Manuel González Prada and Rigoberta Menchú: Measuring Indigenismo through Indigenous Thought

Much has been written about indianismo and indigenismo and their literary and social meaning, but rarely have these two criollo movements been positioned face to face with actual Indigenous expression. This article attempts a preliminary pass at just such an approach by comparing four indigenous themes established by Manuel González Prada's essay "Nuestros indios" (1904) with analogous approximations in Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (1985). Notwithstanding their different national contexts, manner of composition, and periods of composition, there is a surprising conformity between both texts' respective discursive positions on four topics: 1) the problem of the caporal, or overseer, who rises up over his own ethnic group; 2) the negative impact of alcohol among indigenous communities; 3) the conundrum of language and culture with respect to education; and 4) the turn toward violence as a response to internal colonialism. The consonance between González Prada's Peruvian indigenismo and Rigoberta Menchú's Quiché perspective as dictated to anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos could be a coincidence, but it also suggests a common frame of reference for a criollo-indigenous dialogue in the context of persistent internal colonialism in two Latin American countries with large Amerindian populations.