Copyright by Natalia Majluf 1995
The Creation of the Image of the Indian in 19th-Century Peru: The Paintings of Francisco Laso (1823-1869) Volume Two
by Natalia Majluf, B.A., M.A.
Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin December, 1995
The Creation of the Image of the Indian in 19th-Century Peru: The Paintings of Francisco Laso (1823-1869)
Approved by Dissertation Committee:
Jacqueline Barnitz, Supervisor
Dedication
To my parents, and to Martín, Verónica, Juan Pablo and José Antonio
Acknowledgments This dissertation was written over a long period of time in Lima and Austin. Research in Peru was facilitated by a number of persons, without whose support this dissertation could not have been written. Above all, I wish to thank Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru, who was kind enough to share his broad knowledge of the life and works of Francisco Laso. He was always ready to answer my questions and was generous enough to allow me to study Laso's personal papers. A large part of the research for this dissertation was carried out in the library of Dr. Félix Denegri Luna, who generously allowed me to study his rich 19th century newspaper collection. Without his help my research would have been seriously limited. The bulk of Laso's works is kept at the Museo de Arte de Lima, where I was able to work thanks to the unqualified support of its Director, Cecilia Alayza, and the museum conservation staff, who went out of their way to make Laso's paintings and drawings available to me. In the same manner, Merli Costa facilitated access to the works by Laso in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Historia. I am also grateful to the private collectors who allowed me to study and photograph works by v
Laso in their homes, and to my friends Carmen Banchero, Arnaldo Mera, José Ignacio Peña and Leonie Roca, who provided invaluable help in locating Laso's works and in finding access to a number of collections and archives. Thanks to Daniel Giannoni, I was able to obtain photographs of many important works illustrated in this dissertation. The staff of the Sala de Investigación of the Biblioteca Nacional in Lima was always kind and supportive, and allowed me to locate a number of rare publications. Similarly, I wish to thank the staff of the Archivo General de la Nación, Elia Lazarthe of the Centro de Estudios Histórico Militares, and Dr. Ricardo Arbulú Vargas and Pedro Godoy R. of the Biblioteca Pedro M. Benvenutto, Universidad del Pacífico.
In
particular, I thank Carlos Gálvez at the Instituto Riva-Agüero of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. The ideas presented here owe much to continued discussions with a number of friends in Peru including Juan Carlos Estenssoro, Pedro Guibovich, César Itier, Steven Mathews, Cecilia Méndez, Gabriela Ramos and Jorge Villacorta. I wish to thank in particular my friend Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, with whom I discussed almost every aspect of this dissertation, and who helped me from the very beginning of my research, generously sharing his broad knowledge of the art of the period. Financial support for the initial stages of this dissertation was provided by the University of Texas at Austin through the Marian Royal Kazen Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Art and a scholarship from
vi
the Deans Associations Fund. The Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin offered much encouragement and gave me the freedom necessary to explore my topic. I am especially grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Jacqueline Barnitz, for her help and guidance, and to Dr. Susan Deans-Smith, my advisor in the History Department, who introduced me to Latin American history and provided me with constant encouragement and invaluable criticism throughout my studies in Austin. I was able to write this dissertation thanks to the help of Patricia Majluf, Lisa Costello, and Chris Hudson and Ruby (and their green couch), who shared their homes with me for such long periods of time. Finally, I want to thank my friends in Austin, Beverly Adams, Katy Siegel, and Ethel Shipton, who have helped me even more than they can imagine.
vii
The Creation of the Image of the Indian in 19th-Century Peru: The Paintings of Francisco Laso (1823-1869) Publication No._____________
Natalia Majluf, Ph. D. The University of Texas at Austin, 1995
Supervisor: Jacqueline Barnitz
This dissertation studies the first important appearance of the theme of the Indian in modern Peruvian painting, in the works of Francisco Laso (1823-1869).
The emergence of this subject matter is
examined as part of a wider process of reorganization of social and ethnic identities in post-independence Peru. Inscribed within a dualistic image of the nation, an idealized and abstract "Indian" becomes the cornerstone of Creole nationalist ideology. This manner of representing the nation defines the discourse of modern Indigenism as I define it, and although I do not present Laso himself as an early precursor of this 20th century movement, I argue that his life and work can serve as the basis for a case study in the conditions of the possibility of Indigenist discourse.
By
examining Indigenism as a discourse, I also analyze its specific rhetorical
viii
strategies, in particular that of approximation and simultaneous distancing to a Creole-created "Andean world." My discussion centers mainly on only a few works by Laso (Inhabitant of the Cordilleras, Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro, The Three Races, and the Pascana series), although a number of other works by the artist are also discussed. I analyze these paintings in the context of contemporary discussions on the Indian population in Peru, but also with regard to the international circuits in which cosmopolitan intellectuals like Laso are increasingly situated. I explain the emergence of the modern image of the Indian as a consequence of both the racial prejudices structuring Peruvian society and the discourse of authenticity defining ethno-linguistic nationalisms.
ix
Table of Contents List of Illustrations ............................................................................................ xiii INTRODUCTION
1
SECTION I: CREOLE POSITIONINGS: FROM COLONY TO NATION
22
Chapter 1: The Indian Problem and the Problem of the Nation ................ 22 Creole Nationalism and the Appropriation of the Inca Past .............. 25 Early Indianism: Creole Leaders and the Figure of the Victimized Indian ................................................................................................. 42 The Nation and Social Integration: Racial Prejudice and Creole Identity............................................................................................... 49 SECTION II: THE SOCIAL FORMATION OF THE ARTIST
67
Chapter 2: The Beginnings of National Description: Costumbrismo and the Rise of Criollismo ................................................................................. 67 Artisans and Artists: The Social Formation of the Painter .................. 67 The First Costumbrismo ............................................................................. 81 The Image of Creole Lima........................................................................ 93 Chapter 3: Francisco Laso and the Generation of 1848.............................. 111 Laso in Europe ......................................................................................... 111 Francisco Laso and the Generation of 1848 ......................................... 119 SECTION III: THE IMAGE OF THE NATION
140
Chapter 4: The Image of the Nation: Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras of Peru and Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro ......................... 140 The Inhabitant of the Cordilleras .......................................................... 142 The Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro ............................................................ 148 Criticism and the Function of Painting ................................................ 156 The Dualism of the Nation .................................................................... 165 x
The Ambivalence of Idealization: A Critical Fortune of Racial Readings .......................................................................................... 182 Chapter 5: Cosmopolitan Spaces: Francisco Laso at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855 ................................................................. 200 Representatives of the Nation ............................................................... 201 National Schools, Cosmopolitanism and the Blurring of Borders ... 211 In Search of Lost Difference: "Local Color" and the Picturesque ..... 219 "Ce n'est pas le Pérou" or, the Failure of Authenticity ......................... 225 Marginalizing the Cosmopolitan .......................................................... 231 SECTION IV: THE FAILURE OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE
240
Chapter 6: Laso: Painter, Writer, and Statesman ....................................... 240 The Failure of Painting ........................................................................... 240 From Writer to Statesman: Elite Politics in the 1860s and the Origins of Civilismo ........................................................................ 257 The Indian: Writing, Politics, and Painting ........................................ 282 The Task of Autobiography: Self-Representation in the Public Sphere .............................................................................................. 294 SECTION V: RHETORIC OF APPROXIMATION
308
Chapter 7: The Country of Melancholy: Creole Identity and the Invention of the Andean World ............................................................ 308 Creole Patriotism and the Emergence of the Melancholic Indian ... 308 Melancholy after Independence ........................................................... 325 Chapter 8: The Haravicu/The Storyteller: The Scene of Approximation ........................................................................................ 345 The Image of the Storyteller and the Inscrutable Indian ................... 345 The Scene of Approximation ................................................................. 361
xi
CONCLUSION
375
Illustrations ....................................................................................................... 378 Appendix: Chronology of the Life of Francisco Laso ................................ 438 Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 450 I. Archival Sources ................................................................................ 450 II. List of Newspapers Consulted ........................................................ 451 III. Bibliography of Francisco Laso ...................................................... 452 A. Writings by Francisco Laso .................................................... 452 B. Contemporary Sources on Laso.............................................. 455 C. Secondary Sources on Laso ..................................................... 458 IV. General Bibliography ...................................................................... 464 A. Primary Sources ....................................................................... 465 B. Secondary Sources .................................................................... 473 Vita .................................................................................................................... 490
xii
List of Illustrations
Figure 1
José Sabogal. Impresiones del Ccoscco (sic), 1919. Exh. catalogue, Casa Brandes, Lima. José Sabogal Archives, Lima. ....................................................................................... 379
Figure 2
Anonymous. Gold medal. Insc. obv. "Simon Bolivar Libr. D Colomb y del Peru," rev. "El Cuzco a su Libertador," 1825. As reproduced in Christie's, New York. An Important Collection of Simón Bolívar Memorabilia. New York, May 18, 1988, p. 27. ................. 380
Figure 3
Anonymous. "From Spaniard and Civilized Indian Woman, Mestizo." Oil on canvas, 91 x 115 cm. Taken from M. C. García Sáiz, The Castes. A Genre of Mexican Painting, foreword by Diego Angulo, et al. Mexico: Olivetti, 1989, p. 115, pl. XIII e. ............................. 381
Figure 4
Table of Castes of Lima. Taken from Gregorio Cangas, Un testimonio sobre la conciencia del Perú en el siglo XVIII, ed. Carlos Deustua Pimentel. Lima: Instituto Riva Agüero, 1960, pp.61-62. ............................................... 382
Figure 5
Table of the Castes of Lima. Taken from Hipólito Unanue, Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima, y sus influencias en los seres organizados, en especial el hombre. Lima: Imprenta Real de los Huérfanos, 1806, pp. xcviii-xcix. ........................................................................ 383
Figure 6
Santiago Juárez. Allegorical Escutcheon in Honor of Simón Bolívar, 1825. Oil on canvas, 108 x 102 cm. Cuzco, Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Museo Histórico Regional. As reproduced in Arte en Iberoamérica, 1820-1980, ed. Dawn Ades, Colección Encuentros. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1990, pl. 1.13. .................. 384
Figure 7
José Gil de Castro. Portrait of José Olaya. 1823. Oil on canvas, 204 x 134 cm. Banco Central de Reserva, Lima. As reproduced in Ades, Arte en Iberoamérica, pl. 1.20 .. 385 xiii
Figure 8
E. Riou after Paul Marcoy. The Atelier or Studio of the Raphael of the Cancha. From Paul Marcoy, Travels in South America. From the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Illustrations by E. Riou. 2 vols. London: Blackie & Son, 1875, p. 271. .................................................. 386
Figure 9
Ignacio Merino, lithographed by Jullian y Ca. Saya ajustada, ca. 1844. Colored lithograph, 19 x 13 cm. Private collection, Lima. ....................................................... 387
Figure 10
Francisco Laso. Bathers in Chorrillos, ca. 1836-1842. Oil on canvas, 72.5 x 56.5 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-660. ........................................................................... 388
Figure 11
Ignacio Merino. La jarana, 1843/1851. Oil on canvas, 127 x 89 cm. Museo Nacional de Historia, Lima. As reproduced in Pintura piurana, Lima: Banco Regional del Norte, Norbank, 1994, p. 51. ......................................... 389
Figure 12
Francisco (Pancho) Fierro. El Mantequero, n.d. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 16 cm. Private collection, Lima. ....................................................................................... 390
Figure 13
Francisco (Pancho) Fierro. [Indio puro de la montaña], ca. 1850s. Watercolor on paper, 29 x 23 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima. ......................................................................... 391
Figure 14
Francisco Laso. Limeña in saya and manto, n.d. Gouache, 31 x 21.5 cm. Private collection, Lima. ............. 392
Figure 15
Anonymous. The Delaroche Atelier. Oil on canvas, 114 x 145 cm. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. As reproduced in W. Hauptman, "Delaroche's and Gleyre's Teaching Ateliers and Their Group Portraits." Studies in the History of Art, 18 (1985): fig. 6. ........................................... 393
Figure 16
Francisco Laso. Self-Portrait, 1849. Pencil on paper, 20 x 15 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Donación Manuel Cisneros Sánchez, Nº V 2.0-412. .......................................... 394
xiv
Figure 17
Francisco Laso. Inhabitant of the Cordilleras of Peru, 1855. Oil on canvas, 145 x 90 cm. Signed, lower left, 'F. Laso.' Pinacoteca Municipal "Ignacio Merino," Municipalidad de Lima Metropolitana. ............................ 395
Figure 18
Francisco Laso. Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro, one of the most famous conquerors of Peru, brother of Francisco Pizarro, 1855. Oil on canvas, 58 x 76 cm. Banco Central de Reserva, Lima. .................................................................. 396
Figure 19
Leopold Muller, lithographer. "Conopa, representing an Indian . . ." From the Album accompanying Mariano Eduardo de Rivero and Juan Diego de [Johann Jacob von] Tschudi. Antigüedades peruanas. Viena: Imprenta Imperial de la Corte y del Estado, 1851, pl. XXIV. ....................................................................................... 397
Figure 20
Print by A. Pinçon and P. Delamare, based on a photograph by M. Garreaud. "Un Indio," 1863. From Mariano F. Paz Soldán, Atlas geográfico del Perú. Paris: Fermin Didot, 1865, pl. XXXV. ................................. 398
Figure 21
Francisco Laso. Justice, 1855. Oil on canvas, 150 x 86 cm. Palacio de Justicia, Lima. Photograph by Daniel Giannoni. ................................................................................ 399
Figure 22
Francisco Laso. Flying Figure, ca. 1855. Charcoal, pencil, and pastel on paper, 28 x 44. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1058............................................................... 400
Figure 23
Francisco Laso. Preparatory drawing for the "Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro," ca. 1855. Pencil on paper, 30 x 47 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1012...................... 401
Figure 24
Francisco Laso. Preparatory drawing for the "Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro," ca. 1855. Pencil on paper, 26.6 x 19.9 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1019.............. 402
Figure 25
Francisco Laso. Preparatory drawing for the '"Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro," ca. 1855. Black and white chalk on paper, 30.8 x 18.6 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1015. .................................................................................. 403 xv
Figure 26
Francisco Laso. Preparatory drawing for the "Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro," ca. 1855. Pencil on paper, 25.2 x 19.5 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1016.............. 404
Figure 27
Francisco Laso. Preparatory drawing for the "Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro," ca. 1855. Pencil and chalk on paper, 30.5 x 15.2 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1051. .................................................................................. 405
Figure 28
Francisco Laso. Self-portrait, ca. 1850-1855. Oil on canvas, 72 x 58 cm. Present location unknown. ............... 406
Figure 29
Anonymous. "¡¡Rompe estas cadenas!! Levanta al indígena de la postración!! ¡¡Conquistemos la inmortalidad!!!" Lithograph no. 18 from the series edited by Leon Williez, ca. 1855-1860. Museo Nacional de Historia, Lima. .................................................................. 407
Figure 30
Anonymous photographer. Francisco Laso in Indian Dress. Photograph on paper mounted on cardboard, 21.1 x 24.2 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.11-52..... 408
Figure 31
Anonymous photographer. Preparatory photograph for the "Haravicu." Photograph on paper mounted on cardboard, 23.3 x 27.8 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.11-56. ................................................................................ 409
Figure 32
Anonymous photographer. Preparatory photograph for the "Haravicu." Photograph on paper mounted on cardboard, 21 x 23.8 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.11-55. .................................................................................... 410
Figure 33
Anonymous photographer. Preparatory photograph for the "Haravicu." Photograph on paper mounted on cardboard, 18.7 x 24.7 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.11-54. ................................................................................ 411
Figure 34
Anonymous photographer. Preparatory photograph for the "Haravicu." Photograph on paper mounted on cardboard, 26 x 22.5 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.11-53. .................................................................................... 412 xvi
Figure 35
Anonymous photographer. Preparatory photograph for the "Haravicu." Photograph on paper mounted on cardboard. Museo Nacional de Historia, Lima. .............. 413
Figure 36
Francisco Laso. Indian Woman Spinning, ca. 1849. Pencil and charcoal on brown paper, 31.5 x 19 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1076. ............................. 414
Figure 37
Francisco Laso. Italian Peasant Woman Seen from the Back, 1847. Pencil on paper, 30 x 22.5 cm. Private collection, Lima. .................................................................... 415
Figure 38
Floor plan of the Palace of Fine Arts of the Universal Exhibition of 1855. From Magasin pittoresque XXIII (July, 1855): 215. ..................................................................... 416
Figure 39
A. Marc. "École péruvienne.-Habitant des Cordillières, tableau par M. F. Laso." In L'Illustration, journal universel XXVI, no. 670 (December 25, 1855): 428. .......... 417
Figure 40
Bertall [Charles-Albert D'Arnould], "Le Salon dépeint et dessiné par Bertall," Journal pour rire nouvelle sèrie no. 204 (August 25, 1855), caricature no. 11720. ...................... 418
Figure 41
Francisco Laso. The Concert, ca. 1855-1859. Oil on canvas, 216 x 135 cm. Pinacoteca Municipal "Ignacio Merino," Municipalidad de Lima Metropolitana. ............ 419
Figure 42
Francisco Laso. Preparatory Drawing for The Concert, ca. 1855-1859. Ink drawing on grey paper, 31 x 23.5 cm. Private collection, Lima. ....................................................... 420
Figure 43
Francisco Laso. Recruitment, n.d. Pencil on paper, 24.8 x 47.2 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1055. ......... 421
Figure 44
Francisco Laso. The Three Races, ca. 1859. Oil on canvas, 81 x 106 cm. Private collection, Lima. ................. 422
xvii
Figure 45
Anonymous photographer. Ignacio Merino, Francisco Laso, and Manuel Nicolás Corpancho. París, ca. 1854. From a copy of the original photograph in the collection of J. M. Ugarte Eléspuru. ...................................................... 423
Figure 46
Francisco Laso. Haravicu, n.d. Oil on canvas, 103.4 x 139.3 cm. Department of History of the National Museum, now in the Palace of Government, Lima.......... 424
Figure 47
Francisco Laso. Pascana in the Cordillera, n.d. Oil on canvas, 126 x 194.5 cm. Club Nacional, Lima. ................. 425
Figure 48
Francisco Laso. Indian Encampment, n.d. Oil on canvas, 140 x 148 cm. Banco Central de Reserva, Lima, Nº cat. P-029. ......................................................................... 426
Figure 49
Francisco Laso. Preparatory drawing for a Pascana, n.d. Pencil on paper, 22.2 x 25.5 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1028............................................................... 427
Figure 50
Francisco Laso. Sowing, n.d. Pencil and pastel on paper, 22.2 x 25.5 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1028 (reverse). .................................................................. 428
Figure 51
"The Inca Manco Capac and the Coya Mama Ocllo Huaco, his wife, founders of the Inca Empire." Lithograph. El Ateneo americano, no. 2 (November 20, 1847): n.p. ............................................................................... 429
Figure 52
Leopold Muller, lithographer. Frontispiece to the album accompanying Rivero and Tschudi's Antigüedades peruanas. ...................................................... 430
Figure 53
"Vista de las ruinas del templo de Pachacamac . . ." Lithograph. From the album accompanying Rivero and Tschudi's Antigüedades peruanas, pl. LIV. ...................... 431
Figure 54
Horace Vernet. Arab Chiefs Telling a Tale. Salon of 1834. Oil on canvas, 39 x 54 1/2 in. Musée Condé, Chantilly. As reproduced in Robert Rosenblum and H. W. Janson, 19th-Century Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1984, pl. 117. .................................................. 432 xviii
Figure 55
Francisco Laso. Oil sketch for the Haravicu, n.d. Oil on canvas, 27 x 34.5 cm. Museo de Arte Nº V 2.0-217. ......... 433
Figure 56
Francisco Laso. Figure carrying a load, n.d. Pencil and charcoal on paper, 26.6 x 21.5 cm. Museo de Arte Nº V 2.0-1007. .................................................................................. 434
Figure 57
Francisco Laso. Preparatory study for the Indian Encampment, n.d. Pencil on paper, 17.5 x 15.5 cm. Private collection, Lima. ....................................................... 435
Figure 58
Francisco Laso. Preparatory study for the Indian Encampment, n.d. Pencil on paper, 27.4 x 43.5 cm. Private collection, Lima. ....................................................... 436
Figure 59
Francisco Laso. Preparatory study for the Pascana in the Cordillera, n.d. Pencil on paper, 28.5 x 30.5 cm. Museo de Arte Nº V 2.0-992. ............................................... 437
xix
INTRODUCTION
But what does Lasso more honor is his patriotic love, and to have been the first interpreter of the enigmatic psyche of our indigenous race. José G. Otero, 19231
An important aspect of Laso's work is of having been the creator of the indigenous theme in national painting. He paints him [the Indian] with all the pride of he who is the last expression of a fabulous past of seigniory and splendor, as he thought it should be. José Antonio de Lavalle y García2
There now is a general agreement on the importance of Francisco Laso (1823-1869) to the history of Peruvian painting. Considered to be the
1[Pero lo que hace a Lasso más honor es su amor patrio, y el haber sido el primer intérprete de la enigmática psiquis de nuestra raza indígena.] José G. Otero, "En el taller de Laso, una visita emocionante. Dibujos y óleos," Variedades no. 792 (May 5, 1923): 1104. 2[Aspecto resaltante de la obra de Laso es el de ser el creador del motivo indígena en la pintura nacional. Lo pinta con dignidad, con todo el orgullo de quien es última expresión de un fabuloso pasado de señorío y esplendor, como él creía que debía ser] José Antonio de Lavalle y García, "La extraordinaria personalidad de Francisco Laso," Expresión, revista peruana Año I, vol. I, no.1 (1938): 22.
1
founder of a "national" painting, Laso is also recognized for having been the first painter to represent the Indian.
In effect, between the
colonization of Peru in the 16th century and independence from Spain in the 19th century, Andean painting did not produce any significant representation of the Indian.
This is not to say that no visual
representations of people of Indian ethnic or racial status exist prior to the 19th century. However, the portraits commissioned by members of the local Andean nobility during the colonial period, or the rare representations of Indians among urban crowds in some colonial paintings, do not qualify as representations of Indians. Colonial Andean nobles created their portraits as members of a native elite, the paintings were signs of privilege and symbols of power which in fact differentiated them from the masses of Indian commoners. Moreover, these paintings, as portraits, represented specific, identifiable persons and, instead of inscribing their subjects within a particular ethnic group, served to further individual lineages and names. The modern representation of the Indian which Laso inaugurates marks a rupture precisely because it presents the Indian as an anonymous representative of an ethnic group. In this sense it could be argued that Indians appearing in urban crowds in colonial painting should be considered precedents to modern representations of the Indian.
Yet persons of Indian status represented in these urban
crowds are not singled out; they share a representational space with
2
Creoles, Mestizos, high church officials and other colonial authorities.3 Thus, in Laso's paintings, for the first time in Peruvian history, the Indian is presented as a type, idealized and singled out as a representative element of the Peruvian nation. This definition of his importance within the history of Peruvian painting places Laso at the beginning of a history of representations. In being hailed as the first "Indigenist" painter,4 he is presented as the initiator of a pictorial tradition which in the 20th century would come to gain momentum in the Indigenist movement.
Yet the aim of this
dissertation is not to cite Laso as a precursor of Indigenism. Laso did not initiate a movement nor did he spawn imitators. Between the time of his death in 1869 and the beginnings of Indigenism as a movement in the early 20th century lie three decades of Peruvian painting in which the Indian was a largely absent figure. I argue here, however, that many of the most important elements of modern Indigenism appear for the first time in Laso's works. My purpose is to determine the historical ruptures and conditions that allowed the Indian to become the central figure in Peruvian society, that permitted a socially marginalized and exploited mass to become the most significant representative of the Peruvian nation. Although I will demonstrate that certain crucial changes occur in Creole 3While
the term Indian is usually capitalized in English, other ethnic terms such as White, Creole and Mestizo are not, and I have found no consistent explanation for this convention. I thus capitalize ethnic terms equally in order to emphasize that they are all abstract categories. 4Edgardo Pérez Luna, "Los primeros destellos del indigenismo en la pintura de Francisco Laso," El Comercio, 9-XII-1959.
3
nationalist ideology during Laso's lifetime, I do not claim that Laso's paintings are representative of a wider change in Peruvian society. This dissertation is necessarily monographic because Laso's works are exceptional, not only within Peru, but also in a broader Latin American context.
The facts of Laso's biography, his social status, his artistic
education, his participation in a specific intellectual group, and his geographical displacement between Europe and America explain the early emergence of a kind of representation that can only be called "Indigenist." Thus, through an analysis of the different discourses that come together in Laso's works, I imply that the circumstances of Laso's biography allowed for the early emergence of Indigenism in his works, and that Laso's life and works can serve as a case study of the underlying assumptions and conditions of possibility of modern Indigenism. Indigenism is rarely defined systematically, but it has become a shorthand for a complex series of social, political, and cultural nationalist movements which emerged at the turn of the century and reached their apogee during the 1920s and 1930s.
Defined as a social movement,
modern Indigenism has been analyzed primarily through political and economic history, the focus of which is the emergence of the social vindication of the Indian. This way of interpreting Indigenism reflects the prevalence
of
economic
and
political
history
and
the
relative
marginalization of cultural history in Peru. Even recent research which has emerged in literary studies and art history has followed these
4
historiographic preferences.5 This partial manner of viewing Indigenism has led to a blindness to what is unique and specific to modern vindications of the Indian in all spheres. For the political vindication of the Indian itself is not new, and it can be traced back to the 16th century to the ardent defense of Bartolomé de las Casas and even to the tutelary laws of the Spanish legal system. In the context of this continuity, the literature on Indigenism has differentiated modern Indigenism from earlier political vindications through its intensity, and in literature through its degree of realism.6 20th-century Indigenist painters thus placed their relationship to Laso in negative terms; Laso was an early precursor, whose idealized works they had superseded with a more "realistic" representation, and they created a narrative of an expanding an ever-growing consciousness, culminating in the movements of the 20th century.7 The teleology of Indigenism constructs the history of a mounting tide of interest in the Indian, a natural process of gradual awakening to a problem which remains virtually the same throughout centuries.
5Efraín Kristal's study of Indigenist literature, for example, studies this phenomenon exclusively in relation to economic and political discourse. See The Andes Viewed From the City. Literary and Political Discourse on the Indian in Peru, 1848-1930, American University Studies, Series XIX, vol. 6 (New York, Bern, Frankfurt and Paris: Peter Lang, 1987). 6Tomás G. Escajadillo's erudite study of Indigenist literature is the most recent example of this kind of realist argument. See Narrativa indigenista peruana (Lima: Amaru, 1994). 7Indigenist painters of the early 20th century rarely acknowledged Laso openly. However, they evidently respected him as an artist. José Sabogal owned a self-portrait drawing of Laso, and Julia Codesido kept a framed reproduction of a portrait of Laso, which can still be seen hanging in her home. The drawing owned by Sabogal originally belonged to the painter Teófilo Castillo. See José Flores Araoz, Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, cat. no. 3.
5
It would be impossible to offer any single definition of the immense variety of political, economic, and legal discourses of the social movements and the cultural manifestations that are generally subsumed under the term Indigenism. What I wish to trace is the emergence of a particular mode of Creole discourse that defines the nation through the idealization of the Indian, and to define the place of this discourse within the broader context of an hegemonic nationalist mythology. In literary studies a distinction is usually made between a sentimentalizing and exoticizing vision of 19th-century writers, labeled Indianists, and the more "realist" and politically committed Indigenist writings of the 20th century.8 These definitions, however, simply follow the interpretations that 20thcentury writers and artists offered of their works, and are only able to trace the changes in aesthetic preference that marked the shift from romanticism to realism in literature and art. For lack of better terms, in this dissertation I also draw a distinction between Indianism and Indigenism. My definitions take into consideration the etymological roots
8The
distinction can be traced to José Carlos Mariátegui's definition of "authentic Indigenism," which he contrasts to simple "nativism." See Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality [1928], trans., Marjory Urquidi, prol. by Jorge Basadre (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971): 271-272. The term Indianism, as equivalent of romantic exoticism, was popularized in literary studies by Aída Cometta Manzoni, El indio en la poesía de América española (1939) and later by Concha Meléndez, La novela indianista en hispanoamérica (1961). Cornejo Polar also defines Indianism as a "romantic Indigenism." See "La producción de la novela indigenista," in La novela indigenista. Literatura y sociedad en el Perú (Lima: Lasontay, 1980): 36f. Luis Alberto Sánchez also distinguished between Indianism and a politically committed Indigenism. For a descriptive review of the use of these terms in literary studies see Fernando Rosemberg, "Dos actitudes literarias: Indianismo e indigenismo," Revista interamericana de bibliografía 36 (1986): 52-57. As I hope to show, 19th-century Indianism was no less politically oriented than any of its 20th century counterparts.
6
of these terms and account for what I consider to be the most significant characteristic of modern Indigenism. Indianism here refers to any defense of the Indian based on social and political vindications. Indigenism may incorporate Indianism, but it is primarily defined by the discourse of authenticity emerging from romantic nationalism. It must be remembered that in Spanish the term "Indian" (indio) is synonymous with indígena, meaning "indigenous" or "native." Yet as Raúl Alcides Reissner points out, although these words are generally synonymous in Latin America, they are not etymologically related.9
I wish to emphasize this difference,
between "Indianism" as a designation for a social group and "Indigenism" as a nativist accent on the authocthonous elements of Peruvian culture. While Indianism does not depend on the idealization of the Indian and its culture, Indigenism values "Indianness" as an ideal and hypostatizes the Indian into a symbol of the nation. Thus, overt racism appears more frequently within Indianist discourse than it does in Indigenist texts. Because certain movements within early 20th-century Indigenism emerged as a regionalist contestation of Lima's hegemony, many have attempted to define Indigenism as a regionalist movement.10 However, the discourse of cultural Indigenism is not significantly different when it is 9Raúl Alcides Reissner, El indio en los diccionarios. Exégesis léxica de un estereotipo, Serie de Antropología Social, Colección INI, 67 (México: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1983): 39. 10In particular José Tamayo Herrera, Historia del indigenismo cuzqueño, siglos XVIXX, prol. by Luis E. Valcárcel (Lima: INC, 1980). In this book Tamayo implies that Indigenism in a specifically Cusqueño movement. Víctor Peralta Ruiz follows Tamayo in his definition of what he calls 19th-century "proto-Indigenism." See En pos del tributo: burocracia estatal, elite regional y comunidades indígenas en el Cusco rural (1826-1854) (Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1991).
7
deployed from Cuzco, Arequipa, or Lima. Indigenism may sometimes be used in regionalist vindications, but it also transcends them, for as I argue here, although Indigenism may take the form of regionalism, it is primarily an elite discourse which transcends political geographies. Thus, unlike some accounts of the origins of Indigenism, I see it developing in large urban centers and in particular in Lima. Nevertheless, I do not characterize Indigenism simply as a manner of viewing the Andean region from an urban perspective, to paraphrase the title of one of the most recent books on the subject.11 Indigenism implies a specific way of imagining the Peruvian nation that is expressed through a particular mode of address. It is both a myth, in Roland Barthes' sense,12 and a particular rhetorical strategy.
This
definition explicitly contradicts functionalist accounts of Indigenism which view it as the product of a specific class, whose political and economic interests it is said to represent,13 while at the same time it serves to de-emphasize the specificities of particular disciplinary discourses. Indigenism functions within a dualistic representation of the Peruvian nation, one which opposes a Creole/Spanish element to the Indian.14 11Kristal,
The Andes Viewed From the City. Barthes myth is basically a motivated mode of signification which naturalizes history through reductive and essentializing tactics. See Mythologies, trans., Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 13See Kristal, The Andes Viewed From the City, and the review of the Spanish translation of Kristal's book by Cecilia Méndez in Revista andina, 10, no. 1 (July 1992): 253-254. 14Cornejo Polar was the first to reflect on the manner in which Indigenism functions within a dualistic image of the nation. See especially his essay "El indio: heterogeneidad y conflicto," in La novela indigenista. Literatura y sociedad en el Perú, pp. 1-29. Cornejo, however, describes this dualism through Marxist social categories, as the way in which 12For
8
Accounts of Indigenism generally assume that the term "Indian" is stable and fixed, that it is the unchanging essence which Indigenist writers constructed.
Although based on late-colonial images, the modern
definitions of the Creole and the Indian emerge only after independence. The problems encountered by elites in their attempts to define a Creole identity lie at the heart of the construction of the modern image of the Indian. Intellectual elites forged a dualistic nationalism, constructed as a series of oppositions between two contrasting poles, the Indian/the Andes and the Creole/the coast. Yet the Creole-Indian dichotomy does not represent actual social groups but symbols through which a national identity is constructed in discourse. This dichotomy pervades the national imagination; Peruvian history is reduced to the encounter of Spaniards and Incas, and even the country's geography is symbolically charged by this opposition. The three "natural regions" into which the country is traditionally divided, the Coast, the Andes, and the Amazon, are in effect largely dichotomous, for the Amazon has never been part of the national imagination, it is figured as an empty frontier zone and thus remains culturally insignificant.15 My aim is to show how this image of the nation came to be constructed during the mid-19th century in the generation of Francisco Laso. Indigenists negotiate a pre-existing dualism in Peruvian society. For him, Indigenism reflects but does not actively construct the national dichotomy. 15Benjamin S. Orlove describes this general geographical division in "Putting Race in Its Place: Order in Colonial and Postcolonial Peruvian Geography," Social Research, vol. 60, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 301-336. In attempting to cover the entire history of Peru since the 16th century, Orlove ignores historical specificity (and even accuracy) and sacrifices his avowed theoretical intentions in favor of general description.
9
This dissertation thus traces the emergence of new social hierarchies, and the reorganization and resignification of ethnic identities in the aftermath of the wars of independence. I argue that the national dichotomy is a creation of the intellectual elites of Laso's generation, one which is traditionally blamed for virtually all of the social and economic problems besetting modern Peru. As the story goes, by ignoring Peru's social problems, alienated and Europeanized elites betrayed their historical role as nation-builders and failed to construct the ideological and economic foundations for the Peruvian nation-state.
Basing their
wealth on the export of raw materials, speculating on the guano boom and pillaging state resources, they failed to form the capitalist bourgeoisie that would have placed the nation on the path of industrialization. Thus, the disastrous war against Chile of 1879-1883, in which Peru, unable to offer a unified defense against the foreign armies, lost a large part of its territory, has become a symbol of the failure of early republican elites.16 This modern narrative of failure, however, has a long tradition, and historians closely follow the interpretation of Peruvian history and society offered by post-war Peruvian intellectuals of the 1880s.
Modern
Indigenism is usually said to emerge from this "first literature of disillusionment," exemplified in the writings of Manuel González Prada.17 16The
most important account of this failure of elites is Julio Cotler, Clases, estado y nación en el Perú, 6th ed., Perú Problema, 17 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1992). 17Jorge Basadre, Perú: Problema y posibilidad. Ensayo de una síntesis de la evolución histórica del Perú, Biblioteca peruana (Lima: F. y E. Rosay, 1931): 156-157. It is important to note, however, that Basadre characterizes González Prada's writings as the "first" literature of disillusionment, when in fact the theme of the failure of the Peruvian
10
Historians argue that the war forced intellectuals to confront Peru's social problems through a process of self-criticism, out of which came a sudden awareness of the exploitation of Peru's relegated Indian population. However, though now couched in the language of positivism and anarchism, post-war intellectuals simply perpetuated the national imagery constructed by the intellectuals of Laso's generation. The failure of the political project of mid-century national elites obscures the success of the images of the nation which they helped to construct. The consolidation of the Creole state at mid-century, made possible by the guano-based economic boom, produced the first consistent attempt to forge a national constituency through vast educational projects partly based on the publication of government-subsidized textbooks on national archaeology, history, and geography.
Thus, during Laso's
lifetime the Indian became the focus of a wide array of old and new disciplines and discourses: philologists studied Andean languages, archaeologists rediscovered Inca ruins, writers produced the first Indianist novels, and jurists and politicians tackled the everpresent "problem of the Indian" through a liberal rhetoric at odds with a neocolonial reality. The dualistic image of the nation which these intellectuals constructed, remains, even today, the natural image of the Peruvian nation.
The specific associations and the political implications of
"Indianness" and "Creoleness," as concepts, changed significantly since the nation begins even with independence. The theme of national failure could in fact be characterized as a national intellectual tradition.
11
mid 19th century; the social make-up of the nation also changed, but the dichotomous structure and the hierarchy of value which it implied remained intact. There is perhaps no better example of this dualism than the catalogue which the Indigenist painter José Sabogal designed for his first exhibition in Lima in 1919. Titled "Impresiones del Ccoscco," this exhibition is considered the first important manifestation of modern pictorial Indigenism. The cover of the catalogue (fig. 1) presented a strong image of the "Andean" through a conflation of Andean sceneries and neoIncaist designs, while the image of the tapada, traditional symbol of Creole Lima, was relegated to the back cover of the catalogue. As synthesized in Sabogal's catalogue, the Peruvian nation is composed of a virile and dynamic Andean element, presented in a "modern" style, and a weak and feminine element described through a more restrained style associated with the past.
Thus the Indian and the tapada become emblems of
"Indianness" and "Creoleness" and summarize, through a simple opposition, the image of the Peruvian nation. This dualism pervades most writings on Peruvian history and in particular those of Indigenist advocates. José Carlos Mariátegui's influential Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality of 1928 contributed to perpetuate the national dualism.
For Mariátegui, the coastal type is a weak blend, lacking a
"homogeneous type" and a "strong personality"; while the Indian is a symbol of the "authocthonous race," which not only "represents a type, a
12
theme, a plot, a character, he represents a people, a race, a tradition, a spirit."18 Between the Indian and the Creole there is a third term, "Mestizo," which would appear to threaten the stability of this dualism. Significantly, the Creole/Indian dichotomy fails to incorporate the Mestizo in any explicit manner.
While during the 19th century the
Mestizo has no significant representation,19 the growing demographic presence of the Mestizo population during the 20th century forced Peruvian intellectuals to confront the issue of social mestizaje. With the adoption by Peruvian writers of the Latin American discourse on mestizaje in the early decades of the 20th century, it appeared as though this dualism would finally be superseded. Yet this did not occur, for mestizaje rarely produced a perfect fusion, and the Mestizo became the synthesis of only two elements, the Indian and the Creole.20 In writers like José Uriel García and José Varallanos, the positive interpretation of the "New Indian" or the "Cholo" meant little more than the ascription to these social groups of "Andean" traits.21
The difficulties encountered by Mariátegui in
overcoming Peruvian dualism are exemplary. Mariátegui simply opposed an Indianized Mestizo of the Andes to a Hispanicized Mestizo of the Coast. In the end, Mariátegui's conception of Peru does not allow for the 18Mariátegui,
Seven Interpretive Essays, pp. 201, 272-273. Oliart, "Poniendo a cada quien en su lugar: Estereotipos raciales y sexuales en la Lima del siglo XIX," ms., 1993, n. p. 20José Varallanos, El cholo y el Perú. Introducción al estudio sociológico de un hombre y un pueblo mestizos y su destino cultural (Buenos Aires: Imprenta López, 1962): 12, 32. 21Ibid., pp. 79, 96. 19Patricia
13
"undefined hybrid nature" of the Mestizo social type, which "manifests itself in a sordid and unhealthy stagnation."22
For a long time Peruvian historiography ignored the 19th century. Recently, revisionist studies on the wars of independence, peasant rebellions, and on the economic history of Peru have contributed to expanding our knowledge of this important but forgotten period of Peruvian history.
Unfortunately, the same has not occurred within
cultural history, which, save for a few scattered studies in literary history, remains largely unexplored.
This is partly the consequence of the
emergence of dependency theory during the 1970s, which looked to the 19th century only in search of the origins of neocolonialism and underdevelopment.
Historians studied the insertion of the Peruvian
economy in the international capitalist system, debated on the existence of a national bourgeoisie, and tried to explain the paradoxical economic failure of a Peruvian state enriched by guano exports. The emphasis on economic issues effectively relegated cultural and intellectual history to the superstructural margins of Peruvian history. Thus there is still no history of Peruvian nationalist ideology or of modern racism, only few studies of elites and ethnic identities, and no specific histories of the emergence of archaeological and anthropological discourses, or of 19thcentury Peruvian painting, architecture, or sculpture.
22Mariátegui,
Seven Interpretive Essays, pp. 279-282.
14
This dissertation attempts to contribute some new views on Peruvian nationalist discourse and Peruvian cultural history in general, for Laso's paintings cannot be understood in a historical void. However, I am aware of the limitations which the lack of specific histories places on the issues discussed here.
At some points discussions of particular
discourses and histories may seem overdone, obscuring rather than illuminating Laso's works, but they all emerge from questions and problems posed by the paintings themselves. Moreover, I attempt to ground all of the more general discussions around issues concerning Laso's life.
Although the broad outlines of
Laso's biography were established in early writings, this dissertation offers new information and documents previously unfounded statements about the artist's life. Save for some significant contributions by José Flores Araoz, most modern writings on Laso have as their source the obituaries and other biographical notices written by friends of the artist after
his
death.23
This
limited
biographical
information
was
supplemented by the first serious attempt to order Laso's œuvre on the occasion of the important retrospective exhibition of his works held at the Sociedad "Entre-Nous" in 1937.24 Although useful, the catalogue of this exhibition, compiled by Flores Araoz, was not comprehensive nor did it have any scholarly pretensions. Discussions of specific works by Laso in 23Most notably the short biography written by his friend José Antonio de Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," El Perú Ilustrado 3, 2nd semester, no. 137 (December 21, 1889):1126-1127. 24Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, exh. cat. (Lima: Sociedad "Entre-Nous", Imprenta Torres Aguirre, December, 1937).
15
this dissertation thus rely on original research which will hopefully conclude in a catalogue raisonné of the painter.
However, I do not
attempt to analyze here all aspects of Laso's pictorial and literary production. I focus mainly (but not exhaustively) on those works which deal directly with the theme of the Indian, and I exclude from consideration most of Laso's religious paintings and portraits.25 This dissertation follows a roughly chronological sequence.
It
begins with late colonial and early republican debates on the Indian and the constitution of the Peruvian nation, and then, following the course of Laso's biography, it attempts to establish the manner in which these early images survived the specific political junctures in which they originated, becoming an integral part of Creole ideology during the rest of the century.
While new images and stereotypes on the Indian begin to
emerge at mid-century, they do not cancel out, but rather incorporate previous images and discourses. Thus, the paradox of Indigenism pointed out by Magnus Mörner, that Indigenism "grew out of an environment that was imbued with racism"26 is only apparent. As I attempt to show in Section I, Indigenist discourse, though self-avowedly opposed to Indian
25I exclude from consideration many of Laso's paintings dealing with Indian subjects. In particular, I do not discuss Laso's important work, The Burial of the Bad Priest (Museo de Arte de Lima), on which I am preparing a separate study. However, many of the issues surrounding this painting, including the problem of Indian oral traditions and the theme of melancholy, are discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 of this dissertation, in relationship to Laso's Pascana series. 26Magnus Mörner, "Historical Research on Race Relations in Latin America During the National Period," in Race and Class in Latin America, ed. Magnus Mörner (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970): 225.
16
oppression, is not only framed by the structures of a racist society, but is in fact determined by racism. Section II analyzes the way in which the status and role of painting changed at mid-century, allowing new representations to emerge, and traces the development of a new Creole identity in the modern discourse of criollismo, and its representations in visual and literary costumbrismo. Laso's early formation as an artist developed in the context of Creole costumbrismo, and this genre greatly influenced his pictorial and literary production.
However, Laso also formed part of a generation of
intellectuals that attempted to break with the tenets of costumbrismo, and to construct an alternative vision of Peruvian society. In Section III, I analyze the Creole/Indian dichotomy as it appears in two of Laso's most important early works, the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras and the imaginary portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro of 1855, by examining their place in Peruvian debates of the early 1850s. In this section I also describe the manner in which the paintings were discussed in the French criticism of the Universal Exhibition of 1855 and the difficulties encountered by painters like Laso in creating a national painting in international contexts. Francisco Stastny rightly defined Laso as precursor of the contemporary Peruvian artist, caught in the dilemma of participating in European culture and simultaneously feeling alienated from that tradition. Laso's entire œuvre can be seen as a response to this
17
"ambiguous situation."27 Even though colonial art also participated in transcultural, even "international," contexts, it was only during the 19th century that the notion of cultural alienation is incorporated into the practice of artistic production. Thus Laso's paintings for the Universal Exhibition engaged the issue of national art as part of a broader discussion, facilitated by international demands. The discourse of cultural authenticity emerges as the crucial element that binds together Creole representations in a Peruvian and an international context. As a painter, writer, and statesman, Francisco Laso spoke from a variety of positions and his statements are defined in form and content from the position from which he speaks. Section IV presents a history of Laso's activities as a writer and politician after his return from Europe in 1856. Laso gradually abandoned painting during this period to become one of the most important figures of Peruvian national politics of the 1860s. This section offers an opportunity to present the various ways in which the Indian is figured in different discourses, and I analyze the image of the Indian as it appears differently in Laso's writings, paintings, and political activities.
I argue that a professional painter like Laso
perceived painting as a marginal activity within Peruvian society. The 27"Francisco
Laso no sólo fue el primer artista que vivió plenamente el dilema de sentirse partícipe y a la vez ajeno a esa cultura europea que admiraba tanto y por la cual añoraba; también fue el que respondió con más autenticidad, decisión y consistencia al resto de esa dualidad. Es en ese sentido amplio, que a Laso se le puede considerar como un precursor de los artistas contemporáneos. No por el simple uso de una temática indígena, ni por sus actitudes de vanguardia, sino porque experimentó en carne propia y supo responder a esa situación ambigua." See Francisco Stastny, "Francisco Laso, pintor moderno," in Exposición conmemorativa Francisco Laso, I centenario (1869-1969), exh. cat. (Lima: Museo de Arte, July 1969): n.p.
18
second part of this section traces how the perceived weakness of a pictorial public sphere determined the veiled autobiographical references which abound in Laso's paintings, in particular The Three Races of circa 1859. As I define it, Indigenist discourse is structured through a specific rhetoric, it is a mode of address. Section V, "The Rhetoric of Approximation," analyzes the manner in which literary, archaeological, legal, and other discourses on the Indian are structured through a similar rhetoric of approximation and simultaneous distancing to an unchanging and hypostatized "Andean world." This section describes Creole attempts to approach the Indian through a study of three major paintings by Laso, the series of Pascanas, representing Indian resting places in the Andes. Recent research has tended to emphasize that Indian communities were not disassociated from the political structures of the Creole state, and that in fact they often participated actively in national struggles.28 However, this new body of work not only ignores the evidence which suggests that Indian-state relations were highly localized and rarely able
28For a review of the literature see the essays by Florencia Mallon and Heraclio Bonilla in Steve J. Stern, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), and the volume by Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, eds., Nation-States and Indians in Latin America, Symposia on Latin America (Austin, Texas: ILAS and University of Texas Press, 1991). More recent specific contributions by Cecilia Méndez, "Los campesinos, la independencia, y la iniciación de la república. El caso de los iquichanos realistas: Ayacucho, 1825-1828," in Henrique Urbano and Mirko Lauer, eds., Poder y violencia en los Andes, Debates Andinos, no. 18 (Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1991): 165-188; and Charles Walker, "La violencia y el sistema legal: Los indios y el estado en el Cusco después de la rebelión de Túpac Amaru," in Ibid., pp. 125-147.
19
to transcend regional interests, but it has also obscured the basic fact that Indian communities had virtually no participation in the political structures of the Peruvian state or on the production of nationalist discourse. Thus, while explicitly addressing the issues of the creation of the image of the Indian, this dissertation necessarily traces only a history of Creole nationalist ideology, for it rests on the assumption that it is the very instability of Creole identity that constructs certain images of the Indian, and that it is the Creole need to fix social and ethnic boundaries that in large part determines these representations.
20
SECTION I: CREOLE POSITIONINGS: FROM COLONY TO NATION Chapter 1: The Indian Problem and the Problem of the Nation Francisco Laso was born on May 8, 1823 in Tacna, in southern Peru,1 during one of the most difficult and uncertain years of the Peruvian wars of independence; Spanish forces still dominated most of southern Peru, while the north was soon to be torn apart by civil wars.
The
liberating expedition from the south, led by General José de San Martín, favored the cause of Peruvian independence from Spain, which was declared on July 28, 1821; but San Martín's monarchical ideas and lack of decision in confronting Spanish military forces--and the Peruvian elite-led to his early retirement in 1822. In February of 1823, the Peruvian aristocrat José de la Riva Agüero took over the presidency, but by June Spanish military forces had taken Lima, and José Antonio de Sucre, sent by Simón Bolívar's forces in the north, took over the leadership of the patriot forces.
Riva Agüero, unwilling to relinquish power, established
himself as president in the northern city of Trujillo. Soon Peru was to 1The
issue of the artist's date and place of birth has been extensively debated. It was largely solved in an article by José Flores Araoz, which also summarizes the debate. See, "En torno al lugar y fecha de nacimiento del pintor Francisco Laso," La Prensa, 19-VI1938. Although most of his conclusions are correct, Flores Araoz insisted in identifying Laso's birthplace as the town of Yaquia, in Tacna. Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru finally established Tacna as Laso's birthplace in Ignacio Merino. Francisco Laso, Biblioteca Hombres del Perú, XXXIII (Lima: Hernán Alva Orlandini, 1966): 108-109. The confusion about his place of birth derives from a misspelling of Tacna in the catalogue of the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition.
22
have two presidents, for the Congress in Lima simultaneously named the marquis of Torre Tagle as new president of Peru. The anarchy and chaos that ensued left little hope that Peruvians could consolidate independence from Spain. The fragility of Peruvian leadership was soon exposed when Riva Agüero began negotiations with the Spaniards and Torre Tagle, with typical opportunism, took sides with the royalists. By September 1823, the armies of Simón Bolívar entered Lima. Bolívar's military leadership won the decisive battles of Junín in August and Ayacucho in December of 1824, which finally sealed Peruvian independence.2 The Peruvian nation-state, the "reluctant republic" as John Lynch called it, thus came into existence.3 While the very concept of the nation implied a radical and irreversible change, the social structures inherited from the colonial period remained largely untouched.
The new
leadership, composed mostly of Creoles emerging from the middle and upper sectors of colonial society, took over the political void left by the mass migration of colonial authorities and other Spaniards living in Peru. They were faced with the daunting task of creating a new political order and of organizing, almost from scratch, the future face of the Peruvian nation. Few texts better convey the "extraordinary and embarrassing dilemma" posed by the wars of independence on the Creole leaders who 2The
best summary of these events is John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826, 2nd ed. (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986): 158-189 and 267-294. 3Ibid., p. 267.
23
led and managed the revolt than Bolívar's anxious portrayal in his famous "Jamaica Letter" of 1815: I consider the present state of America as similar to that of imperial Rome, when she was decaying: Every division formed for itself a political system, agreeable to its interests and situation, or followed the particular ambition of certain chiefs, families, or corporations; with this remarkable difference, that the dispersed tribes reestablished their ancient customs, with such alterations as were required by circumstances. But we hardly preserving a vestige of our former state, neither Indians, nor Europeans, but a race between the original natives and the European Spaniards; being by birth Americans, and our rights those of Europe, we have to dispute and fight for these contending interests, and to persevere in our endeavors notwithstanding the opposition of our invaders; so that we are placed in a most extraordinary and embarrassing dilemma. It is a sort of prophecy to say what line of policy will be finally adopted by America.4 Bolívar describes the precarious position of Creole leadership, simultaneously having to fight an external enemy while maintaining power in opposition to other social groups within the colonies. But the new power structure must also seek its own legitimacy, for it can no longer be based on a pre-Columbian past which is beyond retrieval. In the presence of the "original natives," the issue of political legitimacy becomes the crucial factor in the constitution of the new Creole states, for it implies that Creole power is somehow spurious and illegitimate.5 Bolívar's text
4Simón
Bolívar, Carta de Jamaica (Caracas: Ediciones de la Presidencia de la República, 1972): 93-94. This rigorous edition offers most of the 19th-century versions of this important text. Of the many available versions of this text, first written in 1815, I cite the earliest published version, as it appeared in a Jamaican newspaper in 1818. 5In fact, the Spanish version of this text, published in 1833 replaces the phrase "original natives" by that of "legitimate owners."
24
thus summarizes the political and social tensions which successive generations of Creole leaders would have to confront. Francisco Laso belonged to the first generation of Creole Peruvians who lived to see the outcome of what Bolívar could only perceive as a "prophecy": Creoles politically achieved the arduous goal of winning a double battle and of maintaining power.
But if political battles can
sometimes be definitely won, the cultural and social problems arising from the situation Bolívar described were not as easily overcome. During his lifetime Laso would not only witness but help in the construction of a new representation of Peru, a process which involved the assimilation of new concepts of the nation, and the social groups which comprised it, into a society that was not significantly different from that of the colonial period. The present chapter traces the history of early Creole Indianism by analyzing the manner in which Creoles first attempted to construct the basis of the Peruvian nation-state.
CREOLE NATIONALISM AND THE APPROPRIATION OF THE INCA PAST
I don't know whether it was a poetic movement, in which the soil was taken for the nation, or if it was one of those true follies, which were not wanting at the time of emancipation: the fact is that Peruvian independence and the reconquest of the Inca empire were reclaimed as one and the same thing. And with such good faith did many American Spaniards believe this, that 25
even today they are persuaded that they belong to the Inca empire; that they are Indians; and that the European Spaniards conquered them and did them great harm. Bartolomé Herrera, 18466
The sense of Creole identity which had mobilized vast sectors of colonial society prior to the wars of independence had been forged on two fronts. On the one hand, it was a long-standing process, dating from the earliest moments of conquest, of Creole fights for power within the colonies. It evolved out of a growing resentment against the political privileges and commercial success of peninsulares
(Spaniards born in
Spain).7 Although this aspect of early Creole power and identity has been extensively studied by historians of colonial society, they have usually ignored the other group against which the Creole came to assert their power: the colonial curacas. The curacas formed a kind of lesser nobility within the Spanish legal system, a position usually associated with a hereditary post which gave 6[No sé si fué un movimiento poético, en el que se tomaba por la nación el suelo; o si fué una de las verdaderas locuras, que no escasearon en la época de la emancipacion: el hecho es que se proclamó la independencia del Perù, o la reconquista del imperio de los incas como una misma cosa. Y tan de buena fé creyeron esto muchos españoles peruanos, que hasta hoi están persuadidos de que pertenecen al imperio de los Incas; de que son indios; y de que los españoles europeos los conquistaron y les hicieron grandes daños.] Herrera, Escritos y discursos, 2 vols., prologue by Jorge Guillermo Leguía (Lima: F. y E. Rosay, 1929): 86. 7Bernard Lavallé, Las promesas ambiguas. Ensayos sobre el criollismo colonial en los Andes (Lima: Instituto Riva-Agüero, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1993). Lavallé focuses on the development of an autonomous Creole identity during the 16th and 17th centuries but largely ignores the differences between this early Creolism and that of the late 18th century.
26
them power over their communities and turned them into useful intermediaries between the colonial state and local Indian communities. Curacas thus held an ambivalent position as representatives and protectors of Indian communities and necessary aides of the colonial administration in the control of the native population. During the late 17th century, but especially during the next century, Andean curacas exerted a growing political and symbolic presence in Peruvian society, coming to form what John Rowe has called the "national Inca movement" of the 18th century.8 The symbols they chose for their identification to the pre-Columbian past were mostly of colonial origin. Francisco Stastny has used Panofsky's notion of "disjunction" to describe the transformation of motifs and artistic media that defined this Inca "renaissance."9
These symbols and
representations were not, in any way, representations of an "Andean" identity or of a specifically "Indian" culture, nor did they represent the curacas as an ethnic or racial type.10 Although curacas claimed a political right to represent the Indian nation, they had a different legal and social
8The
founding study and still one of the best accounts of this phenomenon is John H. Rowe, "El movimiento nacional inca del siglo XVIII," Revista Universitaria, vol. 43, no. 107 (1954):17-45 9Francisco Stastny, "El arte de la nobleza inca y la identidad andina," in Mito y simbolismo en los Andes. La figura y la palabra, ed. Henrique Urbano (Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas", 1993): 145. 10The term is ambiguously used in the title of Stastny's essay, Ibid. Stastny himself indirectly relates these images to 20th-century Indigenism in "El indigenista y sus fuentes," in Museo de Arte de Lima, Sabogal y el grupo indigenista, exh. cat. (Lima: Museo de Arte, 1993): n.p. This is a common prejudice, which has pervaded much of the literature of the 1980s. See Thierry Saignes' criticism of Manuel Burga's Nacimiento de una utopía. Muerte y resurrección de los Incas, of 1988, in "Le Temple du soleil," L'Homme XXXII, nos. 122-124 (April-December 1992): 377.
27
status.11 Artistic products of the Inca renaissance were signs of privilege and distinction; they were the symbols of power which served to distinguish a native elite. Moreover, neo-Incaism was not circumscribed to any particular region, least of all to the Andes. The revived power of the curacas as a social group emerged during one of the most conflicted and unstable periods in colonial history, marked by a cycle of peasant rebellions. In 1781, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, a member of the Andean nobility, after unsuccessfully seeking validation of his titles from the Spanish legal system, organized and led the most important and widespread rebellion of the colonial period.12 This rebellion, which shook the entire southern Andean region, from Cuzco to La Paz, mobilized a vast number of peasant communities, and although Túpac Amaru was sentenced to death in 1781, the rebellion continued well into 1783. Many Creoles participated in the early stages of the revolt, although they retreated in fear when they perceived they could no longer control the violence the insurrection unleashed. A great number of curacas, on the other hand, actively participated with colonial authorities in repressing the insurrection. 11Thomas
B. F. Cummins points to the curacas' differentiation from the Indian population while emphasizing their oppressive role in relation to the communities they represented. See, "We Are the Other: Peruvian Portraits of Colonial Kurakakuna," in Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Rolena Adorno y Kenneth J. Andrien (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1991): 203-231. 12No aspect of colonial history has produced a richer debate or a lengthier bibliography than the Tupac Amaru rebellion. The most comprehensive review is Stern, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World; for the most recent critical review see Scarlett O'Phelan Godoy, "L'Utopie Andine. Discours parallèles à la fin de l'époque coloniale," Annales, no. 2 (March-April 1994): 471-495.
28
Túpac Amaru's motivations and aims are hotly debated today, but the colonial administration had a clearer and more univocal interpretation of the rebellion than modern historiographers.
Whatever the true
motivations and interests behind the rebellion, it is this interpretation which was to become crucial in the succeeding decades and which, in large part, defined early Creole nationalist ideology. The royal inspector, José Antonio de Areche, was convinced that Túpac Amaru's success in mobilizing the Indian population derived from his claims to Inca descent. For Areche, Túpac Amaru's power over the Indian masses derived from the way in which he had manipulated Incaist symbolism in order to legitimate himself in the eyes of the Indians. Colonial authorities thus reacted swiftly in the aftermath of the rebellion to prohibit such displays and to limit the power of this native aristocracy. Areche ordered that all paintings representing the Incas be destroyed, but his prohibitions extended to almost every aspect of Incaist representation, from portraiture to dress and music. Areche was attempting to erase a historical memory for, he claimed, Incaist symbolism only served "to remind them [the Indians] of memories that do nothing but influence them and induce more and more hatred to the dominant nation."13
Areche's death sentence
against Túpac Amaru in 1781 also sealed the fate of the curacas as a social group.
On April 28, 1783 a royal decree suppressed all hereditary
13[recordándoles
memorias que nada otra cosa influyen que el conciliar más y más odio á la nación dominante] "Sentencia dada por el señor visitador D. José Antonio de Areche al rebelde José Gabriel Tupac Amaru en la ciudad del Cuzco," [May, 1781], published in John Miller, Memorias del General Guillermo Miller, preliminary study by Percy Cayo Córdova, 2 vols. (Lima: Editorial Arica, 1975): I, pp. 295-302.
29
cacicazgos, allowing only those curacas who had remained faithful to the crown to maintain their posts until their death.14 The gradual disappearance of the curacas as the privileged intermediaries
between
Indian
communities
and
the
colonial
administration left an important political void within the colonies. The social and political vacuum created by the dispersal of this Inca renaissance came to be increasingly filled by the colonial administration and an important sector of the Creole bureaucratic elite.
Far from
withdrawing in fear, as traditional historiography would indicate,15 the Creole undertook an offensive against the curacas.
The power of the
native elites, however, had been gradually undermined even before the rebellion.
During the late-18th century Creoles and Spaniards
progressively take over the functions of traditional curacas in Indian communities. After the rebellion, this process received official sanction with the abolition of hereditary cacicazgos and the increasing appointment of Spaniards and Creoles to the post.16 In prohibiting the use of Incaist imagery by curacas, Areche had asserted the political potential that such images could have in forging popular support. Thus, in spite of Areche's prohibitions, Incaist imagery did not disappear from Peruvian society after the rebellion. 14Rowe,
As Juan
"El movimiento nacional inca del siglo XVIII," p. 38. especially Heraclio Bonilla and Karen Spalding, "La independencia en el Perú: Las palabras y los hechos," in La independencia en el Perú, eds. Heraclio Bonilla et. al. (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1972): 15-65. 16David P. Cahill, "Independencia, sociedad y fiscalidad: el Sur Andino (1780-1880)," Revista complutense de historia de América 19 (1993): 249-268. 15See
30
Carlos Estenssoro suggests, the social and political vacuum created by the dispersal of the Inca renaissance came to be increasingly filled by Creole elites. Estenssoro has traced the history of a growing taste for Indian musical forms among urban Creoles after the Túpac Amaru,17 and César Itier has described a similar process with respect to elite attitudes toward the Quechua language during the same period.18 Incaism became a crucial if ambivalent theme of Peruvian Creole ideology, and the pre-Columbian past increasingly formed the focus of Creole concerns.19 In each case one finds a process of appropriation and neutralization of the subversive potential of these supposedly Indian cultural forms.20 The pages of the literary and the scientific journal, the Mercurio peruano (1791-1795), became a central forum for this renewed interest in the pre-Columbian past. Edited by the circle of intellectuals grouped around the "Sociedad Amantes del País," and actively supported by Viceroy Gil de Taboada, it became a quasi-official forum for the
17Juan Carlos Estenssoro, "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," 2 vols. (M.A. Thesis, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1990): vol. II, p. 537. 18César Itier, "Quechua y cultura en el Cuzco del siglo XVIII: de la 'lengua general' al 'idioma del imperio de los Incas'," ms. of an essay presented at the Colloquium "Siglo XVIII en los Andes" organized by the Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos 'Bartolomé de las Casas' in Chantilly, France, April 26-29, 1993. 19This contradicts David Brading's comparison between Peruvian and Mexican nationalism, and in particular his interpretation of the effects of the Tupac Amaru rebellion upon Peruvian Creole ideologies. See Los orígenes del nacionalismo mexicano, Colección Problemas de México (México: Ediciones Era, 1980): 40-41. 20Estenssoro, "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," vol. II, pp. 525-534. Estenssoro writes: "Aunque sea difícil demostrarlo, es posible que la derrota de Tupac Amaru haya neutralizado [...] el contenido político de los elementos culturales de origen indio. Los elementos indígenas por ley fuera de las manos de las elites indias y siendo estilizados fuertemente por la retórica oficial, parece pudieron pasar más fácilmente a ser tema de discusión entre los criollos." Ibid., p. 533.
31
promotion of reforms within the colonies.21 A poem of the history of the Incas, published in the
Mercurio peruano of 1792, shows this Creole
appropriation at work. It was written by the Mulatto surgeon José Pastor de Larrinaga with the avowed purpose of serving his "beloved Patria."22 Yet the author was also concerned with teaching "young Peruvians" the history of their native land, of promoting, through his writings, a new kind of consciousness in his implicitly Creole audience. The poem begins with the first Inca, Manco-Capac, and follows the established succession of Incas and their deeds, ending, in the final section, with Huascar and his death at the hands of Atahualpa. But the crucial link to the Creole is established through the figure of Huayna Capac: Finally, Huayna-capác, died and in his laws With him were counted the twelve Kings: And though he left two sovereign sons, In his testament he ordered the Peruvians, To embrace with pleasure and sincere faith The laws of another, foreign, people; Because he and all his Incas, and their vestiges, Ceased forever, and ever.23 21The journal's official character is overtly stated by its editors who wrote that the Mercurio was "protected by this Superior Government, as recommended by the August deference of Our Great Monarch." See the editorial note to the Francisco de Paula de la Mata Linares y Vasquez de Avila [D. F. D. P. D. L. M. L.], "Carta remitida a la Sociedad, que publica con algunas Notas," Mercurio peruano, no. 344 (April 20, 1794): 257. 22[no por ambición á los efímeros encomios que suelen preparar las tareas literarias, sino por servir únicamente à mi amada Patria]. Joseph Torpas de Ganarrila [José Pastor de Larrinaga], "Carta remitida a la sociedad incluyendo la siguiente poesía," Mercurio peruano 176 (September 9, 1792): 17. On Larrinaga see Ricardo Palma's tradición "La Apología del pichón palomino," in Tradiciones peruanas completas, ed. Edith Palma (Madrid: Aguilar, 1964): 836-838. 23[Murió en fin Huayna-capác, y en sus leyes / Se contaron con él los doce Reyes: / Y aunque dexó dos hijos soberanos, / Mando en su testamento á los Peruanos, / Que abrazaran con gusto y fe sincéra / Las leyes de otra gente forastera; / Porque él con todos sus Incas, y vestigios, / Cesaba por los siglos de los siglos.] Ibid., p. 25.
32
Peruvians do not become then, simple perpetuators of Inca culture. Rather, they are encouraged by "their" Inca to accept the power of Spain. The idea of the Incas is thus used to legitimate, not a continuation, but a rupture with the pre-Columbian past. The final lines of the poem recall the conquest, the arrival of the Catholic faith to Peru, and an eulogy of Spain.24 The same author later published another historical poem of the "Governors, Presidents, Viceroys and Captain Generals, after the Incas of Peru, named by our Catholic Kings of Spain."25 There is now no longer a remembrance of a culture, a renaissance, but rather the final closure of a historical period. Yet the invocation to the "Peruvians" must not be taken as a form of differentiation or separation from Spain. As in Larrinaga's writings, most Creole uses of Inca symbolism in the aftermath of the rebellion were not an assertion of a form of Creole "nationalism," separate from Spain, but rather a manner of following official policy and filling a political void within the colony. Incaist elements which defined Creole affirmation after the Túpac Amaru rebellion set the stage for the movements which would emerge during the early 19th century for independence from Spain. Although Lima would remain royalist until the very end of the wars of 24[Y como entre las Naciones que acrisola, / No hay ninguna mejor que la Española, / Envió con la piedad de nuestros Reyes / Las Armas, Letras, Religion y Leyes.] Ibid. 25Juan Pastor Larrinaga, "Sucesión cronológica de los Señores Gobernadores, Presidentes, Virreyes y Capitanes Generales, despues de los Incas del Perú, por nombramiento de nuestros Católicos Reyes de España, desde el Emperador Carlos V, en cuyo tiempo se conquistó la América Meridional, hasta el presente, en que feizmente Reyna Nuestro Católico Monarca el Señor Don Carlos IV, escrita por el Autor del Mercurio núm. 176," Mercurio peruano 237 (March 7, 1793): 159-166.
33
independence, the period from 1805 to 1814 saw the emergence of a number of important rebellions in Peru.
Scarlett O'Phelan has
emphasized the importance of regional interests in the articulation of resistance to colonial authority, and in particular the commercial circuit encompassing the region between Cuzco and Potosí in Upper Peru. These movements also saw the political potential of Incaism, its power to legitimate their projects and to gather popular--and in particular Indian-support. As O'Phelan has demonstrated, if during the late 18th century, Creoles had been incorporated into a number of curaca-led rebellions, the situation was inverted in the early 19th century. In the latter, Creoles only sought the support of the curacas after they had asserted their leadership and defined the aims of the rebellion.26 Francisco Laso's father actively participated in these early revolutionary movements.
Originating in the colonial middle sectors
which would later gain prominence with independence, Benito Laso is prototypical of early republican leaders. The son of an old Creole family from Arequipa, Benito Laso (Arequipa, 1783--Lima, 1862) had been trained as a lawyer at the Seminario Conciliar de San Jerónimo. The seminary, which offered training in the professions for traditional Arequipeño elites, had been renovated by the introduction of new scientific and philosophical ideas. The curricular reform was the product of the efforts of the zealous bishop of Arequipa, Pedro José Chávez de la 26"El mito de la "independencia concedida": Los programas políticos del siglo XVIII y del temprano XIX en el Perú y Alto Perú (1730-1814)," in Independencia y revolución, 1780-1840, 2 vols., ed. Alberto Flores Galindo (Lima: INC, 1987): II, pp. 145-199.
34
Rosa. Like Benito Laso, many of the most important republican leaders of Peru--Francisco de Paula González Vigil, José María Corbacho, and Francisco Javier de Luna Pizarro--emerged from San Jerónimo.27 Little is known of Benito Laso's early life, except that it was closely bound to the interests of southern Peru. In 1810 Benito Laso married Juana de los Ríos, daughter of Julián de los Ríos, an important army officer, rich hacendado, and mine-owner of Puno. Laso apparently moved to Tacna where, in October 1813, he joined the group of rebels who, under the leadership of Antonio Rivero, subdelegate of Arica, declared political independence from Spain and allied themselves with the Junta of Buenos Aires. After the rebellion was crushed, Laso was deported to Puno, where he would continue his political activities. Towards the end of 1814, the priest Ildefonso Muñecas and Juan Manuel Pinelo, sent from Cuzco by the forces of Vicente Angulo and Mateo Pumacahua, arrived in Puno, where Benito Laso joined the patriot forces. While Muñecas and Pinelo moved on to Upper Peru, Laso remained in Puno as military and political chief of the region. When royalist forces took Puno, Benito Laso was captured, and his life was spared only through the influences of his brother-in-law, the royalist officer José García. Laso remained imprisoned in Puno for two years, after which he was confined to Tacna.
Ferdinand VII's
restoration to the Spanish throne in 1814 reversed the luck of political 27Benjamín
Vicuña Mackenna, La independencia en el Perú [1864], prologue by Luis Alberto Sánchez (Buenos Aires and Santiago: Editorial Francisco de Aguirre, 1971): 21-29. On the bishop's reforms and their influence in the emancipation movements see John Frederick Wibel, "The Evolution of a Regional Community Within Spanish Empire and Peruvian Nation: Arequipa, 1780-1845" (Ph. D. diss., Stanford University, 1975): 224.
35
insurgency in Peru.
During the following years, until the arrival of
General Miller to Tacna in 1821, Laso apparently engaged only in covert political activities.28 He was later named war auditor of the Southern Division by General José de San Martín and secretary of the general-inchief of the Liberating Army.29 The insurgent movements in the south had made frequent use of Incaist imagery to legitimate their cause and to gain the support of the Indian population. The forces led by the Buenos Aires patriot Juan José Castelli into Upper Peru from 1810 to 1811, exploited allusions to the Inca Empire and the return of the Inca. His declaration of legal equality of Indians and the abolition of Indian tribute were strategically staged against the backdrop of the ruins of Tiahuanaco.30 Creoles had evidently learned from the Túpac Amaru rebellion, in which rebel leaders often pronounced speeches in Quechua in front of huacas, the ancient ruins and cemeteries,31 which held an important symbolic role for Indian communities.
It is not surprising that much of the Incaist rhetoric
produced by Creole writers should have been framed by ancient ruins. In 1822, for example, the Creole patriot Félix Devoti published a text on the ruins of Pachacamac, and in 1824 Hipólito Unanue would similarly evoke 28The
most complete account of this early period of Benito Laso's life is Rómulo Cúneo Vidal, "Notas de historia y de arte. A propósito de Francisco Lasso de la Vega Mogrovejo y de los Ríos," La Prensa, 4,16-VI-1915. 29Guillermo Zegarra Meneses, "Benito Laso, prócer de la Independencia y la República," Mercurio peruano no. 418 (1962): 18-19, nos. 6-7. 30Steve J. Stern, "The Age of Andean Insurrection, 1742-1782: A Reappraisal," in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, p. 71. 31Leon G. Campbell, "Ideology and Factionalism during the Great Rebellion, 17801782," in Ibid., p. 126.
36
the scenery of the ruins of Santa in order to promote the cause of independence.32 Benito Laso's poetry of the independence period also alluded directly to the pre-Columbian past.
His poem, "El Perú Esclavizado"
[Enslaved Peru] of 1811 or 1812 linked patriotic sentiment to the desire for vengeance for the lost Inca Empire: he dares to sail in search of gold, Pizarro the Cruel barbarian European: discovering in Peru, the accursed metal Even in more copy than his miserly desires could devise, cupidity stains with blood his sword: but; oh heavens! from my memory erase such a crime, may a black veil cover the execration, that the death of Atahualpa be ignored, nor this century so perverse be told: completely buried be in the lugubrious waters of Lethean the abhorrent names of Pizarros, of Almagros, of Valverdes, of Toledo... Toledo, that name of ignominy, may thus God confound him in Avernus. Tupac Amaru, Sairitupac Incas, Say tyrant, what fault did they commit in Princes being born, in what did they offend the ambition of Charles the first? Their innocent existence, their disgrace were for the Cruel Iberian crimes. You have given them death as villains, and to the King proclaim of rebellion prey. Peruvians; oh! fix your gaze on the barbarous and bloodstained scaffold 32Ascensión
Martínez Riaza, La prensa doctrinal en la independencia del Perú. 18111824 (Madrid: ICI, Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1985): 200. See also Nuevo Día del Perú, no. 9, 26-VIII-1824, for references to the Incas associated with the themes of Independence and the article by Unanue, "Sr. Editor," Nuevo Día del Perú, no. 10, 2-IX1824.
37
of unjust execution, which rises in the great Cuzco, Court of the Empire. Cry with me, and in mournful choir the eternal vengeance of the Most High God against the fierce Spaniard let us ask together certain, for a moment, of achieving it.33 Benito Laso asks, in his poem, that the death of the Inca be forgotten or remembered in a way which seals the end of the empire. This Incaism can only be grafted with difficulty onto that "Andean utopia" created during the 1980s by Alberto Flores Galindo and Manuel Burga as a myth of national proportions.
Their elusive and all-encompassing
"Andean utopia"--which includes all kinds of political resistance over periods covering centuries and holds under the same category both Indian peasant movements and official ideologies--is supposedly posited on the "return of the Inca and the restoration of an Incaic monarchy."34 Yet what 33[se
atreve á navegar, buscando el oro, / Pizarro el Cruel y bárbaro Europeo: / descubre en el Perú el metal infausto / aun en mas copia que idear pudieron / sus avaros deseos, la codicia / ensangrienta su espada: mas; O cielo! / de mi memoria borra tal delito, / cubra la execración un negro velo, / que se ignore la muerte de Atahuallpa, / ni se cuente ese siglo tan perverso: / sean enteramente sepultados /En las lugubres aguas del Eteo, / los nombes detestables de Pizarros, / De Almagros, de Valverdes, de Toledo... / Toledo, ese nombre de ignominia, / asi Dios lo confunda en el Aberno. / Tupac Amaru, Sairitupac Yncas / Di tirano ¿Que culpa cometieron / en Príncipes nacer, en qué ofendian / á la ambición de Carlos el primero? / Su vivir inocente, su desgracia / eran delitos para el Cruel Ybero. / Tu les das muerte cual facinerosos, / Y al Rey pregonas de revelion reo. / Peruanos; ay! fixad una mirada / en el tablado barbaro Sangriento, / De injusta ejecución, que se levanta / en el gran Cuzco, Corte del Ymperio. / Llorad con migo, y en funesto coro / la venganza eternal del Dios exelso / contra el fiero Español pidamos juntos / seguros de alcanzarla por momentos.] It was first published as "El Perú Esclavisado, Poema," El Sol del Cuzco, 18-VI-1825, pp. [3-4]. Fragments of the poem were later reproduced in Godofredo Corpancho, Lira patriótica o Colección escogida de poesías sobre asuntos patrióticos para ejercicios de declamación (Lima: By the author, 1873): 14-16. The poem is here cited as being written in 1812. Jorge Guillermo Leguía, however, dates it to 1811. See his "Biografía de Don Benito Laso," in Estudios históricos, prologue by Jorge Basadre, Biblioteca Integración, 2 (Lima: Asociación Cultural Integración, 1989): 30. 34Although they accept that this "utopia" may be used differently by various groups, they still conclude that "la utopía andina termina por ser un instrumento de identidad
38
all Creole Incaist constructions show is precisely the opposite, since it will be associated obsessively with the finality of death. More than a way of forging "collective identities," as Flores Galindo and Burga contend, Creole Incaism served as a political tool. What will ultimately be enacted in elite or official Incaism is the topos of death, of an order that has been terminated and which can only be retrieved in the form of an archaeology, of the unearthing of fragments. As in other Latin American countries, the "Black Legend" of the Spanish conquest of America, which had occupied a very small place in earlier stages of Creole patriotism, now came back with force.35 The cause of independence was presented not only as a fight for self-government but also as a revenge for the destruction of pre-Columbian societies. As in earlier stages of Creole Incaism, the Inca appears as a validating force for Creole writers. "The dethroned Inca," wrote Santiago Negrón in 1821, "appears to have raised the stone of the sepulcher, and raising his bloodstained head told us with courage: Peruvians, avenge me."36 Creoles rarely recuperate the idea of the Incas as a continuity with the present; they will often claim to be avenging the Spanish destruction of Inca society, but will rarely speak of resuscitating their empire.37 colectiva, equivalente de Quetzacoatl y Guadalupe en el área mexicana." Alberto Flores Galindo and Manuel Burga, "La utopía andina," Allpanchis XII, vol. XVII, no. 20 (1982): 94. See especially Alberto Flores Galindo, Buscando un inca. Identidad y utopía en los Andes, 4th ed., Arqueología e Historia, 5 (Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1994). 35Brading, Los orígenes del nacionalismo mexicano, p. 76. 36[El Inca destronado parece que levantó la losa del sepulcro, y alzando la cabeza ensangrentada nos dixo con valor: peruanos vengadme."] In Los Andes Libres, 31-VII1821. Cited in Martínez Riaza, La prensa doctrinal, p. 198. 37This directly contradicts Cecilia Méndez recent essay, Incas sí, indios no. Apuntes
39
The years immediately following independence saw the gradual dispersal of Incaist imagery, which slowly lost its privileged place in nationalist discourse. For example, while Incaism had been an important part of Benito Laso's writings prior to Peruvian independence, it completely disappears from his later essays. The ease with which Incaism disappeared from elite discourse in the decades following independence testifies to the fact that its use rested primarily upon political expediency. The curacas had claimed political power through the legitimacy which their--real or alleged--descent from the Incas had offered, and Creole patriots had attempted to appropriate that legitimacy through their appeals to the Inca empire. But both the aristocratic pretensions of the curacas, together with the monarchic aura which surrounded the idea of the Incas, had become anathema within the new ideals of liberal republicanism. On July 4, 1825 Simón Bolívar finally extinguished all cacicazgos, giving the final blow to the downfall of the curacas as a social group.38 Although the idea of the Incas lost much of its political force, it did not disappear completely from Creole discourse. The Incas continued to appear in Creole writings, theatrical and poetical productions, and in painting, but they no longer carried any direct political weight. During para el estudio del nacionalismo criollo en el Perú, Documento de Trabajo no. 56, Serie Historia del Arte, no. 9 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1993). By focusing only on expressions of racism in early republican Peru, Méndez ignores the other, parallel but crucial tradition of Creole Indianism. My argument reverses her interpretation that Creoles found it easier to deal with the Inca past than with the contemporary Indian. 38Rowe, "El movimiento nacional inca del siglo XVIII," p. 49.
40
the 19th century, however, the pre-Columbian past was to be assimilated mainly through the scientific neutrality of archaeological discourse. After the declaration of independence, the Peruvian state would officially become the owner of pre-Columbian monuments.
The state's mostly
symbolic appropriation of the ancient ruins was declared on April 2, 1822, when an official decree was issued proclaiming that the ancient monuments of Peru were the property of the Peruvian nation because "they belong to the glories that derive from them."39
EARLY INDIANISM: CREOLE LEADERS AND THE FIGURE OF THE VICTIMIZED INDIAN Todavía se halla fresca la huella sangrienta de la conquista, y la sombra de Atahualpa vaga aun en las soledades de nuestras ruinas, no ya airada como en otro tiempo pidiendo al cielo venganza, sino conmovida por el dolor al contemplar la esclavitud de su raza desventurada. José Casimiro Ulloa40
The appeal to the pre-Columbian past and the identification of the Creoles with the Indians was a constant throughout Latin America. Creoles returned to the period of conquest to denounce abuses against the 39See
the collection of documents published by Julio C. Tello and Toribio Mejía Xesspe, "Historia de los Museos Nacionales del Perú, 1822-1946," Arqueológicas 10 (1967): 1-2. 40"Noticia biográfica," in Manuel Nicolás Corpancho, Ensayos poéticos de Manuel Nicolás Corpancho precedidos de varios juicios escritos en Europa y América (Paris: Imprenta y Litografía de Maulde y Renou, 1854): 2.
41
Indian, while simultaneously differentiating themselves from the Spaniards.41 Because of the ambivalence of their discourse, in which they no longer presented themselves as heirs of the conquest, the terms "americano," and "peruano" were preferred, for they served to include the Creoles as victims, along with the Indians, in a common bond of suffering against external oppression. The idealized Incaic past was confronted with the Indian's present misery. The stereotypes did not change, only their causes. Now it was the Spanish system which had caused the stupidity, backwardness, and present dejection of the Indians. The image of the Indian crying on the ruins of a glorified Inca past summarizes the extents and the limits of early forms of Creole Indianism.
The image of the enslaved Indian
became a staple of early nationalist writings and iconography in most of Latin America. In Cuzco in 1825, the city struck gold and silver medals in honor of the Liberator. Bolívar's bust was stamped on the obverse, while the reverse showed the figure of a plumed Indian figure crying upon the ruins of an ancient monument (fig. 2). The oppressed Indian functioned allegorically as an image of oppressed America, which the Liberator had saved.
As a generalized abstraction, the plumed figure served as a
common symbol with which all social groups in Cuzco (and, more broadly, in the rest of Latin America) could identify. 41For Colombia see Hans-Joachim König, "Símbolos nacionales y retórica política en la independencia: El caso de la Nueva Granada," in Problemas de la formación del estado y de la nación en Hispanoamérica, eds. Inge Buisson, Günter Kahle, et al., Lateinamerikanische Forschungen, 13 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1984): 395-398.
42
After independence the Creole will no longer be able to justify their self-image as victims. The Indian population, however, will continue to be defined as the victims of centuries of oppression. Creole paternalism emerges with force in order to justify Creole tutelage of the Indian population. This view came to be formed from the earliest moments of independence. The most radical of the liberal Peruvian newspapers, El Diario Secreto of 1811 could state: The degrading humiliation and the abandonment in which the Indians were buried, and in which they still remain, does not allow for the restitution of their ancient dominions, for they would be incapable of government or of keeping themselves; paternal care and an education of many years are needed in order that they may at least recuperate and assert their rights as men in society.42 Creole power is justified through a paternalist rhetoric. The blame for the Indian's suffering is placed squarely on the Spanish monarchy, but the consequences of oppression and degradation will justify this early form of Creole Indianism. The Indian's abject state annuls any possibility of self-determination or of the creation of an autonomous Indian state. By presenting the Indian as a defenseless, brutalized, and spiritually exhausted race, the Creole can represent themselves as redeemers. A new form of paternalism came to supplant the tutelary laws of the Spanish legal system.
42[La
degradante humillación y abandono en que fueron sepultados los indios, y en que permanecen hasta hoy, no permite devolverles sus antiguos dominios, ya que serían incapaces de regir, ni mantener por sí mismos: es precisa una educación de muchos años, un cuidado paternal para que siquiera se recuperen y puedan hacer valer los derechos del hombre en sociedad]. Cited in Martínez Riaza, La prensa doctrinal, pp. 177-178.
43
The writings of Benito Laso in the period immediately following independence testify to the widespread use Creoles made of the image of the victimized Indian. Writing in 1826, Laso defined the Peruvian Indians in the following manner: The indigenous caste, that numerous and unfortunate portion of our territory, which under the paternal government of the Incas was the most innocent race to have been seen on earth, acquired since then that blind and apathetic submissiveness, which has been, and will continue to be for a long time, fatal to the progress of civilization. Colonial domination seems to have annihilated in them that instinct through which savage man aspires to preserve the dignity of his species.43 The image of the submissive and victimized Indian served to deflect Creole social fears while justifying their leadership. The paradox of late colonial and early republican forms of Indianism is that they are asserted always through a necessary degradation of the Indian.
For
example, in denouncing the exploitation of the Indian population, Creoles often evoked the image of the Indian as a beast of burden, thus immediately associating them with animals.44 Thus, in 19th-century Peru the Indian will not emerge as a threat to Creole power. In official rhetoric, in painting, and in literature, the Peruvian 19th century did not produce 43[La
casta indígena, esta porción numerosa y desgraciada de nuestro suelo, que bajo el gobierno paternal de los Incas fue la raza mas inocente que se ha visto sobre la tierra, adquirió desde entonces esa ciega y apática sumisión, que ha sido y será por mucho tiempo fatal a los progresos de su civilización. La dominación colonial, parece haber aniquilado en ella ese instinto, por el que aun el hombre salvaje aspira a conservar la dignidad de su especie.] Originally published in Lima in the press of José María Concha in 1826. I cite from the version published as "La famosa Exposición de don Benito Laso en pro de la permanencia de Bolívar en el Perú [1826]." Boletín del Museo Bolivariano I, no. 3 (November 1928): 50-51. 44On the association of the Indian with animals in later Creole discourse see Oliart, "Poniendo a cada quien en su lugar," n. p.
44
an image of the aggressive, violent, or threatening Indian. Reduced to a state of servility, the Indian masses could now only remain under the tutelage of the Creole state. The image was partly justified. In spite of the political disturbances caused by caudillo factionalism, no Indian rebellions emerged to threaten Creole power during the first decades after independence.
Only the
rebellion of Huanta in 1827 and the Huancané rebellion in 1866-68 disrupted the relative calm of the early republic. Yet the strength of the image of the victimized Indian defined Creole responses to both of these rebellions. From 1827 to 1828 the Indians of Iquicha in the province of Huanta, led by the Indian leader José Antonio Navala Huachaca, rebelled against the Peruvian state invoking the name of the King of Spain. The state did not immediately respond with a military offensive, attempting first to dissuade the Indians through peaceful means. In October of 1827 President José de La Mar offered amnesty to the rebels and in November the prefect of Huanta, Domingo Tristán, sent a letter to the Indian leaders in the hope of convincing them to submit to state authority. Tristán could not believe that the Indians had rebelled on their own. In the letter he expressed his conviction that Indian leaders were being misguided by a small number of foreign (i.e. Spanish) leaders who persisted in their attempts to undermine the Peruvian nation.45
Although the Indian
leaders promptly wrote back to deny the prefect's charges, state 45Patrick Husson, De la guerra a la rebelión (Huanta, siglo XIX), Archivos de Historia Andina, 14; Travaux de l'IFEA, LXVII (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, 1992): 32-33.
45
authorities continued to believe in the peaceful nature of the Indian masses.
In fact, in the aftermath of the rebellion, only non-Indian
participants were accused and punished. Patrick Husson surmises that republican justice believed generalized repression of the province did not justify the persecution of individual Indian leaders, that the state's perception of the Indian population as a collective mass did not allow for prosecution, and that the fear of exacerbating social tensions kept the Peruvian state from prosecuting the Indian population.
Husson also
wonders whether the paternalist vision of republican justice, which did not consider the Indian as a legally responsible individual, allowed for corporal punishment outside the legal system.46
There is no conflict
between all of these explanations, since they can all be subsumed within the paternalist vision which characterized early Creole Indianism. This kind of response to Indian rebellion would prove to be enduring. As we shall see, forty years later Lima society would respond in a similar manner to the rebellion of Huancané. In the Southern Cone countries and the United States, the Indian was presented as a menace to society, as the very image of barbarism which needed to be eradicated for the sake of civilization.
As Laura
Malosetti has shown, the Río de la Plata region produced the image of the White woman captured by the Indians in order to justify the state's frontier wars.47 46Ibid.,
In Peru, where the Indian is perceived as a victim of
p.101. Malosetti Costa, Rapto de cautivas blancas. Un aspecto erótico de la barbarie
47Laura
46
Creole exploitation, the situation is reversed. In 19th-century Peruvian literature, the sexual union between a White man and an Indian woman is usually characterized as an abuse of Creole power, of a violence committed against the native population.
The passive and impotent
Indian is never involved in sexual offenses, for he poses no outright threat to Creole power. While in the United States and in the Río de la Plata region the constitution of each nation was predicated on the occupation of Indian lands and the total extermination of the Indian population, in Peru the nation sought the incorporation of the Indian into national life.
THE NATION AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION: RACIAL PREJUDICE AND CREOLE IDENTITY In the liberal press from 1811 to 1825 the term "nation" continued to have its prior synonymity with "race."
Thus, the "Spanish nation"
incorporated equally both Spaniards and Creoles, or, as they were often called, "American Spaniards."48
Perú was the patria chica, the small
homeland, while Spain continued to be the madre patria, the mother of the American Spaniards. It would only be with the bases of the Constitution of 1822 that the Peruvian nation would receive its first official recognition in its modern sense, as a sovereign, self-governed, and distinct territorial unit.49 en la plástica rioplatense del siglo XIX, Hipótesis y Discusiones, 4 (Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1994). 48Martínez Riaza, La prensa doctrinal, p. 119f. 49Ibid., p. 128.
47
Through the first constitutions Peruvian elites framed the structures through which the modern Peruvian nation was to be defined. Modeled on the French and North American precedents, and informed by the Spanish liberal constitution of Cadiz of 1812, all of the early Peruvian constitutions were of a marked liberal tendency, emphasizing equality and individual rights. The egalitarian ideals which were unanimously imposed on Peruvian society directly subverted the corporatist structure of colonial society, where special laws governed different social groups. Liberal republicanism demanded that society submit to a single code of law, a fact which determined the eventual abolition of military and ecclesiastical fueros and Indian tribute.
The institutionalization of
economic liberalism also opposed the collective ownership of land which affected Indian communities. Elites envisaged the gradual incorporation of the Indian into an integrated society. For one, the Indian was declared a "citizen," a definition based, not on ethnic or cultural traits, but on universal individual rights.50
Similarly, by emphasizing private
ownership of land, the Indian was to be converted into a property owner and set on the path to achieving full citizenship. Yet if Indian tribute was abolished, it remained an important source of fiscal revenue for the state and it was finally reinstated in 1826 as the "contribución de Indígenas," although it would now also be accompanied by a new "contribución de castas." Furthermore, while the state anticipated the partition of Indian
50König,
"Símbolos nacionales y retórica política en la independencia," pp. 398-405.
48
lands, this process was not initiated until half a century later, well after the abolition of tribute by Castilla in 1854. While Indian integration was envisioned by early republican leaders, the 19th century has been described as the century of "Indianization," a period during which the Indian population of Peru not only remained stable, but actually increased.51
Recent scholarship has interpreted the vitality of Indian
communities in early republican Peru as a consequence of fiscal continuities, the breakdown of traditional routes and markets, and the weakness and lack of presence of the central state.52 In any case, at least for Peru's Indian population, independence did not bring about any significant social transformation. The above account simplifies the complexities of social change in 19th-century Peru, yet it highlights the tensions between an official discourse which openly embraced change and a practice which in fact denied it. The reasons for the overwhelming adoption of liberal ideals in the early republican period is difficult to assess, except for the fact that such a discourse became a new source of legitimation for Creole leaders. As one of the most important figures in the consolidation of the new Peruvian state, the case of Benito Laso may again serve to illustrate this point. Writing under the pseudonym of "El Robespierre Peruano," and 51George
Kubler, The Indian Caste of Peru, 1795-1940. A Population Study Based Upon Tax Records and Census Reports, Smithsonian Institution, Institute of Social Anthropology, Publication no. 14, reprint (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973). Kubler's study has been corroborated by the most recent work on Peruvian 19th-century demography, Paul Gootenberg's "Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions," Latin American Research Review vol. 26, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 109-157. 52For a good summary of these views see Gootenberg, Ibid., p. 143f.
49
citing previously proscribed authors such as Rousseau, Laso adopted most of the tenets of liberal republicanism, including a virulent anticlericalism which set off one of the major debates on the role of the church in early republican Peru. Like other republican leaders, Laso rejected the aristocratic pretensions and privileges associated with colonial society, and he never again used his full name (Benito Lasso de la Vega). Yet the rejection of certain aristocratic elements did not necessarily imply a simultaneous rejection of other forms of social prejudice, and in particular of a long-standing history of racial discrimination. The contradictory nature of this Creole republicanism is also reflected in the stringent authoritarianism which surfaced in the years immediately following independence. In 1826, Laso wrote his famous "Exposición que hace Benito Laso, Diputado al Congreso por la Provincia de Puno." Supposedly written with the aid of Bolívar himself, the tract accused Peruvians of having contributed precious little to the cause of independence and attempted to justify Bolívar's authoritarian tendencies. Laso wrote: The diversity of castes is a kind of gangrene which prepares disintegration, if from the beginning it is not neutralized against the rude and ignorant ideas of some, the false knowledge of others and the opposing interests of all.53
53[La
diversidad de castas que abunda es una especie de gangrena que prepara la disolución, siempre que desde el principio no se sepa neutralizar la ignorancia é ideas groseras de las unas, los falsos conocimientos de las otras, y los intereses encontrados de todas.] "La famosa Exposición de don Benito Laso en pro de la permanencia de Bolívar en el Perú," p. 50.
50
The authoritarianism of early republican leaders was in part owing to the uncertainty of the new power structure and the social fears of Creole leaders. Hipólito Unanue, as minister of state in 1826, also invoked the need to impose order on a society which had just emerged from a "revolutionary ferment." He spoke of the need for peace, of uprooting any disturbances, and of "reducing each citizen to his class."54 Yet he saw no contradiction between this statement of purpose and the egalitarianism of the new constitution he was serving under: The equality of the citizenry before the eyes of the law, is composed of the difference of classes and the conditions which nature, society and religion have established. The government of peoples must be one, and to it must submit, in agreement with the laws which are nothing but the bond which firmly unites the parts of the political body so that it does not dissolve. However, the Supreme Government which is at its head, must distinguish between those which can concur with preference to its safety and splendor.55 The fixed hierarchical structure of Peruvian society was not only defined by nature, but ordained through divine intervention. The state, in Unanue's perception, retains the right to choose and select among the citizenry those individuals who will constitute the ruling class.
54
The
Hipólito Unanue, "Memoria del Señor Ministro de Estado en el Departamento de Gobierno y Relaciones Exteriores al Congreso Nacional," in Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, Jorge Arias-Schreiber Pezet, ed., CDIP, I, vols. 7-8 (Lima: Comisión Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Perú, 1974): vol. 8, p. 877. 55[La igualdad de los ciudadanos ante los ojos de la ley, se compone con la diferencia de clases y condiciones que la naturaleza, la sociedad y la religión han establecido. El gobierno de los pueblos debe ser uno, y a él le han de estar sometidos, con arreglo a las leyes, que no son otra cosa que los lazos que unen con firmeza las partes del cuerpo político para que no se disuelva. Empero, el Gobierno Supremo que forma la cabeza, debe distinguir aquellas que concurren con preferencia a su seguridad y esplendor.] Ibid., p. 878.
51
notion of a legal equality thus becomes a useful abstraction, a rhetorical concession to the liberal ideas of the new republicanism. The hesitant acceptance and the partial adoption of new ideas during this period conforms to what Fernando de Trazegnies has defined as a process of modernización tradicionalista [traditionalist modernization].56 The persistence of racial prejudice in Peruvian society is perhaps the most significant example of the manner in which liberalism is held in check and transformed by traditional values. Outspoken expression of prejudice in the years following independence only slightly affected official policy, which, ruled by a humanitarian egalitarianism, would never endorse overt discriminatory policies. On the other hand, it would have been surprising that a weaker Creole state should have been able to enforce segregation when the more powerful colonial state had failed to do so.57 The apparent recrudescence of racism during the period of independence could be partly attributed to Creole feelings of insecurity, and fears of not being able to contain other ethnic groups; yet the fact that racial prejudice persisted long after Creole power had been effectively secured suggests that political fear did not constitute the only basis for Creole racism. Racial prejudice was part of the "colonial heritage" of independent Peru, and particularly of the renewed obsession with racial classification 56Fernando
de Trazegnies Granda, La idea del derecho en el Perú republicano del siglo XIX (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1992): 32f. 57Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967): 47f. For the specific case of Arequipa see Sarah Clarke Chambers, "The Many Shades of the White City: Urban Culture and Society in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854," Ph. D. diss. (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1992): 199.
52
and notions of purity of blood that surfaced during the late colonial period.
Elite prejudices against the castes reflect the still prevalent
Hispanic prejudices defined by purity of blood. In order to pursue claims to a title of nobility or to a career in the public service, a person had to prove his status of purity of blood. Yet this principle did not only refer to racial purity, for one was also required to satisfy other qualifications, such as proving that one's ancestors had not engaged in any of the manual professions.58 By the late 18th century, the ideal division of Peruvian society into a "Republic of Indians" and a "Republic of Spaniards" envisaged by colonial authorities had demonstrated its inefficacy and had begun to be seriously questioned.
After centuries of cohabitation, the frontiers
between the two republics came to be significantly blurred. The castas, people of mixed cultural and biological origins, became an ever increasing category, thus threatening the very foundations on which the colonial state had been constructed.
Some estimates suggest that by 1791 the
mixed castes already constituted 45% of the population of Lima, and some censuses calculate a general population of over 240,000 for the whole of Peru.59 The increasing presence of the castes posed a direct threat to a Creole identity which had always been defined in opposition to other ethnic groups.
58Ibid.,
pp. 421-427. Rosenblat, La población indígena y el mestizaje en América, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1954): vol. 1, appendix II, and vol. 2, p. 96. 59Angel
53
The history of the term Creole shows how Creole identity had to be forged largely by contrast to the Indians and the colored castes. Originally the term had been used only in America, for in Spain the term "indiano" was used to designate all persons born in America. But Creoles rejected the label because it associated them with the Indian population. "Criollo," however, was originally used in the colonies during the early colonial period to designate Mulattos. Bernard Lavallé has described the manner in which Creoles would continue to be associated with the prejudices against the Indians and the castes.
Yet a "clean" racial
ascendancy was not sufficient. On the one hand, being nursed or suckled by an Indian or a person of color was enough to transmit racial impurity and even moral characteristics;60 while the very climate of the New World was said to darken the Creole's skin. In order to disassociate themselves from the other castes, Creoles insistently favored the designation "American Spaniard," and attempted to hide whatever other ascendants could taint their genealogies.61 Constantly accused of racial impurity, the perceived increase in the caste population apparently exacerbated Creole racial anxieties.
The
expansion of racial mixtures, along with increasing acculturation seems to have caused a state of generalized doubt among all sectors of colonial
60Julio Caro Baroja, Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa. Religión, sociedad y carácter en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII, Biblioteca de la Historia, 10 (Madrid: SARPE, 1985): esp. ch. XX. 61Bernard Lavallé, Las promesas ambiguas. Ensayos sobre el criollismo colonial en los Andes, pp. 15-21, 45-61.
54
society, in particular in large urban centers.62 Racial status was largely defined by visual identifications, yet these could often be ambiguous. In fact, the difficulty in distinguishing between the different races was perceived as a widespread social problem during the late colonial period. Citing court records in which witnesses were called upon to testify about a person's racial status, Sarah Chambers shows how contradictory these identifications could be.63 Since many Mestizos and Mulattos passed as Spaniards, Creole elites consistently sought to avoid racial classifications. As Chambers has shown for the case of Arequipa, although a person's caste status was usually assigned in tax records and parish registers, racial categories were often avoided in such official documents. She cites a letter to the King of Spain written by Bishop Gonzaga de la Encina in Arequipa in 1815, in which the problems surrounding racial classifications are directly put forward: [This] classification is odious to the parish priests, since having been ordered by the courts to do it, the priests found themselves obliged either to tell the truth or to lie. If they did the former, all those who judged themselves to be Spanish citizens, not being such, believed they had been insulted, and they rose up against the priests, they insulted, scorned and slandered them. If the latter, it weighs upon their consciences.64
62For
example, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa wrote that the Creole "cavilan continuamente en la disposición y orden de sus genealogías." Cited in Rosenblat, vol. II, p. 95. 63Chambers, "The Many Shades of the White City," p. 188. 64Cited in Ibid., p. 183.
55
While racial status might have been avoided in official documents, it reappeared in other types of texts, particularly in Spanish and Creole scientific and social commentaries.
In Mexico, Creole obsession with
racial classification in fact produced an entire pictorial genre. Created originally for foreign markets, the series of late 18th-century caste paintings testify to the classificatory impulse of the late 18th century and to the European Enlightenment interest in collecting knowledge of the different regions and races of the world.65 This type of painting did not have any resonance in Peru, and only one of the series known today can be attributed to an artist from the Andean region (fig. 3). Yet even this series was created for a European audience.66
The following table is
drawn from the inscriptions on the Peruvian pictorial series: Infidel Mountain Indians Civilized Mountain-dweller Indians From Spaniard and Civilized Indian woman, Mestizo Mestizo. Mestizo girl. Mestizo woman. Español, Mestizo woman, Mestizo Quadroon woman. From Mesizo Quadroon woman and Spaniard, Mestizo Quinterona From Spaniard and Mestizo Quinterona, Spaniard or Mestizo Requinteron Bozales Blacks from Guinea. Idem. 65My
discussion of these paintings derives largely from information provided by Susan Deans-Smith, who is currently writing an essay on these works. For the most complete catalogue of these paintings see María Concepción García Sáiz, The Castes. A Genre of Mexican Painting, forewords by Diego Angulo Iñiguez, Roberto Moreno de los Arcos and Miguel Angel Fernández, including Spanish trans., (Mexico: Olivetti, 1989). 66Jorge Bernales Ballesteros cites a document in the Archivo General de Indias, informing that Viceroy Amat sent a series of 20 caste paintings to Spain in 1770, intended for the Cabinet of Natural History of Charles III. See "La pintura en Lima durante el Virreinato," in La pintura en el Virreinato del Perú, Colección Arte y Tesoros del Perú (Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 1989): 66.
56
From Black woman from Guinea or Criolla and Spaniard, Mulattoes. Mulatto woman. Mulatto girl. Mulatto father. From Mulatto woman and Spaniard, Mulatto or Quadroon From Spaniard and Mulatto Quadroon woman, Mulatto Quinterona Mulatto. Quinterona. Mulatto Requinteron girl. Spaniard. From Spaniard and Mulatto Requinterona, White. Spaniard. White people, From practically pure blood. From Mestizo and Indian woman. Cholo. From Indian woman and Mulatto, Chino. From Spaniard and Chino woman, Chino Quadroon From Black and Indian woman. "Sambo de Yndio" From Black and Mulatto woman, Sambo67 However, while this pictorial genre did not gain hold in Peru, a number of late 18th-century texts on Peru reproduced similar taxonomic tables (figs. 4-5). These tables could be simply interpreted as an American reflection of 18th-century European racial theories.
However, the
emergence of the foundations of scientific racism in Enlightenment writers did not question or significantly transform Peruvian racial theories. Hipólito Unanue, who published one of these tables in 1806, shows that he was well aware of the works of such writers as Camper and Blumenbach, yet his image of the races does not seem to be significantly altered by these readings. In fact, it is important to note that American writers do not uncritically adopt European racial theorizing, as is sometimes suggested, but that they openly contest them.68
In his Observaciones
sobre el clima de Lima [Observations on the Climate of Lima], Unanue 67García 68Oliart,
Sáiz, The Castes. A Genre of Mexican Painting, pp. 115-121. "Poniendo a cada quien en su lugar," n. p.
57
opposes both the European argument about American degeneracy and the Euro-centered belief in the superiority of European culture.69 It is in the context of his criticisms of the notion of European superiority that Unanue introduces his racial table, a fact which suggests that these tables could partly be interpreted as a response to Enlightenment writers.70 Unanue claims that each race has a special type of beauty and rejects the notion that the European represents the ideal, yet his argument does not deny a belief in the superiority of the White race, which was also a part of longstanding Hispanic prejudices. In this context, it is useful to review the detailed explanation of the ideas underlying these tables offered by the late-18th-century writer Gregorio Cangas in an imaginary dialogue between a Peruvian and a Chapeton (Spaniard). The Peruvian guide tries to orient the Spaniard and instruct him about the "confusion of genealogies" of the inhabitants of Lima.71
Cangas begins with the three main branches, the Spaniard, the
Black, and the Indian, and presents the product of racial mixtures between the Spaniard and the Black, the Spanish and the Indian, and the Indian and the Black.
He admits the impossibility of covering every single
gradation and simply lists a sampling of the main identifiable mixtures. 69See
See Antonello Gerbi's classic La disputa del Nuevo Mundo. Historia de una polémica, 1750-1900, 2nd. rev. ed. (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982). 70Unanue, Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima, y sus influencias en los seres organizados, en especial el hombre in Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, vol. 7, esp. the section "Influencia del clima en el hombre," pp. 100-117. 71Gregorio Cangas, Un testimonio sobre la conciencia del Perú en el siglo XVIII. La "Descripción dialogada de los pueblos y costumbres del Perú" de Gregorio Cangas, ed. Carlos Deustua Pimentel, Publicaciones del Instituto Riva Agüero, no. 29, Simposio del Seminario de Historia (Lima: Instituto Riva Agüero, 1960): 61.
58
Cangas favors the White race which, for him, is the "most perfect," and he decries the racial mixtures, favoring the "pure races." Thus, the "primary" mixtures between a Spaniard and a Black or an Indian, are not as harmful as the "secondary mixtures" produced, for example, from the mixture of a Black person and a Mulatto. Cangas' table is predicated on what may be called the "principle of racial dilution." He explains this notion through an analogy. Cangas asks the Chapetón to imagine the mixture of water and wine. If one mixes water with wine and keeps adding water, Cangas explains, the liquid will end up being transparent. However, in the case of the "secondary castes" the same experiment would have to be conducted with wine and a colored fluid, which would mean that, no matter how much of each liquid is used, it would never achieve the transparency of water. Cangas' table thus implies a strict racial hierarchy where the "decay in color" corresponds to the decay in "esteem" in which the races are held. The White race emerges as the privileged color in this hierarchy, but also as the strongest, for it could eventually dilute the lower races. The consequences of Cangas' complex racial theorizing are numerous, but two important elements may be extracted from his discussion.
For Cangas, the three main racial types "search out their
origins," which means that no matter how much mixing is involved, one element will always dominate. The social group which would seem to benefit the most from this explanation is evidently the Creole, for Cangas'
59
theory implies that through successive mixtures with Whites, the tainted blood of the Creole can be cleansed. Since the White race is the strongest, the Creole's White ascendants will prevail. Thus, according to Cangas, racial mixing, which was traditionally seen as degenerative, could in some cases actually improve the races. On the other hand, unlike its European counterparts, Cangas' taxonomy allows for the fluidity of racial categories which cannot be perceived as either fixed or stable, but which change constantly. The "principle of dilution" could thus be applied to a program of social eugenics, and in fact it became the cornerstone of 19th-century theories of racial integration. In 1827, for example, El Sol del Cuzco promoted a competition in the University of San Simón calling for proposals on the best manner of "forming a national spirit" and on the "most practical medium through which to mix the castes of Indians and Whites." José Maruri de la Cuba won the competition. The indigenous caste, he argued, had suffered a variation after years of servitude so that, its caste presents itself in our sphere with no more point of contact with Whites than those of servitude and our domination. To pull it out of this state in one blow inspires justified suspicion for wise policy, and the heart cannot endure to keep it in servitude. . . Hence is born a necessity: to cross-breed them. The mixture with Blacks gives such a vile fruit that nothing may be expected out of it; with Whites it is beautiful, and education develops aptitudes of great hope.72 72[su
casta se presenta en nuestro terreno sin más puntos de contacto con la de los blancos que los de la servidumbre y nuestra dominación. Sacarla de un golpe de este estado infunde sospechas justas a una sabia política, mantenerla en servidumbre no puede sufrirlo el corazón [. . . ] De aquí nace una necesidad: encastarlos. La mezcla con el negro da un fruto tan vil que de él nada se puede sacar o esperar; con el blanco es bella, y
60
Maruri de la Cuba suggested that the state promote marriages between Whites and Indians and offer monetary and honorific incentives for these mixed marriages. As Patricia Oliart has noticed, during most of the 19th century, the Indian is presented as lacking in virility, a stereotype which justified Creole hopes that the Indian population would eventually dwindle.73
The emphasis on diluting the Indian population through
mixtures with people considered to be of the White race, is a constant throughout the 19th century, and republican elites consistently favored European inmigration as a way of "whitening" the Peruvian population.74 Creole racial anxieties not only failed to disappear after independence, but in fact seem to have been exacerbated.
While the
Peruvian social structure was not altered in any significant way after independence, the upper echelons of Peruvian society did in fact change. The massive emigration of the Spanish population of Peru paved the way for the rise of colonial middle sectors, in particular professionals like Benito Laso and members of the military to national leadership.75
A
number of early presidents, including Andrés de Santa Cruz and Agustín Gamarra, were Mestizos, which made them vulnerable to racist attacks.76
la educación desarrolla aptitudes de grande esperanza.] Tamayo Herrera transcribes part of the newspaper article in Historia del indigenismo cuzqueño, pp. 118-119. 73Oliart, "Poniendo a cada quien en su lugar," n.p. 74Pilar García Jordán, "Reflexiones sobre el darwinismo social. Inmigración y colonización, mitos de los grupos modernizadores peruanos (1821-1919)," Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Études Andines, 21, no. 3 (1992): 961-975. 75Trazegnies, La idea del derecho en el Peru, p. 43. 76On Felipe Pardo's racist writings against Santa Cruz see Méndez, Incas sí, indios no.
61
Far from diminishing, Peruvian racism actually seems to have increased as the century "progressed."
The manner in which modern
critics have dealt with Francisco Laso's racial status is a telling example of the persistence of racial prejudice in modern Peru.
None of Laso's
biographers refer directly to Laso's racial status, although most Peruvians who look at a photograph of the artist today immediately classify him as a Mestizo.77 Early 20th-century writers on Laso focus obsessively on his genealogy, perhaps because his racial status, like that of other Creoles, could be ambiguous. In many ways it is possible to say that Laso has had more genealogists than biographers. Among the first writers to trace his genealogy was Rómulo Cúneo Vidal in 1915,78 while the same topic would be treated more extensively later by José Flores Araoz.79 After a visit to the home of Laso's widow, Teófilo Castillo wrote: A sad, extremely modest home, is all that remains today of what in other times was the festive, sumptuous, mansion of the most noted of our old painters, that of don Francisco Lasso de la Vega y Mogrovejo, the gentleman artist, direct descendant, no less, of the most opulent sirs the Dukes of Infantado, Marquis of Covadonga and Villa Hermosa, Counts of San Donás, Gutiérrez de los Ríos and Tamayo de Mendoza, patents of nobility of the most rancid Hispanic nobility, one of which, in the records of tranferral to Peru, dated 1531, comprises seventeen heraldic coat of arms of as many branches and alliances.80 77This
statement is based on an informal survey I conducted while doing research for this dissertation. 78Rómulo Cúneo Vidal, "Notas de historia y de arte. A propósito de Francisco Lasso de la Vega Mogrovejo y de los Ríos," La Prensa, 4,16-VI-1915; and "El pintor Francisco Lasso de la Vega y de los Ríos," Mundial (1929). 79"Francisco Laso. Ensayo biográfico-crítico," El Comercio, 31-I-1937. 80[Un hogar triste, modestísimo es todo lo que hoy queda de lo que en otros tiempos fuera la mansión alegre, fastuosa del más insigne de nuestros pintores antiguos, el de don Francisco Lasso de la Vega y Mogrovejo, el artista caballero, descendiente directo, nada
62
The litany of titles and surnames testifies to a widespread tendency during the early 20th century to associate Laso with a noble Spanish lineage.
Laso's "illustrious ancestry" and his "rancid pedigree,"81 are
brought forth to cleanse his blood. The growing idealization of the Indian favored by an expanding Indigenism made it easier for later writers to propose that Laso had Indian blood, yet the manner in which these statements are framed is highly contradictory. In a single year, José Flores Araoz, an important early critic of Laso, wrote an article in which he praised the painter's illustrious Spanish ancestry and another in which he wrote that Laso's Pascanas paintings were "precious artistic documents of the life of the Indian" because the artist, carrying "in his veins a good dosis of indigenous blood, felt, in the trance of artistic creation, the tremor of the telluric forces of the authocthonous race."82 Significantly, Flores Araoz cannot bring himself to conclude from this that Laso could have been a Mestizo. As shall be seen, Creole elites during the 19th century were also able to idealize the Indian
menos, de los opulentísimos señores Duques del Infantado, Marqueses de Covadonga y Villa Hermosa, Condes de San Donás, Gutiérrez de los Ríos y Tamayo de Mendoza, ejecutorias de la más rancia nobleza hispana, que en el acta de su traspaso al Perú tiene una de ellas fecha de 1531 y comprenden diecisiete escudos heráldicos de otros tantos entronques y alianzas.] Teófilo Castillo, "Interiores limeños, XI. Casa de la Sra. Manuela Henríquez v. de Lasso." Variedades XI, no. 369 (March 27, 1915): 1929. 81See also Lavalle y García, "La extraordinaria personalidad de Francisco Laso," p. 18, and Ricardo Vegas García [R.V.G.], "Centenario de Lasso." Variedades XIX, no. 792 (May 1923): 1093-1097 82[Las Pascanas son preciosos documentos artísticos de la transhumante vida del indio de nuestras serranías, y es que el artista por llevar en sus venas buena dosis de sangre indígena, sintió en el trance de la creación plástica, la sacudida de las telúricas fuerzas de la raza autóctona.] Flores Araoz, "La exposición de pintura de Francisco Laso." La Prensa, 8-XII-1937, p. ii.
63
but found it much harder to discuss the Mestizo. In fact, the Mestizo usually appears only in contexts where racist prejudice against a person considered to be of a mixed race is openly expressed. Creole elites will find no problem in discussing racial extremes, for they feel threatened by racial mixtures. In this context it is easy to see why the clarity of the Creole-Indian dichotomy could be appealing to Peruvian elites.
64
SECTION II: THE SOCIAL FORMATION OF THE ARTIST Chapter 2: The Beginnings of National Description: Costumbrismo and the Rise of Criollismo
ARTISANS AND ARTISTS: THE SOCIAL FORMATION OF THE PAINTER The wars of emancipation and the early republican period produced no significant visual representations of national history. In the case of painting, the colonial period may be said to continue at least until the middle of the 19th century.
During the first two decades of the
republic, Peruvian artists continued the pictorial traditions established during the colonial period. Just as Peruvian society was not significantly altered with independence, long-standing pictorial traditions could not be immediately transformed. Colonial Peruvian painting was closely tied to the patronage of the church and its themes were thus largely devoted to the portrayal of religious subjects. The colonial tradition of painting, created in a constant dialogue between European models and local artisans, tended to reject illusionism along with any naturalist interest.1 Local artists, for example, copied landscapes as they appeared in European models to create a codified scheme which would be reproduced endlessly and which served
1Juan Carlos Estenssoro, "La plástica colonial y sus relaciones con la Gran Rebelión," in Mito y simbolismo en los Andes. La figura y la palabra, ed., Henrique Urbano (Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1993): 158-159.
67
to represent the abstract concept of "landscape." The colonial pictorial tradition thus constructed a grammar of images, a repertoire of symbols and attributes, that could be easily identified by most sectors of colonial society. At no time was the painted image intended to serve as a window onto the world. On the rare occasions in which contemporary events were represented, they followed the hieratic and codified schemes of colonial painting, and were usually based on other visual models rather than on direct observation. Independence produced only new symbols of power, but no new forms of representation. The pictorial codes and conventions which had served to glorify the King and God were now placed in the service of the nation. The new concepts to be represented--liberty, the republic--were no different conceptually from such abstractions as God, Virgin, or King. The abstract nature of the concepts allowed for the formation of a similar code of types, a repertoire of ready-made images that could be selected and placed on the flat surface of the canvas, as in Santiago Juárez's Allegorical Escutcheon in Honor of Simón Bolívar, painted in 1825 (fig. 6).
The
symbols of the new state, the Phrygian Cap, the Tree of Liberty, and the portraits of Bolívar and his generals are arranged symmetrically over the surface of the canvas. Below, two tiny figures representing Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the founders of the Inca Empire, serve to legitimize the power of the new Creole leadership.2 2For
The names of Bolívar and his
a discussion of this work see Teresa Gisbert, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz: Gisbert y Cia., 1980):158-159.
68
generals are inscribed over their effigies, and patriotic verses fill the upper half of the canvas. The inconsistencies of the proportions of the figures, the lack of any defined or coherent space, and the pervasive presence of texts, point to the heraldic nature of the representation. Thus, the new republican imagery which immediately replaced the symbols of Spanish imperialism were based on the pictorial genres and forms of representation that had been carried over from the colonial period. Where portraits of Ferdinand VII previously hung, the portrait of Bolívar immediately replaced it.
Leaders of independence were
represented through the pictorial conventions which had served to define the aulic portrait of the viceregal court. The work of José Gil de Castro, the Mulatto painter who became the official portraitist of the heros of independence, is perhaps the best example of the manner in which colonial artists managed to incorporate the latest European styles without transforming, or significantly disturbing, the colonial system of representation. The austerity of his paintings derives in large part from Neo-classic models, but the overall structure of the composition is still defined by the colonial pictorial tradition. The rare attempts to represent space followed the simple and often awkward conventions inherited from the earlier tradition of portraiture.
Gil de Castro's portrait of Simón
Bolívar (1825)3 presents the Liberator against a flat background, and while 3José Gil de Castro, Portrait of Simón Bolívar, 1825, oil on canvas, 210 x 130 cm., Salón Elíptico del Congreso Nacional, Ministerio de Relaciones Interiores, Caracas, Venezuela. See the illustration in Dawn Ades ed., Arte en Iberoamérica, 1820-1980 Colección Encuentros (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1990): pl. 1.21.
69
the floor tiles suggest perspective, the vanishing point seems to lie somewhere above the head of Bolívar, causing the effect of a tilting floor. Bolívar's solid black boots and the smooth surface of the white trousers, become highly abstracted forms. The striking sense of presence which the painting conveys does not derive from any intimation of naturalism, but from Gil de Castro's obsessive attention to the most minute details of the general's uniform and physiognomy. The same occurs in Gil de Castro's portrayal of José Olaya, one of the early heroes of Peruvian independence (fig. 7). The artist's pictorial interests here find an outlet in the boldness of the composition and the delicate treatment of the patriot's white dress, but this interest does not extend to the representation of pictorial depth, which is consistently denied by the manner in which the Gil de Castro uses legends. For Gil de Castro, as for most painters educated in colonial workshops, the space of painting continues to be a rarefied and otherworldly sphere, a space which becomes privileged because it can claim a difference from the spaces of everyday life. It would only be in the decades following independence that the colonial tradition of painting would be abruptly shaken by a new conception of artistic practice and a simultaneous change in the social position of the artist.
Gil de Castro, like other painters of the early
republican period such as Pablo Rojas and Mariano Carrillo, was a Mulatto. Working mostly on commission, the artistic practice of these artists was tied to the artisan workshops of the colonial period. As a
70
manual craft, painting was viewed with distaste by the upper sectors of colonial society. During the late 18th century, Francisco de Paula de la Mata Linares wrote to the Mercurio peruano complaining of aristocratic prejudices against manual work and attributing the backwardness of the country to the nobility's disdain for the arts.
This prejudice, he
maintained, would be without consequence were it not for its harmful effects in making the arts contemptible, "so that it is a rare European, and less an honest Creole who determines to follow any of these worthy professions."4 If the first part of the 19th century sees the continuation of the colonial artistic system practiced by artists of the lower social classes and of various ethnic origins, the second half of the 19th century witnesses one of the most drastic changes in the practice of art to have occurred since the conquest. Like Francisco Laso, almost all the important painters of the republican period came from upper sectors of Peruvian society. Beginning in this period, the names of the best-known artists--Juan de Dios Ingunza, Ignacio Merino, Luis Montero, Federico Torrico--betray their high social status and a different, usually Creole, ethnic extraction. The rupture, however, occurred only in one sector of Peruvian society.
The "colonial heritage" in the realm of painting remained
4[Esto importaría poco sino hubiera producido en la práctica la conseqüencia tan perjudicial de haber hecho despreciables las Artes, de tal mode que raro Europeo, y menos Criollos honrados, son los que se determinan a seguir ninguna de estas profesiones estimables. Mas como ellas son precisas, se desempeñan por la plebe: . . .] Francisco de Paula de la Mata Linares y Vasquez de Avila [D. F. D. P. D. L. M. L.], "Carta remitida a la Sociedad, que publica con algunas Notas," Mercurio peruano, no. 345 (April 24, 1794): 2264-2265.
71
unchanged among the artisans who continued earlier pictorial traditions. Their social status had weakened and their customers were increasingly drawn from the lower spheres of society. While during the late 18th century the upper classes would not have adopted painting as a profession, they participated, as patrons, in the artistic production of colonial artisans. By the mid 19th century educated sectors of large urban centers like Lima no longer depended on this artistic production. Foreign itinerant painters like Francis Drexel or Raymond Quinsac Monvoisin, along with an emerging class of elite painters like Laso, increasingly came to corner the limited market for painting. Followers of the colonial pictorial tradition became marginal characters in Peruvian society, looked upon with disdain by the upper sectors of society. In the 1840s the French traveler Paul Marcoy visited Cuzco and produced a corrosive satire of these colonial artisans. His caricatures of the painting and sculpture workshops of Cuzco are perhaps the most derogatory images of Peruvian artists ever to have been produced (fig. 8). One representing a painter's workshop, sarcastically titled "The atelier or studio of the Raphael of the Cancha," shows the artist at the easel, dressed in poncho and chullo, and sitting on a roughly made stool. A cat sits on his back, and chicken and other domestic animals roam around the floor of the workshop, which is covered with straw. A large disheveled woman cooks an undetermined stew in an oversized cauldron at the far side of the room. The small religious images which hang in
72
series on the walls, immediately evoke the kind of popular oil paintings that Creole writers came increasingly to attack in the newspapers of Lima and other important urban centers. Elite conceptions of painting had apparently started to change during the late colonial period. Late 18th-century elite interest in drawing instruction testifies to this transformation, which consolidates with independence, when drawing comes to form part of the curriculum of most preparatory schools.
The drawing lessons established in these
schools were not oriented towards the preparation of professional artists, but were offered as a supplement to a liberal education. Now associated with a new idea of cultivation and adornment, drawing became an integral part of the standard education of an educated minority.5 Although very little is known about Laso's early life, it is almost certain that he received his first drawing instruction in primary school. The first seven years of his life had followed the uncertain path of his father's public career. Benito Laso's loyalty to Bolívar had earned him a post as president of the Superior Court of Arequipa in 1826, yet this very allegiance to the Liberator soon cost him his job. With the victory of antiBolivarian forces in January of 1827, Benito Laso was forced into exile in Bolivia, where he was to remain until 1830, when General Agustín Gamarra returned to power as president of Peru. Having been restored to his post at the Superior Court of Arequipa, Benito Laso and his family 5Natalia
Majluf, "Entre pasatiempo y herramienta artesanal: aspectos de la enseñanza del dibujo en el diecinueve," Sequilao, Año II, no. 3 (May-July, 1993): 32-42.
73
settled there towards the end of 1830. Laso's mother, Juana de los Ríos, had died in Copacabana, on August 7, 1830, and Benito Laso remarried to Petronila García Calderon y Crespo on March 10, 1831, an unhappy marriage which, according to Benito Laso's own account, had been intended to secure his social status.6 The family apparently remained in Arequipa, even when Benito Laso attended the National Convention of July 1833 in Lima as representative of the southern province of Huancané. Thus, Laso must have received a formal education only after his family settled in Arequipa towards the second half of 1830.7 It is likely that Laso studied at the Colegio General de Ciencias y Artes de la Independencia Americana, the most important school in Arequipa at that time. As in most teaching institutions formed during the early years of the republic, drawing classes were part of the standard teaching curriculum. We do not know who taught these classes during the early 1830s, although it is likely that Manuel José de Recabarren, who had been in charge of drawing lessons at the school until at least 1828, continued to teach there.8 The school included courses on the "Fine Arts," Spanish, and
6The
date of Benito Laso's marriage in Santiago Martínez, Monografía de la Corte Superior de Arequipa y apuntes biográficos de todos sus Vocales y Fiscales (Arequipa: Tipografía Caritg & Rivera, 1925): 41. See also Benito Laso, "Memoria reservada dirigida à mis hijos sobre mi conducta con ellos en consecuencia de mi segundo matrimonio para que con ella juzguen con imparcialidad mis procedimientos como padre y corrijan sus malos conceptos que quisa y sin querer los han tornado contra mi," ms. dated Lima, February 27, 1861, in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. 7This is confirmed by a statement made by Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1126. 8Ramón Gutiérrez, Evolución histórica urbana de Arequipa. 1540-1990 (Lima: Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Artes, Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Epígrafe Editores, 1992): 117f.
74
music, along with more traditional topics such as philosophy, mathematics, and jurisprudence. Laso only stayed in Arequipa for six years, after which his family moved to Lima.
Siding with Agustín Gamarra, Benito Laso opposed
General Andrés de Santa Cruz and the Peru-Bolivia Confederation, a stance which forced Santa Cruz to dismiss him from his post as a member of the Court of Justice of Arequipa on March 3, 1836. Because Arequipa remained largely loyal to Santa Cruz, Benito Laso found it convenient to move his family to Lima, where he arrived by July of 1836. Benito Laso's career in the succeeding years followed the unpredictable course of political events. In 1838 he was minister of state under Orbegoso and later under Gamarra. From July to November of 1839 he was again minister of government and foreign relations under Gamarra, and from 1842 to 1843 minister of instruction and ecclesiastical affairs under Francisco Vidal. After Gamarra's victory over Santa Cruz, Benito Laso was appointed to the Supreme Court, a post he maintained until his retirement in 1858, and which forced him to settle permanently in Lima.9 Francisco Laso received his first professional artistic instruction after arriving in Lima in 1836, when he apparently entered the National Drawing Academy.10 The Drawing Academy originated in a class first established as an auxiliary course for students of botany at the College of 9Zegarra
Meneses,"Benito Laso, prócer de la Independencia y la República," p. 30. y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1126. José Flores Araoz claims that Laso studied with Cortés at school, even before joining the National Drawing Academy. See "La exposición de pintura de Francisco Laso." La Prensa, 8-XII-1937, p. ii. 10Lavalle
75
Medicine of San Fernando in 1810, when the botanist Juan Tafalla and the illustrator Francisco Javier Cortés were hired to teach botany and scientific illustration.11
The drawing course served as the foundation for the
National Drawing Academy, instituted by a government decree of June 1, 1826. In 1832, after a number of problems, the Drawing Academy was finally installed in the building which housed the National Library. In an effort to renovate the institution, new rooms were arranged in the same building in 1840. The inspector of the academy, the collector and patron José Dávila Condemarín, had provided some engravings and models, and, according to official sources, nearly eighty students attended the academy by the early 1840s. The only teacher at the institution was the director, Francisco Javier Cortés y Alcocer.12
The youngest member of a family of Ecuadorian
painters from Quito, Cortés had worked as an illustrator in the Royal Botanical Expedition of New Granada (1783-1816) led by the Spanish scientist José Celestino Mutis, an expedition which counted with royal approval and the active support of the viceroy of New Granada. Like his father and brothers before him, Cortés worked in the expedition from 1790 to 1798, after which he returned to Quito.13 Although it has often been 11See
the document of May 9, 1815, "Expediente con el dictamen de la Junta Superior de Medicina y cirugía de España y Real Cédula para que se rectifiquen las instituciones y plan de estudios de la Escuela de Medicina de San Fernando de Lima." A photocopy of the manuscript belonging to the University of San Marcos in BNL, no. D-12930. 12Joaquín H. Ugarte y Ugarte, "El pintor Francisco Javier Cortés, uno de los autores del Escudo Nacional," El Comercio, 17-XII-1955, morning ed., pp. 2, 16. 13Alfredo D. Bateman, "Los personajes de la Expedición Botánica," Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades (Bogotá) LXXI, no. 747 (October-December, 1984): 952.
76
mistakenly stated that Cortés worked with Alexander von Humboldt, it is unlikely that Cortés ever met him.14 The botanist Juan Tafalla apparently hired him during a trip to Quito in 1809,15 after which he joined the staff of the School of San Fernando. Save for the fact that Cortés designed the national escutcheon for San Martín and that he worked as a portraitist, little is known of his activity as a painter in Lima. During his first years in Lima, Laso also continued his education in one of the most respected preparatory schools in the capital, which had been established by Clemente Noel in 1838.16 Laso later claimed to have taught drawing at Noel's school since the age of fifteen, paying for room and board with his salary as a teaching instructor.17 Apparently, again according to Laso's own account, he continued to live there even after he began taking courses as an external student at the School of San Carlos, an institution which functioned both as a university and a secondary school.18 During the first four years at the institution, students received a 14Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1126, was the first to link Cortés' name with that of Humboldt. See also Ugarte Eléspuru, Ignacio Merino. Francisco Laso, pp. 111-113. Gustavo Buntinx follows the same line in relating Cortés to Humboldt in "Del 'Habitante de las Cordilleras' al 'Indio Alfarero'. Variaciones sobre un tema de Francisco Laso," Márgenes VI, nos. 10-11 (October 1993): 26. Humboldt met with Mutis in Ecuador in 1801, but by that time Cortés had already abandoned the expedition. 15Cortés was incorporated to the team working under Tafalla on January 17th, 1809. See Pedro Gjurinovic C., "Apuntes sobre Francisco Javier Cortés," El Comercio,17-IX1989, p. C3. 16Flores Araoz claims that Laso entered Noel's school, "Pensión para hombres belgas" on Pescadería street as soon as he arrived in Lima. See, "Francisco Laso. Ensayo biográfico-crítico," El Comercio, 31-I-1937. " The school, however, was not founded until 1838. See Eduardo Carrasco, Calendario y guía de forasteros de la República Peruana para el año de 1842 (Lima: Imprenta de Instrucción primaria de Felix Moreno, 1841): 97. 17"Derechos adquiridos." El Comercio, 22-V-1867. 18No documents exist for this period in the archives of San Carlos. However, when in 1851 Laso painted the portrait of the Rector, Bartolomé Herrera, he offered it as a gift to
77
general education, while those who wished to earn a degree in law continued for four more years. Laso's later statements about his economic independence during this early period of his life are confirmed by the fact that external students did not pay tuition.19 It is difficult to ascertain exactly which courses Laso may have attended at San Carlos. The bulk of the studies were geared towards the study of law, but courses in geography, literature, French, and English were also offered.20 From 1837 to at least 1838, drawing classes were taught by Alejandro Seghers.21 Laso's training as an artist must have received a new direction after 1838 with the arrival from Europe of the young Ignacio Merino (18171876). The son of an aristocratic family from the northern city of Piura, Merino had left Peru at the age of ten to continue his education in Europe, where he attended the school of the Spanish émigré Manuel Silvela in Paris. Almost nothing is known about his early training as an artist, although his early biographers list him as a student of Paul Delaroche. Merino later identified himself as a student of Raymond Quinsac Monvoisin (1790-1870), but there is no evidence to suggest that he knew him prior to Monvoisin's stay in Lima from 1845 to1846.22 In any case, by San Carlos for he had "received his first education there." See "Comunicados. Colejio de San Carlos," El Comercio, 28-VIII-1851. The lack of information on San Carlos for this period is confirmed by Oswaldo Holguín Callo, Tiempos de infancia y bohemia. Ricardo Palma (1833-1860) (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1994):125, no. 127. 19Holguín Callo, Tiempos de infancia y bohemia, pp. 130-131, nos. 147, 156. 20Ibid., p. 132, no. 160. 21Seghers requested permission to teach French and drawing at San Carlos on September 27, 1837. In October he requested permission to teach music. Both requests were approved. AGN, R-J, 179, Instrucción, Convictorio de Bolívar y San Carlos, leg. 1. 22Although he does not identify his sources, José Flores Araoz claims that Merino
78
the time Merino arrived in Peru in 1838 he was already an accomplished artist, having traveled through Naples, Venice, and Rome before returning home.
In 1840, after the death of Cortés, Merino took charge of the
directorship at the National Drawing Academy. Probably with Merino's support, Laso was named assistant to the director, a post which he occupied from 1841 to 1843.23 No works produced by the students of the National Drawing Academy survive, and there is almost no information on the course of instruction, except that students copied the few casts and engravings donated to the school by Dávila Condemarín.
However, even this
information is significant in the context of local artistic traditions. The Drawing Academy broke with the instruction offered by the craft guilds of the colonial period. Drawing had formed only a minor part of the teaching instruction of colonial workshops, which were intent on producing artists able to serve professionally as painters. At the Drawing Academy on the other hand, only a few students were allowed to take up the brush, and the full weight of the program was devoted to drawing.
approached Monvoisin for the first time in Lima, asking for guidance and seeking to become his student. See "Raimundo Monvoisin," Cultura peruana I, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb., 1941): n.p. Monvoisin, a student of Guérin, did not have a teaching atelier during the 1830s in Paris, but he is known to have given private drawing lessons to a number of Latin Americans. Because of Monvoisin's close ties with an important group of Latin Americans in Paris, including the Peruvian Luis Rosales, whose portrait he painted in 1837, it is not unlikely that Merino should have met him there. See David James, Monvoisin (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1949): 24-25, 64-67. 23Eduardo Carrasco, Calendario y guía de forasteros de la República peruana para el año de 1841 (Lima: Imprenta de Instrucción Primaria por Felix Moreno, 1840): 92-93; Calendario y guía de forasteros de la República Peruana para el año de 1842 (Lima: Imprenta de Instrucción primaria de Felix Moreno, 1841): 89.
79
Furthermore, classes at the academy were held only at night, three times a week, a fact which confirms that this was not a full-time course intended to produce professional artists, but rather an accessory course intended for those already engaged in other activities. Laso's early education thus signals a break with the colonial tradition. Not only did he come from a much higher social status than any of his colonial predecessors, but parallel to his training as an artist, he also received a liberal education which would have been unthinkable for a colonial artist. Painters of Laso's generation no longer looked to painting simply as a way to earn a living, and there was little incentive to produce works to satisfy the meager local demand for religious painting or portraiture. It is clear that the limited resources available in Lima gave Laso little space to develop as an artist, and it seems natural that he should later have decided to travel to Europe to further his education. However, from the time he arrived in Lima in 1836, and until he left for Europe in 1843, Laso, along with Merino,24 contributed to the definition of the early stages of costumbrismo, one of the most influential cultural movements to develop in Peru after independence.
24Juan Bautista de Lavalle, "Ignacio Merino, 1817-1876. Apuntes biográficos," in Ignacio Merino (1817-1917). Edición conmemorativa del primer centenario del nacimiento del eminente pintor peruano (Lima: Concejo Provincial de Lima, Casa Editora M. Moral, 1917): 10, 12.
80
THE FIRST COSTUMBRISMO The years that Laso spent in Lima saw the consolidation of costumbrismo, perhaps the most important literary and pictorial genre in 19th-century Peru. Costumbrismo, as its name indicates, was primarily devoted to the representation of local manners and customs. Yet more than a specific literary or pictorial genre, costumbrismo was a complex social project, which transcended and outlived most European literary and pictorial styles. In literature it manifested itself in poetry and in the theater, in the novel and in the satirical essay. In its visual manifestations, costumbrismo was developed in a variety of media, mostly in watercolors but also in drawings, occasionally in painting but also in engravings and lithographs. Costumbrismo pervaded almost every aspect of 19th-century Peruvian--and for that matter, Latin American--society.
However, its
relevance to the study of Latin American culture during this period has not been adequately addressed. In literature, the interest in tracing the origins of more canonical genres has affected the study of costumbrismo, which is usually discussed only insofar as it can be defined as a precedent or an impediment to the development of the novel.25 In the visual arts, due to the weak foundations of art history as an academic discipline and to the lack of interest in 19th-century art, costumbrista images have mostly been used by historians as documentary illustrations of Peruvian society. 25Maida
Isabel Watson Espener, El cuadro de costumbres en el Perú decimonónico (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1980): 146-147.
81
In literature, costumbrismo was framed by the contemporary Spanish literary tradition of short prose sketches known as cuadros de costumbres. In the visual arts, the origins and sources of costumbrismo are far more obscure, although it is usually associated with the "empiricist" tradition established by illustrators of the late 18th-century scientific expeditions.26 The impact of these voyages on the development of visual costumbrismo is difficult to assess.
Having worked for two important
scientific projects, Francisco Javier Cortés, Laso's first teacher, could hypothetically serve as an obvious link to these scientific expeditions. Joaquín Ugarte claims that Cortés continued in the service of Tafalla's botanical expedition until 1832,27 but there are indications that Cortés was more interested in pursuing other activities during his stay in Lima, and he appears to have turned to other genres when his commitment to the botanical expedition ended. He abandoned scientific illustration, which had a limited institutional base and offered few economic possibilities, and dedicated himself to an eclectic career as drawing instructor, portraitist, and advisor to the Peruvian mint. A similar trajectory can be traced for José del Pozo, the Spanish painter who abandoned the Malaspina expedition and settled in Lima in the 1790s. Like Cortés, Pozo turned to drawing instruction and carried out a number of important painting commissions for the church, seeking out a traditional career as a
26See
Stanton Loomis Catlin, "La naturaleza, la ciencia y lo pintoresco," in Dawn Ades, Arte en Iberoamérica 1820-1980. 27Ugarte y Ugarte, "El pintor Francisco Javier Cortés," p. 2.
82
painter. Thus, both Pozo and Cortés seem to have established a clear division between their work as scientific illustrators and their work as professional painters, following, rather than transforming the more established genres of painting. The relationship of visual costumbrismo to late colonial scientific expeditions does not seem to be have been as direct as is often assumed. The local tradition of geographical description which, under the influence of Enlightenment ideas, developed during the late 18th century produced mostly written texts.28 Furthermore, social customs were rarely the focus of these late 18th-century projects, and they were discussed only where they could be incorporated into discussions of natural history or economic theory. Costumbrista interest in depicting social customs also departed in purpose and function from the strictly utilitarian interests of late 18thcentury descriptions. While most scientific illustrations were not seen by the general public, and were either sent to Spain to form part of royal collections or hidden away in university libraries and museum herbariums, costumbrista images were exhibited in storefronts and circulated widely in Peruvian society. Although isolated examples of earlier costumbrista drawings and watercolors can be found, the genre only emerges as such after the mid 1830s. It must therefore be necessarily examined in the context of literary 28A notable exception would be the watercolors of the Bishopric of Trujillo created under the supervision of Bishop Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón in the 1780s. This apparently isolated case requires further study, but the impact of these images in Peru must have been small, since most were sent to Spain to form part of the royal collections.
83
costumbrismo which also developed during the same period. Although this is not the place to fully explore the relationship between the written and the visual aspects of costumbrismo, pictorial references abound in costumbrista writings, and written legends played an important role in visual images, which were not only used as book illustrations but also were labeled and explained through written legends. What defined costumbrismo above all was its function and its role in society. The pedagogic impulse behind this project is reflected in the institutions through which it was developed. Costumbrismo appealed to a wide public and its natural spaces were either the theater and the daily newspapers or cheap and popular media such as the watercolor and the lithographic print. In El Espejo de mi tierra, the first newspaper devoted entirely to the depiction of local customs, Felipe Pardo y Aliaga wrote that the revolution of independence had weakened the very foundations of old customs, while new ones were still hesitant and uncertain.29 Through its critique of customs, literary costumbrismo attempted to guide Peruvian society through this difficult period of transition, while simultaneously creating the first representations of a modern Creole identity. Although the avowed pedagogic purpose of costumbrista writers is less evident in pictorial costumbrismo, there is often in these images a sense of ironic distance from the subjects portrayed that betrays a similar intent. 29[Las
costumbres nuevas se hallan todavía en aquel estado de vacilación y de incertidumbre, que caracteriza toda innovación reciente: las antiguas flaquean por sus cimientos al fuerte embate de la revolución.] Felipe Pardo y Aliaga, El espejo de mi tierra, Colección Autores Peruanos, 29, ed. with a preliminary study by Edición y Alberto Tauro (Lima: Editorial Universo, S.A., 1971): 34.
84
Costumbrismo thus produced the first self-conscious literary and visual representations of Peruvian society to emerge after independence. In part, the social descriptions which 19th-century Creoles produced were the continuation of a process which had begun during the late 18th century.
In the late colonial period Creoles produced geographical
descriptions of their native regions, offered a virulent defense of American nature in late 18th-century Enlightenment debates,30 and expressed their emotional attachment to the patria chica, the small homeland, in a number of important texts. While late 18th-century Creoles had described the particularities of American nature, they had not conceived of themselves as culturally different from other Spaniards. Before independence had opened the doors to foreign artists, businessmen, and scientists, local elites had defined themselves as españoles americanos, American Spaniards, who rather than seeking any kind of cultural differentiation, sought equal representation and participation within the Spanish Empire.
Prior to
independence, Creolism had largely been a pan-American affair, but the establishment of separate nation-states created distinct and well-defined territorial units, forcing Creoles to define the nation within more limited borders. Costumbrismo was the most important medium through which early republican Creoles throughout Latin America confronted this moment of self-definition.
30See
Gerbi, La disputa del Nuevo Mundo.
85
Usually perceived as emerging in conscious opposition to a process of "Europeanization,"31 costumbrismo in fact developed in a constant dialogue with Europe.
The very notion of "Europeanization" only
becomes intelligible within this new process of differentiation.
Felipe
Pardo was perfectly aware of what was at stake in this dialogue; he was a firm believer that Americans had much to learn from Europe, and that commerce was the vehicle for national improvement. "Commerce," he claimed, "puts us in contact with the rest of the inhabitants of the globe: it reveals to us the progress of the human spirit in the sciences and the arts." 32
Pardo could thus easily compare the attacks on the Italian opera with
those leveled against the introduction of foreign manufactures.
He
praised not only the singers and musicians but also the businessmen, Valdeavellano, Malagrida, Palacios, and Canevaro, for having provided the support to bring the opera company to Lima.33 Recent studies have demonstrated that foreign powers, mainly Britain, France, and the United States, did not succeed in their attempts to induce the Peruvian government to adopt free trade policies during the
31E.
Bradford Burns' simplistic account of costumbrismo as a popular form of representation which questions elite notions of progress is largely the product of the crude application of dependency theory to cultural studies. See The Poverty of Progress. Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983): 60f. 32[ El comercio con los extranjeros es indudablemente el vehículo de esta mejora. El nos pone en contacto con el resto de los pobladores del globo: él nos revela los progresos del espíritu humano en las ciencias, en las artes y en todos los ramos que influyen de una manera más o menos directa en la felicidad del hombre: él en fin es el agente más poderoso del gran principio de sociabilidad. . .] Pardo y Aliaga, El espejo de mi tierra, p. 79. 33Opera y Nacionalismo," in Ibid., pp. 79-80.
86
first half of the 19th century. As Paul Gootenberg has demonstrated, the very weakness and instability of early republican Peru, along with the strength and organization of protectionist elites, frustrated foreign interventionist attempts in Peruvian political affairs.34 Elite protectionism, however, did not affect all spheres of Peruvian life, and economic protectionism did not automatically translate into cultural nationalism. Foreign manufactures, books, and fashions slowly gained a hold in Peruvian society during the same period. Peruvian intellectual elites, for whom independence had meant a liberation from colonial obscurantism, avidly sought to renovate their society through the adoption of the latest European ideas and fashions. Furthermore, foreign merchants, travelers, artists, and diplomats flocked to Peru in the decades after independence in search of new romantic experiences, and new markets for their products and services. Costumbrismo sought to find a balance between foreign customs and Creole control of the nation. Even Pardo, an ardent advocate of change and European customs could declare that the "literature of each country must be, and has always been cultivated by natives of the country," because foreigners lacked both sufficient knowledge and investment in the country to be able to speak about it in an adequate or fair manner.35 34Paul
Gootenberg, Tejidos y harinas, corazones y mentes. El imperialismo norteamericano del libre comercio en el Perú, 1825-1840, Colección Mínima, 17 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1989), and the broader perspective by the same author in Between Silver and Guano. Commercial Policy and the State in Postindependence Peru (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989). 35["Que la literatura e cada país debe ser y ha sido siempre cultivada por los naturales del país . . ."] Pardo y Aliaga, El espejo de mi tierra, p. 40.
87
Pardo distinguished between a "barbarous" nationalism and its "civilized" counterpart, which was defined and supported by the rights of universal reason. If Pardo opposed the superficial acquisition of foreign customs and deplored the uncritical adoption of everything foreign, he was also an zealous critic of narrow-minded nationalist xenophobes.36 Costumbrismo was also the first self-consciously cosmopolitan genre to develop in Peru. Pardo's most memorable character, the spoiled "niño Goyito" of "Un viaje," is not, as his name would imply, a child, but a 52year-old man, whose fear of travel (he spends three years preparing a trip to nearby Chile) symbolizes the closed character of a retrograde Creole elite.37 In the cuadro de costumbres foreigners are inscribed in the narrative to facilitate comparisons between foreign and local customs and ideas. Yet costumbrismo was also cosmopolitan in that it was constructed on the premise of a foreign observer. Felipe Pardo and Manuel Ascencio Segura worry constantly of what foreign visitors could say about Peru's backward customs. In "La carta," Segura, responds to a (possibly imaginary) critic of his cuadro "Las exequias," in which he had criticized the Latin inscriptions in the funerary catafalque constructed for the exequies of General Gamarra. According to Segura, the critic had found his writings were not only detrimental to "national decorum," but where also dangerous for the opinions which foreigners could form of the state of Peru. Segura defends himself by saying that he wrote his cuadro to show that "our present taste 36"Opera 37"Un
y Nacionalismo," in Ibid., pp. 76-79. viaje," in Ibid., pp. 101-105.
88
is not satisfied with just anything," and "to avoid at the same time that it should be thought in Europe that the 19th century had not yet arrived for us."38 Costumbrismo was partly a response to the "imperialist gaze" of foreign observers who flocked to America after independence.39
The
dialogue established between European travelers and Americans has been extensively analyzed by Mary Louise Pratt.40
As Pratt demonstrates,
European travelers could rarely project, unaided, values and ideas onto America, for the region had already been constructed for them by previous local and foreign writers and travelers.
However, Pratt's
analysis sometimes fails to point to the common intellectual and cultural ground
on
which
this
dialogue
took
place.
Her
notion
of
"transculturation" seems rather to imply a significant cultural difference between the European observers and local artists. This was no "confrontation of gazes"41--to use a phrase coined by Beatriz González,--nor a collusion of interests between foreigners and local elites. It was a fluid exchange of ideas and forms of representation that were utilized differently by each of the parties involved. A more 38[nuestro
gusto actual que ya no se da por satisfecho con cualquier cosa; y para evitar al mismo tiempo que se creyera en Europa, qe el siglo XIX aún no había entrado en nosotros.] Manuel Ascencio Segura, Artículos de costumbres, preliminary study by Jorge Cornejo Polar, Colección Autores Peruanos, 25 (Lima: Editorial Universo, 1967): 75. 39Deborah A. Poole, "A One-Eyed Gaze: Gender in 19th-Century Illustration of Peru," Dialectical Anthropology 13, no. 4 (1988): 333-364. 40Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge,1992). 41Stanton Loomis Catlin, "La naturaleza, la ciencia y lo pintoresco," in Dawn Ades, Arte en Iberoamérica 1820-1980, p. 63.
89
balanced evaluation of visual costumbrismo is needed, one which avoids the pitfalls of dependency theory, where local elites barely serve as filters for European capital, or an imperialist European gaze, and the nationalist "conciencia de sí" school which views it as a spiritual awakening, a natural and autonomous manifestation of identity. Visual costumbrismo was forged in the dialogue between foreign and local artists. The two most important representatives of the genre in Peru were the Mulatto painter Pancho Fierro (1807-1879) and the aristocratic Ignacio Merino.
The self-taught Fierro popularized
watercolors representing urban types and characters while Merino, probably influenced by Fierro, transferred these popular images to painting, creating more complex compositions which, however, did not depart from the spirit of its prototypes. Representations produced by foreigners in Lima were often created in collaboration with local artists and were usually based on local models. Juan Espinosa, the Uruguayan liberal who settled in Peru in the late 1830s, acted as a scout and guide to one of the most productive of the 19th-century travelers to Latin America, the German Johann Moritz Rugendas.
He proposed new subjects,
described customs, and guided the artist generally through Chile and Peru. In Lima, Rugendas also worked in close collaboration with Merino, whom he depicted in a drawing probably made on one of their drawing excursions in Lima.42 42José Flores Araoz publishes the drawing and identifies the artist in Juan Mauricio Rugendas. El Perú romántico del siglo XIX (Lima: Editor Carlos Milla Batres, 1975): 134, pl. 54. The correspondance between Juan Espinosa and Rugendas is reproduced in Ibid.,
90
Given the international context from which the genre emerged, it is no coincidence that costumbrismo should have served both a foreign and a local clientele.
Costumbrista drawings and watercolors were the first
examples of Peruvian postcards.
A large number of watercolors by
Pancho Fierro, now housed in foreign collections, first left the country as souvenirs. Léonce Angrand, French diplomat and draftsman, collected a number of watercolors by Fierro which he took back with him when he returned to France in the late 1830s. The Chilean general José Miguel de la Barra formed an album with images by Merino and Fierro around 1840, and the Russian naturalist and ethnographer Leopold Shrenk, who visited Lima between 1853 and 1854,43 also took home a set of costumbrista watercolors. Foreign residents in Peru also sent albums of watercolors to their families abroad.44 Yet foreigners were not the only customers for these popular and commercially successful images; sold and exhibited in the storefronts of Lima, costumbrista watercolors also circulated widely in Peru. Although the interests of foreign and local artists often coincided, they placed a different emphasis on the type of images they produced. Foreign artists placed a greater emphasis on the documentary value of pp. 253-272. 43Manuel Cisneros Sánchez, Pancho Fierro y la Lima del 800 (Lima: García Ribeyro, 1975): 174. A number of watercolors from the Shrenk collection have been published as Tipos limeños vistos por Pancho Fierro. Acuarelas de una colección soviética (Leningrad: Editorial de Artes Aurora, 1979). 44For example, in 1855, the German Juan Luis Dammert sent a set of 20 watercolors to his mother in Germany, and James Moore, an officer of the Royal Navy presented his friend Gertrude Ginn, in England, with an album of watercolors by Fierro. Cisneros Sánchez, Pancho Fierro y la Lima del 800, pp. 159-160, 187.
91
their images, usually conceived from the beginning as illustrations to the future publication of the inevitable travel account. They thus preferred broad vistas, panoramic views of the city, or more focused images of important monuments or typical street scenes. The images created by local artists, on the other hand, focused primarily on the representation of social customs, and the typified portrayal of the inhabitants of Lima. The differing emphasis is related to the function of these images, for local costumbrismo was intimately tied to the self-conscious creation of a modern Creole identity.
THE IMAGE OF CREOLE LIMA Costumbrista images actively participated in the construction of criollismo, a modern form of Creole identity which differed from previous types of Creole patriotism. While the latter had developed out of colonial power struggles between criollos and peninsulares, and had placed no distinct emphasis on the cultural difference between the two, criollismo attempted to define the characteristics of a specifically Creole culture. The borders of Creole patriotism had been undefined; the "imagined community" which it produced was both too narrow or too broad, focusing either on the celebration of the native town or the more generalized space of the Indies. Costumbrismo
participated in the
definition of the boundaries of a properly Creole identity, in its modern form, as criollismo.
92
Significantly, both costumbrismo and modern criollismo develop primarily in Lima. Although costumbrista writers claimed to represent the nation, and spoke repeatedly of their role as reformers of the patria, they nonetheless limited the scope of their works to the portrayal of scenes from the capital. In the same paragraph, a writer like Pardo can speak of the nation in one line and define that nation as Lima in the next. With some exceptions, such as Narciso Aréstegui's portrayal of Cuzco in his novel El Padre Horán (1848), no other regional center produced a visual or literary costumbrismo until the end of the century.
During the early
republican period regional interests and economic networks had dominated national politics. Regional elites vied to promote the interests of their provinces of origin, attempting to compete on equal footing with Lima, the traditional colonial center against which many patriots had fought during independence. Gradually however, the consolidation of government administration in the capital came to supplant and replace local ties and political networks. Provincial elites were incorporated into a growing bureaucracy, a process which slowly paved the way for the emergence of a powerful centralized state in the capital.45
This
centralizing process finally consolidated in the 1850s when the economic boom of the guano era allowed the development of a strong government bureaucracy centered in the capital.
Benito Laso's trajectory, from
provincial patriarch in the Southern Andean region, to prominent 45See
Guano.
Wibel, esp. pp. 74, 93, and 464. See also Paul Gootenberg, Between Silver and
93
participant of a Lima-based politics is a telling example of this process. The image of Creole Lima was an important aspect of the consolidation of this new national elite. As a critique of customs and vices inherited from the colonial period, costumbrismo helped to define local traditions, forming the first consistent interpretation of criollismo: a particular culture produced through the gradual transformation of the cultural and social legacy of Spain. By the late 1830s, visual costumbrismo had already developed the catalogue of types which would be repeated, almost unchanged, during the rest of the century.
Costumbrista images were stereotypes in the
broadest sense of the word. In the most obvious sense, the portrayal of specific scenes or individuals were presented as examples of a characteristic site or of typical social groups. creation
of
the
cuadro
necessarily
implied
For Felipe Pardo, the the
formulation
of
generalizations, and he warned his readers not to look for portraits of specific people in his literary characters for "they will never be copies of a person of flesh and blood, but embodiments of the character which is to be presented." His types would be created through the selection of the most "notable accidents" representative of the particular trait or vice chosen to come under attack.46 But these images were also stereotypical in that they 46[Así que no den en la flor que antes he indicado de buscar los originales de mis personajes, que no serán nunca copias de una persona de carne y hueso, sino la encarnación del carácter que se trata de presentar; y esta encarnación no se verificará tomando los rasgos propios de un individuo existente, sino escogiendo los accidentes más notables, que acompañan a la manía, preocupación o vicio de cualquier género, que se intente censurar.] See Pardo y Aliaga, El espejo de mi tierra, p. 43. On the importance of generalizations for the writer of the cuadro de costumbres see Ibid., pp. 35-37.
94
were meant for repetition. Like the picture postcard, they functioned through a necessary repetition of "typical" motifs. Watercolorists copied the works of other artists but also repeated their own images, photographers reproduced these works or simply posed their subjects in the poses and dresses of earlier costumbrista types, and editors used these images to illustrate publications on Lima.47 Although few early prints have survived there are references which indicate that by the late 1830s costumbrista prints were already being produced in Lima. Merino kept works by Fierro in his sketch books and in the early 1840s produced a series of lithographs apparently based on his watercolors (fig. 9).48 The tremendous impact of costumbrismo derived precisely from this combination of a rhetoric of description and the repetition of ideal types. The depiction of the different castes, trades, the religious customs associated with the church, and the traditional dress of the women of Lima created an exoticized image of the city and defined the contours of a differentiated criollo culture.
A history and a tradition were self-
consciously retrieved from the urban spaces of the city.
Through
costumbrismo, Creoles also created an image of Lima that incorporated the plebeian and aristocratic sectors of society. They represented the peaceful coexistence of different classes and ethnic groups in a kind of arcadia 47For
example, most of the watercolors of costumbrista scenes in the collection of the Hispanic Society of New York appear to be copies of watercolors by Pancho Fierro and possibly also of prints. See reproductions in Anna Pursche, "Scenes of Lima Attributed to Pancho Fierro," Notes Hispanic IV (1944): 92-132. 48José Flores Araoz, "A cien años de su muerte, Pancho Fierro. Lima de antaño tuvo su pintor." La jornada comunera, 23-IX-1979, pp. 11-13.
95
which resolved the social tensions of Lima, without however, effacing or subverting the social hierarchy.
Significantly, even what survives of
criollismo today shows its double aristocratic and plebeian face, and it is not surprising that the self-taught Mulatto painter Pancho Fierro and the European-trained and aristocratic Merino should have been the main exponents of the genre at mid-century. Pancho Fierro himself became a cult figure for later elite advocates of Limeño costumbrismo, who elevated him to the status of a cultural icon, the spontaneous expression of criollo culture. Laso's participation in this early costumbrismo is more difficult to define, for only one painting by him can be attributed to this early period of his life. His Bathers in Chorrillos (fig. 10) draws on one of the standard themes of Creole costumbrismo, centering on the typical entertainments of urban elites. The painting catches two women as they move into the water in a summer station near Lima. As in most costumbrista images, it rejects any obvious narrative and does not attempt to go beyond the simple representation of a scene from contemporary life. The stiff and somewhat awkward contours of the figures is not the only element which suggests an early date for this painting.
Although costumbrismo
determined the emphasis Laso would later place on the definition of ethnic types and the representation of contemporary subjects, he would never again create works which evoked the transient character of this kind of image.
96
The modern Creole image of Lima largely depended on the nostalgic evocation of its rich colonial past.49 Auguste Borget defined it as "a city which is still a strange city, unlike any other. A city of feasts, and pleasures, of luxury and mystery."50 The character of Lima was usually described in terms of careless excess, as in Ignacio Merino's Jarana (c. 18401850) (fig. 11). The painting shows a group of Creoles engaged in a jarana, singing to the music of the guitar and the cajón. The music produced with these typically Creole instruments is usually defined as rhythmic and festive, combining both Afro-Peruvian and Hispanic rhythms. Like the different ethnic groups represented in Merino's painting, the construction of criollismo depended on the inclusion of plebeian sectors. The Black water-carriers, the Mulatto laundresses, and Mestizo street-sellers formed an integral part of the image of Creole Lima (figs. 12-13). The hierarchical nature of Peruvian ethnic stratification was also reproduced in criollismo. The "colored castes" were systematically associated with specific menial trades and services, which emphasized their subservient place in the social hierarchy. Yet Lima received its most powerful symbolic representation through the image of the tapadas, aristocratic women dressed in the saya y manto, the traditional dress which gave them their name. The dress of the 49On
the theme of nostalgia in criollista discourse see Julio Ortega Cultura y modernización en la Lima del 900 (Lima: CEDEP, 1986). The striking similarities between this first criollismo and criollista discourse of the 20th century as described by Ortega point to the tremendous continuity and impact of this form of Creole identity. 50[esta ciudad que todavía es una ciudad extraña, no semejante a ninguna otra. Una ciudad de las fiestas, de los placeres, del lujo y del misterio.] Borget, p. 31.
97
tapada apparently originated in Andalucía in the late 15th century, after Moslem women were prohibited from covering their faces and forced to exchange the traditional veil for the Castilian shawl. Moslem women, however, now used the shawl to cover their faces, leaving only one eye uncovered. The fashion apparently spread to Castilian women and later to the colonies, where it became especially popular in Peru. Allowing them to walk the city streets without being recognized, the dress gave women an unsuspected freedom which permitted them to evade the patriarchal structures of colonial society, enabling them to go in public unchaperoned, a fact which gained them a reputation for licentiousness and disorder.
At least since the 16th century, civil and ecclesiastical
authorities tried unsuccessfully to ban the dress and the church council and the viceroy repeatedly issued ordinances and pragmaticas against the tapadas, threatening them with severe penalties. In the early 17th century, viceroy Marquis of Montesclaros wrote in defeat, that "since I have seen that each husband cannot control his own wife, I have no confidence whatsoever that I shall be able to control all of them together."51 Although the dress had been widely used by Creole women throughout Peru,52 by the middle of the 19th century, the tapada had come to be exclusively associated with Lima, becoming the city's most 51Luis
Martín, Daughters of the Conquistadors. Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1983): pp. 303, 300-309. 52For a description of tapadas in Arequipa in the 1830s see E. de Sartiges (E. S. de Lavendais), "Viaje a las repúblicas de América del Sur" [1851], in De Sartiges-Botmiliau. Dos viajeros franceses en el Perú republicano, ed. Raúl Porras Barrenechea, trans., Emilia Romero (Lima: Editorial Cultura Antártica, 1947): 15-16.
98
conspicuous symbol. The tapada came to signify the renowned beauty of the women of Lima. As Deborah Poole has shown the image of the tapada was "consciously formulated to set them off as upper-class women from the blacks and Indians around them."53
As an 18th-century commentator
wrote, the beauty of the women of Lima was in part owing to the "hideous Faces of the Mulatto's, Blacks and Indians, which serve as Foils to them."54 The description of a tapada by José Victorino Lastarria, Chilean visitor to Lima in 1850, is a classic example of the type of writing in which the image of the tapada came to be consistently framed: The voluptuous saya, which falls in symmetrical folds from the waist down to the instep of an elegant and richly clad foot; the colorful silk shawl which looms up in front, laying bare beautiful naked arms adorned with more or less precious bracelets; and finally, that narrow manto fitted to the back and head and fastened with the hand over the face so that only a black, splendid and radiant eye remains uncovered, giving these women a mysterious, lascivious, enchanting air, that fascinates and dazzles.55 Ironically, the notorious beauty of the tapada could not usually be seen.
Writers focus only on the contours of her body, her feet, the
53Poole, "A One-Eyed Gaze," p. 361. Poole's suggestive readings of the gendered construction of the tapada fails precisely in interpreting it as a negotiation between the tapada's self-representations and images created by European observers, while ignoring the ambiguous nature of the tapada's racial status and the implications of this ambivalence for the development of criollismo. 54Cited in Poole, "A One-Eyed Gaze," p. 333. 55[La voluptuosa saya, que cae en simétricos pliegues desde la cintura hasta el empeine de un pie pulido y ricamente calzado; el vistoso chal de seda que asoma por delante, dejando descubiertos unos lindos brazos desnudos y adornados con pulseras mas o menos preciosas; y por fin, ese estrecho manto ajustado a la espalda y a la cabeza y prendido con la mano sobre la cara, de modo que no deja descubierto sino un ojo negro espléndido y radiante, dan a estas mujeres un aire misterioso, lascivo, encantador, que fascina y deslumbra.] José Victorino Lastarria, "Lima en 1850," in Viajeros en el Perú Republicano, ed., Alberto Tauro, ( Lima : Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1967): 100-101.
99
uncovered arms and particularly on the single, disembodied eye. The dress of the tapada comes to substitute for her physical body. As one North American visitor, arguing against the reputation of the women of Lima, starkly put it: the departures from this standard [of beauty] are many, even among those of untainted Spanish lineage, and innumerable among others of impure blood and degraded caste. It is probable that if those who formerly testified to a universal Limeña loveliness, could see the women in later fashions of dress, they would conclude that the saya-y-manto, the mysterious garment then worn, did much to shape their opinions.56 Thus, the beauty of the women of Lima paradoxically depended on its invisibility.
And, precisely for this reason, the tapada became the
perfect medium through which to assert the racial superiority of a Peruvian upper class, anxious about their own racial status. The tapada could signify racial purity without representing it directly, and particularly without having to engage the ambiguities of specific phenotypic signs. But the tapada did not completely deflect Creole racial anxieties (see Ch. 1). Writers obsessively express their fears that the "hideous" face of a woman of color could lurk beneath the veil of the tapada. José Victorino Lastarria sarcastically described one of these feared encounters.
The
shawl of a tapada he had been admiring caught in one of his coat buttons, and her face was exposed; and to his horror, he was confronted with the
56H.
Willis Baxley, What I Saw on the West Coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands (New York: Appleton & Company, 1865): 111.
100
face of a "snub-nosed chola with a prominent mouth."57 The theme of deception can be traced back to the late-18th century. In his satirical poem Lima por dentro y fuera, Esteban de Terralla y Landa warned the visitor to Lima: Never go flirting With a tapada woman For she may be a Negress Or a horrible skeleton.58 The tapada served both to inscribe a social hierarchy and to define the image of an aristocratic and White Lima. The representation of the "colored castes" was thus a necessary part of the image of the city. "White" Lima incorporated Blacks and other colored castes as accessory figures, subsidiary characters which framed and defined the place of the tapada. The figure of the Indian, however, was excluded from criollismo. Although Indians often appear as one of the urban types of Lima, they are also usually defined as transient figures. The legends which accompany the images of Indians in watercolors and book illustrations usually characterize them as "Indian from Jauja," "Indian from the Sierra," or "Muleteer Indian," implying that they are migrant figures, temporarily 57[En
lugar de desenredarme digo: "perdone usted señorita," y clavándole mi vista con avidez doy un grito de espanto: había visto el rostro deforme de una chola ñata, con boca prominente y que tenía tuerto el ojo que llevaba tapado! Fue tal la prisa que me di por huir de aquel vestigio, que no me desenredé sino que arranqué el botón con un jirón de mi levita, dejándoselo todo como trofeo de mi derrota."] Lastarria, "Lima en 1850," p. 101. For other similar accounts see Poole, "A One-Eyed Gaze," p. 345. 58[Jamas á mujer tapada / Vayas a echarla requiebros,/ Que puede ser una negra/ O algun horrible esqueleto.] Simón Ayanque [Esteban de Terralla y Landa], Lima por dentro y fuera. Obra jocosa y divertida la da a luz Simón Ayanque para escarmiento de algunos y entretenimiento de todos [1797], new ed., illustrations by Ignacio Merino ( Paris: Librería Española de A. Mézin, [1854]): 188.
101
passing through the city; that, in fact, they are misplaced in Lima (fig. 13).59
This absence is strange, considering that Lima always had an
important Indian population,60 but while Blacks and other castes were a minority in Peruvian society and could thus be easily coopted as subservient figures of Creole Lima, criollismo could not as easily assimilate the figure of the Indian, which constituted an overwhelming majority in Peruvian society.
For criollistas the Indian is always elsewhere, and
usually in a distant mountainous landscape. The image of the Indian could only be actively constructed after a Creole identity had been systematically defined through costumbrismo. When, around mid-century the Creole began to actively define the image of the Indian, it came to be framed in a different space and through different representational techniques. In fact, as we shall see, the Indian was to be represented as the very opposite of Creole culture. The image of the Indian would also come to be sustained as the authentic contrast to an alienated and illegitimate coastal elite. As Julio Ortega notes, in criollista discourse Lima is consistently decentered, appearing only in a process of disappearance and destruction, figured as
59The type illustrated in fig. 13 of this dissertation does not carry the legend, but it corresponds with a watercolor created ca. 1854 and labeled "Indio puro de la montaña" in the collection of the Russian traveler Leopold Shrenk. See Tipos limeños vistos por Pancho Fierro. Acuarelas de una colección soviética (Leningrad: Editorial de Artes Aurora, 1979): n.p. 60The disappearance of the Indian from the image of the city has affected even modern historians like Alberto Flores Galindo. For a critique of this prejudice in modern historiography see Javier Flores, "Hechicería e idolatría en Lima colonial (siglo XVII)," in Poder y violencia en los Andes, pp. 53-56.
102
"an empty space, a fantasmatic space, a mutilated corpse."61 The issue of cultural originality and modernization were always crucial to the definition of a Creole identity.62 illustrate this tension.
In this case too, the tapada can serve to
If the tapadas had survived official colonial
prohibitions they were unable to withstand the onslaught of French fashions after independence. Mid 19th century writers wrote obsessively of the disappearance of the tapadas and exorted Limeño women to remain faithful to their old customs. Newspaper chroniclers cheered from their daily columns when upper-class women dressed in the saya y manto on special occasions such as religious processions.63 In 1850 the Chilean José Victorino Lastarria, claimed that Lima's high society was "no longer limeño," for men and women had "adopted the manners and dresses of Europe." Lastarria was resigned to the losses and could only dream of a hero of the stature of Bolívar or San Martín to combat the new "colonialism of fashion" to which Lima's elites humiliatingly submitted. If Limeños survived the battle, Lastarria claimed, "there would at least be one original country in this wretched America."64
61Ortega,
Cultura y modernización en la Lima del 900, p. 63. inextricable links between criollismo and modernization see Ibid. 63As one chronicler wrote in praise of the appearance of the tapadas at the Corpus Christi procession of 1854: "Lima, la ciudad que se había hecho medio francesa, medio inglesa y se había olvidado de si misma, recordó ayer su tipo primitivo, su caracter especial que le han hecho siempre una ciudad excepcional." In ""Cronica interior. Corpus cristi," El Heraldo de Lima, 16-VI-54. See also"Noticias varias de la capital," La Revista, 23-VI-1851; "Crónica Interior. Corpus Cristi. Antaño y ogaño," El Heraldo de Lima, 14-VI1854. 64[Ojalá fueran más frecuentes los chascos de esta especie, y pudieran ellos influir en la conservación de las antiguas costumbres, que así habría siquiera un pueblo original en esta América infeliz. La alta sociedad de Lima no es ya limeña: hombres y mujeres han 62On
103
Modernization implied a loss of originality, and the figure of the tapada is perhaps the most significant example of how Creole elites compensated for this loss. The need to create a visual image of the tapada grew precisely to the degree that the actual dress disappeared from Peruvian public life. Modernization implied a necessary fall from grace for modernizing elites, but this was counterbalanced by the exoticized Lima they constructed through criollismo.
Transformation and change
thus define the very core of criollismo. The privileged media for pictorial costumbrismo, the watercolor, the pencil drawing, and the lithograph, were in themselves signs of modernity in early 19th-century Peru. Antonio Cornejo Polar has described costumbrismo as a literature capable only of engaging the present, unable to construct a national project or of establishing a productive relationship with the colonial tradition.65 But although costumbrismo rejected historical narrative, it did not deny history. Cornejo Polar fails to realize that in describing the present, costumbrismo constructed the past and envisaged the transformation of Peruvian society. Costumbrismo was thus the first important example of a Peruvian "invention of traditions."66 The social customs chosen for portrayal were those which were perceived to be disappearing in the face of an inevitable adoptado los usos y trajes de la culta Europa. . . . Tan lamentables pérdidas no tienen reparación, a no ser que aparezca un Bolívar o un San Martín, que espada en mano, de el grito de alarma contra el coloniaje de la moda que con tanta humillación se somete la clase elevada de Lima.] Lastarria, "Lima en 1850," p. 103. 65Antonio Cornejo Polar, La formación de la tradición literaria en el Perú (Lima: CEP, 1989): 25-31. 66Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
104
modernization (even if this modernization was yet more imagined than real), thus creating the image of a "Lima de antaño" ("old Lima") always on the verge of disappearance.67 This aspect of costumbrismo is clearly evidenced in a letter written in 1885 by the historian Agustín de la Rosa Toro (one of the most important patrons of Pancho Fierro) to the writer Ricardo Palma, where he explained his use of Fierro's images as historical documentation of the colonial period.68 Costumbrista images were thus representations of the remnants of the colonial past surviving in the present. Criollismo allowed Peruvian elites to differentiate themselves from their past, to embrace European fashions and customs while simultaneously preserving an untouched Creole culture in images and texts. Criollismo then was only indirectly a Creole self-representation, or at least it was a form of self-representation through negation. In this sense it is important to take into account the self-image Creole elites projected through costumbrismo.
As Deborah Poole has
pointed out, the tapadas, typically accused of irresponsibly squandering their husbands' money, came to be associated with a "feminine
67As
Ortega writes: "Por otra parte, esta Lima que se fue, esta Lima que se va, no ha dejado de estarse yendo desde el comienzo mismo del discurso sobre Lima." See Cultura y modernización en la Lima del 900, p. 17. 68"Mi afición a las antigüedades históricas me determinó desde hace algunos años a formar una colección de cuadritos a la aguada, que a indicación mia iba produciendo el conocido Pancho Fierro, para con ellos avivar el recuerdo de los trajes, usos, costumbres e instituciones de la época colonial de nuestro país, a fin de que pudieran servir para ilustrar los estudios etnográficos y sobre todo para comenzar algún día entre nosotros la pintura histórica." Cited in José Flores Araoz, "Pancho Fierro, pintor mulato limeño," Cultura peruana V, nos. 20-21 (May, 1945): n.p.
105
extravagance," which "ultimately served to support European colonial mercantilism" and to symbolize the "availability of Peru as a post-colonial market."69 This image however, was not only used by travelers of the "capitalist vanguard" defined by Mary Louise Pratt, but by the Creoles themselves. Typical Creole males, as described by costumbrista writers, were similarly portrayed as profligate, frivolous, irresponsible and prone to adopt uncritically all European fashions and customs.
As Patricia
Oliart has pointed out, in contrast with the strict work ethic and responsibility associated with European immigrants, Creole males were portrayed as eluding the most basic patriarchal responsibilities.70 Abandoned to such irresponsible and morally reprehensible elites, the nation was left open to encroachment by Europeans. Yet it is crucial to understand that while this is a constant theme in Peruvian literature from Felipe Pardo y Aliaga to Ramón Rojas y Cañas,71 this is not a Creole selfrepresentation.
By depicting traditional elites in this manner,
modernizing Creoles distanced themselves from traditional Peruvian
69Poole,
"A One-Eyed Gaze," pp. 333-334. describes this image of Creole elites in some detail. However, she believes this image served to differentiate elites from the even more reprehensible indolence of the poor or to disguise their power. Moreover, she seems to assume that these stereotypes are an adequate representation of actual Creole elites. As she writes: "Parecería que para los limeños de entonces era más fácil imaginar lo que ellos debían recibir de sus subordinados, según el ideal victoriano, que asumir las obligaciones del modelo del hombre paternalista." See "Poniendo a cada quien en su lugar . . . ," n.p. 71See especially the cuadro "El limeño criollo y el afrancesado," in Ramón Rojas y Cañas, Museo de Limeñadas. Colección de artículos de costumbres. Obra ilustrada, escrita en Lima por Ramón Rojas y Cañas (Lima: Imprenta de Justo Montoya, 1853): p. 55f. I thank Oswaldo Holguín for kindly allowing me to photocopy his copy of this extremely rare book. 70Oliart
106
society and defined, through a process of systematic negation, the difference which they represented. The feminization of Creole Lima evoked in the image of the tapada reveals the sense of inadequacy associated with Creole culture and the need felt by modernizing elites to transform Peruvian society.
Laso's
generation was the first to seriously attempt to affect this transformation, a fact which explains their ambivalent attitude towards literary and visual costumbrismo. They did not openly reject the genre, which they often used to criticize the customs of Peruvian elites, but they preserved it only as a subsidiary element in their literary and pictorial works. For example, although Laso's writings are largely determined by the local costumbrista tradition (his friends would later compare him to Felipe Pardo y Aliaga, whose portrait he also painted),72 his paintings consistently attempt to supersede the genre. The manner in which Laso engaged the theme of the tapada is significant. While he did represent the tapada, he never gave the image the pride of place which he would give the image of the Indian. He only dealt with the theme of the tapada in minor genres, in two small drawings and a simple gouache (fig. 14). Significantly, in the lower corner of one of these undated drawings,73 he sketched the image of a preColumbian ceramic, as if its associations of authenticity could counterbalance the inadequacies inscribed in the image of the tapada. 72This
portrait, one of Laso's best and by far the most famous, is now in the collection of the Museo Pedro de Osma in Lima. 73Francisco Laso, Limeña in saya and manto, n.d., pencil on paper, 40 x 25 cm. Collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru.
107
Chapter 3: Francisco Laso and the Generation of 1848
LASO IN EUROPE Although the influence of costumbrismo on Laso's œuvre was decisive, it was largely a negative influence. While in his essays Laso approached earlier costumbrista writers, in his paintings he distanced himself from the genre, attempting rather to transcend costumbrista representations. Costumbrismo had not functioned as a high literary or pictorial mode and it had occupied a marginal artistic position; and Laso sought to create an œuvre that could define an aesthetic domain in Peru. Rejecting the minor media favored by costumbristas, the bulk of his visual production was undertaken in oil painting; he rarely created watercolors or prints and, except for preparatory sketches for his paintings, made very few drawings. Laso's initiation as a professional painter took place in Europe, during the extended trip he undertook from 1843 to 1849. Sometime in the early months of 1843, Laso arrived in Europe. His trip had been partly financed by funds inherited from his mother, but he also received regular assistance from his father in Lima.1 There is almost no information on Laso for the period between his arrival in Paris and his 1[A
principios de 1843 pisé por primera vez las playas de Europa en donde estuve en mi primer viaje hasta 1849. En esa época nada tuve que hacer el Estado conmigo. Yo hice el viaje de ida y de regreso, parte con dinero mío, es decir con dinero legado por mi madre, y parte con los auxilios de mi padre, remitidos por conducto del señor D. José Domingo Castañeda, quien puede decir si digo la verda o miento.] Francisco Laso, "Derechos adquiridos," El Comercio, 22-V-1867.
111
departure for Italy in May of 1847. His early biographers claim that he first entered the atelier of Paul Delaroche;2 yet Laso could only have studied with Delaroche for a brief period of time, since Delaroche abandoned his studio in 1843, and by July of that year he had already given up his activity as a teacher. In any case, Delaroche's influence on Laso is negligible, and Laso consciously opposed the kind of anecdotal narrative history painting practiced by Delaroche. On the two occasions in which Laso was required to name his teacher, while seeking permission to copy at the Louvre in 1853,3 and in the catalogue of the Universal Exhibition of 1855,4 he listed himself as a student of Charles Gleyre. This does not contradict, but rather supports his biographer's claims that he studied with Delaroche, for an important group of Delaroche students started a new atelier under Charles Gleyre in October of 1843.5 This argument is supported by one of the few documents relating to this period of Laso's life, the portrait of the painter which appears in a group portrait said to represent students of Delaroche's atelier (fig. 15). Laso's face is difficult to distinguish at first, because few portraits of the artist exist for this period of his life. It is thus useful to compare the 2Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra mistakenly claims that Laso entered Delaroche and then Gleyre's atelier after his trips to Spain. "Francisco Laso," p. 1126. 3See Brigit Staiger-Gayler, "Liste des élèves," in Gleyre ou les illusions perdues, p. 145. 4Exposition universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, gravure, lithographie et architecture, des artistes vivants étrangers et français, exposés au Palais des Beaux-Arts Avenue de Montaigne le 15 Mai 1855 (Paris: Vinchon, Imprimeur des Musées Impériaux, 1855): cat. no. 1654. 5This information is drawn from William Hauptman's thorough study, "Delaroche's and Gleyre's Teaching Ateliers and Their Group Portraits," Studies in the History of Art, 18 (1985): esp. pp. 79-80.
112
painted portrait to Laso's earliest self-portrait, a drawing signed in Panama, during his return to Peru in June of 1849 (fig. 16).
In this
drawing Laso is shown with long hair combed to the side in a fashion similar to that of the figure represented in the painting.
While the
drawing shows Laso in profile view, the closeness of the eyes to the nose (which gave the painter an almost cross-eyed look), and the shape of the eyebrows correspond to later photographs of Laso which show him in frontal view.
The painting is part of a series of two group portraits
representing students associated with the ateliers of Gleyre and Delaroche. One painting shows painters who studied with Gleyre in the 1850s and 1860s, the other, in which Laso's portrait appears, was apparently begun in Delaroche's atelier and continued in Gleyre's, a fact which corroborates the traditional account of Laso's training in Europe.6 William Hauptmann, who published these group portraits, claims that being included in the portraits was an honor reserved only for those students whose achievements in the atelier were considered to merit recognition.
Gleyre's atelier was one of the most important teaching
institutions of the period and, being a continuation of Gros and David's ateliers, the one with the most significant tradition.7 Unfortunately, there is scant information on Gleyre's teaching practices during the 1840s, and very few works by Laso which can be securely dated to these years. 6See
Hauptman, "Delaroche's and Gleyre's Teaching Ateliers and Their Group Portraits," esp. pp. 79-80. 7Charles Clément, Gleyre. Etude biographique et critique avec le catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre du maitre (Paris: Didier et Cie., 1878): 172.
113
In spite of his early salon success of 1843, with his large-scale painting Le Soir (also known as Les illusions perdues), and of his popularity as a teacher, Gleyre remained an independent artist working outside the institutional framework of the Academy. As a teacher, Gleyre promoted landscape studies and encouraged painters to work out of doors, but only as an aide to more ambitious original compositions. Gleyre privileged Biblical subjects and emphasized compositional skills, he encouraged students to paint from memory and advised them to prepare their works systematically through detailed studies.8 He did not impose his own views on his students but rather stressed originality. As a student of Gleyre later wrote: Il [M. Gleyre ] me donna horreur de la singerie en art et de l'imitation des autres peintres. M. Gleyre aimait les choses originales qu'on avait sérieusement voulues. Il ne plaisantait pas avec cette chose sainte qu'on appelle l'art.9 Gleyre's teaching practice has been most extensively analyzed by Albert Boime, yet his interest in tracing the origins of modernist art to the academic pedagogical system forces him to present Gleyre's teachings as more innovative than they were.10
If Gleyre remained outside the
Academy, he nevertheless created works which associated closely with the idealist vision favored by the Academy. Gleyre imbued his students with a strong sense of purpose, an earnestness and a respect for artistic 8Albert
Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Phaidon Publishers Inc., 1971): 59-65. 9Hamon, cited in Clément, Gleyre, pp. 172-173. 10See Boime,"The Instruction of Charles Gleyre and the Evolution of Painting in the Nineteenth Century," in Gleyre, ou Les illusions perdues, pp. 102- 125.
114
practice, which, in the case of Laso, proved to be enduring. Albert Anker, one of Gleyre's oldest pupils claimed that the subject of painting was indifferent to Gleyre and that instead of concerning himself with "l'arrangement pittoresque," Gleyre emphasized "le geste vrai du sentiment á exprimer."11 There is no doubt that Laso's studies in Gleyre's atelier largely defined his training as an artist. However, this kind of formal instruction was not the only part of his early education. During his trip to Europe, Laso apparently traveled to Spain (possibly visiting Valencia, Madrid, and Barcelona) in the company of a friend of his father, the amateur painter Miguel Espinosa de los Monteros.12 It is likely that Laso left for Spain in 1845, for that autumn Gleyre left Paris on a trip to Padua and Venice.13 Save for a fictionalized account of this trip, which he later published in La Revista de Lima, little is known about this trip and no painted copies after Spanish artists survive. The few dated studies from this period belong to his Italian journey, undertaken between 1847 and 1849. As a foreigner, Laso could not participate in the Prix de Rome competition, yet he undertook the trip to Italy on his own. In May of 1847, Laso obtained a passport from the Chilean Legation in Paris and began the 11Cited
in Clément, Gleyre, p. 176. from Laso's fictionalized account of his travels through Spain, there is barely any information on this trip. See "Tiempos pasados (continuación)," La Revista de Lima, IV, no. 5 (September 1, 1861): 185-204. Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra identifies the fictional character Patricio Jil as Espinosa de los Monteros, yet he confuses Laso's trip to Spain with the later trip to Italy, which Laso apparently undertook on his own. See "Francisco Laso," p. 1126. 13See the biography of Gleyre compiled by Rudolf Koella, "Biographie," in Gleyre ou les illusions perdues, p. 40. 12Apart
115
journey to Italy, stopping in Grenoble, where he stayed at the home of his friend, the painter Henri Blanc-Fontaine.14 After visiting Turin, Novara, Milan, and Verona, Laso arrived in Venice by the end of May, where he stayed until the end of September. He then traveled through Ferrara, Bologna, and Prato on his way to Florence. By July of 1848, Laso had already arrived in Rome where, save for a short trip to Naples, he apparently remained until February of 1849. In Rome, Laso befriended Jean Eugène Damery (1823-1853), a young painter who was then living at the Villa Medici. Damery had achieved wide renown as the youngest winner of the Prix de Rome, which he obtained in 1843 (the year Laso arrived in Europe) with his historical composition Oedipus exiled at Thebes.15 In an essay written after his friend's death, Laso remembers his early admiration for the artist, the beginning of their friendship, and their frequent meetings and conversations.
Damery
allowed Laso to use his studio at the Villa Medici and accompanied him on outings to the Roman countryside.16 In early February of 1849, Laso returned to Paris, where he stayed until April, after which he began the journey back to Lima.17
14Letter
from Francisco Laso to Henri Blanc-Fontaine, dated Grenoble, May 12, 1847. Copy of a manuscript in the Collection of Manuel Cisneros Sánchez. 15Philippe Grunchec, Les concours des Prix de Rome, 1797-1863, 2 vols., exh. cat. (Paris: Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts,1986): I, pp. 162-163 and vol. II, pp. 154158. 16Laso, "Un recuerdo." La Revista de Lima, III, no. 6 (March 15, 1861): 203-218. 17Information drawn from a passport issued by the Chilean Legation in France (Peru did not yet have an official embassy in France by that date) on May 5, 1847. The passport is presently the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru.
116
Toward the end of his stay in Europe, Laso is said to have sent his father a copy of one of Ary Scheffer's Marguerites.18 Scheffer's singlefigure compositions and his taste for evoking a sense of interiority through self-absorbed figures would exert a considerable influence on Laso. It is apparently from Scheffer's influence too that Laso derived his preference for religious painting, and particularly for the portrayal of a kind of Christian spirituality which ultimately derived from the influence of the German Nazarenes. However, in terms of artistic pretensions and the kind of social message conveyed, Scheffer's moralizing canvases, such as his famous Le Christ consolateur (1837), seem to have been the most decisive in shaping Laso's future works.19 Laso's association with Gleyre and his admiration for Scheffer point to his preference for a kind of painting which Léon Rosenthal has termed "peinture abstraite." As part of the reaction which emerged in the late 1830s to what many considered to be the excesses of romantic painters, peinture abstraite appealed to reason rather than sentiment, favored elevated themes deriving from the Bible and antiquity and promoted a revived Christian spirituality strongly influenced by the German Nazarenes. Without necessarily adhering to the kind of painting supported by the Academy, this idealist tendency invoked a return to the "vrai beau," and
18Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1126. Scheffer painted a number of versions of this theme, and until Laso's painting is identified, it is impossible to determine which one he copied. 19On Scheffer see Léon Rosenthal, Du romantisme a réalisme. La peinture en France de 1830 à 1848, introduction by Michael Marrinan (Paris: Macula, 1987): 195-196.
117
endowed painting with a renewed moral signification.20
This is
important to emphasize since this kind of painting tends to get confused with the painting of the juste-milieu,21 a tendency which Laso always rejected in his works.
Laso avoided vast machines, the large, multi-
figured compositions popularized by juste-milieu painters such as Horace Vernet, Léon Cogniet, and Thomas Couture. He eluded literary subjects, and especially the anecdotal tendencies of the genre historique.
His
paintings are neither accessible nor easy, and they lack the "instant intelligibility" which Rosenthal rightly associates with the painting of the juste-milieu.22 Save for the standard academic studies and the painted copies which Laso created during his stay in Europe, no other works can be dated to this period.
If his European training had been decisive in
determining his artistic career, his stay in Lima from 1849 to 1852 put Laso in contact with an important new generation of Peruvian intellectuals, thus paving the way for his involvement in Peruvian politics and his attempts to create a national painting.
20Ibid.,
169-177. Scheffer See Albert Boime, Thomas Couture and the Eclectic Vision (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980): esp. pp. 40-51. 22Rosenthal, Du romantisme a réalisme, pp. 205-209. 21For
118
FRANCISCO LASO AND THE GENERATION OF 1848 When Laso arrived in Lima from Europe in July of 1849,23 he found a totally changed environment.
General Castilla's government had
achieved the first extended period of relative peace for the country, and the economic effects of guano revenues began to be felt in Peruvian society. Although Laso would remain in Peru for only three years before returning to Europe, his stay in Lima was decisive in defining his role within Peruvian society and his understanding of the social function of painting. Barely a month had passed since Laso's arrival in Lima when his father presented a petition to the Peruvian Congress requesting the payment of 4,000 pesos from the 16,000 which the Peruvian state owed him, in order that his son establish an academy of painting. His son, he wrote, had recently returned from Europe: confident that his studies enable him to establish an Academy of Painting to introduce and propagate the taste for this Fine Art, which distinguishes the cultivated nations from those which are not. I am determined on my part to provide him with the means in order that he may establish it as a private enterprise, and without burdening the National Treasury. In sight of what other Governments of the Continent are doing for the progress of the new Republics, and of the measures that are being taken right here in benefit of the country, I could have requested the creation of an establishment rented on national funds, which could serve so many youths of both sexes who are 23Information drawn from Laso's passport in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. Notice of Laso's arrival in Lima is also reported in "Policía. Razón de pasaportes presentados y expedidos. Día 17," El Comercio, 17-VII-1849. This police report reads: "Francisco Laso, de Panamá, casa del señor Eléspuru."
119
endowed with the most fortunate disposition to acquire the practice of an Art which is the adornment of civilized nations; but this thought is very far from, someone who, like me, trusts the free use of talent more than any mean interest that make talents venal. Thus, it is less repugnant for me to make a sacrifice of the only material possession which I can leave my children, than to resort to another arbitration which would tax the Treasury.24 Laso also requested that the Congress assign a site for the proposed school and suggested the possibility of occupying any empty rooms which could exist either in the building of the National Library or in the university, which he considered to be "the most suitable [places] for teaching such a useful and agreeable art." The proposal did not meet with the support of Ignacio Merino, who apparently believed that the establishment of Laso's painting academy would compete with the institution he was directing.
When in September the director of the
National Institute wrote to him inquiring whether there was any available space in the building where the Drawing Academy functioned, Merino
24[Ha regresado de Europa en el mes próximo pasado, i seguro de que sus estudios lo hacen capaz de establecer una Academia de Pintura que introduzca i propague en el Perú el gusto por este bello Arte, que distingue a las naciones cultas de lo que no lo son, estoi empeñado por mi parte en facilitarle los medios para que la establezca como una empresa particular, i sin gravamen del Erario Nacional./ A vista de lo que otros Gobiernos del Continente están haciendo para el adelanto de las nuevas Repúblicas, i de las providencias que aquí mismo se expiden a beneficio del país, yo habría podido solicitar la creación de un establecimiento rentado de los fondos nacionales, que sirviera a tantos jóvenes de ambos sexos que están dotados de la más feliz disposición para adquirir la práctica de un Arte que es el adorno de las naciones civilizadas; pero este pensamiento está mui lejos de quien como yo fia mas del uso libre del injenio que del interés mezquino, que hace venales los talentos. Por ellos es que me es menos repugnante hacer un sacrificio del único bien material que puedo dejar a mis hijos, que acuridr a otro arbitrio que gravaría al Erario.] See Emilio Gutiérrez de Quintanilla, "Palique sobre los artistas Merino y Laso," in Sobre bellas artes, conferencias críticas i estudios, 1886-1920 (Lima: By the author, 1920): 383-392.
120
responded that "he ignored whether there was space for another Drawing Academy in the establishment" (my italics).25 The proposal, however, received support from the press26 and in December of 1850 the government ordered the payment of the amount Benito Laso had requested, for the express purpose of establishing an academy of painting under the direction of his son.27
The proposed
painting academy was never instituted, perhaps because of Merino's opposition, or because by the time the congress released the funds Laso was already serving as interim director of the National Drawing Academy. On February 18, 1850, Ignacio Merino had requested a leave of absence from the Drawing Academy in order to undertake a trip to Europe.
Although he named his student Federico Torrico, as his
successor,28 year.29
Laso was appointed to the post on March 17 of the same
For the next two years, Laso worked as director of the Drawing
Academy while also teaching drawing at the School of Clemente Noel.30
25Merino's
response in Ibid., p. 389; Benito Laso's letter in Ibid., pp. 391-392. las artes," El Progreso, no. 16, November 17, 1849, pp. 7-8. 27"Razón de las resoluciones comunicadas por la última Lejislatura al Supremo Gobierno que no se han publicado. . ." AGN, O.L. 363-2. 28"Habiendo solicitado el Director de la Academia Nacional de Dibujo D. Ignacio Merino, licencia para pasar a Europa a asuntos particulares, el Gobierno en acuerdo de hoy ha tenido a bien cedérsela por el término de dos años sin sueldo alguno, nombrando interinamente para reemplazarlo al Profesor D. Francisco Lazo con la dotación señalada a dicho empleo." Letter from Juan M. del Mar to the Minister of State in charge of Public Finances, dated March 17, 1850. AGN, O.L. 356-42. 29Transcription from an original document in the AGN in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. 30"Instrucción Pública," El Comercio, 28-IV-1851. The advertisement for Noel's school in January of 1851 did not list drawing courses. See "Colegio de Noel," El Comercio, 23-I1851. 26"De
121
Benito Laso had attempted to give his son intellectual freedom by giving him the means to be economically independent. He had attempted to distance his son from direct dependence on the state. Yet Laso never did form the teaching academy which the state had funded, and throughout his life he continued to expect and demand that the Peruvian state become a serious patron of the arts--he would have to walk the fine line between state patronage and intellectual independence. His situation, however, was not very different from that which defined the careers of other Peruvian intellectuals during this period. In the succeeding years Laso came to form part of the growing intellectual circle which had been developing in Lima since the late 1840s. Most of these intellectuals were students or recent graduates from the newly renovated School of San Carlos. This institution, which had fallen into disarray during the early republican period, had been reformed during the 1840s by its conservative rector, the priest Bartolomé Herrera. Ricardo Palma, José Arnaldo Márquez, Luis Benjamín Cisneros, Numa Pompilio Llona, Clemente Althaus, Manuel Adolfo García, and Sebastián Barranca, who were later to form the political, literary, and scientific leadership of Peru, first met in the classrooms of the School of San Carlos in the late 1840s. Although most emerged from the middle sectors of Peruvian society, some like José Antonio de Lavalle, José Casimiro Ulloa, Luis Benjamín Cisneros, and Manuel Pardo came from some of the oldest
122
aristocratic families in Peru.
Many were independently wealthy, but
economic status was only secondary within this new intellectual community. Laso himself never made more than a modest income while others, like Ricardo Palma, emerged from the urban lower classes. Their common interests, however, superseded class differences. Though most came from respectable families, they distanced themselves from the frivolity and the excesses associated with Lima's high society.
Most
adopted a liberal stance in politics, but their views ranged from radical socialism to a more conservative liberalism, and though many were to group together politically, they did not espouse an homogeneous political cause, and many would find themselves fighting on opposite sides during the revolutionary cycle of the mid 1850s. As an educated elite, they forged an intellectual community through their common interests in literature and art.31 Taking as a point of departure their literary preferences, this group has been defined as the first Peruvian "romantic generation,"32 but the designation is problematic because none of them limited their activities to literature. I thus prefer to define them simply as "the generation of 1848," referring to the year in which they emerged into Peruvian public life. While in a European context the year 1848 evokes the political fervor of 31The
classic account, written by a member of this generation is Ricardo Palma, "La Bohemia de mi tiempo," in Tradiciones peruanas completas, pp. 1293-1321.The most documented account of this group of intellectuals is Holguín Callo, Tiempos de infancia y bohemia, pp. 139-196. 32Alejandro Losada, La literatura en la sociedad de América Latina. Perú y el Río de la Plata 1837-1880, Editionen der Iberoamericana, Reihe II, Monographien und Aufsätze, 9 (Frankfurt: Verlag Klaus Dieter Vervuert, 1983).
123
social revolutions, in Peru this date initiates the popularization of literature among young intellectuals.
That year the Spanish poet
Fernando Velarde published in Lima his Flores del desierto, a book which inaugurated literary romanticism in Peru; that same year a group of young students of the School of San Carlos, which included José Casimiro Ulloa, Luis Arnaldo Márquez, and Manuel Nicolás Corpancho, published short-lived literary review El Semanario de Lima. Beyond the particular literary tendencies that they then espoused, it was the practice of literature and the arts, in themselves, which defined the renovating stance of this group within Peruvian society. Laso was almost a decade older than most of the young intellectuals with whom he associated in the early 1850s. His studio on Gremios Street seems to have been a meeting place for the new group of poets and journalists, students, and politicians who came together to forge the first semblance of an intellectual community in Peru since independence. Unlike earlier political gatherings and literary salons, this group did not only associate in private, behind closed doors, but gathered together in public, in the space of the theater and on the pages of the daily newspapers. The members of the generation of 1848 were incorporated into active public life principally through journalism. The older liberal generation of the founders of independence met with the young students of the School of San Carlos in the pages of such liberal newspapers as El
124
Progreso, headed by Pedro Gálvez or El Correo de Lima, a newspaper edited by Benito Laso. The theater was not only a site of reunion, but also the most important forum for the presentation of literary works and critical debate. In 1850 Laso painted decorations for the new theater of Lima, the "Sala de Artes,"33 which had been designed and constructed by the French tenor Alejandro Teisseire in association with Carlos Zuderell. Testifying to the growing importance of the theater during this period, the new theater, which would change its name the following year to "Teatro de Variedades," opened on September 26, 1850.34 Laso is said to have painted an allegory of "mankind led by madness through space in a car drawn by a quadriga of white horses."35 None of his decorations for the theater survive, but the above description shows that Laso simply continued the old tradition of using allegorical figures for the decoration of theater drop curtains. A sense of fellowship was developed in the pages of the daily newspapers and in the books they published. Laso himself became the object of a number of public tributes. Numa Pompilio Llona wrote a 33The chronicler of El Comercio stated that the theater was decorated "en su parte noble de pintura, por el pincel del jóven peruano Laso recien llegado de Europa." See El del mes pasado, "Comunicados. Ojeada al comercio," El Comercio, 3-VIII-1850. 34Very little is known of the history of this theater. The information gathered here was obtained by following the daily announcements and commentaries published in newspapers like El Comercio during the second half of 1850. 35[y para un teatrito que en aquel tiempo se abrió al público . . . el telón de boca, que representaba a la humanidad conducida por la locura a través del espacio, en un carro arrastrado por una cuadriga de caballos blancos.] Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1127.
125
poem in honor of Laso in El Comercio in August of 1851,36 and Manuel Nicolás Corpancho later dedicated his poem "El Arco Iris" to his "distinguished friend, the artist D.
Francisco Laso."37 Their status as
intellectuals was validated through mutual praise and admiration proffered openly in the public arena. Typical of the kind of celebratory publicity is the text elicited by Laso's paintings for the "Sala de Artes": We have not seen his paintings; but competent persons have assured us that they could be displayed in the first Theater of Paris. We congratulate young Laso because he has not rolled down the world like a bundle, nor exposed himself, like others, to be confiscated upon his return by a custom house official. May God grant that all those who have gone to visit that world return like Mr. Laso, geniuses in liberal arts or sciences and not geniuses in nonsense. If young Laso were not son of who he is, aristocratic airs would surely have placed him in the courts of justice, the barracks or the convent, to live obscured and annihilated by lack of vocation. Today young Laso is an artistic eminence in America, and we congratulate him for his triumphs in the arts and wish him prosperity.38 Evidently, the hyperbolic praise is not directed at the works the author admits not to have seen. It is directed at the image of the artist that Laso represented. 36Numa
In distancing themselves from the traditional
P. Llona, "Comunicados. A mi amigo D. Francisco Laso," El Comercio, 17-IX-
1851. 37Manuel Nicolás Corpancho, "El Arco Iris. A mi amigo el distinguido artista D. Francisco Laso," in Ensayos poéticos, pp. 245-248. 38[No hemos visto sus pinturas; pero personas muy competentes nos han asegurado, que pueden lucir en el primer Teatro de París. Nosotros felicitamos al jóven Laso por que no ha rodado el mundo como fardo, ni expuéstose como otros, á ser decomisado á su regreso por un administrador de Aduana. Quiera Dios que todos los que han ido á conocer ese mundo vuelvan como el señor Laso, jenios en artes liberales ó ciencias y no jenios en tonteria. Si el jóven Laso no fuera hijo de quien es, los humos aristocraticos lo habrian colocado en el foro el cuartel o el convento para vivir anonadado y oscurecido por falta de vocacion. El jóven Laso es hoy una prominencia artística en América, y nosotros le felicitamos por sus triunfos en las artes y le deseamos prosperidad.] El del mes pasado, "Comunicados. Ojeada al Comercio," El Comercio, 3-VIII-1850.
126
professions, the intellectuals of the generation of 1848 also embraced a modernizing and even revolutionary stance. Literature, painting, political economy, the sciences, anything but traditional medicine, jurisprudence, or a military career, represented the difference which this new generation established between themselves and the obscurantism and scholasticism they attributed to the learned men of the colonial period. For a young man of good social standing to embrace a career in the arts professionally implied a rupture with traditional Peruvian society. In 1849, El Progreso, the organ of the expanding liberal party, had supported Benito Laso's petition to the Congress for the establishment of an academy of painting. "The state of civilization of a country," the anonymous writer stated, "can be judged by its artistic works, and a country whose productions in this genre are not of a more or less perfect degree, cannot be called civilized."39 Evoking the grandeur of Egypt, classical antiquity and the Renaissance, the writer attributed the backwardness of the arts in Peru to long-standing colonial prejudices: Painting, sculpture and architecture have been considered here as dishonorable occupation, the painter has been seen as if he were a mason,--no decent youth would have dared to dedicate himself openly to the arts without a fear of descending in the rank he occupied in society. But these prejudices could not exist forever and someone had to break with that dike which stood in the face of our progress.40 39[El
estado de civilización de un pueblo se puede juzgar por sus obras artísticas: y no se llama civilizado, al país cuyas produccions de aquel jenero no sean de un grado más o menos perfecto.] p. 7. 40[Aquí se ha considerado la pintura, escultura, o arquitectura, como oficios deshonrosos; se ha visto a un pintor cual si fuera un albañil,-y ningun joven decente, se hubiera atrevido a dedicarse francamente a las artes sin temor de descender del rango
127
The writer of El Progreso invoked Horace Vernet's relationship to the czar of Russia and the image of Charles V stooping down to pick up the brushes of Titian, in order to show the elevated nature of the art of painting. In Peru the battle over the nobility of painting was being fought in the mid-19th century, at a time when, in Europe, the academic establishment and the status of painting were being questioned and even seriously undermined. The anonymous writer of El Progreso then went on to name Merino as a precursor of the new sensibility, citing Laso and the young architect San Martín as examples of the new type of artist, who had finally understood that "it is better to be a good artist than a mediocre lawyer, doctor or ecclesiastic."41 The patriotism of Laso and San Martín, the writer argued, had convinced them of the need of spreading the knowledge they had acquired in Europe, "and to propagate art with all the faith with which the first apostles propagated the gospels."42 The figure of the artist as the apostle of a new faith reveals the earnestness and seriousness of purpose with which the generation of 1848 confronted their role in society. If the young generation was imbued with such a strong sense of responsibility it was because they were aware of the privileged place they occupied in Peruvian society.
They perceived
que ocupaba en la sociedad.-Pero es estado de preocupación no podía exisiter toda la vida, y alguno debía romper ese dique que se oponía a nuestro progreso.] "De las artes," El Progreso, no. 16, 17-XI-1849, pp. 7-8. 41[orgullosos de ser artistas, por que saben que mas vale ser un buen artista, que un mediocre abogado, médico o eclesiástico . . .] Ibid. 42[y propagar el arte con toda la fé con que propagaron el evangelio de los primeros apostoles.] Ibid.
128
themselves as the founders of national literature and the arts, which they considered an important aspect of the process of nation-building. Fetishizing the arts as an ideal in themselves, the generation of 1848 forged a new notion of the aesthetic as an autonomous field in Peru. Though they decried the political chaos of the early republic, the pervasive presence of the military in national politics, and retrograde customs of Peruvian society, the group did not always present a radical front. There is some truth to Palma's retrospective appraisal of the political activities of the generation of 1848: Youth then did not have the petulance to believe themselves in a position to impose a plan of administrative conduct on the government, nor did it imagine that the class rooms of the School [of San Carlos] could be turned into centers or revolutionary clubs.43 In the most suggestive study of the generation of 1848, Alejandro Losada defines three stages in the literary production of the period. He traces the group's early espousal of a form of enlightened populism, their subsequent adherence to an abstract revolutionary stance, and their later retreat into an alienated literature defined by an aristocratic interiority, a retreat which Losada attributes to a widespread disillusionment after the failure of the liberal revolution of 1855.44
The elements Losada
43[La juventud de entonces no tenía la petulancia de creerse en aptitud de imponer a los gobiernos un plan de conducta administrativa, ni se imaginaba que los claustros del Colegio podían convertirse en centros o clubs revolucionarios.] Palma, "La bohemia de mi tiempo," in Tradiciones peruanas completas, p. 1299. 44Losada, La literatura en la sociedad de América Latina. Perú y el Río de la Plata 1837-1880. While Losada is one of the few writers to attempt a totalizing analysis of the literary production of this group, he sacrifices erudition in favor of broad categorizations. Losada's text is limited by his search for romantic traits in the literature of the period and
129
distinguishes as occurring in chronological sequence in fact exist simultaneously. Some of the members of the generation of 1848, such as José Casimiro Ulloa, Manuel Alvarado, and Luis Benjamín Cisneros did attempt to participate in revolutionary reforms during the early 1850s. The radicalization of many of these intellectuals received a new impulse with the arrival in Lima of a number of exiled American radicals. By midcentury, Peru had become a haven for political exiles from all over Latin America, Julio and Sergio Arboleda, Manuel María Mallarino and Vicente Cárdenas, from New Granada, and Juan María Gutiérrez from Argentina, all spent long periods in Peru.45 But perhaps the most important group of exiles to arrive in Lima were the Chileans.
José Victorino Lastarria,
Federico Errázuriz, and the brothers Javier, Antonio, and Santiago Arcos arrived in Lima in December of 1850,46 soon to be followed by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna and the brothers Francisco and Manuel Bilbao. The brothers Arcos and Federico Errázuriz stayed in Lima for a short while, but Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna and the brothers Bilbao would stay in Peru and actively engage in Peruvian political and intellectual life over the following decade. The Chileans had produced one of the most radical if his reliance on a still inadequate secondary literature. He fails to discuss an important number of writers including Ricardo Palma, Juana Manuela Gorriti, Julián Manuel del Portillo (whose works he does not seem to know), Ramón Rojas y Cañas (who he evidently did not read), Manuel Atanasio Fuentes, Juan Vicente Camacho, and José Antonio de Lavalle. The works of these writers, often working in hybrid genres, tends to contradict his periodization. 45Jorge Guillermo Leguía, "Las ideas de 1848 en el Perú," in Estudios históricos, pp. 117-119. 46"Policía. Pasaportes presentados," El Comercio, 6-XII-1850.
130
short lived political movements of Latin America. Guided by the tenets of utopian socialism, they had formed the "Sociedad de la Igualdad," where they expounded the principles of sovereignity of the people, the priority of reason, and universal fraternity. These Chilean radicals had managed to engage the support of thousands of intellectuals, artisans, and workers; they organized into groups, prepared popular conferences, taught courses for artisans, and contested the government of Manuel Montt. But this short-lived revolutionary experiment was finally crushed after a fierce political repression sparked by the heretical pronouncements of Francisco Bilbao.47 Although the Chileans attempted to pursue a similar revolutionary program in Peru and were partly successful in helping to formulate the revolutionary reforms undertaken by Ramón Castilla after 1855, the Peruvian situation did not favor the kind of grass roots political movement they had developed in Chile. While the Chilean "Sociedad de la Igualdad" had actively constructed ties with workers and craft guilds, such an association was problematic in mid-19th-century Peru, where an overwhelming and aggressive tide of free-trade liberal ideology had characterized Peruvian craft guilds as obstacles to progress and as the last, impoverished, remnants of the colonial legacy.48 47Julio
César Jobet, Santiago Arcos Arlegui y la Sociedad de la Igualdad. Un socialista utopista chileno (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta "Cultura", 1942). The fact that Peruvian historiography has largely ignored the close links between Chilean and Peruvian intellectuals during this period is not surpising given the understandable animosity to Chile in the aftermath of the War of the Pacific. 48Paul Gootenberg, Imagining Development. Economic Ideas in Peru's "Fictitious Prosperity" of Guano, 1840-1880 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of
131
Laso apparently developed close ties with these Chilean radicals. He is known to have painted portraits of the brothers Arcos and of Federico Errázuriz.49 José Victorino Lastarria wrote that Laso, "having cultivated his talent in Europe," was an artist in the full sense of the word: his works reveal his knowledge, and his album shows a true genius who has inspiration, who conceives with strength and spontaneity and executes with courage and originality his creations.50 There is no evidence about Laso's political stance during this period, yet it is safe to say that he followed the more reformist position that characterized Peruvian liberalism in general. Losada has censured the generation of 1848 for producing a romantic literature out of touch with social realities and reduced to the reproduction of an aristocratic interiority. Implicit in Losada's analysis is his belief that the generation of 1848 should have produced a revolutionary realist literature, a fact which explains his constant references to the failure of their writings. Losada does not perceive that the sanctity of the aesthetic domain was in itself a modernizing and revolutionary stance for young intellectuals in the context of mid-century Peru. Literature and painting could carry a social message, but it was not indispensable, for literature itself was a modernizing activity, whether or not it engaged actual social issues. Part California Press, 1993). 49Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1127. I have been unable to trace the present location of these two works. 50[Este joven que ha cultivado su talento en Europa, es un artista en toda la extensión de la palabra: sus obras revelan sus conocimientos, y su álbum muestra al verdadero genio que tiene inspiración, que concibe con fuerza y naturalidad y que ejecuta con valentía y originalidad sus concepciones.] Lastarria, "Lima en 1850," pp. 90-91.
132
of the problem with Losada's interpretation of the period is that his analysis is limited only to literary works which can be classified as romantic.51 Yet few members of the generation of 1848 remained tied to only one intellectual activity; they could write a romantic poem or a stringent satirical tract in the daily press, present an elevated patriotic representation the next, and attend a class on economics or medicine the next. Moreover, the position which these intellectuals came to occupy in Peruvian society did not allow for any kind of radical opposition. As Losada himself points out, as soon as members of the generation of 1848 entered the public arena, they were quickly coopted by the state.52 Many of the intellectuals of Laso's generation were incorporated into the bureaucracy at an early stage in their careers. Probably toward the end of his stay in Lima, Laso painted a portrait of Miguel del Carpio y Melgar (1795-1869), amateur poet and politician who served as a patron of the young writers.53 Minister of state under Ramón Castilla and later vicepresident of the council of state during the government of President Echenique, Carpio used his influence to obtain government posts for many of the young writers. It was through such influences that Ricardo 51Losada,
La literatura en la sociedad de América Latina, p. 28. p. 206. 53The painting was seen in Laso's studio by an anonymous writer of El Comercio. See Anch'io son pittore! "El taller del pintor," El Comercio, 27-II-1852. It was exhibited in 1939, see Flores Araoz, Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, cat. no. 16. The painting was in the National Library in Lima but I have been unable to find it there. It is possible that it was destroyed by the fire of 1943. On Carpio's role in the Peruvian "bohemia" see Holguín, Tiempos de infancia y bohemia, esp. p.186f. 52Ibid.,
133
Palma, Corpancho, and Márquez became officers in the "Cuerpo Político de la Armada," a bureaucratic entity which incorporated civilians into administrative posts in the army.54 Laso himself received government subsidies through personal connections. In October 1850 Laso sent a letter to Bartolomé Herrera, then minister of instruction, justice, public welfare and ecclesiastical affairs, under Echenique,55 requesting a leave of absence from his post at the National Drawing Academy.
In the letter, Laso
mentioned that Herrera had promised to send him to Europe on a government pension.56 Later in life, Laso admitted that his father had obtained the pension for him through his friendship with President Echenique.57
In March of 1852, Laso was given a two-year leave of
absence from the National Drawing Academy along with a government pension to study in Europe.58 The Peruvian state was willing to incorporate and sustain these young intellectuals in a conscious attempt to nurture a new ruling elite. The government was successful, since during the 1860s many of the members of the generation of 1848 would come to occupy important 54Holguín 55Jorge
Callo, Tiempos de infancia y bohemia, p. 453ff., 458, no. 15. Guillermo Leguía in the prologue to Bartolomé Herrera, Escritos y discursos,
p. xxxvii. 56Transcription of an original document in the AGN, in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. 57Laso also admitted that President Echenique offered to name Laso Peruvian Consul in Rome, a post which he refused. See "Derechos adquiridos," El Comercio, 22-V-1867, and also in El Nacional, 22-V-1867. 58Se concede a Francisco Laso, Director de la Academia Nacional de Dibujo dos años de licencia para pasar a Europa con el sueldo de cien pesos mensuales; debiendo darse a dicho Laso por la Tesorería departamental un sueldo adelantado, y abonarselos que falten por la casa Gibbs de Londres." Decree of March 8, 1852 in AGN, O.L. 371-55.
134
government posts. The 1860s saw the definitive absorption of this group into the institutional structures of the Peruvian state. Two of Laso's close friends, Francisco García Calderón and Manuel Pardo would later hold the Peruvian presidency, while others, like José Casimiro Ulloa, Corpancho, and Laso himself, would come to occupy state ministries and diplomatic and congressional positions. The most famous description of the literary activities of the generation of 1848, written by Ricardo Palma, one of its most prominent members, defined the group as the first "Peruvian bohemia," a characterization which may be evocative but which is not very precise. T. J. Clark defines the radicalized French bohemia of the 1840s and 1850s as a group which rejected the ideals of the bourgeois capitalist order. These bohemians were "bourgeois playing at being a bourgeois," mocking their self-assured ideals and declarations of progress. For Clark, the "bohemian style" can only function within a capitalist order which mythifies itself and believes in its future.59 In mid 19th-century Peru there was, properly speaking, no bourgeoisie. If the generation of 1848 adopted the trappings of European bourgeois culture, they did not occupy a similar place in society.
And, unlike the French bohemians, they were not marginal
characters in Peruvian social life, but prominent public figures, part of a powerful and privileged educated elite. They attempted to forge an ideal of the model republican citizen, which they claimed to represent. 59T.
J. Clark, Image of the People. Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973): 34.
135
Their attitudes towards literature were colored by their position in Peruvian society.
Their role was to create a model of literature and
painting which could define the basis of the artistic sphere in Peru. Thus, they could not question an order that they were trying to construct. Laso himself later gave his own definition of the French bohemia. Evoking the memory of his friend Damery, which he turned into a model of the true artist, Laso opposed a serious and morally superior Damery to a frivolous and even ridiculous "literary and artistic monde" of Paris. Laso ridicules the pretensions of the poets, the artificiality of the literary pose, the excesses of realist writers, the childish pranks of the painters, and the superficiality of the musicians.
Above all, he questioned the moral
character of the artists of the French bohemia: It seems incredible! those people who pretend to nourish themselves with the soul, and who seek the ideal, are often satisfied living far from the ideal and from the soul.60 Neither the frivolous character of the French bohemia, nor its real or pretended gestures of marginalization, could serve as models for the members of the generation of 1848. Perceived as a guiding intellectual force, the Peruvian artist was entrusted with a moral responsibility, not only toward society but toward universal ideals and a sanctified aesthetic domain. Their works were intended to convey exemplary social messages, but this was not the only role of art. They were creating exemplary models
60[Parece increible! esa jente que pretende alimentarse del espíritu y que busca el ideal, muchas veces se complace viviendo léjos del ideal y del espíritu.] "Un recuerdo," p. 205.
136
for Peruvian society, and the very practice of literature or painting was in itself a sufficiently elevated activity. Laso's stay in Peru from 1849 to 1852 not only had defined his lifelong friendships but also his role within Peruvian society. Laso would participate throughout his life in the activities of the generation of 1848, joining them in political battles and journalistic activities.
He would
attempt to do for painting what the writers of his generation did for literature. Yet Laso was the only professional painter active in this group. His friend Federico Torrico was also a painter, yet he lacked Laso's practical training and gave priority to his political and economic activities. José Anselmo Yánez participated in some of the activities of the group, yet he was a much older artist and his practice was limited to previous pictorial traditions. Ignacio Merino and the young Luis Montero both had a European training, but they disassociated themselves from Peruvian society and spent most of their lives abroad. During this period Laso worked primarily on private commissions. He painted a number of portraits of important members of Peruvian society and a large-scale Burial of Christ for the chapel of the hacienda of his friend Joaquín Ramos Font. Although his pictorial style implied a rupture with previous traditions of painting, Laso necessarily produced works only within well-established pictorial genres: the portrait, theatrical decorations, and religious painting. Laso worked primarily for private patrons and produced no significant original compositions in other
137
genres. Yet during his stay in Lima Laso had been hailed as the founder of a national painting, which implied that he was required to create a different form of painting. His second trip to Europe enabled Laso to develop as an artist, and it was then that he began most of his important original compositions, including his most famous painting, the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras.
138
SECTION III: THE IMAGE OF THE NATION Chapter 4: The Image of the Nation: Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras of Peru and Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro
Creole nationalism had produced only an ambiguous and conflicted image of the nation's past, early republican leaders had defined the nation through the abstract principles of a universalizing political theory, and costumbrista writers had offered the first self-conscious description of Peruvian society. In each case, the image of the Indian had surfaced to disrupt and contest the various representations of the nation which Creole elites had put forward, and in each case the Indian was no more than an accessory figure to Creole constructions. The Inhabitant of the Cordilleras (1855) is Laso's first major composition and the first important example of a modern representation of the Indian in Peruvian painting.
This work incorporates many aspects of previous Creole
nationalist ideologies but simultaneously inverts or rejects many of their basic presuppositions. Painted expressly for the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855, the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras of Peru (fig. 17) was exhibited along with another painting by Laso, titled Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro, one of the most famous conquerors of Peru, brother of Francisco Pizarro (fig. 18).1 1Original titles in French, Portrait de Gonzalo Pizarro, un des plus célèbres conquérants du Pérou, frère de Francisco Pizarro, and Habitant des Cordillières du Pérou, see Exposition universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages. . ., cat. nos. 1653 and
140
Together, these works attempted to offer a synthetic representation of the Peruvian nation. Years later Laso's friend, the painter and critic Federico Torrico, described the circumstances under which the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras was created: Peru did not present anything to this great congregation of the intelligence and industry of all nations; and Lazo, only ten days before the opening of the exhibition, and at the request of his teacher (Gleyre), conceived and executed this painting. At the time this work was painted, during Laso's second trip to Europe from 1852 to 1856, the painter was living in Paris on a pension from the Peruvian government. Torrico described how Laso received a number of offers for his Inhabitant, but that he refused to sell it because, "he was living on a pension from the national government and he knew that all the works he created under the cover of that protection belonged to the republic."2 Thus Laso's painting was both a representation of the nation abroad and a painting for the Peruvian nation. This chapter offers a reading of this painting in the context of Peruvian representations of the nation, the next, a reading of the painting as an attempt to negotiate national representation in an international context.
1654 respectively. 2[El Perú no presentaba nada en ese gran concurso de la inteligencia y de la industria de todas las naciones; y Lazo solo 10 dias ántes de la apertura de la Exposicion y á instancias de s maestro, concibió y ejecutó esa pintura. . . . Por ese cuadro se hicieron cuantiosos ofrecimientos a Lazo, que no podia enagenarlo, porque desde el año de 853 recibia un sueldo del gobierno nacional y sabia que todas las obras que ejecutaba á la sombra de esa proteccion pertenecian á la república.] Federico Torrico, "El arte y los pintores peruanos en la primera exposición nacional," El Nacional, 2-VIII-1869, p. 2.
141
THE INHABITANT OF THE CORDILLERAS The Inhabitant of the Cordilleras shows a single figure dressed in a flowing black poncho standing against an earth-colored background. The figure holds in his hands a pre-Columbian vessel and stares out directly at the viewer.
The symmetry of the composition serves to establish a
relationship between the main figure, a symbol of the contemporary Indian, and the ancient object he presents to the viewer. A common theme in the repertoire of Moche iconography, the bound prisoner represented in the ceramic brings ancient history into the present. The worn surface of the pot, broken at several points, presents a rupture with Peru's ancient past, which can now be represented only in the form of a ruin. But the ceramic vessel functions here as far more than a generic symbol of the pre-Columbian past. It is an image that has been carefully selected by the artist and placed at the very center of the composition. The ceramic vessel represents a prisoner, whose hands are tied behind his back and bound by a rope around his neck; it is the image of a victim, constrained, subjugated, and immobilized. Held out by the main figure, and presented in a confrontational manner to the viewer, the preColumbian pot becomes an allegory of the oppression of the Peruvian Indian.3 Laso may have based the ceramic vessel represented in the painting on an illustration from the lithographic album which accompanied
3Stastny,
Exposición conmemorativa Francisco Laso, cat. no. 9.
142
Mariano Eduardo de Rivero's famous book on Peruvian archaeology, Antigüedades peruanas of 1851 (fig. 19). The similarities between the painted and the lithographed pots are striking, save for one crucial detail. While in Rivero's book the rope around the neck of the figure in the ceramic ends in the form of a snake's head, which ensnares the figure's genitalia, in Laso's painting the end of the rope disappears behind the back of the figure, and the genitals are completely absent. The type of vessel portrayed in both images is one of the most common types produced in Moche iconography.
Although the bound pose and the
representation of genitalia are typical in these pots, the serpent motif is not always present. While there can be no doubt that Rivero's book was known and used by Laso, it is also likely that he had access to other sources, and being in Paris he could have visited the pre-Columbian collections exhibited in the recently founded Salle des Antiquités Américaines at the Louvre.4 Unlike the colored lithographs reproduced in Rivero's album, which created a glossy image of pre-Columbian objects, Laso's treatment of the pot translates the smooth yet mat ceramic surface, and evokes the texture of an actual pre-Columbian vessel. Laso's decision to avoid the representation of the figure's genitals no doubt derives from a typically bourgeois sense of decorum which pervaded his life and public
4On
the ambivalent aesthetic status of pre-Columbian antiquities during the mid19th century see, Elizabeth A. Williams, "Art and Artifact at the Trocadéro. Ars Americana and the Primitivist Revolution," in Objects and Others. Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 3 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985): 146-166.
143
image.5 On the other hand, by transforming the serpent into a rope, Laso reduces the range of possible meanings of the vessel, whose "emblematic" significance had eluded Rivero,6 in order to convey more directly the message of the Indian's oppression. Thus, the pre-Columbian vessel represented in Laso's painting evokes the long-standing Creole image of the victimized Indian. However, by avoiding the derogatory associations implicit in this specific type of Creole rhetoric, Laso's painting marks a distance from earlier Creole Indianism. One can compare Laso's representation of the Indian to the image reproduced in Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán's Atlas del Perú of 1865 (fig. 20). Paz Soldán's own description of this image translates the Creole image of the Indian as victim: One can distinguish in his face that combination of sadness and distrust which constitutes the depths of his character, as they have been during centuries victims of the rapacity and deception of those who do not belong to his race.7 In order to assert the image of the victimized Indian, Paz Soldán calls forth most of the negative stereotypes associated with the Indian 5In a much later text, apparently evoking the image of the pot reproduced in Rivero's book, Laso wrote: "Existen muchos vasos representando al mismo personaje, a quien envuelve una culebra, y el modo como está colocado el reptil, indica que fué intencional: mas no podemos traducir la idea por temor de pasar por ingenuos e inmorales." See "Algo sobre bellas artes," p. 78. Although offering a different interpretation, Buntinx also notices the connections between Rivero and Laso's images. He offers a suggestive reading of the painting through the psychoanalytic theme of castration. See "Del 'Habitante de las Cordilleras' al 'Indio Alfarero'," pp. 31-37. 6Mariano Eduardo de Rivero and Juan Diego de Tschudi [Johann Jacob von], Antigüedades peruanas (Viena: Imprenta Imperial de la Corte y del Estado, 1851): 320. 7[Se distingue en su cara esa mezcla de tristeza y desconfianza que constituye el fondo de su carácter, como que han sido durante largos años víctimas de la rapacidad y trapacería de cuantos no les pertenecen en raza.] Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, Atlas geográfico del Perú (Paris: Fermin Didot Hermanos, 1865): 65.
144
population. The Indian's hair, in disarray, and the crude quality of the clothes evoke the indolence and lack of self-esteem which was said to epitomize the Indians of the sierra. The large and prominently displayed glass of chicha, which the Indian holds in one hand, evokes secular images of the Indian's drunkenness, the glazed, unfixed gaze, and the slumped pose, the laziness, and the lack of free will associated with the Indian's character. In the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras, Laso evokes the Indian's oppression without, however, turning the Indian into a dejected figure. Upright, solemn, and confrontational, Laso's Indian has a dignified and proud bearing. The use of the pre-Columbian ceramic allows Laso to transfer onto the inert and broken object the marks of oppression: the scars on the surface of the ceramic pot evoke the destruction of a civilization, the bound pose of the figure denounces a brutal exploitation,-yet no violence is made to the image of the Indian, whose body is freed from bearing the scars of secular hardships. Yet the pre-Columbian ceramic is not the only medium through which Laso evokes the image of the victimized Indian. The main figure, dressed in black, also evokes both the lost pre-Columbian past and the contemporary suffering of the Indian population. The generalized use of black is a daring pictorial move, but the choice of color obeys to more than artistic concerns. It was a commonplace in the 19th century that in certain regions of Peru--which generally remained unspecified--the Indians
145
dressed in black as a sign of mourning for the dead Inca. There is, to my knowledge, no anthropological proof for this idea, but this notion was widely current during Laso's life. The origins of this theme seem to lie in Areche's sentence against Túpac Amaru, which was known through the version published in the documentary appendix to the widely read memoirs of General Miller. In a passage worthy of citation, Areche wrote about the rule prohibiting: the black dress they [the Indians] wear as a sign of mourning and which they carry in some provinces in memory of their deceased monarchs and of the day and the time of conquest, which they take to be unfortunate and we consider felicitous, for they then joined the body of the Catholic Church and the most kind and sweet domination of our kings.8 In the main body of his text, Miller repeated the idea. "Such is the veneration which the Indians have for the memory of their Incas," he wrote, "that they still dress in mourning for them."9
The idea of the
Indians who mourned for their dead kings becomes generalized during the 19th century,10 although it begins to be used less as an ethnographic 8[De
propio modo se prohiben y quitan las trompetas ó clarines que usan los indios en sus funciones á las que llaman Pututos, y son unos caracoles marinos de un sonido extraño y lúgubre con que anuncian el duelo y lamentable memoria que hacen de su antigüedad, y también el que usen ó traigan vestido negro en señal del luto que arrastran en algunas provincias como recuerdo de sus difuntos monarcas y del día ó tiempo de la conquista que ellos tienen por fatal y nosotros por feliz, pues se unieron al gremio d la iglesia católica y á la amabilísima y dulcísima dominación de nuestros reyes.] Cited in Miller, Memorias del General Guillermo Miller, vol. I, pp. 300-301. 9[Tal es la veneración en que los indios tienen la memoria de sus Incas que en muchas provincias llevan aún luto por ellos.] Ibid., vol. 2, p. 160. 10A number of foreign travelers mention this custom. Auguste Borget, who traveled through Peru during the first half of 1838, wrote that the inhabitants of Tacna "llevan todavía luto por los últimos Incas." See the travel notes published by David James in En las Pampas y en los Andes. Treinta y tres dibujos y textos sobre Argentina, Chile y Peru de Auguste Borget (Buenos Aires: Pardo-Emece, 1960): 31; and Ernest Grandidier, Voyage dans l'Amérique du Sud. Pérou et Bolivie (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1861): 72.
146
fact than as a metaphor to evoke the oppression and current state of dejection of the Indian, as when Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán described contemporary Indians "wearing the black vestments of pain."11
Pío
Benigno Mesa, a liberal politician from Cuzco, wrote: The dress of mourning which the Incas used was of a brown color, and that of the common people was doubtless black, for even now the dress of mourning which the Indians of pure race carry is that color (the llocolla, the montera, the uncú, the accsu, &a). The dress of mourning which some provinces of Puno and Cuzco carry constantly for the death of Huascar and Atahuallpa is so rigorous, that it is mortifying and deeply sorrowful to see them.12 The black dress of the main figure allows Laso to evoke both the pre-Columbian past and the present oppression of the Indian while simultaneously avoiding the negative stereotypes associated with the image of the victimized Indian. Laso constructs his image on the previous Creole Indianist tradition, yet he also transforms it in a radical way. His painting thus constitutes one of the earliest examples of a new kind of Creole Indianism, one which works not only through commiseration but now also through idealization.
11[vistiendo
el negro ropaje del dolor.] Mariano Felipe and Mateo Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, 2 vols. ( Paris: Fermin Didot, 1862): I, p. 30. 12[El luto que antes usaban los Incas era el color pardo; y sin duda seria negro el que llevaba el pueblo, pues que ahora mismo son de ese color los vestidos de duelo que llevan los indígenas de raza pura (la llocolla, la montera, el uncú, el accsu &a). Tan rigoroso es el luto que llevan constantemente, por la muerte de Huáscar y Atahuallpa, algunas provincias de Puno y Cuzco, que dá pena y honda tristeza el verlos.] Pío B. Mesa, Los anales de la ciudad del Cuzco o las cuatro épocas de su historia, narradas breve y sencillamente por Pío B. Mesa, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Tipografía de la Convención por Jacinto Carrasco, 1866-7): II, p. 205, no. a.
147
THE PORTRAIT OF GONZALO PIZARRO The dress of mourning calls forth memories of the end of the Incas and the destruction of their civilization. It is thus the scene of conquest which is evoked in Laso's painting, and the painter leaves no doubt about the source of the Indian's oppression. The Inhabitant of the Cordilleras was accompanied in the exhibition by an imaginary portrait bust of the conqueror Gonzalo Pizarro (fig. 18).
By opposing the image of the
Spanish conqueror to that of the Indian, Laso establishes the historical origins for the oppression which the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras condemns. At first it could seem surprising that Laso should have selected Gonzalo Pizarro and not his brother Francisco to evoke conquest history. The youngest brother of the family of conquistadors, Gonzalo Pizarro (1502?-1548) participated in the conquest from its earliest stages. He was governor of Quito, when in 1541 he led an expedition of 200 Spaniards and almost 4,000 Indians to the unexplored regions east of Quito. Upon his return in August 1542, Gonzalo Pizarro found news of the death of his half-brother Francisco and of the New Laws of the Spanish Crown restricting the privileges of the conquistadors and protecting the rights of the Indians. In order to protect their prerogatives, the Spaniards named Gonzalo governor of Peru and leader of anti-royal forces. He fought and killed viceroy Blasco Núñez de Vela in the Battle of Anaquito of 1546, and was finally defeated and captured by Pedro la Gasca in 1548. Although
148
Gonzalo never claimed outright rebellion against the Spanish King, he was condemned as a traitor and beheaded in April of 1548. Laso's choice of Gonzalo Pizarro to represent conquest history is not as strange in light of a certain tendency towards Gonzalismo in Peruvian literature of the period. One of the earliest historical novels of Peru, Manuel Ascencio Segura's Gonzalo Pizarro (1844), is also the first known republican literary account based on the life of this conqueror.13 In Segura's text, Gonzalo's rebellion appears only in the background as the setting for a story of romantic intrigue which the author turns into a parable of political opportunism (Peru had yet to emerge from one of the most unstable periods of caudillo factionalism). Ricardo Palma was also fascinated with the history of the rebellion. One of his first plays, La hermana del verdugo, presented in the theater of Lima in 1851, centered on the figure of Juan Enríquez, the executioner of Pizarro and his associate Francisco de Carbajal.14 And although Gonzalo Pizarro appears only in the background of the cycle of tradiciones he devoted to the conquest, Palma was captivated by Carbajal, who he called "El Demonio de los Andes."15 The cruel and despotic actions attributed to Carbajal offered the 13Long forgotten in studies of Peruvian literature, Segura's text was published in the feuilleton of El Comercio, 13-15, 17-18, 20-V-1844. Its literary value is not as important as its historical significance as an evident local precedent to the writings of Ricardo Palma. 14See Holguín Callo, Tiempos de infancia y bohemia, p. 293f. 15Palma wrote: "Crueldades aparte, es Francisco de Carbajal una de las figuras históricas que más en gracia me ha caído." See Tradiciones peruanas completas, p. 85. The titles of the tradiciones devoted to Carbajal are "El Demonio de los Andes" [1872], "Los tres motivos del oidor" [1879], "El que se ahogó en poca agua" [1877], "Si te dieren hogaza, no pidas torta" [1875], "Comida acabada, amistad terminada" [1879], "Es sueño de un santo varón" [1879], "Los postres del festín" [1879], "Las hechas y por hacer" [1883], "Maldición de mujer" [1883], "¡Ay, cuitada! y ¡Guay de lo que aquí andaba!" [1883], "Un
149
kind of anecdotal references which Palma enjoyed elaborating in his writings. Yet in Laso's paintings there is no sign of the whimsical and flippant tone associated with the writings of Segura and Palma.
The
earnestness of his works is directly related to the seriousness of the message they impart. The pre-Columbian ceramic is presented to the viewer as a testimony of a history of oppression and destruction; its broken edges directly evoke the ruin of the Inca Empire. Placed next to this image, that of a conqueror, any conqueror, would be explicit enough as to the historical import of that destruction. Yet the figure of Gonzalo Pizarro is particularly meaningful in this regard. One of the earliest and most important texts on Peruvian archaeology, Hipólito Unanue's "Idea general sobre los monumentos del antiguo Peru" (1791), placed a large part of the blame for the destruction of pre-Columbian monuments on Gonzalo's greed, explicitly attacking his atrocities: Lawlessness and havoc are inevitable in large scale conquests; but those of the nefarious Carbajal and his friend Gonzalo Pizarro reached unheard-of excess. The latter tormented many unfortunate Indians so they would disclose the sepulcher of Inca Viracocha, which was said to be full of riches. He found it in the valley of Xaxahuana six leagues away from Cuzco. And not satisfied with having satiated his cupidity, despoiling him of his riches, he burned the body of that monarch and dispersed his respectable ashes.16 hombre inmortal" [1883 ], "El verdugo real del Cuzco," [1877], and "El robo de las calaveras" [1877]. See Ibid., pp. 76-98, 103-105, 109-111, 180-182. Most of these were published together in 1883 under the title El Demonio de los Andes. 16[Son inevitables los desórdenes y los estragos en las grandes conquistas; pero los del malvado Carbajal y su amigo Gonzalo Pizarro llegaron a un exceso inaudito. Este atormentó a muchos indios desgraciados, a fin de que le descubriesen el sepulcro del
150
Through his association with Carbajal, Gonzalo was inevitably associated with the cruelty and the excesses of conquest history. Yet the figure of Gonzalo Pizarro is particularly complex, for some 19th-century writers presented him as a predecessor of Peruvian independence. The National Museum kept a portrait of Carbajal next to the gallery of portraits of the viceroys, along with the plaque containing his death sentence which had been placed on the site of his house during the colonial period and which had been taken down during independence.17 Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán mentions that this portrait carried an inscription presenting him as an early martyr of national independence.18 For most historians of the period, however, Gonzalo Pizarro's rebellion against the Spanish Crown was not enough to include him among the precursors of independence. Thus, although Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna placed Gonzalo Pizarro's rebellion in the pantheon of distant predecessors of independence, he characterized it as part of the history of the conquest, as a manifestation of the "Castilian spirit." Vicuña Mackena found the Inca Viracocha, en que se decía haber muchas riquezas. Encontrólo en el valle de Xaxahuana, seis leguas distante del Cuzco. Y no contento con saciar su codicia, despojándolo de sus riquezas, quemó el cadáver de aquel monarca y dispersó sus respetables cenizas.] Unanue, "Idea general de los monumentos del antiguo Perú," [1791] in Hipólito Unanue, vol. 8, p. 333, no. 2. 17José Victorino Lastarria, "Lima en 1850," in Viajeros en el Perú republicano, ed., Alberto Tauro, Comentarios del Perú, 6 (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1967): 89-90. 18"Del Perú la suprema independencia / Carbajal ha tres siglos quería / Y por ella en el cadalso / Rindió el último aliento de su vida." Cited in Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, p. cxxi. The same verses are cited by Ricardo Palma in his tradición "El Demonio de los Andes," [1872] in Tradiciones peruanas completas, p. 78. Unless otherwise noted, all dates given here for Palma's works are taken from Merlin D. Compton's useful bibliographic compilation "Las Tradiciones Peruanas de Ricardo Palma: Bibliografía y lista cronológica tentativas," Fénix 28-29 (1983): 99-129.
151
true origins of independence in the cycle of late 18th-century rebellions, which, for him, were the first manifestations of a "purely Creole and American movement which produced emancipation."19 Ricardo Palma also cites Gonzalo Pizarro as a forerunner of independence, yet he too emphasized that his fight was not for freedom but for "profit and privilege."20 And, more explicitly, Palma continued: But it was written that Pizarro would not be chosen by God to create the Peruvian nationality. In crowning himself he would have created special interests within the country, and men would have allied their destinies to that of the monarch.21 Gonzalo Pizarro was a conqueror, not a Creole, and more than an heroic battle for separation from Spain, his rebellion was perceived as an act of personal ambition. In
contemporary
histories
of
the
conquest,
Gonzalo
was
represented as man corrupted by power and motivated only by personal interest. This was the view offered by the most influential and widely read history of the conquest, William Hickling Prescott's History of the 19[Pero
el movimiento puramente criollo y americano que produjo la emancipación y cuya primera aparición eminentemente criolla nos ha parecido trazar en Quito catorce años antes (1766) del levantamiento de Tupac Amaru.] Vicuña Mackenna, La independencia en el Perú [1864], pp. 55, 57 no. 1. 20[Gonzalo Pizarro y seis años después, Francisco Hernández Girón acaudillaron la rebeldía, cediendo a las instancias de la muchedumbre. Su causa, bien examinada, fué como la de los comuneros en Castilla. Si éstos lucharon por fueros y libertades, aquéllos combatieron por la conservación de logros y privilegios.] In the tradición "El robo de las calaveras," [1877] Tradiciones peruanas completas, p. 181, Palma relates that the injurious inscription said to have been placed on the site of Carbajal's home was taken down by the "Sons of the Republic" after independence. For Palma, however, this was not done to vindicate Carbajal as a forerunner of Independence, but simply as a gesture of respect towards the dead. See "El Demonio de los Andes," [1872] in Ibid., p. 82. 21[Pero estaba escrito que no era Pizarro el escogido por Dios para crear la nacionalidad peruana. Coronándose, habría creado intereses especiales en el país, y los hombres habrían hecho su destino solidario con el del monarca.] Ibid., p. 78.
152
Conquest of Peru, first published in 1847 and immediately translated into Spanish.22
Prescott's claims to scientific objectivity, his conscientious
notes, and the comparison and juxtaposition of a fabulous array of sources gave his account the credibility which allowed it to become the official history of the conquest for most of the 19th century.
Yet Prescott's
popularity among Peruvian intellectuals was also due to the fact that his interpretation of conquest history was closely in tune with the political and economic liberalism of the generation of 1848. Prescott was openly hostile to the conquerors, who he portrayed as greedy, uncouth soldiers who overthrew a grand civilization, and, as Guillermo Lohmann has observed, La Gasca ended up being the only true hero in his account.23 Prescott's interpretation of Peruvian conquest history was to be immediately influential in Peru and it served as a basis for the first school textbook on Peruvian history, written by the Chilean liberal Manuel Bilbao in 1855.24
22W. H. Prescott, Historia de la Conquista del Perú con una ojeada sobre la civilización de los incas, con un apéndice del traductor, 2nd rev. ed., trans., Joaquín García Icazbalceta (México: R. Rafael, 1850). Significantly, the frontispiece shows a lithograph of Pedro de la Gasca. 23Guillermo Lohmann Villena, "Notes on Prescott's Interpretation of the Conquest of Peru," Hispanic American Historical Review XXXIX, no. 1 (February, 1959): 46-80, remains the best account of Prescott's book. Lohmann cites a letter to Gayangos of 1844 in which Prescott claims that "Pizarro would need every chivalric illusion to be made into a respectable figure." Ibid., p. 80. 24Manuel Bilbao, Compendio de la historia política del Perú, escrito para el estudio de los jovenes cursantes de humanidades (Lima: Imprenta del Pueblo por J. M. Ureta, 1856). Bilbao's history, bought by the State for use in public schools, was approved and corrected by Sebastián Lorente, the Spanish pedagogue who was then inspector of public instruction.
153
The most important previous history of Gonzalo's rebellion had been written by Garcilaso de la Vega in the second part of his Royal Commentaries of the Incas. Published posthumously in 1617 under the title of General History of Peru, Garcilaso's sympathetic portrayal of Gonzalo Pizarro served to justify his rebellion, in which Garcilaso's father had taken part. Prescott, who openly accused Garcilaso of being partial to Gonzalo, drew a more negative portrait of the conqueror and wrote a significantly different version of the rebellion.25 The New Laws which sparked Gonzalo's rebellion had been directly inspired by the defender of the Indians, the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas.
Among other measures, the New Laws abolished the
encomienda, prohibited Indian enslavement, and ordered a humane treatment of the Indian population. If Gonzalo, fighting only to defend personal privilege, was the evil figure in Prescott's account, the Dominican--whose struggle to defend the rights of the Indians led to the promulgation of the New Laws--became its hero.26 Prescott explicitly compared Las Casas to contemporary liberal reformers and interpreted his defense of the American Indian as a defense of political liberty.27 All historians of the period were convinced that, in rising up against the New Laws of 1542, Gonzalo Pizarro had failed to defend the 25William Hickling Prescott, Historia de la conquista del Perú (Madrid: Gaspar y Roig, 1853): Book IV, ch. IX. 26Ibid., Book IV, ch. VII. 27"Pero Las Casas era un amigo decidido de la libertad: atrincherábase fuertemente en el terreno del derecho natural, y, como algunos reformistas de nuestros días, no se cuidaba de calcular las consecuencias de aplicar el principio en toda su estension." Prescott, Historia de la conquista del Perú, Book IV, chap. VII, p. 185.
154
right cause. Even Paz Soldán, who showed a certain ambivalence towards this conqueror, finally attributed Gasca's victory to the "good cause which he defended."28 Thus associated with the ideals of modern liberal humanism, the New Laws became a model for 19th-century Peruvian liberals and defenders of Indian rights who constantly invoked Las Casas as an example. In 1867, for example, he was made patron of the "Sociedad Amiga de los Indios" and Francisco de Paula González Vigil wrote a historical essay on the Dominican which he dedicated to the society.29 Laso's choice of Gonzalo Pizarro to represent conquest history is thus not as surprising as it may have seemed at first. If Bartolomé de las Casas represented the humanitarian ideal for 19th-century liberal Indianists, Gonzalo could only represent for them the image of the cruel and abusive representative of conquering and retrograde Spain.30
28Paz
Soldán, Geogrrafía del Perú, p. cxx. de Paula González Vigil, "Sección Indios. Bosquejo histórico sobre Bartolomé de las Casas," El Comercio, 8, 13-15, 18, 21, 26, 28-XI-1867. 30My views on these two paintings contradict the most recent interpretations by Gustavo Buntinx. This author sees the main figure as a representation of a Mestizo, turns Laso into a defender of a Mestizo utopia and interprets the juxtaposition of the two paintings as an allusion to the "[momento] ilusionado de la rebelión que se quiso mestiza." Buntinx, "Del 'Habitante de las Cordilleras' al 'Indio Alfarero'," p. 50. In order to sustain his hypothesis Buntinx goes as far as rewriting history. He describes Gonzalo Pizarro as ". . . un rebelde que habría pretendido fundar una monarquía independiente y mestiza en el Perú." (italics in the original) p. 16. This assertion is repeated in p. 49, note. 68. Of course, Gonzalo Pizarro did not propose, but rather emphatically rejected, Francisco de Carbajal's suggestion that he marry an Indian princess and crown himself king. See Garcilaso, Historia General del Perú, Book IV, chs. XL and XLI. 29Francisco
155
CRITICISM AND THE FUNCTION OF PAINTING Through the juxtaposition of the Indian and the conqueror, Laso had offered a critical assessment of Peruvian history, but also a pointed commentary on contemporary Peruvian society. For Laso, the purpose of painting was not to provide simple delectation, but to construct a forum for the discussion of serious themes of social and even moral character. This approach to painting reflects the political commitment and the seriousness of tone associated with the writings of the generation of 1848. Laso's second trip to Europe was a continuation of the social and intellectual circle in which he had participated during his stay in Lima. In Paris he came into contact with a new generation of Peruvians who were then studying in Europe: Narciso Alayza, José Casimiro Ulloa, Manuel Pardo, Corpancho, and Ignacio Merino. Thus, during his second trip to Europe, Laso would not be detached from the events at home, and in fact, he was to engage directly in a number of contemporary Peruvian issues. The dissatisfaction with the economic corruption and conservative tendencies of President Echenique's government had roused a generalized climate of protest, in particular among the more liberal sectors of Peruvian politics. The increasing disillusionment with Echenique's regime paved the way for liberal revolution which took General Castilla to power in January of 1855.31 It is possible that Laso referred to these events through his Inhabitant of the Cordilleras. The abolition of Indian tribute had been 31Jorge
Basadre, Historia de la República del Perú, 10 vols., 5th ed. (Lima: Ediciones 'Historia', 1961): IV, pp. 81-122.
156
one of the most important ideals of the group of radical liberals who sided with Castilla in 1854. During the civil war of 1854, tribute was abolished in order to obtain the support of the Indian population. The rebel of Junín, Fermín del Castillo had abolished tribute locally in February of 1854, and in July of the same year General Castilla signed a similar decree which was to have much broader repercussions.32 For liberal reformers tribute was not simply one of the many forms of exploitation that the Indian population had to withstand, but a generalized symbol of Indian bondage. To speak of the Indian's oppression in the mid 1850s was almost synonymous with speaking of Indian tribute. In this context it is highly likely that Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras, which, as we have seen, directly evokes the oppression of the Indian, could be referring to Castilla's abolition of Indian tribute. In 1854, Laso's companion in Europe, the young medical student José Casimiro Ulloa published a small pamphlet criticizing Echenique's administration.
The tract, dedicated to the Chilean radical Francisco
Bilbao, is an important document of the liberal ideals of many of the young intellectuals of the period. Showing a marked anti-clericalism and praising the ideals of the French revolution, Ulloa criticized fiscal corruption, the pervasiveness of militarism in Peruvian politics, the ignorance and lack of patriotism of Peruvian intellectuals, and the
32Ibid.,
vol. IV, pp. 98f.
157
persistence of social inequalities testified by the continuation of slavery and the exploitation of the Indian population.33 At the end of the year, under the pseudonym of "El baron de poco me importa" (The Baron Who Couldn't Care Less), Laso himself wrote a text which offered a scathing critique of Peruvian society. Also published in Paris, as the Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú (New Year's Present for the Ladies of Lima), this satirical pamphlet traced the story of the education of a boy of good social standing whose innate talents and good disposition are gradually destroyed in the process of growing up in the morally corrupt environment of Peru.34 Laso's critique of Peruvian customs raised a storm of protest when it was published in the pages of Lima's most important daily, El Comercio, in April of 1855.35 His criticisms were said to be unpatriotic, he was compared to the treacherous figure of Judas and defined as a "false Peruvian." Critics, stung by the caustic tone of the pamphlet, claimed that Laso generalized on isolated cases and that, rather than a portrait, Laso's tract was a vile caricature of Peruvian society. One of the critics even demanded that his government pension be withdrawn. Others, however, rose to his defense. The radical liberal Juan Espinosa, Laso's father, and 33[José
Casimiro Ulloa], El Perú en 1853. Un año de su historia contemporánea (Paris: Imp. de Moulde y Renue, 1854). This pamphlet has frequently been mistakenly attributed to Laso. 34[El baron de poco me importa], Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú (Paris: Imprenta de Maulde y Renou, 1854). 35The text appeared under the same pseudonym in El Comercio, 24-IV-1854, p. [3], 25-IV-1854, p. [3], 26-IV-1854, pp. [2-3]. A full list of the articles against Laso, and those which appeared in his defense, are listed in the bibliography in the section "Contemporary sources on Laso."
158
others defended his motivations and character, even if they did not completely approve of the text he had written. When, more than a decade later, Laso's political opponents republished the pamphlet in Lima, they presented the text with a prologue in which they criticized Laso for publishing lies about Peru in a foreign context.36 Laso responded by distinguishing between printing and publishing a text, arguing that if his Aguinaldo had been printed in Paris, it had been intended for a Peruvian audience. He also described the context that prompted the publication of his text: In that year [1854], as Peruvians living in Paris, we received with each trip the saddest news of the patria. On the one hand it was said that Ecuador had humiliated us in the cruelest manner as a consequence of the Flores expedition . . . To such news were added the stories about the Consolidación. Those stories, which in themselves were of great import, were magnified by the time they arrived in Paris. I will refrain from repeating the things that were then said; but I will only say that the Peruvian colony in Paris was aghast with what was said to be happening at the time on these shores, and the youths of the Latin quarter vociferously expressed their desperation.37 36"Raros
son para honra de la humanidad y para consuelo de la patria esos monstruos de alevosa perfidia que destituidos absolutamente del santo fuego del patriotismo o del agradecimiento, van a naciones extrañas a forjar mentiras que recojidas por la ignorante multitud forman el descrédito de una nacion mas que cualquiera otra civilizada e ilustre." In "Dos palabras," anonymous prologue to El Aguinaldo. Colección de recriminaciones, ultrajes y denuestos, inferidos al Perú y a su sociedad, según pública voz poer el Ciudadano Don Francisco Lazo diputado por Lima al congreso constituyente. Hallándose en Europa viviendo y educándose á espensas de la Nación. Dado a la prensa por unos patriotas en las actuales circumstancias para que se conozcan de todos los indignos manejos de este Representante (Lima: Imprenta de "El Liberal," 1867). 37[Pero es necesario retroceder un momento al año 1854. En ese año los peruanos que residíamos en París en cada viaje recibíamos las noticias mas tristes de la patria. Por una parte se decía que el Ecuador nos había humillado de la manera mas cruel a consecuencia de la expedición Flores . . . A semejantes noticias se agregaban las historias de la Consolidación. Esas historias que de por si eran de gran bulto, llegaban a París aumentadas. Omitiré repetir las cosas que entonces se comentaban; pero solo diré que la
159
Laso's Aguinaldo had been addressed to the "ladies of Lima"; it confronted Peruvian society directly with its mordant sarcasm and its irreverent tone. Both the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras and the Gonzalo Pizarro, confront the viewer in the same manner, as does another painting that Laso created during this period, his Justice of 1855 (fig. 21) A pencil drawing and a small oil-sketch in the collection of the Museo de Arte de Lima, indicate that Laso possibly based his image of Justice on Pierre-Paul Prud'hon's Vengeance and Justice (1808) which had been created for the hall of judgment of the French Palais de Justice and which had won Prud'hon the title of history painter.38 Prud'hon represented justice and vengeance as allegorical flying figures who rush in pursuit of crime. In his drawing Laso draws a single flying figure, angrily raising its left arm into a closed fist and directing an enraged look at the viewer (fig. 22). Although the flying figure Laso depicts in the oil sketch lacks the angered gesture of the figure in the drawing, it flies over an ominous, dark, and barren landscape, apparently surveying the land in the aftermath of destruction.39
colonia peruana en París estaba atónita con lo que se decía pasaba en esos momentos en estos mares, y los jóvenes del cuartel Latino expresaban su desesperación a gritos.] In "Derechos adquiridos," El Comercio, 22-V-1867; also published in El Nacional, 22-V-1867. 38The painting was first exhibited at the Salon of 1808, and also in 1810. See Walter Friedlaender, David to Delacroix, trans., Robert Goldwater (Cambridge Mass, and London: 1980): 57-58, pl. 31. For a more general discussion of the influence of Prud'hon on Laso see Alberto Jochamowitz, "Consideraciones sobre la obra pictórica de Francisco Laso," in Pintores y pinturas. Crítica de arte (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1949): 107108. 39Francisco Laso, Sketch of a Flying Figure, ca. 1855, oil on canvas, 27 x 35 cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-471.
160
In the final version of the painting Laso created an apparently more conventional representation of justice without, however, excluding the image of Nemesis. The fusion of justice and Nemesis into a single figure did not escape a Peruvian critic who described the work when it was first exhibited in Lima in 1860.
He claimed, sarcastically, that Laso had
probably made a mistake in giving his painting the title of Justice, for the figure represented in the painting "seems rather to be a personification of Vengeance." The critic discerned in the pallor of the face the mark of "a bilious, choleric temperament," and described the expression of the steadfast gaze as "menacing and impassive." Finally, by pointing to the image of the city in flames in the background of the painting, the critic concluded that "we have here a true portrait of the goddess of Vengeance."40 Laso's Justice is thus similar to the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras in the manner in which it addresses the viewer. Almost identical in size and format, the Inhabitant and the painting of Justice both show single figures, represented frontally in three-quarter length, who fill up the surface of the canvas and hold allegorical attributes in their hands. Both paintings are clearly allegorical, and both use the most conventional means of
40[La justicia. El señor Laso debe de haberse equivocado al llamar asi este cuadro, pues con escepcion de las balanzas y de la espada, atributos ordinarios de la Justicia, la figura que en él se vé mas bien parece ser una personificacion de la Venganza. Y sino miradla: esa palidez que cubre su rostro denota un temperamento bilioso, colérico; la fijeza de la mirada es mas bien amenazadora que impasible; tiene los labios cerrados; y si agregamos a esto esa ciudad que se divisa en la lontananza presa de las llamas, tenemos un verdadero retrato de la diosa de la Venganza.] "Esposicion de Pinturas," El Comercio, 15-VIII-1860.
161
representation. The polished surfaces, the hieratic and solemn stance of the figures, and the restrained range of colors, point to the sense of decorum which pervades Laso's painted œuvre. Laso's use of allegory in his paintings testifies to the revalorization of this mode at mid-century. The romantics and the practitioners of the genre historique had disdained mythological subjects and what they perceived as the coldness and obsolete nature of allegory, but the mode was renewed and emphasized in the reaction against romantic tendencies of the mid 1830s.41 Laso's teacher, Charles Gleyre, was acclaimed as a representative of a new allegorical mode by the critic Gustave Planche. Allegory became a way of emphasizing an art of ideas in opposition to the doctrines of "l'art pour l'art." Planche, who openly declared his distaste for the literary qualities of cold and "inanimate" allegories nevertheless acclaimed Gleyre's Le Soir, as "une des plus charmantes compositions de l'école moderne." As Planche claimed, "L'allégorie ainsi comprise n'a plus rien d'inanimé: c'est une création puissante et sereine qui domine la réalité et nous emporte dans un monde supérieur."42
Allegory could renew an
art of ideas and assert the elevated nature of painting even if it did not necessarily engage traditional academic subjects.
41Marie-Claude
Chaudonneret, "Historicism and 'Heritage' in the Louvre, 1820-1840. From the Musée Charles X to the Galerie d'Apollon," Art History vol. 14, no. 4 (December 1991): 493. 42"Le danger constant de l'allégorie est d'accorder trop d'importance à la pensée prise en elle-même, et de ne pas parler aux yeux assez vivement." Gustave Planche, "Charles Gleyre," in Portraits d'artistes. Peintres et sculpteurs, 2 vols. (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1853): vol. I, pp. 260-261.
162
The serious tone of Laso's painted works thus offers a striking contrast with the colloquial and even rough language he chose to present in his writings. What had offended Peruvians most in Laso's Aguinaldo had been the irreverent tone in which the artist presented his critique of Peruvian society. In their defense of the Aguinaldo, both Corpancho and Ulloa argued that Laso had not attempted to write a work of literature. Ulloa explained that the language of the Aguinaldo should be seen as a "rhetorical artifice" which could be said to be lacking in taste, but which was nonetheless necessary.43 Laso himself explained to Corpancho: You know that it has not been my intention to devote myself to literature. I have neither the time nor the disposition to entertain myself fabricating elegant phrases which the wind carries away. If I have taken up the pen it has been out of desperation, and since I opened my mouth I had to cry out with all my strength to point out the danger, so that those who have a heart should awaken and rush out to save the country."44 For the generation of 1848, art and politics could coexist, sometimes even coalesce, but their purpose and function were not equal. Painting could offer a moral exemplar but it could not be debased by the specificity of immediate concerns.
The elevated nature of art could not be
questioned, it was an unachieved ideal, part of the modernizing utopia of progressive liberal reformers.
By using the allegorical mode in his
43[En el lenguaje del Aguinaldo no debe pues verse mas que un artifico retórico, cuyo mal gusto puede criticarse, si se quiere, pero no la oportunidad.] José Casimiro Ulloa, "El Aguinaldo," El Comercio, 10-IX-1854. 44[U. sabe que mi intencio no ha sido ni será dedicarme á la literatura. Yo no tengo tiempo ni humor para divertirme fabricando frases elegantes que se las lleva el aire. Si he tomado la pluma ha sido por desesperación, y ya que abrí la boca debí gritar con todas mis fuerzas para señalar el peligro, y para que aquellos que tienen corazon, despierten y acudan a salvar el país.] Laso, "La causa de la juventud," El Comercio, 5-II-1855.
163
paintings Laso was able to produce a form of social criticism without harming the structure of painting or undermining its elevated nature. While the political essay could be written in a direct and even crude manner, the same was not allowed in painting, whose structures, still under construction, could not be questioned.
THE DUALISM OF THE NATION The dialogue established between the two paintings, in which the narrative of history is implied but not directly represented, provides a powerful synthesis of Peruvian history.
Placed side by side at the
Universal Exhibition of 1855, the Portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro and the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras presented an image of the Peruvian nation defined by the Spanish-Indian dichotomy. A similar dualism is present in the works shown by Ignacio Merino at the same exhibition. Apart from a portrait of the painter Francisco Masías,45
Merino exhibited a work
representing Christopher Columbus and his Son Receiving Hospitality in the Convent of Rábida (Spain)46 and a Resting Place of Peruvian Indians. Although the latter work is now lost, descriptions by contemporary critics
45Listed in the catalogue as Portrait de M. J.M.; see Exposition universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages. . ., cat. no. 1652. This work is now in the Pinacoteca Municipal "Ignacio Merino", Lima. 46Listed in the catalogue as Christophe Colomb et son fils recevant l'hospitalité dans le couvent de la Rabida (Espagne); see Exposition universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages. . ., cat. no. 1650. There are at least three versions of the same theme painted by Merino and I have as yet been unable to define which was the work exhibited at the Universal Exhibition. Two of these works are now in the Pinacoteca Municipal "Ignacio Merino," Lima.
164
describe it as a dark, brooding landscape in which a group of Indians, dressed in native clothes and surrounded by "fantastic" ceramics, crouch together for a meal of maize and peppers.47 Both artists thus represented the Peruvian nation in terms of an opposition, the Spanish versus the Indian, the foreign versus the native. These works thus offer the first important manifestation of the modern Creole conception of the nation as a dichotomy, as an opposition of types. Yet the characterization of this opposition is strikingly different in each case. Merino represented Columbus in an anecdotal moment of his career, and his Indian scene would seem to fit the genre of European exoticizing painting, a picturesque representation of a contemporary scene of Indians in the mountains. Merino's focus on the European discoverer of America rather than on the conquest, says much about his banal vision of history. Laso's two paintings, on the other hand, presented a more critical depiction of Peruvian history. Corpancho, in a long article in which he transcribed some of the French reviews of Laso's paintings, offered one of the few lengthy discussions of Laso's work. Not having seen the paintings, Corpancho could only describe the associations which the dichotomy evoked in him:
47Listed in the catalogue as Halte d'Indiens Péruviens; see Exposition universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages. . ., cat. no. 1651. There is no information on the present whereabouts of this work. The most complete descriptions of this painting are Edmond About, Voyage à travers l'Exposition des Beaux-Arts. (Peinture et sculpture) (Paris: Hachette, 1855): 64-65, and Pedro Escandón, La industria y las bellas artes en la Exposición Universal de 1855. Memoria dirijida al excelentísimo señor Ministro de Fomento de México (Paris: Imprimerie Centrale de Napoléon Chaix et Cie., 1856): 155156.
165
Also worthy of national gratitude is the thought which [the painter] has carried out in his two paintings and which show how the memories of the fatherland are alive in his heart. In designing two figures which represent the two civilizations, the two opposed types of the European and the Indian, of the sons of the Cid and the descendants of Manco-Capac, Mr. Lazo has brought forth the opposed elements which intervened in the fusion of the two races in America, practically explaining to the Europeans how, from the unequal struggle between two races, whose superiority is revealed at first sight, could result that conquest which has been and will always be the amazement of centuries. Here thus, how two figures are worth a great epic and two personages can explain an entire history.48 Corpancho's text reflects the views of one of the most ardent supporters of a revived Hispanism in the mid 19th century. For more than two decades after independence no positive assessment of the Spanish legacy had been possible in Peru. Early republican leaders had claimed to break free from centuries of oppression, to renovate the social structure and to embrace the ideas and customs of a world which the Spanish government had closed off to them.
As in the rest of Latin
America, the reconciliation with the Spanish legacy which began at midcentury, developed in a decidedly conservative context.49
48[Es digno tambien de la gratitud nacional, el pensamiento que ha realizado en sus dos cuadros y que manifiestan lo vivo que están en su corazón los recuerdos de su patria. El señor Lazo trazando dos figuras que representan las dos civilizaciones, los dos tipos opuestos del europeo y del indio, de los hijos del Cid y de los descendientes de MancoCapac, ha puesto en relieve los elementos opuestos que intervinieron en la fusion de las dos razas en América, explicando prácticamente á los europeos como de la lucha desigual de dos razas, cuya superioridad se revela a primera vista, pudo resultar esa conquista que ha sido y será siempre el asombro de los siglos. He aquí, como dos figuras valen por toda una epopeya, dos personajes explican toda una historia.] Manuel Nicolás Corpancho, "Exposición Universal, D. Francisco Lazo [sic]," El Heraldo de Lima, 12-XII1855. 49Carlos M. Rama, Historia de las relaciones culturales entre España y la América Latina. Siglo XIX (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982), esp. ch. II.
166
The founding moment of this renewed Hispanism had been the sermon given by the conservative priest Bartolomé Herrera at the Cathedral of Lima on the 25th anniversary of independence in 1846. Reflecting on the political chaos of early republican Peru, Herrera concluded that it was the result of the tyranny of the erroneous ideas of the philosophers of the French revolution. Upholding the doctrine of the divine origin of law, Herrera proposed an aristocratic and authoritarian juridical system in which the only political role assigned to the vast majority of people was defined by the principle of obedience.50 Herrera's ideas prompted one of the most wide-ranging political debates of 19thcentury Peru. To the aristocratic order envisioned by Herrera, liberal writers rushed to defend the principle of popular sovereignity. Although he retired early from the debate, the first liberal writer to contest Herrera's opinions had been Benito Laso, who declared Herrera's views as "subversive" and "anti-social." Yet in focusing on the issue of popular sovereignity, the debates of 1846 engaged only one aspect of Herrera's doctrine.51 To the chaos of early republican Peru, Herrera had opposed a placid and idealized image of the colonial past. His ardent defense and 50For a juridical analysis of Herrera's sermon see Fernando de Trazegnies, La idea del derecho en el Perú republicano, pp. 90-100. See also Daniel Gleason, "Anti-Democratic Thought in Early Republican Peru: Bartolomé Herrera and the Liberal-Conservative Ideological Struggle," The Americas XXXVIII, no. 2 (October 1981): 205-217 and Jorge Guillermo Leguía, "La pasión patriótica de Bartolomé Herrera," in Estudios históricos, pp. 96-106. 51The sermon and the debates which it prompted (including the articles written by Benito Laso) are reproduced in Bartolomé Herrera, Escritos y discursos, vol. I, pp. 66ff.
167
justification of the conquest, which he saw as an heroic evangelizing mission, led him to propose a new definition of the Peruvian nation. In reclaiming Peru's Hispanic past, Herrera attacked the superficial Incaism of the independence period and declared that the pre-Columbian past was irretrievable.
Moreover, for Herrera, Spain was the very basis of the
Peruvian nationality. Independence had only been a divinely ordained "emancipation," a natural sign of maturity comparable to the son who abandons his parents upon reaching adulthood. The only conclusion that Herrera could derive from this line of reasoning was that the conquerors had "formed the new Peru, the Spanish and Christian Peru, whose independence we celebrate."52 Herrera's views polarized Peruvian intellectuals and generated a schism between the students of San Carlos, the more liberal of which soon grouped around the figure of Pedro Gálvez.53
Herrera's active
involvement in Peruvian politics during the early 1850s, as the most important member of Echenique's cabinet, revived the debates of the late 1840s, but now liberals focused their attacks on Herrera's Hispanism. Liberals agreed with Herrera on the importance of Peru's Hispanic legacy, but while Herrera reclaimed an idealized Hispanic tradition, liberals attributed all of Peru's problems, its economic backwardness, political conservatism, and its social injustices to the Spanish legacy. 52[formaron
el nuevo Perú, el Perú español y cristiano cuya independencia celebramos.] In Ibid., vol. I, p. 76. 53See Jorge Guillermo Leguía, "Bartolomé Herrera, Maestro," in Herrera, Escritos y discursos, vol. II, pp. iii-li.
168
The classic text of Peruvian anti-Hispanism was Juan Espinosa's The Spanish Heritage of Americans, a book which was intended to counteract the retrograde teachings imparted at the School of San Carlos by a "cleric who preached in favor of the conquest, on the day of the anniversary of independence."54 Espinosa saw signs of the survival of the colonial spirit everywhere in Peruvian society, in economic ideas, in the arts, in the forms of religious belief and in the customs of society in general. Placed in the context of this anti-Hispanist revival of the early 1850s, Laso's portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro can be more clearly understood. Writing in defense of his Aguinaldo in 1854, Laso had publicly praised Espinosa's book, which he set as an example of the kind of stringent criticism necessary to awaken the conscience of Peruvian youths.55
If
Espinosa had been primarily concerned with Peruvian political institutions and economic ideas, Laso privileged the critique of Peruvian customs. Years later, an anonymous writer described Laso as always having been "an Aristarchus, zealous in combating social prejudices and the remnants of bad Spanish education."56 Laso's debt to costumbrista 54Juan Espinosa, La herencia española de los Americanos. Seis cartas críticas a Isabel Segunda por el Coronel Juan Espinosa, seguidas de otros escritos de interés público (Lima: Imprenta del Correo, 1852): 10. The book reproduces articles first written by Espinosa for El Correo, the newspaper run by Benito Laso. 55Laso, "La causa de la juventud," El Comercio, 5-II-1855. The article, dated in Paris in November 1854, is in the form of a letter to his friend José Casimiro Ulloa (then in Lima). 56["Lazo que ha sido siempre un Aristarco celoso por combatir preocupaciones sociales y rezagos de la mala educación española."] P., "Inconsecuencias," El Nacional, 23V-1867. Aristarchus of Samos was a Greek astronomer active during third century BC, who was indicted for claiming that the Earth rotates and revolves around the Sun.
169
interest in national customs and character surfaces clearly in his writings, and Corpancho compared the attacks on Laso's Aguinaldo to those which had received the publication of Felipe Pardo's Espejo de mi tierra.57 The same interest in moral and social character is present in Laso's portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro. The preparatory sketches for this portrait of the conqueror show that instead of simply evoking the image of a specific historical episode, Laso had attempted to represent the character of the conquerors. In what seems to be the earliest sketch for the painting (fig. 23), Laso represents a full-length figure with one hand on the belt and the other on the hilt of the sword.
As the same drawing shows, Laso
apparently decided later to present the figure only in three-quarter length. The next two drawings (figs. 24-25) show Laso working on the figure's position with regard to the viewer, and placing a greater emphasis on the facial expression of the conqueror, whose severe features are developed into a glaring scowl. Two other drawings (figs. 26-27) further simplify the composition; the conqueror's body is now in profile and the head turns to look out at the viewer, the short cape disappears, and the size of the golilla is attenuated. In the final painting, the composition has been reduced to a simple bust portrait, and the entire emphasis on the painting is placed on the conqueror's face. Although there is a certain hardness and even a sense of menace in Gonzalo's gaze, Laso no longer focuses on the representation of a specific facial gesture. By emphasizing the conqueror's
57Corpancho,
"El Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú," El Comercio, 10-IX-1854.
170
physiognomy, and by avoiding any distracting historical details, Laso forces the viewer to confront only the character of the conquerors. It was that character which liberals claimed continued to pervade Peruvian society. In his Aguinaldo Laso had centered his criticism on the education given to Peruvian youths because he claimed that only a good education could eradicate the vices inherited from Spain: Mexico and Peru have had the same origin, and their march towards destruction is parallel. --Mexico and Lima were the favorite cities of the conquistadors; they made a center of pleasures of each of them, and the brutal soldier with the generosity of the bandit, dilapidated large sums, established luxury, gambling and all the other vices which are annexed to places of prostitution.-- The Spaniards, ever since they raised the monuments torn down by grapeshot in the capital of Motezuma, and in laying out the first bases of pliant mud in the city of Kings, impressed on Mexicans and Peruvians the seal of ignominy. Our degradation is chronic; original sin weighs over us; and as instead of purifying us at birth, our parents corrupt us with a bad education and example, in the end each generation perfects the vices invented by its generatrix.58 Speaking always in the plural in his Aguinaldo Laso had not exempted himself from the vices associated with the Spanish heritage. In fact, Laso seems to have identified with the image of the conqueror. A 58[Méjico y el Perú han tenido el mismo origen, y su marcha a la destruccion es paralela. --Méjico y Lima fueron las ciudades favoritas de los conquistadores; de cada una de ellas hicieron un centro de placeres, y el brutal soldado con la generosidad del bandido, dilapidando ingentes sumas, estableció el lujo, el juego y los demas vicios que están anexos a los lugares de prostitución.-- Los Españoles desde que levantaron los monumentos derribados por la metralla en la capital de Motezuma, y al poner las primeras bases del blando barro en la ciudad de los Reyes, imprimieron a Mejicanos y Peruanos el sello de la ignominia./Nuestra degradación es crónica; sobre nosotros pesa el pecado original; y como en vez de purificarnos al nacer, nuestros padres nos corrompen con la mala educación y el mal ejemplo, al fin cada generacion perfecciona los vicios inventados por su generatriz.] Aguinaldo, p. 6.
171
self-portrait of Laso painted during the early 1850s (fig. 28),59 is remarkably similar to the portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro. Almost identical in size, both works are painted in a similar format and dark tones, and both present their subject glancing out at the viewer in the same three-quarter profile view. Laso's white collar and the conqueror's golilla serve to set off each of the subject's face, and only slight distinctions of physiognomy, and the fact that they are reversed, allows one to differentiate between the two works. If Laso did not present himself in the guise of the conqueror, he at least identified with a conquering race. There is, beyond question, an evident exposure of Creole feelings of guilt in Laso's self-representation, a self-incrimination which, as we will later see, pervades most of his work. However, the fact that the two portraits are mirror-images of each other suggests that Laso may have allowed the possibility of a selfrepresentation as a new kind of Peruvian, the republican leader who was willing to fight for the moral regeneration of the nation. Exhibited next to the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras, the portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro had served to represent the play of oppositions in which the nation was framed. Yet, it is difficult to conceive of these two works as pendants and, in fact, they were never to be shown or discussed together again. At the first national exhibition of 1860 in Lima, Laso 59Although there is no documentary evidence on which to base a date for this painting, it has traditionally been assigned to 1851. It could have been created during the early 1850s, the features of the face, the haircut, and the beard coincide with a photograph of Laso taken in Paris in 1852.
172
exhibited only the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras, and when later that same year he included the painting among the group of works he presented to the Peruvian state, he excluded the Gonzalo Pizarro from the series. When they had been exhibited together at the Universal Exhibition, the two works had presented an unbalanced and assymetrical dyad. The Inhabitant of the Cordilleras is a self-sufficient work, a powerful composition rich in meaning and significance, but the portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro remains a simple and understated portrait bust.
While the
Inhabitant of the Cordilleras could evoke on its own the pre-Columbian past, the conquest and the future of the Peruvian nation, the portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro, placed in isolation, remains only a token of the character of the Spanish conquerors. Within the national dichotomy presented by Laso at the Universal Exhibition, the other pole of the Peruvian nationality, formed by the Spaniard-Creole, was significantly reduced to the portrayal of a specific historical character. There is thus also a temporal disjunction between the two works.
The imaginary portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro represents a
specific and identifiable historical personage; the figure represented in the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras is anonymous and difficult to place in a temporal order. It is clearly a figure existing after the destruction of Inca civilization, yet it is not clear whether it represents a contemporary Indian. Perhaps it was intended as a representation of the Indian of the future, as envisaged by liberal reformers such as José Casimiro Ulloa:
173
¡Race of our grandparents! unfortunate race of the Incas! they condemn you to brutalization in order to prolong the duration of your servitude; you are denied all participation in social enjoyments, and you are cast out of the patria of the citizen, making you a slave in the very land you inherited from your elders. You water the earth with the sweat of your brow, and you come to deposit the fruits of your labor at the foot of a man who owes you an education and does not give it you, and of a priest who, falsifying God, speaks to you about religion as a merchandise and sells you the sacraments . . . Your condition is sad, and sadder still because the day of your redemption is not even in sight. But that day will come; that is the law of humanity which convokes all the peoples to form a single family and which tends to constitute the unity of the human race.60 Federico Torrico's interpretation of the painting is evidently informed by his own conversations with the painter, but also by his readings of the European criticism of Laso's work.
Torrico sees the
Inhabitant as representing an ideal that will only be achieved in the future. Speaking of the Universal Exhibition, Torrico wrote: Peru was to have in the Indian its most genuine representation. That race which conceals under its apparent immovability, great instincts that will one day make it reconquer a personality which has not disappeared. Lazo cherished that conviction and his Indian, who presented before the advanced European industry the shapeless product of its most notable industry, pottery, symbolized 60[¡Raza
de nuestros abuelos! infortunada raza de los Incas! te condenan al embrutecimiento para prolongar la duración de tu servidumbre; te se niega toda participación de los goces sociales, y te se arroja de la patria del ciudadano, haciéndote esclava en el propio suelo que heredaste de tus mayores. Riegas la tierra con el sudor de tu frente, y vienes a depositar el fruto de tu trabajo a los pies de un señor que te debe educación y no te la concede, y de un sacerdote que falsificando a Dios, te habla de la relijion como de una mercancía y te vende los sacramentos. Tu sabes que hay un gobierno, porque trabajas para pagar un impuesto; sabes que hay una religion, porque te enseñan la idolatria del cristianismo, el culto de las imágenes, y porque una gran parte de tu cosecha te la arrebata el diezmo. Triste es tu condición, y mas triste aun porque aun no se vislumbra el dia de tu redencion. Mas ese dia llegará; así lo quiere la ley de la humanidad que convoca á los pueblos a formar una sola familia y que tiende a la constitución de la unidad del género humano.] Ulloa, El Perú en 1853, pp. 21-22.
174
the Peru of the future. The parallelism of the lines, which can be seen in the painting indicates the immobility of that race; and the nobility in the attitude, the serenity of the character and its beauty revealed the powerful personality which the artist dreamed for Peruvians.61 If the Indian is understood as the future of the Peruvian nation, the Spaniard-Creole is only part of its past. Laso's dichotomy thus departs from traditional anti-Hispanism. He not only rejects Peru's Spanish heritage, but valorizes the other pole of the dichotomy. It is in this sense, above all, that Laso's paintings may be perceived as the earliest manifestations of a type of national representation which will define Creole nationalism well into the 20th century. This manner of identifying the nation with the Indian responds to far more than simple Creole political and social guilt, or to difficulties associated with identifying with a conquering race. What becomes increasingly central to the definition of Creole nationalism is the notion of cultural authenticity, the romantic notion that the origins of the nation lay in racial and cultural bonds, in language, and in ethnicity. Such a definition of the nation directly undermined Creole identity. In his famous sermon of 1846, Herrera had attacked the critics of
61[El
Perú debía tener en el indio su representacion mas genuina. Esa raza encubre con su inmovilidad aparente, grandes instintos que algun dia la harán reconquistar una personalidad que no ha desaparecido. Lazo abrigaba esa conviccion y en su indio, que presenta ante la avanzada industria europea, el producto informe de su industria mas notable, la alfareria, simbolizó al Perú del porvenir. El paralelismo de las líneas, que se observa en el cuadro indica la inmovilidad de esa raza; y la nobleza de la actitud la serenidad del personaje y su belleza revelan la personalidad poderosa que el artista soñaba para los peruanos.] Federico Torrico, "El arte y los pintores peruanos en la primera exposición nacional," El Nacional, 2-VIII-1869, p. 2.
175
the conquest by taking their arguments to an apparently logical conclusion. As he wrote: The legitimacy of Spanish government, it has been said, originates in the conquest, an usurpation which can never be legitimized. If the one who thinks this way is White, Mestizo, Mulatto, in short of any race which is not the one which inhabited Peru before the conquest, then he must agree that he has no patria, because the conquest brought him here.62 Yet even Creole anti-Hispanists arrived at a similar conclusion. Even today the term "Peruvian" functions in certain contexts as a synonym of Indian.
For example, the Semanario de Lima, mouthpiece of the
generation of 1848, spoke of the Indians as those "people that can truly be called peruano,"63 thus implying that no other ethnic group could lay equal claim to the title. Within the discourse of cultural nationalism, the foreign conquerors are opposed to the "originary" Indians. The Indians are thus frequently defined in the literature of the period as the "authentic Peruvians," as the "originary owners of the land," or as "Peru's primitive peoples."
62[La lejitimidad del gobierno español, se ha dicho, proviene de la conquista, usurpación que nunca puede lejitimarse. Si el que piensa así es blanco, mestizo, mulato, en fin de cualquiera raza que no sea la que poblaba el Perú anes de la conquista, debe convenir en que no tiene patria, por que la conquista es quien lo trajo aquí.] Herrera in Escritos y discursos, p. 93. 63[No fijemos nuestra atención sobre el pueblo que verdaderamente puede llamarse peruano. No. . ., semejante espectáculo más es digno de conmiseración que de examen.] Cited by Emilio Gutiérrez de Quintanilla in Conferencia del Sr. Emilio Gutiérrez de Quintanilla leida en la Federación de los Estudiantes del Perú (Lima: E. Rosay, 1920): 59. The author cites a number of that journal dated September 16, 1848, but presently only an incomplete copy of that important journal exists in the National Library. María Isabel Remy cites President Gamarra making an even more direct use of the term in "La sociedad local al inicio de la República. Cusco 1824-1850," Revista andina, 12, no. 2 (December 1988): 452.
176
The racial classification of Peru provided in Paz Soldán's Geografía del Perú of 1862 marked a strict distinction of the kind we have been describing, establishing a clear division between the pure Indians who preserve their customs and other, mixed, racial groups in Peru. The races of Peru were divided between a majority belonging to "the primitive indigenous race, which still preserves its language and customs," and the rest, composed of descendants of the Spaniards, who, more or less mixed with Indians and Africans, engendered "races of different colors and physiognomies."64 César Itier has traced the first attempts to "purify" Quechua from Spanish elements to the 19th century, in the emerging field of philology. As Itier points out, the phrase "Empire of the Quechuas" is then used for the first time in Peruvian history, thereby linking the Quechua language with an ethnic group.
Linguistic and ethnic
community became one and the same thing, a conflation which was not necessarily made prior to the 19th century when Quechua was referred to as the "lengua general." As the "language of the Incas," Quechua came to form part of the invention of national traditions. The Indians were thus increasingly associated with a differentiated culture, forming a linguistic and cultural community different from the rest of the country. The Indian was already becoming a cultural symbol. Only the Indian groups which could be associated with the pre-Columbian past, 64[La mayor parte de los habitantes del Perú es de la raza indígena primitiva, que conservan todavía su idioma y costumbres. / Otra parte de descendientes Españoles, encastados mas ó menos con los Indios y Africanos, hace nacer razas de diferentes colores, fisonomia, a saber:. . . ] Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, vol. I, p. 24.
177
traditional dress and native language would come to be idealized in the Creole imagination. Yet Creoles singled out the "culture" of the Indians of the southern Sierra, and because of their associations with memories of an Incaic past, particularly the customs of Indian communities of the Cuzco region. Thus, neither the "Indians" living in Amazonian communities nor racially "Indian" acculturated groups would receive the same kind of attention or distanced respect. As a cultural icon, the "Andean" Indian was hypostatized as symbolic pole of a national dichotomy. Increasingly, the Indian came to be singled out as the most significant representative of the Peruvian nation. A telling example is offered by Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán's Atlas del Perú, the first important work on Peruvian geography. Apart from maps, this lithographic album contained images of cities and monuments from Peru's different regions.
Save for three prints
representing "Indians," no other ethnic group was represented in the album.
The hypostatized Indian was already becoming the most
important representative of Peruvian nationhood. Hence the paradox that groups which do not consider themselves Indian represent the nation through a rhetoric of Indianness.
This is
perhaps the most crucial difference between Latin American ethnolinguistic nationalisms and those varieties which emerged in other regions during the same period.65 The Creole will not pass the test made by 65E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 108. Hobsbawm suggests that ethno-linguistic nationalisms developed mostly after the 1870s, which would help to explain the persistance of this Creole "Andean" construction well into the 20th century.
178
demands of racial and cultural difference and purity inscribed within the notion of authenticity. The Creole, unlike the Indian, does not have a "culture," and the Indian serves as a fetish, fulfilling the demands of cultural authenticity which the Creole themselves cannot satisfy. In offering a representation of the Peruvian nation, Laso, in a manner not unlike Paz Soldán, also singled out and emphasized the Indian. In a letter written during the second half of the year from Belgium to José Casimiro Ulloa, Laso informs his friend that the French critics had spoken well of his "pobre andino" [poor Andean].66 Laso's statement leaves no doubt about the nature of figure represented in the painting. The figure is not the representation of a specific Indian but a symbol of "Indianness," the inhabitant of an already mythified and exoticized geography. The type of dress portrayed in the Inhabitant is inspired by the costumes worn by Indian communities of the southern Andes, and in particular by those from the Cuzco region. The pre-Columbian ceramic calls forth images of an Incaic past, associating the Indian with the nation's origins. The Indian is subsumed within a "culture," in its modern sense, as a unified organic entity linked by a supposed correspondence between race, land, language, and customs. It is thus not surprising that while Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras led to his fame as an artist, his
66The
letter, addressed to his friend José Casimiro Ulloa in Paris, was written while Laso was on a trip to Belgium during the second half of 1855. A photograph of the last page of the letter, where this information is contained, was reproduced by José Flores Araoz, "La exposición de pintura de Francisco Laso," La Prensa, 8-XII-1937, p. ii. According to the author of the article, the letter is now lost.
179
imaginary portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro faded into the background and disappeared from memory.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF IDEALIZATION: A CRITICAL FORTUNE OF RACIAL READINGS My discussion of Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras has been based on the assumption that the painting represents an Indian. Yet this is not a natural supposition to make, since the racial identity of the figure represented in the painting has been an issue of contention among 20thcentury critics of Laso's works.
While Laso's Inhabitant and other
paintings representing "Andean" characters have been unanimously accepted as representations of "Indianness," modern critics have found it difficult to accept them as representations of Indians. There are two facets to this questioning, which in fact follow each other chronologically. One, which was dominant until the mid 20th century, claimed that Laso had stylized the Indian to such an extent that it ceased to be an accurate representation of an Indian. The other, which surfaced especially after mid-century, postulated that the painter had not even intended to depict an Indian, and that the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras actually represents a Mestizo. This lack of consensus points to a number of crucial problems in Peruvian ethnic stratification and nomination and raises important issues regarding the visual representation of race. It was only after the third decade of the 20th century that the racial status of the figures in Laso's paintings became problematic. Until that 180
time, no one seems to have questioned the identity of the figures represented in any of Laso's "Andean" works.
The Inhabitant of the
Cordilleras, for example, came to be popularized as the Indian Potter, a title which admits no imprecision.67 In 1917, the critic Emilio Gutiérrez de Quintanilla, referring to the figures dressed in Indian costume in Laso's Haravicu, wrote that their "pallid and cuprous flesh," reflected the "soul of the [Indian] race," and the "sadness of the Andean landscape."68 For Juan Manuel Peña, writing on the Inhabitant in 1929, Laso had represented the "Indian of bronzed skin,"69 while José Antonio de Lavalle y García later described the figures in Laso's Pascana in the Cordillera as Indians whose "bronzed faces energetically reflect the racial characteristics."70 The first signs of doubt in relation to the racial status of Laso's Indians came in 1937, on occasion of the first important exhibition of his work.
José Flores Araoz, the exhibition organizer, admitted that the
67In
the catalogue of the national exhibition of 1877 in Lima, Laso's Inhabitant was listed as "El famoso Indio alfarero de Laso." See Catálogo general de la exposición municipal inaugurada el 28 de julio de 1877 (Lima: Imp. de "El Nacional", 1877): 11, no. 68. In 1892, it was listed as "Un habitante de las punas." See Exposición Nacional. Objetos exhibidos en las secciones de bellas artes, minería e industrial (Lima: Imprenta de "El Comercio", 1893): 11, no. 104. 68[La iluminación sombría de los rostros. . . trasluce el ánimo de la raza, abatida por torturas seculares, á la vez que la tristeza del árido paisaje andino. A esas penumbras rostrales coadyuva la carnación del indio, pálida, cobriza, uniforme, sin transparencias, sin vibraciones, tal como lo reproduce Laso.] Emilio Gutiérrez de Quintanilla, "Los cuadros de Laso," La Prensa, 8-I-1922, p. 8. 69[El poder sicológico de Laso siempre poderoso y en esta figura logró representar no sólo al indio de tez bronceada, vestido con el clásico poncho de la cordillera,. . .] Juan Manuel Peña, "El arte en el Perú a través de un museo," El Comercio, 27-I-1929, p. 22. 70[Uno de los haravicus, representa tres indios pintados a gran tamaño, cubiertos de sus ponchos opacamente coloreados, cuyos bronceados rostros acusan con energía las características raciales.] Lavalle y García, "La extraordinaria personalidad de Francisco Laso," p. 22.
181
physiognomies of the figures represented in Laso's Indian Encampment (fig. 48) were "a bit stylized with regard to ethnic veracity,"71 yet he did not thereby claim that they did not represent Indians. While recognizing Laso's merit of intention in initiating the "treatment of Indians as a pictorial motif," the critic Carlos Raygada claimed that the painter had failed with regard to the representation of racial types. He attributed this to Laso's inability to "feel" the Indian, claiming that "the study of racial character" lay outside the painter's "natural tendencies." Raygada asserted that Laso's figures were not really Indians for they originated in "Mestizo models," and that they actually represented people "disguised as Indians [italics in the original]."72 The "Mestizo models" Raygada referred to is a series of photographs, used as preparatory studies for Laso's Pascana series (figs. 30-35), which show models dressed in traditional Andean clothes, and to which we will later return.
71[las
fisonomías-un poco estilizadas en cuanto a la veracidad étnica es cierto-.] Flores Araoz, "La exposición de pintura de Francisco Laso." La Prensa, 8-XII-1937, p. 11. It is apparently with this statement that an anonymous writer agrees with when he says, "En "La Pascana", aceptamos la crítica que asegura que los indios tienen más bien un aspecto moruno sin dar la sensación de peruanismo que lo marcan en forma precisa las llamas que se ven en la lejanía. " See "La exposición de la obra magnífica de Laso." La Crónica, 15-XII-1937, p. 3. 72[Laso . . . no sintió al indio, estaba fuera de sus tendencias naturales y sin duda jamás pensó en ello, pues ni entre sus apuntes, ahora descubiertos, se han encontrado intentos de estudio del carácter racial, hallándose únicamente esquemas y bocetos en que denota su preocupación por los juegos de pliegues en los ponchos o por las actitudes de los tipos. . . . Debe reconocerse, sin embargo el mérito de su impulso e intención al iniciar el trato de los indios como tema pictórico. Lástima que no lo fueran precisamente, pues tanto los de las "Pascanas" como este "Alfarero" nacieron de modelos francamente mestizos, como que el propio autor se retrata en uno de los personajes disfrazados de indios, lo que se comprueba en la misma exposición con la fotografía en que aparece Laso cubierto con poncho y tocado de chullo en la actitud que luego hubo de realizar pictóricamente.] Carlos Raygada, "La pintura de Laso," El Comercio, 12-XII-1937, p. iv.
182
While in 1937 Laso was criticized for "stylizing" or creating false Indians, no one claimed that he had not intended to paint Indians. By 1969, when the next important exhibition of Laso's works was held, the situation had drastically changed. The critic Juan Acha wrote that even if Laso's Pascanas could be described as Indian or Indigenist scenes, they actually represented "an allegory or symbolism of Peru as a coexistence of races. Because the character on the left is the same Mestizo as in the Indian Potter (the painter Masías as model?), the one in the center is decidedly "Indian" and there is a great resemblance to the Three Races."73 Later, Eduardo Calvo claimed that the figures represented in Laso's Pascana series in fact showed "Europeans or Mestizos and even the artist in Indian dress."74 Most recently Gustavo Buntinx has revived Acha and Calvo's interpretations in order to suggest that the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras represented for Laso the ideal of mestizaje.75 Yet Buntinx's essay is highly contradictory. The author suggests that the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras
73 ["La Pascana" (1851) nos muestra a tres personajes convertidos en masas monumentales y silenciosas. . . . Al referirse a la iconografía de esta obra se suele hablar de indígenas o indigenismo, cuando en realidad se trata de una alegoría o simbolismo del Perú como coexistencia de razas. Porque el personaje de la izquierda es el mismo mestizo de "El Alfarero" (¿el pintor Masías de modelo?), el del centro es decididamente "indígena" y existe gran similitud con el lienzo "Las Tres Razas".] Juan Acha [J. A.], "Exposición conmemorativa de F. Laso: En el primer centenario de su muerte," El Comercio, 1-VIII1969. 74[las Pascanas en la cordillera, cuyos personajes son europeos o mestizos y el propio autor con trajes de indios . . .] Eduardo Calvo, "Francisco Laso, el pintor de Santa Rosa de Lima," El Comercio, 10-V-1978. 75Buntinx writes: "aunque ataviados a la manera indígena, los retratados son visiblemente blancos o mestizos-empezando por el propio artista." Buntinx, "Del 'Habitante de las Cordilleras' al 'Indio Alfarero'," p. 70.
183
has "Occidentalized features," and that it represents a "White Indian," but he does not hesitate to refer to it in the same essay as a representation of an "Indian," or to describe both the Inhabitant and the Pascanas as signs of "Indianness" ("lo indio").76
Buntinx further states that the figure
represented in the Inhabitant represents a Mestizo, while simultaneously claiming that it has "Creole features." This author thus manages to apply almost every conceivable racial designation to the painting while effectively skirting direct confrontation with the issue of racial nomination. Buntinx, who believes this lack of definition was actively sought by the artist, concludes that the Inhabitant is both a representation of the ideal of mestizaje, and a manner of incorporating the Creole into the image of the Indian. There are a number of problems with this interpretation of Laso's work. Above all, it reads into the paintings present-day values and ideals, assuming that there is a stable history of racial stereotypes and perceptions. It ignores the fact that the interpretation of the Inhabitant as a representation of the Mestizo only became possible at a particular historical juncture, when the concept of mestizaje, as actual social process (most visible in the massive Andean migration to Lima beginning in the 1950s) and as national ideal (involving the sublimation of socio-racial differences), had become common among intellectuals in all spheres.
76Ibid.,
pp. 11, 14, 25-26, 37, 71, and 73.
184
During the 19th century, the Mestizo as such lacked the symbolic importance which it would acquire after the third decade of the 20th century, when the concept of mestizaje began to come into general favor. In defending his thesis, Buntinx quotes fragments from an essay by Laso on the subject of Peruvian racial prejudices, which he reads as a defense of mestizaje in its modern sense, as the ideal fusion of the Creole and the Indian elements of the Peruvian nation. Laso's "La paleta y los colores" ["Palette and colors"] of 1859, however, does not praise any single mixture but rather attacks in a general manner the Creole preference for purity of blood. Defending the universal ideal of human equality and the benefits of racial variety, Laso denounced the widespread notion that all of Peru's social problems derived from its heterogeneous population.
He
questioned the importance of racial differences in defining social inequalities, arguing instead that education and equal opportunity, would resolve Peru's social problems. Buntinx's explanation further fails to account for the basic question of whether a figure dressed as an Indian could represent a Mestizo in any effective manner. In the Peruvian social imagination, the Mestizo is an Indian who has abandoned traditional values--a displaced urban Indian. Thus, a Mestizo who dresses as an Indian automatically ceases to be a Mestizo; and in fact, the identity of the Inhabitant becomes ambiguous only if one focuses exclusively on its facial features. In every other respect the figure is unproblematically an image of Indianness. The dress and the
185
pre-Columbian ceramic are elements which serve to anchor the painting as a representation of an "andino," as Laso himself described it.
The
figure's body is almost completely covered by these signs of Indianness. Only the face, obscured by the shadow cast by the wide-brimmed montera, and the hands which hold the pre-Columbian pot remain visible. The same occurs in most of Laso's representations of Indians, where the bodies of his figures remain largely hidden from view. Laso's evident discomfort in painting the Indian's body derives from the difficulty of the task he had at hand. In painting the Indian as a representative of a specific ethnic group, as a symbol of a culture, Laso inaugurated a pictorial tradition for which there were, until then, few models or precedents. Whether in late 18th-century caste paintings (fig. 3) or in the watercolors created for the Bishop of Trujillo Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón, and later in costumbrista watercolors, the Indian had only been an accessory figure to represent the racial hierarchies of Peruvian society. In each of these cases, phenotype was not as important as skin color, dress, occupation, or written labels in defining the social formation. Thus, during Laso's lifetime there was no highly codified manner of representing the Indian, which helps to explain in part the resulting lack of definition of his work. For, if there is no doubt that the Inhabitant is ambiguous to modern viewers, it is more difficult to ascertain precisely where this ambiguity lies. Like other writers, Buntinx assumes that the
186
lack of definition of the figure represented in the painting automatically means that it is equivalent to representing an ambiguous social group, the Mestizo. The lack of definition, however, may respond to other factors. On the one hand it may respond to Laso's desire to negate any fundamental difference between the Peruvian Indian and other social groups within the country. Adhering to the basic liberal principle of equality and further rejecting any kind of biological determinism, Laso refused to discuss the Indian as a separate racial group. To emphasize a difference through phenotype would have implied a betrayal of those principles. Significantly, in Laso's paintings, it is primarily the costume, an element which can be changed at will, which represents the Indian's difference. On the other hand, the indeterminacy of Laso's figures may only be perceptible to those raised on more rigid stereotypes of Indianness. In fact, by 1937, when the first qualms about Laso's Indians began to be voiced, the Indigenist movement in painting, which had already perfected a particular manner of representing the Indian, dominated the Peruvian artistic scene. The exaltation of the Indian's body emerged as an obsession among these painters and writers, whose political rhetoric valued notions of virility and character. Drawing on the organicist and vitalist currents of early 20th-century thought, Indigenists forged a theory of telluricism in which, through the conflation of biological and geographical notions, the Indian's body was made to express the power of the mountainous Andean
187
landscape. The "man of bronze" of the Andes was an ideal which could be easily accommodated to the aggressive vindications sought by the revolutionary politics of the period.
Indigenist representations placed
emphasis on the Indian's body, exaggerating the elements of physique, facial features, and musculature, in order to define the "character" of the race. The opinions of Laso's critics of the 1930s were informed by these Indigenist representations. Raygada, for example, was an ardent advocate of Indigenist painting, in particular of the School of Sabogal, the movement which did the most to perfect the visual stereotypes now commonly associated with the Indian. Indigenists claimed that they had captured the essence of the race. This was not merely an aesthetic but also an ethical and a political assertion, for it implied that their images derived from close physical and spiritual proximity with the Indian.
The
coarseness of the fabrics on which they painted and the intentional crudity of their images became signifiers of proximity, and their claims to greater realism were expressed through a process of caricaturization. Indigenists thus considered their images to be adequate representations of the "character of the race." José Sabogal once told an interviewer that Laso's Indians, "painted after his return from Europe," looked like "Tibetans," and that even his llamas "lacked character."77 Sabogal implied that Laso's works were inadequate because the painter was geographically and 77JIn a response to an interview by César Francisco Macera, reproduced in José Sabogal, Obras literarias completas, ed. Ignacio Prado Pastor (Lima: By the author and Talleres Gráficos P. L. Villanueva, 1989): 403.
188
spiritually detached from his models. What Indigenists claimed as a form of realism was, however, only a different aesthetic and racial ideal. In fact, the same dismissal in the name of realism which Sabogal and others turned against Laso was later used to question the painted Indians of the Indigenists.78 Modern critics have generally approached Laso's paintings as if they were defined by naturalist intentions. Yet to ask whether Laso's Indians are "realistic" is, of course, a false question. Francisco Stastny has rightly questioned these expectations of realism: Instead of representing accidents of individuality or stopping to describe defects --as Courbet and Daumier programmatically did--, Laso initiates in his Pascanas a search for ideal "types," in whose serene beauty the spectator must see the sublimated prototype of Indianness.79 What Stastny is describing is the academic notion of the ideal which defined Laso's practice as a painter.
It would seem logical to
deduce from this the plain, and accurate, statement that Laso idealizes the Indian. Yet this is a deceptively simple assertion to make, for, if there are no evident visual models of any importance for the artist to refer to, what 78Mirko Lauer argues that the Indigenists failed because they were unable to "feel" the Indian, "No por resistencia a mirarlo, sino por real imposibilidad de verlo." Later, however, Lauer contradicts his argument when he calls the search for the "true Indian," a "myth." See "La pintura indigenista peruana. Una visión desde los años 90," Márgenes VI, nos. 10-11 (October 1993): 104, 106. 79[En lugar de representar lo accidental del individuo y de deternerse a describir sus defectos--como hacían programáticamente Courbet o Daumier--, Laso emprende en sus Pascanas la búsqueda de "tipos" ideales, en cuya serena belleza el espectador debe ver el prototipo sublimado de lo indígena.] Francisco Stastny, "En torno a la exposición Laso," El Dominical, supplement of El Comercio, 7-IX-1969, p. 38. The article is a response to the critical review of the exhibition of 1969 written by José Flores Araoz. In that review Flores Araoz described Laso as a "realist." See "Equívocos, silencios, omisiones: Francisco Laso, muestra imperfecta," La Prensa, 24-VIII-1969, p. 30.
189
is this "Indian" which Laso idealizes, and further, how is any idealization effected? We have already mentioned the ways in which Laso dignifies the figure of the Indian by avoiding the derogatory stereotypes usually associated with the Indian population. Yet idealization begins with Laso's conception of painting as an ennobling activity. Although Laso never discussed the realist painters of his time, he offered a severe criticism of the realist writers of the French bohemia. For the painter, those writers and dramatists had been driven by their cynicism to forsake the ideal in favor of low sensationalist tactics.80 Laso's ideal artist, instead, inhabited only "elevated regions," and was "gifted with the instinct to seek the beautiful, the good and the just."81 Laso's conception of painting does not allow for a comparison of his images of Indians with those created in other visual modes. They cannot, for example, be compared to contemporary caricatures such as that included in the album titled "Adefecios" which was sold at the lithographic store of Leon Williez in Lima in the mid-1850s (fig. 29).82 80Laso
wrote: "Los fabricantes de novelas y dramas realistas y de portée son my parecidos a los poetas: si son menos ridículos, menos simples que éstos, tienen en cambio mas cinismo. El dramaturgo, con el pretesto de anatomizar la sociedad y de conocer el corazon humano, no hay fango en el cual no se enlode, no hay absurdo y extravagancia que no practique." See "Un recuerdo" p. 205 81"Y, en efecto, señores Redactores, si UU. han nacido artistas, como yo vine al mundo, convendrán en que uno no puede reconvenir al todo Poderoso por haberlo dotado con el instinto de buscar lo bello, lo bueno, lo justo. . . . El verdadero artista tiene forzosamente que ser bueno, por que lo bueno es lo bello; y no puede ser malo, porque lo malo y lo injusto es la fealdad. El verdadero artista es el hombre feliz sobre la tierra, por que viviendo en las rejiones elevadas, desconoce los grillos de la necia preocupación, y se desprende de los embarazos de la vanidad ridícula." "Tiempos pasados," p. 52. 82Although they are usually attributed to Leon Williez, he was more likely the editor
190
Caricature demanded ease of reading and clear identifications, and if the Indian's features in images such as this are exaggerated, they inhabit a space in which everything else is similarly transformed. The same applies to early book illustration, of which the images in Paz Soldán's album are a good example (fig. 20).
Paz Soldán, seeking ethnographic veracity,
assured his readers of the superiority of his images over other descriptions or drawings, which he dismissed as simple "caricatures." His images were validated by the truth value of the photographs on which they had been based.83
Book illustration, political caricature and painting are each
framed by different demands and expectations, and each functions within specific visual codes.
Laso's paintings are as far removed from the
scientific positivism of Paz Soldán, as they are from Williez's caricatures. Thus, the indeterminacy of Laso's Indians is in part to be explained by the need to differentiate painting from other visual modes. To caricature his Indian figures or to define them with ethnographic rigor would have been a breach of decorum, a betrayal of the very notions which defined his conception of painting as a differentiated and ennobling activity. Laso's adherence to the academic ideal further implied a rejection of naturalism. This is clarified in an earlier essay in which he discussed the ceramic works of the pre-Columbian period. In "Algo sobre bellas of the series. 83"Dichas tres láminas son tomadas de unas muy buenas fotografías que M. Garreaud sacó durante su viaje al interior del Perú. Estas estampas, darán de los indígenas mejor idea que cualquiera descripción o dibujo, o mejor dicho de caricaturas que se han hecho hasta ahora." Las recomendamos a los etnógrafos." Paz Soldán, Atlas del Perú, p. 65.
191
artes," Laso praised these works by placing them on the same level as those of Lucca della Robbia; he claimed that in their vessels the Indians had "not simply copied men, animals and fruits," but that, in creating them, they had in fact been guided by a "philosophic idea."84 Laso's belief that naturalism belonged to an inferior stage of artistic production could not be made more explicit. This does not mean, however, that Laso rejected direct observation or the study from nature. In October of 1851, before undertaking his second trip to Europe, Laso requested a leave of absence from his post as interim director of the National Drawing Academy in order to undertake "a quick survey of the monuments that the ancient Capital of the Incas presents to the traveler and artist."85
The drawings and oil sketches
which Laso made during this trip, along with a few others created during an earlier stay in Arequipa (fig. 36),86
demonstrate his interest in
personally studying the subjects which he would later take to painting. 84"Los indios en sus huacos no solo copiaban simplemente al hombre, a los animales y las frutas.--Muchas veces, al trazar una obra, tenian una idea filosófica." See "Algo sobre bellas artes," p. 78. 85[Francisco Laso, Director Interino de la Academia Nacional de Dibujo ante Vuestra Excelencia me presento y digo: Que antes de regresar a Europa según Vuestra Excelencia me ha prometido mandarme, necesito hacer una ligera recorrida de los celebres monumentos que la antigua Capital de los Incas presenta al viajero y al artista; a cuyo fin he resuelto marchar en el próximo vapor que sale del Callao el 26 del corriente.] Document in the AGN; transcribed from a photocopy in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. Laso was granted permission to travel on October 24. He left for southern Peru on October 26, and had apparently returned by the end of February. Save for his stated intention to travel to Cuzco, the exact route he took and the places he visited remain unknown. 86Laso's small oil sketch, Indian Woman Spinning (40 x 23.5 cm., Museo de Arte de Lima, Nº V 2.0-1102), bears an inscription on the reverse which reads: "Fco. Laso, Arequipa 1849." A painting representing a black servant watching on while her lady sleeps (Museo de Arte, V 2.0-1103) bears the same inscription, which is the only documented reference to Laso's trip to Arequipa that year.
192
Laso apparently took a number of these studies with him back to Europe when he left Peru in 1852,87 and it is likely that he may have used some of these sketches in creating his Inhabitant of the Cordilleras in Paris. In the same manner, Laso later used photography (figs. 30-35) as an aide in constructing his painting titled Haravicu (fig. 46). Yet the drawing and the photograph are but stages in the process of creating a painting. While the poses of the figures in the photographs, and the items of dress which they wear, are almost identical to those which appear in the painting, they produce a drastically different effect. By reducing details to a minimum and defining masses through simplified contours, Laso suppresses the documentary connotations of the photograph. The polish of the painting minimizes any evidence that could imply that the representation is a simple extension of an actually perceived reality. Idealization thus involves in part an erasure of any element which could evoke direct experience. Laso's
photographs
and
representations of their subjects.
drawings
are
not
unmediated
For example, Laso's drawing of an
Indian Woman Spinning (fig. 36) follows the conventions he had earlier applied to the portrayal of an Italian peasant woman (fig. 37).
Both
sketches share a similar format, drawing technique, emphasis on detailed description, and even the procedure of writing down information on the
87A
number of canvasses were bought by a Peruvian collector in Grenoble in the 1940s to a descendant of one of Laso's French friends, the painter Henri Blanc-Fontaine.
193
color scheme of the figure's dress.88 The equivalence established between the European peasant and the Peruvian Indian, will be continued in many of Laso's works, where the European pictorial conventions applied to such subjects will be recurrently used by Laso in composing his works. If the drawings do not necessarily have priority with relation to the subjects they portray, the photographs also do not have precedence within the creative process of Laso's paintings. The figures represented in the photographs are posed according to a pre-established compositional plan. They have been clearly posed by the artist to conform to his compositional scheme, and their purpose, as studies of pose and drapery, is no different from that of the standard preparatory sketch.
In this case, the
photographs are not placed in the service of ethnographic veracity. At most, the photographs can be considered a time-saving device, as they allow the painter to eliminate a stage in the preparation of the painting. The Indigenists were only partly correct when they claimed that Laso had stylized or idealized the Indian.
For they simultaneously
assumed that there existed a "true" representation of the Indian to which Laso's painting did not correspond. Their response to Laso's Indians is not very different from the reaction of one 19th-century reader to an image labeled "Indios de la Sierra" in Manuel Atanasio Fuentes' famous book on Lima of 1866. This reader struck out the word "Indian" from the
88The drawing of an Indian Woman Spinning bears an inscription on the reverse in which the colors of the elements of dress are carefully described. In the case of the Italian Peasant Woman, this inscription is located on the obverse, on the upper left hand corner.
194
legend and wrote beneath it with indignation: "Seen by a Frenchman!";89 the supposition being that someone who did not know the real Indian had made the illustration and that the label did not correspond to the image. The sense of deceived expectations present in this judgment is no different from that which accompanied Indigenist statements that Laso's Indians were somehow inappropriate. Underlying these expectations is the notion that there is an Indian essence which a particular set of phenotypic symbols can express. This belief denies the basic fact that any representation of the "Indian" is a generalization, and that the notion of "Indianness" is in fact an abstract category, a concept with no single or fixed referent. For, what could possibly be the visual or physical referent of the term "Indian"? When reading a text, the term immediately evokes an appropriate image in the reader's mind. Yet this image will inevitably change depending on the reader's expectations which, as we have seen, are socially and historically determined. However, when confronting a visual representation, the viewer must confront a particular interpretation of the concept, which may or may not be in accordance with his/her expectations. The notion that any image can represent an "Indian essence" is thus seriously flawed. As ideal representations, Laso's Indians remain at a conscious level of generalization.
Academic theory was in large part devoted to the
problems deriving from the need to give abstract categories visual form. 89The
volume of Fuentes' Lima bearing this inscription is in the Rare Books section of the Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin.
195
The standard view of academic writers was that the ideal did not exist in nature but was actively constructed in the artist's mind.90 In this regard, it is possible to say that the academic notion of representation is more honest than realist conceptions, and that it comes closer to the actual processes by which we give certain concepts visual form. Raygada, as later McElroy and Buntinx, stated that the indeterminacy of Laso's images of Indians originated in the artist's use of Mestizo models.91 He based his assertion on the fact that the models represented in the photographs for Laso's Haravicu were in fact friends of the painter dressed in Indian costume. This does appear to be the case in some of the photographs, such as the one in which Laso himself is represented in Indian dress, but it is more difficult to say the same about the rest of the models. Although the question of the appropriate racial designation for these models is evidently futile, it is useful in that it brings up an important aspect of the modern obsession with the "true" representation of the Indian.
For the process of identification of the
figures in the photographs involves exactly the same procedures and assumptions as are involved in racially identifying an actual person. The modern obsession with the Indian's image is thus also part of a history of Creole racism, a continuation of the very same Creole anxieties of racial indeterminacy which we discussed in the opening chapter. 90See
the entries for "Idéal," in C.-H. Watelet and P.-C. Lévesque, Dictionnaire des arts de peinture, sculpture et gravure [1792], 5 vols. (Geneva: Minkoff Reprints, 1972): 91Keith McElroy, Early Peruvian Photography. A Critical Case Study, Studies in Photography, no. 7 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1985): 40.
196
Laso's conception of painting in fact defined the failure of his images of Indians. Idealization did not allow for any form of caricature, and the ambiguous and uncertain features of Laso's Indians impeded their subsequent adoption as valid symbols of Indianness. We may question the obsession modern writers have shown in determining the "true" image of the Indian, yet it remains a crucial part of the history of Laso's paintings.
197
Chapter 5: Cosmopolitan Spaces: Francisco Laso at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855
My mother Frenchified me in Peru, and France Latin Americanized me . . .1 Alfredo Bryce Echenique
When I arrived in Paris in 1949 I realized two things: that I didn't know how to paint and that I was a Latin American.2 Fernando de Szyszlo
Latin American cosmopolitanism is not a form of uprootedness, nor our nativism a provincialism. We are condemned to search in our land, an other land, and in the other, our own.3 Octavio Paz
1Alfredo
Bryce Echenique, Permiso para vivir. (Antimemorias) (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1993): 20. 2Interview by Ana María Escallón in Mario Vargas Llosa, et al., Fernando de Szyszlo (Bogotá and New York: Ediciones Alfred Wild, 1991): 27. 3"El cosmopolitismo latinoamericano no es un desarraigo ni nuestro nativismo es un provincialismo. Estamos condenados a buscar en nuestra tierra, la otra tierra; en la otra, a la nuestra." Octavio Paz, "José Guadalupe Posada y el grabado latinoamericano," in Los privilegios de la vista. Arte de México, México en la obra de Octavio Paz, III - Letras Mexicanas (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987): 188.
200
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NATION While Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras and the portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro had been framed as a form of criticism of Peruvian society, they also claimed to represent the nation abroad. But the showing of Laso's works at the Universal Exhibition of 1855 was only part of a broader movement of national representation in international contexts, a campaign in which many members of the generation of 1848 would come to play an increasingly important role. This campaign was in part fueled by a concern with the opinions about the country offered in the growing number of texts on Peru published by foreigners abroad.4 In his defense of Laso's Aguinaldo, Corpancho had criticized extranjerismo, a weakness for things foreign which blinded Peruvians to what writers from other countries said about Peru: Not long ago the Crónica de New-York, speaking of the state of the Peruvian press, presented our Republic almost as a tribe of Hottentots and Araucanians. With all this, our dailies, usually so eager to air disputes on the merits of singers, sanctioned with their silence the most slanderous absurdities. If necessary, I could cite many other cases of travelers and writers of all kinds, fruitful and ready to insult us, in order to show that we have always left slander and offense unpunished when he who pronounces is not a compatriot.5 4Examples
of this concern: "Colaboradores. La Europa y el Perú," El Heraldo de Lima, 11-V-1855; "Comunicados. El Eco Hispanoamericano y el Perú," La Independencia, 12-XII-1860; Peruvian newspapers often translated articles on Peru from foreign journals in order that Peruvians could see for themselves the things that were said of the country. See for example: "Variedades. Los escritores extrangeros y la América," El Heraldo de Lima, 14-VII-1854. 5[No hace mucho que la Crónica de New-York hablando del estado de la prensa peruana presentó a nuestra República casi como una tribu de Hotentotes o de Araucanos. Con todo esto, nuestros diarios tan afanosos para ventilar disputas sobre el mérito de las cantatrices, sancionaron con el silencio los absurdos mas claumniosos. Otros muchos
201
In many ways, this concern is similar to that expressed by earlier costumbrista writers about foreign surveillance of Peru, yet there is a radical difference between the two. While costumbristas sought to reform Peruvian society by criticizing its customs, the generation of 1848 attempted to construct new models and offer new representations of the nation. During the years Laso spent in Paris, a number of his friends also embarked on projects, usually with state support, which claimed to represent the country.
In 1850, requesting leave of absence from the
National Drawing Academy in order to travel to Europe, Merino had explained that although he left on personal business, he also wanted to serve his country by publishing a book devoted to Peruvian customs on which he had been working.6 In 1854 Merino would publish in Paris the new edition of the late 18th-century satirical poem on Lima by Esteban de Terralla y Landa, illustrated with his lithographs based on drawings of tapadas and other typical costumbrista images.7 Merino's attempt to
casos de viajeros y escritores de todo jénero, fáciles y fecundos para insultarnos, pudera citar si fuese neesario, demostrando que seimpre hemos dejado impune el ultraje o la calumnia cuando el que la pronuncia no tiene para notros los lasos del paisanaje.] Corpancho, "El Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú," El Comercio, 10-IX-1854. 6[Quiero también aprovechar de esta ocasión para llevar a cabo la publicación de una obra de costumbres del Perú, en la cual he gastado no pequeña parte de mi tiempo, y tan solo con la esperanza de procurar si es posible, algún impulso al bello arte que se cultiva en esta Capital mediante el protector celo del Supremo Gobierno.] Document dated February 1850 in the AGN, transcribed from a photocopy in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. 7Simón Ayanque [Esteban de Terralla y Landa], Lima por dentro y fuera. Obra jocosa y divertida la da a luz Simón Ayanque para escarmiento de algunos y entretenimiento de todos [1797], new ed., illustrated by Ignacio Merino (Paris: Librería Española de A. Mézin, [1854]).
202
represent the country abroad exemplifies the costumbrista outlook and helps to better delineate the difference separating him from the artists and writers of the generation of 1848. Merino simply presented a satirical and derogatory image of the nation, an act which implies a distance from that which is being criticized, but which does not itself assert a different form of representation. The generation of 1848, however, attempted to represent that difference directly. In 1852 Corpancho had been sent to Europe on a government commission related to his activity as a surgeon.
While in Paris, in
association with Oscar Comettant, Corpancho published a compilation of Peruvian poetry and music titled Album peruano, which he dedicated to President Echenique, whose government had financed the edition.8 In order to contest foreign views of Peru, the generation of 1848 tried to create tangible national products which could place Peru among the civilized nations, that is, cultural products that could show that Peruvian society was not inhabited by Hottentots. The generation of 1848 was perhaps Peru's first fully cosmopolitan generation. Intellectuals rejected the categorization of their country as an exotic region, and attempted to erase the differences which separated them from Europe.
Their situation was generalized throughout Latin
America; the movement of artists and intellectuals to metropolitan centers (and usually back), increased dramatically after independence. Claiming 8Holguín Callo, Tiempos de infancia y bohemia, p. 153-154, no. 62. I have been unable to locate a copy of this book which was recently stolen from the National Library in Lima.
203
one of the main promises of the Enlightenment, young Creole Americans traveled to Paris, London, and Rome, not as exiles or émigrés, but as cosmopolitans, as participants in a world culture. Whether in commerce, the sciences, or the arts, they had sought inclusion and equal participation in an international community.
The excitement of liberation and
discovery soon gave way to a more questioning and critical attitude. By the last decades of the century, these cosmopolitans were already aware of the vertical nature of their relationship to European centers, unequal development, and their peripheral position in the international community. They became aware of their paradoxical position as marginal cosmopolitans. But the marginalization of the cosmopolitan is not brought about similarly in different spheres of activity. This is why the term "cultural dependence," borrowed from the terminology of the theorists of economic neocolonialism, is not always useful or particularly precise. In the visual arts, the marginalization of the Latin American cosmopolitan has been effected primarily through one particular discourse, that of cultural authenticity--for the Latin American cosmopolitan has no place within a discourse which privileges the organic relationship of the individual artist to an endogamous, pure, and essential culture.9 The manner in which Laso has been discussed by contemporary critics shows that his work is constantly defined through this discourse of 9See
James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
204
authenticity. In this sense, his work is treated no differently than that of other Latin American artists. The traditional critical strategy which has been systematically applied to Latin American art since the 19th century is deceptively simple: in order to be acceptable in international circuits, Latin American art must be made different; for when found to be familiar, or similar, it is defined as derivative.10
In either case, artists from Latin
America are effectively placed on the margins--outside or beneath/behind the culture of the West. Critics thus decry Laso's "Europeanizing" style, his "exoticized" Indians, and his supposed cultural alienation.11 He is chastised for having used the language of Europe. Like Laso, most Latin American cosmopolitans are expected to have an "other" language or an "other" culture, different from the culture of the modern West; but these cosmopolitans have no other culture, nor can they speak in another tongue.
They have sought to be included as the same, but the
international community has systematically rejected any of their signs of sameness.
10See Gerardo Mosquera, "Presentación," in Ante América, exh. cat. (Bogotá: Biblioteca Luis-Angel Arango, 1992): 12-16. For a discussion of current debates on the presentation of Latin American art in international contexts, see Mari Carmen Ramírez, "Beyond 'the Fantastic': Framing Identity in U.S. Exhibitions of Latin American Art," Art Journal vol. 51, no. 4 (1992): 59-68. 11José Sabogal, for example, characterized Laso as a "European" painter. See Obras literarias completas, p. 403. For Sebastián Salazar Bondy, Laso "aprende bien la técnica del arte europeo y trata de hallar en el tema un estilo propio, tal como lo demuestra su Santa Rosa de Lima, sin lograrlo." See "La pintura peruana contemporánea," in Una voz libre en el caos. Ensayo y crítica de arte (Lima: Jaime Campodónico Editor, 1990): 45; see also his discussion of Laso in "Los que intentan vencer el complejo," where he sees Laso's "European technique" as a major obstacle to the achievement of a Peruvian painting. Ibid., p. 263.
205
The discourse of authenticity deriving from romantic notions of originality, also defined these intellectual's own perceptions, and by the mid 19th century it had already determined debates on the nature of American literature. In Peru this debate was revived during the early 1850s with the publication of the first serious literary works by members of the generation of 1848.
A series of critical commentaries on
Corpancho's Ensayos poeticos centered exclusively on this particular issue. Authors debated whether in fact an original literature could be produced from "imports," whether a "derivative" and "dependent" literature could be superseded.12 José Marmol struck a note of resignation arguing that Spanish America would not develop its own literature for at least three generations.13 For Noboa, the links to the true Catholicism of "the genius of Castile" could be a way of evading the damning influence of the affected religiosity of French writers, but for other writers a retrograde Spain could no longer be a significant model. José Casimiro Ulloa also believed that the literary history of America would for a long time have to be conflated with that of Spain since "the efforts America had made were still insufficient to create its own literature;" yet he urged writers not to "renounce their aspirations of originality" and to cultivate all the "elements
12The
terms are used by Ignacio Noboa in "Las Brisas del Mar," one of the introductory chapters to Corpancho's Ensayos poéticos, pp. 21-22, 30. 13José Marmol, "Juicio del Sr. Marmol," in Corpancho, Ensayos poéticos, p. 59.
206
of spontaneity" that would some day help to forge a truly American literature.14 The demand for a national literature did not contradict, and in fact derived, from these intellectuals' cosmopolitanism. Miguel del Carpio, guide and patron of the generation of 1848, advised Corpancho to struggle toward the creation of a national art precisely because it was a sign of civilization. In order to resemble the more advanced nations, Peru should have a distinctive character "which is not, nor can be, nor should be anyone else's."15
The problem, however, was how to achieve this
difference. The only advice Carpio was able to give Corpancho was that he draw from themes of national history or geography. Although there were yet no comparable debates on the nature of a Latin American painting, the problems were no different from those which confronted writers. Like Corpancho's poetry, Laso's paintings for the Universal Exhibition claimed to offer not only a representation of the nation but also a national artistic production. For Laso, painting itself was a "forced consequence of civilization." Following the standard view of 14[Decimos la gloria literaria de España, porque los esfuerzos de América no han bastado aun para crearle una literatura propia y por largo tiempo tendrá todavía que confundir su historia literaria con la historia literaria de la patria de su lengua. No por esto deberá renunciar á sus aspiraciones de originalidad; antes bien debe cultivar con esmero todos los elementos de espontaneidad de que se servirá algun dia el jénio a quien reserve el destino la gloria de crear la literatura americana.] Ulloa, "Noticia biográfica," in Corpancho, Ensayos poéticos, p. 1. 15[Sabrá U, señor Corpancho, que siempre he deseado que en todo jénero de cosas tenga el Perú lo suyo, lo propio, lo esclusivo, lo que no es, ni pueda, ni deba ser de nadie, para que en esto se parezca nuestra patria á otras cultas naciones, las cuales tienen un carácter señalado, un jénio con tendencias privativas, una literatura especial, y, en fin, una cosa que no se parece a la de los otros pueblos de la tierra.] Miguel del Carpio in Corpancho, Ensayos poéticos, p. 44.
207
European artistic theorists, Laso believed that painting emerged only in the later stages of the civilizing process and was thus one of the highest forms which civilization could take.16 In an essay titled "Algo sobre bellas artes," Laso developed a brief but important early account of the history of art in Peru. He defined civilization as a unilinear progress, a path all nations necessarily followed. While he admitted certain signs in ancient Peruvian monuments which indicated that the native inhabitants of Peru had undertaken significant steps toward civilization, he concluded that this civilizing process had been completely disrupted by the Spanish conquest. Pre-Columbian arts were an irretrievable and dead language which could not serve as a basis for the painters of modern Peru: Since it risked in one night the gold sun, Peru is nothing but a field in which another race, another civilization is transplanted; thus, we will no longer busy ourselves with the art of the Indians, but of European art immigrated to Peru.17 Laso showed respect for the arts produced by colonial Peruvian artists, yet if their works indicated progress, the lack of serious study and the attachment to a decadent Spanish culture had prevented them from fully realizing their achievements. For Laso there was no doubt that the European artistic tradition constituted the only valid artistic model. When in November of 1856 the minister of instruction (Director General de Estudios) requested Laso's advice about the infrastructure necessary to 16"Algo
sobre bellas artes," pp. 76-77. Perú, desde que se juega en una noche el sol de oro, ya no es sino un campo en donde se trasplanta otra raza, otra civilización;--por consiguiente, ya no nos ocuparemos del arte de los indios, sino del arte Europeo inmigrado al Peru.] "Algo sobre bellas artes," p. 79. 17[El
208
install a new National School of Painting, the painter responded by providing a list of models: plaster casts of Greek, Roman, and Renaissance works; engravings after Italian, German, Spanish, and French masters; and copies of the best European paintings.
All these elements were
"absolutely necessary" for the constitution of a "true academy" of painting in Peru. 18 In the present chapter I wish to show how Laso's works first came to be discussed through the discourse of authenticity at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855.
Laso's themes, deriving from national
history, no doubt were a response to the demands placed on the artist by the responsibility of representing the nation in a foreign context. Yet his paintings, attempting to present the nation through the "civilized" language of painting, are also opposed to the traditions of European exoticism. If the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras avoids the traditional gestures of narrative history painting, it nevertheless attempts to engage the elevated rhetoric of the ideal within which history painting was being redefined. The artist deftly manages pictorial rhetoric to announce his elevated intentions. The hieraticism of the main figure, its rigorous frontality, and the restrained range of colors, point to the allegorical ambitions of Laso's painting. The simplicity of the composition offers no distractions to the viewer, and the main figure appears as the only object of the gaze. 18Document
D-12105.
from the archives of the AGN. Photocopy of the document in BNL, n.
209
Although the presence of traditional dress might imply a documentary approach to painting, the lack of color counteracts such a reading. Nothing could be further from the picturesque than the imposing black contours of the main figure, emerging dramatically against the light, almost unmodulated background. Like an emblem, the figure stands in a purely pictorial, abstract, and non-referential space. Therefore, if Laso paints themes from national history, he simultaneously rejects the exoticizing pictorial traditions of European art. But if Laso paints decidedly against the European picturesque, he also rejects the Peruvian counterpart, the descriptive tradition of costumbrismo. In one of the few contemporary Peruvian discussions of The Inhabitant of the Cordilleras, Corpancho went to great lengths to show precisely how much the painter deviated from that picturesque mode.
Corpancho
emphasized Laso's status as a history painter and the seriousness and elevated nature of his art.19 Yet even if one does not agree on a particular interpretation of this work, there is one reading that it effectively impedes: it can neither be read as genre or picturesque representation.
In the
French criticism of the exhibition of 1855, however, this is precisely how his painting was read.
19For Corpancho, Laso's character reveals a "most pronounced genius for historical painting," which contrasts with the kind of painting of "scandalous colors" preferred by Peruvian audiences. See "Exposición Universal. D. Francisco Lazo [sic]," El Heraldo de Lima, 12-XII-1855.
210
NATIONAL SCHOOLS, COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE BLURRING OF BORDERS Unlike later world fairs, the Exhibition of 1855 had no natives on exhibit,
and
no
grandiose
ethnographic
and
archaeological
reconstructions. Latin American countries were represented, like other nations, in the Industrial and the Fine Arts sections of the exhibition. Yet it is not surprising that the numerous studies of this event have failed to mention these Latin Americans, for only 6 works by three painters were exhibited out of a total of over five thousand works by almost two thousand artists.20 Only two Latin American countries, Mexico and Peru, participated in the exhibition. This minor presence, however, would be countered by the symbolic importance they held within the exhibition as markers of cultural difference. The Universal Exhibition of 1855 satisfied a practical need for comparative criticism by offering an institutional framework for the discussion and evaluation of works of art from different regions. Although geographic determinism had a growing presence in the theory of art since the 18th century, it would be only with the modern idea of the nation that the concept of national schools of painting would be effectively put to use. What had been scattered ideas before the exhibition were now
20Patricia
Mainardi, Art and Politics of the Second Empire. The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987). See also Marcia Pointon, "'From the Midst of Warfare and its Incidents to the Peaceful Scenes of Home': The Exposition Universelle of 1855," Journal of European Studies XI, pt. 4, no. 44 (December 1981): 233-262; and Rachel Essner, "Regards français sur la peinture allemande à l'Exposition Universelle de 1855," Romantisme no. 73 (1991): 103-112.
211
given practical application and an institutional force. The early 1850s saw a growing number of art exhibitions, in London, Brussels and Berlin, Dublin and New York, which showed works by artists from different countries; but until the Exhibition of 1855, none had stipulated that artists participate as representatives of their nations.21
Exhibition regulations
explicitly stated that no product of a foreign country could be accepted without the prior authorization of the respective national official or committee.22 Thus, in November of 1854, Laso and Merino approached the Peruvian Legation in Paris to inquire about their participation, which was subsequently arranged.23 In the case of foreign painters, the national embassy became the intermediary between the artists and the exhibition organizers. Interpellating artists as representatives of national schools of painting, the exhibition was an important early attempt to fix the frontiers of national cultures by classifying them according to an essentialist discourse of authenticity. Every territorial unit was required to have a distinctive and unique culture, self-contained and coherent, to correspond to the national borders.
21Mainardi,
Art and Politics of the Second Empire, p.39. universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages . . ., p. xvi. 23Although official exhibition regulations left the choice of the works to be exhibited to the national committees, the Peruvian Legation official claimed that it was necessary, and preferable, that the artists submit their works to the French jury. See the letter from Francisco de Rivero in Paris to the Minister of Foreign Relations in Lima, dated 28 November, 1854. Archive of the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Lima. Servicio Diplomático, Legación en Francia, 1854, file 5-14/5, no. 165. Although the interests of the Peruvian embassy had been centered on the exhibition of industries, Peru was ultimately only represented in the Fine Arts section. See documents nos. 80, 112, 122, 137 in the same file, and no. 50 in file 5-14/5, for 1855. 22Exposition
212
The very structure of the exhibition determined its critical parameters. Critics entered exhibition halls that had been neatly arranged by the Imperial Commission in clearly defined national sections (fig. 38),24 and they consulted an official salon catalogue that listed artists under their nation's heading. Faced with the daunting task of reviewing such a vast number of works, they organized their writings by following the organization by national schools presented in the exhibition.25 In short, the exhibition framed the hope, later expressed by Hippolyte Taine, that works of art could be placed "like families in museums and libraries, like plants in an herbarium and animals in a museum."26
Yet this rigid
taxonomy, regulated by the frontiers of the national schools, was completely disrupted by a new cosmopolitanism.
Claude Vignon
expressed every critic's amazement and frustration upon finding that "the nationalities, so well separated in the livret, are often confused, or at least difficult to find and distinguish."27 The idea of "national schools" implied the possibility of classifying art through the recognition of difference, and there was no significant difference precisely where it was most expected. 24Exposition
There was
universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages. . ., p. xxii, art. 27. J. Delécluze explicitly stated: "Conformement au livret de l'Exposition universelle, nous avons suivi l'ordre alphabétique dans lequel sont rangées les nations qui ont pris part à ce grand concours." See Les Beaux-Arts dans les deux mondes en 1855 (Paris: Charpentier, Libraire-Éditeur, 1856): viii. 26[Car il y a des faits ici comme ailleurs, des faits positifs et qui peuvent être observés, j'entends les œuvres d'art rangées par familles dans les musées et les bibliothèques, comme plantes dans un herbier et les animaux dans un muséum.] Philosophie de l'art, 11th ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1904): vol. I, p. 14. 27Claude Vignon [Noémi Cadiot], Exposition Universelle de 1855. Beaux-Arts (Paris: Libraire d'Auguste Fontaine, 1855): 20. 25Etienne
213
disillusionment, even outrage, in the critics who surveyed the paintings sent by artists coming from supposedly exotic locales. As Edmond About stated, "Those who counted on finding at the Exhibition picturesque information on unknown countries will be a bit disappointed in their expectations."28 And of the countries represented in the exhibition, few were expected to be more exotic than Mexico and Peru. For over three centuries, these two names had been associated in the European imagination with fantastic stories of amazing treasures, strange peoples, and a bizarre geography. Enlightenment thinkers gave these images new life when they turned to the Incas and Aztecs to illustrate their disputes; and during the 19th century, travel books and journals helped popularize the findings of an emerging Americanist archaeology and ethnography, invariably illustrating the texts with magnificent landscapes, fabulous ruins, and curious peoples and costumes.29 It was in these countries, both geographically distant and symbolically exotic, that critics expected to more easily recognize the boundary lines of national schools.
And precisely because of these
expectations, the character of the cosmopolitan artist sent to represent these newly decolonized countries was particularly disturbing to the critics.30 Peru's Laso and Merino were students of Raymond Quinsac 28About,
Voyage à travers l'Exposition des Beaux-Arts. Peinture et scultpure, p. 64. the famous Enlightenment debates on the nature of the New World see Antonello Gerbi, La disputa del Nuevo Mundo; for the "rediscovery" of America in European travel writing of the 18th and 19th centuries see Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. 30The salvadoreño painter Francisco Cisneros, pupil of Gigoux, participated in the French section of the exhibition. See Exposition Universelle de 1855. Beaux-Arts. 29For
214
Monvoisin and Charles Gleyre respectively, Mexico's Juan Cordero had studied in the Academy of Rome. All three painters had been sent to Europe on government subsidies to complete their artistic training. America, for centuries the site of projected utopias, of dreams of gold and exotic reveries, was represented, not by "natives," but by cosmopolitan Creole intellectuals. The artists from Peru and Mexico came to be perceived, not as participants in a common culture, but as the victims of progress. Referring to the Peruvian exhibition, Delécluze noted that with the exception of the Chinese who had preserved the immemorial traditions of their art, "the most far-off regions, and those whose customs were strangest to us, upon receiving the civilization of Europe, have adopted all its tastes."31 The notion of a technical progress informed critics' discussions of the visual arts, but what was perceived as a benevolent process in industry was unanimously questioned by the critics reviewing the Fine Arts section. Here, progress was not perceived as a clear and rationally controlled succession of events, nor as the expansive movement of an Enlightenment that would illuminate the farthest reaches of the world, but as an uncontrollable force that disturbed all difference. As a gauge of contemporary trends, the exhibition was also a glimpse into the future, and many critics ventured to set forth their predictions of where the present advances would lead. Loudun pointed Explication des ouvrages..., p. 281, cat. no. 2751. 31Delécluze, Les Beaux-Arts dans les deux mondes en 1855, p.145.
215
to "the spirit of universality which tends to efface distinct characters and to melt away all nuances in a yet undecided ensemble, these are the new conditions for criticism and for art."32 The critics envisaged a process that was at once uncontrollable and inevitable, one which they could embrace or refuse, but which they could not define or affect. Noticing the lack of differentiation, Louis Peisse wondered whether the entire world was not on its way to forming a single world culture and asked: "These [national] frontiers, must they also disappear under the leveling of the railways?"33 The presence of the marginal cosmopolitan thus heralded a new and problematic state of affairs that the critics were quick to name: that of an impending process of homogenization.
The future was a site where
difference would be eradicated, where everything would be the same. The very possibility of such a homogeneous world was quickly rejected. A world without difference is impossible to classify and to order, impossible to organize, but also devoid of any hierarchy. The demand for cultural difference was thus deployed to counter the perceived blurring of borders of an expanding world culture. In the face of cosmopolitanism, critics did not abandon national classification imposed by the exhibition, but rather reaffirmed those categories which they perceived as vanishing before their very eyes. It was precisely in his review of the Universal Exhibition of 1855 that 32Eugène Loudun [Eugène Balleyguier], Le Salon de 1855 (Paris: Ledoyen, Éditeur, 1855): 1-2. 33Louis Peisse, "Beaux-Arts. Exposition Universelle," Le Constitutionnel, 25 May, 1855. Among the authors who also refer to this idea are Paul Mantz, "Salon de 1855," La Revue française 2 (1855): 22-23, and Loudun, Le Salon de 1855, pp. 206-207.
216
Baudelaire, following Poe, defined the beautiful as the bizarre. He did so in direct support of variety and against the formula of progress that the exhibition propounded.34 He was not alone. For Paul Mantz "the role of nationalities" had an important role to play, for "an abdication of all originalities" would literally be "the suicide of art."35
Louis Peisse
expressed his hope that "the civilization of the economists will not extend its conquests to that point, and that, at least in the ethereal world of the spirit, of imagination and sentiment, she will leave to future travelers the piquancy of curiosity, the charm of the unexpected, the pleasure of surprise."36
This demand for difference was not simply a victory for
romantic notions of cultural relativism, for the manner in which it was deployed to redefine France's relationship to the rest of the world served to establish a new world hierarchy. The Peruvian and Mexican painters had exhibited their paintings as representatives of their nations, but they had also aspired to equal participation in a contemporary exhibition, as cosmopolitans, as members of a world culture.
However, within the
context of an exhibition which set down the borders of the nation, their works were forcibly tied only to the national and the particular. The 34Charles Baudelaire, Curiosités esthétiques. L'Art romantique, et autres Œuvres critiques, Henri Lemaitre, ed. (Paris: Garnier,1962): esp. 215-216. The threat of homogenization pervades many of Baudelaire's writings. For example, Constantin Guys, the "painter of modern life" was a cosmopolitan, a "man of the world," who devoted his time to the creation of extended inventories of the picturesque, whether in London, Turkey, or Spain. It is no surprise that he also lived in a world where Turkish women had adopted a "Parisian air" and where the crinoline threatened to displace the native dress of the women of Turkey. See the section "Pompes et solemnités," in "Le peintre de la vie moderne," Ibid., p.476-479. 35Mantz, "Salon de 1855," La Revue française 2 (1855): 608. 36Peisse,"Beaux-Arts. Exposition Universelle," n.p.
217
exhibition interpellated them for the difference they could produce, framed them as "others", and in so doing, broke the spell of their identity as cosmopolitans. Subjected to this critical strategy, they found they had no place in the new hierarchy except as the transparent vehicles for exoticism or as simple appendages of an expanding French culture.
IN SEARCH OF LOST DIFFERENCE: "LOCAL COLOR" AND THE PICTURESQUE Of the painters from Latin America who had presented works at the exhibition, none enjoyed the critical success of Francisco Laso. In reviews of an exhibition of almost 5,000 works, even a passing reference to a particular painting meant an acknowledgment of its importance. When the mere fact of being mentioned in the press implied recognition, Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras was reproduced as an engraving in L'Illustration and the Magasin pittoresque, was caricatured in the Journal pour Rire, and discussed by most of the leading critics of the period. But this success came at a great cost.
What was primarily valued in the
painting was not the artist's ability, but the fact that it satisfied certain demands for difference, that even if only at the level of content, the painting could be claimed as an "authentic" work. The manner in which the critics managed to make the painting conform to their ideals of difference produced a highly idiosyncratic reading of this painting, now generally known as the Indian Potter, a title it was given by the French critics in 1855. There would appear to be little difference between this 218
popular, if apocryphal, title and the painting's official designation as the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras of Peru [Habitant des Cordillières du Pérou];37 but behind this apparently innocuous change in title lies a radical transformation in the reading of the painting. The idiosyncratic manner in which the French critics read the painting cannot be explained simply as a result of French ignorance of a specific history, or to the carelessness with which many of the reviews of the exhibition were written. For in such a case one would expect to find different readings, different interpretations, while in fact French criticism of the exhibition was unanimous. It is also not enough to state that the critics read in the painting what they were expecting to find.38 Their interpretation shows a struggle with the work, whose meanings and whose presence they managed effectively to circumvent. This was as much a confrontation with the painted work as with the very categories the exhibition put into play. The critics who reviewed Laso's works at the exhibition saw neither the symbolic charge of the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras nor its relationship to the imaginary portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro.
Their reviews focused
primarily on the Inhabitant, which they read in a radically different manner than that which we established. The figure holding the ceramic vessel was identified as a potter,39 and its function reduced from that of an 37Original
title in French, Habitant des Cordillières du Pérou, cat. no. 1654. a reading of how expectations color the interpretations of French critics see Essner, "Regards français sur la peinture allemande à l'Exposition Universelle de 1855." 39Along with those critics cited in the text: Delécluze, Les Beaux-Arts dans les deux 38For
219
allegorical figure to that of a simple artisan. One critic suggested that the ceramic was his "masterpiece . . . maybe even a family portrait,"40 while another simply exclaimed "this man makes ceramics, he is a king of creation."41 Only the painter Ernest Charton, who had recently visited Peru and who was acquainted with pre-Columbian art, realized that the ceramic vessel had not been created by the figure holding it. Nevertheless, no knowledge of pre-Columbian art is needed in order to realize that this ceramic, which bears the traces of the passage of time, is not contemporaneous with the figure holding it. Yet even a critic with as much first-hand knowledge as Charton failed to appreciate Laso's allegorical intentions. Charton created a narrative in which the figure holding the ceramic is an amateur archaeologist or grave digger who has recently discovered the vessel in an ancient tomb and concludes his discussion by saying that the importance of the painting lay in its manner of showing "all that is original and even picturesque in the national costume."42
mondes en 1855, p. 146; Escandón, La industria y las bellas artes en la Exposición Universal de 1855, pp. 156-157, Loudun, Le Salon de 1855, p. 88, A.J. du Pays, "Exposition des Beaux-Arts. Écoles diverses," L'Illustration, journal universel, XXVI, no. 670 (December 25, 1855): 428, Charles Perrier, "Exposition Universelle des Beaux-Arts. Écoles secondaires d'Europe et d'Amérique, L'Artiste, 5 sér., XVI, no.4 (September 23, 1855): 46. 40About, Voyage à travers l'Exposition des Beaux-Arts. Peinture et scultpure, p. 65. 41Valleyres, "Exposition des beaux-arts-Souvenirs d'un Spiritualiste," L'Illustration, journal universel XXVI, no. 670 (December 25, 1855): 442. 42[Ernest Charton], "Les arts au Pérou," Magasin pittoresque XXIV (March, 1856): 102. Although the article is not signed, it is very likely that the author is Ernest Charton, an artist and journalist who had recently been in Peru. His brother, Édouard Charton, was the director of the journal in which the article appeared.
220
This manner of reading Laso's work was not limited to written criticism. The engraving of the painting that appeared in the popular weekly L'Illustration (fig. 39) constitutes as powerful an act of transformation and interpretation as any of the written accounts.43 Where the painting rejected the rhetoric of description through the elimination of superfluous detail, the engraving multiplied the folds of the black poncho, found nonexistant muscles in the hands of the main figure, and added a number of elements to the pre-Columbian pot. The impenetrable solidity of the black surface was pierced by the engraver's thin cross-hatched lines, which also blurred the monumental contours of the main figure, merging and dissolving it into the background. Where the figure represented in the painting lacks any obvious Indian features, the engraver Indianized him by flattening the nose and enlarging the lips. While the ceramic shows the worn look of an ancient object, the engraver transformed it into a gleaming pot recently out of the oven, as he also misunderstood the purpose and meaning of the rope around the neck of the figure. The downcast look of the figure in the ceramic was transformed into a blank, outright, even despondent stare; the sour gesture of the mouth into a smile, and the restrained pose into a meaningless squat. Even the subtle shading of the background was enhanced and turned into a dramatic chiaroscuro, evoking a narrative space absent from the actual painting. 43The
engraving by A. Marc appeared in L'Illustration, journal universel XXVI, no. 670 (December 25, 1855): 428. This engraving was also reproduced in El Correo de ultramar, parte literaria ilustrada Año 15, VII, no. 159 (1856): 44. Another version, apparently by the same engraver, appeared in Magasin pittoresque XXIV (March 1856):101.
221
All meaning was eradicated and all reference to history obliterated. What remained was the beautiful image of an artisan, and the painting was denied the right to signify beyond the level of the picturesque--the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras became the Indian Potter. The meaning of The Inhabitant of the Cordilleras as an allegory of oppression was reduced to the category of picturesque genre, the very category from which Laso had tried to distance himself. But even more important than the demotion of the work within the still imperative hierarchy of genres, was the fact that it was read as a transparent representation of a viewed scene. Delécluze's description of the painting as a young man, dressed in black, who "holds in his hands an earthenware bowl, and stands out against a blue sky,"44 is nothing short of extraordinary.
He transforms, through his description, the abstract
background into a landscape. The critics looked through the frame and projected the topoi of travel writing; they were transported to a distant land where they encountered a young Indian man, a potter, and even constructed a natural scenery for this exotic figure to inhabit; they saw past the layers of paint, as if the work were a window into the brute reality of "Peru." Laso's painting was returned to the context of travel illustration, and it is no small coincidence that the Magasin pittoresque and L'Illustration, where Laso's painting was discussed and reproduced,
44Delécluze,
Les Beaux-Arts dans les deux mondes en 1855, p. 146.
222
should have also been the two most important French journals for the publication of travel accounts.
Ernest Charton, who wrote on Laso's
painting was not only a brother of the founder of both these journals but also a traveler-reporter, whose drawings of South American scenes were often reproduced in the Magasin pittoresque.45
These travel accounts
depended for their success on their ability to transport readers to distant and exotic sites as if those sites were immediately present. The rhetoric of description, the profuse detail, and the vistas which opened out from the pages of journals and travel books helped to sustain that illusion. Critics were attracted to those paintings which allowed them to be similarly transported to foreign lands. Thus, Ignacio Merino's Resting Place of Peruvian Indians, impressed the critic Edmond About, who found its "frankly exotic" subject the equivalent of "un bon chapitre de voyage."46 Yet the other works exhibited by Merino, his Portrait of J.M., and the historical painting Christopher Columbus and his Son Receiving Hospitality in the Convent of Rábida (Spain), were simply ignored by the critics, in the same way in which Juan Cordero's Adulterous Woman and Laso's Gonzalo Pizarro went unacknowledged. These works were passed over because, even when they represented scenes taken from national histories, they refused the transparency of the picturesque. They not only offered no "surprises" to the critics, but they seemed to engage more 45Charton, for example, published drawings of South American scenes in Magasin pittoresque, XX, no. 32 (January 1852): 32, XXXII, no. 44 (October 1864): 357; XXXIX, no. 32 (August 1871): 249. 46About, Voyage à travers l'Exposition des Beaux-Arts. Peinture et scultpure, pp. 6465.
223
directly the conventions and practices of contemporary European painting.
Critics refused works where they recognized pictorial
conventions, such as the portrait or the history painting, or where they saw an iconography deriving from the standard repertory of the European painter.
By reading Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras as the
representation of a viewed scene, the critics had ignored precisely those pictorial conventions that defined Laso's work as an allegorical history painting. They thus denied the aspect of elaboration, the thought of the painter, and the ideas which the artist had imparted to the work. In their search for difference, critics looked, not at the paintings on exhibit, but at the distant lands they could be made to represent. If the signs of the exotic had to be sought somewhere outside the pictorial frame, it was because the paintings themselves were found to be devoid of significance.
"CE N'EST PAS LE PÉROU" OR, THE FAILURE OF AUTHENTICITY What had ultimately been valued in Laso's painting was what was perceived as its "Peruvian" content. For, critics claimed, there was in his works no such thing as a "Peruvian" form, a distinct type of "Peruvian" painting. While the critics had managed to evoke difference in some of the works of the marginal cosmopolitans, they had failed to find authenticity.
Laso, along with Merino and Cordero, were repeatedly
denigrated for making use of a kind of painting that was not properly
224
"Peruvian", or "Mexican". The legend under Bertall's caricature of the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras in the Journal pour rire (fig. 40) read: Why does this Inhabitant hold a moneybox? Doubtless to indicate how much his country is rich in cash. That much is true; but, for painting, ce n'est pas le Pérou (it is not Peru).47 "Ce n'est pas le Pérou," is an old French expression of disillusionment which evokes the riches Peru was famous for and which had excited the European imagination since the conquest. By exclaiming, "ce n'est pas le Pérou," Bertall places Laso's failure precisely in the context of the expectations of difference.
Laso's painting lacked an "authentic"
language, one that could be perceived as unique to Peru.
Yet as a
marginal cosmopolitan, trained in the European pictorial tradition, there was no other, or different, language that he could use. But Laso's pictorial language was not simply not Peruvian; more importantly, it was identified as French. Taxile Delord wrote: The two Peruvians who represent modern art in the country of the Incas have found the climate of Paris more favorable than that of Lima for their paintings, they make Peruvian painting "rue de Grenelle" and "rue des Martyrs."48 47Bertall [Charles-Albert D'Arnould], "Le Salon dépeint et dessiné par Bertall," Journal pour rire nouvelle sèrie no. 204 (25 August 1855), caricature no. 11720. Bertall's reference to Peru's riches simultaneously evokes the economic boom the country experienced during the mid 19th century as a result of guano exports. Peru had a world monopoly of this natural fertilizer, which became one of the most important Peruvian exports during this period. France, along with England, was an important market for this product. 48The critic refers here to the addresses of the two Peruvian painters as given in the exhibition catalogue. Taxile Delord, "III. Exposition des Beaux-Arts-L'École Espagnole," Le Charivari, Monday, July 2, 1855. Virtually the same criticism of the Peruvian artists was expressed by Delécluze, Les Beaux-Arts dans les deux mondes en 1855, p. 146: "il est bien difficile de démèler ce qu'il y a de péruvien et d'européen dans les productions des deux artistes du Nouveau Monde." Another critic was even more pointed: "Quant aux États-Unis, au Pérou et à la Suède, au Danemarck et à la Norwège, ils ont qu'une
225
And Paul Mantz insisted: May we then traverse the ocean, and approach a virgin land where academies have not yet had the time to acclimatize. But, alas!, peine perdue, pointless voyage! America has nothing to teach us. There is, no doubt, in the small Peruvian exhibition the portrait of an Inhabitant of the Cordillera, a delicate and sober painting by M. Francisco Laso; but M. Laso is a young pupil of Gleyre; he obeys our methods . . . Even further afar, in the United States, a similar scene attends us, and we have but to reassert the absence of a national painting . . . France smiles to their advantage, and many of our masters have today in the New World, if not intelligent imitators, at least warm supporters."49 Like Mantz, other critics disqualified the work of marginal cosmopolitans by noting, in passing, who their--mostly French--teachers had been.
Where the style used by the marginal cosmopolitan was
traceable to a French source, it could only be characterized as an illegitimate possession, as a theft. For cultural authenticity could not be borrowed: it was a form of non-transferable cultural property. National schools were expected to be able to generate, autonomously, distinctive styles to reflect the "genius," the "spirit," and the "character" of its people. This character could be variously established by a philosophic tendency, geographical determinants, or political traditions.
Imitation was
everywhere rejected. Thus, the English painters, "too proud to imitate," were acclaimed for the distinctive character of their works. Whether that national quality was agreeable to any particular critic was of secondary importance secondaire due à la singularité des types; et le plus souvent le nom seul de leurs œuvres en fait toute l'originalité, car bon nombre de ces exposants exotiques sont tout simplement des habitants de la rue Bréda et des étudiants des galeries du Louvre et du Luxembourg." Claudius Lavergne, Exposition universelle de 1855. Beaux-Arts (Paris: Imprimerie Bailly, Divry et Ce., 1855): 8. 49Mantz, "Salon de 1855," La Revue française 2 (1855): 168.
226
importance, for even if they created "ugly" works, at least it was "an ugliness of their own."50 Imitation could only be acceptable if, as in the case of the Flemish painters, it involved copying the style of an older national tradition. As Loudun asserted "the poor are those who borrow."51 Since the means of representation used by the marginal cosmopolitan was perceived to have been taken from others, it could not serve to establish the national difference which the critics sought. Subject matter, as we have seen, was where this difference came to be located, and artists were expected to depict the distinctive scenes and images of their nation. It is not surprising that Delécluze should have succinctly defined the "derivative" nations as "picturesque schools,"52 as nations which could only achieve difference through the presentation of anecdotal customs and characteristic scenes. Nature, and not painting, became the prime marker of difference. Juan Cordero's large religious painting, The Adulterous Woman of 1853, was thus contemptuously dismissed on the grounds that he had failed to represent the Mexican nation.
No great effort was
expended on arguing against the painting on purely pictorial terms; it was quite enough to state that he was not "Mexican," that he was not an authentic painter.53 Reflecting the demands made by the French critics, 50"on peut louer ou blâmer ce qu'elle fait; mais, si elle fait laid, c'est une laideur qui lui soit propre." Loudun, Le Salon de 1855, p. 3. 51"les pauvres sont ceux qui empruntent." Ibid., p. 7. 52Delécluze, Les Beaux-Arts dans les deux mondes en 1855, pp. 194-195. 53For example, Delécluze, wrote: "Un seul ouvrage...est de la main d'un Mexicain, car je n'oserais affirmer qu'il ait été peint au Mexique." See Ibid., p. 134; Lavergne wrote: "encore est-ce là un Mexicain bien authentique? Nous n'oserions l'affirmer." See Exposition universelle de 1855. Beaux-Arts, p. 43.
227
Pedro Escandón, the official Mexican representative at the exhibition, criticized Cordero severely, declaring that the artist's work could pass for the product of any nationality but that it could not pass for that of an "American."54 Escandón expressed his regrets that Mexico had been unable to send a painter "to represent our men and our splendid nature."55 Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordilleras had also been turned into a sign of Peruvian nature.
Any indication of the presence of the pictorial
language used by the cosmopolitan artist was carefully circumvented. Critics effectively eliminated the individual artist, literally "jumping over" the cosmopolitan in order to satisfy their expectations of difference. A cosmopolitan like Laso could at best serve to transcribe, like the travelerreporter, the images of the nation. If his language could not be made different, it had to be ignored. The signs of Laso's presence as a painter, such signs as the organization of the composition, or the facture of the paint, were simply invisible to the French critics. The
marginal
cosmopolitan
could
serve,
at
most,
as
an
intermediary between European viewers and the authenticity of the nation. In 1879, the Colombian literary critic, José María Torres Caicedo, summed up the problem of a "Latin American" literature by simply stating: "Our literature is original with respect to the description of objects,
54"Puede
pasar el Sr. Cordero por un pintor italiano, alemán ú otro, pero no español ni americano." Escandón, La industria y las bellas artes en la Exposición Universal de 1855, p. 155. 55Ibid., p. 168.
228
imitative in all the rest."56 Effectively internalized, this definition pushed Latin American countries to place emphasis on the ethnographic sections of later exhibitions, defining the national through the presentation of ethnographic and the archaeological specimens as metonymic fragments of the nation. In succeeding Universal Exhibitions, contemporary painting by artists from Latin America would continue to be shown in the buildings devoted to the Fine Arts, but this would cease to be the primary space for the representation of the nation.
Separate pavilions, in the
ethnographic sections of the exhibitions, presented pre-Columbian artifacts and samples of natural history directly to the public. The illusion that the materials presented were "authentic" elements of a national culture depended on the idea that they offered unmediated access to the nature of those nations. Difference, the specificity of each Latin American nation, came to be framed primarily outside of contemporary artistic production.
MARGINALIZING THE COSMOPOLITAN The demands of authenticity made of the Peruvian and Mexican painters had not only placed their works on the margins of contemporary painting but also in a secondary position with regard to French art. The same comparative context which rejected the cosmopolitanism of the Latin American artists, served, simultaneously, to locate France at the very 56José
María Torres Caicedo, "La literatura de América Latina" in Arturo Ardao, América Latina y la latinidad, 500 Años Despúes (México: UNAM, 1993): 162.
229
center of the international artistic scene.
Proof of French artistic
supremacy was found primarily in the marginal cosmopolitans.
For
Loudun, the Universal Exhibition was "like a gallery of mirrors where one can follow all the movements of the ideas of the times; but the clearest, the most faithful and the most gripping is the French Exhibition: in the works of the foreigners one finds the representation of the same ideas, but it is a pale representation, a reflection; the light comes from us."57 France was not simply a place, like Rome was at mid-century, where artists gathered in a common project of learning from past works; it was an international center which dictated style and established the trends of artistic progress. France was presented as a model and, as such, it had to precede its imitations. This temporal priority was expressed through the biological metaphor of the ages of man but also by analogy to the pedagogic process. The development of the "secondary" national schools, and especially that of the "young" Americas, was compared to the training process of the art student.
Like the youthful French students of the
Academy, marginal cosmopolitans learned by copying the "masters;" but these were no longer to be found in the consecrated schools of the past, available equally to all artists, but in a contemporary school, now firmly localized in a determined country, as the property of a specific people. France was superior because it was perceived as being copied or imitated by others.58 France did not copy others; only others copied France. 57Loudun, 58In
Le Salon de 1855, p. 11. classical academic theory, copying and imitation had been largely synonimous
230
The demands for authenticity that defined the criticism of the exhibition were not equally applied. France would claim center stage precisely by evading a national classification.
No critic, for example,
demanded that French artists represent only French landscapes or customs. Symptomatically, critics never defined the French school by drawing on examples from the large number of contemporary regionalist painters. Nor was there a unanimous opinion on what precisely made French art "French." French victory in the arena of art, critics claimed, was due to the eclecticism that defined its school. This eclecticism, however, must not be confused with the painting of the juste-milieu,59 nor with a benign kind of cultural relativism in art criticism.
Eclecticism,
furthermore, did not have exactly the same implications in the context of French affairs as it did in an international context.60
French artistic
hegemony was defined in clearly expansionist terms. For Loudun, the "capital fact" of the exhibition was that while "all nations represent their own genius . . . only one nation has a general character, France. She is not terms. Copying was a standard teaching procedure in the visual arts but one perceived as allowing for significant personal difference, which left a margin for the expression of a student's creativity. Within the discourse of originality, however, copying was devalued and was no longer associated with creative potential. See Richard Shiff's rich discussion of the usage of these terms in 19th-century art theory, "The Original, the Imitation, the Copy, and the Spontaneous Classic: Theory and Painting in Nineteenth-Century France," in The Anxiety of Anticipation, Sima Godfrey, ed., special issue of Yale French Studies, 66 (1984): 28. 59As Boime does in Thomas Couture and the Eclectic Vision. See the review of Boime by Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, "The Juste Milieu and Thomas Couture," in Romanticism and Realism. The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984): 113-129. 60Mainardi, Art and Politics of the Second Empire, p. 70, has summarized the French critics' conclusion by stating that "eclecticism led to universality, and universality led to superiority." Eclecticism alone, however, did not establish French superiority.
231
confined within her borders . . . she does not represent the citizen of this or that country, she represents man. Thus the other nations are only confined within themselves, their action expires within their frontiers."61 France now became a model, not through the abdication of all difference, but because it could assimilate all difference. In his review of the Universal Exhibition of 1855, Baudelaire, borrowing Hegel's metaphor of Spirit as a light born in the Orient, culminating in the West, concluded: "It is true that France, by reason of her central position in the civilized world, seems summoned to gather to herself all the ideas, all the poetic products of her neighbors and to return them to other peoples, marvelously worked upon and embroidered."62 For Baudelaire, as for most of the French critics at the exhibition, the emphasis in painting now lay in the process of elaboration of a "reality," the ability to give "it" form. For Maxime Du Camp, France maintained a "certain superiority of facture,"63 and other critics repeatedly emphasized France's supremacy in style and execution, that is, in the formal aspects of painting.64
Paul
Mantz, who had complained about the increasing homogeneity of international artistic production, saw the solution to the emerging chaos not in "an abdication of all originalities," but through "unity in merit, but 61Loudun,
Le Salon de 1855, p. 10. See Charles Baudelaire, Curiosités esthétiques, p. 220. The translation is taken from Charles Baudelaire, Art in Paris, 1845-1862. Salons and Other Exhibitions Reviewed by Charles Baudelaire, trans., and ed. by Jonathan Mayne (Ithaca, New York, 1965): 127. 63"une certaine supériorité de facture." See Maxime Du Camp, Les Beaux-Arts à l'Exposition Universelle de 1855. Peinture.-Sculpture (Paris, 1855): 397. 64This emphasis on "métier" gained a particular relevance in the opposition between a "philosophic" painting of ideas said to characterize German art and the more "materialistic" French art. See Essner, esp. pp. 105-110. 62
232
not in the manner . . . identity of efforts, but not in facture."65 It was the means of representation, the style, which now determined the value of art. The "secondary schools" were thus marginalized through this new standard of value, for it was precisely their "borrowed language," which had been criticized. In valuing the means of representation, the expression of the individual artist was simultaneously privileged. Increasingly perceived as the mediator between nature and representation, the individual artist acquired a previously unknown importance in artistic discourse.66 Critics discussed the French school on the basis of their readings of contemporary French "masters," usually Ingres and Delacroix, whose individual retrospectives within the French exhibition formed one of its central attractions. Conversely, the emphasis on the subject of painting as the source of originality in the secondary schools effectively served to eliminate the creative potential of the individual artist. The works of the marginal cosmopolitan had been read as unmediated presentations of foreign lands, and in doing so the individual painters inevitably disappeared. The manner in which cosmopolitanism was rejected and demands for difference deployed, had effectively helped to support a new hierarchy of pictorial production. The creation of secondary schools was destined to 65Mantz,
"Salon de 1855," La Revue française 2 (1855): 608. Shiff, "The Original, the Imitation, the Copy. . .," pp. 28, 35-38ff. In a less convincing fashion, Patricia Mainardi has analyzed the manner in which the Universal Exhibitions of the Second Empire helped to articulate the modern concept of art as individual expression. See Art and Politics of the Second Empire, esp. pp. 65, 196. 66See
233
stop a threatening movement, for the presence of the marginal cosmopolitan created an important tension within the discourses of the exhibition.
Latin American cosmopolitan painting, for example, as a
lesser or secondary manifestation of French painting, could possibly come to compete with the French masters on their own terms. The biological metaphor for culture that could proclaim the Italian school in a state of decadence and relegate the "young" Americas to success only in a constantly deferred future, presented France with a persistent threat: the possibility that the French school could also fall into decay and lose its privileged position in the present. A temporal priority thus became, at this early stage, the necessary precondition for international artistic superiority. For even if the very presence of the "young" Americas could make Europe anxious, the marginal cosmopolitan, delayed in the periphery and in the timeless essence of the nation, could not very well dictate representation for a changing world. The notion of an avant-garde now acquired a very particular inflection. In the conclusion to his review of the exhibition, Paul Mantz characterized the superiority of France by claiming its precedence, its temporal priority over other schools. "It is not necessary for those who march the first to slacken their pace," he concluded, "what is needed is for those peoples in retard to hasten and strive to catch up with the avant-garde."67
67Mantz,
"Salon de 1855," La Revue française 2 (1855): 608.
234
The criticism of the exhibition thus inaugurated a new geographic and temporal hierarchy based on a double standard of value. Whereas in the foreign schools this value was based on the degree of authenticity of the painter to a national ideal, for the French painters, value could be framed only by evading the discourse of authenticity. The arguments through which French superiority was framed were applied, inversely, to define the marginality of the foreign cosmopolitans. Artists like Laso had attempted to inscribe themselves within European culture. They had partly done this through the discourse of authenticity.
However, the way in which this discourse had been
deployed in the criticism of the exhibition had served to further marginalize them, to set them off as derivative of Europe. On the other hand, by inscribing themselves within the sphere of French art, cosmopolitans like Laso necessarily played into French critical strategies. In fact, Laso's fame as an artist was paradoxically defined by the French critical reviews, which were immediately translated and published in the Peruvian press.68 From then on, Laso's painting would come to be discussed in Peru through the interpretations which French critics had offered. When the painting was first exhibited in Lima in 1860, the critic, who discussed Laso's other paintings in full, simply stated:
68"Comunicados.
D. Francisco Laso," El Comercio, órgano del progreso industrial, vol. 1, no. 12, 24-II-1856, p. 4.
235
This painting has been exhibited already in Paris and is considered, with reason, as Mr. Lazo's masterpiece. Parisian critics have written much about it, and it is thus useless that we praise it.69 Even today Laso's painting is commonly known in Peru as The Indian Potter. We do not know how Laso himself reacted to the French criticism of the exhibition. However, in his letter to Corpancho of 1854, Laso had advised his friend: If you take up the lyre, brandish it with force in the service of this poor patria, specter of a nation. God, who sooner or later remunerates those who do good deeds, will reward you by giving you a new inspiration; while otherwise you will have to follow the sad fate of an American poet, an imitator. Be a good patriot and you will be original.70 Laso's words can be read in two ways.
Either as a sign of
resignation about the status of Peruvian painting in international contexts, or as an invocation to engage politics directly and leave painting aside. Both attitudes would surface in Laso after his return to Peru in 1856. He would no longer attempt to participate actively in the European artistic scene, and he would gradually abandon painting in favor of an active political career.
69[El
Habitante de los Andes. Este cuadro ha sido espuesto ya en París y es considerado, y con razon, como la obra maestra del señor Lazo. Los críticos parisienses se han ocupado mucho de él y por lo tanto es inútil que nosotros lo elogiemos; nos contentamos pues con llamar sobre el la atencion de los aficionados.] "Esposicion (sic) de pinturas." El Comercio, 15-VIII-1860. 70[Si toma la lira víbrela con fuerza en servicio de esa pobre patria, espectro de nación. Dios, que tarde o temprano remunera a quien bien obra, lo recompensará dandole nueva inspiración; mientras que de otro modo U. tendrá que seguir la triste suerte de poeta americano, de imitador. Sea U. buen patriota y será orijinal.] Laso, "La causa de la juventud," El Comercio, 5-II-1855.
236
237
SECTION IV: THE FAILURE OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Chapter 6: Laso: Painter, Writer, and Statesman
THE FAILURE OF PAINTING After the Universal Exhibition of 1855, Laso spent a few months traveling through Belgium, after which he apparently remained in Paris until his return to Lima in August of 1856.1 Save for a short trip to Italy and France, undertaken between 1863 and 1864, he would not leave Peru again.
When Laso arrived in Lima in 1856, he was a mature and
successful artist, ready to stay for the long term and begin a serious professional career as a painter. The succeeding years, during which most of his important dated works were created, were the most productive in his life. During this same period, the painter found that there was no artistic community to support his practice and that the kind of painting he hoped to establish had little presence in Peruvian society. Around 1864, he seems to have abandoned his professional career as a painter in order 1When
Castilla took power after the revolution of 1855, he began a systematic attack on most of Echenique's friends and supporters. This included artists who had been pensioned in Europe like Laso and Luis Montero, whose pensions were immediately suspended. See the letter dated Paris, May 30, 1855, from Francisco de Rivero to the Minister of Foreign Relations in Lima, in AMRE, Legación del Perú en Francia y en la Gran Bretaña, 5-14, no. 42. In this letter Rivero explains that while Laso's pension had already been renewed, Montero, in Italy, still did not receive his payments. Apparently both pensions were extended only until the end of 1855. Laso, however, stayed in Europe until 1856. It is unclear whether Laso continued to receive a pension during 1856.
240
to enter active political life. Laso's struggle to forge a space for painting in Peru had failed. In rejecting colonial traditions and transforming the status of painting, artists of Laso's generation also removed the social foundations on which pictorial practice had been grounded. If painting had become a privileged and even aristocratic profession, it remained a marginal practice in Peruvian society. While in the case of literature, intellectuals could have almost immediate access to what was published in Europe in its original form, painters were limited to scattered and inadequate reproductions of European art. Literature may have still been a fragile institution, but writing was a respected activity and counted with a solid infrastructure of presses and readers. Daily journals and, increasingly, specialized scientific reviews offered writers a space for debate and assured them a respectable audience. Painters and other artists working in the visual arts encountered major difficulties. On one hand, they lacked exhibition spaces that would allow their works to be seen, and on the other, their activity depended on traditions and institutions which could not be easily reproduced in the periphery.
Artists like Laso situated
themselves within a European academic system that was supported by a long and venerable theoretical tradition and a wide network of museums. Working in Peru, the painter could rely only on his own knowledge in order to recreate those artistic structures in his country.
241
The lived experience of the cosmopolitan painter like Laso was thus confronted with the largely imagined Academy of his contemporaries in Peru. A kind of invisible Academy evolved, bringing together the few artists who had been trained in Europe and who had been active participants in the European artistic scene. Yet this was a knowledge which could not be shared by many. Ignacio Merino, who had left Peru in 1850, remained in Paris until his death in 1876. Luis Montero, trained in Europe at the expense of the government in the late 1840s, returned to Peru for only brief periods of time. A younger generation of artists, which included the sculptor Ricardo Suárez and the painter Juan de Dios Ingunza, was just beginning to leave the country for Europe. A few other, and less able, painters like Leonardo Barbieri and Francisco Masías limited their activities to the minor genres in order to satisfy the small local market for portraits and still lifes. Although a number of Laso's close personal friends, Federico Torrico, Toribio Alfonso Calmet, and the businessman Mariano Alvarez also painted, they had no professional ambitions, and they practiced their craft privately, as amateurs. Laso often lamented the lack of an artistic community in Peru. A deep nostalgia permeates the essays in which he evoked the years he had spent in Europe. In his writings, he introduced his readers to the artistic community in Rome, told them of the pranks and conversations of the
242
artists with whom he had lived in Venice, and described the weaknesses and merits of the different characters which formed the French bohemia.2 The artistic community which Laso hoped would emerge in Peru was not easily achieved. Painting and sculpture required an institutional framework of support, pedagogic institutions, and exhibition spaces which would help to expand the social base for artistic practice. Yet none of these structures existed during Laso's lifetime. In the first place, the possibilities for artistic instruction were limited. By the time Laso arrived from Europe, the Drawing Academy which had functioned in the building of the National Library, and where Laso himself had served, had closed down. In mid 1856, the Peruvian state decided to move the Drawing Academy from the rooms it occupied in the building of the National Museum and Library.3 By July of 1856 the Drawing Academy had been closed and the plans that were undertaken to install it in the School of Guadalupe never materialized.4 In November, in the face of mounting complaints5 the Ministry of Education decreed the establishment of a
2See in particular his essays "Tiempos pasados," "Un recuerdo," and "Algo sobre bellas artes." 3This decision was apparently prompted by the repeated complaints of Simón Irigoyen, director of the National Museum, who claimed that the constant traffic of the students posed problems of security for the museum, which had already been robbed. See Letter dated June 30, 1856, from Simón Irigoyen, director del Museo Nacional, to Manuel Ferreyros, Director General de Estudios. AGN, R-J, Museo Nacional, 190-8.10. 4The School of Guadalupe already counted with a course in drawing for its students as part of the standard curricula. 5Un progresista, "Comunicados. ¿Mueren las bellas artes en Lima?" El Comercio, 18VII-1856.
243
"National School of Painting." The director of studies sought Laso's advise in order to propose a project for the new school. In formulating his response to the government, Laso modeled his suggestions on the teaching practice of the French Academy. He indicated to the director that three rooms would be needed, one for drawing from life, one from casts, and another from engravings. He proposed that the state acquire these casts and engravings in Europe so that the students could develop "taste" and learn the "procedures of the masters." Yet these were not only learning aides but substitutes for the originals which, the painter admitted, the students would probably never see.
Laso's
skepticism about the institution of painting in Peru is clearly reflected in his response to the government.
He had also suggested that the
government buy painted copies after European artists, yet he stated that the small number of interested youths did not justify the enormous cost of such works.6 The need of original European works of art, without which, Laso thought, artistic instruction in Peru could not advance, led to an acquisitions project in the 1860s. During a short trip to Europe Laso made in 1864, he was commissioned by the state to acquire works in consultation with Merino, then living in Paris. With the danger of war with Spain erupting at any moment, Laso cut short his trip in order to 6As Laso wrote: "Y, para formarse en el gusto, tendrá que conocer las obras de los grandes maestros, por grabados o estatuas, ya que no le es posible ver los orijinales." Proposal signed by Francisco Laso on November 22, 1856. BNL, no. D-12105, photocopy of an original document in the archives of the AGN.
244
return to Lima, leaving the money assigned to him (15,000 francs) at the Peruvian Legation in Paris. The money was apparently used for other things.7 The academy which had been projected in 1856 also failed to materialize. Possibly due to the political instability of the period, the Academy of Painting was not established. The situation had not changed by 1860, when the small private academy led by portraitist Leonardo Barbieri remained the only establishment of its kind in Lima.8 If there was no place for young artists to study art in Peru, there were also few opportunities for mature artists like Laso to practice their profession. Patronage of major works of art was limited during the third quarter of the 19th century, and even Laso's social position and relations did not help to change that situation. Laso's first major commission was also the last one in his career. After his return from France he traveled to Arequipa where he began a series of works under the patronage of Bishop José Sebastián de Goyeneche. Soon after his arrival in that city in early 1857, Laso began a painting of Saint John for the cathedral. When he delivered the painting toward the end of the year, he was commissioned to paint the three remaining evangelists and a painting representing Saint
7Letter dated June 30, 1864, from Pedro Gálvez in Paris to the minister of cult and foreign relations in Lima. AMRE, Servicio Diplomático del Perú, Legación en Francia, 514, Año 1864, no. 683. See also a letter, dated July 30, 1865 from the Peruvian Legation in Paris to the minister of foreign relations in Lima. AMRE, Servicio Diplomático del Perú, Legación en Francia, 5-14, Año 1865, no. 131. 8The press complained about the lack of government support for the arts. See for example, "Crónica de la capital. Escuela de dibujo y pintura," El Comercio, 24-III-1859, evening ed.; "Crónica de la capital. Bellas artes," El Comercio, 16-II-1860.
245
Peter. These works were completed in Lima and sent to Arequipa only in 1859. Laso's work for the Cathedral of Arequipa was an exceptional commission for the period, since by the mid-19th century the church had ceased to be an important patron of the arts in Peru.
Work for the
Cathedral of Arequipa was initiated after the old temple burned down in 1844. In the following decades Bishop Goyeneche, who came from one of the wealthiest and most important families of the city, personally supervised its reconstruction and promoted a number of artists to work on its decorations. Laso's early biographers state that he was also commissioned a series of the four national saints, Saint Rose, Santo Toribio, San Francisco Solano, and San Martín de Porres.9 Yet Laso is only known to have been interested in the figure of Saint Rose, whose image he represented in a number of important canvasses.
These, however, were undertaken
privately by the painter and do not appear to have been created under commission. Though he apparently began working for the bishop, whose portrait he also painted, he dealt directly with the cathedral "Junta de Obras," with which, however, he encountered serious problems.10 The 9Lavalle
y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1127. dated January 20, 1860, from Juan Miguel Gálvez, on behalf of the Junta de Obras de la Catedral de Arequipa to the minister of cult and foreign relations in Lima. Although the Cathedral Junta was unhappy with the works (they refused to accept Laso's St. Peter), they were ordered by the state to pay the painter a total of 1450 pesos through a decree of December 28, 1859. Photocopy of ms. documents from the AGN in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. 10Letter
246
disagreements between Laso and the Junta seem to have eliminated any further possibilities for the painter to work in the cathedral. After his return from Arequipa, Laso began an effort to exhibit his paintings to the public of Lima. Between April and October of 1859 he exhibited four paintings in the window of the lithographic and office supplies store of Emilio Prugue. He exhibited The Laundress, The Three Races, Saint Rose, and The Concert, a work which he had begun during his trip to Europe.11 Storefronts and the galleries of photographic studios were the only spaces Peruvian artists had for exhibiting their works. In order to change this situation, the Italian painter Leonardo Barbieri organized a National Painting Exhibition in August of 1860, the first organized collective exhibition of art in Lima.
The government lent
Barbieri the halls of the old Jesuit convent of Saint Peter, where Laso and Montero helped hang the 58 works which were presented by the artists of Lima.12 The exhibition had a retrospective character, since most artists, including Laso, showed works which had been created over the past decade. Laso presented the portraits of Felipe Pardo y Aliaga and Josefa Anglade de Noriega, the Inhabitant of the Cordilleras and Justice, along with The Concert, Saint Rose, and The Three Races.13
Luis Montero
exhibited his famous Sleeping Venus of ca. 1850 along with other important paintings of biblical subjects, while Merino sent from Europe 11See
Appendix A for complete chronology and sources. de pinturas (sic)," El Comercio, 1-VIII-1860. 13"Espocición de pinturas (sic)," El Comercio, 15-VIII-1860. 12"Esposición
247
the painting of Columbus which he had exhibited at the Universal Exhibition of 1855. Save for a large number of portraits and other minor genre paintings, their works were the most important to be exhibited on this occasion. The next year, at Barbieri's request, the government published an official decree establishing the exhibition as a yearly event.
The
government also promised to finance the exhibition, to provide prizes for the best works, and to organize an admissions jury.14
The second
exhibition of 1861, however, was not as successful as the first. Newspaper commentators criticized the fact that few important works could be seen on exhibition. Montero, who had recently left the country, did not exhibit that year, and save for a well-known religious painting, Merino had not sent any new work to the exhibition. Laso himself had exhibited all of his major works the previous year. According to a newspaper review Laso only exhibited the Pascana in the Cordillera, a small painting representing a "Roman girl" and a "portrait of a 15th-century gentleman," possibly his portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro. Save for some paintings by Ingunza, a group of portraits by Barbieri, and views of Lima by the young painter Tasset, the rest of the works on view were academies and copies made by the students of Barbieri.
15
The exhibition of 1861 was the last of the yearly
exhibitions.
14"Reglamento 15"Lima.
de la exposición de pinturas," El Peruano 41, no. 7 , 28-VII-1861, p. 26. Esposición de pinturas (sic)," El Comercio 18-IX-1861.
248
On January 23, 1860, Laso offered the Peruvian state four of his most important works: Inhabitant of the Cordilleras, Justice, The Concert, and Saint Rose.
In a letter to the government he explained that his
offering was a way to repay the state for his European pension, but also a manner of fulfilling a personal promise made to President Echenique. The state accepted the gift and ordered the works to be placed in the National Museum.16 Yet even in the National Museum Laso's works were not visible. In July of 1861 a journalist reported that the paintings Laso had given to the state remained unframed, and stacked on the floors of the National Museum.17 Laso's offering sparked an attack from an unidentified enemy, writing under the pseudonym of "Veritas." Evoking the scandal caused by Laso's Aguinaldo, Veritas repeated virtually the same arguments against the painter, accusing him of writing against the nation while simultaneously benefiting from state patronage. The critic wrote against Laso' articles in La Revista de Lima, and in particular, against the essay "Algo sobre bellas artes," where the painter denounced the lack of government support for the arts. Veritas accused Laso of ingratitude, and sarcastically called him the "Christ of civilizing redemption."18
Laso's
response, published in the same newspaper the next day, simply 16Laso's letter offering his works to the state, and the government's reply were published in El Peruano, vol. 38, no. 12, 11-II-1860, p. 47. On February 12 the Director of the museum, Simón Irigoyen sent a letter to the minister of instruction accepting the offer. Document from the AGN, photocopy of the document at the BNL, no. D-12103. 17"Crónica de la capital. La exposición de pinturas," El Comercio, 9-VII-1861. 18Veritas, "D. Francisco Lazo y sus fanfarronadas," El Comercio, 13-II-1860, p. 4.
249
reaffirmed his previous statements. For the Peruvian government, Laso wrote, art and industry were "bastard daughters, who must seek life and development on their own."19 Insisting on the need for state patronage of the arts, he compared the Peruvian artist to a son abandoned by his father. He cited the case of Ricardo Suárez, the young sculptor who had recently been awarded a pension to study in Europe and asked what would happen when the sculptor returned to his country to find he had no work. A few days later another anonymous writer entered the debate. He poked fun of Laso's excessive dramatism in portraying the situation of the Peruvian artist. Using Laso's parental parable, he attacked the artist's assertions by claiming that the best support a father could give a son was to provide him with an education. He sarcastically added that in order that artists educated in Europe should not die of hunger, the government should issue a decree or promulgate an edict so that all the inhabitants of Peru, should get their portraits made exclusively with those artists trained at the expense of the state, and all foreigners should order them to create paintings.20 The painter did not reply, yet it is evident that this writer had misunderstood Laso's appeal.
Laso had actually been successful as a
19[Las artes y la industria, para los Gobiernos de Perú, son hijas bastardas que tienen que buscar vida y desarrollo por sí solas . . .] "Comunicados. Asuntos personales. Al Señor Veritas," El Comercio, 14-II-1860, p. 3. 20[A nuestro juicio el único medio que podia conciliarse para que los artistas educados por el gobierno en Europa, no se murieran de hambre, era emitir un decreto, promulgar un bando para que todos los habitantes del Perú, se manden retratar al óleo, exclusivamente donde los artistas que hayan aprendido a espensas del erario, y a todos los estranjeros que los manden pintar cuadros.] ¡Buena vá la danza!, "Comunicados. Asuntos personales. El Sr. D. F. Lazo," El Comercio, 17-II-1860, p. 3.
250
portraitist, but this was not the kind of painting for which he was seeking support. In fact, except for a few religious paintings, Laso's portraits were the only works that he did under commission; and, save for his portraits and the works he donated to the state in 1860, the rest of his work remained in the possession of his widow and of a few friends until the beginning of the 20th century. Laso was never very interested in private patronage.
If the painter appealed directly to state patronage, it was
because he was attempting to create works which could have a wider public and greater resonance. Only the institutional structures of church and state could offer a framework for painting to become an important aspect of Peruvian public life. The case of Laso's American Unity, of 1864, demonstrates the painter's desire to reach a wide audience. In 1863, Spain had occupied the guano islands on the pretext of an incidental affair in a northern hacienda. In order to present an unified front against the threat the Spanish fleet posed in the Pacific, Peruvian diplomats organized an American Congress in Lima with the presence of some of the most important Latin American leaders.
The congress was installed in November of 1864 and Laso
painted his large-scale work in order to commemorate the event. December,
Laso
had
already
signed
a
contract
with
By
Courret's
photographic studio by which he sold them the rights to reproduce his work.21 21Keith
McElroy mentions this contract in passing in Early Peruvian Photography. A Critical Case Study, p. 40. The original contract, which I was able to locate, is in AGN,
251
In order to make his works available to a broader public, Laso had taken advantage of modern technology. Laso, however, never attempted to popularize his works, that is to say, he never appealed directly to prevailing taste. He did not create still life paintings or genre scenes, he disdained excessive dramatism and refused to mold his religious compositions to local pictorial conventions. His works, cryptic and full of hidden references, always imply a knowledgeable audience. Perhaps only his Laundress and The Three Races could be interpreted as attempts to satisfy a local public whose taste had been shaped by costumbrismo. But even these works, which can be easily mistaken for simple genre scenes, incorporate more complex levels of signification. Public visibility did not ensure adequate reception. During his entire professional life in Peru, Laso's works did not provoke even as much criticism as the exhibition of two paintings had in Paris in a single year. Newspaper commentaries on the paintings exhibited in Lima were brief and only superficially informative. The journalists who took up the task of publishing reviews often wrote with a self-acknowledged sense of inadequacy. Serious art criticism only emerged in Peru during the early 1860s and even these texts, most of which can be attributed to Laso's friend, the amateur painter Federico Torrico, appeared infrequently. Further, intellectuals of Laso's generation were highly skeptical about the public reception of their works, for they considered that their local public Protocolos Notariales, Escribano José de Selaya, Protocolo 131, 1864, f. 2143v.
252
lacked the education and the sensibility required to appreciate artistic productions. In 1854, speaking of Laso's Aguinaldo, Corpancho explained the reasons why Laso had decided to present his criticism of Peruvian society in writing and not in painting: The populace of our patria is not yet educated enough to judge artistic works, it lacks the necessary aptitudes to perceive the fineness of the art of Michelangelo and Raphael, and a work of painting does not yet have full signification in Peru. It was thus indispensable that Lazo should have deprived himself of his most powerful instrument in order to launch his idea within reach of the masses, rehearsing a genre of work outside his profession.22 Laso shared Corpancho's opinion, although he was even less hopeful with regard to the reading public: Since, in Peru a painter cannot practice his profession, he should at least be allowed to think of the artists' workshop. If I cannot paint, I will at least write. Truth is, for our most respectable public painting and writing, are exactly the sa************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************?? ***************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************
22[La muchedumbre de nuestra patria no está todavía bien educada para juzgar de los trabajos artísticos, le falta la aptitud necesaria para apercibirse de las finezas del arte de Miguel Anjel y Rafael, y un cuadro de pintura aun no tiene toda sus significación en el Perú. Era indispensable pues que el señor Lazo se privase de su instrumento mas poderoso para lanzar su idea al alcance de las masas, ensayandose en un jenero de trabajo que no le son profesionales.] Corpancho, "El Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú," El Comercio, 10-IX-1854. 23[Ya que en el Perú un pintor no puede ejercer su profesion, que le sea siquiera permitido pensar en el tayer los artistas [sic]. Ya que no puedo pintar, escribiré siquiera. Verdad es que el pintar y el escribir, para nuestro muy respetable público, es exactamente lo mismo. Si los cuadros tienen poca importancia, tal vez la tengan menos los escritos. Pero, en igualdad de circunstancias, es preferible manejar la pluma que no el pincel, por ser mas económico el escribir que el pintar.] "Un recuerdo," p. 3.
253
*****************************??****************************************************** ****??******************************************************************************* *********************************arned prospective Peruvian artists in one of his essays: ***************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************ ****************************??******************************************************* ***??******************************************************************************** ********************************arned prospective Peruvian artists in one of his essays: If you feel a vocation for the arts and you don't have the courage to make yourselves citizens of another country, abandon, by God abandon the sad fantasy of wanting to be artists in Peru. You will die of misery--you will die of pain."26 Most of Laso's important works were created during the period from 1855 to 1861. During the next decade of his life Laso's production seems to have been limited to a few works, including a few portraits, his American Unity and possibly the Burial of the Bad Priest and the
24[hablar
de artes es predicar en el desierto, y hablar de atistas es menos aun que hablar de los orangutanes en el Africa o de los habitantes de la Luna.] "Tiempos pasados," p. 50. 25"Algo sobre bellas artes," p. 75. 24[hablar de artes es predicar en el desierto, y hablar de atistas es menos aun que hablar de los orangutanes en el Africa o de los habitantes de la Luna.] "Tiempos pasados," p. 50. 25"Algo sobre bellas artes," p. 75. 26[Si se sienten con vocación para las artes y no tienen valor para hacerse ciudadanos de otra nación, dejen, dejen, por Dios, la funesta fantasía de querer ser artistas en el Perú. Morirán de miseria-morirán de dolor.] Laso, "Algo sobre bellas artes," p. 82.
254
Haravicu.27 The decline in Laso's pictorial production coincides with his increasing involvement in politics and active public life.
Even in his
writings he gradually abandoned references to painting. As a politician, and even as a writer, Laso had a great amount of power to affect the course of events and to define the debates in Peruvian society. As a painter, however, he perceived his works to be largely ineffective, and even invisible. Laso was unbending with regard to his conception of the elevated nature of art and refused to change his idealizing conception of the painter's profession in order to gain a wider public. For Laso, painting inhabited a superior sphere, beyond but not detached from social life. The Concert (fig. 41), a large-scale work painted between 1855 and 1859, can be read as an allegory of Laso's understanding of artistic creation. Within the walls of a church, modeled on the architecture of the Italian Cathedral of Pistoia, a group of three monks gather together to play music. Preparatory sketches for this work show that the singer to the left had been originally intended as a painter at his easel (fig. 42). Since the two standing figures portrayed in the painting represent Laso's friends, Toribio Alfonso Calmet and Manuel de Osma,28 it is logical to deduce that the painting may contain autobiographical allusions.
A sense of
27Laso's close friend, José Antonio de Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra wrote: "Después de la "Santa Rosa" puede decirse que Lazo ya no pintó más; pues sus trabajos se limitaron a uno que otro boceto humorístico, y a tal cual retrato de familia o de un amigo muy íntimo." See, "Francisco Laso," p. 1127. 28Flores Araoz, Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, cat. no. 45.
255
aristocratic distance pervades this work, and the group exudes a sense of spirituality and inspired concentration. Engaged in a common pursuit, the group does not evoke the isolation of the individual creator, but a community of artists sharing a common language. By insisting on the elevated nature of artistic practice, Laso had also denied the possibility of a potentially large public.
Similarly, having
broken with colonial traditions, intellectuals of Laso's generation had also forsaken certain circuits and languages which would have ensured them a broader public. These intellectuals insisted rather that it was their task to transform the Peruvian population into an informed public. Yet this was considered a long-term process, the results of which only future generations of Peruvians would be able to see.
In their own time,
however, they could only lament the absence of the public they claimed to be seeking.
The tension between hope for the future and present
disillusionment, between the desire for a public and the belief that it cannot yet be formed, also marks the political debates of the 1860s in which Laso became a central figure.
FROM WRITER TO STATESMAN: ELITE POLITICS IN THE 1860S AND THE ORIGINS OF CIVILISMO In the early 1860s the generation of 1848 reached political maturity. Its members, trained under the cover of the state and supported by the previous generation of political leaders, now occupied leading positions in
256
government and civil institutions. Throughout the decade, many of these intellectuals struggled to replace Peru's tradition of military leadership with civilian control, a process which culminated in the election of Manuel Pardo as first civilian president of Peru in 1871. Pardo's candidacy was also the first to be supported by an organized party embodying a cohesive political program. Pardo's anti-militarism involved a rejection of the very foundations of Peruvian politics.
For Civilistas this required the
institutional legitimation of the state, to be achieved through broader popular participation and respect for the democratic principles of the republic.29
Emerging from a clearly liberal tradition, Civilistas were
primarily political pragmatists who believed Castilla's liberal revolution of 1855 had failed precisely because of its blatant disregard for Peru's harsh realities, attempting to enforce abstract and utopian principles on a society which was not yet ready to accept them. Pardo and his followers claimed that the state could only be founded upon an aggressive modernizing program, one in which technical innovations and political indoctrination went hand in hand. Railroads and schools were thus the mainstays of Pardo's program. The railroad would encourage economic diversification, create new markets and bring together the dismembered elements of the Peruvian nation. Education was meant to bring about similar results. As president, Pardo embarked on massive publishing projects to make books widely available to a broader public, he supported a large number of 29Carmen
McEvoy, Un proyecto nacional en el siglo XIX. Manuel Pardo y su visión del Perú (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1994): 205-209, 258-277.
257
technical institutes for arts and sciences, gave new impetus to women's education and, most significantly, issued a decree ordering Indian communities to be instructed in Spanish.30 Pardo's Civilismo then, was a program intended to institutionalize the model of the bourgeois public sphere in Peru.
If the nation itself would be constituted through an
improved communications network centered on the railroad, education would enable informed political participation of an ever widening public. The doctrines of Civilismo, which permeated Peruvian politics well into the 20th century, were neither single-handedly devised by Pardo, nor did they crystallize suddenly in the political arena in 1871. Its program had been forged in the political struggles of the 1860s,31 in which Laso occupied a leading role. In fact, Laso's career in politics is nearly identical to Pardo's, with whom he established a close friendship. Laso may have first met the future president when Pardo was studying political economy at the College de France in the early 1850s.32 They came together again as writers in the Revista de Lima in 1859, and continued to collaborate more directly in a number of other projects throughout the 1860s. Laso's involvement in partisan politics had begun upon his return from Europe in 1856.
By the time he arrived in Lima, the liberal
revolution which took Castilla to power after the victory over Echenique at La Palma in 1855, had begun to encounter serious problems. 30Fredrick
B. Pike, The Modern History of Peru (New York: Praeger, 1967): 135f. in particular McEvoy, Un proyecto nacional en el siglo XIX 32Ibid., pp. 33-34. 31See
258
The
political reforms demanded by second generation liberals such as José Gálvez, Julián Manuel del Portillo, and Sebastián Lorente, materialized in the Constituent Assembly (1855-1857), which proposed the most radical changes of the Peruvian social structure until that date. The assembly, the first to be elected by direct suffrage, reflected the radical anti-clericalism and political and economic individualism of the liberal majority, favored state decentralization, limited the powers of the executive, and abolished ecclesiastical and military fueros and church tithes. This liberal political program, however, was not carried out to its full extent and the assembly was ultimately unable to institute its program for a clearer separation of church and state or to establish freedom of worship in Peru. The reforms provoked widespread resistance, and even President Castilla asked the congress to reconsider many of its decisions. Conservative reaction against the Constitution of 1856 was led by an old caudillo, the aristocratic General Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco, who rebelled in Arequipa towards the end of 1856. In spite of Vivanco's conservative tendencies, many liberals, Ricardo Palma and Laso among them, joined in the revolt.
Castilla had not respected civil liberties in instituting his
government, he had shut down critical newspapers such as El Heraldo de Lima, and barred enemies from political office. Further, for many, Castilla remained a military man, a caudillo, who had brought liberals an opportunity with bullets. A number of members of the generation of 1848, such as José Casimiro Ulloa and Luis Benjamín Cisneros, refused to 259
get involved in the civil war, which they decried as a continuation of the political chaos of the earlier republican period of caudillismo. Vivanco's reaction took advantage of popular resentment of the Constituent Assembly's religious reforms in order to gather support. Vivanco retreated to Arequipa after a failed attempt to take Lima, where, after a grueling eight-month siege of the city, he held out until March of 1858. It is significant that this rebellion coincides with the period during which Laso is known to have been in that city at work on the paintings for the cathedral chapter of Arequipa under the protection of its conservative bishop, Juan Manuel de Goyeneche. Although Laso clearly supported the rebellion, and collaborated with some of the local juntas,33 the extent of his participation is unclear. On the one hand, his political sympathies caused a family division, for his father, along with other first-generation liberals formed part of the group appointed to the Supreme Court in the wake of Castilla's judicial reforms of 1855,34 and was one of the most ardent defenders of the Constitution of 1856.35 On the other hand, if Laso seems 33On September 6 Laso wrote to an unknown friend: "Yo creí ser el portador de la presente, pero el haberme metido con una junta me tiene en este Sebastopol, como gato encerrado en un castillo de cuetes." In a letter intercepted by Castilla's forces and published as "Correspondencia interceptada," El Comercio, 18-IX-1857. 34Basadre,Historia de la República del Perú, IV, p. 125. 35See Benito Laso's retrospective appraisal of the events of 1855-1858 in B. L. [Benito Laso], "Resultados políticos, reales y morales del decreto de 12 de Marzo en Arequipa," El Constitucional, 6-7-IV-1858. Benito Laso wrote: "El que escribe estos renglones ha sido públicamente el más furioso enemigo de a revolución de Arequipa su tierra . . . el que a pesar del interés que tenía una parte de su familia en el triunfo de Vivanco ha sido cuasi una imagen del antiguo Bruto por amor a la patria . . . Mas ¡ay! cuando al llegar la correspondencia del Vapor vio en el "Boletín" del Ejército el decreto de 12 de Marzo, se le cayeron las alas del corazón." Laso's brother-in-law, General Norberto Elespuru (married to Laso's sister Juana Manuela) also sided with Vivanco.
260
to have been particularly attracted to the popular fervor which the rebellion managed to stir up, he remained critical of Vivanco.36 Laso also seems to have served as a liaison between Corpancho, who was then collaborating with Castilla, and Vivanco in Arequipa in August of 1857.37 The fact that Laso returned to Lima well before the siege was over also indicates that his involvement was not crucial to the leadership of the rebellion.38 As soon as Arequipa surrendered in March of 1858, Castilla, seeking to establish a new consensus, repealed the Constitution of 1856, disbanded the assembly and sent a number of erstwhile Castilla supporters into exile.
Finally, in 1859, elections were held for the
moderate assembly that would draw up the conservative Constitution of 1860.
There was widespread disillusionment with regard to Peru's
political future in the aftermath of these events. For most intellectuals 36As Laso wrote: "Si la revolución triunfa (ahora tiene posibilidades) no le deberá a este héroe por fuerza que el haberla expuesto a fracasar varias veces." See "Correspondencia interceptada," El Comercio, 18-IX-1867. Defending the Indian against accusations of cowardice Laso later wrote: "Sólo la toma de Arequipa bastaría para desvanecer la injusta idea de que el Indio peruano es cobarde. Los pobres y despreciados Indios, se batieron allí como franceses, sólo porque conocían a su general y sabían que este estimaba al soldado, es decir, al Indio." See "Croquis sobre el carácter peruano," p. 306. 37In a letter to José Casimiro Ulloa, Corpancho wrote: "Le he escrito a Lazo pidiéndole noticias exactas de Arequipa y ya para que vea a Pacheco en mi nombre solicitando para mi un salvoconducto a fin de verlo y conferenciar sobre los medios de un arreglo. Si lo consigo marcho a Arequipa y si no viene, quedo persuadido de que el odio es general y profundo." See "Correspondencia interceptada," Alcance al Regenerador, no. 56, 6-VIII-1857. 38The city only surrendered in March of 1858, and Laso had returned to Lima by early January of the same year, although it is likely that he returned at a much earlier date. He had declared his intentions to leave Arequipa already in September of 1857. See "Correspondencia interceptada," El Comercio, 18-IX-1867.
261
associated with the generation of 1848 the new constitution reflected the failures of a code of law that was rarely respected and a democratic system run by the military and governed only by personal interest.39 After Vivanco's defeat, Laso appears to have temporarily retreated from active participation in Peruvian politics. However, it was precisely at this juncture that he began his career in journalism as one of the founding members of the Revista de Lima (1859-1863). This journal may be seen as the most direct response of the younger political generation to the events of 1855-1858. La Revista de Lima was a journal which appeared in part to lay the basis of a different system. Attempting to avoid from the outset any association with a particular political bias, its editors refused to identify with liberal or conservative tendencies, rejected labels such as romantic and positivist and dismissed the extremes of abolitionism and protectionism.40 The journal thus incorporated writers like Corpancho and Laso, who had fought on opposing sides in 1857, and brought together arch-conservatives such as Lavalle with radical intellectuals like Juan Espinosa. The conciliatory nature of the journal reflected its broader interest: that of serving as a springboard for modernizing projects and reform 39This
dissastisfaction is eloquently expressed in the letters between the young poet Luis Benjamín Cisneros and José Casimiro Ulloa, published in Luis Benjamín Cisneros, Obras completas de Luis Benjamín Cisneros, 3 vols (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1939): II, 387-443. 40As they stated in their presentation o f the journal: "no es un periódico con bandera ni de sistema, no es conservadora ni liberal, romantica ni positivista, proteccionista ni abolicionista."
262
programs that could forge a framework of political thought in restructuring the Peruvian state. Thus, the journal differentiated itself from the daily papers by promising both a broader outlook, which could transcend immediate political concerns, and lengthier articles which could allow a more serious exposition of ideas. La Revista de Lima included literary productions, historical and sociological essays, technical studies of economic problems, and engaged in highly specialized legal and scientific discussions. A bimonthly chronicle offered a summary of current political issues and accounts of the social activity of the capital. The journal was explicitly modeled on such European productions as the French Revue des Deux Mondes, but it also had ideological and formal affinities with its most important local precedent, the 18th-century Mercurio peruano. Following the Enlightenment tradition inaugurated by the Mercurio, La Revista de Lima established itself as a forum for rational debate, and thus as a contribution to the construction of the nation and to the advancement of civilization and progress. The journal has been characterized in recent writings as a mouthpiece of an "export oligarchy" and of a "commercial bourgeoisie" openly opposing its landed counterpart.
These rather narrow
interpretations derive from a simplistic reductionism which, focusing exclusively on the essays written by Manuel Pardo, sees the journal as an expression of his economic ideas.41 If La Revista de Lima is to be seen as a 41A
view which is vaguely described in Bonilla, Guano y burguesía en el Perú, p. 54, simplified by Cotler, Clases, estado y nación en el Perú, pp. 102-105, and later closely
263
precedent of Civilismo, it must be analyzed in terms of its overall political project, of which Pardo's economic program was but a part.
The
intellectuals grouped around La Revista de Lima were attempting to reform the political structures of the Peruvian state in order to reverse the tradition of Peruvian militarism. Opposing what they considered to be remnants of caudillo politics, they sought to encourage civilian participation in politics, and by promoting intellectual engagement, they hoped to create a space for rational and interest-free debate. By contrast to the populist politics of the 1850s, they sought reform from above: only the guidance of enlightened leaders would ensure the gradual incorporation of a wider public into active political life. La Revista de Lima thus struck a middle ground between the "aristocracy of intelligence," supported by conservatives like Bartolomé Herrera, and the principle of "popular sovereignity" propounded by liberals like Benito Laso. The question of how this intellectual politics was to function was never clarified. The problem came to the fore when the La Revista de Lima began to receive a subsidy from the Peruvian government. In fact, the issue of direct state patronage of the journal caused a conflict among its editors, which led to its demise. The tension between the need to participate in the structures of the state and the question of intellectual independence would remain a constant in intellectual debates throughout followed by Kristal, The Andes Viewed From the City, p. 58-59. The most recent discussion of the journal is Gootenberg, Imagining Development, pp. 75-77. His view of the significance of the journal is more balanced, yet he too uses it only as a preamble to a discussion of Manuel Pardo's economic thought.
264
the rest of the century. It would resurface in the mid 1860s, when most of the editors of La Revista de Lima began active political careers supporting the presidency of Mariano Ignacio Prado. Colonel Prado's success against the government of Pezet had been prepared by the rising dissatisfaction with the manner in which the president handled the conflict with Spain.
A wave of Americanist
patriotism brought together all of Peru's leading intellectuals in the early 1860s.
Along with Ulloa, Cisneros, González Vigil, Espinosa, García
Calderón, and José Gregorio and Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, Laso joined the editorial board of La América, periódico político, consagrado a la defensa de la autonomía de las naciones americanas [La América, political newspaper dedicated to the defense of autonomy of the American nations], which was published intermittently from 1862 to 1865. Originally published to protest the French invasion of Mexico, it later forged the opposition to the perceived weakness of Pezet's position in the conflict with Spain.
The sustained attacks on Pezet's policies led the
president to shut down the journal in 1864. In November of 1865, with the support of many of these intellectuals, Prado took over the Peruvian presidency.
Like Manuel
Pardo, who became Prado's finance minister, Laso's active political career also began during this period. In December of 1865 a letter appeared in El Comercio praising Laso for his honesty and vast knowledge, and asking
265
Prado to name him director of the School of Arts.42 Laso was not named to that post, but in January, Prado named Laso, along with other supporters, to form part of the "Junta Censora del Teatro de la Capital," whose role it was to ensure that the theater would become a "school of instruction and good customs."43 By that time, Laso had already been elected to the post of syndic of the municipality of Lima,44 where he joined Mayor Antonio Salinas, lieutenant mayor José Bresani, and syndic Augusto Althaus in the administration of the city.45 From his new post, Laso oversaw the daily problems of the city. He formed part of a commission to control the price of water, attempted to organize agencies of domestic servants, supervised the municipal markets, controlled food expenditure and prices in the city, and regulated public services in general.
He also personally engaged in an aggressive
campaign of public morality, closing down opium smoking rooms, and
42Since
the Academy of Drawing had been closed down, and the attempt to found a National Academy of Painting had failed, it is likely that this writer is refering to the recently founded Escuela de Artes y Oficios. "Comunicados. La Dictadura," El Comercio, 5-XII-1865. 43"S. E. que se ha apresurado a hacer este nombramiento, porque en las varias veces que ha concurrido al Teatro, ha notado que se exhiben con mucha frecuencia dramas indignos del grado de cultura y civilización en que se halla este pueblo, espera del celo é ilustración de UU. que sabrán cumplir el Reglamento de Teatros, no dando pase en los sucesivo sino a aquellas piezas que pueden ofrecer una lección útil y saludable para el pueblo, que sean morales en todo respecto y que tengan un verdadero mérito literario, á fin de que el Teatro sea una escuela de instrucción y de buenas costumbres." See El Peruano, vol. 50, no. 1, 2-I-1866, p. 1. 44Laso is listed as a candidate for the municipality of Lima in December of 1865. "Crónica interior," El Comercio, 27-XII-1865. 45Among the councilmen were Ignacio Osma, Francisco Paz Soldán and Emilio del Solar. Pedro M. Cabello, Guía política, eclesiástica y militar del Perú para el año de 1866 (Lima: Imprenta de la Guía, 1866): 105.
266
attacking illegal gambling.46 As member of the Municipality Public Works Commission, Laso also helped to advance the projects for urban modernization which had begun in the 1850s.
Envisioning urban
expansion, the commission proposed that the city walls be torn down and that the funds derived from the sale of the surrounding land be used to construct a prison and a public park.47 During the early months of 1866, Prado's government had initiated diplomatic and military preparations for the impending war with Spain. Finally, on March 31, Spanish forces bombarded the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Fearing that the same could occur with the port of Callao, the municipality of Lima bought water pumps and organized the artisans of the city in order to form a fire brigade. As captain of the municipal fire brigade, Laso led a force of over 200 volunteer artisans to Callao in April, participating in the battle of May 2, 1866, in which Peruvian forces repealed the attack of the Spanish navy.48 Immediately, the government ordered the construction of a monument commemorating the Peruvian victory against Spain. Laso most likely participated in the decision, since his teacher, Charles Gleyre, was named head of the jury commissioned 46All the information on Laso's activities in the municipality of Lima is taken from the daily chronicles of El Nacional of 1866, which published the official acts of the municipality and other commentaries on the activities of that corporation. 47"Instalación de la nueva Municipalidad," El Comercio, 8-I-1866. Laso also formed part of the Commission of Instruction and Public Welfare. On urban reform in Lima during this period see Natalia Majluf, Escultura y espacio público. Lima, 1850-1879, Documentos de Trabajo, Serie Historia del Arte, 2 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1994). 48"Bomberos de la Municipalidad de Lima," CEHMP, doc. 51, Leg. 14, Año 1866. See the section "Crónica local" in El Nacional, 21, 25, 27-IV-1866.
267
with selecting a design for the monument in Europe.49
Laso also
organized the public festivities for Independence Day in July of 1866. The public procession began around the "Tree of Liberty," on the site of the Portal leading to Callao. The festivities were not substantially different from those which took place every year on that date.
The various
corporations, including the Society of Founders of Independence and the Society of Artisans walked to the statue of Bolívar near the Congress and then gathered in the main square of the city. The festivities were part of the government's attempt to broaden popular participation in public life and to motivate identification with the nation. To that effect, Laso inaugurated a tradition that year which would be often repeated in succeeding festivities. He ordered that prizes be given to the best artisans of the city and to the most heroic soldier in the war against Spain, for "there is no greater solemnization, than that which has as its object the encouragement of work and civic virtues, which are the essential foundations of any republican country."50 The concern with broadening popular political participation and the parallel interest in forging ideal models of citizenship also informed the discussions surrounding the political elections of 1866.
49Majluf,
Escultura y espacio público. Lima, 1850-1879, p. 44, no. 44. no hay mayor solemnización, que la que lleva por objeto el estímulo al trabajo a las virtudes civiles, fundamentos ambos esenciales en todo país republicano.] "Crónica local. Premios," El Nacional, 14-VII-1866. See also "Crónica local. Aniversario," El Nacional, 24-VII-1866. 50[que
268
On Independence Day 1866, Prado had announced presidential and congressional elections in order to legitimate his power. In August, El Nacional, the newspaper which had first appeared in support of the Dictatorship, published a list of possible candidates for the upcoming elections. The "popular candidacy" they proposed for Congress included Francisco de Paula González Vigil, Antonio Salinas, Colonel Manuel González Lacotera, and Francisco Laso. In the following days, Laso's name appeared frequently in the different newspapers, all shuffling a similar list of candidates.51
Laso's personal honesty, his "success" in
Europe, his irreproachable qualities as a citizen, and his prominent position "among the most notable figures of the liberal party" were cited in support of his candidacy.52 Laso's candidacy was backed by a number of high-brow electoral societies, such as the one which met at the home of Pedro Paz Soldán, and which defined "popular representation" as that which brought together "businessmen, capitalists and industrialists."53 The support given to Laso's candidacy was not limited only to upper-crust electoral societies, for Prado actively sought the support of the
51"Comunicados. Candidaturas," El Nacional, 4-IX-1866; Patriotas, "Comunicados. Candidatura," El Nacional, 5-IX-1866; "Comunicados. Elecciones," El Nacional, 7-IX-1866, "Comunicados. Elecciones," El Nacional, 7-IX-1866; El pueblo, "Comunicados: ¡Alto ahí!," El Nacional, 10-IX-1866. 52El pueblo, "Candidatura popular," El Nacional, 31-VIII-1866. 53[Como la principal base de la representación popular es la de los propietarios y agricultores y la de los comerciantes o capitalistas e industriales, nos hemos apresurado a considerar en nuestras protestas a las personas que a nuestro debil juicio . . .] "Crónica local. Nuevo club eleccionario," El Nacional, 4-X-1866; "Crónica local. Asociación electoral," El Nacional, 8-X-1866; "Crónica local. Asociación electoral," El Nacional, 9-IX1866.
269
artisans of Lima.
For almost a decade, words such as "guild" and
"artisan," anathema to the progressive advocates of economic liberalism, had been stricken from the vocabulary of Peruvian politics. However, partly due to the effects of the artisan riots of 1858, there emerged what Gootenberg has called a "renascence of artisan politics."
Further, the
Constitution of 1860 had given high-ranking artisans the right to vote in national elections for the first time.54
Prado's political campaign was
directed at gaining the support of these artisans, and he described his candidacy as one which represented "the people" and the "popular classes." On August 16, 1866, El Nacional published a text in praise of the candidates Laso, Vigil, and Salinas. Significantly, this piece of political propaganda was presented as a transcription of a conversation overheard in an artisan's workshop.55 Laso's activity as syndic of the municipality of Lima that year, in particular his leadership of the Lima artisans in the municipal fire brigade had paved the way for a rapprochement with local artisans. The electoral association of artisans, the "Club Progresista," had proposed a list of candidates composed mostly of artisans, but which also listed the names of Antonio Salinas, whom they described as an "agriculturalist," and Laso, whom they described as an "artisan."56 The 54Gootenberg,
Imagining Development, p. 143, 150. quidan, "Comunicados. Un Taller," El Nacional, 16-VIII-1866. 56"Crónica local. Club Progresista," El Nacional, 11-X-1866. 55Un
270
elections were held in a meeting attended by "the artisans of the parish of Santa Ana and a select group of students of the School of San Carlos." By then, the names of most of the artisan candidates had been replaced by those of well-known Prado supporters. The "few select students of the School of San Carlos" had obviously exerted some influence on the artisans' choice.57 Laso was also invited to the artisan club "La Unión," to give a speech. The president of the club received Laso, praising the artist's "polished education," his fame as an artist, his modest character and the purity of his life.58 Laso in turn praised the artisan's active participation in politics and thanked their support of Prado.
He spoke highly of
candidates Herencia Zevallos and Lacotera and warned that although they were military men they had not used their power to further personal interests or to cause disorder within the country. Laso made no specific promises, modestly offering simply to preserve his "faith in the republic" and promising that "as the artisans' representative" he would do his best to keep their honor.59 Laso, who is not known to have ever supported or worked in any guild activity, and whose definition as a painter consciously rejected any association of painting as a craft, ended up becoming a representative of the artisans of Lima. 57"Crónica
local. Club Progresista," El Nacional, 15-X-1866. señor Lazo, que después de haber recibido una educación científica y esmerada, ha querido tener, como teneis vosotros, un oficio en las artes, es un pintor filosófico qe ha enriqecido con sus obras los museos y los grandes salones de esta capital. Aquí lo teneis modesto y distinguido siempre por la pureza de su vida, por su patriotismo y por su aplicación al trabajo de los gremios." "Comunicados. Club de la Unión. Acta," El Nacional, 22-X-1866. 59"Comunicados. Club de la Unión. Acta," El Nacional, 22-X-1866. 58"El
271
The elections gave Laso a majority of the vote and he joined the Constitutional Congress of 1867 as the representative for Lima, abandoning his post as syndic of the municipality.60 Laso's participation in Congress was not very successful.
Placed on the constitutional
commission, his first proposal, to impose a third of the vote as quorum, was overwhelmingly rejected. An editorial in El Nacional rejected the proposal as autocratic, labeling the official representatives "pseudoliberals." A number of congressmen distributed copies of the liberal Constitution of 1823 so that it could be compared to the "ultraconservative" project presented by the constitutional commission. Although Laso was apparently in disagreement with the project, he nonetheless gave his signature.61
Laso was also elected to the Public
Works Committee of the Congress, which paved the way for some of the most important railroad projects of the 1870s. Prado's supporters in Congress likewise perfected the brand of political pragmatism that would later characterize Pardo's government.
This is clearly reflected in the
debate surrounding the issue of religious tolerance, which became one of the most important congressional debates of the period. Ricardo Palma lampooned Laso: Away with worries 60For
the results of the election see the section "Crónica local," in El Nacional, 23-31X-1866 and 6-XI-1866. For praise Laso received upon winning the elections see Manuel Talavera, "Comunicados. Elecciones," El Nacional, 27-XI-1866. 61"Crónica local. Constitución de 1823," El Nacional, 7-III-1867.
272
He shouted from France, He came to enlighten the nation And then, at the first stop He voted for intolerance.62 Laso claimed to have voted against tolerance for "political reasons," claiming that, as a representative of the people, he had to obey the wishes of the majority of his constituents. He also stated that he was ready to forsake the title of "liberal" if it meant heading inapplicable "prospectus" instead attending to the public interest.63 Laso was dubbed the "silent" or "invisible" congressman because he rarely spoke in Congress. His silence was due to a speech defect which caused him to stammer and prevented him from speaking fluidly. The only full speech Laso gave in Congress was read from a written text that was later published in the daily press. In this text, on the subject of acquired rights, Laso criticized the abuse of government subsidies and the excessive state bureaucracy, in direct support of the austerity program which Manuel Pardo had launched from the Ministry of Finance.64 Laso's colloquial language and direct accusations caused a scandal and his speech was received with almost unanimous rejection; his political
62[Don Francisco Lazo / (Representante por Lima) / Fuera preocupación! / Nos gritaba desde Francia - / Vino a ilustrar la nación, / Y luego al primer tapon / Votó por la intolerancia.] Ricardo Palma, "Semblanzas," La Campana, 7-VII-1867. 63[Si para ser buen liberal es indispensable llevarse mas de los "prospectos" sin aplicación que de la conveniencia pública, entonces los señores que me critican pueden guardarse sus títulos de "liberal" para envolverlos con su "patriotería" . . . ] Francisco Laso, "Derechos adquiridos," El Comercio, 22-V-1867; also published in El Nacional, 22V-1867. 64"Derechos adquiridos," El Progreso, 29-IV-1867; and Discurso leido por Laso en el Congreso, supplement to El Comercio, 29-IV-1867.
273
enemies published his Aguinaldo with a preface in which they accused him of also living off state money.65 The attacks on Laso came mainly from the liberal front, who accused the painter and other Prado supporters of betraying their liberal principles: Canary [Laso] is a democrat, and he was one of the first who shouted for the establishment of absolute government; he is a friend of the people and voted for the survival of contribución personal; he is a liberal and he voted for intolerance; he is the staunchest enemy of officeholders and he practices no genre of industry, commerce or work; he arranges his brushes and paints, because the painter's trade is not aristocratic. In short, "El Barón de Poco me Importa" is incomprehensible, a venomous and biting animal. After he bites he begs forgiveness.66 From Congress, Laso also supported the establishment of a National Academy destined to ensure the participation of the intellectual elite in government. The project for the creation of the academy was launched in March of 1867.
The issue of the benefits and problems
associated with state patronage of such an institution were immediately 65El
Aguinaldo. Colección de recriminaciones, ultrajes y denuestos, inferidos al Perú y a su sociedad, según pública voz poer el Ciudadano Don Francisco Lazo diputado por Lima al congreso constituyente. Hallándose en Europa viviendo y educándose á espensas de la Nación. Dado a la prensa por unos patriotas en las actuales circumstancias para que se conozcan de todos los indignos manejos de este Representante (Lima: Imprenta de "El Liberal", 1867). For other criticisms of Laso see bibliography, for Laso's response see "Derechos adquiridos," El Comercio, 22-V-1867; also published in El Nacional, 22-V-1867. 66[Canario es demócrata y fué uno de los gritadores para que se estableciera el gobierno absoluto; es amigo del pueblo y votó por la subsistencia del tributo personal; es liberal y votó por la intolerancia; es acerrimo enemigo de los empleados y no ejerce ningun género de industria, comercio o trabajo; arregla sus brochas y pinturas por que el oficio de pintor no es artistocrático. En fin "El Barón de Poco me Importa" es un incomprensible, un animal mordedor y venenoso. Después que muerde y ofende pide perdón.] "Comunicados. Intereses Generales. El Barón de Poco me Importa o el Canario Mudo," El Comercio, 7-V-1867.
274
raised by an editorial in El Comercio. Although the editorial praised the benefits of the constitution of civil associations, its author claimed that its freedom would be endangered by government support, and pointed to the example of a group of young writers who were already gathering together independently as the "Sociedad Amiga de las Letras."67 Immediately, El Progreso responded by arguing that private institutions were difficult to support financially and that the academy was not intended to train young students, but to bring together qualified scientific and literary figures. El Progreso also claimed that government support would allow the academy to better fulfill its program since it could then have under its responsibility such public institutions as the National Library and Museum.68 Evidently modeled on the French academy, the original project had in fact thought of the institution as a supervising and directing body of all the scientific and literary establishments associated with the state.69
The final statutes determined that the academy would
receive a government subsidy and that it would have at its disposal all state archives, museums, and scientific equipment.70 On June 23, 1867 the "Academia Nacional de Ciencias y Bellas Letras" was installed in an act headed by Felipe Osorio, minister of education. In his inaugural discourse, Próspero Pereira Gamba thanked 67"Crónica.
Buena idea," El Comercio, 6-III-1867. Nacional," El Progreso, 16-III-1867. 69"Proyecto de Constitución de La Academia Peruana," El Progreso, 16-III-1867. 70Art. 25 of the statutes in "Estatutos de la Academia Nacional de la República del Perú," El Progreso, 5-VI-1867. 68"Academia
275
the president for allowing them to gather in the hall of sessions of the Congress and stressed that the role of the academy was to promote learning in all spheres and to follow a "public and not an individual" path.71 The academy would serve to disseminate knowledge in the service of the state.
Its subjects were divided among the social, philological,
mathematical, physical, philosophic, and natural "sciences," and among its stated purposes was the formation of a national census and the promotion of education through the study of national history.72 Laso participated actively in the events organized by the academy. He was juror of a literary competition on patriotic themes which he helped to organize, and, in fulfillment of his duties as academician, he prepared an essay to be read in the academy.73 On November 9th, 1867, the newspapers announced that in the next session Laso would read a work on "Peruvian Archaeology," but the reading of the essay was transferred to another date.74 By then, however, it was too late. The academy had functioned almost as an appendage of Congress. When at the end of the year political resistance against Prado's government
71"Academia Nacional. Discurso de instalación del Dr. D. Próspero Pereira Gamba," El Progreso, 23-III-1867. See also "Crónica. Academia Nacional," El Comercio, 27-VI1867. 72The original project for the academy divided its sections differently, establishing philology, history, statistics, physical and natural sciences and literature. The final division stressed the "scientific" character of the institution. See "Proyecto de Constitución de La Academia Peruana," El Progreso, 16-III-1867 and "El Día," El Progreso, 30-IV-1867. See also "Estatutos de la Academia Nacional de la República del Perú," El Progreso, 5-VI-1867. 73"Crónica. Academia Nacional," El Comercio, 26-VII-1867, 1-VIII-1867. 74"Crónica. Academia Nacional," El Comercio, 9-XI-1867, 14-XI-1867, 17-XII, 1867.
276
culminated in civil war, the Congress disbanded and the National Academy was dissolved, and Laso apparently never read his text to the Academy. Laso's short-lived congressional experience did not end his political career.
In December 1867, Manuel Pardo was elected as head of the
Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima (Society of Public Beneficence of Lima), and Laso joined him as member of the board of directors of that institution. This semi-official, civilian welfare agency was dominated by members of the most distinguished families of the capital. Pardo gave new impetus to the society, initiating a series of modernizing projects in education, public health, and welfare. He founded the "Caja de Ahorros" to promote savings and instruct the general public on economic matters; he initiated the construction of Lima's largest hospital, named after the Battle of May 2, 1866; he formed a special commission to help the inhabitants of Arequipa after the earthquake of 1868, and he gave special support to a variety of educational programs.75
Pardo also created a
special work asylum for beggars and named Laso its inspector.76 Above all, however, Pardo's administration of this welfare society is best remembered for his efficiency in combating the yellow fever epidemic of 1868. By mid-year the epidemic had caused over 4,000 deaths in the
75McEvoy, 76"Crónica
Un proyecto nacional en el siglo XIX, p. 68. local. Beneficencia," El Comercio, 5-I-1869.
277
capital. Members of the society not only organized support groups but personally helped in aiding the sick and burying the dead.77 The administration of the society became a political springboard for Pardo and his friends. Accusing the government of inefficiency, they argued that organized civilians had done better than the state in controlling the epidemic. Since the end of February 1869, Laso had been in charge of the weekly chronicle of El Nacional published under the title "Bazaar semanal." Laso supported this campaign from his weekly column in the newspaper,78 praising the work of the members of the society in order to criticize the inactivity of the mayor of Lima and of the government79 Laso's close political collaboration with Pardo continued until the very end. In 1869, after Congress annulled the municipal elections, and President Balta appointed Laso to the "Junta of Notables" in charge of municipal affairs and of electing a new mayor of Lima. On March 19, 1869, Laso accepted his appointment as "Vocal de la Junta Municipal."80 Not surprisingly in light of his previous success in the Beneficencia Pública, Manuel Pardo was elected as Lima's new mayor.81 From his post at the municipality, Pardo furthered his modernizing projects by 77McEvoy,
Un proyecto nacional en el siglo XIX, pp. 65-66. the announcement of Laso's column see "Crónica local. Bazaar semanal," El Nacional, 27-II-1869. By early April Laso's ill health prevented him from continuing his work at the newspaper, "Crónica local. Bazaar semanal." El Nacional, 3-IV-1869. For a complete listing of the articles Laso published in that newspaper see bibliography. 79"Bazar semanal," El Nacional, 6-III-1869. 80See Laso's acceptance letter in El Peruano, 56, no. 69, 23-III-1869, p. 273. 81McEvoy, Un proyecto nacional en el siglo XIX, p. 69. 78For
278
improving sanitation and public services, controlling prices, founding schools, and taxing the wealthier sectors of society. The political struggles of the 1860s had presented new actors in the political arena, had left behind a succession of modernizing projects, and helped to redefine the themes and issues of public debate; they had thus paved the way for Pardo's successful presidential campaign of 1870. Underlying these activities and debates, there is one crucial theme which forms the linchpin of early Civilista political ideology: the stated ambition of expanding the political public sphere. Although evidently modeled on the bourgeois public sphere which Jürgen Habermas has described for contemporary Europe, the public sphere Peruvian intellectuals envisioned was significantly different. It was not to be formed by a clear separation between civil society and the state, but rather by a crucial incorporation of educated property-owning individuals into the structures of the Peruvian government. For these intellectuals, a political public sphere would only be assured through an oligarchic control of the state.82 In 1863 Laso had written an essay titled "Croquis sobre las elecciones," which can be simultaneously read as a summary of early Civilista ideology and of the ideas which led him to politics. In this text, Laso urged "people of order," "decent," and "important" people," to participate in politicical life.
He deplored the disorders and the bad
82On the notion of the bourgeois public sphere as model see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans., Thomas Burger with the help of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).
279
political habits that surfaced in every election.
He also criticized the
egotism and lack of civic virtue that led most of Peru's upper classes to look with disdain upon politics and assured his readers that if "decent" people participated in politics, the "populace" would fall into order and accept the guidance of its leaders. Left to people of "lesser importance," electoral politics would not improve. Laso's criticism was largely directed to the tradition of caudillismo, which took people to political office through "intrigue and brute force."83 But the call for participation in politics was not made to all civilians, irrespective of social standing. It was made specifically to Lima's high society, urging them to take over what had until then been the province of the middle sectors. Civilismo had begun with the ambition of broadening the social base of Peruvian politics, but even in its initial stages it had been marked by an aristocratic tinge. In order to transform the popular classes into fullfledged citizens, the intellectual and social elite had to assert its position as a true ruling class. What was presented as a form of popular democracy was in reality a variation on enlightened despotism. It is no surprise that by the end of the century, Civilismo had become the fully oligarchic and aristocratic movement which modern critics condemn.84 83"Croquis sobre las elecciones. Indirecta para los ricos, en particular, y para todo hombre de orden, en general" La Revista de Lima, VII, no. 3 (February 1, 1863): 97-107. In another text, Laso also criticized the lack of public spirit, writing: "Se dice, jeneralmente, que en el Perú nadie sabe obedecer; pero nosotros creemos mas justo el decir que 'en el Perú no hay quien sepa mandar'-Por esto, todos los males del país han venido y vienen de arriba para abajo, y no de abajo para arriba." See "Croquis sobre el caracter peruano,"p. 313. 84The most notable critique of Civilismo is Mariátegui's, Seven Interpretive Essays.
280
THE INDIAN: WRITING, POLITICS, AND PAINTING Through enlightened debate, education, and broader political participation, early Civilismo had attempted to forge the basis for a political public sphere. For these modernizing elites, the main obstacle standing in the path of the constitution of this public sphere was the Indian population of Peru, marginalized and exempted from participation in the nation-state. The viability of the nation depended, then, on the possibility of incorporating Peru's Indian communities into the political structures of the state. Between 1866 and 1868, the issue of the relationship between Indian communities and the state became pressing and topical with the outbreak of a large-scale Indian rebellion in Huancané in southern Perú. The insurrection had been sparked by a number of extraordinary taxes imposed by Manuel Pardo, then minister of finance under Prado.
In
October of 1866, the prefect of Puno managed to subdue some early uprisings with the aid of local hacendados. The following months saw a gradual expansion of unrest which finally erupted into forthright rebellion.
In the absence of aid from the capital, the sub-prefect of
Azángaro went as far as to seek support from neighboring Bolivia.
Cecilia Méndez rightly criticizes recent historians' view of Civilismo as a monolithic and unchanging movement, pointing to the changes which the group underwent during the second half of the 19th century. See her review of the Spanish translation of Kristal's The Andes Viewed From the City in Revista andina, 10, no. 1 (July 1992): 253-254.
281
Finally, in June of 1867, a military division led by General Baltazar Caravedo arrived in the region, managing to pacify the rebellion while avoiding direct confrontation.
When Caravedo's forces left Puno in
October, new disturbances emerged.
Joining in the campaign against
Prado that Diez Canseco was leading in Arequipa, public authorities of Lampa openly rebelled against the president. Juan Bustamante, a rich politician of the region who had been active in national politics and who had previously served as the Indian's representative before the Congress, organized the Indians in support of Prado. On December 30, he took Puno but was forced to retreat to Pusi on January 1, 1868. The next day he was defeated and violently executed.
Massive reprisals, including a
number of cruel massacres against the Indian communities of the region followed, and military repression continued well into 1868.85 The rebellion awakened old racial fears in the capital and newspapers repeatedly warned of the danger that a full-scale caste war could erupt in the country. In May, the deputies for Puno in Congress
85Manuel
Burga and Alberto Flores Galindo present the rebellion as a an anti-feudal "caste war," fueled by millenarism and Andean utopia based on the myth of the return of the Inca. See "Feudalismo andino y movimientos sociales (1866-1965) in Historia del Peru, vol. XI (Lima: Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1980): 32-33. The only evidence they produce in support of their theory is a short and casual remark by a journalist intent on discrediting Juan Bustamante, that Bustamante had "la ridícula idea de proclamarse Inca y el horrible plan de exterminar la raza blanca." Cited in Emilio Vásquez, La rebelión de Juan Bustamante (Lima: Librería-Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1976): 312-313. A modernizing politician would never have espoused such ideas. The rebellion was evidently sparked by Pardo's fiscal policy and later taken advantage of by Prado's political enemies. However, all of the information presently available on this rebellion is drawn from Lima newspapers, which are not adequate sources to define the motivations of the Indian communities of southern Peru.
282
proposed a project for a law which would order the use of force to repress the uprisings, submit the instigators of the rebellion to a military court, deport the rebellious Indians, and sell their property, measures destined to root out what they perceived was a "regrettable tendency toward a caste war." The proposal received no support in the capital, and the "Law of Terror," as it was baptized by the press, was virulently attacked by all of the newspapers of Lima, including La Campana, El Comercio, El Nacional and El Liberal.86 In the congressional debates, newspaper articles, and pamphlets which circulated throughout the year, the public of Lima heard horror stories about the atrocities committed by local authorities against the exploited Indians. The fault of all abuses were unanimously blamed on the "Mestizos without conscience," who were accused of exploiting the Indians in unspecified, but always distant, Andean provinces.87
The
special section on "Indians" in El Comercio published poems and letters of support for the Indians of southern Peru.88 The composer Carlos Pasta wrote the music for a zarzuela titled ¡Pobre indio!, with lyrics by Juan Cosío and Juan Vicente Camacho, long-time "bohemian" and collaborator of La Revista de Lima. "Moved by the misfortunes of the poor inhabitants
86The law was submitted by José L. Quiñones, Federico Luna, and Santiago Riquelme. See Vásquez, pp. 190f. The editorials of El Nacional against this law are published in Ibid., pp. 341-351. As an example of the criticisms of the law see El Mozo del Campanero, "El Esquilón," La Campana, 21-VII-1867. 87"Un poco de todo," El Liberal, 10-VIII-1867. 88The poem by José Ignacio Palma is published in "Indios," El Comercio, 27-IX-1867.
283
of Puno," Pasta claimed he had written the piece with the aim of exciting in his audience similar "sentiments of admiration and esteem."89 The power of the image of the victimized Indian surfaced again to mitigate the racial and political fears of the inhabitants of the capital. Public displays of empathy promoted a climate of generalized commiseration that few could escape. Many were driven to take a more active role in these events. On July 22, 1867, the "Sociedad Amiga de los Indios," [Society of Friends of the Indian] held its first meeting in the home of José Miguel Medina, one of the directors and founders of the society along with Juan Bustamante, Buenaventura Seoane, and Rudecindo Beltrán.90 The society's declared aims were to assist in the education of the Indian race, to protect the Indians from abuse, promote legislation against forms of illegal dependence (personal service), and serve as arbiters, if solicited, in legal disputes among and about Indian communities.91 The society requested a thorough study of Indian problems in order to facilitate the implementation of educational programs and to assist in the examination of land titles. Members Zegarra and Mesones were charged with the commission of gathering documentation to initiate the process of 89Carlos
E. Pasta, Juan Vicente Camacho and Juan Cossío, ¡Pobre indio! Zarzuela escrita por Juan V. Camacho y Juan Cossío. Música del maestro Carlos E. Pasta (Lima: Imprenta Liberal, 1868). 90[Editorial], "Sociedad Amiga de los Indios," El Comercio, 22-VII-1867. 91José Miguel Medina was elected as the first Director and Amunátegui VicePresident. General Baltazar Caravedo was named honorary president. Thanks are given to Juan Bustamante who is declared "Founder of the Society." "Lima. Sociedad Amiga de los Indios," El Comercio, 6-VIII-1867. The idea for the society and its foundation are usually attributed single-handedly to Juan Bustamante.
284
canonization for Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, invoked and acclaimed as the patron of the society.92 On August 26, 1867, El Comercio published over thirty letters, written by leading intellectuals, accepting Bustamante's invitation to participate in the society. Even President Prado sent a special commission to the society and offered his help.93 Although the society was centered in Lima, it attempted to bridge the distance separating them from Indian communities. It counted on members in the different provincial capitals, who conveyed the grievances of Indian communities to the society, which in turn published them in the daily papers. Further, Sebastián Lorente and Juan José Araos presented a proposal to the society to write a letter to the Indians explaining the function of the society and asking for their collaboration. The society, however, could not escape the paternalist rhetoric which had dominated Peruvian debates on the Indian since the colonial period, and the standard views on the Indian's character had not changed substantially since the rebellion of Iquicha of 1827. Juan Bustamante, for example, admitted that the Indians were justified in their "involuntary" rebellion, but refused to admit that they could have been responsible for 92"Crónica
local. Sociedad "Amiga de los Indios,"" El Nacional, 27-VIII-1867. Indios," El Comercio, 26-VIII-1867. Among the important public figures who wrote to support the society were Pedro Gálvez, Francisco de Paula González Vigil, Santiago Távara, José Sevilla, Mario Alleon, Juan Francisco Pazos, Cipriano Coronel Zegarra, and Augusto Althaus. Among the prefects who wrote in response to Bustamante's request for proposals to improve the Indian's condition were José Miguel Medina, Ramón Vargas Machuca, and Miguel Zavala. 93"Lima.
285
any violence, further claiming that they had been used by their very oppressors as foils for their own political pretensions.94
Most reform
proposals presented to the society involved extreme forms of paternalism. Miguel Zavala, for example, proposed a project to revive the colonial post of "Protector de Indígenas." The protector would live in Indian communities, take their complaints, and serve as an intermediary between the state and the native population. The protector would also inspect the morality, domestic customs, hygiene, and even sleeping arrangements of the Indians, "directing them toward rational ends." By turning Indian communities into reform schools, the protector would ensure strict surveillance of the population (a special register and wardens were stipulated in the proposal), and through the promotion of forced labor, the Indians would supposedly acquire the will power and the "ambition" they were said to lack.95 In March, in the midst of the social upheavals of the southern provinces, the Congress began lengthy and heated debates on the issue of contribución personal. Although the tax was finally abolished, it received the support of a number of congressmen, including Francisco Laso. The apparent contradiction, that a self-declared liberal and evident defender of 94Juan
Bustamante, "Los indios del Perú," El Comercio, 26-VIII-1867. Zavala, Protectorado de indios, o sea Proyecto de ley ofrecido á las consideraciones de los H.H. Representantes de la Nación, en la presente legislatura de 1868, con el fin de mejorar la deprimida condición social del indio, haciendo realizables sus derechos (Lima: Imprenta de J. M. Masías, 1868). An article in Zavala's proposal read as follows: "[El Protector] inspeccionará escrupulosamente la moralidad, la higiene, las prácticas y usos domésticos de los indígenas, dirigiéndolos paternalmente á fines racionales." Ibid., pp. 44-45. 95Miguel
286
the Indian population should support the hated tax, however, is not very difficult to explain. The supporters of contribución personal offered two distinct yet closely related justifications for their position, one economic and one political. Manuel Pardo produced a lengthy text in which he presented the economic reasoning behind his tax proposal. Pardo argued against common opinion, claiming that Indian tribute had in fact been beneficial, and that it was precisely Castilla's decree of 1854 which was to blame for the economic stagnation of the provinces of the interior. At the heart of Pardo's supposedly modernizing arguments was the old colonial belief about the indolent character of the Indian population.96 The Indians were said to lack, by nature, what Pardo called the "instinct for progress." According to Pardo, the abolition of Indian tribute had eliminated the Indian's motivation to work and had brought about a serious decline in agricultural productivity. Pardo's racism translated neatly into economic theorizing. He criticized the application of European economic theories to Peru, claiming that each race required its own economic theory. Thus, in Europe, taxes never translated into increased productivity, but among the Indian population of Peru, any increase in work "must originate only in an increase of needs, and, reciprocally, any increase in needs translates into 96The
Indian's "indolence" had been used throughout the colonial period to justify forced labor and other exploitative economic policies. For the case of the use of this argument to justify the reparto see Alfredo Moreno Cebrián, "El ocio del indio como razón teórica del repartimiento," Revista de Indias XXXV, nos. 139-142 (January-December 1975): 167-185.
287
increased productivity."97
Further, taxes would be the mainstay of the
state's civilizing mission, since the money derived from taxes could be used to improve communications and education, the elements early Civilistas believed would contribute to the transformation of Indians into citizens. If Pardo justified the head tax with economic jargon, others offered a different, if complementary, justification. The renowned jurist Francisco García Calderón provided the legal backing for contribución personal. He argued that while Indian tribute had been a sign of vassalage, the head tax implied no subjection, it was simply a sign of common membership in the Peruvian nation.98 José Casimiro Ulloa also approved of the need for contribución personal, for he considered it a way of letting the Indians know that they were free men and citizens.
"I am for the Indian's
independence," he stated, "but for an independence obtained through work, civilization, and commerce."99 Other congressmen approved of the principles expounded by Pardo and García Calderón, yet refused to
97[podremos deducir lógicamente que todo aumento de trabajo en ella, tiene que provenir solamente de un aumento de necesidades y que recíprocamente todo aumento de necesidades se traduce en un aumento de trabajo . . . ] Manuel Pardo], Algunas cuestiones sociales con motivo de los disturbios de Huancané. Al Soberano Congreso (Lima: Imprenta dirigida por J. M. Monterola, 1867): 11-12. 98See the entries under "contribución" and "tributo" in Francisco García Calderon, Diccionario de la legislación peruana, 2d rev. ed. (Lima and Paris: By the author and Laroque Jeune, 1879). 99A summary (or rather, transcription) of the congressional debates in Marcelo Sánchez Espinosa, "La abolición de la contribución personal por el Congreso Constituyente peruano de 1867," Revista de historia de.América 18 (December 1944): 348.
288
follow them in fear that the tax would exacerbate the social upheavals in the south. Although Laso offered no written justification for his vote in favor of contribución personal, it is clear that he would have agreed with his friends Pardo, García Calderón, and Ulloa. For them, the incorporation of the Indian into the nation required that they be transformed into the model citizens of classic liberal ideology: free, educated, and propertyowning individuals.
Pardo contemptuously dismissed the "sterile
philanthropy" of Indian defenders, and indirectly attacked the society of Friends of the Indian when he stated that the problems of the southern provinces would not be resolved simply "by protecting the Indians against the exploitation of the Mestizo.100 Laso clearly adhered to the liberal discourse of Pardo and his followers, and, like most other political thinkers of the period, he envisaged the future de-Indianization of Peru. He believed in the power of education and modern civilization in general to transform Peruvian society by incorporating the Indian into the body of the nation. In this regard, it is significant that Laso did not join the Society of Friends of the Indian and that he never engaged the "Indian problem" as a separate political issue. As a politician, he placed a greater emphasis on issues of state reform, remaining largely aloof of contemporary debates on the Indian. Similarly, he did not devote a single published article exclusively 100[con
patrocinar al indígena contra la esplotación del mestizo.] Pardo, p. 20.
289
to the "Indian problem." When he mentions the Indian population in his articles, he does so in broader, usually comparative contexts. In his essay "Croquis sobre el caracter peruano," Laso praised the calm resignation, the sober and hardworking character of the Indians and defended them against widespread accusations of laziness, cowardice, ingratitude, and inferiority; but he did so in an essay in which he also discussed other social groups within the country.
In this, as in other writings, Laso
presented a frontal attack on the notion that character or intelligence were biologically defined, rejecting in decided terms any insinuation of racial determinism.
He refused to speak of the Indian as an irremediably
different social group; he discussed the Indian population as an integral, if underprivileged, segment of the Peruvian nation. It is in this sense mainly that Laso may be said to depart from traditional political Indianism. Laso's works always involve a stringent criticism of Peruvian society, yet he never represented forms of exploitation directly in his paintings. An exception to this is a small drawing in the collection of the Museo de Arte de Lima, which represents an image of forced recruitment in an Andean landscape (fig. 43). In the foreground, two women in Indian dress cry out as a group of horsemen in the background lead a party of Indians away from the town. Forced recruitment of men for the army had been generalized in the Andean region since the wars of independence and, although it was an illegal act, it was rarely punished. The practice 290
was criticized constantly in the newspapers.101
While a few attacked
recruitment because it disrupted daily life and deprived families of their servants, others argued against it on principle, as an affront to personal liberties.102
Laso himself pointed to forced recruitment as one of the
principal forms of the Indian's exploitation, and his drawing appeals to the suffering caused by this practice.103
Significantly enough, this
drawing, which is the work in which Laso most directly approximates existing public debates, was never taken to canvas.104 Generally in Laso's painted works, social criticism is more veiled and indirect, and Laso's Indian figures never evoke the kind of commiseration presented in his drawing of forced recruitment. As in his writings, Laso refused to engage in the "sterile philanthropy" which Pardo had attacked. If the Indian is largely absent from Laso's writings, in his paintings by contrast, the Indian's presence is forcefully emphasized. The bulk of his major works were devoted to the image of the Indian, which he turned into a crucial symbol of the nation.
This is in part the result of the
different functions Laso assigned to writing and painting. His essays, written with the conviction that all of Peru's social problems derived from 101See
for example "Crónica. Leva," El Heraldo de Lima, 13-XI-1854 José Casimiro Ulloa, "Crónica de la quincena," La Revista de Lima," IV, no. 10 (November 15, 1861): 426-432, and Francisco García Calderón, Diccionario de la legislación peruana. 103 As one chronicler wrote: "desgraciadamente se toma a los muchachos sirvientes, causando de este modo grandes perjuicios a las familias." "Crónica de la capital. Leva," El Comercio, 27-I-1859. See also "Croquis sobre el caracter peruano," p. 307 and 104A painting representing a scene of recruitment in a private collection in Lima has been attributed to Laso, but this work is completely unlike Laso's drawing and does not correspond to the painter's style. 102See
291
an irresponsible leadership, are intended as tools for the reform of Peruvian elites. The colloquial tone used by Laso in his writings implies a familiarity with his readers, with whom he assumes a level of equality. In his paintings, on the other hand, there is an implicit distance between the author and his public. This distance is marked by the fact that the public for Laso's painted works was not as clearly defined as the audience Laso imagined in his writings. For, even though Laso believed there was a limited public for art, his paintings were created as more inclusive public symbols, and, in a sense, they appealed to a potentially broader public than his writings. As a superior system of signification, painting offered possibilities for representation that politics and writing could not satisfy. The need to construct national symbols through painting led Laso to approach the Indian in a different manner than he did as a writer or politician. As we have seen, the Indian became, in part, the purveyor of the authenticity needed to sustain a national representation. Laso's idealist aesthetics were incompatible with any particular demand or circumstantial subject matter. Thus, he denied genre painting, but he also rejected traditional history painting. Laso's painted works are never an illustration of his writings, nor his writings an illustration of his paintings. As we shall see, although the relationship between the two is less evident, it is no less important.
292
THE TASK OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY: SELF-REPRESENTATION IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE Laso's political career was guided by the conviction that all citizens were obliged to participate actively in public life. The call for broader participation in politics which he launched in his essay "Croquis sobre las elecciones" had been directed to Peru's "people of order," that is, to morally qualified individuals whose probity would ensure the reform of a corrupt political system.
The country required ideal models of
citizenship, exemplary figures who would renew the weakened foundations of the nation. Significantly, a large number of the essays Laso published in La Revista de Lima are devoted to issues of moral character. In "Variaciones sobre la candidez," Laso wrote of the disingenuous character of Peruvians and the lack of prudence and circumspection which dominated Peruvian society. An essay titled "Croquis sobre la amistad," was dedicated to a meditation on the values of friendship in the context of a rapidly changing society; "El vividor," attacked the lack of principles, the opportunism, and adulation which pervaded public life.
In "Croquis sobre los bien-
aventurados en la tierra," Laso wrote a cynical account of the nature of happiness, and in "El hombre y su imagen," he offered an ironic reflection on the vanity and self-satisfaction behind the taste for portraiture. In each case, Laso appealed to human nature and to principles he considered to be of universal validity. According to Laso, the coming of the republic had brought Peru nothing but chaos and corruption which 293
had weakened the Peruvian state and had led to the failure of the basic principles of liberal democracy. Only by renewing the moral foundations of the state could the nation hope to progress, and the only way to achieve this was by changing the customs and traditions which formed the moral character of Peruvians. Moral renewal had to emerge from the private sphere, from the education and the ethical principles imparted in the home. This is why Laso dedicated his Aguinaldo to the ladies of Lima, whom he charged with the responsibility of reforming Peruvian education. In that text, Laso had traced the story of the education of a boy of good social standing. The innate talents and good character of the child are gradually destroyed in the process of growing up in a morally corrupt environment. A bad education produced weak leaders lacking in public spirit and patriotism. For Laso there was no clear distinction between the private and the public spheres: without a thorough reform of the private realms, public life could not possibly improve. In his Aguinaldo Laso attacked in public the moral corruption of Peruvian private life. In so doing he exposed the intimacy of the private world of Lima's elite, and this was precisely what most offended his critics. Laso's political career, and his life generally, demonstrate how his notion of civic life depended on the close interrelationship of the public and private spheres. His own self-image was constructed in public. Laso never wrote a complete
self-contained
narrative 294
of
his
life,
but
there
is
an
autobiographical text running through his entire œuvre. Laso is among the first Peruvian artists to make his own life the subject of his works. Among Laso's writings there are several autobiographical essays in which he turns episodes of his life into the material for fiction. In "Un recuerdo" ("A Memory"), he described his friendship with the French painter Eugène Daméry; in "Mi cumpleaños" ("My Birthday"), he recounted an anxious birthday meditation on the passing of time;105 and in "Tiempos pasados" ("Times Past"), he constructed a fictionalized narrative of his European travels.106
In the Aguinaldo, too, the author's voice interjects repeatedly
in the text, establishing personal opinions and inserting dreams and autobiographical fragments into the narrative. In this manner, while Laso criticizes the young Manongo of the story, he recurrently enters into an act of self-criticism and even of self-deprecation.
The autobiographical
fragments imply that the author has also gone through a similar social process. The interdependence of the public and private spheres similarly shaped Laso's work as a painter, and autobiographical references also abound in his paintings. Yet these references are not simply transposed to the works but in fact help to shape and define them. Perhaps the most poignant example of how personal narratives structure Laso's works is 105Laso
publishes this essay with a disclaimer in which he affirms that the text was written by a friend. The autobiographical references in this essay, however, indicate that Laso was the author of the piece, a fact that is corroborated since it is signed a few days after his birthday. 106For a complete listing of Laso's writings in the Revista de Lima see part III of the bibliography at the end of this dissertation.
295
The Three Races, or Equality Before the Law107 (fig. 44), first exhibited in April of 1859 in the store of the lithographer Emilio Prugue. In spite of its obvious appeal to allegorical convention, the painting has often been identified as an anecdotal work.
When it was exhibited at the first
National Exhibition of 1860, a critic described it as a "nice cuadro de costumbres."108 José Antonio de Lavalle later included it among Laso's "humorous sketches,"109 and Carlos Raygada considered it a welcome respite in the context of Laso's "meditative and severe" production.110 Indeed, there is a sense of calm repose in the painting, reflected in such details as the manner in which the young Black woman comfortably lets her shoe slip and fall casually to the ground. There is no doubt that, in representing a contemporary scene, Laso seems to appeal directly to the costumbrista genre tradition.
Yet, whereas costumbrismo had focused
107The
painting is first mentioned under the title, Las Tres Razas, in the criticism of the exhibition of 1860. Later, a friend of the artist, José Antonio de Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, claimed that Laso called it Igualdad ante la ley. See "Francisco Laso," p. 1127. 108"Esposicion de pinturas (sic)," El Comercio, 15-VIII-1860. 109"Después de la "Santa Rosa" puede decirse que Lazo ya no pintó más; pues sus trabajos se limitaron a uno que otro boceto humorístico, y a tal cual retrato de familia o de un amigo muy íntimo. Merecen especial mención entre los primeros, un cuadrito que intituló "Igualdad ante la ley" y que representa a un niño de raza blanca esmeradamente vestido, jugando a los naipes con una sucia negrilla y una haraposa indiecita, que obsequió a su amigo el doctor Mariano Alvarez."Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, "Francisco Laso," p. 1127. 110Carlos Raygada described it as follows: "Las tres razas" o "La igualdad ante la ley" es una composición en que por única vez adviértese una leve sonrisa juguetona en medio de toda la producción tan severa y mediativa de Laso. Ha reunido en esta tela, para buscar un contraste de buen humor, a una negrita, una cholita y un niño rubio. El cuadro es, sin duda gracioso pero intrascendente, recayendo todo su mérito en la figura de la negrita, pintada con una maestría y una calidad tonal que seducen de inmediato." "La pintura de Laso." El Comercio, 12-XII-1937, p. iv. "Aparecen en esta sencilla composición costumbrista una muchacha de color, una indiecita y un niño, sobrino del pintor, jugando a las cartas dentro de una habitación." Flores Araoz, Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, cat. no. 4.
296
exclusively on Peruvian public life, Laso here presents a domestic interior, and, as in his writings, penetrates aggressively into a traditionally sheltered space. Laso transforms traditional costumbrismo by using it to illustrate a universal allegorical convention. There is a hint of irony in the title Laso gave this work, for the group is presented in a context in which the social hierarchy is not denied but rather emphasized.
Set in a domestic interior, and placed in the
company of a fair-skinned boy in formal dress, the young Indian and Black women can only be interpreted as servants. Yet in representing the group as engaged in a game of cards, which is also a game of chance, Laso seems to suggest, as he often did in his writings, that the social inequality of the different ethnic groups was not due to inherent biological characteristics but to unequal social opportunities. The fact that it is the boy's turn to play further emphasizes that his position is only temporary and that the hierarchy can be upset at any time. The entire composition is activated by this contrast, between the ideal of equality which the title sets forth and the harsh reality of quotidian life that the painting ostensibly engages. The group directly evokes the feudal relationship between family and servant established in the interior of the home, and in so doing appeals to the values Laso had set forth in his Aguinaldo. In this regard, the prominent presence given to the young Indian girl is crucial to the meaning of the painting.
The
practice of using Indian children for domestic service was widespread in 297
the mid 19th century.111
There seems to have been little difference
between the status of these Indian children, or "cholitos" as they were usually called, and that of the Black slaves engaged in domestic service. Although it had no legal sanction, this unofficial slavery was carried out with impunity. As the rewards that were offered for escaped servants in the newspapers indicate, families assumed a right of ownership over them.112 Supported by an increasing urban demand and tacitly allowed by provincial authorities, the trade in Indian children became generalized throughout Peru. Most liberal writers of the mid-19th century, vigorously criticized this trade, and calls for sanctions were frequently heard in Lima newspapers. Laso harshly attacked this practice in one of his most important texts, the "Story of Manuquita" which he inserted in his Aguinaldo. The story centers on a young Indian girl who served in his house when he was a child, and whom Laso described as "a piece of furniture or an animal that a deputy or subprefect had given to my sister as a gift."113 The painter recalls how a school friend had stolen his sister's gold and pearl rosary, threatened the young Laso into silence, and thus turned him into an accomplice in crime. Inevitably, Manuquita was accused of stealing the 111Sebastián
Lorente, who offers one of the most poignant testimonies of this practice defined the cholito as, ". . . el indio esclavizado casi al salir de la cuna." See Pensamientos sobre el Perú [1855], preliminary note by Alberto Tauro, Comentarios del Perú, 8 (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1967): 29. 112Flores Galindo, Buscando un inca, pp. 213-236. 113[Eraun mueble ó animal que undiputado ó subprefecto habia regalado a mi hermana. Creo que fué de una hacienda que la arrancaron del seno maternal; y en dicho lugar, como en toda hacienda, habia adquirido una enfermedad.] Aguinaldo, p. 27.
298
rosary. Beaten by a public official into admitting a crime she had not committed, the young servant suffered the consequences of Laso's silence. The incident evidently marked Laso for life. In his text he presents it as one of the crucial events of his life: What a miserable being I was! it is something that I have never forgiven myself for; and that confession weighs on me as a fatal sentence."114 The autobiographical references in the Aguinaldo also appear in The Three Races. Family tradition states that the boy represented in the painting is Laso's nephew, Juan Norberto Elespuru y Laso (1846-1923), the son of his sister Juana Manuela. This tradition is corroborated by the fact that the boy's apparent age in the painting coincides with the age of Laso's nephew at the time the painting was created.115
But the question of
whether or not the boy represented in the painting is in fact Laso's nephew is irrelevant to an autobiographical reading of the work, for a more direct reference can be found in the figure of the young Indian servant represented in the painting. The girl is placed in a privileged position; she forms the apex of the pyramidal composition which structures the painting, and even the clearly marked orthogonals on the floor converge at a point slightly above her head.
Her prominent
placement within the painting contrasts with her unassuming figure and her humble, and even drab clothing. 114[¡Miserable
Significantly enough, the only
que fui! es cosa que jamás me la perdono; y esa confesion pesa sobre mi como fatal sentencia.] Aguinaldo, p. 28. 115Felipe A. Barreda, Elespuru, (Lima: By the author, 1957): 40-41.
299
element that serves to distinguish her is a small rosary which hangs from her neck. The rosary establishes an evident link between the story told in Laso's Aguinaldo and the domestic interior represented in the painting. The Three Races can be easily read as a tribute to Manuquita. If Laso used the written text as a confessional, the act of painting here becomes a form of expiation. The painting is thus far more than the apparent image of a domestic interior; it transcends the anecdotal character of costumbrismo, and attempts to resolve on the surface of the canvas the social contradictions at the heart of Peruvian society. In a way, what Laso condemns in his writings is redressed in his paintings. Yet the personal narrative that structures the painting is not readily visible, and, although later writers have insisted in reading selfportraits in a number of Laso's paintings, not a single critic has discussed The Three Races in autobiographical terms. Even if a personal narrative underlies most of his paintings, Laso's self-representations are never evident, and rarely direct. They are far removed from the manner in which Ignacio Merino, for example, daringly sought public exposure in presenting a self-portrait in the figure of Christ in his Supper at Emmaus. In Laso's case, the autobiographical references are not simply inserted into a traditional composition but are in fact an integral part of the conception of his works.
300
The few surviving preparatory sketches by Laso show that usually, as in The Concert or in his Pascana series, the painter incorporates direct self-references only in the preparatory sketches, later erasing the traces of his presence from the final works. In this, as in much else, Laso adhered closely to contemporary academic theory, for preparatory works were considered to belong to the private realm, a part of the creative process which could not be exposed.116 The personal references in Laso's works do not appear to have been intended for a broad audience. They are perceptible only when the paintings are placed under close scrutiny, or when the retrospective work of the historian gathers together evidence which would not have been available to contemporary viewers. At most, these references could have been perceptible only to a small circle of friends and acquaintances. These friends and relatives were, of course, the most important public figures of Peruvian public life.
Laso's intimate circle included
presidents, ministers and congressmen, and intellectual and literary figures in all spheres. Close friends like Mariano Ignacio Prado, Manuel Pardo, García Calderón, the Paz Soldán and Cisneros brothers, Toribio Pacheco, Ulloa, Narciso Alayza, Mariano Alvarez, and José Antonio de Lavalle, were not only grouped together through political activities but also through family ties. They formed both the political and the social elite of the country. 116Boime,
The Academy, pp. 83-86, 92-95.
301
This small circle was in fact Laso's only certain "public." Almost all of them had their portraits painted by Laso, and many kept his works in their possession. The contradictions present in proto-Civilista discourse, between the ideal of a broad political public sphere and the denial of this ideal in the constitution of an oligarchic state, thus surface also in Laso's practice as a painter. In his paintings, Laso had intended to create public symbols, images which could both embody and constitute the nation. The desire to appeal to a broad audience is constantly contradicted by his practice, by Laso's aristocratic understanding of painting, and the simultaneous skepticism about the possibilities of forging an art public in Peru. In Laso's work, not only is the construction of public images based on the incorporation of private references, but public symbols are given proper names. Tradition states that the image of Laso's Saint Rose was modeled on the physiognomy of Manuela Henríquez, the painter's wife, who is also said to be represented in the figure of Liberty in his American Unity. A family relative, Juanita Noriega, is said to have posed for the allegorical figure of Ecuador, and, as we have seen, other friends of the painter posed for Laso's The Concert.117
In this manner, members of
Laso's most intimate circle are made to inhabit public spaces and even to embody national symbols.
117Flores
Araoz, Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, cat. no. 51, 54.
302
It is thus not surprising that modern critics should have read selfportraits of the painter even where such identifications are improbable,118 and that these writers should have given such an important place to the artist's biography, for the works themselves invite such identifications. In fact, more than the works themselves, it is Laso as author who dominates in every instance of critical writing on his work.
Beginning with his
genealogy, repeating almost every factor that affected his life, ending with the tragedy of an untimely death, the figure of the author and the narration of his life are presumed to be the ultimately determining factors, the creative locus of the works. The act of painting as an "exercise of human sensibility"119 is thus a leitmotif of critical writing on Laso. The artist and critic Teófilo Castillo could find the source of the "intense truth" of the Haravicu in "[t]hat truth which is nothing but the soul of the artist there made transparent, virile soul, strong, always enamored of the native soil, whose life is the only thing that interests and inspires him."120 And when José Antonio de Lavalle y García wrote Laso's biography, he decided to focus on "what [Laso's] multiple œuvre has of sincerity, of faithful expression of his character and of his inner life, of his ethical and 118Flores
Araoz, for example, identified two figures in Laso's Haravicu as selfportraits, Ibid., cat. no. 59. For self-portraits in Laso's Gonzalo Pizarro and his Inhabitant of the Cordillera see Buntinx, "Del 'Habitante de las Cordilleras' al 'Indio Alfarero'," p. 49. 119[el ejercicio de la sensibilidad humana.] Juan Acha, "Exposición conmemorativa de F. Laso: En el primer centenario de su muerte," El Comercio, 1-VIII-1969. 120[Hay intensa verdad en el cuadro. Esa verdad no es otra cosa que el alma del artista allí transparentada entera, alma viril, fuerte, siempre enamorada del terruño, cuya vida es lo único que interesa y le inspira.] Teófilo Castillo, "Interiores limeños, XI. Casa de la Sra. Manuela Henríquez v. de Lasso," Variedades XI, no. 369 (March 27, 1915):1934
303
intellectual discipline, of the way in which it reproduces with specular fidelity his always high and noble attitude towards life."121 The artist's personality is directly transmitted to the works; the truth of his paintings is to be found in the ethic and moral standards of the author and in the sincerity of the artist's intention.122 The interpretation of the work as the expressive carrier of the feelings and personality of the artist has a long history in literary and art criticism, but this tradition of writing is not to be explained only by recourse to a critical tradition outside the works.
It is the paintings
themselves that make those writings possible, for those critical traditions are already present in the production of Laso's works. Laso's biographers merely insert the works within a biography already written, within an autobiography. Yet
if
Laso
constantly
personalizes
common
allegorical
conventions, if he inserts biographical narratives into his works, it is also because, as in The Three Races, painting can offer personal redemption. Laso's paintings actively engage the problems of the society in which he lived; but as a placeless practice defined by utopian ideals, painting also 121[
voy a referirme a . . . lo que su múltiple obra tiene de sinceridad, de fiel expresión de su carácter y de su vida interior, de reflejo de sus disciplinas intelectual y ética, de la forma como ella reproduce con fidelidad especular su actitud siempre alta y noble ante la vida.] Lavalle y García, "La extraordinaria personalidad de Francisco Laso," p. 18. 122[Laso fue un artista enimentemente sincero, sencillo, modesto y hasta desdeñoso de la gloria; vivió y pintó encastillado en un amargo sentimentalismo y en una escéptica melancolia....ya que pintando o escribiendo, siempre lo hacia de acuerdo con sus ideas y sus convicciones severas, como si se tratase de hacerlas resplandecer en el lienzo y en el impreso para que luego irradiaran sobre quienes las contemplasen o leyesen.] José Flores Araoz, "La exposición de pintura Francisco Laso," La Prensa, 8-XII-1937, p. ii.
304
allowed Laso the possibility of envisioning a different order of things. The paintings composing his Pascana series, discussed in the following chapter, are a telling example of this belief.
305
SECTION V: RHETORIC OF APPROXIMATION Chapter 7: The Country of Melancholy: Creole Identity and the Invention of the Andean World
Melancolía importada y a redopelo, no era posible que prosperara entre nosotros. Ventura García Calderón1
CREOLE PATRIOTISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE MELANCHOLIC INDIAN In 1852, along with two friends, Laso posed for a group photograph in Paris (fig. 45).2 In this image, the poet Manuel Nicolás Corpancho sets his left arm on Laso's shoulder and looks in his direction. Opposite Laso, to the far left, the painter Ignacio Merino leans forward and rests his weight on the small table in the middle.
In their engaging, mobile
attitudes, the poses of Merino and Corpancho serve to activate the composition, bringing together the three figures in the photograph. Laso, on the contrary, seems to sit apart; his hands lie on his lap, his head tilts slightly downward. The withdrawn attitude, the pensive look and the 1Ventura
García Calderón, ed., Los Románticos, Biblioteca de Cultura Peruana, 8 (París: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938): 13. 2The date of 1854 is inscribed in the copy of this photograph now in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru. However, Corpancho was in Paris only during 1852. His book of poems, Brisas del mar. Recuerdos poétios (Lima: Tipografía del "Mensajero", 1853), written during his return trip from Europe, is signed on board the frigate "Amazonas" on January 7, 1853.
308
serious, even grave expression, are the basic elements of the image which the artist constructs for the viewer, an image which will be repeated, again and again, to the point of obsession, in other self-representations of the painter. This is the image of the melancholic; the romantic ideal of the solitary, alienated artist which Laso is among the first to inaugurate among Peruvian painters. It is also a characteristic mark of the ideal perpetuated by the writers of the generation of 1848.
The drive to
sentiment in the literature of this period has been defined as the most distinct example of poetic artificiality, of thoughtless mimicry of European forms. For the critic Ventura García Calderón, the Peruvian romantic generation "wept because Lamartine and Musset had wept . . .," theirs was not a sincere sentiment, but a simple affectation, it was not "a state of the soul but a literary pastime."3 Yet the accusations of artificiality leveled at the Peruvian romantic generation simply continue and elaborate on 19thcentury interpretations of the frivolous and Europeanizing culture of Lima, an interpretation which, as has been seen, was crucial in the construction of the artist's paintings, but also of his self-image. The influence of European romanticism during this period is certainly
decisive
on
Laso's
generation,
but
while
Laso's
self-
representations partake of this romantic attitude, they also imply a more 3Ventura García Calderón, Del romanticismo al modernismo. Prosistas y poetas peruanos (París: Sociedad de Ediciones Literarias y Artísticas, 1910): vii-ix. García Calderón insists on the derivative nature of Peruvian literature of this period: "Hasta muriendo jóvenes los poetas peruanos parecen plagiar a los franceses." Ibid., p. ix.
309
specific source for this melancholy disposition. And a clue is to be found in a rather late self-portrait, a photograph probably taken during the 1860s (fig. 30).4 Here, as in other representations, Laso projects a sad and rueful self-image. But unlike other representations of the painter, here he sits on the ground, like the Indians he portrays in his paintings, and wears a poncho and a chullo, characteristic items of Indian dress. At this point, the image of the melancholic artist evokes its other, the image of the melancholic Indian; the artist appropriates for his self-representation the very character of the Indian. At mid-century, the easiest path to the Indian was mediated through romantic sentiment.
Francisco García Calderón spoke for an
entire generation: we have heard the yaraví intoned by the natives that, with their work, sought the money to pay the tribute with which they paid their slavery. Nature, half-asleep, the dense shadows of the night, the silence of the valley, the surrounding hills which produced a sad echo, the miserable condition of the native: all this contributed in giving such a sentiment to the yaraví, that it tore our hearts. The Indian was, for us, the interpreter of the sorrows of the land; and his tender song was a plight elevated to the firmament; plight that was elevated when Nature sleeps, because, in order not to increase the sorrows of life, it seemed necessary that mortals never be conscious of what they suffer.5 4Museo
de Arte de Lima, Nº V-2.11-52. The date of this photograph and the circumstances under which it was created are discussed fully in the following chapter. 5[hemos oido el yaraví entonado por los indígenas que iban a buscar con su trabajo el dinero necesario para dar el tributo con que pagaban su esclavitud. La naturaleza, medio dormida, las densas sombras de la noche, el silencio del valle, las colinas de que estaba rodeado y que formaban un eco triste, la condicion miserable del indígena: todo esto contribuía a dar tal sentimentalismo al yaraví, que nos desgarraba el corazon. El indio era, para nosotros, el intérprete de los dolores de la tierra; y su tierno canto era la queja elevada al firmamento; queja elevada cuando la naturaleza duerme, porque para no aumentar los pesares de la vida, parece preciso que los mortales no tengan jamas
310
The elevation of a pain to the level of the poetic in García Calderón's text lies in the literature of European romanticism, in the union of beauty and melancholy, or in its inscription onto nature, as in the somber landscapes evoked by Chateaubriand.6 And Peruvian writers, conscious of their inscription in the European literary tradition, rapidly incorporated these romantic themes into their literary repertoire. Poets produced innumerable odes to the Andes, and its mountainous landscape became the site for the language of the sublime and the poetics of pain.7 There is little doubt that the romantic sensibility of Laso's generation helped to elevate the theme of the sadness of the Indian to unprecedented heights; but the stereotype of the melancholic Indian has a much older and revealing history.
Indeed, few stereotypes are as
pervasive during the 19th century, and even today, as that of the sad Indian. Of the many stereotypes which have been associated with the Indian, that of the Indian's sadness is one of the most recurrent and problematic. As we have seen, the reduction of the character of the Indian
conciencia de lo que padecen.] Francisco García Calderón, "[Introduction]," in Mariano Melgar, Poesias, Manuel Moscoso Melgar, ed. (Lima: By the author, 1878): 32. 6Mario Praz discusses these issues in The Romantic Agony, trans. from the Italian by Angus Davidson (New York: Meridian Books, 1956): 25-45. 7José Manuel Valdez y Palacios writes: "Y en las bases de los Andes, en cuyas faldas ondea la melancolía y sobre cuyas cumbres existe lo sublime, no habrían recibido las impresiones de la poesía?" in Bosquejo sobre el estado político, moral y literario del Perú en sus tres grandes épocas [1844], preliminary study by Estuardo Núñez, trans., from the Portuguese by Carmen Sologuren, Publicaciones del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia y de la Fundación de la Biblioteca Nacional (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, 1971): 44. To my knowledge, the only previous discussion of the theme of melancholy is Juan Carlos Estenssoro's analysis of its appearance during the late-18th century. See "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," 2 vols. (M.A. Thesis, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1990): II, p. 535.
311
to sadness and melancholy, its definition as a somber and dejected race, lies at the very center of all discourses on the Indian during the 19th century. As Francisco García Calderón's text indicates, the sadness of the Indian was exemplified in the yaraví, the mainly elegiac songs of the Andes. It was precisely in discussions on the origins and character of the yaraví that the crucial image of the melancholic Indian first emerged. Colonial chroniclers describing the Inca Empire, defined the harawi as a broad term which included all sung stories.8 In his Historia del Nuevo Mundo, the chronicler Bernabé Cobo described the arabi as a primarily gay song, used to remember past ordeals, extol great exploits, and sing in praise of the Incas.9 By the end of the 18th century, the term became almost synonymous with the elegy, and its themes were reduced to the portrayal of sorrowful love songs.10 By the mid 19th century, the traveler
8Raoul and Marguerite D'Harcourt, La música de los incas y sus supervivencias, prólogo de Luis Alberto Sánchez, trad. del francés por Mosca Azul Editores (Lima: Occidental Petroleum Corporation of Peru, 1990): 169. 9"Los que eran de regocijo i alegría se decían "arabis"; en ellos referían sus hazañas i cosas pasadas, i decían lores al Inca." Citado en D'Harcourt, La música de los incas, p. 169, note 28. A similar definition is given by Diego González Holguín in the 17th-century: "Haraui o yuyaycucuna oHuaynaricuna ttaqui. Cantares de hechos de otros o memoria de los aucentes y de amor y afición y agora se ha recibido por cantares deuotos y espirituales." Citado en Consuelo Pagaza Galdo, "El yaraví del Cuzco,"Folklore americano, Año VIII, Vol. IX, Nos. 8-9 (1960-1961): 86. 10D'Harcourt, La música de los Incas, pp. 168-173, esp. p. 169. The most complete compilation of definitions of the yaraví can be found in Aurelio Miró Quesada Sosa, Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar (1790-1815) (Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica del Centro de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1978): 162-172. In tracing the history of the definitions of the yaraví, Miró Quesada cites a revealing example: in the first edition of Diego de Torres Rubio's Arte de la lengua quichua, of 1619, the yaraví is simply a generic name for song; in the third edition of the dictionary, published in 1754, the yaraví is defined as a "sad song" [canción triste]. See Ibid., pp. 165-166.
312
Clements R. Markham could write that the songs of the Indians "almost all are melancholy and despondent in their tone."11 Little is known of how this remarkable transformation was effected, when, exactly, the yaraví became a term used only and exclusively to describe elegiac songs; but the theme appears with force only during the 18th century.12 Aurelio Miró Quesada finds the earliest reference to the term in its modern form in an early 18th-century manuscript in which the yaraví, characterized as a simple popular expression, is opposed to the artificiality and frivolity of other musical forms.13
Already by this early date, the yaraví evokes simplicity and
sincerity in opposition to supposedly foreign formulas. Discussions of the yaraví will always develop in similar context of definition of different cultural forms, and as Juan Carlos Estenssoro notes, it formed part of an
11Clements R. Markham, Markham in Peru. The Travels of Clements R. Markham, 1852-1853, Peter Blanchard, ed. (Austin, Texas: Univeristy of Texas Press, 1991): 67. 12Antonio Cornejo Polar rejects the notion that the yaraví, defined as a sorrowful love song, is the result of a progressive reduction of the meanings of the "arawi" as a generic and all-inclusive category. He claims that the term may derive from a specific form of yaraví, the"'jaray arawi" or from the "urpi," the lyric songs expressive of sorrowful love. However, the distinction between different forms of the yaraví is never made in pre-20th century sources and Cornejo follows blindly the modern distinctions created by Jesús Lara. Also lost from Cornejo Polar's account of the development of the yaraví is the role of Creole interpreters in the reformulation of the significance of the yaraví and its association with the stereotype of the melancholic Indian. See Antonio Cornejo Polar, "La poesía tradicional y el yaraví," Letras XXXVIII, nos. 76-77 (1st and 2nd semesters 1966): 103-125. 13Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar, pp. 165-166, note 59. Although the manuscript, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris is not dated, it is found in a volume containing other papers dating from 1682-1712. Miró Quesada also finds in this manuscript the first instance of the current spelling of the song as against earlier versions in which it is spelled "harawi," "arawi," etc.
313
Enlightenment interest to classify into distinct groupings the different "nationalities" of the country.14 Yet the use of the yaraví in the assertion of difference finds its most revealing synthesis in an article signed under the pseudonym of Sicramio in the 18th-century journal, El Mercurio peruano, the central forum for the discussion of Enlightenment ideas in Perú.15 Written with the objective of praising and validating the yaraví as a musical form, and defining sorrow and melancholy as the characteristic mood of the Peruvian soul, the text is crucial in the enactment of an emerging Creole identity. For Sicramio, the yaraví, a music which is "originary of our Fatherland,"16 is also the characteristic music of the Indian, and stands in opposition to other festive songs played in Peru, songs which he associates, appropriately enough, with the Spanish character.17 Sicramio claims that although the nations of the world each have their own character, they also borrow constantly from each, forming an "agreeable miscellany."
But the yaraví is an
exception to this rule, and only the character of the Indian remains
14Juan
Carlos Estenssoro, "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial,", vol. II, p.517. On the Enlightenment origins of racial classification and its importance for the formulation of modern racism see George L. Mosse, Towards the Final Solution. A History of European Racism, 2d ed. (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985): esp. chs. I-IV. 15Sicramio, "Rasgo remitido por la Sociedad Poética sobre la Música en general, y particularmente de los Yaravíes," El Mercurio peruano 101 (December 22, 1791): 284-291. Consuelo Pagaza Galdo mistakenly identifies Sicramio as J. M. Tirado in "El yaraví del Cuzco,"p. 77, note 4. For Estenssoro, however, emphasizes the official character of Sicramio's text, which is presented as a proposition of the "Sociedad Poética." See "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial,"vol. II, p. 536. 16[música originaria de nuestra Patria.] Sicramio, "Rasgo remitido...," p. 285. 17Ibid., p. 290-291
314
inimitable.18 Sicramio's text performs a curious and crucial reversal of cultural dependency, defining the European character as weak and permeable in opposition to the strength and originality of Peruvian music. But to claim originality, this Creole writer has to find it in an other tradition, in the Indian tradition. The Indian's originality lies in a natural, hence
inalienable
condition,
which
suffuses
his
every
act
and
manifestation: his genius and humor, all is inclined to panic and sadness: his lodgings are dark, of low ceilings and of melancholic fabrication: his food is spare and the most frugal: his bed is humble and on the floor: even his wardrobe is of strange and sad colors: in consequence all the Indian does, says and thinks is accompanied by a natural gravity that their temperament inspires them . . . because only that which is tenebrous suits them.19 For Sicramio to participate in this Indian sentiment he must claim it as his own; and if the yaraví's power is unavoidable and if all who listen to it succumb to the overwhelming force of its sorrowful thrust, Sicramio claims a special prerogative. Thus, when he describes the powerful effects that the yaraví exerts over his senses, he claims that the pleasure he takes in them derives from his "organic disposition . . . inclined to that which is
18"Por
exemplo: el Español remeda a veces al Italiano y al Frances: estos al Español y al Ingles, y aquellos al Portugues y Aleman: de manera, que se forma una miscleanea agradable, anque sea con la imitación de diferentes estilos: solo el carácter del Indio es inimitable; y sus Yaravíes son regla de excepción a esta parte . . ." Ibid., p. 287. 19[su natural, su condicion, su genio y su humor, todo es propenso a lo pánico y triste: sus habitaciones son obscuras, de baxas techumbres y de fabrica melancólica: su comida parca y la mas frugal: su lecho humilde y en el suelo: hasta su vestuario es de unos colores extraños y tristes: por lo qual todo quanto el Indio hace, dice y piensa es acompañado de una natural seriedad que les influye su temperamento. . . . porque solo aquello tenebroso les acomoda.]Ibid., p. 287.
315
pathetic."20 Sicramio's identification with the characteristic emotion of the Indian is thus an evident precedent to Laso's doubly appropriated melancholy.
The topos of melancholy becomes a crucial if forgotten
strand in the history of Creole identity, an identity which is largely defined through the idealization of the Indian and the Andean landscape. There is, however, another essay on the yaraví in the Mercurio peruano.
Written by José Toribio del Campo in direct response to
Sicramio's text, this article highlights many of the issues which Sicramio smooths over or silences.21
Del Campo reveals the stereotype of the
melancholic Indian for what it is, a reductionist move that omits more than what it reveals. He emphasizes the variety of musical modes used by the Indian and points to the many examples of Indian songs expressing opposite, festive, and pleasant sentiments.
"What," he exclaims, "the
Indians have no other passions than those of pain? Don't they sing the triumphs of Mars and those of Cupid? Will they intone only their misfortunes?"22
But Del Campo goes further, and by pointing to the
vulgarity and simplicity shared by the yaraví and other popular songs, he simultaneously diminishes their originality and devalues their quality, 20Ibid.,
p. 286. Toribio del Campo], T. J. C. P., "Carta sobre la música: en la que se hace ver el estado de sus conocimientos en Lima y se critica el Rasgo sobre los Yaravies impreso en el Mercurio num. 101," Mercurio peruano, 117-118 (February 16 and 19, 1792):108-114, 116-118. The identity hidden by the initials is revealed by Juan Carlos Estenssoro, Música y sociedad coloniales. Lima, 1680-1830, Colección de Arena (Lima: Editorial Colmillo Blanco, 1989): 32 22[Qué: ¿los Indios no tienen mas pasiones que las del dolor? ¿No cantan los triunfos de Marte, y los de Cupido? ¿Entonarán sólo sus desdichas?] Del Campo, "Carta sobre la música...", p. 112. Much later, D'Harcourt would also vindicate the Indian against the melancholic stereotype, La música de los incas, p. 170. 21[José
316
judging them to be of "little merit." Denying that the yaraví is inimitable, he goes so far as to insinuate that it derives not from an original Indian tradition, but from Spain.23 It is thus not surprising that, faced with the choice of two contrasting views presented in the Mercurio peruano, 19th-century writers should have unanimously chosen Sicramio's version. The text is repeatedly cited in scholarly and other sources24 and it was even reproduced with some amendments in the Cuzco review El Museo erudito of 1839.25 But the oblivion into which Del Campo's version fell did not owe only to the way in which it undermined certain Creole claims for originality. Whereas Sicramio described the yaraví as a love song, Del Campo found another source for the Indian's sorrow, one which threatened the legitimacy of the Creole appropriation of this Indian form. 23Ibid.,
pp. 114-116. B. Mesa, Los anales de la ciudad del Cuzco o las cuatro épocas de su historia, vol. I, pp. 202-203; Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, vol. I, p. 33; Francisco García Calderón in Melgar, Poesías, p. 37, note 1. Pedro Paz Soldán y Unanue [Juan de Arona], Diccionario de peruanismos [1860-1893], 2 vols., presentation and notes by Estuardo Nuñez, preliminary note by Ventura García Calderón, Biblioteca Peruana, 48-49 (Lima: Ediciones Peisa, 1974): vol. II, p. 388 is one of the few authors of this period to speak despectively of the yaraví. Writing against the opinion of Sicramio, he follows closely del Campo's line of argument, without, however, citing him. Sicramio's text would continue to play an important role in the 20th century. Ventura García Calderón will cite him to describe the confluence of Romantic sentimentalism and the poetic yaraví in the work of Melgar. See his introduction to Melgar in Los Románticos, Biblioteca de Cultura Peruana, 8 (París: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938):16. 25"Concluye el artículo sobre la música en general y empieza el de los yaravíes," Museo erudito II, no. 13 (September 10, 1839): 5; II no. 14 (September 20, 1839): 5-7; and II, nos. 13-15 (September 10, 20 and 30, 1839): 5-7. Sicramio's text is here interwoven with certain important additions, like the story which is the Cuzco version of Romeo and Juliet, in which the romantic nature of the melancholic character are stressed. See especially no. 14, p. 6. The popularity of the Mercurio peruano as a source for writers during this period was no doubt facilitated by the reprint published by Manuel Atanasio Fuentes in the 1860's. 24Pío
317
For Del Campo claimed that what the Indians cried in the yaraví was the loss of the Inca Empire, "the dethronement of the Peruvian Prince." Claiming to have seen just such a representation, Del Campo defies Sicramio: "Ah! what wouldn't Mr. Sicramio say, when he had heard and seen the tender moans of the Collas; those painful gesticulations, those sad expressions that manifest the cause of their pain."26
Implicit in Del
Campo's challenge is the threat it poses to the legitimacy of Sicramio's version, questioning the Creole appropriation of the Indian's sorrow. The instrumental role of the discourse on the yaraví in the cultural legitimation of the Creole cannot be ignored. For Juan Carlos Estenssoro, Del Campo's challenge reveals the underpinnings of a decisive transformation in late 18th-century Creole attitudes toward Indian culture, and his unease derives in large part from his disapproval of the then growing taste for the yaraví among urban Creoles after the Túpac Amaru rebellion.27 César Itier has described a similar process with respect 26[Los
Yaravies, generalmente hablando, son unas composiciones hechas en los tiempos de calamidad. Sus letras hacen relacion a la catástrofe sucedida en el destrono del Príncipe Peruano. Un perfecto drama músico, que yo mismo he oido y visto representar, me lo ha hecho entender así. Esta tragedia daría a conocer, como en este Pais salvage y recien conquistado, aun en el tiempo de su barbarie producia quizá modelos a Racine y a Volter: pero desgraciadamante ocultan los Indios este tesoro que conservan solo por tradicion. . .¡Ah! que no diría el Señor Sicramio, quando hubiese oido y visto las tiernas quejas de las Collas; aquellas gesticulaciones dolorosas, aquellas tristes expresiones que manifestaban la causa de su dolor]. Del Campo, "Carta sobre la música . . .," p. 112. 27Estenssoro,"Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," vol. II, p. 537. Estenssoro coincides with Miró Quesada in showing that the yaraví became popular among the urban Creole only during the late-18th century. Under the spell of the 20thcentury nationalist paradigm of "mestizaje" (which he promoted), Miró Quesada sees the yaraví as a perfect fusion of popular Indian and elite Creole culture, a phenomenon that he sees occuring first in Arequipa. Miró Quesada, Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar (1790-1815), pp. 171 ff. As Estenssoro demonstrates, the adoption of the yaraví by urban Creoles seems to have been more widespread, and far from being a natural, almost
318
to elite attitudes toward Quechua during the same period.28 In both cases one finds a similar process of appropriation and neutralization of the subversive potential of these supposedly Indian cultural forms.29 As has been seen, the social and political vacuum created by the dispersal of the 18th-century "Inca renaissance" came to be increasingly filled by the Creole elites. The stereotype of melancholy and the discourse on the yaraví represents only one aspect of this new Creole offensive. Music was perceived, since the early colonial period, as a perfect gauge of political feelings and tensions, and as Estenssoro has demonstrated, the Indian's sadness was thus constantly associated with the tragedy of the colonial situation.30 In 1776, for example, the marquis of Soto Florido, Francisco Antonio Ruiz Cano, in his Drama de dos palanganas veterano y bisoño, wrote of the uprising of 1750, led by "Indians who still cry their decapitated Inca in their Yaravís."31
The
plaintive mood associated with the oppression of the Indian would be a
biological fusion, it was an intelligent manipulation of a musical form for political ends. 28Itier, "Quechua y cultura en el Cuzco del siglo XVIII: de la 'lengua general' al 'idioma del imperio de los Incas'," n.p. 29Estenssoro writes: "Aunque sea difícil demostrarlo, es posible que la derrota de Tupac Amaru haya neutralizado . . . el contenido político de los elementos culturales de origen indio. Los elementos indígenas por ley fuera de las manos de las elites indias y siendo estilizados fuertemente por la retórica oficial, parece pudieron pasar más fácilmente a ser tema de discusión entre los criollos." See "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," vol. II, p. 533. 30Hernando de Santillan, denouncing abuses against the Indians in 1550, described the effects on the Indians in the following manner: "de ordinario nunca están sino llorando; aunque sea en fiestas y regocijos, todo es llorar, y sus cantares todos son de duelo." Cited in Estenssoro, "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," vol. I, pp. 79-80. 31[estos indios que aún llora su Inca degollado en sus Yaravíes]. Cited in Miró Quesada, Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar, pp. 166-167.
319
constant motif in petitions and appeals to the Spanish Crown. In 1750, Fray Calixto de San José Túpac Inca, a member of the Andean nobility, could address the issue of the injustices against the Indians by paraphrasing the lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah.32
The
disconsolate tone of such writings would later be adopted by Creole leaders of independence. Little over half a century after the writing of Fray Calixto's text, Francisco Laso's father, the Creole patriot Benito Laso, would write a poem against Spanish authority based on the same biblical text, entitled, "Oración de Jeremías. Traducción libre aplicable al Perú," ["Prayer of Jeremiah.
Free Translation Applicable to Peru"].33 The
lamentation, largely the prerogative of the Andean nobility, would now be appropriated by Creole patriots to promote the cause of independence from Spain. While functioning on the surface as a simple expression of romantic love, the sorrow reflected in the yaraví simultaneously entered into a politically charged rhetorical tradition.
The instrumental role of the
discourse on the yaraví in the cultural legitimation of the Creole cannot be ignored. Sicramio's essay on the yaraví became a seminal text, influencing an entire generation of Creole writers who actively participated in the process of independence. This was the case of the Creole poet and hero of independence Mariano Melgar (1790-1815), among the first to make 32Estenssoro,
"Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," vol. I, p. 523. de Jeremías. Traducción libre aplicable al Perú," La Revista de Lima I, no. 12 (March 15, 1860): 574-579. This is apparently the first publication of this text. A note to the title claims that it was written in 1813 in honor of General Belgrano's victory at Vicapuquio. 33"Oración
320
famous the yaraví as a poetic form and to fix into writing a mainly oral tradition.
As in Sicramio, the source of the sadness in Melgar was
unrequited or impossible love, and the motif behind the appropriation of an Indian form, the assertion of Creole patriotism. Sorrow too lay at the source of the Incaist rhetoric of the poetry of the independence period, and it is no coincidence that Benito Laso, who created one of the most important Incaist poems of the period, was also one of the participants in the literary salons of Arequipa were Melgar composed his yaravís.34 His poem, "El Perú Esclavizado" [Enslaved Peru] of 1811 or 1812, had linked patriotic sentiment to the desire for vengeance for the lost Inca Empire: Oh dear Patria, sweet and tender name! the long night of mournful sorrow which you suffered under the most impious yoke, I will sing in sad meter. To sing, I say not, to cry is just the cruel pain of the Fatherland, for a fierce and ungrateful sensation opposes harmony in the accent. And you, somber muse, sad inspiration with which you formed in Young mournful echoes, inspire my cries compassionately, for my tears of you are worthy; and if your influence resists the coarseness of my unpolished talent, I will invoke the favor which fits me best, that of all the furies of hell: they shall inspire me the dark passion of desperation, and if my words cannot be noble, 34Miró
Quesada, Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar, pp. 73-74.
321
at least my thoughts of horror will be full. I turn my eyes (Who would not, and whoever did, when born was blind!) over this continent long and wide, which Manco-Capac first governed: I see new customs and peoples, I see new cities, new towns, which, banishing a beautiful innocence spread the venom of vice, which, destroying ancient populations with their ashes form new towns, who spilling the blood of Kings, erect themselves into tyrants of this land which full of brutal and impious arrogance, without law, they dominate the perulero, and unfair and bloody everywhere, force and interest are their rights.35 Like Benito Laso, other writers on the yaraví would later evoke Edward Young's The Complaint, or Night Thoughts (1742-1745) in their texts.36 The use of terror and gloom and the appeal to sentiment to gain 35[¡O
Cara Patria, dulce y tierno nombre!/la larga noche del pesar funesto/que debajo del yugo mas impio/sufriste, a cantar voy en triste metro./Cantaré, digo mal, llorar es justo/el acerbo dolor del patrio suelo,/por que la sensacion ingrata y fiera/repugna la harmonia en el acento./ Y tu musa sombría, numen triste/que formaste en el Young funestos ecos,/mis sollosos alienta compasiva,/pues que de ti mi llanto es digno objeto;/y si es que tu influencia se resiste/a la rudeza de mi tosco ingenio,/invocaré el favor que me es mas propio,/el de todas las furias del infierno:/ellas me inspirarán la pasion negra/de desesperacion, y por lo menos,/a que nobles no sean mi palabras,/llenos de horror serán mis pensamientos./Vuelvo los ojos (¡Quien no los hubiera,/y quien quando nació, naciera ciego!)/sobre este largo continente y ancho/que Manco-Capac goberno primero:/veo nuevas costumbres, nuevas gentes,/veo nuevas ciudades, nuevos Pueblos,/que desterrando la inocencia hermosa/de los vicios propagan el veneno,/que arruinando las viejas poblaciones/con sus escombros forman nuevos pueblos,/que derramando sangre de los Reyes,/en tiranos se erigen de este suelo/llenos de altives brutal, e impia/señorean, sin ley al perulero,/e injustos y sangrientos por do quieran,/la fuerza, el interes son sus derechos./. . .] "El Perú Esclavisado, Poema," El Sol del Cuzco, 18-VI-1825, pp. [3-4]. 36The enormous influence of Edward Young in Peru, whom Unanue described as the "poet of sadness" ["el poeta de la tristeza"] has yet to be studied. See Hipólito Unanue, Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, vol. 8, p. 134. A volume of "Young, The Complaint," is listed in the inventory of Unanue's library in 1833. See Ibid., vol. 7, p. 146. By the early 19th century there already was a translation of Young into Spanish by Don Juan Escoiquiz,
322
support for political causes, provided the frame for one of the earliest forms of idealization of the pre-Columbian past.37 But the Creole could similarly empathize with the contemporary Indian as the heroic victim of centuries of oppression. Many of these themes would remain in place during the course of the 19th century, although they would increasingly give way, by mid-century, to romantic notions of poetic subjectivity. The type of Incaism reflected in Benito Laso's poem has been constantly denounced as a simple "rhetorical" gesture, a superficial attachment to the Indian world, instead of the more authentic and sincerely felt "Indianism" of some later period, or to the more "authentic" gesture of Melgar who drew on popular tradition.38 That is to say, Melgar exemplifies for modern writers a "natural" process of mestizaje , in contrast to the mechanical and artificial appropriation of a superficial Incaist rhetoric. Yet Melgar's poetry forms part of the same ideological project, a tightly formulated strategy of Creole legitimation. Furthermore, to speak, as has been done of the yaraví as a Mestizo form,39 evokes an easy and natural cultural symbiosis that does not reflect the political tensions implicit in the Creole use of these Indian forms. Obras selectas de Eduardo Young, expurgados de todo error, y traducidos del inglés al castellano, 3 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1804). This text also seems to have influenced the anonymous author of the article on the yaraví which appeared in the Museo erudito. 37On some of the political uses of the sublime in Europe see Hugh Honour, NeoClassicism, Style and Civilization, John Fleming and Hugh Honour eds. (New York and London: Penguin Books, 1988): 141-146. 38Antonio Cornejo Polar, La formación de la tradición literaria en el Perú (Lima: Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1989):31-35 and 97, 182-183. 39See, among others, Miró Quesada, Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar, esp. pp. 171-172, and 184-185; and José Varallanos, El harahui y el yaraví, dos canciones populares peruanas (Lima: Editorial Argos, 1989).
323
For the appropriation of the Inca past and the Indian's sorrow enacted
in
this
literature,
neutralizes
the
supposed
political
subversiveness of Incaist nostalgia by representing the Inca Empire as a closed and sealed epoch. As has been seen, the idea that the Indian could have a separate and independent political project was fresh in the minds of the Creole in the aftermath of the Túpac Amaru rebellion.
The
stereotype of melancholy forged in Creole texts displaces the possibility of such a project. Although the yaraví will be increasingly defined as a love song, it will never lose its associations with the political situation of the Indian, nor its use as a tool for denouncing oppression.40 Nevertheless, denunciation will now be a Creole privilege and will come to form part a paternalist rhetoric of almost official character. As a song of love, the yaraví is a song of loss, of impossible retrieval, broken by death or by distance, and thus impossible to recuperate. The romantic lamentations of the yaraví simultaneously evoke the pre-Columbian past as an epoch impossible to retrieve. By asking that the Inca's death be forgotten, Benito Laso
remembers
and
emphasizes
the
end
of
an
empire
and
simultaneously legitimizes the power of the Creole elite.
40Juan
Carlos Estenssoro writes that: "idea del indio triste tenderá a perder su carácter de denuncia para convertirse en un estereotipo." See "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial," vol. I, p. 80. Nevertheless, if the melancholic Indian is a stereotype, it will never lose its association with the denunciation of the Indian's oppression, although it will increasingly come to be appropriated by a Creole paternalism.
324
MELANCHOLY AFTER INDEPENDENCE The image of the victimized Creole will not be easy to justify when power passes into their hands with independence. Nevertheless, it was precisely during the second half of the 19th century that the stereotype of the melancholic Indian would come to be more explicitly affirmed. Postindependence consciousness that the luck of the Indian had not changed and the inability to blame the Spanish for those injustices, help to sustain the permanence of this stereotype in the Creole imagination. Thus, 19th-century writers spent considerable energy in reenacting the death of the Inca. No other theme received as much attention in literature and painting. The yaraví had become an established literary form and poets such as Manuel Castillo, Clemente Althaus, and especially the writers grouped around the "veladas literarias" of Juana Manuel Gorriti, continued the tradition initiated by Melgar.41
In the theater,
works with titles like the "Death of Atahualpa" or "The Conquest of Peru" inevitably ended with the narrative of the death of the Inca. The yaraví, which already formed an integral part of Lima theatrical activity, came to accompany these representations.42 In 1851, for example, some "yaravíes del Inca" ["yaravís of the Inca"] were sung at the beginning of the fourth 41Many of the poems of Castillo and Althaus are reproduced in Ventura García Calderón, ed., Los Románticos, Biblioteca de Cultura Peruana, 8 (París: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938). See also Juana Manuela Gorriti, Veladas literarias de Lima, 1876-1877 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Europea, 1892):301-302, 406-408, 452ff; especially the yaraví "Imposibles" by Manuel F. Escobedo, and the poem on "El yaraví peruano" by Carolina García de Bambaren. 42For example, yaravís were composed by "una señorita" for the "Función Lírica Dramática" of the 2nd and 7th February 1851. See El Comercio, 2-II-1851. For other examples see Estenssoro, Música y sociedad coloniales, p. 58, note 70.
325
and last act of the "La conquista del Perú y muerte del Inca Atahualpa" ["Conquest of Peru and Death of the Inca Atahualpa"], the popular play by Manuel de Santiago Concha.43 The play by Isidro M. Pérez on Manco II ["Manco II o el coloniaje en el Perú"] shown in Lima in 1858, also ended in the fifth act with the "Death of Manco" and was accompanied by a yaraví composed by Pedro Bajas, the director of the orchestra.44 The Creole yaraví had by now been transformed, quite literally, into a song of mourning. The weight given here to the discussion of the early emergence of the discourse on the yaraví may seem excessive and unwarranted, but it is not a senseless search for origins. The discourse of the yaraví points to continuity, to the creation of a critical, literary, and eventually pictorial tradition. There is a straight line running from the Mercurio peruano to the intellectuals of Laso's generation, grouped around the project of the Revista de Lima. It is in this journal that Benito Laso's poetry of the independence period will be republished during the 1860s.
Melgar's
popularity among urban intellectuals during this period was established in part through the frequent insertion of his poems in newspapers and
43"Teatro," El Comercio, 26-III-1851. The traveler Paul Marcoy described the melancholic sound of the "cantata of Manco Capac" which he heard sung by the daughter of the British Consul in Islay. He also related it to the lamentations of Jeremiah and with the "glorias extinguidas de los hijos del Sol." He would later describe a then famous yaraví titled "Pica-flor de Huascar Inca" which he also characterized as an extremely melancholic song. See Travels in South America. From the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, 2 vols. (London: Blackie & Son, 1875): I, p. 7, 192. 44"Teatro principal," El Comercio, 15-XII-1858. I thank Cecilia Méndez for having informed me of this play.
326
journals,45 a campaign that was apparently led by Francisco García Calderón and Mateo Paz Soldán, but also by Miguel del Carpio, nephew of Mariano Melgar and respected benefactor of the poets of the Peruvian "bohemia." The most important figures who in their writings help to perpetuate the stereotype of the melancholic Indian are members of Laso's most intimate circle but also among the most respected members of the intellectual elite of the country after independence.
Moreover, Laso's
family was closely tied through friendship and marriage with Francisco García Calderón, the Paz Soldán brothers, and Miguel del Carpio.46 Together, they formed a tightly knit circle of liberal intellectuals, who shared a prestigious social position and held a leading role in Peruvian politics. It is among this new intellectual elite that the stereotype of the melancholic Indian would be developed with most force. While elements of poetic empathy had already been revealed through the literature of the sublime, the romantic subjectivism which entered with force in the literature of the 1850s gave a new impetus to the trope of the melancholic artist who associates with other suffering souls. 45Francisco García Calderón refers to the popularity of Melgar's poetry during the mid-nineteenth century. Along with Mateo Paz Soldán, he was among the first to publicize Melgar's poetry. See the introduction written by Francisco García Calderón in 1865 to Melgar, Poesías, p. 5 and 11. On the history of the publication of the poetry of Melgar see also, Miró Quesada, Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar, esp. pp. 152-155. 46Benito Laso was related through marriage to Francisco García Calderón (through his second marriage to Petronila García Calderón y Crespo), whom he aided in writing his famous Diccionario de la legislación peruana. The relationship between Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán and Benito Laso also seems to have been extremely close, as he named Paz Soldán executor of his will. On February 13, 1862, shortly after Benito Laso's death, Francisco Laso wrote a letter to Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, then speaker of the Superior Court of Lima. In a gesture of friendship, Laso presented Paz Soldán with Benito Laso's medal as speaker of the same court. Letter property of Natalia Majluf, Lima.
327
Manuel Nicolás Corpancho wrote a long poem dedicated to his friend, Manuel Castillo, a poet from Arequipa who continued Melgar's tradition of the yaraví. In "El Poeta," Corpancho brought together the new themes of Romantic poetry with the local tradition of the yaraví. Beginning with the image of the isolated and melancholic poet framed by flowing tears and funerary images, continuing with the evocations of the redeeming potential of Christianity derived from Chateaubriand, Corpancho ended on a patriotic note evoking Andrés Bello's images of American nature. Yet the final verses return to the imagery of a local melancholy: Tienes la entonacion de la cascada; La pujanza del mar, que airado truena; La ternura amorosa de la QUENA; No, no puedes morir. Los espíritus puros de los bosques Donde no penetran las lejiones Que de España trajeron los pendones Al mundo de Colon, Una corona tienen preparada Con flores de sus árboles mas ricos, Que Atahualpa dejó a los HARAVICOS De su bella nacion. Cuando a las HUACAS venerables pides La gaya historia de la pátria mia, Tienes la melancólica armonía Del tierno YARAVI: Los Incas en sus tumbas se levantan Para escuchar el canto del poeta; Modesto te hizo Dios cual la violeta . . .
328
La corona es de tí.47 Corpancho's poem reveals only the continuities involved in the tradition of writings on the yaraví, but not the ruptures which begin to emerge during this period. The photograph of Laso in poncho and chullo with which we began this chapter can help to show how his generation continued and reformulated the notion of melancholy. As has been seen, this photograph was used in the preparation of Laso's Haravicu (fig. 46), one of a series of paintings dedicated to the theme of the Andean Pascana.48 These works have been recurrently discussed in terms of the idea of melancholy. Following a long critical tradition,49 Francisco Stastny wrote in 1969 that in front of Laso's works "the spectator is confronted with a world of tense harmony and serene lucidity; but from which emanates a profound melancholy."50 For Stastny, as for other authors, this melancholy is said to derive from the painter's style, but for earlier writers this quality derived from the very character of the Indians represented in the paintings. For Flores Araoz, writing in 1939, the Pascana in the Cordillera (fig. 47) "gives 47Manuel
Nicolás Corpancho, "El Poeta," in Ensayos poéticos, pp. 185-186. original titles of these paintings are unknown. The titles they are given here, The Indian Encampment, Pascana in the Cordillera and Haravicu, follow only the practical need of distinguishing between them in the text. 49The painter and critic Teófilo Castillo described the Haravicu as "una escena rústica sencilla henchida de paz y melancolía," in "Interiores limeños. XI. Casa de la Sra. Manuela Henríquez de Lasso," Variedades XI, no. 369 (March 27, 1915):1934. Later, Edgardo Pérez Luna would define all of Laso's works in the following manner: "En el estilo de Laso predominan una sorda melancolía y un dramatismo cromático severo." En "Un siglo de Laso," in Suceso, supplement of Correo, 27-VII-1969. 50[el espectador es confrontado con un mundo de tensa armonía y de serena lucidez; pero del cual emana una profunda melancolía.] Stastny, "Francisco Laso, pintor moderno," in Exposición conmemorativa, n.p. 48The
329
a sensation of quietism and melancholy, characteristic of the soul of our authocthonous inhabitant."51 On the same date, Guillermo Salinas Cossío described the Indian Encampment in the Banco Central de Reserva (fig. 48) as "both a true nocturnal and a pastoral, full of the mysterious silence of the puna, and which leaves in the spirit, the same disconsolate sadness that indigenous music provokes."52 Although music is not directly represented in the Haravicu, it is important to remember that for 19th-century writers the term yaraví derived from haráuec53--or in its 19th-century form, arabicu54--the name given to the official poets of the Inca court. Furthermore, Indians appear playing musical instruments such as the quena
in the preparatory
drawings (fig. 49) and the final version of the Indian Encampment. Here too, music serves to define the Indian's sadness. In these paintings the Indians sit still and adopt an air of sadness. And here, again, we find that 51[da una sensación de quietismo y melancolía, característica del alma de nuestro habitante autóctono.] Flores Araoz in Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, cat. no. 19. 52[verdadero nocturno y pastoral a la vez, pleno del silencio misterioso de la puna, y que deja en el ánimo, la misma desconsoladora tristeza que provoca la música indígena. ] Stastny, "Francisco Laso, pintor moderno," in Exposición conmemorativa Francisco Laso, n.p., cat. no. 48. The same author further wrote: "Al indio peruano, lo ha representado Laso en dos actitudes; unas veces encorvado bajo el peso de una melancolía invencible, o sumido en el misterio de su propio pensamiento, como aparece frecuentemente en sus Pascanas; o bien, hierático sin soberbia, digno, pero siempre triste y desconsolado, como en el Indio alfarero." In "Apunte crítico," in José Flores Aráoz, Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso, n.p. 53Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas, defines the haráuec or harauicus as poets, Book II, ch. XXVII and Book VII, ch. X; but also as the guardians of collective memory, Book VI, ch. IX. 54In a note to his "Idea general de los monumentos del antiguo Peru," published in Mercurio peruano of 1791, Unanue writes: "Arabicus. Nombre de los poetas peruleros; de aquí nació el yaravíes que se da a sus canciones elegiacas..." in Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, vol. 8, pp. 335-336.
330
sadness is used to denounce the Indian's condition.
In the Indian
Encampment and the Pascana in the Cordillera, there is a pre-Columbian ceramic, which accompany the groups that rest on the cordillera. This ceramic, representing the typical Moche motif of the prisoner of war, is the same one which had already been used by Laso in his Inhabitant of the Cordilleras of 1855 as a powerful metaphor of the oppression of the Peruvian Indian.55 It is no coincidence that this denunciation should be fixed on an object representing the pre-Columbian past; for it is only by opposition to that glorious past that the present condition of the Indian can be understood. As in the discourse on the yaraví, denunciation of the present condition of the Indian implies a rupture with the pre-Columbian past. Here, the notion of nostalgia, as the evocation of a glorious past, is inseparable from that of melancholy, as a fixed condition, of character and essences. Both images are figured in Laso's painting. In these works too, we see how the stereotype of melancholy is closely tied to Creole identity.
Through the photograph, the artist
includes himself in the painting, only to exclude himself from the final representation. In this play of inclusions and exclusions, which we will explore further in the following chapter, we already see the Creole ambivalence with regard to his place in that Andean world he has invented. This ambivalence shows the complex nature of Creole identity, which is problematic because it is defined through the discourse of 55See
Stastny, Exposición conmemorativa Francisco Laso, n.p. cat. no. 9, and the lengthy discussion of this painting above.
331
authenticity. This notion, present in the discourse on the yaraví at least since the 18th century, is crucial in the definition of a Creole identity. As García Calderón writes, the yaraví is not the song which we owe to the Europeans: it is, as we have already stated, the elegy with which the suffering heart accompanies his tears. The natives taught it to the Spaniards; and since then it has been made into a national song in music; and a completely special song in our literature.56 The Creole then can participate in this national music but not in its authenticity, for it is a music that does not originate with them. If the Indian is the inventor of the yaraví, then when it is sung by the Creole, it can only be interpreted as an appropriation. García Calderón will thus be forced to admit in the same text that the verses of the yaraví "have in quechua a sweetness and expression such that Spanish could not reproduce."57 For him, the yaraví is the "primitive poetry of the natives," and those that are sung in Spanish are nothing more than "translations or imitations of them."58 The yaraví is an element of authenticity which can only be artificially appropriated by the Creole, who has no defined place within 56[la
cancion que debemos a los europeos: es, como ya hemos dicho, la elegía con que acompaña su llanto el corazon que sufre. Los indígenas lo enseñaron a los españoles; y desde entonces se ha hecho de él una composición enteramente nacional en la música; y una cancion enteramente especial en nuestra literatura]. Francisco García Calderón, "[Introducción]," p. 35. 57[tienen en quechua una dulzura y expresión tales que el castellano no las podría reproducir]. Francisco García Calderón, "[Introducción]," pp. 31-32. 58Francisco García Calderón, "[Introducción]," p. 35. The traveler J.J. von Tschudi also wrote that "The yaravie [sic] has been imitated by the Spaniards in their own language, and some of the imitations are beautiful; but they have not been able to reach the deep melancholy of the Quichua elegy." See his Travels in Peru, trans. from the German by Thomasina Ross (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1854): 343.
332
the incipient romantic ideal of cultural authenticity in which human groups begin to be defined on the basis of ancestral origins and culturally differentiated traditions.
It is no coincidence that this theme was
developed with force during the 1850s and 1860s, a period of growing internationalization of literary and pictorial production in Lima. Yet the problem had already been defined by previous writers. In the early 19th century Hipólito Unanue attempted to solve this contradiction by explaining that the inhabitants of Lima, under the influence of its climate, had been "more or less affected by the melancholic character of its inhabitants."59 While during the early part of the century a writer like Unanue could nationalize the Creole through a form of climactic determinism, as the century progressed, melancholy was turned increasingly into a sign of difference. With the growing emphasis on a difference of characters, the gap between the Creole and the Indian could only come to be bridged through political or aesthetic empathy. Thus, while an approximation to the notion of authenticity is sought, the Creole is simultaneously defined as the non-Indian.
The
implied separation between the Creole and the Indian will be symbolically extended to country's geography.
If melancholy becomes the
characteristic sentiment of the native, it also serves to fix the image of the "Andean world." In order to be truly authentic, the yaraví had to be sung in its natural scenery, the Andes. This idea, already implied in Sicramio's 59[afectado más o menos del carácter melancólico de sus naturales.] Unanue, Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima y sus influencias en los seres organizados, en especial el hombre [1806] in Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, vol. 8, p. 135.
333
text, is developed further in Unanue's Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima [Observations on the Climate of Lima],60 and is retaken by the anonymous author to the additions to Sicramio's text as it was published in the Museo erudito of1839. For this author, yaravís: alongside the decorations and the etiquette, of the elegance of the dresses and of the furniture and adornments and the bustle with which they concur in theaters, philharmonic societies and other reunions, no longer produce all their effects, as when they are transferred to the tranquil and peaceable air of the countryside: while the yaravís sung in these places dress up in inconceivable magic, they penetrate better into the heart and invite tears of sweet melancholy to be spilled . . . All of nature appears to have put itself in the service of the harmony of the yaravís . . .61 Paz Soldán would also speak later of the Indian who flees "social bustle" in order to play his mournful music amidst the solitude and the silence of nature.62 And Francisco García Calderón wrote: "Yes, we repeat: you men of society cannot understand the yaraví, because this composition 60Unanue
in Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, vol. 8, pp. 135-136. Unanue's ideas on melancholy and suicide are largely inspired by Young. See Young's Sixteenth Night, "El Deleyte y el Suicidio," in Obras selectas de Eduardo Young, vol. III, pp. 92-131. 61[en medio de un concurso numeroso, al lado de las decoraciones, de las etiquetas, de la elegancia de los vestidos y de los muebles de los adornos y del bullicio que concurren a la vez en los teatros, las sociedades filarmónicas y otras reuniones; no producen ya todos sus efectos, cuando son trasladadas a la tranquilidad y ayre apacible del campo: mientras que los yaravies cantados en estos sitios se revisten de una majia inconcebible, penetran mas en el corazon y convidan a derramar lágrimas de una dulce melancolia . . . La naturaleza toda parece que se pone en contribucion a la armonia de los yaravíes . . .] Museo erudito, p. 5. The same author continues: "Los yaravíes que por si mismos son tan tristes y espresivos aumentan su fuerza e influencia, cuando son cantados en el campo, al son de una, o dos guitarras a duo; y esta es otra particularidad de estas canciones que no tienen los demas jéneros de la música," Ibid., p. 5. "Estas composiciones [complex forms of music, orquestras] se inventaron para gozarlas en la reunion y en el bullicio de las ciudades: su lugar propio son el teatro, los bailes, las funciones filarmónicas; el de los yaravíes son los prados, los verjeles, la humilde choza de paja, las quiebras de las rocas, la sociedad inocente de la amistad, los sitios escojidos del amor." Ibid., p. 6. 62Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, vol. I, pp. 30-31.
334
is like the plants which only grow and develop in the place from which they originate; and which, when transplanted to another place, are weakened, and no longer produce fruit."63 By Laso's lifetime, the stereotypical image of the melancholic Indian had become inseparable from the Andean landscape. The Indians in Laso's Pascanas are not simply set in the midst isolated landscapes. Sitting on the ground, their figures seem to merge with the mountainous scenery of the punas. After a trip to the coastal town of Huacho in 1869, Laso described its countryside in the following way: Be it for the beauty of the place or because of the good rewards that the Indian obtains for his work, in his own plot, it seems as if the Indian character had been modified in these places, because the natives, even when they preserve a certain gravity of race, walk with their bodies erect, look forwards, speak and even take the liberty of singing as if they were white or black. It is a truth that richness and liberty always infuse aplomb, and the Huachano is powerful in face of the comparatively poor serf of the Indian of the Sierra.64 The Indian and the Andean landscape can no longer be seen separately, and the final "equation of mountain landscape and Indian essence"65 has now become fixed. 63[Sí,
Even though Laso appeals to the
repetimos: vosotros los hombres de la sociedad, no podeis comprender el yaraví, por que esta composicion es como las plantas que solo crecen y se desarrollan en el lugar de que son indígenas; y que trasplantadas a otro se hacen débiles y no producen fruto]. Francisco García Calderón, "[Introducción]," pp. 33-34. 64[Sea por la belleza del lugar o por la buena recompensa que el indio saca del trabajo, en su propio terreno, parece que el carácter indígena se hubiera modificado en esos sitios, puesto que los naturales, aun cuando conservan cierta gravedad de raza, caminan con el cuerpo recto, miran de frente, hablan y aun se toman la libertad de cantar como si fueran blancos o negros. Verdad es que la riqueza y la libertad siempre infunden aplomo, y el huachano es poderoso comparativamente al pobrísimo siervo del indio de la Sierra]. [F.L.] "Huacho à vuelo de pájaro," El Nacional, 13-II-1869, p. 1. 65Benajamin S. Orlove broadly describes this transformation in "Putting Race in Its
335
precepts of mid 19th-century liberal Indianism in invoking the ideal of the Indian as a free property-owning individual, he inevitably appeals also to stereotypical images of racial and geographic determinations of character. Indeed, only a radical inversion of the political and natural order could produce the happy and working character of the Indians of Huacho. The definition of the notion of Andean telluricism, which would later come to occupy such an important place in 20th-century Indigenism, is by now completely fixed, and its basic elements already well determined.66 The images we have been reconstructing partake of a process of idealization of the Andean world. Melancholy converts the Indian into an heroic victim and defines their culture as an inimitable quality and authentic force. But this process of idealization is double-edged; it is constructed on the basis of other, older and more negative stereotypes: those of the indolence and passivity of the Peruvian Indian. Melancholy thus, also has a dark side and it leads, almost inevitably, to paralysis and even to suicide. Sicramio eloquently described the paralyzing force of melancholy: The truth is, that in general this intonation appears to have the same effect on everyone: I have known a person that has remained afflicted for many days, and that has deprived himself as much as he could from hearing them so as not to feel so vividly the sensations of those compositions, from which he fell ill: such is its power and its natural gravity.67 Place: Order in Colonial and Postcolonial Peruvian Geography," p. 325. 66Deborah Poole, "Fotografía, fantasía y modernidad," Márgenes, Año IV, no. 8 (December, 1991): 127-128. 67[Lo cierto es, que por lo general en todos parece que surte el mismo efecto esta entonacion: he conocido una persona que ha quedado acongojada por muchos dias, y
336
Unanue later described a pathological melancholy which prevailed, of course, in the "deserted sites" of the Andes.68 An early critic of Laso's Pascana in the Cordillera wrote in 1861 that "the painting of Indians, by Mr.
Lazo (sic) . . . makes us feel, the climate, the temperature, the
accidents of the land, as well as the indolent character and the passive customs of its inhabitants."69
This reading of Laso's painting may be
surprising, but it is neither wrong nor twisted, for the dividing line between melancholy and indolence is never very clear. While Laso's paintings evoke the idealizing emphasis of the stereotype of melancholy, they cannot escape the associations evoked by the image of the lazy Indian, who needs to be forced by Creole authorities in order to be made productive. Yet the paralyzing effects of melancholy are curiously similar to the consequences that three centuries of oppression were said to have produced on the Indian population. Laso himself spoke, simultaneously, of the "melancholic" and "dejected" character of the Indians of the sierra.70 Thus, the stereotype of melancholy cannot be seen simply as the positive side of a negative stereotype. The
que se privaba quanto podia de oirlos por no sentir tan vivamente las sensaciones de su composicion, de cuyas resultas enfermaba: tal es su poderio y su natural gravedad.] Sicramio, "Rasgo remitido...", p. 286. 68["lugares yermos"] Unanue, Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima, in Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, p. 135. 69[...el cuadro de los indios, el señor Lazo (sic)...nos hace palpar, el clima, la temperatura, los accidentes del terreno, así como el génio indolente y las costumbres inactivas de sus habitantes]. Anonymous, "Lima. Esposición de pinturas," El Comercio, 18-IX-1861. 70Francisco Laso, "Croquis sobre el caracter peruano," p. 309.
337
process of idealization is necessarily shaped and formed by pre-existing images of the Indian. In his Pascanas, Laso portrays this collective paralysis. The static nature of these representations present a still and isolated world, where there is no action save for the expression of sadness. Thus, Laso's works show neither the development of a story nor the representation of action. His Indians remain motionless, literally bent over and self-absorbed. Indolence, noble suffering, and sadness produce the same effect. Paralyzed into a terminal passivity, transfixed by their sadness, Laso's Indians participate in the invention of a "frozen" and immutable Andean order. It should not be surprising that only two works by Laso show the Indian engaging in an active pose.
In these two drawings, from the
collection of the Museo de Arte de Lima, Indians appear diligently working the land (fig. 50).71 But these images, dominated by a certain tone of reverie, are precisely the representations of an ideal world. A strange, clearly allegorical figure, follows behind the peasants who diligently sow the land.
Although the specific meaning of this figure is difficult to
determine, it helps to situate the scene in a fantastic space, perhaps the world of inverted order of the Indians of Huacho. If the meaning of the static Indian in itself is interesting, it is also necessary to situate it in the context of the image that began to be
71Museo
de Arte de Lima, Nº V-2.0-1028 and Nº V-2.0-1074.
338
constructed about Lima and the Creoles. If the character of ethnic groups is closely tied to geography, and if the sierra is the Indian's natural habitat, then the city is, implicitly, Lima.
As the image of melancholy and
nostalgia define the passivity of the Indian's character; vigor, youth, and change define the Creole and his "natural space." The Indian's sad music can thus be easily contrasted with the festive music of Creole Lima. Ignacio Merino's La jarana (fig. 11), which he painted before leaving Lima in 1851, is perhaps the clearest example of how this criollismo created an image of a popular, carefree, and cheerful Lima. Furthermore, as has been seen, the "Lima que se va" of José Gálvez, which originated in the writings of Palma and Lavalle, necessarily evokes a process of modernization and inevitable change. By contrast, the nostalgia attributed to the Indian is an unproductive evocation of an epoch in the past. The melancholic stereotype served to create the image of an Andean world that could be easily assimilated by Peruvian elites. This passive and paralyzed Indian could not claim any rights nor rebel to defend them. For Francisco García Calderón, the lamentation expressed in the yaraví was but a weak "moan," devoid of the "ardent accent of hatred," or the "devouring expression of vengeance."72 And according to Paz Soldán, these "descendants of Manco" with no "voice to complain, with no strength to defend themselves, lacking the resources to demand or obtain justice," had abandoned themselves to the "most profound
72Francisco
García Calderón, "[Introducción]," p. 34.
339
melancholy."73 This impotent Indian cannot question Creole power, but rather needs the protection of the Creole. The stereotype of melancholy thus serves as an excuse for Creole paternalism and helps to perpetuate the colonial system of Indian tutelage. The effectivity of this stereotype derives from the subtlety with which it is used. It defines social inequality as a natural fact, since it derives in the last instance from a colonial condition of bondage which has now become an almost biological fact. Thus, the stereotype of the melancholic Indian will not be easily questioned. It will be possible to debate on legal and political issues regarding the status of the Indian, but it will be useless to debate about what is fixed and immutable--the Indian's character. It is in this manner that this image of the Andes was created, an image which has prevailed in the 20th century, particularly in anthropological thought,74 and which has been recently described by José Guillermo Nugent: The exclusion of the Indian communities of the coast and of the sierra not only meant that they were stripped of their lands and public rights. It meant, above all, opening up a space for that image, which prevails even today in some studies on the "Andean world", of being in the presence of a "frozen," arrested time.75 73[sin voz para quejarse, sin fuerza para defenderse, sin recursos para demandar y obtener justicia, . . . entregados a la más profunda melancolía.] Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, I, p. 30. 74For a critique of the essentialist category of "lo andino" in anthropology see Marisol de la Cadena, "De utopías y contrahegemonías: El proceso de la cultura popular," Revista andina, año 8, no. 1 (July 1990): 65-76. 75[La exclusión de las comunidades indígenas en la costa y en la sierra no significó únicamente un despojo de tierra y de derechos públicos. Significó sobre todo abrir el espacio para esa imagen, que aún ahora sigue vigente en algunos estudios sobre el "mundo andino", de estar ante un tiempo detenido, "congelado."] José Guillermo Nugent,
340
While the stereotype of melancholy serves to denounce the oppression of the Indian, it simultaneously serves to define its character; while it constructs the Indian as an heroic figure, it also perpetuates older stereotypes. There is an attempt to approach the "Andean world," and at the same time, that world is created as a separate and distinctive space. A thorough revision of republican historiography which shows the constant relationship between Indian communities and the national state was needed in order to break the image of an isolated Andes that Laso's generation created. Creole attitudes toward Indian music could be defined as a form of Indianism, or even as an incipient Indigenism. Yet it is preferable to avoid the use of such charged terms to define these Creole approximations to the "Andean world," a term which will necessarily have to be placed in quotation marks, for it is evident that there is no approximation to a ready-made world, but that world is constructed in the very process of Creole approximations. Laso's paintings condense the complex history of Peruvian melancholy and perpetuate a stereotype forged in Creole discussions on indigenous music. The stereotype of melancholy gathers and disperses a multiplicity of stereotypes and ideas which have had an extraordinary prevalence in Peruvian society.
But the discourse of
melancholy was not an agent for immediate political change nor a generalized discourse during Laso's lifetime.
It was formed in the
El laberinto de la choledad, Serie Panel, 1 (Lima: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1992): 20.
341
aesthetic discussions of a small group of intellectuals and only later, through the perpetuation of certain crucial texts--classics such as the Mercurio peruano, Unanue's Observaciónes sobre el clima de Lima, La Revista de Lima, and Paz Soldán's Geografía del Perú, among others--it became fixed as an hegemonic stereotype. It emphasized the symbolic division of the nation into two opposing and separate worlds: the Indian and the Creole, the Andes and the coast, Cuzco and Lima. It served, consequently, to eliminate numerous social groups (in particular the Mestizo) from the national imagination, to level complex traditions, and to exclude, through a dichotomous ordering, a number of geographical regions of the country. In these initial approaches to the Indian and the Andean world, we see already all the tensions and contradictions that later movements will have to confront. Contradictions which reflect a double anxiety, both cultural and political, of the Creole appropriation of Indian cultural forms. We could thus end here with the two photographs with which we began this chapter. In one, the artist is represented in a bourgeois interior, next to two important Peruvian intellectuals.
In the other, the artist
assumes a dress which is obviously not his own, a dress which can only be taken as a disguise. The artist's gesture of approximation, though rare, is determined by previous traditions of Creole approximations, by prevailing stereotypes of the Indian, but above all, by the complex and ambiguous status of Creole identity.
342
343
Chapter 8: The Haravicu/The Storyteller: The Scene of Approximation
There are those who say that a native will not speak to a white man. Error. No man will speak to his master; but to a wanderer and a friend, to him who does not come to teach or to rule, to him who asks for nothing and accepts all things, words are spoken by the camp-fires, in the shared solitude of the sea, in riverside villages, in resting-places surrounded by forests-words are spoken that take no account of race or color. One heart speaks--another one listens; and the earth, the sea, the sky, the passing wind and the stirring leaf, hear also the futile tale of the burden of life.1 Joseph Conrad
THE IMAGE OF THE STORYTELLER AND THE INSCRUTABLE INDIAN As we have seen, Laso's Pascanas define and are in turn constructed by the figure of melancholy through which Creole approximations to the "Andean world" were first forged. Melancholy, however, reveals only one aspect of the broader problematic of Creole approximations. In the previous chapter the Pascanas were basically used as illustrations of the Indian's melancholy, but their relationship to the
1From Joseph Conrad's "Karain: A Memory," cited in Johannes Fabian, "Presence and Representation: The Other and Anthropological Writing," Critical Inquiry, vol. 16, no. 4 (Summer 1990): 771-772.
345
issue of Creole approximations is both a richer and more complex. The point of departure for this chapter will be Laso's Haravicu, the painting which most directly refers to the issue of communication. The original title of the painting is not known, but it appears as the Haravicu only during the early 20th century.2 The term, however, was widely used during the 19th century in literary circles,3 a vogue which apparently owed much to the definition provided in the Royal Commentaries of the Incas. For Garcilaso, the harauicus were the poets of the Inca Empire who "told of the deeds of their kings and other famous Incas and chief curacas in verse, and taught these poems to their descendants as a tradition, so that the good deeds of their ancestors should be remembered and imitated."4 The painting owes its title to the figure who sits at the far left of the painting and who gestures with his hands to indicate that he is speaking. This figure's hands are emphasized by contrast with the absent hands of the other figures in the composition, which are either hidden from view or tightly clasped together, as in the figure in the middle. The narrator's importance within the painting is subtly emphasized. Sitting upon a bundle of textiles, he is the only figure who does not sit directly on the ground, and his seniority is defined by 2Teófilo
Castillo mentions the painting for the first time as "El haravicú, ó sea el indio historiador." See "Interiores limeños. XI. Casa de la Sra. Manuela Henríquez de Lasso," Variedades XI, no. 369 (March 27, 1915): 1933. 3Abelardo M. Gamarra was baptized as "el último harabicu" in the literary salon of Juana Manuela Gorriti. See, Gorriti, Veladas literarias de Lima, 1876-1877, pp. 452ff. 4"The poetry of Inca amautas or philosophers and harauicus, or poets," Royal Commentaries of the Incas, Book Two, ch. XXVII, p. 126. On the haravicus see also Book Six, ch. IX.
346
what is apparently a walking rod, lying on the ground beside him. Although the pre-Columbian ceramic which Laso had used in previous Pascanas to evoke the history of the Indian's oppression is not shown in the Haravicu, the presence of the storyteller compensates for this absence. The poetry of the haravicu, from which the yaraví was said to derive, could only be defined in the context of the stereotype of melancholy, and could thus be interpreted only as elegies.5 The lowered heads of the figures in the painting, and the seriousness of their facial expressions, indicate that the story they are hearing is probably a sad episode from their history. The pre-Columbian ceramic is no longer necessary in order to convey the message of the Indian's oppression. The figure of the storyteller evokes the contemporary European interest in oral traditions and the pictorial iconography which developed in its wake. Laso's Haravicu is thus paralleled by a number European paintings on the topic, among which can be cited such works as The Storyteller (1866), a painting attributed to the German painter Ernst Fischer (1815-1874)6. Often set in rural landscapes, European images of storytelling usually evoke the nostalgia for traditional forms of life in the context of the rapid industrialization of the countryside. Numerous other examples could be drawn from contemporary European painting which show
similar
5Unanue,
scenes
of
storytelling
among
societies
considered
"Idea general de los monumentos del antigüo Perú," (1791). p. 335-336, no.
9. 6Sotheby's,
New York, Important 19th Century European Paintings, sale catalogue no. 4714M, October 19, 1981,. no. 271A.
347
"traditional" or among exoticized peoples.
The remarkable affinities
between Laso's paintings and the storytelling scenes developed in Europe show that they form the most direct sources for the composition of the Haravicu. But the comparison to contemporary European painting is only superficial, for the European view on the subject was radically transformed as it was incorporated into Peruvian society. In 1859 La Revista de Lima published an essay on the importance of tracing Peruvian oral history.
Written by
René Enrique Tabouelle,
secretary to the French legation in Lima, this essay offers a distinctly European understanding of the significance of oral traditions. Tabouelle began by criticizing the lack of interest of Peruvians for their nation's history, claiming that they knew more of the "conquests of Genghis-Khan than of the great rebellion of Tupac Amaru."7 The sense of urgency with which Tabouelle pleaded Creoles to take on the task of recording Peruvian oral tradition is based on his belief that it was a knowledge doomed to perish, a belief which was based on the widespread premise of the weakness of Indian customs and the inability of the Indian population to withstand the expansion of European civilization. Yet the idea of rescuing a fading culture which underlies this notion, was not particularly pertinent to the Peruvian situation, where Indian culture was largely perceived as being impervious to the influx of Western civilization. 7[el viejo mundo de donde irradia la civilizacion, la atrae y la cautiva: a buen seguro, conoce mejor las conquistas de Gengis-Kan que el gran sublevamiento de Tupac Amaru.] [René] Enrique Tabouelle, "Algo sobre el estudio de la historia peruana," Revista de Lima I, no. 6 (December 15, 1859): 276-277.
348
Tabouelle also expressed his amazement that no one should have thought of "gathering . . . those precious memories that are orally transmitted."8
The French author, writing with a knowledge of the
development of a European interest in folk cultures, then draws comparisons with the legends of the blacks of Nubia, the primitive songs of Eropean peoples, and the epics "which are the chronicles of the youth of modern nations." Tabouelle has no doubts that, given the "innate taste of the Indians for songs and the multitude of their legends," historians might discover, among the "poems disseminated in the mysterious valleys of Peru . . . something analogous to the Ionic epic or, at least, to those of the Middle Ages."9 This writer was apparently unaware that the interest in oral traditions had a strong presence among the collaborators of the very journal he was writing in. Their interest, however, was not expressed in the form of a rigorous ethnography; and in fact, there are no indications that any kind of conscientious fieldwork was carried out in Peru until much later in the 19th century. However, a large part of the literature of
8[Esto nos conduce a manifestar nuestra estrañeza de que a nadie se le haya ocurrido el recojer, en la vasta extension de la República, esos preciosos recuerdos que se transmiten oralmente, de generación en generación y que podrían llamarse la historia cantada, en razón de que, en los pueblos poco avanzados, hay una relación tan íntima entre la historia y la poesía, que sus canciones nacionales revelan todo lo que les ha sido caro, despreciable o penoso.] Ibid., pp. 278-279. 9[refiriéndonos sólo a este pais, y observando el gusto innato de los indios por el canto y la multitud de sus leyendas, nos sentimos inclinados a creer que, en un tiempo, la poesía era cultivada aquí por una especie de improvisadores y rápsodas bastante parecidos a los artistas ambulantes de la antigua Grecia: y aun podria suceder que, recojidas todas las poesisas diseminadas en los miseriosos valles del Perú, se encontraría algo análogo a la epopeya jónica o por lo menos, a las de la edad media.] Ibid., p. 280.
349
the period was framed and defined by the idea of an oral tradition. The literary genre of the tradición, the short historical stories created by Ricardo Palma evoke, sometimes directly, sometimes through their colloquial tone and language, orally transmitted stories. As one critic has written, "one does not read Ricardo Palma, one listens to him."10 Often the elaboration on a popular saying, or of a story heard from the lips of an older person, the tradición became the most important literary genre of the late 19th century, and many of Ricardo Palma's earliest tradiciones appeared for the first time in the pages of La Revista de Lima. Palma's tradición, however, was developed primarily to record Creole colonial and republican history. But parallel to Palma, during the 1850s and 1860s, the writer Juana Manuela Gorriti also published a number of short novels and stories which follow a structure similar to the tradición, and which she often titled "legends"; these works were largely devoted to the portrayal of "Indian" themes. What must also have escaped Tabouelle was the fact that these Creole writings were forged in the context of a widespread stereotype on the Indian--that of the silent Indian who refuses to communicate with the Creole. As in other stereotypes of the Indian which resurfaced with force during the 19th century, the origins of the theme can be traced back to the 10[Su
género literario es oral. Cuando escribe, está hablando . . . Don Ricardo Palma tiene el mérito de haber escrito como hablaba o como debiera haber hablado . . . A Ricardo Palma no se le lee, se le oye.] Emilio Romero, "El cuento hace treinta años," in Ricardo Palma, Tradiciones, 5 vols., Raúl Porras Barrenechea, ed., with illustrations by Apu-rimak, Raúl Vizcarra and Carlos Quíspez Asín (Lima: Editorial Cultura Antártica S.A., 1951): V, iii.
350
early colonial period, but it gained new relevance within the late 18thcentury interest in archaeology and the description of the country's geography.
When an anonymous author accused the editors of the
Mercurio peruano of concentrating always on the same topics and thus limiting the scope of the subjects covered by the journal, the editors responded by arguing that this was partly to be explained by the fact that it was difficult to have access to ancient monuments given the "mysterious prudence with which they are concealed by those who possess them, perhaps without benefit for themselves."11 The ideas contained in this short statement, that the Indians are the only rightful heirs of the preColumbian past and its archaeological remains, that out of fear or egotism they refuse to share their heritage with the Creole, and that they lack the ability to make their knowledge and their properties productive, would be repeated and recreated obsessively during most of the 19th century. Together, they form the basis of the stereotype of the inscrutable Indian. As in the stereotype of melancholy, a simple character trait immediately evokes a complex yet highly codified set of associations which helps to structure and explain unequal social relations. The inscrutable Indian becomes an obstacle for Creole knowledge. As the image of the insurmountable Andes had already become a symbol as a barrier to progress,12 the Indian's character now became a further 11[y de la dificultad con que pueden grangearse Monumentos antiguos, segun el misterioso recato con que los reservan los que los poseen, acaso sin fruto propio.] D. F. D. P. D. L. M. L., "Carta remitida a la Sociedad, que publica con algunas Notas," Mercurio peruano, no. 344 (April 20, 1794): 257. 12Orlove, "Putting Race in its Place. . .," pp. 317, 328.
351
obstacle for the constitution of modern Peru. The Indian's self-imposed marginalization amounts to the creation of a space that evades scientific description and ultimately the mapping of the nation.
The Indian's
inscrutability metaphorically justifies and defines the process of the Indian's marginalization from society that was also enacted in other spheres. There is, for example, a striking parallel in 19th-century political discourse on the Indian.
The liberal politicians who wrote the first
constitutions and the first laws of the new republic, stressed a process of incorporation of the Indian into civic life which was contradicted in practice, for Indian communities came to be increasingly marginalized during the 19th century. The image of the inscrutable Indian also ignores an important transformation in Peruvian society during the 19th century. While during the colonial period Quechua had been known and used by elites, during the 19th century most educated urban Creoles no longer knew the language.
In the civilizing process envisaged by Creole politicians of
Laso's generation, the Indians would need to learn Spanish in order to participate in Peruvian society. Quechua was no longer a valid official tongue, and came to be used less and less even in domestic contexts.13 The study of Quechua by early philologists such as Sebastián Barranca and others was validated as a practice only because it was a scientific and thus modernizing enterprise. Furthermore, in the 19th century, Quechua 13Itier,
"Quechua y cultura en el Cuzco del siglo XVIII: de la 'lengua general' al 'idioma del imperio de los Incas'," n.p.
352
was not studied as a living language; it was either pragmatically used by religious institutions for missionary purposes, or coldly examined by philologists for its archaeological interest.14
The Indians' silence thus
served official political discourse well, for the fault for their exclusion from Peruvian society could thus be transferred to the Indians. It was they, and not the Creole state, which was to blame for the separation. It should not be surprising that among the best-known and most widely disseminated "legends" of the 19th century--the stories of Inca gold, secretly guarded by the suffering Indians for the moment of liberation--should have served to perpetuate the stereotype of the inscrutable Indian. The theme was taken up by the writer Juana Manuela Gorriti as an independent story in El Tesoro de los Incas.
(Leyenda
histórica) [The Treasure of the Incas. (Historical legend)], published for the first time in Lima in 1864.15 Innumerable versions of stories involving hidden treasure circulated during this period. Clements R. Markham is told the story twice during his trip to Peru in 1851-1853, and one of his 14Luis
Enrique Tord, El indio en los ensayistas peruanos, 1848-1948 (Lima: Editoriales Unidas, 1978): 38-39. 15El Tesoro de los Incas was apparently first published in La República (Lima), Year I, nos. 5-6, 8, 10, 14-15 (December 20, 1863-February 21, 1864): 39-40, 46-47. 62-63, 79-80, 111-112, 119-120. I cite from El Tesoro de los Incas. (Leyenda histórica) Sección de Documentos, Serie 4, Novela I, no. 6 (Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Imprenta de la Universidad, 1929): 239-268. It was later published in 1865 in Sueños y realidades, vol. II, pp. 87-137. Some studies on Gorriti, written from the perspective of gender studies, attempt to find in her writings a difference from contemporary (male) discourse. See for example, Lucía Guerra Cunningham, "Visión marginal de la historia en la narrativa de Juana Manuela Gorriti," Ideologies and Literature 2, no. 2 (1987): 59-76. In this and the following sections, I treat Gorriti as a crucial figure in Peruvian intellectual circles, I minimize her difference from male writers and emphasize the manner in which the themes of her writings actively participated in the construction of a hegemonic Peruvian mythology.
353
informants, Modesto Basadre later published his own version of the story. Ricardo Palma and Clorinda Matto de Turner later included similar stories in their tradiciones, and the legend would continue to be reenacted well into the 20th century.16 Though claiming to derive from an ancient tradition, the legends of Inca gold are turned into part of a literary repertoire, fixed in a pattern, recognizable as legends only insofar as they are always already defined by a literary tradition. The very mention of gold immediately and unavoidably evokes the moment of conquest. The revival of the "Black Legend" of the Spanish conquest during the 19th century had placed greed, and not religion, as the primary motivation of the conquerors. In the stories spun around this theme, the hidden treasures are usually part of the ransom offered to the Spaniards by Atahualpa, which the Indians hide in hearing about the Inca's death. At that moment, an oath is taken: the gold must be guarded, kept hidden, and is only to be used for the collective project of liberation. It is thus not surprising that many of the stories of hidden treasure center on the moment of independence.
One popular version, for example,
described how the curaca Mateo Pumacahua financed his rebellion of 1814
16Modesto
Basadre, "Botijlaca" included in a compilation of his writings titled, appropriately enough, Riquezas peruanas. Colección de artículos descriptivos escritos para 'La Tribuna' (Lima: Imprenta de 'La Tribuna', 1884): 91-112. Palma wrote a number of tradiciones on the theme, including "Los Tesoros de Catalina Huanca" [1876-77], "Un tesoro y una superstición" [1879] and "Buscadores de tesoros." The legend by Matto de Turner is "Ccata-Hueqque. (Origen tradicional del nombre de la cueva)" in Tradiciones cuzqueñas, pp. 131-133. The persistence of the theme can be seen in Ventura García Calderón's "La espantable magnificencia," in Instantes del Perú, Biblioteca de Grandes Autores Americanos, 1era serie (Paris: Garnier Hms., 1941): 59-67.
354
with Inca treasures.17 The very element that was perceived to be the basis of the colonial system was also to be its undoing. The probity of the Indians who, rather than squander the treasure, prefer to live in poverty and sacrifice personal riches in favor of a collective cause, contrasts with the greed motivating the conquerors and their descendants. When the Indian, through torture or seduction, betrays the secret, death and depredation immediately follow. Related stories picked up by the traveler J. J. von Tschudi, tell how the Indians withheld their knowledge of the location of rich mines in order to avoid the ensuing exploitation as laborers.
The examples he cites serve to prove "the
reluctance of the Indians to disclose the secret of their hidden treasures, and their indifference about obtaining wealth for themselves."18
Laso
himself, in defending the Indian's character from accusations of mistrust and avariciousness, wrote that, If, in general, the Indian is cautious, avaricious and ungrateful, it isn't because these bad qualities are organic to the indigenous race. In the same circumstances as our Indians, Caucasians would also be reserved and would answer everything with their manan cancho. . . . The Indian then, has every reason to be distrustful, as would an Englishman if he were treated in the same manner.19 17Markham, Travels in Peru, pp. 10-11. This story, told to Markham by Modesto Basadre, is "confirmed" later in his travels by another informant, Mrs. Bennet, the descendant of Pumacahua's ally Domingo Luis Astete y Angulo. Ibid., p. 89. 18J. J. von Tschudi, Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, Into the Primeval Forests, rev. ed., trans. from the German by Thomasina Ross (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1854): 244. See also pp. 241-244. 19[También se habla mucho del carácter desconfiado, avaro e ingrato del Indio.-Pero estas acusaciones son tanto ó mas absurdas que las anteriores. Si en general el Indio se muestra cauteloso, avaro é ingrato, no es porque estas malas cualidades sean orgánicas en la raza indíjena. Los Caucaseanos en las circunstancias de nuestros indios, tambien tendrian para todo su reserva y su "manan cancho. . .¿Cómo puede tener expansion ni
355
He claims that when the Indian is well treated, he is sociable and does not refuse the Creole his goods.20 While Laso, Tschudi, Gorriti, and others reject biological and determinist explanations in favor of social and political causes for the Indian's mistrustful character, they ultimately do not deny the basic stereotype. These images and stories establish then, an apology for silence and a confession of guilt, a fear of rebellion and a muted belief in its justification. Creole attempts at approximation presuppose the stereotype of the inscrutable Indian. As in political discourse, a sense of distance from the Indian was thus constructed in the very process of approximation. Paradoxically, storytelling, the medium through which this separation is ideally to be resolved, also becomes the medium through which it is enacted. The image of the Indian's treasures simultaneously evokes both the distance separating Creoles and Indians, and the Creole desire for communication. Hidden in deep underground recesses, natural caves and subterranean cities, the treasures become metaphors of darkness and
alegría el Indio, cuando vive brutalmente tiranizado por las autoridades y sus patrones? ¿Cómo puede manifestar sus pocos recursos, cuando sabe que el oficial transeunte le ha de quitar sus víveres a planazos, ó ha de pagarlos con la cuarta parte de su valor? El Indio, pues, tiene mucha razon de ser desconfiado, como la tendria un Inglés si se le tratase del mismo modo. Si los gefes dela casa de Gibbs se les pidiese algun efecto sin garantía de pago, aunque la demanda no se hiciese a planazos, es mas que probable que esos Señores contestarian tambien "manan cancho" sin pasar por esto, por desconfiados ni avaros.] Francisco Laso, "Croquis sobre el caracter peruano," pp. 306-307. 20[La prueba de que la desconfianza no es inherente á la raza indíjena es, que en Chorrillos y en otros puntos en donde no se trata al Indio como á esclavo, el Indio es sociable y no niega sus recursos, porque está seguro del pago y no teme el mal trato.] p. 307.
356
concealment, of inaccessible knowledge and exclusion.
The Indian is
wrapped in an aura of romantic mystery and becomes a privileged object of Creole desire. In El Tesoro de los Incas, Gorriti thus wrote: What thoughts burn under the patient resignation with which they endure their misfortune? That festive costume, preserved always next to their eternal dress of mourning, what hopes does it reveal? and, what is that secret, transmitted from generation to generation and so religiously guarded among the tatters of their misery? Learn their beautiful language and hear the stories of their long nights around the fire of their huts, and you will believe to hear the symbolic dirges of Sion under the willows of Babylon.21 Gorriti creates the scene of approximation, a space where difference is simultaneously asserted and sublimated. Thus, the Creole interest in oral traditions did not emphasize content; it was less interested in specific Indian knowledge, customs, or folklore as it was obsessed by the idea of communication. In this context, the Indian who speaks becomes a privileged figure in the Creole imagination.
The Creole with whom the Indian
communicates becomes authorized to speak on the Indian's behalf. The image of the speaking Indian was thus often deployed to legitimize Creole texts. The Creole frequently validate their accounts by framing them as originating in the words of the Incas or in their rightful heirs, the 21[¿Qué pensamiento arde bajo la paciente resignación con que sobrellevan su infortunio? Ese vestido de gala conservado siempre al lado de su eterno luto, ¿qué esperanza revela? y ¿cuál es ese secreto transmitido de generación en generación y guardado tan religiosamente entre los harapos de su miseria?/Aprended su hermosa lengua y escuchad las pláticas de sus largas veladas en torno al hogar de las cabañas, y creeréis oír las simbólicas endechas de los desterrados de Sión, bajo los sauces de Babilonia."] Juana Manuela Gorriti, El tesoro de los incas, p. 244. Cf Paz Soldán, Geografía del Perú, vol. I, p. 31.
357
contemporary Indians. The use of the idea of an oral tradition in the political legitimation of the Creole can be traced back to the period of independence, and in particular to the writings of Hipólito Unanue. In 1824, Unanue--who had previously written about the stubborn, distrustful and mysterious character of the Indian22--offered an early demonstration of the utility of this rhetorical strategy. Wandering around the site of the ruins of Santa, the author is plagued with questions about the origins and history of those who had created the ancient monuments, and is forced to reflect upon the problems involved in the reconstruction of preColumbian history: The dead do not speak. In peoples of recent origin, oral traditions can fill the gaps of history. From the conquest of Peru until the present time, a few generations are enough to form it. In these rustic places men live long, and from father to sons they recount the things of the past.23 In the middle of this thought, an elderly man appears upon the scene and establishes a dialogue with the author. The words Unanue attributes to his informant are but paraphrases from Garcilaso about Inca Yupanqui's magnanimous government and peaceful conquests, yet they 22Unanue, Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, p. 250. In a note to his text, Unanue cited a letter written by Pedro de Osma in 1568 in which he relates how when Osma sought information on "el lugar en que criaban las vicuñas la piedra bezar; por más preguntas que hacían a los indios sobre esta materia, se resistían y no querían descubrirles sus secretos, por el encono que les tenían . . . Pero habiéndoselos revelado un indiecito de 10 a 12 años, al instante sus paisanos lo quisieron degollar. Protegiólo Osma, y descuidándose en custodiarlo con el recreo de la caza, se lo robaron y lo sacrificaron." 23[Los muertos no parlan. En los pueblos de data reciente puede la tradición oral llenar los huecos de la historia. De la conquista del Perú al tiempo presente, bastan pocas generaciones para formarla. En estos rústicos lugares los hombres son vividores, y de padres a hijos se cuentan las cosas pasadas.] "Apuntes sobre las ruinas del valle de Santa," in Los Ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue, p. 434. Originally published in Nuevo día del Perú in1824.
358
help to validate his opinions about the course of contemporary events, and in particular his praise of Bolívar and the victories of the armies of independence.24 The frontispiece of the 1851 edition of Mariano Eduardo de Rivero's Antigüedades peruanas shows a similar process of legitimation at work. In this lithograph, a generic "Inca" extends his arm outwards, apparently pointing to a landscape in the distance.
Although the figures in the
frontispiece are not identified, the lithograph is based on an image previously published by Rivero in the short-lived newspaper El Ateneo americano of 1847 under the heading "The Inca Manco Capac and the Coya Mama Ocllo Huaco, his wife, founders of the Inca Empire" (fig. 51).25 The frame of the lithograph limits our view of the landscape, barely allowing a glimpse of a city in the background, but insinuating a vast expanse of territory.
Yet outside the frame of the lithograph, in the
context of the book itself, the extended arm of the Inca serves another function: by also pointing in the direction of the title page it serves to represent Rivero's work as an extension of the Inca's words.
24Numerous other examples could be given of this legitimizing strategy. To give only one striking example, I cite the case of José Domingo González de Matos, who wrote most of his satirical newspaper, El Duende (1830), in the form of an imaginary dialogue between the editor and the Inca. 25[El Inca Manco Capac i la Coia Mama Ocllo Huaco, su esposa, fundadores del Iniperio (sic) del Peru.] The lithograph appeared in El Ateneo americano, periódico quincenario con láminas. Literatura, ciencias, artes y oficios, no. 2, November 20, 1847. The newspaper was directed by Mariano Eduardo de Rivero and Nicolás de Piérola. According to Pablo Patrón, five numbers of the newspaper appeared, accompanied by six lithographs, three of which were "los primeros incas con sus coyas, según la narración de Garcilaso." See "Galería de retratos de los gobernadores y virreyes del Perú," La Integridad (Lima), 25-II-1893.
359
This legitimating strategy is repeated in the title page of the lavish album which accompanies the book. Here, a rather bizarre reconstruction of the Portal of the Sun of Tiahuanaco serves as a frame for a series of portraits of the Incas (fig. 52). Below the portal, an Indian man points to the banner in which the names of the authors and the title of the work are inscribed.
The contemporary Indian, heir of the Incas, becomes the
intermediary between the public and the pre-Columbian past. The same theme is repeated in one of the final illustrations in the album, in which an Indian gestures towards a view of ancient ruins while addressing the archaeologist who sits at his feet and appears to listen attentively to the Indian's words (fig. 53).
THE SCENE OF APPROXIMATION The storyteller in Laso's Haravicu does not direct himself to a Creole audience. He is depicted in a strict profile running parallel to the picture plane, in a manner which denies any possibility that he may be directing himself to the viewers of the painting. His audience is formed by the group of Indians who sit in the same space as he, and who tilt their heads slightly downwards as if concentrating on his words.
The
storyteller speaks to a group of Indians and he does so in a space--the Andean landscape--which is distant and inaccessible. The painting thus refuses to legitimate a Creole narrative, for instead of addressing the
360
viewer, it denies from the outset an easy or immediate access to the scene represented in the painting. The viewer's difficulty in approaching the painting thus evokes the image of the inscrutable Indian and shows how superficial the initial comparison to European painting proves to be. In this context, it is useful to compare Laso's Haravicu with an important precedent in European painting, Horace Vernet's Arab Chiefs Telling a Tale (fig. 54), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1834. The viewer of Vernet's painting is placed in a privileged position and is offered instant access to the scene represented in the painting. The figures in the foreground do not sit in a closed circle but leave an open space in the foreground that serves as a point of entry for the viewer. The viewer looks through this empty space in the middle of the canvas, only to be guided to the figure of an Arab man who, in turn, looks behind him. It is almost impossible to focus on the main group in the foreground of the painting. The entire composition, organized along two diagonals which seem to meet only in the far distance, serves as a kind of funnel, literally forcing the viewer to focus on the vast landscape in the background and the events that are taking place there. None of the figures in the painting look out at the viewer; immersed in their activities, they are oblivious to the fact that they are being watched. Vernet deploys the typical picturesque strategies of Orientalist painting as described by Linda Nochlin.
The minute description of details and the exacting
brushwork function as "authenticating details" which, along with the
361
polished surfaces, helps create the illusion of transparency that allows the "controlling gaze" of the West to fix upon an exoticized and distant Orient.26 As in other paintings by Laso, the Haravicu rejects almost every aspect of these picturesque strategies. The Andean landscape of Laso's painting serves only to construct a general setting for the group represented in the foreground. Occupying almost the entire surface of the painting, the group of Indians in this work blocks the view of the landscape and rejects the type of panoramic vistas usually favored by Orientalist painters like Vernet. Favoring only the broad definition of masses and minimizing superfluous items, Laso also rejects the minute description of costumes and ethnographic details which, in Orientalist painting, usually serve to create the "effect of the real." Thus, Laso's painting is not an ethnographic record, nor is the scene represented offered as a display. The standing figure in the foreground gives its back to the viewer, thus helping to deflect the viewer's attention. This figure is important in the composition of the painting, as it serves to unify the figures grouped in the foreground. The figure's head forms the tip of a triangle formed by the slanting backs of the storyteller on the far left and the figure placed on the other extreme. However, the imaginary sides of this triangle do not function as orthogonals but rather run parallel to the picture surface to negate any indication of depth. Thus, unlike
26Linda
Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," in The Politics of Vision, pp. 33-59.
362
Vernet's painting, the viewer is constantly forced to focus on the foreground of the painting and not on the landscape behind. Yet if the painting does not offer the viewer a sense of immediacy or an easy point of access to the scene, neither does it impede it. The standing figure, for example, does not completely seal off the composition. By being placed slightly off-center to the left, it also opens up a space to the right-hand side of the painting. Thus, the circle formed by this group of Indians is not completely closed; a space is left open which allows the viewer a point of access to the scene. And it is precisely on the right-hand side of the painting that the viewer's gaze is returned by that of the Indian woman.
This figure has a crucial function within the painting.
By
acknowledging the viewer, the figure initiates the exchange around which the entire composition is structured, for it is the outward gaze of this figure which turns the spectator into a participant. The viewer of the painting is not the privileged, omniscient viewer that Vernet's painting presupposed. In the first place, the viewer of Laso's painting not only observes the scene, but is in turn observed. The viewer depends on the Indian woman's gaze in order to be incorporated into the painting. Moreover, this figure's side glance is highly ambiguous; it is more of an acknowledgment of the viewer than an invitation to the scene. Further, by placing the point of entry to the painting off-center, the viewer is allowed only an indirect access to the painting, and is simultaneously placed in a marginal position within the represented scene.
363
The process through which the painting is created is thus structured through the same rhetoric of approximation which defines other Creole texts. In the same manner in which contemporary Creole interest in oral traditions largely ignored the contents of Indian folklore and privileged the theme of communication itself, Laso's painting rejects ethnographic details and focuses rather on the issue of approximation to the Andean world. The Haravicu transfers onto the surface of the canvas the encounter with the Indian, and the painting enables a dialogue between the non-Indian viewer and the Andean world. The painting literally creates the scene of approximation. The encounter between the non-Indian observer and Andean world represented in the painting recreates the process through which the painting itself was constructed. As has been seen, Laso used a series of photographs to create the composition of his painting (figs. 30-35).27 Unfortunately, nothing is known about where or when these photographs were taken, nor of who the photographer may have been. Clearly, Laso himself must have posed the models and selected the dresses, but, considering that he appears in one of the photographs, it is unlikely that he should have taken the photographs himself. The photographs were taken on a makeshift stage, formed by the precarious placement of 27The photographs were "discovered" in the storage rooms of the Museo de Arte de Lima in 1968, while Francisco Stastny was organizing an exhibition of drawings of Laso and Carlos Baca-Flor. They apparently entered the Museum's collection with the "Memoria Prado" donation of 1960. Following the date traditionally given to the Haravicu, the photographs were also dated in 1868. See "Viejas fotografías descubiertas lo comprueban. El famoso pintor Francisco Laso no se representó en "La Pascana,"" El Comercio, 22-VI-1968.
364
wooden boards on top of what seem to be pieces of forged metal furniture. A simple blank cloth hangs behind, serving as a backdrop. The setting for the photographs could indicate that they were taken in an urban setting and possibly even in Lima. As has been seen, Laso does not seem to have used the photographs to produce the effect of ethnographic precision, for the worn, even ragged, look of the costumes in the photographs are transformed in the final painting. The similarity between the dress, poses, and attitudes of the figures represented in the photographs and those portrayed in the painting indicates that Laso had already decided on the general arrangement of the composition before the photographs were taken, which here take the place of the preparatory pencil sketch. Laso used the photographs to prepare an oil sketch which is now in the collection of the Museo de Arte de Lima (fig. 55). Save for a few minor changes, such as the replacement of the oxen in the background for llamas, or the use of a lighter palette, the final version of the painting closely follows the composition established in the sketch. The inclusion of Laso among the figures in the photographs points to the fact that the issue of communication and approximation defines the construction of the painting. By excluding himself from the composition, Laso allowed the opening on the right-hand side of the painting, where the viewer is situated. The role assigned to the viewer of the painting fills in for Laso's missing figure in the final painting. The Haravicu is only the
365
final product of a longer process through which Laso worked out the problem of approximation to the Andean world.
In fact, the entire
Pascana series can be seen as partial solutions to a similar problem, that of turning the surface of the painting into the scenario which actively constructs the process of approximation. Although none of the paintings from the Pascana series can be firmly dated, a relative chronology may be tentatively established. Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru described the unfinished Indian Encampment (fig. 48) as a large "sketch,"28 and this characterization seems to be fairly accurate. Even though its large size indicates that it was not intended as a sketch, it did serve as a point of departure for other paintings in the series. It appears as though Laso was not satisfied with the painting, for it was never completed. Many of the figures have been barely brushed in with thin layers of paint and a number of areas appear undefined. The Pascana in the Cordillera seems to have been created after the Indian Encampment and before the Haravicu. The closeness of the Indian Encampment to sketches created by Laso in 1849 and the tentative quality of the composition seem to indicate that it is the earliest work in the series, probably created in the first half of the 1850s.
The Pascana in the
Cordillera, as shall be seen, was apparently created after the Indian Encampment, probably later in the 1850s.29 When it was exhibited in 28Ugarte
Eléspuru, Ignacio Merino. Francisco Laso, p. 159. y Arias de Saavedra's early reference to these paintings is ambiguous, but also suggests a date in the second half of the 1850s. After speaking of Laso's Justice and The Concert, which he dates to ca. 1855-1856, he writes: "A la misma época corresponden, dos cuadros representando campamentos de indios en la cordillera, de los cuales creemos 29Lavalle
366
1861--apparently the only painting in the series to have been exhibited in Laso's lifetime--a critic reviewing the exhibition mentioned that the works Laso was exhibiting had been lying in his studio for a long time.30 Finally, a number of elements indicate that the Haravicu is the last painting in the series, and it has been traditionally dated to 1868 (a date which is neither justified nor supported by any documentary evidence). A date in the 1860s is probable since photography on paper only became popular in Peru during the late 1850s and Laso's physiognomy in the photograph shows him slightly older than he appears in photographs and paintings created during the 1850s.31 The Indian Encampment is the only painting from the Pascana series for which numerous preparatory drawings and sketches survive. The image of the central figure in the group, the spinning woman, is based on a drawing and a small oil sketch which Laso made during his trip to southern Peru in 1849 (fig. 36). Save for the addition of a wide-brimmed hat, or montera, the figure in the painting is virtually the same as the one represented in these early sketches. The figure of a man carrying a load uphill, to the right, is also based on an undated preparatory sketch in the Museo de Arte de Lima (fig. 56). Apart from these studies for individual que uno está en poder del doctor don Mariano Alvarez, y otro en el de su viuda." See, "Francisco Laso," p. 1126. 30"Lima. Esposicion (sic) de pinturas," El Comercio, 18-IX-1861. 31The relative chronology suggested here contradicts that which has traditionally been assigned to these paintings. Flores Araoz dates the Pascana in the Cordillera to 1851, the Indian Encampment to 1859 and the Haravicu to 1868. Flores Araoz offers no explanation for the dates he assigns to these paintings, nor does he provide any documentary evidence. Francisco Stastny simply follows the chronology established by Flores Araoz.
367
figures, there are three sketches which show that Laso began the painting as nothing more than the simple representation of an idyllic Andean scene. In one of them, a group of four figures (fig. 57) sit in a circle and listen to the music of a quena. Another similar sketch follows the same composition and only incorporates a greater number of figures into the scene (fig. 49). The last sketch, in which all the main groups present in the final painting are already well defined, is arranged along a horizontal axis (fig. 58). The relaxed poses of the figures in the painting, the sense of community which their mute conversations imply, and the tenderness of feeling which the figure of the mother and child evokes, show that there is nothing here beyond the representation of an idyllic and idealized Andean pastoral. This is the painting in which Laso comes closest to European paintings of Arab and peasant encampments.
However, the solemn
stance and the contrived arrangement of the figures in Laso's final version of the painting already points to a differentiation from the purely picturesque interest of other similar examples in contemporary French painting. Laso seems to have based some of his figures on models taken from the repertoire of classical themes, thus giving his figures the authority and nobility deriving from images taken from the classical tradition. The pose of the figure of the Indian woman represented to the left of the central group in the foreground, for example, seems to have been derived from the pose of one of the figures from the Villa of the
368
Mysteries in Pompeii.
But Laso also seems to have looked to
contemporary European models. The arrangement of the figures in the Indian Encampment is similar to Jean-François Millet's Harvesters Resting, of 1851-1853,32 exhibited at the Salon of 1853, and which Laso could have seen during his second stay in Paris. The figures, who appear to be oblivious to the spectator, are similarly arranged around a central group where a meal is being prepared. Millet too evoked, indirectly, a more transcendent meaning to his painting, which was originally titled Ruth and Boaz. The painting's biblical references, though hidden, pervade Millet's composition.33 In the final painting, however, Laso included a figure which transforms the meaning of the entire composition, and which indicates that he had already begun to work around the theme of approximation. In the very center of the main group in the foreground, and in the very middle of the canvas, Laso included a figure dressed in a simple poncho who turns his back to the spectator. The haircut of the figure contrasts sharply to those of the rest of the figures in the painting. The montera, the long hair in a braid or the big black tufts of hair are signifiers of the Indian in Laso's works. The tightly cut hair of the figure in this painting would not seem to correspond with that image of the Indian. Moreover, the short cut hair and the overall shape and turn of the head, are similar to
32Oil
on canvas, 69 x 120 cm; Boston Museum of Fine Arts (bequest of Mrs. Martin Brimmer). 33Griselda Pollock, Millet (London: Oresko Books, Ltd., 1977): 46-47.
369
Laso's self-portrait of 1851 (fig. 28). The fact that this figure turns his back towards us, however, makes any definite identification impossible. The ambiguous character of this figure is further enhanced by the placement of a montera and a walking stick on the ground beside him. If the figure were to wear this hat, he would be indistinguishable from the other figures represented in the painting. This ambiguous figure thus defies a clear interpretation, but insofar as it allows the likelihood that it could be a nonIndian, it also opens up the possibility of evoking in the viewer a similar interest in approximation. Finally, however, the image works through hidden personal reference and the viewer's relationship to the painting remains that of the simple observer. It is clear that the Pascana in the Cordillera was developed after the Indian Encampment. The composition of this painting is based on the group of three Indians who sit in the background of the painting. This group first appeared as a subsidiary grouping to the side of one of the preparatory sketches for the Indian Encampment (fig. 58), and was later developed in more detail in a separate drawing (fig. 59). The fact that no independent drawings or sketches exist for the Pascana in the Cordillera could also indicate that the painting was developed out of the group represented in the Indian Encampment. In the Pascana in the Cordillera, this group becomes the center of the entire composition--confined to a dramatically compressed pictorial space, they fill the entire frame of the painting. Pushed to the foreground,
370
the almost life-size figures in the painting confront the viewer with an emphatic sense of presence. In the Pascana in the Cordillera, Laso has already established the final compositional strategies which he was to deploy in the Haravicu. Here too, the viewer is placed on a slightly offcenter axis, and the entry to the painting is mediated by the outward glance of the crouching figure to the right. As in so many other works by Laso that we have already discussed-the portrait of Gonzalo Pizarro, The Three Races, The Concert--the autobiographical references in the Haravicu are veiled and barely perceptible to the spectator. Yet here too, the painter's presence lies at the heart of the construction of the paintings. The subjects presented to the viewer are part of a the painter's personal fantasy, and the act of painting the medium for deliverance from the problems of Peruvian society. Laso's Pascanas thus enact the scene of approximation. The double movement, of approximation and simultaneous distancing, which is implicit in Creole representations of communication, is also recreated in Laso's paintings. The Indians represented in his Pascanas are difficult to approach, but the possibility of participating in the painting is left open. In 1860 Laso wrote: such is the essence of the Indian's goodness, that even when he shouldn't compromise with the race of the oppressors, he knows how to be grateful when he finds some superior being who shows him consideration. There are a thousand deeds of gratitude on the part of the Indian towards their protectors. In what province is it not told that such and such a man has become rich, because an
371
Indian friend disclosed a treasure? aren't there many officers who relate abnegated acts of Indian soldiers?34 Laso's words reveal the paternalism which pervades the writings of even the most radical Creole defenders of the Indians during the mid-19th century.
The paintings, through their references to the Indian's
oppression and melancholy, appeal to the feelings of one of those "superior beings" of which Laso writes.
If the paintings suggest the
possibility of communication, their effect ultimately depends on the willingness of the (Creole) viewer to participate in the exchange. The extent to which this ambiguous invitation was heeded by Laso's contemporaries is difficult to assess. The bulk of the discussions on Laso's works, written within the space of the didactic newspaper notice or of the summary exhibition catalogue, do not usually favor close readings. In the absence of any extensive discussions of these works, both during and after Laso's lifetime, it is valid to end here with the only contemporary reference to the painting, which is as brief as it is telling. Reviewing the exhibition of 1861 in which the Pascana in the Cordillera was first shown, an anonymous critic simply wrote that Laso's painting "will always be conserved by amateurs as a most faithful reproduction of a mute scene of our poor natives (my emphasis)."35 34[Sin embargo, tal es el fondo de bondad del Indio, que aun cuando no debiera transijir con la raza opresora, siempre que encuentra algun ser superior que lo considere, él sabe mostrarse agradecido. Hay mil hechos de gratitud de parte de los Indios para con sus protectores ¿En que província no se refiere que tal hombre se enriqueció, porque un Indio compadre suyo le descubrió un tesoro? ¿no hay muchos oficiales que relatan actos de abnegacion de parte de los indios soldados?] Francisco Laso, "Croquis sobre el caracter peruano," pp. 307. 35[Este cuadro siempe se conservará por los aficionados como una reproducción
372
fidelísima de una escena muda de nuestros pobres indígenas.] "Lima. Esposicion (sic) de pinturas," El Comercio, 18-IX-1861.
373
CONCLUSION
Laso's self-representations in his paintings and writings, his simultaneous identification as conqueror and Indian, as artist and public figure, show the conflicts which define the discourse of modernizing elites at mid-century. Racial anxieties, collective feelings of social guilt, and a strong sense of political illegitimacy and cultural inadequacy plagued Creole leaders. In many ways Laso's place in relation to Creole ideology was remarkably similar to that of his peers. As a statesman he helped in the construction of the modernizing and progressive, if often aristocratic, project of Civilismo; and as a writer, he largely followed the tradition of earlier costumbrista critics of customs. Like other 19th-century liberals, Laso struggled to incorporate ideals of social justice and equality within the hierarchical and exploitative structures of Peruvian society. His often contradictory views on the Indian population of Peru reflect the manner in which the discursive constraints of earlier traditions define his statements. As a politician Laso is situated within an already established nationalist discourse, but his activity as an essayist shows how his distanced position with regard to the writer's profession allows him to reverse certain elite prejudices. It is only as a painter, however, that Laso is able to formulate a radically different manner of conceiving the nation. Laso's idealist vision of painting, the marginal position of the artist in
375
Peru, and paradoxically, his lack of faith in the ability of painting to adequately affect society, allowed him to turn the surface of the canvas into a utopian space in which social injustices could be resolved. Laso's political career, his profession as an artist, along with his participation in international cosmopolitanism, explain both why the idealization of the Indian emerges first in his works and why this particular manner of representing the nation would not be immediately generalized.
In studying Laso's works I have discussed a series of
ruptures within Creole ideology that redefined elite nationalist discourses. In defining Indigenism as a discourse (even if I do not always use the term), I directly contradict the usual manner of discussing it as a social movement. This does not deny, however, that Indigenist discourse may form part of different political programs and that it can be deployed by various social groups.
Early 20th-century history proves that it was
indeed used in this manner, but it also shows how quickly it became institutionalized and even turned into an official state ideology under President Leguía in the 1920s. While the image of Peruvian society which Laso envisions in his paintings breaks with earlier forms of Creole nationalism, it does not completely reject earlier discursive traditions, but is constructed in a constant dialogue with dominant discourses. Richard Terdiman explains how all counter-discourses necessarily engage the structures and
376
meanings of dominant discourse.1 Nevertheless, it would be difficult to define Laso's works as counter-discursive, for they are not only constructed from a position of power, but the image of the nation that they propose, would also eventually come to form part of dominant discourse.
1Richard Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).
377
Illustrations
378
Figure 1
379
Figure 2
380
Figure 3
381
Figure 4
382
Figure 5
383
Figure 6
384
Figure 7
385
Figure 8
386
Figure 9
387
Figure 10
388
Figure 11
389
Figure 12
390
Figure 13
391
Figure 14
392
Figure 15
393
Figure 16
394
Figure 17
395
Figure 18
396
Figure 19
397
Figure 20
398
Figure 21
399
Figure 22
400
Figure 23
401
Figure 24
402
Figure 25
403
Figure 26
404
Figure 27
405
Figure 28
406
Figure 29
407
Figure 30
408
Figure 31
409
Figure 32
410
Figure 33
411
Figure 34
412
Figure 35
413
Figure 36
414
Figure 37
415
Figure 38
416
Figure 39
417
Figure 40
418
Figure 41
419
Figure 42
420
Figure 43
421
Figure 44
422
Figure 45
423
Figure 46
424
Figure 47
425
Figure 48
426
Figure 49
427
Figure 50
428
Figure 51
429
Figure 52
430
Figure 53
431
Figure 54
432
Figure 55
433
Figure 56
434
Figure 57
435
Figure 58
436
Figure 59
437
Appendix: Chronology of the Life of Francisco Laso1
1823
May 8 - Francisco Laso is born in Tacna to José Benito Laso de la Vega (1783-1862) and Juana Manuela de los Ríos.
1825
Gamarra names Benito Laso speaker of the new Court of Justice of Cuzco and Bolívar appoints him president of the 'Junta de Calificación'. He is later deputy for Puno at the National Congress.
1826
Benito Laso publishes his tract in favor of Bolivar. Named prefect of Puno and speaker of the Supreme Court of Justice of Arequipa.
1827
Benito Laso, exiled in Bolivia, settles with his family in La Paz.
1830
April - Gamarra's return to power as President of Peru in 1829 favors Benito Laso. On April 17th, 1830 Gamarra signs a decree reinstating Laso as speaker of the Superior Court of Arequipa. Benito Laso moves his family to Arequipa.
1830
August 7 - During the journey back to Arequipa, Laso's mother dies in Copacabana (Bolivia).2
1This
section only includes bibliographical references to information not included in the main text.
438
1831
On March 10, 1831, Benito Laso marries Petronila García Calderón y Crespo in Arequipa. Constitutional Reform of the courts of justice forces Benito Laso out of his post as speaker of the Superior Court of Arequipa. Francisco Laso studies preparatory school in Arequipa.
1836
February - Andrés de Santa Cruz forms the PeruBolivia Confederation. Benito Laso, a friend and supporter of Gamarra, Santa Cruz's rival, is dismissed as interim speaker and judge of the Court of Arequipa. He moves his family to Lima. In Lima, Francisco Laso studies at the National Drawing Academy under Francisco Javier Cortés. Later alsoenters the secondary school of Clemente Noel.
1838
August - Gamarra names Benito Laso minister of government and foreign relations. Laso's sister, Juana Manuela, marries Norberto Elespuru.
2Benito
Laso, "Memoria reservada dirigida a mis hijos..." February 27, 1861. Ms., Collection Juan Manuel Ugarte Elespuru.
439
1838
Laso gives drawing lessons while an intern at the school of Clemente Noel. Continues to live and teach there after finishing his coursework. Audits courses at the School of San Carlos.
1839
January - Battle of Yungay, where Gamarra defeats Santa Cruz. Benito Laso deputy at the Congress of Huancayo and speaker of the Supreme Court of Justice, a post he maintains until his retirement in 1858.
1840-1841
Francisco Laso serves as assistant director of the Drawing Academy then directed by the painter Ignacio Merino.
1841
October - Gamarra invades Bolivia. On November 18, Peruvian forces are defeated at the battle of Ingavi, where Gamarra is killed. After Ingavi, young Francisco Laso joins the Batallion 'Comercio 1' of the National Guard as a volunteer in the war against Bolivia.3
1842
Benito Laso holds the post of minister of instruction during the short-lived presidency of General Vidal. He gives support to the National Drawing Academy.4
3"Patriotismo," 4Zegarra
La Bolsa, 7-XII-1841. Meneses,"Benito Laso, prócer de la Independencia y la República," pp. 33.
440
1843
With the help of his sister Juana Manuela Laso travels to Europe at the beginning of the year.
1847
May 5-6 - Laso obtains visas for Geneva, Tuscany and the Vatican from the Chilean Legation in Paris.5 May 12 - Laso signs a short letter, addressed to his friend Henri Blanc-Fontaine, in Grenoble, where he was staying at his friend's house.6 On the 14th, he begins the journey to Venice, traveling through Turin, Novara, Milan, Ticino and Verona. May 27 - Arrives in Venice. While in Venice, on July 27th, Laso obtains a visa for Florence and, two months later, another for travel to the Vatican States. September 30 - Travels through M. Maddalena, Ferrara, Bologna, Prato on way to Florence. On November 1, in Florence, he obtains a pass for Rome.
1848
July 4 - In Rome. His passport is sealed at the Chilean Legation near the Holy See. Obtains a visa for Naples and the Baths of Acquasanta. On the 26th of July he is in Ascoli, and on the 29th in Porta Badia.
5Unless
otherwise stated, all of the information regarding Laso's trip to Italy is drawn from his passport in the collection of Juan Manuel Ugarte Elespuru. 6Letter from Francisco Laso to Henri Blanc-Fontaine, dated Grenoble, May 12, 1847. Copy of a manuscript in the Collection of Manuel Cisneros Sánchez.
441
1849
February 3 - In Rome obtains a visa for Tuscany and Paris. On February 7th he goes through Viterro. In mid-February he travels through Florence, Livorno, Genoa and Marseilles on his way to Paris. He stays in Paris until April, when he obtains a pass to travel to Lima via England. July 14 - Laso arrives in Lima. Once in Lima sets up a studio in Gremios street. In the succeeding years he paints a number of portraits, including those of Miguel del Carpio, Bartolomé Herrera, Juan Norberto Elespuru, and the Chilean radicals Federico Errázuriz and the brothers Arcos. He also paints his large-scale religious painting The Burial of Christ.7 Apparently undertakes a trip to Arequipa at the end of the year.
7Lavalle
y García, "La extraordinaria personalidad de Francisco Laso," p. 20.
442
1850
May - Laso is an examiner of the linear drawing class directed by Manuel Dositeo Carvajal at the Beausejour school in Lima.8 June-September - Paints the decorations of the new theatre of Lima, the "Salon de las Artes." In Merino's absence, Laso serves as acting director of the Drawing Academy from 1850 until his departure for Europe early in 1852.9
1851
April - Drawing instructor at the school of Noel. Paints the portrait of Bartolomé Herrera, and obtains a government pension to continue his studies in Europe. October 26 - Begins a trip to Cuzco before leaving the country.
1852
In Lima until at least February 27th.10 April - In Paris, sets up a studio at the rue Grenelle, near the Luxembourg gardens.11 Laso states that he arrived in Europe in April of 1852.12
8M.
D. Carvajal, "Colegio de Beausejour," El Comercio, 17-V-1850. Guia de forasteros para el año de 1851 (Lima, 1850),and Carrasco, Guia de forasteros para el año de 1852 (Lima, 1851). 10On that date an anonymous writer mentions that Laso had not yet traveled to Europe. See "El taller del pintor," El Comercio, 27-II-1852. 11Lavalle y García, "La extraordinaria personalidad de Francisco Laso," p. 20. 12Francisco Laso, "Un recuerdo," p. 214. 9Carrasco,
443
1853
During the European Summer of 1853 Laso undertakes a painting trip to the Grave region of France. He is accompanied by his friends Henri Blanc-Fontaine (1819-1897) and Diodore Rahoult (1819-1874), students of Léon Cogniet from Grenoble.13
1854
Publishes his Aguinaldo in Paris.
1855
January - His Aguinaldo is published in the newspaper El Comercio, in Lima.
1855
Exhibits his Gonzalo Pizarro and The Inhabitant of the Cordillera at the Paris Universal Exhibition. Travels to Belgium during the second half of the year, returning to Paris by October. Finishes his painting Justice.14
1856
August 15 - His government pension withdrawn, he takes the boat in Le Havre to return to Peru. September - Signs a petition to aide Lamartine by promoting the Spanish translation of his "Curso familiar de literatura."15
13Aristide
Albert, Le peintre Blanc-Fontaine (Grenoble: Librairie Dauphinoise, 1902):
10-11. 14José
Flores Araoz, "La exposición de pintura de Francisco Laso." La Prensa, 8-XII1937, p. ii. 15"Avisos. M. de Lamartine," El Comercio 12-IX-1856. The advertisement appears throughout November. The appeal states that Americans living in Paris had spoken with the petitioners to promote the cause in Peru. It is possible that Laso himself, recently returned from Europe, should have been the intermediary in question. Signed by Francisco
444
1856
November 21 - In response to a government petition, he signs a project for the creation of a School of Fine Arts. General Vivanco's revolution declares the abolition of the the Constitution of 1856, which had been promulgated by Castilla in October of the same year.
1857
April 22 - General Vivanco lands in Lima, is defeated, and retreats to Arequipa. Laso participates in Vivanco's revolution in Arequipa. Begins work on the religious paintings commissioned by the Cathedral of Arequipa.
1858
By January 12, Laso has already returned from Arequipa.16 February - Laso marries Manuela Henríquez in Lima.17
Laso, Benito Laso, José Casimiro Ulloa, Numa P. Llona, José Gregorio Paz Soldán, Francisco de Paulo González Vigil, Ignacio Noboa, among others 16Letter dated Jan. 12, 1858 from Luis Benjamín Cisneros in Lima to José Casimiro Ulloa in Paris. "Hoy abrigo la convicción de que Arequipa es intomable por un ejército como el nuestro. Francisco Bilbao, a quien una comisión llevó a Sachaca por el último vapor y que se halla ya de regreso, y Lazo, venido del mismo Arequipa, me han obligado a creerlo, bien a pesar mío y de todas mis esperanzas. Esto no circula en público, pero no admite duda después de testimonios tan apreciables." In Luis Benjamín Cisneros, Obras completas de Luis Benjamín Cisneros 3 vols (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1939): II, 391. 17Laso requests permission to marry on February 25, 1858. See Archivo Arzobispal, February 1858, exp. no. 3. I have been unable to trace the actual marriage contract.
445
1859
April 15 - Exhibits The Three Races and The Laundress at the lithographic store of Prugue and Co.18 August 3 - Exhibits a painting of Saint Rose at the store of Prugue and Co.19
October 15 - Exhibits The Concert at the store of Prugue and Co.20 This same month, he presents three paintings of the Evangelists to the Cathedral of Arequipa. Forms part of the editorial board of the bimonthly publication, Revista de Lima, the most important scientific and literary journal of the period, where he collaborates as an essayist until 1863. 1860
February - Presents four paintings to the state. Appears in the 1860 census of Lima as residing in Valladolid Street, no. 181. His father and his father's wife, Petronila appear as living in the same street no. 177.21
18"Crónica
de la capital. Cuadros de pintura," El Comercio, 15-IV-1859. de la capital. Artes nacionales," El Comercio, 3-VIII-1859. 20"Crónica de la capital. Tres frailes," El Comercio, 15-X-1859. 21The census reads "Francisco Laso, pintor, nacido en Puno, 36 años, católico, casado, blanco, alfabeto. Manuela Henríquez, nacida en Lima, 28 años, casada, blanca, alfabeta. Juan Anglades (sic), 58 años, nacida en Lima, católica, viuda, blanca, alfabeta." See AHM, Censo General de Lima, 1860, vol. 1, fol. 178-179. The 1866 census records him as living on the same street, now called Callao, in the house of Pedro Paz Soldán: "Francisco Laso, 19"Crónica
446
1862
January 14 - Benito Laso dies in Lima22
1863
Travels to Europe. Does not leave before January 20th, 1863 when he signs his last article in the Revista de Lima.
1864
Is in Rome during the Winter, until at least January 23, after which he travels to Paris.23 Laso returns to Lima by the end of the year. Paints his large-scale work, Unión Americana, to conmemorate the American Congress that was then being held in Lima.
1865
November 28 - Laso supports Mariano Ignacio Prado's rebellion against president Pezet.
1866
January - Elected syndic of the municipality of Lima, and placed in charge of the public works commission. Laso is named member of the Junta Censora del Teatro.
pintor, nacido en Tacna. 42 años, 30 en Lima, casado, no tiene propiedades. Manuela Henríquez, nacida en Lima, 34 años, casada, madre de familia (sic), propiedad urbana. Juana Anglade de Henríquez, nacida en Lima, 55 años, viuda, madre de familia, propiedad urbana." 22Zegarra Meneses,"Benito Laso, prócer de la Independencia y la República." 23Information contained in a letter dated January 23, 1864 from Francisco Laso in Rome to Manuel Pardo in Lima. AGN, collection of correspondence of Manuel Pardo, n. D2-231544.
447
1866
March - Laso presents a report on the high price of meat in Lima, and recommends that the price be lowered to help the poorer inhabitants of the city. April 12 - Laso, Althaus and Seminario sign a proposal presented to the municipal council in which they express their concern over the Spanish attack on Valparaiso, and their fear that the same could occur in the port of Callao. They propose preventive measures including the acquisition of water pumps for the capital. May 2 - Captain of the "Compañía de Bomberos de la Municipalidad de Lima" (which he helped form as syndic of the Municipality) in the Battle of May 2, against the Spanish fleet. September - Presents a proposal to destroy the walls of Lima and to sell the land between the walls and the city limits. The money from the sale would go to the construction of an alameda and a prison near the penitentiary. November - Informs the city mayor of the ruinous state of the church of San Marcelo and asks for its immediate reconstruction.24
24AHM,
Actas de la Municipalidad de Lima.
448
1867
Representative for Lima at the Congress called to draw a new constitution. Founding member of the National Academy and editor of the newspaper La Tribuna, which appeared in support of Prado's Presidency.25
1868
Director of the Beneficencia Pública de Lima. Participates in the activities against the yellow fever epidemic. Forms part of the political group "El Porvenir del Perú."
1869
January - Laso's ill health takes him to Huacho, where he buys a plot of land.26 February-March - Laso in charge of the weekly column "Bazaar semanal" in the newspaper El Nacional. Forms part of the "Junta de Notables" in charge of electing a new mayor of Lima. May 14 - Dies in the town of San Mateo, on his way to Jauja, where he was traveling to recover from an illness.
25I
have been unable to find a copy of this newspaper. contained in the will of Manuela Henriquez, Laso's widow. See AGN, siglo XX, protocolo 3, notario Manuel Iparraguirre, September 27, 1902, f. 847v. 26Information
449
Bibliography
Both the primary and secondary sources listed in the section "Secondary Sources on Francisco Laso" pertain only to those works which deal exclusively with the artist. Any other contemporary or later writings that mention Laso in a wider context are included in the general bibliography. I have included a list of newspapers consulted because only the most important newspaper articles cited in the text are included in the bibliography.
I. ARCHIVAL SOURCES AAL
Archivo Arzobispal, Lima.
BNL
Biblioteca Nacional, Lima.
AGN
Archivo General de la Nación, Lima.
AHM Archivo Histórico Municipal, Lima.f AMRE
Archivo del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Lima.
CEHMP
Archivo Histórico Militar, Centro de Estudios HistóricoMilitares del Perú, Lima.
450
II. LIST OF NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS CONSULTED27
La América, 1862-1865 El Americano, 1866. El Ateneo americano, 1847.* El Amigo del pueblo, nos. 1-73, 1840. Boletín del Ejército (Paita, Guayaquil, et. al.),1859-1860. La Bolsa, 1841-1842. La Campana, 1867. El Comercio, 1839-1844, 1846, 1849-1851, 1856, 1858-1862, 1864, 1867, 1869. El Comercio (Tacna), 1855-1856. El Constitucional, 1858. El Demócrata americano (Cuzco), nos. 1-, 1846-1847. El Duende (Cuzco), nos. 1-18, 1830. El Heraldo de Lima, 1854-1855.* La Independencia, 1860-1862. El Liberal, 1867. El Mercurio peruano, 1791-1795. El Mercurio, 1862-1865. Museo erudito (Cuzco), 1837-1839. El Nacional, 1865-1869. Nuevo día del Perú (Trujillo), nos. 1-12, 1824. El Peruano, 1849-1869. El Progreso, 1849-1850 El Progreso, 1867. 27Unless otherwise indicated, all newspapers are published in Lima. Asterisks following dates indicate that I have only had access to incomplete collections of those particular periodicals. The dates following the names of the newspapers are not necessarily the dates of publication but the dates which were covered during the research.
451
El Regenerador (Arequipa) 1857. La República, nos. 1-48, 1863-1864. El Republicano (Arequipa), 1849. La Revista, 1851.* La Revista de Lima, 1859-1863. El Semanario de Lima, 1848.* El Sol del Cuzco (Cuzco), 1825-1827.
III. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRANCISCO LASO
A. Writings by Francisco Laso28 [F.L.] "Memorias de Cupido. Quien soy yo." El Comercio, 26-VI-1850. [El baron de poco me importa]. Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú. Paris: Imprenta de Maulde y Renou, 1854; reprint in El Comercio, 24-IV-1854, p. [3], 25-IV-1854, p. [3], 26-IV-1854, pp. [2-3]. "La causa de la juventud." El Comercio, 5-II-1855; reprint as "Carta a Manuel Nicolás Corpancho," Península (Callao), 7 (JulySeptember 1965). "Algo sobre bellas artes." La Revista de Lima, I, no. 2 (October 15, 1859): 75-82. "El hombre y su imagen." La Revista de Lima, I, no. 4 (November 15, 1859): 176-180; reprint in La Revista de Buenos Aires, no. 24 (1871): 278-284, and in La Revista de Lima, 1er período, Año 1, vol. I (3a entrega, 1873): 205-208. "La paleta y los colores." La Revista de Lima, I, no. 5 (December 1, 1859): 230-237. "Croquis sobre la amistad." La Revista de Lima, I, no. 8 (January 15, 1860): 380-388.
28Unless
otherwise noted, the following references are signed by the author.
452
"[A letter from Laso offering some of his paintings to the state]." El Peruano, 11-II-1860, p. 47. "Comunicados. Asuntos personales. Al Señor Veritas." El Comercio, Lima, 14-II-1860, p. 3. "El vividor." La Revista de Lima, I, no. 10 (February 15, 1860): 470-472. "Croquis sobre el carácter peruano." (October 1, 1860): 303-315.
La Revista de Lima, II, no. 7
"Un recuerdo." La Revista de Lima, III, no. 6 (March 15, 1861): 203-218. "Variaciones sobre la candidez." La Revista de Lima, III, no. 12 (June 15, 1861): 496-507; reprint in Costumbristas y satíricos, Ventura García Calderón, ed., pp. 32-43. Biblioteca de Cultura Peruana, no. 9, vol. 2. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938; and in Turismo XIV, no. 147 (July-August 1949): n.p.] "Tiempos pasados." La Revista de Lima, IV, no. 2 (July 15, 1861): 49-59. "Tiempos pasados (continuación)." (September 1, 1861): 185-204.
La Revista de Lima, IV, no. 5
"Tiempos pasados. Segundos amores de Mercato." La Revista de Lima, IV, no. 8 (October 15, 1861): 324-337. "Mi cumpleaños." La Revista de Lima, VI, no. 2 (July 15, 1862): 68-75. "Croquis sobre los bien-aventurados en la tierra." La Revista de Lima, VI, no. 11 (December 1, 1862): 422-429. "Croquis sobre las elecciones. Indirecta para los ricos, en particular, y para todo hombre de orden, en general." La Revista de Lima, VII, no. 3 (February 1, 1863): 97-107. "Comunicados. Club de la Unión. Actas." El Nacional, 22-X-1866. [Reproduces a speech by Laso at the Club de la Unión]. "Derechos adquiridos." El Progreso, 29-IV-1867; and Discurso leido por Laso en el Congreso, supplement to El Comercio, 29-IV-1867. El Aguinaldo. Colección de recriminaciones, ultrajes y denuestos, inferidos al Perú y a su sociedad, según pública voz poer el Ciudadano Don Francisco Lazo diputado por Lima al congreso constituyente. Hallándose en Europa viviendo y educándose á espensas de la Nación. Dado a la prensa por unos patriotas en las actuales circumstancias para que se conozcan de todos los indignos manejos de este Representante. Lima: Imprenta de "El Liberal", 1867. 453
"Derechos adquiridos." El Comercio, 22-V-1867, El Nacional, 22-V-1867. [F.L.] "Huacho à vuelo de pájaro." El Nacional, 13-II-1869. [F.L.] "Bazar semanal." El Nacional, 27-II-1869. [Unsigned]. "Bazar semanal." El Nacional, 6-III-1869. [Unsigned]. "Bazar semanal." El Nacional, 13-III-1869. [Unsigned]. "Bazar semanal." El Nacional, 20-III-1869. "[Letter by Laso to the Minister of Government acknowledging his nomination to the Junta Vecinal]." El Peruano, 23-III-1869, p. 273. [Unsigned]. "Bazar semanal." El Nacional, 27-III-1869, evening ed. Selections from his writings in La Revista de Lima are published by Carlos Alberto González, "Francisco Laso," in Antología histórica de Tacna, 1732-1916, pp. 44-50. Lima: Imp. Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado, 1952, pp. 46-50.
B. Contemporary Sources on Laso Anch'io son pittore! "El taller del pintor." El Comercio, 27-II-1852. Barrenechea, José Antonio. "Comunicados. El Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 12-IX-1854, p. [3]. [Barrenechea, José Antonio], El Licenciado Vidriera. "Comunicados. Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú." El Comercio, 28-IV-1854, p. [4]. [Barrenechea, José Antonio], El Licenciado Vidriera. "Comunicados. El Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 2-V-1854, p. [4]. ¡Buena vá la danza! "Comunicados. Asuntos personales. Carta a Lazo." El Comercio, 17-II-1860, p. 3. "Comunicados." A Zenon de Eleas." El Comercio, 27-IV-1854, p. [3]. "Comunicados. Señor Laso." El Comercio, 1-V-1854, p. [4]. "Comunicados. Intereses generales. El Baron de poco me importa o el canario mudo." El Comercio, 7-V-1867. "Congreso Constituyente." El Nacional, 29-V-1867. Corpancho, Manuel Nicolás. "Arco Iris, dedicado a Francisco Laso." In Ensayos poéticos, pp. 245-248. Paris, 1854. 454
________. "Comunicados. Al Padre Anselmo." El Comercio, 4-V-1854, p. [4]. ________. "El Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú." El Comercio, 10-IX1854. [Preceeded by a short letter by Ricardo Palma]. ________. "Exposición Universal, D. Francisco Lazo." El Heraldo de Lima, 12-XII-1855. "Crónica de la capital. Artes nacionales." El Comercio, 3-VIII-1859. "Crónica de la capital. Cuadros de pintura." El Comercio, 15-IV-1859. "Crónica de la capital. Tres frailes." El Comercio, 15-X-1859. "Crónica local. Funerales." El Nacional. 28-V-1869. D. V. "A la memoria del artista D. Francisco Lazo." El Nacional. 21-V1869. "Defunciones." El Nacional, 1-VI-1869. El Derecho. "Comunicados. Zapos y culebras." El Comercio, 9-V-1867. "Derechos adquiridos." El Nacional, 1-V-1867. "Derechos adquiridos." El Nacional, 4-V-1867. "Derechos adquiridos." El Nacional, 6-VI-1867. [Espinosa, Juan], El P. Anselmo. "Comunicados. ¡Pobre mi amigo Lazo!" El Comercio, 28-IV-1854, p. [4]; 29-IV-1854, p. [4]. [Espinosa, Juan], El P. Anselmo. "Comunicados." El Comercio, 5-V1854, p. [4]. "Francisco Laso." El Nacional, 18-V-1869. [Heros, José de los], Zenón de Eleas. "Comunicados. Al Baron de poco me importa." El Comercio, 26-IV-1854, p. [3]. [Laso, Benito], B. Lazo. "Comunicados. Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 6-V1854, p. [3]. [Laso, Benito], El mismo. "Comunicados. Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 2V-1854, p. [4]. Llerena, Telésforo. "Comunicados. Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 4-V-1854, p. [4]. [Llerena, Telésforo], Teles. "Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú." El Comercio, 29-IV-1854, p. [3]. ________. "Comunicados. Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 2-V-1854, p. [4]. 455
Llona, Numa Pompilio. "Comunicados. A mi amigo D. Francisco Laso." El Comercio. Lima, 17-IX-1851. Noboa, Ignacio. "[Untitled]." La semana, 30-X-1850. M. R. "Comunicados. D. Francisco Lazo." El Nacional. Lima, 22-V1869, 2nd ed. M. Revancha le Sol. "Asuntos Personales. Discurso de un zambullo representante." El Comercio, 8-V-1867. Medicis. "Comunicados. El Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 1-V-1854, p. [4]. "[Obituary]." El Comercio, 18-V-1869. Otro diputado amigo de la justicia. "[On Laso's speech in congress]." El Comercio, 3-V-1867. P. "Inconsecuencias." El Nacional, 23-V-1867. [On Laso's speech in congress.] "Patriotismo." La Bolsa, 7-XII-1841. [Prado, Mariano Ignacio], M. I. P. "¡Una lágrima!" El Peruano, 28-V1869, p. 373. [Prado, Mariano Ignacio], M. Y. P. "Comunicados. Una lágrima." El Nacional, 28-V-1869. La sombra de Miguel Angel. "Comunicados. El discurso del diputado canario." El Comercio, 7-V-1867. [Torrico, Federico]. "Francisco Laso." El Nacional, 14-V-1869. Ulloa, José Casimiro. "El Aguinaldo." El Comercio, 10-IX-1854. Uno que no es diputado por Lima. "[Untitled]." El Comercio, 30-IV1867. [On Laso's speech in congress]. Veritas. "Comunicados. Asuntos personales. Don Francisco Lazo y sus fanfarronadas." El Comercio, 13-II-1860, p. 4. Washington. "Comunicados. Francisco Lazo." El Nacional, 20-V-1869.
C. Secondary Sources on Laso [Abate Faria]. "En el día del indio, cuadro de Francisco Laso." Prensa, 24-VI-1930.
La
Acha, Juan [J. A.]. "Exposición conmemorativa de F. Laso: En el primer centenario de su muerte." El Comercio, 1-VIII-1969. 456
Bacacorzo, Gustavo. "Francisco Laso, tacneño ilustre." El Nacional, 18XI-1980, p. 6. ________. "Francisco Laso, tacneño ilustre." Cobre no. 11 (Dec. 1986): 5. Buntinx, Gustavo. "Del 'Habitante de las Cordilleras' al 'Indio Alfarero'. Variaciones sobre un tema de Francisco Laso." Márgenes VI, nos. 10-11 (October 1993): 9-92. Calvo, Eduardo. "Francisco Laso, el pintor de Santa Rosa de Lima." El Comercio, 10-V-1978, p. 2. Castillo, Carlos Aitor. "Francisco Laso." El Comercio, 8-VIII-1969. ________. "Francisco Laso." Expreso, 8-VIII-1969, p. 10. Castillo, Teófilo. "Interiores limeños, XI. Casa de la Sra. Manuela Henríquez v. de Lasso." Variedades XI, no. 369 (March 27, 1915): 1929-1934. ________. "Notas de arte." Variedades no. 439 (July 29, 1916). Castrillón Vizcarra, Alfonso. "Solo como pintor debe ser evaluado Francisco Laso." La Prensa, 3-VIII-1969. Costa C., Merli. "Francisco Laso y el nuevo invento de la fotografía." Lienzo 7, (May 1987): 161. ________. "Ignacio Merino y Francisco Laso." Historia y Cultura 17, (1984): 125-132. Cúneo Vidal, Rómulo. "Notas de historia y de arte. A propósito de Francisco Lasso de la Vega Mogrovejo y de los Ríos." La Prensa, 4, 16-VI-1915. ________. "El pintor Francisco Lasso de la Vega y de los Ríos." Mundial (1929). ________. Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Sur del Perú. Obras completas, IX, pp. 251-254. Lima: Enriqueta Cúneo de Santiestevan, 1978. Diccionario enciclopédico hispano-americano de literatura, ciencias y artes. Barcelona: Montaner y Simón Editores, 1892, XI, p. 631. [Same as in San Cristoval, Apéndice, I]. Enciclopedia del Arte en América.5 vols Vicente Gesualdo, ed. Ed. Argentina S.C.R.L., 1969. "La exposición de la obra magnífica de Laso." La Crónica, 15-XII-1937, p. 3. 457
Fernández Prada, Luis. "La exposición de Laso." In La pintura en el Perú. 5 años de ambiente artístico, pp. 8-10. Lima: Sociedad de Bellas Artes, 1942. Flores Araoz, José. "Francisco Laso. Ensayo biográfico-crítico." Comercio, 31-I-1937. ________. "Francisco Laso, pintor peruano del siglo XIX. biográfico-crítico." La Prensa, 7-III-1937, p. 14.
El
Ensayo
________. "La exposición de pintura de Francisco Laso." La Prensa, 8XII-1937, p. 11. ________. "Francisco Laso, pintor peruano del siglo XIX. biográfico-crítico." La Prensa (Buenos Aires), 7-V-1937.
Ensayo
________. "En torno al lugar y fecha de nacimiento del pintor Francisco Laso." La Prensa. Lima, 19-VI-1938. ________. "Obras del pintor Francisco Laso." El Comercio, 15-1-1939, p. 5. ________. "Santa Rosa de Lima a través de Merino y Laso." Comercio, 18-X-1944.
El
________. "Equívocos, silencios, omisiones: Francisco Laso, muestra imperfecta." La Prensa, 24-VIII-1969, p. 30-31. ________. "A propósito de la exposición de Laso." Expreso, 12-IX-1969. "Francisco Laso en el Museo de Arte." Dominical, supplement of La Crónica, 19-III-1961, pp. v, viii. G.L.C. "Francisco Lasso." Turismo XII, no. 112 (Feb. 1937): n.p. Gallagher de Parks, Mercedes. "Laso, Merino, y el arte del retratista." In Mentira azul, pp. 185-197. Lima: Editorial Lumen, 1948. González, Carlos Alberto. "Francisco Lazo." In Epónimos, pp. 57-63. La Paz: Imp. Velarde, 1922. ________. Antología histórica de Tacna, 1732-1916, pp. 44-50. Lima: Imp. Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado, 1952. Gutiérrez de Quintanilla, Emilio. "Opinión sobre Lazo y algunas de sus obras." El Comercio, 12-IV-1917. ________. Conferencia del Sr. Emilio Gutiérrez de Quintanilla leida en la Federación de los Estudiantes del Perú. Lima: E. Rosay, 1920. ________. "Los cuadros de Laso." La Prensa, 8-I-1922, pp. 7-8. 458
________. "Palique sobre los artistas Merino y Laso." In Sobre bellas artes, conferencias críticas i estudios, 1886-1920, pp. 383-392. Lima: By the author, 1920. Igreda H., Gustavo. "Centenario de Francisco Lazo." La Tribuna, 21-VI1969. Jochamowitz, Alberto. "Consideraciones sobre la obra pictórica de Francisco Laso." In Pintores y pinturas. Crítica de arte, pp. 104115. Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1949. ________. "Selecciones de arte. Consideraciones sobre la obra pictórica de Francisco Laso." El Comercio, 3, 10-II-1949, evening edition, p. 8. Lavalle y Arias de Saavedra, José Antonio de. "Francisco Laso." El Perú Ilustrado 3, 2nd semester, no. 137 (December 21, 1889): 1126-1127. Lavalle y García, José Antonio de. "Francisco Laso: Pintor, literato y político." El Comercio. Lima, 12,19-XII-1937, p. v. ________. "La extraordinaria personalidad de Francisco Laso." Expresión, revista peruana Año I, vol. I, no. 1 (1938): 17-26. Legland, Maurice. "Notas de arte: una incógnita descubierta. Comentarios sobre Laso, Merino, y Baca-Flor." El Comercio, 4XII-1923. López Albujar, Enrique. "Francisco Laso de la Vega (del libro 'Lámpara votiva')." Revista del Instituto Americano de Arte, Cuzco III, vol. I, no. 3 (First semester, 1944): 22. "La más valiosa exposición retrospectiva de un pintor en Lima es la que "Entre Nous" consagra a Francisco Laso." La Crónica, 8-XII-1937, p. 5. Moll, Eduardo. "El pintor Francisco Laso." La Crónica, 6-1-1962. ________. "Francisco Laso, pintor peruano." Expreso, 28-VI-1968, p. 14. Museo de Arte de Lima. Dibujos de la colección del Museo de Arte: Francisco Laso y Carlos Baca Flor. Exh. cat. Presentation by Francisco Stastny. Lima: Museo de Arte, 1968. Otero, José G. "En el taller de Laso, una visita emocionante. Dibujos y óleos." Variedades no. 792 (May 5, 1923): 1099-1104. Pastor, Alberto Enrique. "Francisco Laso." Oriental XXIV, no. 266 (July 1954): 30-31.
459
Paz Soldán y Unanue, Pedro. Pajinas diplomáticas del Perú. Lima: Imprenta de la Escuela de Ingenieros, 1891, p. 222. Peña, Juan Manuel. "El arte en el Perú a través de un museo." El Comercio, 27-I-1929, pp. 22-23. Pérez Luna, Edgardo. "Los primeros destellos del indigenismo en la pintura de Francisco Laso." El Comercio, 9-XII-1959. ________. "Un siglo de Laso." Suceso, supplement of Correo 27-VII1969. Prieto Celi, Federico. "Mundo de la cultura. Descubrimientos." La Prensa, 24-VI-1968. "Proyección social de la obra de Francisco Laso." (July,1969): 36-38.
Oiga no. 334
Puertas Castro, Néstor. "La leyenda trágica y doliente del cura de Yanaquihua en tres estancias." Cultura peruana XVII, vol. XVII, no. 103 (January 1957): n.p. Pupeo, Alonso. "Genio y figura: Francisco Laso." Extra, 12-XI-1992. R.P. "Crítica de pintura: Francisco Laso." La Prensa, 13-VIII-1969. Raygada, Carlos. "La pintura de Laso." El Comercio, 12-XII-1937, p. iv. ________. "Los pintores representativos de siglo XIX." El Comercio (número centenario), 4-V-1939, sect. 8, pp. 169-174. Rodríguez Saavedra, Carlos. "Vida y obra de Francisco Laso." Comercio, 25-V-1958, p. 4.
El
Sala de Exhibiciones, Tacna, y Arequipa Casa del Moral del Banco Industrial. Francisco Laso. Exh. cat. Arequipa: Banco Industrial del Perú, 1982. "Sigue discutiéndose el lugar donde nació Laso." La Prensa, 28-V-1938, p. 3. Sociedad Entre-Nous, Lima Catálogo de la Exposición Francisco Laso. Exh. cat. José Flores Aráoz, ed. Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1937. Stastny, Francisco. "Francisco Laso, pintor moderno." In Museo de Arte de Lima, Francisco Laso, 1823-1869. I Centenario (1869-1969). Exh. cat. Lima: Museo de Arte, 1969. ________. "En torno a la exposición Laso." Dominical, supplement of El Comercio, 7-IX-1969, pp. 38-39. 460
________. "El Museo de Arte aclara el paradero de una obra del pintor Francisco Laso." Dominical, supplement of El Comercio. Lima, 9IX-1969. Tesoro americano de bellas artes. Plutarco de los jóvenes. Biblioteca de la Juventud. 3rd ed. Paris and Mexico: Librería de la Vda. de Ch. Bouret, 1911. Tovar y R., Enrique D. "Francisco Laso." Colónida Año I, vol. 1, no. 4 (May 1, 1916): 11-14. Ugarte Eléspuru, Juan Manuel. "Francisco Laso y el centenario de su muerte." Dominical, supplement of El Comercio, 18-V-1969, p. 36. ________. "Francisco Laso. Una conciencia contra la injusticia." Cultura y pueblo V, nos. 13-14 (January-June, 1969): 21-26. ________. "Francisco Laso: El pincel, la pluma y el espíritu." La Prensa, 28-VII-1969. ________. "Francisco Laso." Cobre 8 (Aug.-Sept., 1986): 8-9. ________. Ignacio Merino. Francisco Laso. Biblioteca Hombres del Perú, XXXIII. Lima: Hernán Alva Orlandini, 1966. ________. "Una conciencia contra la injusticia." In Sala de Exhibiciones, Tacna, Casa del Moral del Banco Industrial, Arequipa, Francisco Laso. Arequipa: Banco Industrial del Perú, 1982. J.U.U. [Joaquín Ugarte y Ugarte]. "Bellas Artes. A los cien años de una memorable jira artística." La Prensa, 3-IX-1950, p. 10. Vegas Castillo, Manuel. "El pintor Francisco Laso." La Crónica, 1-III1947, p. 2, 11a. Vegas García, R. [R.V.G.] "Centenario de Lasso." Variedades XIX, no. 792 (May 1923):1093-1097. "Viejas fotografías descubiertas lo comprueban. El famoso pintor Francisco Laso no se representó en "La Pascana." El Comercio, 22VI-1968.
IV. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
461
A. Primary Sources About, Edmond. Voyage à travers l'Exposition des Beaux-Arts. (Peinture et sculpture). Paris: Hachette, 1855. Aréstegui, Narciso. El padré Horán. Escenas de la vida del Cuzco [1848]. 2 vols. Introduction by Augusto Tamayo Vargas. Colección Autores Peruanos, 19-20. Lima: Editorial Universo, S.A., n.d. Ayanque, Simón [Esteban de Terralla y Landa]. Lima por dentro y fuera. Obra jocosa y divertida la da a luz Simón Ayanque para escarmiento de algunos y entretenimiento de todos [1797]. New ed. Illustrations by Ignacio Merino. Paris: Librería Española de A. Mézin, [1854]. Basadre [y Chocano], Modesto. Riquezas peruanas. Colección de artículos descriptivos escritos para 'La Tribuna'. Lima: Imprenta de 'La Tribuna', 1884. Baudelaire, Charles. Curiosités esthétiques. L'Art romantique, et autres Œuvres critiques. Henri Lemaitre, ed. Paris: Garnier, 1962. Baxley, H. Willis. What I Saw on the West Coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands. New York: Appleton & Company, 1865. Benvenutto Murrieta, Pedro M., Guillermo Lohmann Villena and José de la Riva Agüero, eds. Los cronistas de convento, Biblioteca de Cultura Peruana, 4, Ventura García Calderón, ed. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938. Bertall [Charles-Albert D'Arnould]. "Le Salon dépeint et dessiné par Bertall." Journal pour rire nouvelle sèrie, no. 204 (August 25, 1855). Bolivar, Simón. Carta de Jamaica. Caracas: Ediciones de la Presidencia de la República, 1972. Baudelaire, Charles. Curiosités esthétiques. L'Art romantique, et autres œuvres critiques, ed., Henri Lemaitre. Paris: Garnier,1962. ________. Art in Paris, 1845-1862. Salons and Other Exhibitions Reviewed by Charles Baudelaire. Trans. and ed. by Jonathan Mayne. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1965. Calonne, Alphonse de. "Exposition Universelle des beaux-arts. Peinture. III." Revue Contemporaine 20 (1855).
462
T. J. C. y P. [José Toribio del Campo]."Carta sobre la música: en la que se hace ver el estado de sus conocimientos en Lima y se critica el Rasgo sobre los Yaravies impreso en el Mercurio no. 101." Mercurio peruano 117 (February 16, 1792): 108-114; and 118 (February 19, 1792): 116-118. Cangas, Gregorio. Un testimonio sobre la conciencia del Perú en el siglo XVIII. La descripción dialogada de los pueblos y costumbres del Perú de Gregorio Cangas, ed. Carlos Deustua Pimentel. Publicaciones del Instituto Riva Agüero, no. 29, Simposio del Seminario de Historia. Lima: Instituto Riva Agüero, 1960. Carrasco, Eduardo. Calendario y guía de forasteros de la República peruana para el año de 1841. Lima: Imprenta de Instrucción primaria por Félix Moreno, 1840. ________. Calendario y guía de forasteros de la República peruana para el año de 1842. Lima: Imprenta de Instrucción primaria de Felix Moreno, 1841. Catálogo de los cuadros y objetos varios existentes en el salón del Palacio de la Exposición. Lima, 1898. Catálogo general de la exposición municipal inaugurada el 28 de julio de 1877. Lima: Imp. de "El Nacional", 1877. [Charton, Ernest]. "Les arts au Pérou." Magasin pittoresque XXIV (March 1856): 102. Cisneros, Luis Benjamín. Obras completas de Luis Benjamín Cisneros. 3 vols Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1939. Corpancho, Godofredo. Lira patriótica o Colección escogida de poesías sobre asuntos patrióticos para ejercicios de declamación. Lima: By the author, 1873. Corpancho, Manuel Nicolás. Brisas del mar. Recuerdos poétios. Lima: Tipografía del "Mensajero", 1853. ________. Ensayos poéticos de Manuel Nicolás Corpancho precedidos de varios juicios escritos en Europa y América. Paris: Imprenta y Litografía de Maulde y Renou, 1854. Delécluze, E.J. Les beaux-arts dans les deux mondes en 1855. Paris: Chapentier, Libraire-Éditeur, 1856. Delord, Taxile. "III. Exposition des beaux-arts - L'École Espagnole." Le Charivari, 2-VII-1855.
463
Escandón, Pedro. La industria y las bellas artes en la Exposición Universal de 1855. Memoria dirijida al excelentísimo señor Ministro de Fomento de México. Paris: Imprimerie de Napoléon Chaix et Cie., 1856. Espinosa, Juan. La herencia española de los Americanos. Seis cartas críticas a Isabel Segunda por el Coronel Juan Espinosa, seguidas de otros escritos de interés público. Lima: Imprenta del Correo, 1852. "Esposicion (sic) de pinturas." El Comercio, 15-VIII-1860. Exposición Nacional. Objetos exhibidos en las secciones de bellas artes, minería e industrial. Lima: Imprenta de "El Comercio", 1893. Exposition universelle de 1855. Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, gravure, lithographie et architecture, des artistes vivants étrangers et français, exposés au Palais des Beaux-Arts Avenue de Montaigne le 15 Mai 1855. Paris: Vinchon, Imprimeur des Musées Impériaux, 1855. García Calderon, Francisco. Diccionario de la legislación peruana. 2d rev. ed. Lima and Paris: By the author and Laroque Jeune, 1879. García Calderón, Ventura. Instantes del Perú. Biblioteca de Grandes Autores Americanos, 1era serie. Paris: Garnier Hms., 1941. Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca. Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru [1609]. Trans., with an introduction by Harold V. Livermore. Foreword by Arnold J. Toynbee. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. Gorriti, Juana Manuela. Sueños y realidades. Obras completas de la Señora Doña Juana Manuela Gorriti. 2 vols. Vicente G. Quesada, ed. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Mayo de C. Casavalle, 1865. ________. El Tesoro de los Incas. (Leyenda histórica). Sección de Documentos, Serie 4, Novela I, no. 6. Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Imprenta de la Universidad, 1929. ________, ed. Veladas literarias de Lima, 1876-1877. Imprenta Europea, 1892.
Buenos Aires:
Grandidier, Ernest. Voyage dans l'Amérique du Sud. Pérou et Bolivie. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1861. Herrera, Bartolomé. Escritos y discursos. 2 vols. Prologue by Jorge Guillermo Leguía. Lima: F. y E. Rosay, 1929. 464
"Instrucción Pública." El Comercio, 28-IV-1851. Lara, Jesús, ed. Leyendas quechuas. Ediciones Librería Juventud, 1960.
Antología.
Buenos Aires:
La Salle, A. de. Voyage autour du monde exécuté pendant les années 1836 et 1837 sur la corvette La Bonite, commandée par M. Vaillant. 3 vols. Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1845-1852. Laso, Benito. "El Perú esclavisado." El Sol del Cuzco, no. 25, 18-VI-1825, pp. [3-4]. ________. "La famosa Exposición de don Benito Laso en pro de la permanencia de Bolívar en el Perú [1826]." Boletín del Museo Bolivariano I, no. 3 (November 1928): 46-65. ________. "Relación de los destinos y servicios prestados a la causa de la Independencia por el Dr. D. Benito Laso" [1831]. Revista del Archivo Nacional del Perú XXIX (1971):176-180. ________. "Oración de Jeremías. Traducción libre aplicable al Perú" La Revista de Lima I, no. 12 (March 15, 1860): 574-579.29 Lastarria, José Victorino. "Lima en 1850." In Viajeros en el Perú republicano, ed., Alberto Tauro, pp. 71-110. Comentarios del Perú, 6. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1967. Lavergne, Claudius. Exposition universelle de 1855. Beaux-Arts. Paris: Imprimerie Bailly, Divry et Cie., 1855. "Lima. Esposicion (sic) de pinturas." El Comercio, 18-IX-1861. Lorente, Sebastián. Pensamientos sobre el Perú [1855]. Preliminary note by Alberto Tauro. Comentarios del Perú, 8. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1967. Loudun, Eugène. Le Salon de 1855. Paris: Ledoyen, Éditeur, 1855. Mantz, Paul. "Salon de 1855. IV - Italie - Espagne - Amérique." Revue française 2 (1855): 168. Marcoy, Paul. Scènes et paysages dans les Andes. Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie., 1861.
2 vols.
Paris:
29This poem was mistakenly attributed to Francisco Laso by Ventura García Calderón, and partially published in Costumbristas y satíricos, Ventura García Calderón, ed., Biblioteca de Cultura Peruana, no. 9, vol. 2 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1938): 43-45.
465
_______. Travels in South America. From the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Illustrations by E. Riou. 2 vols. London: Blackie & Son, 1875. Markham, Clements R. Markham in Peru. The Travels of Clements R. Markham, 1852-1853. Peter Blanchard, ed. Austin, Texas: Univeristy of Texas Press, 1991. Mata Linares y Vasquez de Avila, Francisco de Paula de la [D. F. D. P. D. L. M. L.]. "Carta remitida a la Sociedad, que publica con algunas Notas." Mercurio peruano, nos. 344-346 (April 20, 24, 27, 1794): 255-280. Matto de Turner, Clorinda. Tradiciones cuzqueñas. Leyendas, biografías y hojas sueltas. Cuzco: Universidad Nacional del Cuzco, 1954. Melgar, Mariano. Poesías. Manuel Moscoso Melgar, ed. Introduction by Francisco García Calderón. Lima: By the author, 1878. Mesa, Pío B. Los anales de la ciudad del Cuzco o las cuatro épocas de su historia, narradas breve y sencillamente por Pío B. Mesa. 2 vols. Cuzco: Tipografía de la Convención por Jacinto Carrasco, 18661867. Miller, John. Memorias del General Guillermo Miller [1829]. Preliminary study by Percy Cayo Córdova. 2 vols. Lima: Editorial Arica, S.A., 1975. Palma, Ricardo. Tradiciones peruanas. 5 vols. Raúl Porras Barrenechea, ed. Illustrations by Apu-rimak, Raúl Vizcarra and Carlos Quíspez Asín. Lima: Editorial Cultura Antártica S.A., 1951. ________. Tradiciones Peruanas completas. Prologue by Edith Palma, ed. Madrid: Aguilar, 1964. Pardo y Aliaga, Felipe. El espejo de mi tierra. Preliminary study by Alberto Tauro, ed. Colección Autores Peruanos, 29. Lima: Editorial Universo, S.A., 1971. [Pardo, Manuel]. Algunas cuestiones sociales con motivo de los disturbios de Huancané. Al Soberano Congreso. Lima: Imprenta dirigida por J. M. Monterola, 1867. Pasta, Carlos E., Juan Vicente Camacho and Juan Cossío. ¡Pobre indio! Zarzuela escrita por Juan V. Camacho y Juan Cossío. Música del maestro Carlos E. Pasta. Lima: Imprenta Liberal, 1868.
466
Pays, A. J. du. "Exposition des beaux-arts. Écoles diverses." L'Illustration, journal universel XXVI, no. 670 (December 25, 1855): 428. Paz Soldán, Mateo and Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán. Geografía del Perú. 2 vols. Paris: Fermin Didot, 1862. Paz Soldán, Mariano Felipe. Atlas geográfico del Perú. Paris: Fermin Didot Hermanos, 1865. Paz Soldán y Unanue, Pedro [Juan de Arona]. Diccionario de peruanismos. [1860-1893]. 2 vols. Presentation and notes by Estuardo Nuñez, preliminary note by Ventura García Calderón. Biblioteca Peruana, 48-49. Lima: Ediciones Peisa, 1974. Peisse, Louis. "Beaux-Arts. Exposition Universelle." Le Constitutionnel, May 25, 1855. Planche, Gustave. Portraits d'artistes. Peintres et sculpteurs. 2 vols. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1853. Prescott, William Hickling. Historia de la conquista del Perú. Madrid: Gaspar y Roig, 1853. Rivero, Mariano Eduardo de, and Juan Diego de Tschudi [Johann Jacob von]. Antigüedades peruanas. Viena: Imprenta Imperial de la Corte y del Estado, 1851. Rojas y Cañas, Ramón. Museo de limeñadas. Colección de artículos de costumbres. Obra ilustrada, escrita en Lima por Ramón Rojas y Cañas. Lima: Imprenta de Justo Montoya, 1853. Sartiges, Eugène de [E. S. de Lavendais], "Viaje a las repúblicas de América del Sur" [1851]. In De Sartiges-Botmiliau. Dos viajeros franceses en el Perú republicano, Ed. Raúl Porras Barrenechea, trans., Emilia Romero. Lima: Editorial Cultura Antártica, 1947. Segura, Manuel Ascencio [M. A. S.]. "Gonzalo Pizarro." El Comercio, 1315, 17-18, 20-V-1844. ________. Artículos de costumbres. Preliminary study by Jorge Cornejo Polar. Colección Autores Peruanos, 25. Lima: Editorial Universo, 1967. Sicramio (pseud.). "Rasgo remitido por la Sociedad Poética sobre la Música en general, y particularmente de los Yaravíes." El Mercurio peruano 101 (December 22, 1791): 284-291.
467
Tabouelle, Enrique. "Algo sobre el estudio de la historia peruana." Revista de Lima I, no. 6 (December 15, 1859): 276-280. Taine, Hippolyte. Philosophie de l'art. 11th ed., 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1904. Tello, Julio C., and Toribio Mejía Xesspe. "Historia de los Museos Nacionales del Perú, 1822-1946." Arqueológicas 10 (1967): 1-268. Tipos limeños vistos por Pancho Fierro. Acuarelas de una colección soviética. Leningrad: Editorial de Artes Aurora, 1979. Torrico, Federico. "El arte y los pintores peruanos en la primera exposición nacional." El Nacional, 2-VIII-1869, pp. 2-3. Tschudi, J. J. [Johann Jacob] von. Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, Into the Primeval Forests. Rev. ed., trans. from the German by Thomasina Ross. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1854. [Ulloa, José Casimiro]. El Perú en 1853. Un año de su historia contemporánea. Paris: Imp. de Moulde y Renue, 1854. Unanue, Hipólito. Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima, y sus influencias en los seres organizados, en especial el hombre. Lima: Imprenta Real de los Huérfanos, 1806. ________. Los ideólogos. Hipólito Unanue. Jorge Arias-Schreiber Pezet, ed. Colección Documental de la Independencia del Perú, I, vols. 7-8. Lima: Comisión Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Perú, 1974. Valleyres. "Exposition des beaux-arts - Souvenirs d'un spiritualiste." L'Illustration, journal universel XXVI, no. 670 (December 25, 1855): 442. Vignon, Claude [Noémi Cadiot]. Exposition Universelle de 1855. BeauxArts. Paris: Libraire d'Auguste Fontaine, 1855. Vicuña Mackenna, Benjamín. La independencia en el Perú [1864]. Prologue by Luis Alberto Sánchez. Buenos Aires and Santiago: Editorial Francisco de Aguirre, 1971. Watelet, C.-H. and P.-C. Lévesque. Dictionnaire des arts de peinture, sculpture et gravure [1792]. 5 vols. Geneva: Minkoff Reprints, 1972.
468
Young, Edward. Obras selectas de Eduardo Young, expurgados de todo error, y traducidos del inglés al castellano. 3 vols. Trans., Juan Escoiquiz. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1804. Zavala, Miguel. Protectorado de indios, o sea Proyecto de ley ofrecido á las consideraciones de los H.H. Representantes de la Nación, en la presente legislatura de 1868, con el fin de mejorar la deprimida condición social del indio, haciendo realizables sus derechos. Lima: Imprenta de J. M. Masías, 1868.
B. Secondary Sources Albert, Aristide. Le peintre Blanc-Fontaine. Dauphinoise, 1902.
Grenoble: Librairie
Ades, Dawn, ed. Arte en Iberoamérica, 1820-1980. Encuentros. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1990.
Colección
Ardao, Arturo. América Latina y la latinidad. 500 Años Despúes. México: UNAM, 1993. Banco Central de Reserva del Perú. Museo pinacoteca. Lima: Banco Central de Reserva, 1984. Barreda, Felipe A. Elespuru. Lima: By the author, 1957. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans., Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. Basadre, Jorge. Perú: Problema y posibilidad. Ensayo de una síntesis de la evolución histórica del Perú. Biblioteca peruana. Lima: F. y E. Rosay, 1931. ________. Historia de la República del Perú. 10 vols. 5th ed. Lima: Ediciones 'Historia', 1961. Bateman, Alfredo D. "Los personajes de la Expedición Botánica." Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades (Bogotá), LXXI, no. 747 (October-December, 1984): 907-964. Bernales Ballesteros, Jorge. "La pintura en Lima durante el Virreinato." In La pintura en el Virreinato del Perú, pp. 31-107. Colección Arte y Tesoros del Perú. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 1989. Boime, Albert. The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Phaidon Publishers Inc., 1971.
469
________. Thomas Couture and the Eclectic Vision. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980. Bonilla, Heraclio. Guano y burguesía en el Perú. Perú Problema, 11. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1974. ________, and Karen Spalding. "La independencia en el Perú: Las palabras y los hechos." In La independencia en el Perú, eds. Heraclio Bonilla, et al. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1972. Brading, David. Los orígenes del nacionalismo mexicano. Colección Problemas de México. México: Ediciones Era, 1980. Bryce Echenique, Alfredo. Permiso para vivir. (Antimemorias). Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1993. Buntinx, Gustavo. "De Ayacucho a Cusco-La imagen del indio alfarero." Culturas, supplement of La República, 2-X-1988. Burns, E. Bradford. The Poverty of Progress. Latin America in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. Burga, Manuel and Alberto Flores Galindo. "Feudalismo andino y movimientos sociales (1866-1965)." In Historia del Peru, vol. XI, pp. 9-112. Lima: Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1980. Cadena, Marisol de la. "De utopías y contrahegemonías: El proceso de la cultura popular." Revista andina, 8, n 1 (July 1990): 65-76. Cahill, David P. "Independencia, sociedad y fiscalidad: el Sur Andino (1780-1880)." Revista complutense de historia de América 19 (1993): 249-268. Catlin, Stanton Loomis. "El artista viajero-cronista y la tradición empírica en el arte latinoamericano posterior a la independencia," and "La naturaleza, la ciencia y lo pintoresco." In Arte en Iberoamérica, 1820-1980, ed. Dawn Ades, pp. 41-99. Colección Encuentros. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1990. Chambers, Sarah Clarke. "The Many Shades of the White City: Urban Culture and Society in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1854." Ph. D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1992. Chaudonneret, Marie-Claude. "Historicism and 'Heritage' in the Louvre, 1820-1840. From the Musée Charles X to the Galerie d'Apollon." Art History vol. 14, no. 4 (December 1991): 488-520.
470
Christie's, New York. An Important Collection of Simón Bolívar Memorabilia. Sale catalogue. New York, May 18, 1988. Cisneros Sánchez, Manuel. Pancho Fierro y la Lima del 800. Lima: García Ribeyro, 1975. Clark, T. J. Image of the People. Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic. Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973. Clément, Charles. Gleyre. Étude biographique et critique avec le catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre du maitre. Paris: Didier et Cie., 1878. Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. Compton, Merlin D. "Las Tradiciones Peruanas de Ricardo Palma: Bibliografía y lista cronológica tentativas." Fénix 28-29 (1983): 99129. Consejo Provincial de Lima. IV Centenario de la fundación de Lima, 1535-1935. Primera exposición de pinturas nacionales. Lima: Consejo Provincial de Lima, 1935. Cornejo Polar, Antonio. "La poesía tradicional y el yaraví." Letras XXXVIII, nos. 76-77 (1st and 2nd semesters 1966): 103-125. ________. La novela indigenista. Literatura y sociedad en el Perú. Lima: Lasontay, 1980. ________. La formación de la tradición literaria en el Perú. Lima: CEP, 1989. Cotler, Julio. Clases, estado y nación en el Perú. 6th ed. Perú Problema, 17. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1992. Durand Florez, Luis. Independencia e integración en el plan político de Túpac Amaru. Lima: PLV Editor, 1973. D'Harcourt, Raoul and Marguerite. La música de los incas y sus supervivencias. Prologue by Luis Alberto Sánchez, trans. from the French by Mosca Azul Editores. Lima: Occidental Petroleum Corporation of Peru, 1990. Escajadillo, Tomás G. Narrativa indigenista peruana. Lima: Amaru, 1994.
471
Essner, Rachel. "Regards français sur la peinture allemande à l'Exposition Universelle de 1855." Romantisme no. 73 (1991): 103112. Estenssoro, Juan Carlos. Música y sociedad coloniales. Lima, 1680-1830. Colección de Arena. Lima: Editorial Colmillo Blanco, 1989. ________. "Música, discurso y poder en el régimen colonial." 2 vols. M.A. Thesis, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1990. ________. "La plástica colonial y ss relaciones con la Gran Rebelión." In Mito y simbolismo en los Andes. La figura y la palabra, ed., Henrique Urbano, pp. 157-182. Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1993. Fabian, Johannes. "Presence and Representation: The Other and Anthropological Writing." Critical Inquiry, vol. 16, no. 4 (Summer 1990): 753-772. Flores Araoz, José. "Raimundo Monvoisin." Cultura peruana I, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb., 1941): n.p.; and I, no. 2 (May 1941): n.p. ________. "Pancho Fierro, pintor mulato limeño," Cultura peruana V, nos. 20-21 (May, 1945): n.p. ________. Juan Mauricio Rugendas. El Perú romántico del siglo XIX. Lima: Editor Carlos Milla Batres, 1975. ________. "A cien años de su muerte, Pancho Fierro. Lima de antaño tuvo su pintor." La jornada comunera, 23-IX-1979, pp. 11-13. Flores Espinoza, Javier F. "Hechicería e idolatría en Lima colonial (siglo XVII)." In Poder y violencia en los Andes, eds., Henrique Urbano and Mirko Lauer, Debates Andinos, no. 18, pp. 53-69. Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1991. Flores Galindo, Alberto, ed. Independencia y revolución, 1780-1840. 2 vols. Lima: INC, 1987. Flores Galindo, Alberto, and Manuel Burga. "La utopía andina." Allpanchis XII, vol. XVII, no. 20 (1982): 85-101. Friedlaender, Walter. David to Delacroix. Trans., Robert Goldwater. Cambridge Mass., and London: 1980. García Jordán, Pilar. "Reflexiones sobre el darwinismo social. Inmigración y colonización, mitos de los grupos modernizadores
472
peruanos (1821-1919)." Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Études Andines, 21, no. 3 (1992): 961-975. García Sáiz, María Concepción. The Castes. A Genre of Mexican Painting. Forewords by Diego Angulo Iñiguez, Roberto Moreno de los Arcos and Miguel Angel Fernández, including Spanish trans. Mexico: Olivetti, 1989. Gerbi, Antonello. La disputa del Nuevo Mundo. Historia de una polémica, 1750-1900. 2nd. rev. ed. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982. Gisbert, Teresa. Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte. La Paz: Gisbert y Cia., 1980. Gjurinovic C., Pedro. "Apuntes sobre Francisco Javier Cortés." Comercio, 17-IX-1989, p. C3.
El
Gleason, Daniel. "Anti-Democratic Thought in Early Republican Peru: Bartolomé Herrera and the Liberal-Conservative Ideological Struggle." The Americas XXXVIII, no. 2 (October 1981): 205-217. Gootenberg, Paul. Tejidos y harinas, corazones y mentes. El imperialismo norteamericano del libre comercio en el Perú, 18251840. Colección Mínima, 17. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1989. ________. Between Silver and Guano. Commercial Policy and the State in Postindependence Peru. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989. ________. "Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions." Latin American Research Review vol. 26, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 109-157. ________. Imagining Development. Economic Ideas in Peru's "Fictitious Prosperity" of Guano, 1840-1880. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1993. Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, y The University of Maryland Art Gallery. Charles Gleyre. Exh. cat., February-May, 1980. Grunchec, Philippe. Les concours des Prix de Rome, 1797-1863. 2 vols., exh. cat. Paris: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1986. Guerra, Lucía Cunningham. "Visión marginal de la historia en la narrativa de Juana Manuela Gorriti." Ideologies and Literature 2, no. 2 (1987): 59-76. 473
Gutiérrez, Ramón. "Notas sobre la organización artesanal en el Cusco durante la colonia." Histórica III, no. 3 (July 1979): 1-15. ________. Evolución histórica urbana de Arequipa. 1540-1990. Lima: Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Artes, Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Epígrafe Editores, 1992. Harth-Terré, Emilio and Alberto Márquez Abanto. "Las bellas artes en el virreinato del Perú. Perspectiva social y económica del artesano virreinal en Lima." Revista del Archivo Nacional del Perú XXVI (July-December 1962): 353-446. Hauptman, William. "Delaroche's and Gleyre's Teaching Ateliers and Their Group Portraits." Studies in the History of Art, 18 (1985): 79-119. Hobsbawm, E. J. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ________, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Holguín Callo, Oswaldo. Tiempos de infancia y bohemia. Ricardo Palma (1833-1860). Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1994. Honour, Hugh. Neo-Classicism. Style and Civilization, John Fleming and Hugh Honour eds. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1988. Husson, Patrick. De la guerra a la rebelión (Huanta, siglo XIX). Archivos de Historia Andina, 14; Travaux de l'IFEA, LXVII. Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, 1992. Itier, César. "Quechua y cultura en el Cuzco del siglo XVIII: de la 'lengua general' al 'idioma del imperio de los Incas'." Ms. of an essay presented at the Colloquium "Siglo XVIII en los Andes" organized by the Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos 'Bartolomé de las Casas' in Chantilly, France, April 26-29, 1993. James, David. Monvoisin. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1949. ________. En las Pampas y en los Andes. Treinta y tres dibujos y textos sobre Argentina, Chile y Peru de Auguste Borget. Buenos Aires: Pardo-Emece, 1960.
474
Jobet, Julio César. Santiago Arcos Arlegui y la Sociedad de la Igualdad. Un socialista utopista chileno. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta "Cultura", 1942. König, Hans-Joachim. "Símbolos nacionales y retórica política en la independencia: El caso de la Nueva Granada." In Problemas de la formación del estado y de la nación en Hispanoamérica, eds. Inge Buisson, Günter Kahle, et al., pp. 389-405. Lateinamerikanische Forschungen, 13. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1984. Kristal, Efraín. The Andes Viewed From the City. Literary and Political Discourse on the Indian in Peru, 1848-1930. American University Studies, Series XIX, vol. 6. New York, Bern, Frankfurt and Paris: Peter Lang, 1987. Kubler, George. The Indian Caste of Peru, 1795-1940. A Population Study Based Upon Tax Records and Census Reports. Smithsonian Institution, Institute of Social Anthropology, Publication no. 14. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973. Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Marseille Musée Cantini, München Stätdtische Galerie in Lenbachaus, Kiel Kunsthalle, Aarau Aargauer Kunsthaus, y Lausanne Musée Cantonal des BeauxArts. Charles Gleyre ou les illusions perdues. Exh. cat., 19741975. Lauer, Mirko. Introducción a la pintura peruana del siglo XX. Lima: Mosca Azul, 1976. ________. "La pintura indigenista peruana. Una visión desde los años 90." Márgenes VI, nos. 10-11 (October 1993): 93-106. Lavallé, Bernard. "Exaltation de Lima et affirmation créole au XVIIe siècle." In Villes et nations en Amérique Latine, pp. 47-62. Collection de la Maison des Pays Ibériques, 13. Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983. ________. Las promesas ambiguas. Ensayos sobre el criollismo colonial en los Andes. Lima: Instituto Riva-Agüero, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1993. Lavalle, Juan Bautista de. "Ignacio Merino, 1817-1876. Apuntes biográficos." In Ignacio Merino (1817-1917). Edición conmemorativa del primer centenario del nacimiento del eminente pintor peruano, pp. 7-20. Lima: Concejo Provincial de Lima, Casa Editora M. Moral, 1917. 475
Leguía, Jorge Guillermo. Estudios históricos. Prologue by Jorge Basadre. Biblioteca Integración, Serie Estudios Históricos, 2. Lima: Asociación Cultural Integración, 1989. _______. Hombres e ideas en el Perú. Prologue by Gonzalo Otero Lora. Biblioteca Integración, 3. Lima: Asociación Cultural Integración, 1989. Lohmann Villena, Guillermo. "Notes on Prescott's Interpretation of the Conquest of Peru." Hispanic American Historical Review XXXIX, no. 1 (February, 1959): 46-80. Losada, Alejandro. La literatura en la sociedad de América Latina. Perú y el Río de la Plata 1837-1880. Editionen der Ibero-americana, Reihe III, Monographien und Aufsätze, 9. Frankfurt: Verlag Klaus Dieter Vervuert, 1983. Lozoya, Marqués de. "Un siglo de pintura peruana." El Comercio, 3-III1943, p. 6. Lynch, John. The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826. 2nd ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986. Mainardi, Patricia. Art and Politics of the Second Empire. The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987. Malosetti Costa, Laura. Rapto de cautivas blancas. Un aspecto erótico de la barbarie en la plástica rioplatense del siglo XIX. Hipótesis y Discusiones, 4. Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1994. Majluf, Natalia. "Entre pasatiempo y herramienta artesanal: aspectos de la enseñanza del dibujo en el diecinueve." Sequilao, Año II, no. 3 (May-July, 1993): 32-42. ________. Escultura y espacio público. Lima, 1850-1879. Docu-mentos de Trabajo, Serie Historia del Arte, 2. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1994. Mariátegui, José Carlos. Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality [1928]. Trans., Marjory Urquidi, prologue by Jorge Basadre. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971. Martín, Luis. Daughters of the Conquistadors. Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1983.
476
Martínez, Santiago. Monografía de la Corte Superior de Arequipa y Apuntes Biográficos de todos sus Vocales y Fiscales. Arequipa: Tipografía Caritg & Rivera, 1925. Martínez Riaza, Ascensión. La prensa doctrinal en la independencia del Perú. 1811-1824. Madrid: ICI, Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1985. Méndez, Cecilia. "Los campesinos, la independencia, y la iniciación de la república. El caso de los iquichanos realistas: Ayacucho, 18251828." In Poder y violencia en los Andes, eds., Henrique Urbano and Mirko Lauer, Debates Andinos, no. 18, pp. 165-188. Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1991. ________. [Review of Efraín Kristal's Una visión urbana de los Andes: Génesis y desarrollo del indigenismo en el Perú 1848-1930.] Revista andina, 10, no. 1 (July 1992): 253-254. ________. Incas sí, indios no. Apuntes para el estudio del nacion-alismo criollo en el Perú. Documento de Trabajo no. 56, Serie Historia del Arte, no. 9. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1993. Mesa, José de, and Teresa Gisbert. Historia de la pintura cuzqueña. 2 vols. Prologue by Guillermo Lohmann Villena. Biblioteca Peruana de Cultura. Lima: Fundación Augusto N. Wiese, Banco Wiese Ltdo., 1982. McElroy, Keith. Early Peruvian Photography. A Critical Case Study. Studies in Photography, no. 7. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Press, 1985. McEvoy, Carmen. Un proyecto nacional en el siglo XIX. Manuel Pardo y su visión del Perú. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1994. Miró Quesada Sosa, Aurelio. Historia y leyenda de Mariano Melgar (1790-1815). Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1978. Moreno Cebrián, Alfredo. "El ocio del indio como razón teórica del repartimiento," Revista de Indias XXXV, nos. 139-142 (JanuaryDecember 1975): 167-185. Mörner, Magnus. Race Mixture in the History of Latin America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967. ________. "Historical Research on Race Relations in Latin America During the National Period." In Race and Class in Latin America,
477
ed. Magnus Mörner, pp. 199-230. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970. Mosquera, Gerardo. "Presentación." In Ante América, exh. cat., pp. 1216. Bogotá: Biblioteca Luis-Angel Arango, 1992. Mosse, George L. Towards the Final Solution. A History of European Racism. 2d ed. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Nochlin, Linda. The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. Icon Editions. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1989. Nugent, José Guillermo. El laberinto de la choledad. Serie Panel, 1. Lima: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1992. Núñez Ureta, Teodoro, y Sara de Lavalle. Pintura contemporánea. Colección Arte y Tesoros del Perú. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 1975. Oliart, Patricia. "Poniendo a cada quien en su lugar: Estereotipos raciales y sexuales en la Lima del siglo XIX." Ms., 1993. O'Phelan Godoy, Scarlett. "El mito de la "independencia concedida": Los programas políticos del siglo XVIII y del temprano XIX en el Perú y Alto Perú (1730-1814)." In Independencia y revolución, 17801840, 2 vols., ed. Alberto Flores Galindo, II, pp. 145-199. Lima: INC, 1987. ________. "L'Utopie Andine. Discours parallèles à la fin de l'époque coloniale." Annales, no. 2 (March-April 1994): 471-495. Orlove, Benjamin S. "Putting Race in Its Place: Order in Colonial and Postcolonial Peruvian Geography," Social Research, vol. 60, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 301-336. Ortega, Julio. Cultura y modernización en la Lima del 900. Lima: CEDEP, 1986. Pacheco Vélez, César. Memoria y utopía de la vieja Lima. Ediciones de la Avispa Blanca. Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, Departamento Académico de Humanidades, 1985. Pagaza Galdo, Consuelo. "El yaraví del Cuzco." Folklore americano Year VIII, vol. IX, nos. 8-9 (1960-1961): 75-141. Patrón, Pablo. "Galería de retratos de los gobernadores y virreyes del Perú," La Integridad, 25-II-1893. 478
Paz, Octavio. "José Guadalupe Posada y el grabado latinoamericano." In Los privilegios de la vista. Arte de México, México en la obra de Octavio Paz, III - Letras Mexicanas. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987. Peralta Ruiz, Víctor. En pos del tributo: burocracia estatal, elite regional y comunidades indígenas en el Cusco rural (1826-1854). Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1991. Pike, Fredrick B. The Modern History of Peru. New York: Praeger, 1967. ________. "Heresy, Real and Alleged, in Peru: An Aspect of the LiberalConservative Struggle, 1830-1875." Hispanic American Historical Review XLVIII, no. 1 (February 1967): 50-74. Pintura piurana. Lima: Banco Regional del Norte, Norbank, 1994. Pointon, Marcia. "'From the Midst of Warfare and its Incidents to the Peaceful Scenes of Home': The Exposition Universelle of 1855." Journal of European Studies XI, pt. 4, no. 44 (December 1981): 236. Pollock, Griselda. Millet. London: Oresko Books, Ltd., 1977. Poole, Deborah A. "A One-Eyed Gaze: Gender in 19th Century Illustration of Peru." Dialectical Anthropology 13, no. 4 (1988): 333-364. ________."Fotografía, fantasía y modernidad." Márgenes, Año IV, no. 8 (diciembre, 1991): 127-128. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge,1992. Praz, Mario. The Romantic Agony. Trans., from the Italian by Angus Davidson. New York: Meridian Books, 1956. Pursche, Anna. "Scenes of Lima Attributed to Pancho Fierro." Notes Hispanic IV (1944): 92-132. Rama, Carlos M. Historia de las relaciones culturales entre España y la América Latina. Siglo XIX. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982. Ramírez, Mari Carmen. "Beyond "the Fantastic": Framing Identity in U.S. Exhibitions of Latin American Art." Art Journal vol. 51, no. 4 (1992): 59-68.
479
Reissner, Raúl Alcides. El indio en los diccionarios. Exégesis léxica de un estereotipo. Serie de Antropología Social, Colección INI, 67. México: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1983. Remy, María Isabel. "La sociedad local al inicio de la República. Cusco 1824-1850." Revista andina, 12, no. 2 (December 1988): 451-484. Rivera Martínez, J. Edgardo. "Acuarelas desconocidas de Pancho Fierro." Fénix 19 (1969): 169-192. Rodríguez Saavedra, Carlos. "La pintura en la república." In Perú promesa César Pacheco Vélez, ed. Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1988. Rosemberg, Fernando. "Dos actitudes literarias: Indianismo e indigenismo." Revista interamericana de bibliografía 36 (1986): 52-57. Rosen, Charles and Henri Zerner. Romanticism and Realism. The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984. Rosenblat, Angel. La población indígena y el mestizaje en América. 2 vols. Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1954. Rosenthal, Léon. Du romantisme a réalisme. La peinture en France de 1830 à 1848. Introduction by Michael Marrinan. Paris: Macula, 1987. Sabogal Diéguez, José. Obras literarias completas. Ignacio Prado Pastor, ed. Lima: By the author and Talleres Gráficos P. L. Villanueva, 1989. Saignes, Thierry. "Le Temple du soleil." L'Homme XXXII, nos. 122-124 (April-December 1992): 377-384. Salazar Bondy, Sebastián. Una voz libre en el caos. Ensayo y crítica de arte. Lima: Jaime Campodónico Editor, 1990. San Cristoval, Evaristo. Apéndice al diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú. Lima: Librería e imprenta Gil, 1937. Sánchez Espinosa, Marcelo. "La abolición de la contribución personal por el Congreso Constituyente peruano de 1867." Revista de historia de América 18 (December 1944): 335-373. Shiff, Richard. "The Original, the Imitation, the Copy, and the Spontaneous Classic: Theory and Painting in Nineteenth-Century
480
France." In The Anxiety of Anticipation, ed., Sima Godfrey, special issue of Yale French Studies, 66 (1984): 27-54. Sotheby's, New York. Important 19th Century European Paintings. Sale catalogue no. 4714M. New York, October 19, 1981. Stastny, Francisco. "El arte de la nobleza inca y la identidad andina." In Mito y simbolismo en los Andes. La figura y la palabra, ed. Henrique Urbano, pp. 137-156. Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1993. ________. "El indigenista y sus fuentes." In Museo de Arte de Lima, Sabogal y el grupo indigenista. Exh. cat. Lima: Museo de Arte, 1993. Stern, Steve J. "The Age of Andean Insurrection, 1742-1782: A Reappraisal." In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed., Steve J. Stern, pp. 34-93. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. Tamayo Herrera, José. Historia del indigenismo cuzqueño, siglos XVIXX. Prologue by Luis E. Valcárcel. Lima: INC, 1980. Tauro, Alberto. Manuel de Odriozola. Prócer-Erudito-Bibliotecario. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1964. Terdiman, Richard. Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Tord, Luis Enrique. El indio en los ensayistas peruanos, 1848-1948. Lima: Editoriales Unidas, 1978. Trazegnies Granda, Fernando de. La idea del derecho en el Perú republicano del siglo XIX. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1992. Ugarte y Ugarte, Joaquín H. "El pintor Francisco Javier Cortés, uno de los autores del Escudo Nacional." El Comercio, 17-XII-1955, morning ed., pp. 2, 16. Urban, Greg and Joel Sherzer, eds. Nation-States and Indians in Latin America. Symposia on Latin America. Austin, Texas: ILAS and University of Texas Press, 1991. Valcárcel, Luis E. Memorias. José Matos Mar, José Deustua C. y José Luis Rénique, eds. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1981.
481
Vargas Llosa, Mario, et al. Fernando de Szyszlo. Bogotá and New York: Ediciones Alfred Wild, 1991. Vásquez, Emilio. La rebelión de Juan Bustamante. Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1976.
Lima: Librería-
Walker, Charles. "La violencia y el sistema legal: Los indios y el estado en el Cusco después de la rebelión de Túpac Amaru." In Poder y violencia en los Andes, eds., Henrique Urbano and Mirko Lauer, Debates Andinos, no. 18, pp. 125-147. Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1991. Watson Espener, Maida Isabel. El cuadro de costumbres en el Perú decimonónico. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editoria, 1980. Wibel, John Fredrick. "The Evolution of a Regional Community Within Spanish Empire and Peruvian Nation: Arequipa, 1780-1845." Ph. D. diss., Stanford University, 1975. Williams, Elizabeth A. "Art and Artifact at the Trocadéro. Ars Americana and the Primitivist Revolution." In Objects and Others. Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 3, pp. 146-166. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Wuffarden, Luis Eduardo. "Síntesis del arte republicano." In Margarita Guerra, ed., Historia General del Perú, vol. XII. Lima: Carlos Milla Batres, 1984. Zegarra Meneses, Guillermo. "Benito Laso, prócer de la Independencia y la República." Mercurio peruano no. 418 (1962): 43-63.
482
Vita
Natalia María Majluf Brahim was born in Lima, Peru, on February 12, 1967, the daughter of Susana Brahim de Majluf and Miguel Majluf Abugosh. After completing her work at Colegio San Silvestre, Lima, Peru in 1983, she entered Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from Boston College in January of 1988. In October of 1990 she received the degree of Master of Arts in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
In
September 1990 she entered the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin.
Permanent address:
Av. José Pardo 562, Miraflores, Lima, Perú.
This dissertation was typed by the author.
