‘Con Altura’: La Paz, Bolivia - The Hidden Gem of the Andes

Source: The Guardian

By: Carla Suarez

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

La Paz, Bolivia, located at 3600m above sea level, is the highest capital city in the world and the hidden jewel of the Andes. Its imposing beauty will take your breath away (and so will the altitude!). After taking a combination of miraculous sorojchi pills and mate de coca to cure altitude sickness, any visitor to La Paz is set to start exploring the city. 

Calle Jaen, at the heart of the Casco Viejo. Source: Viator

Surrounded by the mystic Andean mountains of the Bolivian Altiplano, La Paz is a unique town that expands all over a bowl-shaped canyon, with variations in altitude and climate all around the city. The city centre, with its idiosyncratic mix of old colonial buildings and modern skyscrapers is the ideal place to get lost in an urban adventure. The never-ending competition of minibuses and trufis with the city-run buses known as puma kataris, could have you stuck in traffic for hours, so walking is definitely the best way to discover downtown La Paz. As you walk around the city, you will see different unique characters that are iconic to the city, such as the famous cholitas, street vendors and zebras. Yes, zebras. Citizens disguised as zebras are part of an urban education campaign created by the Alcaldía de La Paz to promote the use of crosswalks and have become an icon of the city ever since. The streets of La Paz are a marketplace of their own with a diverse range of products being sold by street vendors thanks to whom you will be able to find any Bolivian snack within a mile of anywhere you go, from the essential marraquetas (a smaller and typically Bolivian version of baguettes) to fresh pressed juices. Street food classics include the glorious salteña, the famous sandwich de chola (featured on Netflix’s Street Food Latin America) and the essential api con pastel.  

A casera of the Mercado de las Brujas in the Calle Sagarnaga. Source: Alone Dusty Roads

Downtown La Paz is composed of the Casco Viejo, San Pedro, San Jorge, Miraflores and Sopocachi. El Casco Viejo is where you will find the oldest colonial buildings, as well as La Plaza Murillo and ‘el Palacio Quemado’, the seat of government and the Congress. The famous Calle Jaen is the best-preserved colonial alley with colourful houses and museums. The Calle de las Brujas and Calle Sagarnaga, sitting behind the San Francisco Cathedral are also well-known tourist destinations where you will discover the Andean paraphernalia that tourists rave about. Sitting close by the ‘Witches Market’, the San Pedro jail is known for its infamous in-house cocaine lab and tourist tours. El Casco Viejo is the perfect place to try out the best of Bolivian cuisine with fine dining restaurants such as Popular and Ali Pacha offering a modern and high-end take on Bolivian staple dishes. For some of the best coffee, one of Bolivia’s premium products, you can head to Antigua Miami or HB Bronze and sip on a flat white accompanied by a dulce de leche alfajor. In San Jorge, the Cinemateca Boliviana hosts film screenings every day, displaying the best works of Bolivian cinema such as the movies of filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés. Miraflores hosts the highest football stadium in the world, the ‘Estadio Hernando Siles’ which is known for the unnecessary controversy that surrounds it in international football due to FIFA legislation against football matches at altitude. Sopocachi is the most bohemian and nostalgic neighbourhood in La Paz. Its 20th century architecture, vintage cars and cultural spaces have turned it into a vibrant and trendy cultural hub filled with up-and-coming restaurants and cafés such as Ahijada, Manq’a and Typica. 

Popular, one of the finest fusion cuisine restaurants in La Paz. Source: The Culture Trip / Popular Cocina Boliviana

Exploring La Paz in the Teleférico cable car allows you to explore the city from North to South within an hour while enjoying the breathtaking views. Jump into a cabin at one of the many stations and take a ride across the paceño sky. In the highest parts of the city, reachable through the Teleférico red line, you can find the colourful barrio of Chualluma, a revitalised commune with murals depicting the greatest cultural emblems of Bolivia. If you take a ride on the yellow and green lines you can reach the Zona Sur. Known for its warmer weather, it is primarily a residential area, however it is also home to some of the coolest restaurants and bars of the city such as Gustu, Phayawi, Tinto and Imilla Alzada. The Zona Sur is worth visiting for natural wonders such as the Valle de la Luna and the Valle de Las Ánimas. These valleys feature unique and spectacular rock formations, similar to the surface of the Moon, with some claiming that legendary astronaut Neil Armstrong once visited the Valle de la Luna and made the famous comparison. The Muela del Diablo, a tooth shaped mountain crowning the city’s landscape, is ideal to go on a hike which will culminate with some of the best views of La Paz. 

Valle de la Luna. Source: The Culture Trip

As you stroll around La Paz, you will notice the snow-capped Mount Illimani, the highest peak of the Cordillera Real, is always rising in the horizon. Its imposing and majestic figure melts into a natural embrace with the city laying underneath. When the sun sets, the mountains engage in a magical dance with the sky at dusk before it turns into the night, when the shining lights of the city transform into a veil of stars that elegantly covers La Paz. If you wish to enjoy your stay to the fullest, head to el Parque del Montículo to catch the best views La Paz can offer. 

The view from El Monticulo in Sopocachi: the Illimani and La Muela del Diablo crowing in the landscape. Source: Author credits

The surroundings of La Paz are also worth visiting. The mountains of the Altiplano and the tropical forest of the Yungas are stars of their own, found right outside of the metropolitan area of La Paz. North of La Paz, along the border with Peru, Lake Titicaca is a must for visitors. Tiwanaku and the Puerta del Sol, a monumental site of the Inca empire, is located close to Lake Titicaca. It only takes a two-hour drive to reach Copacabana, where you can visit the 16th century Basílica de Copacabana, home to an impressive colonial shrine made of gold from Potosi. Once in Copacabana, you can take a boat ride to reach the Isla del Sol where lies the birthplace of the first Incas, la Roca Sagrada, a sacred place in Aymara cosmovision. Trekking is another great activity to explore La Paz and its surroundings. The Tuni Condoriri mountain is a popular trekking route that leads to the mind-blowing sights of the Chiar Khota Lagoon. For the most adventurous kind, the Huayna Potosi mountain is ideal for mountain climbing. On the tropical end of the spectrum, Coroico is the ideal place to retreat. Located in the coffee region of Yungas, the town is mostly known for its Afro-Bolivian community, who have made substantial contributions to Bolivian culture, music and folklore.

Laguna Chiar Khota in Tuni Condoriri, Cordillera Real. Source: LatinX

Bolivia is home to surreal sites and natural wonders such as the Salar de Uyuni, the Desierto de Dalí and the Laguna Colorada in the Andes region. The Amazon forest hosts an incredible array of biodiversity in the Eastern lowlands of Bolivia. Cities such as Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and Sucre are also worth visiting for their colonial architecture, gastronomy and sights. Every year in February, the town of Oruro attracts visitors from all over the country as well as the world as it hosts the quintessential Carnaval de Oruro, a UNESCO World Heritage Masterpiece. Tarija, located in the southern valleys neighbouring Argentina, is known for its wine cellars and high-quality vino de altura. Bolivia is an adventure worth taking. 

Bolivia’s Iconic Salar de Uyuni served as a filming location for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Source: Uyuni Salt Flat

There is something about La Paz that is truly magnetic. La Paz is an eclectic city you will never forget and that will always bring a smile to your face when reminiscing about it. The cosmopolitan spirit of La Paz reflects on its urban culture and its up-and-coming culinary scene. Its majestic and imposing landscapes of mystic Andean mountains and clear blue skies are one of a kind. La Paz is a city like no other: the crown jewel of the Andes.

Carla is a Final-Year Student at King’s College London with a great interest in political economy, international relations and philosophy. Having spent most of her life moving between her homeland Bolivia, and her second homes, Chile, Colombia, Belgium and the United Kingdom, she developed a strong interest in Latin American cultural identity, political affairs and environmental issues and the portrayal of these topics in film and global media. 

Cultural Celebration or Economic Exploitation: Indigenous Identity in Peru

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/04/peru-indigenous-names-public-records

By: Clarice Benney*

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao'.

Peru’s geographical diversity is typically summarised in three words: sierra (mountainous Andean region), selva (the tropical Amazon rainforest), and costa (coastal cities, towns and villages). Travel companies often capitalise on this diversity, marketing it as an ideal holiday destination for the variety of environments, however this presentation often idealises the situation and fails to nuance how regionalisation can have a negative impact on individual experience. This article will explore how indigenous and Hispanic identities intersect to form Peru, with regard to economic generation, cultural exploitation, linguistic diversity and political representation.

Source: https://portal.andina.pe/edpespeciales/2018/diversidad/index.html

The mountainous Andean region, home to the cities of Cusco and cultural site of Machu Picchu, is also home to many of Peru’s Quechua communities. 60% of land in Peru is in the Amazon basin, and when looking at the demographic makeup of the Amazonas and Loreto provinces, there are a combined 32 indigenous groups. The coastal area is where the majority of Peru’s cities are based, but when looking at Peru’s entire coastline, the presence of indigenous communities decreases, as shown in the map to the right, and aside from some Quechua communities in Ancash there is no presence at all within 50 kilometres of the coast.

Source: https://www.minem.gob.pe/_publicacion.php?idSector=1&idPublicacion=557

Peru’s three largest industries are mining, fishing, and tourism. When considering how these industries ‘map out’, as shown in the map to the left, mining is being undertaken and explored in areas that seem to follow the spread of Quechua communities: in the Andean region from Arequipa to Ancash. For tourism, I would argue that it is more useful to understand why tourists come to Peru than where tourists go. In 2017, a survey found that the top four motives for visiting Per were to see the nature and natural landscape (60.7%), to see Machu Picchu (60.4%), for the Peruvian cuisine (59%), and to visit Cusco (55%). Machu Picchu is an archaeological site of an Incan settlement, built into the mountains and so remote that it survived the destruction of the Spanish conquistadores, and Cusco is its nearest city, and a popular destination for hiking and its impressive landscape. When visiting for gastronomy, the capital city of Lima is home to many good restaurants, but not the only place to take advantage of Peru’s rich culinary culture.

In terms of the residential population distribution in Peru, about 40% lives in the costa, 36% live in the sierra and 12% in the selva. Almost one third of the population lives in the Lima and Callao Metropolitan area. With this in mind, it does make sense that there would be a centralisation of resources in the Lima area, however the extent of the centralisation of resources appears somewhat exploitative, given that the industries which finance it are linked to the sierra and indigenous culture. However, it is not just about economic resources and recognition; when considering the importance of indigenous culture to tourism, Peru’s institutions often exclude and disadvantage indigenous communities.

In 2002, the cultural and linguistic diversity in Peru led to a law being passed that is commonly referred to as Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (EIB), which aims to promote indigenous languages and cultures, keeping the languages ‘alive’ by creating bilingual schools that teach in indigenous languages. In practice, this has led to the development of some schools that offer bilingual primary education. For example, in the Cusco region some primary schools give education in Quechua, the indigenous language in this area, but almost all secondary education is taught in Castilian Spanish. Whilst the motive behind EIB was good, it has created issues. For one, the ‘othering’ of non-Castilian speaking children, as EIB schools are seen as different and separate from non-EIB schools, which make up the majority. Additionally, EIB aside, there is a higher rate of leaving education between primary and secondary in indigenous communities due in part to the increased expense of accessing schools that are further away. This disproportionately affects girls, who are less likely to be given the opportunity if a family can only afford to send one child, and is choosing between a son and a daughter. What EIB can do is to heighten the risk of dropping out of education if a child is uncomfortable or unable to speak Castilian. To improve this situation would either require the development of EIB secondary schools or the inclusion of indigenous language and culture in the mainstream national curriculum in order to address the issue of marginalisation.

With regard to political representation of indigenous culture in Peru, until 1979 voting was only possible for those who could speak and write Castilian, and there have been a number of cultural conflicts in recent years. For example, in 2006, María Sumire had to repeat her ‘swearing-in’ three times, as she insisted on doing it in Quechua, her native language. In 2009, in what is now referred to as el Baguazo, Congress suspended 7 elected members, three of whom identified as indigenous, for supporting protests in favour of demands being made by indigenous communities. The demands came in response to a government move to loosen legislation regarding extraction of resources in the Amazon. The protests came to a head in a confrontation which saw both police and protestor casualties, but only the prosecution of protestors. The significance of removing these members of Congress cannot be overlooked, given that from 2001-2016 only 7 members of Congress identified as indigenous.

Peru’s diversity is part of its identity, and yet sadly this diversity has not yet led to the social equity necessary to avoid economic exploitation of indigenous people. The seeds are there in the form of the EIB and perception of Peru to outsiders, however in their current forms, neither of these potential factors for change are doing their jobs properly. As such, work to help restore this balance falls to individuals offering community services. I would like to highlight the work of three organisations operating in the Cusco area: Casa Mantay, Sacred Valley Project and Mosqoy. 

Casa Mantay provides a home for teenage mothers and their children and gives them the necessary support (both material and psychological) to continue their education, as well as giving them the opportunity to develop skills by working in their social enterprise, Taller Mantay, which produces artisan leather goods. Mantay has recently started having ‘Jueves de Quechua’ (Thursdays in Quechuan) for staff and girls, to recognise the importance of self-expression for those who speak Quechua as their native tongue, and to encourage non-native speakers to learn it. 

Sacred Valley Project provides dormitories in Cusco for girls from indigenous backgrounds to come during term time and receive support and community when they attend secondary school. Similarly, Mosqoy has dormitories for secondary students and they also work with mostly female-run weaving cooperatives in the Sacred Valley as part of the Q’ente Society Textile Revitalization Programme, to give them an outlet to sell to international markets. This connects women’s often unacknowledged labour with a fair income source, fostering financial independence in their families, greater provision for their children, and a central, respected place in the rural economy.

Clarice is a student studying Spanish at Cambridge University. She is currently on her ‘year abroad’ and working with the NGO Latin American Foundation for the Future (LAFF) as Communications Coordinator. LAFF operates in Cusco, Peru and so Clarice is particularly interested in Peruvian current affairs, as well as protest culture in Latin American and grassroots activism. 

*About LAFF:

Latin American Foundation for the Future (LAFF) is a UK registered charity operating in Cusco, Peru to increase access to quality education and personal development opportunities. LAFF believes that one of the best ways to create positive long term change is to support local grassroots organisations so that community leaders drive the change. To find out more about what we do, check out our website.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laffcharity/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/latin-american-foundation-for-the-future

Literature: Alienation and Decentering in Borges’ “El Aleph

Source: https://www.bookdepository.com/es/Aleph-Other-Stories-Jorge-Luis-Borges/9780142437889

By: Nazreen Shivlani

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

Common, I hope, is the feeling of detachedness from daily chores that taints everything with grotesque oddness. While brushing my hair, I may stare at myself in the mirror and see that body as so strange, those arms as so alien. At a stranger time, I decided the touch of the soil under my feet to be a most captivating feeling. Each time the enchanted moments pass, I recall having been thinking about something greatly important, though I am unable to identify even the character of such great thoughts and so resume my day with an aftertaste of strangeness. Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges talks about similar moments in some of his short stories. This text picks up on small sections from Borges’ “El Aleph” about experiencing things from outside of ourselves, resulting in a form of alienation and decentering.

“El Aleph” is the last short story in Borges’ book of the same title. Aleph is a Hebrew letter written “א”, used in set theory to denote “the size of infinite sets that can be well-ordered” – take this definition, retrieved from Wikipedia and by someone who knows little maths, lightly. The short story tells the tale of a man, Borges, who goes to visit Carlos Argentino Danieri, the cousin of his deceased love interest. Danieri, a snobby aspiring poet, is about to be kicked out of his house. While pleading with a nostalgic Borges for help, Danieri says he doesn’t want to lose his house because it has the Aleph, a point in space which contains every point in space. When a reluctant Borges goes to see this mysterious object, he ends up astounded as he is indeed able to see every point in the universe:

“Cada cosa (la luna del espejo, digamos) era infinitas cosas, porque yo claramente la veía desde todos los puntos del universo” (Borges, 8).

“Everything (the surface of the mirror, for instance) was an infinite number of things, because I could clearly see it from every point in the universe”.

This remarkable experience took place when the fictional Borges lay down, as instructed by his friend, in the darkness of Danieri’s basement while staring at the nineteenth step of the staircase. In the middle of an entrancing description of all of the Aleph’s sights, Danieri interrupts our protagonist, humouring the reader at the realization of our own annoyance at Borges’ friend:

“– ¡Qué observatorio formidable, che Borges! 

(...) En la brusca penumbra, acerté a levantarme y a balbucear: 

–Formidable. Sí, formidable. 

La indiferencia de mi voz me extrañó. Ansioso, Carlos Argentino insistía: 

–¿Lo viste todo bien, en colores?” (Borges, 9).

“‘What a formidable observatory, hey Borges!’

(...) In the abrupt gloom, I was able to get up and mumble, ‘Formidable. Yes, formidable.’ The indifference of my voice surprised me. Anxious, Carlos Argentino insisted, ‘You saw it all well, in colour?’”.

Borges, the author, takes us through the perfect journey. First, a fast-paced multiplicity of descriptions of the Aleph which makes us feel as though we are ourselves experiencing all the points of the universe at once. The fact that we are reading a description, which reminds us that we are not actually experiencing the Aleph, is now mixed with the feeling of experiencing it through the eyes of character-Borges, itself a further point of view encapsulated by this mythical Aleph. This self-awareness of the reader as distinct from the protagonist enables us to notice that the transcendence of character-Borges happens in part because he is able to see reality outside of himself. He finds himself so detached that the world he sees cannot even see him:

“Vi todos los espejosdel planeta y ninguno me reflejó” (Borges, 9) / “I saw all the mirrors of the world and none of them reflected me”.

The viewpoint from the Aleph “corresponds therefore to a fixed sliding of the whole universe, to a decentralization of the world which undermines the centralization which (we are) simultaneously effecting” (Sartre, 255). We get a feeling that at this point, indeed, in his alienation, character-Borges transcends himself. Could it be that when the point of view shifts and the world becomes decentralized, we can realize some eternal truths? Could it be that when we are so alienated that we don’t recognize our bodies as our own and seem to be discovering some external vague truth, the self transcends?

Such a transcendence from the self is something we will never experience– not only because we cannot possibly see first-hand the parts of the world that we do not go to or because we will not experience feelings from the perspective of another person, but because we may never get to know if there is something out there and if it is as we see it. When we stare at nature and absent-mindedly believe to have found a truth about it, could we really have experienced it as it truly, pristinely is? And could the Aleph finally free character-Borges of the fixed point of view that so excruciatingly traps us? Author-Borges expertly escalates our claustrophobia when alluding to other limits of our experience such as language. Only when he is interrupted by Danieri is the protagonist forced to descend back inside of himself, dazedly stepping into his encapsulating point of view to utter a response. This interruption marks the end of Borges’ reverie, as he is called back to reality.

Next in this expedition, the author humours us with hindsight. If author-Borges tried, as I implied, to show that character-Borges (or more broadly perhaps, the subject) transcends himself by annulling the “I” as the starting point, it seems nothing remarkable after the description-induced hypnosis. Naturally, the subject should transcend their subjectivity in order to experience objectivity – which was framed in the present text as the absolute freedom of experiencing a pristine world. Re-reading the previous paragraph, we realize that what to me felt as epiphanies when reading, were quite obvious all along. Of course, there are points in Borges’ writing that draw us into the story and points where we get distracted and realize that we are distinct from character-Borges; surely, not pondering over how we can only see reality from our own point of view for the best part of our lives reflects that this is a plainly obvious fact and not that our minds have not reached the grand depths. Still, in the context of “El Aleph”, Borges’ writing is incredibly ingenious because it is able to take us through the loopiest of thoughts only to drag us back to our living rooms, making us feel like the snobby Danieri that so annoyed us.

Finally, we reach the last stage of Borges’ trip: forgetting. Because character-Borges is fully immersed at every step of his journey, unable to think himself at any step other than the present one, his life after the Aleph feels absolutely normal. This is much like our feelings as we accompany the protagonist in his journey, aided by the author’s magical realism which makes everything appear wholly natural. Natural, yes, but it appears absurd too, from the outside, that such a mind-blowing event should be followed by the same good old daily chores as always. At the end, character-Borges forgets the specificity of what he recalled when looking at the Aleph, remaining only with the memory of an indescribable intensity. This touches upon the possibility that reality is limited and that it is created in its totality by language and memories.

Borges’ “El Aleph” takes us through a journey similar to what we feel during those moments of detachedness from what surrounds us. We may personally relate to character-Borges when we enter those strange and somewhat happy feelings of alienation that come to us under peculiar circumstances, the short minutes when we feel that we experience things from outside of ourselves, as if some thoughts feel awkward when experienced from our own point of view and they would rather be outside of us. When our eyes, perplexed, must begin to understand every part of what they are seeing, getting us bewildered at the novelty of normal views because we truly see things as if for the first time, it seems to me that we may experience something like Borges’ Aleph.

Nazreen is a KCL student interested in development, philosophy, and literature, focused on Latin America.

Four Pillars of New Latin American Narrative (part I): Felisberto Hernández y Horacio Quiroga

Sources: https://sujetos.uy/2012/01/05/felisberto-hernandez-en-el-canon-narrativo-uruguayo/ and http://librosquearden.com/biografia-horacio-quiroga/

By: Luisa Ripoll Alberola

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

 Where does Latin American literature come from? What gave birth to its voice? The modern Latin American literature is genuine and differs notably from the occidental tradition. This was first globally manifested with the Latin American Boom–the literary movement that united many young Latin American novelists in the 60s and spread their work around the globe. The Latin American Boom seems to be the beginning of the assertion of this new voice in the literary world. And thiscould be the reason why Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar – among others – are so popular. 

I wondered if these authors had been some kind of geniuses to create such a new and original form of written expression unexpectedly. What did they read? What was their inspiration? What features were picked up from other literary movements? One day, I found the answers to these questions hiding in a prologue in the words of Carlos Fuentes. His opinion shows these influences in four essential Latin American authors. According to Fuentes; Felisberto Hernández, Roberto Arlt, Horacio Quiroga and Macedonio Fernández are the four fundamental pillars to the renewal of the 20th century narrative. 

‘Renewal that connects with the coexistence of imagination and critique, ambiguity, humour and parody, and the generating capacity of myths–whose encounter converts these aesthetic operators in disruption of the language and literary history. Also because of the establishment of a diversifyingmovement, critical and ambiguous, radically different from the perspective and aesthetic approaches of the old naturalist novel.’  1

To satisfy my curiosity, I started reading one important book per each author –these were written around the 1920s. Hereafter, I will tackle my reading experience with these not-widely-known classics of the Latin American literature. 

Felisberto Hernández

Inspired by my local bookseller, who did his doctoral thesis about him, Felisberto Hernández was the first author I approached. Uruguayan musician and writer (1902-1964), he spent all of his life in Montevideo. I read one of his more popular storybooks: Nadie encendía las lámparas (No One Lit the Lamps). His short stories are homely, calm and without overdone, dramatic effects. The characters seem to be sleeply taken by a great dream.

The style of the renewed Latin American narrative is vivid, visual, colourful and sincere. These attributes are usually related with childhood because when we were young, we received the gift of life purely and happily. As we explored the world for the first time, everything had a new colour, a new taste. Life was marked by these feelings and by the illusion of discovery. The writer, in his adultness, can get close to these memories by a combined act of remembering and imagining. Latin American writers often use this literary resource and make their readers feel alike. The genres that get closer to this innocent and childlike view of life are poetry and specially the tale. Hernández mostly explored this genre, publishing nine storybooks.

From my point of view, his definitive contribution is the intimal link between his literature and his music. Hernández himself was a pianist and a composer. The lifestyle and music in the American continent dictate a rhythm that only him was able to transcribe. It is said that his book Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling (By the Time of Clemente Colling) achieves the ‘painting of piano lessons’. This relation between sound and written word is more profound than just alluding to famous singers, as it happens in other more modern books like Rayuela(Hopscotch) with jazz.

Horacio Quiroga

I followed by reading Historia de un amor turbio (A Murky Love Story), a short novel by Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937). Quiroga is Uruguayan, but he lived most of his life in Misiones, Argentina, close to nature. He died in Buenos Aires, but his legacy lived on in the works of BioyCasares, who he influenced. In Quiroga’s work I already recognised that sincere, shoddy way of expression, that had only been used by children until then. Just as Hernández, he devoted himself to tales such as Cuentos de la selva (Jungle Tales), Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (Stories of Love, Madness and Death), among others. 

Quiroga was a cinema passionate, just like Jorge Luis Borges. He was one of the first silent films critic of his generation, and he wrote articles in different magazines (Caras y caretas, El Hogar, La Nación…)2. Films had a great influence in the visual richness of his stories and inhis notorious experimentation with time –he makes use of ellipsis of time, just as cinema does. 

One characteristic that caught my attention is that he introduces nature so decisively that it seems just like another character of the story. On many occasions, the forest, the jungle, or the river, accompany the leadcharacter in his successes and his death. In others, the main characters are animals, making notorious his influence by Kipling. Definitely, his work is deeply rooted and embedded with Latin American landscape and the tropical forest. 

But the main theme of many of his stories is love. He portrays tradition, courtship, social classes, and all the conventions surrounding love. They are stories of tangible realities. Edgar Allan Poe was another of his influences; in his stories one can take notice of his sharply descriptive style. Quiroga already has some brilliant moments in the use of metaphor and anticipation and retrospection. 

By the time I read Quiroga’s books, I had already connected deeply with my experiment. Inside me, there was plenty of energy to continue reading and reviewing Carlos Fuentes’ chosen authors. Soon you will be able to read the second part of my journey with them and share my impressions about Macedonio Fernández and Roberto Arlt.

Bibliography

1 Enriqueta Morillas, “Prólogo” a Nadie encendía las lámparas, p. 18. Editorial Cátedra, Madrid, 2010. (Thetranslation is mine)

2 Many of these articles are collected in Horacio Quiroga, Cine y literatura, editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 2007. 

Luisa is a Spanish 3rd Year Industrial Engineering student at the Technical University of Madrid. She is passionate about literature and philosophy.