América Crítica

Ecofeminisms in Latin America: Mujeres Creando on extractivist and patriarchal violence

Agnese Codebò — 2024-12-31

In this essay, I am interested in analyzing, through an ecofeminist lens, the ways in which Bolivian anarcho-feminist collective Mujeres Creando has used graffiti in the first decades of the 21st century to question the intimate connection that exists in Latin America between colonialism and patriarchy. Through its interventions in the streets of La Paz, Mujeres Creando aims at an epistemological decolonization that troubles the dominant symbolic order by which men have been considered superior to nature and women, and the North has been thought of as a civilizing agent of a South seen as barbaric. In this way, the Bolivian collective contributes to ecofeminism, a lively current in the contemporary Latin American debate, which reveals how the pillage of neo-extractivist capitalism affects both bodies and territories

Pegaso (1924): overview of a forgotten magazine

Erick Gonzalo Padilla Sinchi — 2024-12-31

Before his first international tour, Xavier Abril (Peru, 1905 - Uruguay, 1990) edited the magazine Pegaso (1924) from Lima, a publication little studied by specialised critics. This paper proposes to analyse the components of Pegaso, linking historical facts and artistic-literary materials. It will examine the community of intellectuals that the magazine sought to make visible during its brief existence to highlight the dialogues between artists and the Peruvian (and international) cultural context of the early twentieth century. From this panoramic reconstruction, the relationship between Pegaso and the classification of Xavier Abril’s early poems as avant-garde expressions will be explored. To this end, the reflections of Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre on romanticism as a pre-modern and critical vision facing of capitalism will be incorporated. In this sense, our main aim will be to contextualise and analyse the magazine’s content. In contrast, as a secondary aim, we will problematise the identification of Xavier Abril, between 1923 and 1926, as a surrealist author
based on his poems published in Pegaso.

What is contemporary in Peruvian Amazonian literature?

Paul Montjoy Forti — 2024-12-31

This study analyzes the characteristics of contemporary urban Amazonian literature in Peru and compares it with texts written during the first three-thirds of the 20th century, up until the publication of Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo by César Calvo in 1981. The article argues that Calvo’s novel marked a turning point in how literature from Amazonian urban centers narrates and writes about the Amazon. To explore this, the concept of contemporaneity, as proposed by Agamben, Premat, and others, is analyzed and developed. The new texts are also examined considering the concept of subalternity, as theorized by Spivak and further developed by Rodríguez. Contributions from Marcone, Pau, and Cabel are incorporated into this study. Finally, this text proposes understanding urban literature as an open category, interconnected with the literature of Amazonian communities, linked to the entire Pan-Amazonian region, and exploring a diversity of topics, including environmental care, social conflicts, prostitution, the vindication of the Amazonian worldview, and the representation of diverse sexualities.

Altarpiece Writing and the Dancer Without Memory: The Matrix of Andean Testimony

Betina Sandra Campuzano — 2024-12-31

I am interested in exploring the matrices of contemporary Latin American testimony, considering its amphibious and undisciplined nature, the legitimization of the Casa de las Américas Prize, and the processes of mediation and translation. I then delineate the particularities of Andean testimony regarding political violence in Peru, tracing a genealogy that connects it to Guaman Poma de Ayala and José María Arguedas, both fundamental to Andean memory. Later, I propose a classification of Andean testimony that, by intersecting image, orality, and writing, reveals how popular cultures, material expressions, and performative acts process the pain and memories of the armed conflict. This classification, which goes beyond its recognition as a literary genre, can be understood as altarpiece-writing: a cultural device encompassing a broad testimonial spectrum. In other words, I conceive testimony as a memory box where the painful recollections of the armed conflict are narrated in multiple ways.

Rapa Nui oral tradition stories contained in the string game Kai kai. Relationships of archive and repertoire

Ilsen Jofré Seguel — 2024-12-31

The Kai kai is an ancestral practice of Rapa Nui culture that involves the creation of one or several figures made with a thread while narrating a story through singing or recitation called Patau’tau, all of the above accompanied by specific body movements. This practice comprises various languages that, as repertoires, contribute to the creation of the figure or landscape, which serves as a record or archive of the Kai kai narrative. Ultimately, the body supports a tradition restored through these acts of information transfer across generations. It is possible to consider that both dimensions, archive, and repertoires, are intrinsically linked to each other, forming part of a whole, and they allow for maintaining fundamental pieces of tradition and oral literature in the memory of the Rapa Nui people.

“Poetry can still be born—even if it’s born messy”. A conversation with Gonzalo Rojas Canouet

Felipe Cussen — 2024-12-31

This article is a transcription of an interview with the Chilean scholar Gonzalo Rojas Canouet. It is a conversation on literature, poetry and his recent book Sienes ardientes. Experimentación y Lirismo en la poesía chilena actual, published in 2024.