Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0042/00426.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 37KB | 610 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00426}
$Pretitle{266}
$Title{Bolivia
Chapter 8B.   Other Arts}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Thomas E. Weil}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{la
de
paz
newspapers
bolivian
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$Date{1974}
$Log{}
Country:     Bolivia
Book:        Bolivia, A Country Study
Author:      Thomas E. Weil
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1974

Chapter 8B.   Other Arts

Literature

     In literature the post-Chaco generation can be said to form a school only
in its common preoccupation with the indigenous. The variety and diffusion
typical of the eclectics persisted in the subsequent movement. Introspective
and critical, the young writers tended toward a realism expressed in rugged
and brutal language, somewhat reminiscent of French naturalism. In form they
preferred the short story, novel, and essay, although poetry was not
completely abandoned. After publishing one or two books, many either turned to
newspapers or periodicals or stopped writing altogether, for a great deal of
literature that emerged from the Chaco experience was the product of young
excombatants who, without the necessary technical skills or real literary
motivation, were moved to set down what they had seen and felt.

     Although Bolivian critics feel that a definitive work on the war is still
to be written, several notable novels and collections of short stories
appeared in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Inspired directly by the war, they
nevertheless indicated the thematic direction literature would take after the
conflict itself ceased to be a source of creative production. Surprisingly,
these novels and short stories expressed no animosity toward the recent enemy
but instead preached a general hatred of war. A strong autobiographical
current, as seen in Augusto Guzman's Prisionero de la Guerra (Prisoner of War)
and Jesus Lara's Repete (a term used to identify Indian combatants), was also
typical of the majority. A suggestion of the indigenism that was to become an
important aspect of artistic nationalism is reflected in Sangre de Mestizos
(Mestizo Blood), by Augusto Cespedes. In addition to expressing the common
pacifist tendency and criticizing the government in power during the war,
Cespedes gives the mestizo ethnic factor an important role in his work.

     The poet Oscar Cerruto emphasized the social drama and contemplated the
rise of the Indian to his full power. With the use of the geography of the
sierra for political and philosophical projections, Cerruto, among others,
indicated another trend for postwar literature. The physical nature of the
Chaco apparently impressed the Bolivians considerably, for it figures
prominently in many war novels and stories. A great interest in national
geography developed in the period after the war, which gave rise to
regionalism and, consequently, costumbrismo (the portrayal of customs and
daily life in a given city, town, or region).

     Geography, important in its own right, was also linked to man. The
mistica de la tierra (mysticism of the land) philosophy, which developed in
the period, was based on the principle that man's natural surroundings produce
a fundamental effect on him and make him different from those having another
physical environment. For those who held the belief, the great Andes were
capable of inspiring Bolivians to new initiatives as they had in the
pre-Hispanic past. They claimed that all Bolivians felt the power of the
national landscape and that their disassociation from it was a prime cause for
the spiritual ills of the nation. The land was to be the new basis for the
Bolivian spirit.

     One of the foremost adherents of mistica de la tierra was Robert
Prudencio, an art history professor at the Higher University of San Andres in
La Paz. His most significant accomplishment was the creation in 1939 of the
literary magazine Kollasuyo, which he intended to be the spiritual expression
of the country in which essayists, critics, and authors would have a forum for
cultural nationalism and indigenism. Prudencio's most characteristic concept
was the "feeling of the land" manifested in individuals and collectivities.

     Another proponent of mistica de la tierra was Fernando Diez de
Medina-author, critic, and politician. In 1948 he founded the Pachakutismo
Party, moderately nationalistic in ideology, whose initial campaign was
against the tin magnates. Under the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement
(Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario-MNR) government he became minister of
education, with ample reflection of his views in an official cultural
magazine, Cordillera. Diez de Medina, one of the most prolific contemporary
Bolivian writers, achieved his greatest success in literary criticism.
Although he has never formulated a systematic philosophy, he attributes a
spiritual function to the land, considering it a source of aesthetic, ethical,
and religious profundity. Indianism often becomes an adjunct of mistica de la
tierra since the indigenous inhabitants have always lived close to the land.
Diez de Medina's Nayjana, which won the National Grand Prize in 1951, is
permeated with this sympathy and concern for the Indian. In a collection of
essays on national concerns, entitled Bolivia y su Destino (Bolivia and Her
Destiny), that came out in June 1962, he continued to display interest in the
Indian. In addition, he offered an evaluation of the MNR government after ten
years and a discussion of his departure from the party.

     Politically, intellectual nationalism also had its effect, Because
Bolivian writers rarely limit themselves to their literary activities and
invariably have some contact with public affairs, their ideas have often
helped to form or modify the political ideology of their particular parties.
The postwar atmosphere encouraged the growth of less traditional groups and
parties. Most counted intellectual elements of the new generation among their
founders or members. Botelho Gosalvez, one of the leading writers, was a
socialist. Cespedes and the critic Carlos Montenegro were members of the MNR,
and Jose Antonio Arze, Ricardo Anaya, and Arturo Urquidi belonged to the Party
of the Revolutionary Left (Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionario-PIR), a
Marxist group.

     Arze translated several books dealing with the putatively communist
society of the Inca and also wrote original works on sociology. Anaya's
political thinking is best delineated in Nacionalizacion de las Minas en
Bolivia (Nationalization of the Mines in Bolivia), written in 1952. Rector of
the Higher University of San Simon of Cochabamba for more than a decade,
Urquidi contributed to the Marxist ideological orientation of that
institution. The works of Cespedes and Montenegro are saturated with political
doctrine and purpose and are written in language suitable for mass
consumption. Cespedes' 1946 novel Metal del Diablo (The Devil's Metal), based
on the life of the tin magnate Simon Patino, promoted the cause of
nationalization of the mines. His El Dictador Suicida (The Dictator
Self-Destroyed), published in 1956, is a nationalistic, revolutionary
interpretation of Bolivian history. The nationalism and socialism expounded by
these groups merges in the Bolivian context with indigenism.

     Philosophically and aesthetically, indigenism represented a reaction
against modernism, which sought inspiration in remote and exotic sources.
Some aspired to the rebirth of indigenous culture and a rediscovery of ancient
wisdom, whereas others adjusted the indigenist cult to the contemporary scene
by studying the ways of the Indian and copying his art. Lara took up the
indigenist theme in Surumi, which describes the social problem of the
desolation and misery of the Indians, and in La Poesia Quechua (Quechua
Poetry) the first systematic study of indigenous literature. Few Bolivian
writers have been able to escape some aspect of indigenism.

     Social themes, revolving principally around the problems of the Indians,
miners, and other lo