungos are washed away and the
Indians lose everything. On top of that, in spite of the year’s good return on
crops, Alfonso does not give his workers any soccoro (extra from the gleanings that traditionally had been doled
out by the hacendados). So there are
enough stirrings of rebellion that Alfonso brings the town’s two deputies out
to guard his house at night.
One day, a dead ox is discovered. Alfonso has some
Indians bury the corpse, but they go back at night and dig it up. The rotten
meat gets some people sick and some die. Alfonso blames them for getting
themselves ill. Some gringos come and
ask that the land where the huasipungos
have re-settled be cleared for a mill. When Rodriguez and the sheriff’s goons
do this, the Indians are stirred up by Chiliquinga to rebel. They cause Alfonso
and the gringos to run away. They
ransack the house, kill the sheriff, and then armed forces come and kill all
the Indians. At the end, there is a lingering cry of the Indians to fight for
their homes: “¡Ñucanchic huasipungo!”
Temas/ideas importantes
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Estilo de escritura
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Very terse writing style, focused on strictly
detailing events
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Language that reflects Indian dialect
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Realism / infrarealism
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Details of sordidness of life
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Omniscient, third-person narration
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Indigenismo
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Tone of social protest aimed at undoing
immediate evils
o
The imposition of ideology on plot and character
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A black and white construction of good and evil –
landowners are automatically evil (rape, lack of concern for Indians) while
Indians are all good (Chiliquinga loves his wife and incites a righteous
rebellion)
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Little stylistic preoccupation
o
Little or no character development
o
Superficial description of folklore and customs
o
Principal intent is to portray oppression
o
Pessimistic vision of world
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Depiction of indigenous people
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They are infantilized, incapable of correcting
their situation in any way
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Some depictions of indigenous customs
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Indigenous are shown as living in horrible
poverty – perhaps exaggerated to convey a stronger message?
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Social commentary/criticism
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Criticism of church (corrupt local priest that
aids landowner Alfonso in manipulation of Indians)
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Criticism of the system that allows and
perpetuates injustice, especially against the indigenous
