Hispanic Baroques: Reading Cultures in Context

Chapter 9. Perspectives on Mestizaje in the Early Baroque: Inca Garcilaso and Cervantes

187  9 Perspectives on Mestizaje in the Early Baroque: Inca Garcilaso and Cervantes Silvia B. Suárez In Peruvian society today, colonial mestizaje constitutes the foundation of the debate about nation and culture among scholars. As in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the nation’s racial hierarchy produces an ideology that divides this country into a mestizo mass and a white elite to the extent that native Andean values are denied even by the mestizo majority of the population. It is noteworthy that a recent study on terrorism in Peru has revealed the underlying presence of this social differentiation in the vicious cycle of violence created by rebel groups and repressive official forces for more than two decades.2 Ninety percent of the victims of this traumatic process have been mestizos with clear ties to Andean traditions. Thus, a revision of colonial discourse from its origins is necessary in order to contribute new insights to the debate on the reconstruction of Peruvian cultural identity. As a starting point in this process, I propose a reinterpretation of the connection between el Inca Garcilaso’s Comentarios reales (1609) and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s last novel, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (1617) and their authorial critique of dominant cultural values. A reading of the texts from the perspective of the colonized subject illustrates that both authors believe that the Amerindian does retain a certain amount of agency within the restrictive colonial environment and engages in a process of cultural negotiation as a means to preserve his/her own values. 188 SILVIA B. SUÁREZ A sociopolitical interpretation of the circumstances that influenced the production of the Comentarios reales and Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda combined with literary analysis suggests that both texts are engaged in critical dialogue with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literary tradition and the hegemonic discourse of Hispanic societies. Both texts depict the colonized as one who challenges the boundaries of the hierarchical society by forging what I will call an “intermediate identity.”3 As in a diglossic situation where two different languages co-exist and are felt to be alternatives by native speakers, the colonized subject does not renounce his native traditions. Instead, s/he develops a strategy to overcome cultural imposition by making a conscious decision to move from the dominant culture of the colonizer to the inferior culture of the colonized according to the particular type of social interaction in which s/he is engaged (Crystal 138). For instance, a Peruvian Andean man would adopt the values of Spanish culture in Hispanic contexts, while maintaining his native customs within his own community. In the Comentarios reales, Inca Garcilaso “comments” on the official history of the conquest and colonization of Peru and, in so doing, alters certain aspects of the history that are conflictive from the point of view of the colonized. Motivated by his own marginality in Hispanic society, Inca Garcilaso designs a narrative in which he not only expresses sympathy for his Spanish heritage, but more importantly, admiration for his Inca ancestors. The narrator’s mobility between different cultures can be understood as a representation of the difficulties that many Andean groups experienced while being forced to assimilate Spanish culture. Given the preeminence of caste values in colonial society, the ability to select among dominant and subordinate cultural practices allowed the colonized subject to develop an “intermediate identity.” As a result, the literary discourse in this chronicle illustrates a tension between two socially unequal groups, the superior white man/woman and the inferior Andean, which enables the colonized to modify his social identity. Similarly, in Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, Cervantes tests the limits of cultural canons by inserting elements from another tradition into them. The geographical description of the “barbarous” setting in which the narrative begins to unfold, reminds the reader of certain passages from Inca Garcilaso’s chronicle. Also, the use of native Taíno words and the inclusion of famous conquistadors as characters are ways of connecting the work to the colonization of America. Moreover, the portrayal of the “barbarous” characters implies the remolding of the barbaric subject not only within literature but also within prevalent modes of thought. Antonio, the mestizo son of a Spanish man (also named Antonio) and an Amerindian woman (Ricla), is one of the “barbarous” PERSPECTIVES ON MESTIZAJE 189 characters that are the basis of the...