Indigenista narrative in Argentina. A double condemnation

Abstract

From the times of José Carlos Mariátegui, Indigenismo literary criticism has been articulating an ethnocentric discourse which production core is located in Peru and surrounding countries. However, rarely an Argentinian work that deals about inequalities of indigenous peoples has been mentioned, not even the Argentinian academia itself. In a country whose governments, from mid-19th c have been trying to erase any trace of indigenous blood in its population, by means of assimilation, extermination or invisibility, and whose major indigenous areas are placed far from the hegemonic Buenos Aires, social novels were pushed aside in the world of regional literature.

However, during the blooming of the Indigenista movement, Argentinian writers echoed the sufferings and demands of their indigenous fellows by means of novels that overpassed the regionalist pejorative epithet and, beyond all understanding, have been forgotten. In this article, that is part of a major work, the silence from the critics is approached, the Indigenista production is contextualized and some of their works are briefly analyzed.