Short stories
Cuentos andinos
Not translated into English
Enrique López Albújar · 1920
Synopsis
Ten tales drawn from the Andean villages around Huánuco. A legend tells how a god turned a young woman's three suitors into mountains; a father hires a marksman to avenge his murdered daughter; a village judges by the law of its elders a thief who has returned despite his banishment; an Indian raises his community against the Chilean troops in 1883. Other pieces, satirical, take as their subject the pride of the louse or the coca plant.
Context
The book appeared in Lima in 1920 and was reissued in 1924; it draws its material from the years when the author was a judge at Huánuco. It brings together ten stories, among them Los tres jircas, El campeón de la muerte, Ushanan-jampi, El hombre de la bandera and Cachorro de tigre, and the author followed it in 1937 with Nuevos cuentos andinos. Miguel de Unamuno praised the stories; José María Arguedas, Luis Alberto Sánchez and Mario Vargas Llosa reproached the author for showing little more than Indians accused of crimes.
Who it is for
Short tales in Spanish, well constructed, in a dry language without ornament; each can be read on its own.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the starting point of Peruvian indigenismo and as the prelude to the narrative writing that led to Ciro Alegría and José María Arguedas.