Nelson Estupiñán Bass: a writer of two shores

Abstract

This essay examines the meaning and function of literature written and read from the experience of blackness in Ecuador, especially with regard to the example of Nelson Estupiñán Bass (1912-2002) who is considered one of Ecuador’s principal Afro Ecuadorian writers. Part of the problem analyzed here is how to identify the social context in which we read Estupiñán’s literary production. To that end, the analysis moves between the so-called “lettered city” and the rural areas of the northern region of Esmeraldas province where numerous communities are struggling to take control of their own representations. Consequently, the question that emerges has to do with the conflicting role of an Afro Esmeraldan writer who purports to articulate and interpret the needs, interests, and histories that define the province’s inhabitants while assuming an hierarchical position of a socially engaged intellectual who unwittingly and paradoxically renders voiceless those Afro communities that have for centuries spoken through their elders and ancestors.