Anatomías contrariadas: la representación del cuerpo en la literatura sobre los Andes

Abstract

The author analyzes three Latin-American texts which show the constructions of the Andean imaginary extended to certain stereotypes around Andean corporality: fragile, distressed, for which the hope of liberation is left to chance. In «Boletín y Elegía de las Mitas,» César Dávila presents a version of the Indian body «exclusively centered in the mockery of the anatomic» (of his head and genitals, of organs as deep as the heart and skeleton), which becomes alien to the naked and forced body. In «El sueño del pongo», by José María Arguedas, the body of the oppressed Indian is diminutive, and carries a «series of gestures which are introduced from humiliated positions». In spite of the apparently optimistic conclusion of both texts, the cultural products that fulfill a role in the exercise of social control are addressed. In «Barraquera», by José de la Cuadra, the body of this woman is established by rapes, deaths and forced migrations: being accustomed to suffer and keep silence, for this body pain becomes the only possible way to access pleasure. It is emphasized that the chronological time of the three accounts is that of waiting, the time of destiny. For these bodies-places always vulnerable and subjected to violence, ridiculed or made invisible, the inevitable would be founded on the closing of the historic.