Writing in the Air: Heterogeneity and the Persistence of Oral Tradition in Andean Literatures - Softcover

Polar, Antonio Cornejo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822354322 ISBN 13: 9780822354321

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Originally published in 1994, Writing in the Air is one of the most significant books of modern Latin American literary and cultural criticism. In this seminal work, the influential Latin American literary critic Antonio Cornejo Polar offers the most extended articulation of his efforts to displace notions of hybridity or "mestizaje" dominant in Latin American cultural studies with the concept of heterogeneity: the persistent interaction of cultural difference that cannot be resolved in synthesis. He reexamines encounters between Spanish and indigenous Andean cultural systems in the New World from the Conquest into the 1980s. Through innovative readings of narratives of conquest and liberation, homogenizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses, and contemporary Andean literature, he rejects the dominance of the written word over oral literature. Cornejo Polar decenters literature as the primary marker of Latin American cultural identity, emphasizing instead the interlacing of multiple narratives that generates the heterogeneity of contemporary Latin American culture.

About this title

About the Author

Antonio Cornejo Polar (1936–1997) was an internationally acclaimed Peruvian literary and cultural critic. He taught and served as Rector at the National University of San Marcos in Lima. Over the course of his career, he held visiting professorships in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Cornejo Polar wrote eleven books and founded and edited the well-respected journal Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinaomericana.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Writing IN THE AIR

Heterogeneity and the Persistence of Oral Tradition in Andean Literatures

By ANTONIO CORNEJO POLAR, LYNDA J. JENTSCH

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-5432-1

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................
vii
Foreword by Jean Franco....................................................
ix
INTRODUCTION...............................................................
1
CHAPTER 1 Voice and the Written Word in the Cajamarca "Dialogue"...........
13
CHAPTER 2 The Sutures of Homogeneity: Discourses of Impossible Harmony....
59
CHAPTER 3 Stone of Boiling Blood: The Challenges of Modernization.........
113
OVERTURE...................................................................
165
Notes......................................................................
173
Index......................................................................
209

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Voice and the Written Wordin the Cajamarca "Dialogue"

Understanding Latin American literature as a complex systemof multifaceted conflicts and contradictions carries a principleobligation: to examine the basic duality of literature's structuralmechanisms, that is, orality and writing. This problem precedesand is deeper than bi- or multilingualism and diglossia in that itaffects the very materiality of discourse.

In literary production, orality and writing have their own codesand histories and are based on two strongly differentiated rationalities,with a wide and complicated zone of interactions separatingthem. In Latin America this zone is exceptionally fluidand complex, especially if one rightly assumes that its literature isnot solely the one that the lettered elite write in Spanish or otherEuropean languages, and the one that can become quite unintelligibleif its links with orality are severed.

It is certainly possible to distinguish the many shapes that therelationship between oral and written literature may take, severalof which have been treated exhaustively by philologists, especiallythe conversion of oral discourse into written texts (for example,Homeric poetry). In other cases, however, as in Amerindian literatures,classical philological instruments seem to be insufficient.

THE CAJAMARCA CHRONICLE

I would like to first examine what could be called "ground zero"of this interaction, or the point at which orality and writing donot merely reveal their differences but evidence their mutualestrangement and their reciprocal, aggressive repulsion. This point of frictionis documented and, in the case of Andean history, even has a concretedate, setting, and cast of characters. I am referring to the "dialogue" betweenAtahuallpa Inca and Father Vicente Valverde in Cajamarca on theafternoon of November 16, 1532.

This is not the origin of our literature, which goes back to the lengthyhistory lived and breathed long before the conquest, but it is the mostvisible beginning of the heterogeneity that has characterized Peruvian,Andean, and, in large part, Latin American literary production ever since.Obviously in other areas of the Americas there are situations similar to theone acted out by Atahuallpa and Valverde in Cajamarca.

For my purposes let us put aside for the moment the commentaries concerningthe inevitable miscommunication between two people who speakdifferent languages. Neither is it very helpful to analyze the job well orpoorly done by Felipillo (or Martinillo), one of the first interpreters utilizedby the conquistadors. My focus is on the clash between orality, formalizedhere by the supreme voice of the Inca, and writing, which in thiscase becomes incarnate in the book of the West, the Bible, or a text derivedfrom it, all of which sets in motion an extensive and complicated series ofacts and repercussions.

I shall first describe the event according to the chronicles, then brieflyexamine its vestiges in several ritual dances and songs and, more thoroughly,in "theatrical" texts that, despite their common theme being Atahuallpa'sexecution, consistently include sporadic references to the topic Iintend to study. Nevertheless I need to clarify why I give such importanceto an event that in principle seems to have no other relationship to literaturesave that it has been the point of reference for many chronicles andother, later texts.

At issue is a broad concept of literature that assumes a complete circuitof literary production, including the reception of the message andattempts to explain the problematics of orality, to mention just two basicpoints. But above all it has to do with something much more importantthat to this day continues to leave its mark on the richly textured fabricof our written culture and the whole of social life in Latin America: thehistoric destiny of two ways of thinking that from their first encounterrepelled each other because of the very linguistic material in which theywere formalized. This presages not only a series of more profound and dramaticconfrontations, but also the complexity of processes of transculturaloverlapping. With the Cajamarca "dialogue" both the great discourses thatfor five centuries have expressed and constituted the abysmal condition ofthis part of the world and the inevitable dissonances and contradictionsamong the various literatures produced here are in nuce.

In other words, Valverde's and Atahuallpa's gestures and words may notbe "literature," but they compromise its very material on the decisive levelthat distinguishes voice from written word, thereby constituting the originof a complex literary institutionality, fragmented in its own base. It couldbe said that they allow for the interplay of several discourses, especiallythe Bible (which, even in its sweeping universality, also seems to relate tothe intertext peculiar to Andean literature), the longstanding discourseof imperial Spain, and the one that from then on came to be globalized as"Indian" (obviating even more Andean ethnic differences) with its signifiersof defeat, resistance, and revenge. Together they contain the seedbedof a never-ending story.

These gestures and words serve to condense the historical-symbolicmemory of the two sides of the conflict and therefore are so frequentlyreproduced in the imaginaries of their literatures. At the same time theyconstitute the emblem of the tenacious Latin American preoccupation thatthe pertinence (or not) of the language with which it represents itself includesthe image of the other.

There are few testimonies of those present at Cajamarca. All are, obviously,from the Spanish side. As cases in point, I offer these: "When Atabalivahad advanced to the center of the open space, he stopped, and a DominicanFriar, who was with the Governor, came forward to tell him, on thepart of the Governor, that he waited for him in his lodging, and that he wassent to speak with him. The Friar then told Atabaliva that he was a Priest,and that he was sent there to teach the things of the Faith, if they shoulddesire to be Christians. He showed Atabaliva a book that he carried in hishands, and told him that that book contained the things of God. Atabalivaasked for the book, and threw it on the ground, saying: — 'I will not leavethis place until you have restored all that you have taken in my land. I knowwell who you are, and what you have come for.'"

The Marquis don Francisco Pizarro, having seen that Atahuallpa wascoming, sent Father Friar Vicente de Valverde, first bishop of Cuzco,Hernando de Aldana, a fine soldier, and don Martinillo, an interpreter,to go and speak with Atahuallpa and to require him, by God and theKing, to subject himself to the law of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the serviceof His Majesty, and to tell him that the Marquis would treat himas a brother and would not consent to there being committed outragenor damage in his land. The Father having arrived at the litter on whichAtahuallpa was being carried, spoke to him and told what he had comefor and preached about our Holy Faith, this being declared to him bythe interpreter. The Father was carrying a breviary in his hands, fromwhich he read what he was preaching to him. Atahuallpa asked for it,and he gave it to him closed, and since he did not know how to open itwhen it was in his hands, he threw it to the ground.... After this Atahuallpa,calling them scoundrels and thieves, told them to go away, andthat he was to kill them all.

[And a friar from the order of Santo Domingo carried] a cross in hishand, wishing to tell [the Inca] the things of God, and he said that theChristians were his friends, and that the lord governor loved him dearlyand that he should enter his dwelling in order to see him. [Atahuallpa]replied that he would not advance further until the Christians returnedall they had stolen from him. Leaving this discussion to one side, thefriar with a book in his hand began telling him the things of God that heneeded to know. And [Atahuallpa] did not want to accept them. But heasked for the book and the friar gave it to him thinking that he was goingto kiss it, and he took it and threw it down. And the priest turned roundshouting and saying, "Come forth, come forth Christians, and attackthese dogs our enemies, who do not want the things of God. Becausethis cacique has thrown the book of our holy law on the ground!"

Seeing this, the Governor asked the Father Friar Vicente if he wishedto go and speak to Atabaliba, with an interpreter. He replied that he didwish it, and he advanced, with a cross in one hand and the Bible in theother, and going amongst the people up to the place where Atabalibawas, thus addressed him: "I am a Priest of God, and I teach Christiansthe things of God, and in like manner I came to teach you. What I teachis that which God says to us in this Book. Therefore, on the part of Godand of the Christians, I beseech you to be their friend, for such is God'swill, and it will be for your good. Go and speak to the governor, whowaits for you." Atabaliba asked for the Book, that he might look at it, andthe Priest gave it to him closed. Atabaliba did not know how to open it,and the Priest was extending his arm to do so, when Atabaliba, in greatanger, gave him a blow on the arm, not wishing that it should be opened.Then he opened it himself, and, without any astonishment at the lettersand paper, as had been shown by other Indians, he threw it away fromhim five or six paces, and, to the words which the monk had spoken tohim through the interpreter, he answered with much scorn, saying: "Iknow well how you have behaved on the road, how you have treated myChiefs, and taken the cloth from my storehouses."

... Father Vicente Valverde, of the Order of Preachers, who laterwas Bishop of that land, with the Bible in his hand and together withMartin, an interpreter, made their way through the crowd in order tobe able to speak with Atahuallpa, to whom he began to tell things aboutHoly Scripture and that Our Lord Jesus Christ commanded that amongHis people there be neither war nor discord, but rather full peace; andthat he in His name thus requested and required the same of him ... atwhich these and many other words that the friar told him, he was quietand without answer; and saying again that he look at what God commanded,which was written in that book in his hand, marveling, in myopinion more at the writing than at what was written there, he askedfor the book and opened and turned its pages, looking at the printingand order of it, and having seen it, he threw it among the people, sayingwith great ire and a flaming face, "Tell them to come hence, for I shallnot leave here until they give account and satisfy and pay for what theyhave done in my land."

Scholars have shown that the conquest's first eyewitnesses were not entirelyreliable (especially with regard to cultural behaviors and artifactsof the Tawantinsuyu) and were barely understandable through amateurand sometimes biased interpreters. Furthermore this was a case of a bilingual"dialogue," mediated by one of these interpreters and in whose transcription(to confuse the matter even more) reality might well have beenmixed with dialogistic stereotypes from classical historiography or chivalricnovels, although I sense that these interferences and those from the romancerosbecame more pronounced as time progressed.

In any case there is a definable common theme in these testimonials:Valverde, through an interpreter, requires that the Inca be subject to Christianbeliefs and the rule of imperial Spain and gives him a sacred book(presumably the Bible or a breviary) that Atahuallpa in the end throws onthe ground. With subtle differences in the renderings, this act provides therationale for the unleashing of the conquistadors' violent military machine.Although it is clear that no historical retelling is an exact replica of whatreally happened, there is all indication that the versions noted here seemto "reproduce" events that did indeed happen, as well as some of the exactwords that were spoken. But even if one were to doubt the veracity of thenarration out of excessive skepticism or for other reasons (Inca Garcilasode la Vega roundly refutes it and Martín de Murúa alludes to the fact thateach one relates the episode according to his interests), the subject matterthat the Cajamarca witnesses recount possesses sufficient symbolic consistencyto be retold countless times (from the colony to the present) inchronicles and other accounts produced by those who could draw uponboth written and oral tradition. Obviously the cited texts originate in theformer, but the understudied oral tradition is most probably based on amuch more varied array of sources.

It is impossible to present here an exhaustive compilation of all laterversions, but most of them clearly expand upon and/or stylize the materialin the first accounts, although the fact remains that their roots are not onlyfound in the written tradition but also in the oral, which seems to take aparallel path. Examples of expansions are found in texts by Agustín deZarate or Francisco López de Gómara, who "transcribe" (or rather imagine)Father Valverde's long speech: a prolix recounting of Catholic dogmaand the King's ordinances derived from the text of the requerimiento draftedby Juan López de Palacios Rubios in 1512. Despite its length it is useful tocite Zarate's version:

Then the bishop, Fray Vicente de Valverde, came forward with a breviaryin his hand and expounded how One God in three persons had createdheaven and earth and all that was in it, and had made Adam, who wasthe first man on earth, taking his wife Eve from his rib, whereby wewere all engendered, and how by the disobedience of our first parentswe had fallen into sin and could not achieve the grace of seeing God orgoing to heaven until our Redeemer Christ was born of a virgin to saveus, as a result of which He received His death and passion; and thatafter His death He was reborn in glory, and remained in the world for ashort time before rising to heaven, leaving in His place Saint Peter andhis successors who lived at Rome and whom we Christians called popes;and how the popes had divided the whole world between the Christianprinces and kings, entrusting each with a task of conquest; and that thisprovince of Atahuallpa's had been assigned to His Majesty the Emperorand King Don Carlos, our master; and that he had sent Don FranciscoPizarro to represent him as governor and inform Atahuallpa on behalfof God and the Emperor of all that he had just said; that if Atahuallpachose to believe and receive the waters of baptism and obey him, as didthe greater part of Christendom, the Emperor would defend and protecthim, maintaining peace and justice in the land and preserving hisliberties as he did those of other kings and lords who accepted his rulewithout the risk of war; but if Atahuallpa were to refuse, the Governorwould make cruel war on him with fire and sword, and lance in hand.

Atahuallpa's response is rendered by Francisco López de Gómara as

Atahuallpa responded very angrily that, being free, he did not desire tobecome a tributary nor hear that there might be another, greater lordthan he; nevertheless, he would be glad to be a friend to the emperorand make his acquaintance, because he must be a great prince, since hesent as many armies as they said throughout the world; he said that hewould not obey the Pope, because he gave away what was not his andwould not leave his father's kingdom to someone who had never seenit. And, as for religion, he said that his own was very good and that hewas contented with it and neither wanted nor was obliged to questionsuch an ancient and well proven matter, and Christ died and the Sunand Moon never died.

The not-so-ingenuous process of stylization is made obvious by comparingthe above text with Jerónimo Benzoni's, which derives from it: "Whenthe king had heard all this, he said that he would live in friendship withthe monarch of the world; but it did not seem, to him, incumbent on a freeking to pay tribute to a person whom he had never seen: and that the pontiffmust be a great fool, giving away so liberally the property of others. As tothe religion, he would on no account abandon his own; for if they believedin Christ who died on the cross, he believed in the Sun, who never died."

No doubt such textual sequences depend heavily on not only theliterary-historiographic codes employed but also the transformations inSpanish oral memory and the receptivity of the narrator for native oralmemory. These are obviously related to the ideological and social interestsimplicit in the subject of the text. For example, the approval or disapprovalof the conquistadors' behavior, especially by Valverde, usually shiftsfrom the direct expression of this judgment to the "objective" narration ofthe events, or vice versa.

Such is the case in the chronicle by Pedro Cieza de León, who condemnsFather Valverde's action ("so that [the Inca] could understand, he shouldhave said it in a different way"), adds information about the fear motivatingthe priest's actions, and extrapolates a general judgment about clericalbehavior ("the friars here only preach where there is no danger"), thuscasting doubt on the veracity of the long discourse that Pizarro's chaplainwas to have pronounced. Likewise Miguel Cabello de Balboa, who alsohas a critical attitude (he complains that Valverde mentions the Gospels"as if Atahuallpa knew what Gospels were or was obligated to know"), prefersthe version in which the Inca lets the breviary fall by accident. It isalso noteworthy that Martín de Murúa opts not to linger on parts of theCajamarca episode ("and so I shall not speak of them") because there areother versions that already do so. But still, he points out the utter senselessnessof the Dominican's behavior.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822354322
• ISBN 13: 9780822354321
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 222