Poetics and Politics of Indigenous-Language Literature in Mexico and Colombia: Forms of Protest and Resistance (original) (raw)

Indigenous Voices in Literature (Latin America)

Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies, 2018

Introduction The indigenous peoples of Abya Yala (Latin America)—which in the Kuna language means “Land in Its Full Maturity”—are the descendants of the first inhabitants and ancestral owners of the lands that were later conquered by European conquistadors. Indigenous peoples, indeed, have resisted centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism, which attempted to strip them of their territories, native languages, and cultural identities. Since the time of Christopher Columbus, the Spanish word indio has been used to imply the racial, cultural, linguistic, and intellectual inferiority of indigenous peoples, yet they have never accepted colonization and exploitation passively. There is a long history of indigenous rebellions and symbolic reappropriations of the “New World.” Today, there are more than eight hundred indigenous ethnic groups in Latin America, and two hundred more are estimated to be living in voluntary isolation, according to the United Nations. The cultural and linguistic heritage of indigenous peoples contributes to the world’s diversity. Indigenous literatures, in particular, are a paradigmatic example of this rich cultural heritage. Based on collective oral traditions (myths, rituals, legends, stories, songs, etc.), these literatures encompass a vast heterogeneous textual production (pre-Hispanic codices, colonial documents, letters, chronicles, autobiographies, testimonies, poems, short stories, novels, etc.) that has been written by indigenous peoples themselves, often using their own languages and reflecting their own worldviews. In this sense, indigenismo, understood as an urban-white-criollo cultural tradition of representing and speaking about and for indigenous peoples, has a radically different point of view (see the Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies article “Latino Indigenismo in a Comparative Perspective”). During the last few decades, the production of indigenous literatures has flourished, putting an end to traditional indigenismo and modifying views on national histories of literatures and conventional literary concepts. New multilingual editions and anthologies of indigenous poetry, fictional narratives, and other genres are currently being published, sometimes as the result of literary festivals and workshops, scholarships, and projects with the participation of indigenous peoples. This new literature is also part of the contemporary social struggle of indigenous communities to affirm their right to live with dignity and preserve their own cultures and languages. Quechua, Kichwa, Aymara, Nahuatl, Maya, and Mapudungun literatures, among many others, allow us to hope that a full social, political, and cultural recognition of indigenous peoples is not so far away. In this bibliographical review, key pre-Hispanic, colonial, modern, and contemporary indigenous authors and works are considered chronologically, giving special priority to indigenous primary sources, and to English translations when they are available. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/abstract/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0199.xml?rskey=9usSqA&result=3&q=juan%20carlos%20grijalva#firstMatch Introduction General Overviews Reference Works and Bibliographies Pre-Hispanic Codices, Colonial Testimonies, and Other Documents Anthologies Across the Americas Early Modern Indigenous Narratives Indigenous Testimonio and Autobiography Anthologies of Contemporary Indigenous Narratives Anthologies of Contemporary Indigenous Poetry Selected Contemporary Indigenous Writers (Prose and Poetry) Translations into Indigenous Languages

The Politics of Artistic Expression in the Andes

Tinkuy Boletin De Investigacion Y Debate, 2008

Literary critics concerned with cultural politics in the Andes-and in the Americas in general-have focused a great deal of attention on the conflict between orality and textuality that originated during the early days of the Spanish Conquest. The last ten to twenty years have witnessed particularly creative and thoughtful scholarship about the political ramification of textuality in the colonial and postcolonial context. In Escribir en el aire, for example, Antonio Cornejo Polar introduces the concept of a heterogeneous literature, where the producer, referent and consumer of a text belong to different interpretive communities. This was a critical breakthrough for cultural critics in general, but especially for those dealing with the indigenista legacy. In his alternative literary history, La voz y su huella, Martin Lienhard unsettles the oral-textual binary by focusing on the appropriation of writing by native populations who were historically marginalized by the text. These are two seminal works in a scholarly trend that, if it didn't exactly begin with the publication of two now classic texts by Angel Rama, certainly picked up speed and self-awareness. In La ciudad letrada, Rama discusses the pivotal role that textuality played in securing social privilege during the colonial, republican and nationalist periods in Latin America. Rama's propositions in this posthumously published book are all the more interesting since they follow on the heels of his equally groundbreaking text, Transculturacion narrativa en America Latina, where by contrast, he stresses the ideological potential of transculturated literature 1. In recent years La ciudad letrada has not only come supercede Transculturación narrativa as a critical reference, but has been employed by critics to critique the earlier text, which arguably, has had an unparalleled influence in the field of Latin American cultural criticism. The disciplinary critique that is implicit to La ciudad letrada and the critical reflection that addresses literature as a political tool bring to mind Hegel's famous dictum that "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk," or in other words, wisdom about literature arrives as its hegemonic efficacy is coming to an end.

Contemporary Indigenous Social and Political Thought in Latin America (1960-2020)

OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES, 2021

Introduction The contemporary continental emergence of a significant number of indigenous intellectuals who have been trained in the academic fields of social sciences (history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, law, education, etc.) and have continued to be engaged with the social struggles of their ethnic communities of origin is a major sociocultural phenomenon not so well known in Latin America. Beginning in the 1960s, but with a stronger sociopolitical visibility in the 1980s and 1990s, indigenous intellectuals’ production of knowledge has become the backbone of many indigenous movements and proposals in the continent. Just like the booming appearance of modern indigenous literary writers (see Oxford Bibliographies article in Latin American Studies “Indigenous Voices in Literature”), the contemporary rise of indigenous intellectuals has reconceptualized indigenous communitarian worldviews and contributed to the study of their own social realities from their specific needs, cultural perspectives, and native languages. Indigenous intellectuals and scholars have flourished in the early 21st century, transforming knowledge and academic discourses into tools of indigenous cultural self-recognition; criticism of neocolonial forms of subordination and exploitation; and new conceptual ways of understanding history, democracy, communal life, political participation, cultural representation, and our human relationship with nature (Mother Earth). The purpose of this bibliographical essay is to offer an interdisciplinary and continental comprehensive view about these critical reflections, research studies, reports, interviews, essays, testimonies, manifests, discourses, and other conceptual contributions of Latin American indigenous intellectuals and communitarian leaders from the 1960s to the present. I have limited this vast and complex intellectual production to three fundamental indigenous debates: first, the criticism against neocolonialism, racism, and discrimination; second, self-defense of indigenous human rights and pluricultural laws; and, third, the development of judicial systems to protect the rights of Mother Earth—all of which lead to constructing new societies based on universal principles of ethnic diversity, respect for social equality and reciprocity, and living together in harmony. There are many other areas of indigenous sociopolitical production that are not considered here. That is why this study is a modest and preliminary tribute to a long and much more complex indigenous intellectual production that emerges based on exclusion, discrimination, and other forms of social inequality still suffered by many indigenous peoples in Latin America. This essay, thematically organized, provides an inclusive selection of a very heterogeneous spectrum of contemporary Latin American indigenous intellectuals, academics, activists and communitarian leaders, in conjuction with others who have been inspired or influenced by them. The purpose here then is to visibilize these contemporary indigenous authors, thinkers, and activists, even if their ideas, studies, and social reflections can be related to precolonial or colonial times. The strong presence of social leaders such as Berta Cáceres in Honduras, Isildo Beldenegro in Mexico, or José Tendetza in Ecuador, and many many others—some of whom have been killed, tortured, and criminalized— cannot be separated from the concepts and critical studies produced by indigenous intellectuals. I want to thank Agustín Grijalva and Maria Warren for their invaluable help. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0245.xml?q=Grijalva%20&fbclid=IwAR02XRk8o66fbQrslTmGUsa1wHJcwXo09D\_sBbht1cw3qOiTVamwQ273ul0#firstMatch

Literary Contraband: Indigenous Insurgency and the Spatial Politics of Resistance

This article maintains that, more than an instance of cultural assimilation or adaptation, the (re)emergence of indigenous literature in recent decades represents a disruptive in-surgence into spaces normally, and until recently, confined to whites, mestizos, and the West. By connecting the practice of smuggling in border societies and pre-Hispanic trade routes with indigenous interventions into the lettered city, I examine what I refer to as literary contraband in the poetry of Miguel Ángel López Hernández (Colombia/Venezuela) and the novel Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko (United States). I argue that conceptualizing Amerindian literature in these terms can help to illustrate the interaction between poetics and politics in contemporary cultural revitalization efforts. Yet beyond simply heralding the fact that Amerindian literature has “finally arrived” I suggest that this incipient reconfiguration of the lettered city commands the continued development of decolonizing critical approaches cognizant of the power dynamics at work in the production and reception of indigenous literatures.

Precarity and the Practice of Chicana/o Poetry

Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies , 2020

This essay intervenes in an ongoing debate within ethnic literary studies about the tension between identity-based, or more overtly political, forms of poetry and experimental poetry that treats language as art material. I show how Javier Huerta's "American Copia" (2012) enlists poetic form to serve the oppositional acts of documenting the undocumented. I argue that Huerta's innovations draw on existing traditions of Chicana/o poetry influenced by twenty-first-century conditions of precarity, specifically undocumented status. Huerta shows how an active practice of poetic innovation responds to an active process of un/documentation through forms of accumulation and affirmation (including code-switching, interlingual word play, collage, and juxtaposition), emplotted through a nonlinear temporal structure organized around the concept of documentation. "American Copia" articulates Chicana/o poetry to undocumented status to show how the literary practice of documenting can take on the weight of public discourse while simultaneously rendering into poetry the practices of social marginalization. Ultimately, Huerta's practice of Chicana/o poetry offers language as an active site of resistance to forms of domination.

Mapping the interstices: intertextuality, language, and authorial voice in Zapatista poetics

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 2020

This paper examines the Zapatista use of the Word as weapon and as world-making. In particular, we focus on narrative devices and discursive strategies that reveal the locus of enunciation from which the Zapatistas, via Marcos, speak. This Word emerges from, and is situated at, the interstices of Western and Mayan worlds. In the Zapatista stories this is evident through a transmodern use of intertextuality; the critique of "false language" and the eruption of another grammar; and a dynamic authorial performance that shifts between Marcos-el Sup as narrator vis-à-vis Marcos as author, spokesperson, and Subcomandante of the EZLN.

Land Uprising: Native Story Power and the Insurgent Horizons of Latinx Indigeneity

University of Arizona Press, 2020

Land Uprising reframes Indigenous land reclamation as a horizon to decolonize the settler colonial conditions of literary, intellectual, and activist labor. Simón Ventura Trujillo argues that land provides grounding for rethinking the connection between Native storytelling practices and Latinx racialization across overlapping colonial and nation-state forms. Trujillo situates his inquiry in the cultural production of La Alianza Federal de Mercedes, a formative yet understudied organization of the Chicanx movement of the 1960s and 1970s. La Alianza sought to recover Mexican and Spanish land grants in New Mexico that had been dispossessed after the Mexican-American War. During graduate school, Trujillo realized that his grandparents were activists in La Alianza. Written in response to this discovery, Land Uprising bridges La Alianza’s insurgency and New Mexican land grant struggles to the writings of Leslie Marmon Silko, Ana Castillo, Simon Ortiz, and the Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. In doing so, the book reveals uncanny connections between Chicanx, Latinx, Latin American, and Native American and Indigenous studies to grapple with Native land reclamation as the future horizon for Chicanx and Latinx indigeneities.