Latin American indigenismo

The indigenist novel reverses the gaze: the Indian ceases to be picturesque scenery and becomes the subject of the book, with a language, communal laws and confiscated land. Ciro Alegría tells of an Andean community dispossessed by a landowner and its lawsuit lost in advance, Icaza shows the mestizo caught between two contempts, Rosario Castellanos writes the Chiapas of the haciendas. Arguedas, raised in Quechua, goes further and works Spanish from within to make it carry another syntax. The movement accompanies the land reforms of the thirties.

works 6

• NovelThe VillagersHuasipungoJorge Icaza · 1934The Indians of the Andean haciendas, crushed by the road that a landowner has built across their lands.Literature
• Short storiesAguaJosé María Arguedas · 1935not translated into EnglishThe Quechua villages of the sierra, split into two irreconcilable camps, seen through a child who belongs to both.Literature
• NovelBroad and Alien Is the WorldEl mundo es ancho y ajenoCiro Alegría · 1941The Indian communities of the Andes confronting the expansion of the great estates, in a novel that gives a voice to the comuneros.Literature
• NovelThe PresidentEl señor PresidenteMiguel Ángel Asturias · 1946The terror of a Central American dictatorship, told in the language of nightmare.Literature
• NovelYanakunaJesús Lara · 1952not translated into EnglishThe haciendas of the Cochabamba valley before the 1952 revolution, where an indebted Indian family pays in labour and in children.Literature
• NovelThe Nine GuardiansBalún CanánRosario Castellanos · 1957The end of the order of the great landowners of Chiapas, seen through the eyes of a child of their world.Literature