La representación andinista del indio campesino en “Notas del alma indígena” de José Santos Chocano

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the section “Notas sobre el alma indígena” of Oro de Indias (1941) by José Santos Chocano with the purpose of refuting the approach that literary critics have outlined about the exceptional treatment of the indigenous referent in it. In other words, it has been asserted that the poems of “Notas sobre el alma indígena” escape from the indianist optic that characterized Chocano’s first poetic compositions. We maintain that, despite the fact that in “Notas sobre el alma indígena” the peasant Indian is presented as the protagonist, the speaker, after his failure to enter Andean subjectivity, expresses an archeological view of him, that is, he represents him as a relic of the past submerged in melancholy. Thus, he romanticizes his precarious condition and figures his ethos as that of a subject lacking will. For our analysis we will use the category of “andinism” proposed by Orin Starn.