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Peru’s Indigenist Movement and the great works it has inspired

As much as in any country in South America, people on vacation to Cusco will be struck by the rich tapestry of culture woven from Andean, Spanish, African, Chinese and Japanese influences.

But until just a few decades ago, it would have been obvious during the Cusco tours the uneasy coexistence between separate and very unequal cultures — a small, dominant European-descended elite and the indigenous Andean majority.

The tensions arising from that relationship and recurrent attempts to achieve a truly national culture, spawned indigenismo — a social, artistic and political movement that was the basis for many of Peru’s greatest artistic and intellectual achievements over the past century.

Inspired by the Inca Empire, adherents of indigenismo emphasized the virtues of Andean Indians, and decried the deprivation and discrimination they suffered.

Many of Peru’s leading adherents of indigenismo in the early 20th century worked in the fields of sociology and history. Politician, teacher, and man of letters, José de la Riva Aguero pioneered a documentary method in his pamphlets, essays, and books covering events and national figures — a methodology adopted by later generations of social scientists. Raúl Porras Barrenechea concentrated on the period of the Spanish Conquest. And historian Jorge Basadre focused on Peru’s Republican period, intermingling history and philosophy in his thought-provoking book Meditations on the Historic Destiny of Peru.

While Julio Tello, the founding father of modern Peruvian archaeology, focused attention on the artistic patrimony of Peru’s pre-Columbian past, discovering the ancient Chavín culture, Hildebrando Castro Pozo was arousing interest in the life-style of the modern Andean peasant, with his book Our Indigenous Community, published in 1924.
José Carlos Mariátegui, one of the most influential Latin American writers of the 20th century, was clearly Marxist in his historical determinism. But his most famous work, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, published in 1926, revealed a distinctively Peruvian take on class struggle. It was dominated by a preoccupation with the plight of the country’s indigenous majority. Mariátegui advocated a new kind of socialism based on the Inca system of communal land ownership and on an alliance between peasants and workers.

Writer César Vallejo dedicated his verse to the nature and spirit of Andean indigenous life. In Trilce, written while he lived in self-exile in Paris, he employed complete freedom in form, meter and syntax and ignored the sequence of time, to present the character of an orphaned “cholo” as the quintessentially oppressed man.
Painter José Sabogal once declared “I am not an indigenist,” but he is nevertheless considered the founder of Peruvian indigenist painting. He was a central figure inspiring a generation of indigenismo artists who studied at the National School of Fine Arts under his direction between 1932 and 1943.

Peruvian poet, novelist and anthropologist José María Arguedas, was born of Spanish descent but was brought up Andean indigenous province of Andahuaylas. He drew upon Indian myth and folklore not for affect or color, but rather to contrast the authenticity of Indian culture against what he considered the artificiality of white civilization. His most famous and most-frequently cited novel is All Races, published in 1954.

This year, Peruvians celebrated the 100th anniversary of Aguedas’ birth, with public readings across the country of his 1964 novel All Races, as well as his book, Deep Rivers, which was published in 1958. That novel is considered one of Arguedas’ most important works, marking the start of the neo-indigenismo movement.

This article was written by Rick Vecchio, director of Fertur Peru Travel, a tour operator based in Lima and Cusco offering vacations in Peru and specializing in trips to Cuzco, the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu.