Last in line: representation of rabonas in nineteenth-century literature and visual culture

Abstract

My article focuses on the literary and visual representation of the rabonas, women of indigenous origin who accompanied soldiers in the campaigns, within 19th century travel literature and costumbńsmo. Both corpora, which played a key role in the symbolic construction of the nation, usually offered an animalized or folklorìzed image of the rabonas, accentuating the poverty and marginalization of these women within the Peruvian social and military body. Thus, considering women a mirror of the nation, my study asserts that the rabonas portrayed Peru in a way that contradicted the modernized image that the nation was trying to address.