Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, Peru - Softcover

Mendoza, Zoila S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822341522 ISBN 13: 9780822341529

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In Creating Our Own, anthropologist Zoila S. Mendoza explores the early-twentieth-century development of the "folkloric arts"-particularly music, dance, and drama-in Cuzco, Peru, revealing the central role that these expressive practices played in shaping ethnic and regional identities. Mendoza argues that the folkloric productions emerging in Cuzco in the early twentieth century were integral to, rather than only a reflection of, the social and political processes underlying the development of the indigenismo movement. By demonstrating how Cuzco's folklore emerged from complex interactions between artists and intellectuals of different social classes, she challenges the idea that indigenismo was a project of the elites. Mendoza draws on early-twentieth-century newspapers and other archival documents as well as interviews with key artistic and intellectual figures and their descendants. She offers vivid descriptions of the Peruvian Mission of Incaic Art, a tour undertaken by a group of artists from Cuzco, at their own expense, to represent Peru to Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay in 1923-24, as well as of the origins in the 1920s of the Qosqo Center of Native Art, the first cultural institution dedicated to regional and national folkloric art. She highlights other landmarks, including both The Charango Hour, a radio show that contributed to the broad acceptance of rural Andean music from its debut in 1937, and the rise in that same year of another major cultural institution, the American Art Institute of Cuzco. Throughout, she emphasizes the intricate local, regional, national, and international pressures that combined to produce folkloric art, especially the growing importance of national and international tourism in Cuzco. Please visit the Web site http://nas.ucdavis.edu/creatingbook for samples of the images and music discussed in this book.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zoila S. Mendoza is Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Shaping Society through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes.

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"Revivals of local musical traditions are sometimes described as the creations of relatively wealthy groups and government policymakers. Zoila S. Mendoza's fascinating analysis of the roles of local actors in shaping folklore movements in Peru is highly relevant for studies in the rest of Latin America, the United States, and elsewhere."--Anthony Seeger, author of "Why Suya Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People"

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CREATING OUR OWN

Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, PeruBy ZOILA S. MENDOZA

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2008 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4152-9

Contents

List of Illustrations............................................................................................................ixPreface to the English Edition...................................................................................................xiAcknowledgments..................................................................................................................xiiiIntroduction: Revisiting Indigenismo and Folklore................................................................................1Chapter 1. The Misin Peruana de Arte Incaico and the Development of Artistic-Folkloric Production in Cuzco......................17Chapter 2. The Rise of Cultural Institutions and Contests........................................................................35Chapter 3. Touristic Cuzco, Its Monuments, and Its Folklore......................................................................65Chapter 4. La Hora del Charango: The Cholo Feeling, Cuzqueoness, and Peruvianness...............................................93Chapter 5. Creative Eervescence and the Consolidation of Spaces for "Folklore"...................................................125Epilogue: Who Will Represent What Is Our Own? Some Paradoxes of Andean Folklore Both Inside and Outside Peru.....................169Notes............................................................................................................................183Discography......................................................................................................................219Bibliography.....................................................................................................................221Index............................................................................................................................229

Chapter One

THE MISIN PERUANA DE ARTE INCAICO AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARTISTIC-FOLKLORIC PRODUCTION IN CUZCO

A key moment at which to begin our exploration of folkloric art in Cuzco is when the production of the music and dances that would shape a regional identity, as well as regional proposals for a national identity, previously closely connected with the development of the "Incaic theater," took on independent and active lives of their own and began to displace drama. Without completely abandoning the theater, many artists became creators and the driving force behind the cultural institutions and events that would promote artistic-folkloric creation throughout the twentieth century. At first, many of the cuadros costumbristas (traditional tableaux), musical pieces and dances that began to be depicted as representative of the Peruvian and cuzqueo identity, had been a part of these dramas or were directly derived from them and thus still had the Inca or Incaic as their central symbol. But, although it never completely vanished, the Inca theme gradually ceased to dominate the artistic scene while a more prominent role was awarded to themes that were recognized as representative of the contemporary world and/or cultural miscegenation.

It must be noted that in order to materialize the Inca aesthetic, from the beginning the renowned musicians of Cuzco and other provinces had used some elements derived from the contemporary rural repertoire (Romero 1988, 223-24). However, it was around the 1920s that the artists, themes, instruments, and styles belonging to the contemporary rural and popular urban worlds began to appear more openly and in force. Finally, it was also at this time that the artistic output took on a leading role in the efforts to develop the genuine cuzqueo and national identity.

The best way to illustrate this moment is to review some aspects of what was called the Misin Peruana de Arte Incaico (Peruvian Mission of Incaic Art), a performing troupe headed by the renowned indigenista Luis Valcrcel. Between October 1923 and January 1924, this artistic group, which was hailed as a Peruvian cultural embassy in both the national and foreign press, successfully took a repertoire of cuzqueo art to Buenos Aires, La Paz, and Montevideo, where audiences assumed that it was representative of Incaness, Peruvianness, and Americanness. The misin's experience, which was formed mostly by cuzqueo artists, is worth recalling for at least three interrelated reasons. First, it remains engraved in the memory of cuzqueo artists as a glorious moment when cuzqueo traditions, and Andean traditions in general, received well-deserved recognition both in Peru and abroad. Second, in the misin, as I try to show here, there were already mechanisms at work that would foster a convergence of the styles, traditions, individuals, and themes that would become more fully developed once Cuzco's cultural institutions took shape. Finally, everything seems to indicate that the successful experience of the misin stimulated not only the establishment of the Centro Qosqo de Arte Nativo, which was the first institution of this kind (and the most important and respected one in Cuzco nowadays), but also the establishment of all the institutions that followed it.

We must not forget that the misin was formed in the midst of the social and political changes brought about by President Augusto B. Legua during his eleven-year administration in 1919-30 (what is now known as the Oncenio). These changes were intrinsically connected to the expansion of the state and capitalism in Peru, as well as with Legua's dream of building a Patria Nueva (New Fatherland) that would modernize Peru through the transformation of its ancient political and economic structures. Legua tried to gain the support of the proletariat, the peasantry, and the middle class in order to consolidate his position vis--vis the old landed oligarchies. This led him to develop a populist rhetoric that echoed indigenista ideas. For instance, his administration supported the establishment of the Comit Pro-Indgena Tawantinsuyo (Tawantinsuyu Pro-Indian Committee), which was a pivotal actor in the political arena of the time and was formed by pro-Indian ideologues based in Lima, radical indigenistas from the provinces, and Indian leaders who identified themselves as such and came from different political backgrounds (De la Cadena 2000, 89). Legua likewise gave legal recognition to the communal property, agricultural land, and pastures of "Indian communities" and established the celebration of the Day of the Indian on June 24. During his second term of oce he likewise actively promoted the music and dance festival held on this date at the Pampa de Amancaes in Lima, which until then had only taken place as part of the feast day of Saint John.

This study of the Peruvian and cuzqueo experience of the misin will show that, although this group was led by intellectuals and artists with formal musical or artistic educations and some cosmopolitan influences (a knowledge of the classical and contemporary repertoires of Europe and the United States), it also included artists who came from a more popular, rural, and self-educated cuzqueo tradition. I will emphasize that the artistic output of the formally educated artists was strongly based on popular Andean urban and rural traditions that were considered indigenous from the standpoint of the city. I will likewise stress that in the misin's performances we have an early example of the convergence of individuals,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822341522
• ISBN 13: 9780822341529
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 254
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland