Trans-Andean Modernismos

This article examines what modernismo can reveal about lo andino. In so doing, I argue that trans-Andean is a more expansive term that accounts for the temporal, spatial, and cultural instability of what constitutes the contours and boundaries of the Andes. I underscore some of the recent work related to literary and cultural studies that has specifically theorized the Andean to offer some considerations as to why trans-Andean may be a more capacious concept for engaging with studies on the Andes, if the emphasis is to truly decentralize a nationalist perspective and offer a comparative analysis. To situtate literary production produced in the Andes in relation to modernismo, the article provides an overview and also suggests how studies on modernismo might benefit from engaging with adjacent fields such as New Modernist Studies. I then turn my attention to short stories that appear in the collection Los hijos del sol (1912) by Abraham Valdelomar and Las cosechas (1913) [1960], a novel by Miguel Ángel Corral, as case studies that elicit a rethinking of modernismos in its plural sense and from a distinct trans-Andean vantage point, one that oscillates from national to regional concerns.