Alcides Arguedas

I thought it was time to continue my tour of Latin America by way of the classics of early-20th century regionalist fiction, this time dropping in on a place that I once had the great pleasure of visiting: Lago Titicaca and the surround Bolivian highlands. Alcides Argüedas's story takes place on its shores, where Pedro Pantoja owns the land inhabited by an Aymara community and brutally exploits his indigenous serfs, just like his father did before him. In the beginning of the story, Agiali, a strong-willed and relatively affluent member of the community, takes the ring of Wata-Wara, a beautiful young woman whom he intends to marry. This symbolic theft (along with her willingness to part with the ring) represents his formal engagement to her, and he's happy as he prepares to set off the next day to buy seed for the community to plant in the spring. Wata-Wara mentions that she has been called to work at the patrón's house, and Agiali, knowing what that means, asks her not to, although he's pretty much resigned to the fact that it's out of his control, and that his love for Wata-Wara will have to withstand his feelings of jealousy based on what he assumes the patrón will ask her to do in his service while he's gone. This short beginning sets the stage for the story that will unfold in the pages to come, with the Pantoja-Wata-Wara relationship providing the basis for a violent ending to the relationship between the indigenous community members and their mestizo ruler. In between, the beautiful landscapes and the hardships of indigenous life are illustrated in great detail, with changing seasons giving the author a chance to document not only the plant and animal life of the lake, but also the agricultural cycle and the major holidays celebrated by the Aymara descendents of the Inca empire.

The entire first part of the book, which documented Agiali's journey with three other community members across the orchards and fertile fields of las Yungas, was my favorite because it helped me remember the specific late-summer moment when I was in Bolivia, and many of the fruits and local crops were recognizable to me because I had tasted them while I was there. Their trip, which nearly destroyed their animals and cost two of the four men their lives, introduced the climate of suffering and forced labor imposed on the Aymara community by the landowner. They were made to trek across hostile terrain, during a time of year when the creeks were swollen to the point that they could only be forded with great peril, all so that they could buy grain at a cheaper price than the patrón would have paid closer to home. The middle of the book dragged a little bit, and as the seasons changed it seemed like the author was too focused on the landscape and the different major events of the community's calendar year, with the narrative falling by the wayside. Different events seemed to pop up only so that the author could document weddings, funerals and other community events, and while I enjoyed it for the most part, I found myself wishing that the story would shift back to the inevitable series of events leading up to the confrontation between oppressors and oppressed. Eventually, Pantoja brought some of his friends to his home in order to show them a good time and go hunting, and things got interesting again. One of his buddies, Suárez, was a young poet who had a very progressive (if naïve) view on the indigenous peoples' lot in Bolivian society. He had some passionate arguments with the two landowners and the fourth member of their party, another thoughtful young man whose head was a bit less in the clouds than the young poet, and who straddled both sides of the argument. I enjoyed reading the landowners' justification for their barbaric treatment of the community members, especially in contrast with the arguments of the progressive poet. As they argued, the events began their slow climb toward the final showdown, and I happily enjoyed the last fifty pages of the book.

I am willing to mostly forgive this book its shortcomings because of how well brought the lake and the Bolivian countryside to life. This is how I generally feel about the major regionalist novels: They are worthwile to me as snapshots of Latin America at a time when artists across the region were beginning to discover the marvelous potential of the worlds that surrounded them, painting the landscapes and peoples of their countries into compelling narratives in order to open the eyes of the rest of the world as to the beauty of Latin America. I believe that time is on the side of the 21st-century reader of these texts, because I assume for every Doña Bárbara or Don Segundo Sombra, hundreds of mediocre texts have fallen by the wayside. I understand why people look at the regionalist texts of the early twentieth century as not much more than stepping stones in the development of the region's literature, building a foundation of regional representations that paved the way for the major works of "universal" literature that were produced in Latin America during the middle half of the 20th century. And it's true, I often do find more satisfaction in the books that, while they are clearly set in a place in Latin America, whether it be a city, a rural community or the jungle, don't bash you over the head with the names of all the local species of flora and fauna, and descriptions of all the unique characteristics of the people and their customs. However, sometimes I like to take a little vacation back in time to a specific place in Latin America, learn all about it, and read a reasonably-entertaining story at the same time. In this exercise in literary travel, I'm glad to have a compelling representation of the Bolivian highlands that I can return to when I want to be taken back to a place that I very much enjoyed visiting.

I also enjoyed the author's documentation of indigenous Bolivians' situation at that time, from the perspective of both the oppressors and the oppressed. The arguments between the mestizo landowners, as well as the voiced complaints of the community members suffering enormous abuses at the hands of the man who "owns" their ancestral land, all helped me better understand the different currents of indigenist thought as they stood in the early 20th century, which in turn helps me understand the ideological debates in present-day Bolivia a bit better as well. The author's personal viewpoint seems to be somewhat negative with respect to indigenous customs and practices, and I often thought that his depiction of the Aymara community suffered as a result of this. There was one moment that I found particularly distasteful, when, during a funeral in which the community members drank a large amount of alcohol, he described the drunken family members rather brutally and didn't seem to be able to understand their actions; he depicts them almost as savages. In general, I didn't get the felling that he was trying to understand the indigenous community he was depicting, and the book was written from more of an educated outsider's perspective. I wondered if men like him were the ones who later introduced policies of "mestizaje" and "cholification" into Bolivian political society, and I thought that Mr. Argüedas and I probably wouldn't see eye to eye on a lot of diversity-related issues. He does seem to be earnestly concerned about the ethnic issues troubling Bolivia, but his viewpoint lacks a certain degree of understanding and respect for different cultures. However, regardless of his viewpoint, his story clearly placed indigenous communities, such as the Aymara community depicted here, on the moral high ground of the struggle with European/mestizo landowners.

Raza de bronce wasn't my favorite regionalist book (I prefer Doña Bárbara, Don Segundo Sombra and Huasipungo, out of the few examples that I've read), nor was it my favorite indigenist book (I far prefer José María Argüedas's Los rios profundos). Nonetheless, it was a solid and enjoyable example of both. My next stop on my regionalist travels will be Cuba, because I have a copy of Alejo Carpentier's Ecue-Yambe-O, Novela afro-cubana. I'm interested to read an example of the genre written by a man whose later, more "universal" work I enjoy and admire.… (meer)