Barr Melej+Cowboys+and+Representations

CovIos and Conslvuclions NalionaIisl Bepvesenlalions oJ FaslovaI LiJe in Fosl-FovlaIian
CIiIe
AulIov|s) FalvicI Bavv MeIej
Souvce JouvnaI oJ Lalin Anevican Sludies, VoI. 30, No. 1 |FeI., 1998), pp. 35-61
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J.
Lat. Amer. Stud.
30, 35-61.
Printed in the United
Kingdom
?
1998 Cambridge University
Press
Cowboys
and Constructions:
Nationalist
Representations
of Pastoral
Life in Post-Portalian Chile*
PATRICK BARR
MELEJ
Abstract. This article examines
political ideology,
cultural nationalism and the
contesting
of
identity
in
early twentieth-century
Chile. It does so
by tracing
the
emergence
of a
unique
cultural construct - the huaso
cowboy
- in the
literary
sphere
and
by exploring
a 'rural idealist' discourse
employed by middle-class,
reformist intellectuals who
hoped
for the
mitigation
of the 'social
question'
and
the
displacement
of traditional
oligarchs
from cultural and
political centrality.
It
also seeks to
explain
how the fiction
genre
known as criollismo
challenged
elitist
conceptions
of 'nation' and 'culture' in the context of dramatic
socio-political,
economic and
demographic change.
Carlos Valdes
Vasques,
a
young
Chilean musician with artistic tastes
rooted in rural folk
culture,
appeared
in urban theatres
during
a
nationwide tour in
1930,
and
proved
to be a sensation in a
metropolitan
environment that had
increasingly
become
estranged
from
campesino
lifeways
since the late nineteenth
century.
Dressed as a huaso
cowboy
-
with his characteristic
poncho-like
chamanto,
black
riding
boots,
silver
spurs
and flat-brimmed hat -
Valdes strummed his
guitar
and
sang
tamacuecas,
traditional
songs
of the Central
Valley countryside.
In attendance at one
Santiago performance
was a critic for a
large daily newspaper,
who
apparently
found more than technical merit in Valdes's
spectacle.
The
artist,
he
wrote,
'[made]
us remember that we are Chileans' and that 'if
there were
many people
in Chile like Carlos Valdes
Vaisques
that were
concerned with what is
ours,
we could
aspire
to create a solid
race,
rooted
in
tradition,
truly
Chilean,
truly
criollo'. The reviewer went on to state that
'now is the time to
begin
a difficult task: to
dignify
this
music,
make
everyone
understand
it,
realise its miracles that make us
proud,
and for the
country
to
adopt
it and
reject
the intrusive
tango
and the
petulant
fox-
Patrick Barr
Melej
is a doctoral candidate in
history
at the
University
of California at
Berkeley.
*
The author wishes to thank Arnold
J. Bauer,
Tulio
Halperin-Donghi, James Cane,
Claudio
Barrientos,
Florencia Mallon and three
anonymous JLAS
reviewers for
offering
excellent comments on earlier versions of this article. He also thanks the
Mellon
Foundation,
the UC
Berkeley Department
of
History
and the UC
Berkeley
Center for Latin American Studies for
generously providing
financial
support.
35
36
Patrick Barr
Melej
trot'.l
Valdes's
representation
of 'huaso culture'
was,
in the observer's
mind,
indelibly
linked to a
peculiar
existence that seemed
authentically
chileno.
As an urbanisation
boom,
industrialisation and the
mining export
economy
altered life's
rhythms during
the
oligarchy-controlled
Par-
liamentary Republic (I89I-i925), many
urban Chileans
began
to
grasp
images
of the
countryside
and its
campesinos
in their searches for traits of
national and cultural
singularity.
In
particular,
the huaso
figure
was
extolled as a cultural
icon,
and came to constitute an
archetype
of chilenidad
by
the late
parliamentary years.
The heralded huaso
tzpico,2
who
today
stands
among
a collection of
figures
and
symbols
tied to Chilean national
identity,
is an
imagined
hero - a Latin American
cowboy legend
born and
nurtured in the
pages
of
print
culture between
1900
and the
I94os.3
The
huaso icon
emerged
within the fiction
genre
known as criollismo as a
discursive
strategy
to delineate and valorise lo chileno
(what
is
Chilean)
or
lo criollo
(what
is native or
autochthonous).
Drawn to idealism and
inspired by
such
European
naturalist writers as
Zola,
Maupassant,
Daudet
and
Flaubert,
the criollistas
sought
to
portray
the
day-to-day
existence of
their subaltern
countrymen
- their
environments, customs,
styles
of
speech,
labours,
relationships, tragedies,
successes - to
navigate
Chilean
literary
culture
away
from the aristocratic element so common in
El Diario
Ilustrado,
22
Jan. 1930.
Similar
productions
were
regularly presented by
the
Santiago-based
Los Cuatro Guasos
[a
less common
spelling
of the
term] during
the era.
Remarking
on one
show,
a critic
explained:
'There was
among
us
[in
the
audience]
a
justified scepticism
for
everything
that smelled like the soil... That was natural.'
Yet,
once the music
began:
'it
only
took the first
song
for the
public
to breathe a
sigh
of
relief and
tranquillity'.
The
audience,
he went on to
state, quickly
realised that 'the
song
and dance of our
countryside
are
melodious,
spicy,
virile and at the same time
within the limits of a certain
dignity
and
decency...
The
greatest
merit of Los Cuatro
Guasos was to make us understand this and to have taken
popular
art to the
stage.'
El
Diario
Ilustrado,
21
July 1930.
2 The
origin
of the name 'huaso'
may
have evolved from the
Quechua
word wasu,
meaning
'rustic man'. See M.
Subercaseaux,
Diccionario de chilenismos
(Santiago, I986).
The
Argentine
term
gaucho
is
thought
to be related.
3 For a
comprehensive survey
of
cowboys
in the Western
Hemisphere,
see R. W.
Slatta,
Cowboys of
the Americas
(New Haven, I990).
On Brazil's version of the
gaucho,
see L.
da Camara
Cascudo,
Vaqueiros
e cantadores
(Sio Paulo, 1984)
and A. L.
Lapenda,
A
missa do
vaquieros:
uma
abordagem
cultural
(Recife, I990);
for the Venezuelan and
Colombian
llaneros,
see V. M.
Ovalles,
El llanero: estudio sobre su
vida,
sus
costumbres,
su
cardctery
su
poesia (Caracas, I990)
and A. Narino
Baquero, Joropo
- identidad llanera: la
epopeya
cultural de las comunidades del Orinoco
(Bogota,
i990).
On the Mexican
charro,
see
K. Mullen
Sands,
Charreria Mexicana: An
Equestrian
Folk Tradition
(Tuscon, I993); J.
Alvarez del
Villar, Orzgenes
del charro mexicano
(Mexico D.F., 1968)
and
J.
Silva
Valero,
El Libro del la charreria
(Mexico D.F., 1987). Among
the
important
books
concerning
the famed
Argentine gaucho
are
Slatta,
Gauchos and the
Vanishing
Frontier
(Lincoln, 1992)
and the discussion of
gaucho imagery
and nation-state formation in N.
Shumway,
The
Invention
of Argentina (Berkeley, 1993).
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
37
nineteenth-century
fiction.
They
looked to the
countryside,
and to the
campesino
whom
fin-de-siecle
urban circles had considered a backward
bumpkin,
and transformed him into a national folk
symbol.
The architects of criollismo, a diverse
assembly
of
santiaguino teachers,
journalists,
bureaucrats and other urban
professionals,
were central
participants
in a
post-9Ioo
wave of cultural
introspection
that
sought
to
define chilenidad in cultural terms.
They
had clear
political purposes.
Largely
committed to the reformist Radical
Party
or allied to other
moderate
political groups,
the criollistas
sought
to democratise the
concepts
of 'nation' and 'culture'
by demonstrating
the value of lower-
class traditions and
lifeways, thereby incorporating
the
campesino
'other'
into a
broader,
more inclusive vision of
patria.
Both
during
the Portalian
Republic (1833-9 ),
an era of constitutional
authoritarianism established
by
businessman
Diego
Portales,
and in the
early years
of the
Parliamentary Republic,
a
largely upper-class, patron-
dominated outlook on what and who constituted the nation
guided
both
artistic and
political expression;
the criollistas and their allies in
politics
aimed to de-centre the
figure
of the landowner and the urban
upper
class
in both
literary
culture and the
political
realm.
Though originally targets
of criollista
criticism,
during
the
1930S landowning
elites staked claims to
huaso
imagery, arguing
that the
cowboy symbolised patrdn
benevolence
and traditional social relations. The short stories
(cuentos)
and novels of
criollismo also established a
clearly
defined code of conduct for the urban
lower class as the 'social
question'
became a
pressing
issue
during
the
parliamentary years.
The
hardworking
and traditionalist
campesino
represents
the ideal worker who is
truly
Chilean;
he is
healthy
in
body
and
mind,
and remains uninfected
by
the
foreign
anarchist and communist
viruses that threaten culture and
authenticity.
Through
criollismo,
the
press, popular
culture and
politics,
an
entourage
of
urban,
middle-class intellectuals
propagated
a 'cultural
nationalism',
a
binding
sense of cultural
affinity
that
recognised
a
singular
constellation
of cultural
norms,
symbols, traditions,
myths
and
folkways
considered
native to the nation. Cultural nationalism and criollista
representations
of
pastoral
life disseminated in
literary
culture
gradually reconfigured
the
way
in which
many
Chileans
imagined
their
community during
the first
half of this
century.
We must
not, then,
examine criollismo
merely
in terms
of artistic content and
style,
but rather
explore
the
personal
histories of its
craftsmen,
the
political
mission
they assigned
as their
own,
their audience
and the basic
principles
that drove them. This
article, therefore,
will focus
on the formation and evolution of criollismo in Chilean literature
by briefly
examining
the works of such notable authors as Guillermo Labarca
Hubertson,
Mariano
Latorre,
Federico
Gana,
Luis Durand and
Joaquin
38
Patrick Barr
Melej
Edwards Bello. It seeks to delineate the historical circumstances under
which cultural nationalist
conceptions emerged
and
proliferated,
the
manner in which such ideas altered national
identity
and,
finally,
how
they
were
expressed
in
politics
and
public policy.
The huaso
cowboy legend,
and nationalist
representations
of
pastoral
life within criollismo and urban
popular
culture,
will serve as
analytical
access
points through
which to
explore
cultural nationalism and
socio-political change.
A vibrant
nineteenth-century
intellectual
atmosphere,
the exclusive
social
space
of
Santiago's wealthy
and educated
few,
flourished beneath
the Portalian
Republic's
aura of
systemic stability.
Authors
composed
and
debated
grand
narratives of national
history,
and
sought
to relate Chile's
post-colonial experience through
both fiction and non-fiction. The most
notable retinue of Portalian-era authors, known
collectively
as the
Generation of
I842,
included such
figures
as
Jose
Victorino
Lastarria,
Daniel Barros
Grez,
Vicente Perez Rosales and
Benjamin
Vicuia
Mackenna. In the realm of
fiction,
domestic
tranquillity inspired
Portalian-
era writers to craft belle
epoque
novels that
explored
both urban and
hacienda life from a
decidedly patrdn-centred perspective.
One of the most
influential Portalian-era fiction authors was Alberto Blest
Gana,
widely
viewed as the most
outstanding
Chilean novelist of
nineteenth-century
Chile in terms of artistic
style.
Blest
Gana,
an enthusiast of
Balzac,
served
as ambassador to the United States in the
86os,
and won a
congressional
seat in
Colchagua,
while
publishing
books and
composing
articles for
newspapers
in the
capital
and the
bustling port city
of
Valparaiso.
His
1862
story
Martin
Rivas,
a tale set within the framework of
santiaguino high
society,
and
Eljefe
de la
familia,
which describes Chilean customs and
attempts
to
provide
a slice of
contemporary society,
are
among
his
many
works that won wide acclaim
among
the literate few of the era.
Though
Blest Gana's
literary projects primarily depict
elite
life,
campesinos
are
present
in
many
of his stories. Martin
Rivas,
for
example,
is a man of the
countryside
whose
shortcomings
are
brought
to his attention
by
the
capital's
elite. The stark division between rural and urban
society
is an
underlying
theme of the
novel,
but woven into the text is a subtle
message
stressing
the
potential
for national
unity.4 Literary
critic Homero
Castillo,
reflecting
on the
Santiago
native's
subject
matter,
states 'there are
species
of huasos...
clearly
differentiated in all of Blest Gana's novels...
[but]
the
huaso is but a
personality
who has not
evolved,
one who is
interesting
due
to his
customs,
ways
of
dress,
and
expression'.5 Though
considered a
4
See A. Blest
Gana,
Martin Rivas
(Santiago, 1956).
For a more substantive discussion of
this
point,
consult the
interpretive essay
on Blest Gana in D.
Sommer,
Foundational
Fictions
(Berkeley, 1992).
5
H.
Castillo,
El criollismo en la novelistica chilena
(Santiago, 1962),
p.
27.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
39
curious
species,
the horseman is not
presented
as a national
archetype
or
folkish
hero,
nor are rural
society's
cultural traditions touted as lo chileno.
Accompanying
Martin Rivas and other
examples
of Portalian-era fiction
on the market were
folletines, inexpensive publications
of lesser
print
quality reproduced
in the late nineteenth
century
for
widespread
consumption among
an
increasingly
literate
public.6
A favoured
folletin
was Don Lucas
Go6me,
o sea un huaso en
Santiago,
written
by
Mateo Martinez
Quevedo
and
published
in the mid-i88os.7 As the title
suggests,
the
story
follows a huaso's
journey
from the small rural settlement of
Curepto
to
Santiago,
where he is faced with a
troubling
situation. In a
plot slightly
reminiscent of Blest Gana's Martin
Rivas,
Lucas Gomez'
santiaguino
brother, Genaro,
attempts
to hide the
true,
rural
origin
of his
jinete
(horseman) sibling.
The huaso
G6mez,
according
to Genaro and his urban
relatives,
is a
comical,
backward
representative
of an
underdeveloped
countryside.
Genaro,
who most
likely
had
emigrated
to the
capital
from
the
campo,
had become civilised
by
urban
society.
In
short,
the huaso
embarrasses Genaro
by being
too huaso. After
achieving
some
notoriety,
the
story
was transformed into a theatrical
production
in the
i89os,
and
was
performed
from time to time in
Santiago
and other
major
cities well
into the twentieth
century.
Don Lucas
GomeZ,
in
summation,
demonstrates
in a
fairly
accurate manner the
prevailing
attitude in the urban
sphere
toward the rural lower class in the late-nineteenth
century:
relics such as
the
cowboy
Lucas
weigh
down a
modernising
nation,
but remain
interesting
'others' with rustic cultural habits
(the
second and final act of
the
stage production
ends with a traditional
gamacueca
folk
dance).8
Subsequently,
as we shall
see,
the
image
of the huaso underwent a dramatic
transformation. Urban Chileans -
especially
members of the middle class
- came to view the huaso as a national icon rather than a somewhat
embarrassing bumpkin
of rural
society. By undermining
the
position
of
elite
literature,
criollismo offered a new
portrait
of national life - a more
democratic one that
challenged
the
hegemony
of the
Parliamentary
Republic's
conservative
oligarchy
and was allied to ideas of
gradual
social
6
Statistics show that
literacy
rates increased
steadily throughout
the nineteenth
century.
In
1854,
1
3.5 per
cent of the
populace
was considered
functionally
literate.
By 1875,
the
proportion
had
grown
to
22.9
per
cent
and, by i885,
the
percentage
reached
28.9.
Anales de la Universidad de Chile: articulos
cientificosy literarios,
vol.
5,
Second Trimester
(1927).
Educational reform in the last
quarter
of the nineteenth
century
extended
literacy
to some members of the urban
working
class. See A. Labarca
Hubertson,
Historia de la ensehanZa
(Santiago, I939).
7
Some
30,ooo
copies
of the
folletin
were sold. See B.
Subercaseaux,
Historia del libro en
Chile
(Santiago, I993),
pp.
90-1.
8
On the
long history
of the
Zamacueca,
consult A. Acevedo
Hernandez,
La cueca:
ortgenes,
historia,
antologia (Santiago, 195 3)
and P.
Garrido,
Historia de la cueca
(Valparaiso, I979).
40
Patrick Barr
Melej
reform. An
anti-revolutionary message
also came to constitute an
underlying
theme of criollismo.
Bloody
confrontations between workers and the state in
1905
and
1907,
the
founding
of the Federaci6n Obrera de Chile
(FOCh)
in
1909
and a
marked increase in urban strikes and anarchist-led demonstrations
between 1910 and
1920
prompted
fear
among
the middle and
upper
strata
of
society.9
The social
impact
on Chile's
political landscape
of what
nationalists
regarded
as
pestilential foreign ideologies
was evident
by
the
end of the
Parliamentary Republic. Many
hacienda labourers
(including
inquilinos)
who
migrated
to
mining regions
in the near- and
far-north,
joined
sindicatos,
embraced
revolutionary
ideas and
pressed
the
govern-
ment for a resolution to the 'social
question'.
Strikes and unionisation
efforts were not
unique
to nitrate and
copper
zones. Between
I916
and
1920,
some
240
strikes nationwide involved more than
125,ooo workers.l0
Criollismo,
by embracing
the
campo
and
campesinos
as
authentically
chileno,
rejected
the
validity
of the
foreign,
urban existence from which
revolutionary
ideas
sprang.
As we shall
see,
the
genre's
constructed
cowboy
and its
representations
of rural life delivered a
political message:
the ideas and cultures of the
extranjeros
were
disruptive
and,
in
general,
ill-
suited for
incorporation
into the Chilean
'reality'.
The
problems
of urban
society
-
from strikes to
diseasesl
- were
simply
the manifestations of a
sickly city
environment infected
by
viruses not of the 'real' Chile. The
cultural
cosmopolitanism
of the
parliamentary years, they
held,
was an
affront to lo criollo and the aloofness and weak sense of chilenidad
among
oligarchs
had allowed
revolutionary ideologies
to make
headway
in the
9 A substantive examination of the
working
class and unionisation is
beyond
the
scope
of this article.
Important
studies on these
topics
include P.
DeShazo,
Urban Workers and
Labor Unions in Chile
I902-I927 (Madison, I983);
M.
Monteon,
Chile in the Nitrate Era
(Madison, 1982); J.
Barrfa
Ser6n,
El movimiento obrero en Chile
(Santiago, 1972);
and
A.
Angell,
Politics and the Labour Movement in Chile
(London,
1972).
0
B.
Loveman,
Chile: The
Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism (New York, 1988),
p. 203.
Accounts of the social
question
are found
in,
for
example,
C.
Gazmuri,
Testimonios de
una crisis:
Chile, 1900-192-
(Santiago, 1979);
A.
Quezada Acharan,
La cuestion social en
Chile
(Santiago, I908);
and M. A.
Parada,
La armonia entre el
capitaly
el
trabajo:
breve
estudio sobre el
problema
obrero
(Santiago, 1927).
1
Discussion of the tuberculosis
epidemic
in
Santiago
demonstrates how 'the urban' was
equated
with 'the sick'. The health
campaign
to
fight
the disease included a call for
spending
more time 'al aire libre'. The
countryside (a
healthier
place)
became a
destination for
many
who were
battling
the ailment. In
1917,
for
example,
an
organisation
called the
Junta
de Beneficiencia constructed a new casa de salud in San
Jose
de
Maipo,
a
rural,
foothill
region
outside
Santiago,
for tuberculosis
patients wanting
to
escape
the
sickly capital.
El Mercurio, 22
April
I916
and 29
April 1917.
Aside from
tuberculosis,
alcoholism and venereal diseases were also
important
health issues in the
city. Overall, living
conditions in
Santiago
became
poor enough, according
to an El
Mercurio editorial
headline,
to warrant the name 'La ciudad desaseada'. El Mercurio, 24
April
1917.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
41
political
arena.12 The
countryside,
the criollistas
believed,
provided
a
pattern
of cultural
traits,
social relations and behaviours that were
typical
of the authentic Chile.
As one historian has
observed,
with 'the
beginning
of the new
century
there arose
poets
and novelists
who,
in addition to
demonstrating
a new
sensibility, originated
from different social sectors
[from
the Portalian
writers]
and made their
literary aspirations compatible
with their
occupations
as bureaucrats and teachers'.13
According
to a
literary
critic
writing
in the
newspaper
La Nacidn in
1926,
these intellectuals were
imaginative people
'in search of exotic
landscapes'.14
In their search for
cultural
authenticity,
the criollistas found an exotic
landscape
outside the
city, among
the
campesinos
divorced from modern urban life.
They
looked
to the
countryside
and
sought
to
apply
the
literary
realism of Zola and the
naturalists - a
project
of documentation and
description
- to the Chilean
experience.15
The
literary projects
of criollismo's first wave of authors
(known collectively
as the Generation of
1900) rapidly gained publishing
notoriety
and came to
represent
a fundamental shift in Chilean
print
culture
away
from the elite-oriented literature and the restricted vision of
patria
of the nineteenth
century.
Central to what became criollismo's
portrait
of lo criollo are huasos. As artists
seeking subjects,
the criollistas
turned to an
historically
differentiated
campesino
for a
pattern
of
physical,
linguistic
and relational characteristics that could
embody
the
'real'
Chile.16 The huaso
tipico,
a
cowboy legend,
evolved as an
urban,
nationalist
representation
of the
inquilino
de
caballo,
a
campesino
service tenant common
to the
archipelago
of
fundos
that extended from the southern stretches of
Aconcagua
Province to the Province of Maule. As Mario
Gongora
has
12
For
general descriptions
of elite tastes for
imported popular
and material cultures as
well as the intellectual environment of the late nineteenth and
early
twentieth
centuries,
see H.
Godoy Urzia,
El cardcter chileno
(Santiago, 1976);
F.
Silva,
'Expansi6n y
crisis
nacional, 1861-1924',
in S. Villalobos et
al.,
Historia de Chile
(Santiago, 1993)
and B.
Subercaseaux,
Fin de
siglo (Santiago, I988).
13
Silva,
'Expansi6n y
crisis
nacional, I86I-I924',
p.
688.
14 La
Nacidn,
8
Aug.
1926.
15
Dieter
Oelker,
'El criollismo en
Chile',
Actas
Literarias,
no. 8
(I983),
p.
43.
The
criollistas,
in
general,
utilised the
objective description techniques
of the
naturalists,
but
grafted
on a certain idealist
sensibility. European
naturalist
novels, moreover,
seldom
ventured from the urban scene and delved into the sometimes
prurient
nature of its
lower-class
subjects.
The
majority
of
criollismo,
on the other
hand,
explore
rural themes
and
generally
circumvent
campesino
characteristics that could be considered
negative.
On the role of naturalism in Chilean and Latin American
literature,
see G.
Ara,
La
novela naturalista
hispanoamericana (Buenos Aires, 1965)
and V.
Urbistondo,
Elnaturalismo
en la novela chilena
(Santiago, 1966).
16
Although
the
majority
of works labelled criollista are based on rural
society,
the
genre
was not restricted to that
setting.
Baldomero
Lillo,
for
instance,
set his criollistas stories
in the
mining
centres of the far-north. See Lillo's Sub-terra
(Santiago, 1904)
and Subsole
(Santiago, 1907).
42
Patrick Barr
Melej
shown,17
the
history
of Chilean
inquilinaje
is an extended and
complex
one,
and need not detain us here. The
history
of the huaso
tipico,
however,
begins during
the
Parliamentary Republic,
when reformers of the urban
middle class and the criollistas
sought
to stake-out their social domain
between the forces of revolution and reaction. We must
begin by
examining
the works of
Labarca,
Latorre and Gana - authors who were
among
the founders of the criollista movement and Chilean rural
idealism.18
Labarca,
a
longtime
leader within the Radical
Party,
Minister of Public
Instruction in
1924, mayor
of
Santiago
in the
mid-I93os
and Minister of
both War and the Interior after the
Popular
Front
victory
in
1938,
produced
some of the earliest
examples
of Chilean literature infused with
rural idealism. Labarca
published
his
widely praised anthology
Al amor de
la tierra in
I905,
which stands as his
only published
collection of cuentos.
Here
campesinos
are
presented
as hard workers with
passions
like
any
other
human. In the short cuento
'Despues
del
trabajo',
Labarca describes the
inquilino Olegario's
sense of fulfilment while
laying
down to rest with his
wife after
completing
his
daily duties,
once
again defeating
the
blistering
sun that beats down on
thefundo
of his
patrona:
'And there
they stayed
for
a
long
time,
both of them
enjoying
the
placid
and enviable
happiness
of
a
day
now
done,
which seemed to float over the
tranquil
shack. The
sanctity
of a rest well earned filled their souls with an ineffable
joy...'9
Another
couple
of
recently
married
campesinos
also take
great enjoyment
from time alone after their
daily
labour on the
patron's
land in the cuento
'La siembra'
(a
title with an intentional double
meaning).20 Although
Al
amor de la tierra convinced
many
readers that Labarca had a
promising
future as a fiction
writer,
he soon chose to concentrate on
politics.
A
former leader of the Federaci6n de Estudiantes de Chile
(FECh)
and
outspoken
critic of the
dictatorship
of Carlos Ibifiez del
Campo
in the late
I920S,
Labarca became close friends with Radical standout Pedro
Aguirre
'7
See M.
G6ngora, Origen
de los
'inquilinos'
de Chile central
(Santiago, I960).
A.
J.
Bauer
also offers a fine discussion of
inquilinaje
in his Chilean Rural
Society
from
the
Spanish
Conquest
to
I93o
(Cambridge, I975).
18 I have borrowed the term 'rural idealism' from Simon Miller's two
interesting
articles
that examine urban views of the rural
landscape
in
early twentieth-century England:
'Land, Landscape
and the
Question
of Culture:
English
Urban
Hegemony
and
Research
Needs', Journal of
Historical
Sociology,
vol. 8, no. i
(I995),
pp.
94-I07,
and
'Urban Dreams and Rural
Reality:
Land and
Landscape
in
English
Culture, I920-45
'
Rural
History,
vol. 6
('995),
pp.
89-I02.
19 G. Labarca
Hubertson,
Al amor de la tierra
(Santiago, I905), p.
i6. Labarca
published
some cuentos in the
magazine Zig-Zag during
the first decade of the
century,
such as 'De
luengas
tierras'. See
Zig-Zag,
vol.
2,
no.
129 (1907).
He
published
his
only novel,
Mirando al
oceano,
in
91
i. For a review of Labarca's
literary
career,
see David
Perry,
'Guillermo Labarca
Hubertson', Atenea,
nos.
353-4 (1954),
pp.
107-14.
20
Labarca,
Al
amor,
pp. 55-8.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
43
Cerda after the turn of the
century,
and never drifted from the Radical
programme.
His criollismo
clearly
demonstrates themes
adopted by
the
party during
the
early
twentieth
century:
the value of
order,
the
distinction of labour and the warmth of
family.21 Borrowing
much from
Labarca's artistic
style
and what the Radical
(re)presented
in Al amor de la
tierra,22
Mariano Latorre took
images
of the
campesinos
and the
landscape
of his home
province
in the
country's
centre-south to the urban bustle of
Santiago.
Latorre's first
book,
Cuentos del Maule
(
9
12),
is
generally
considered the
anthology par
excellence of
early
criollismo.
Through
his collection of seven
short stories he relates the
majesty
of rural life near his
birthplace,
the
town of
Cobquecura
in the Province of
Maule,
a riverine
region
some
250
miles south of the
capital.
Latorre,
a teacher of
Hispanic
literature,
rector
of the
country's Pedagogical
Institute in the
192os
and the first winner of
the National Literature Award in
1942,
assembled stories that
convey,
in
the words of one
literary
critic of the
era,
'the
traditions,
legends,
and
customs of the land'.23
Latorre,
who was known to
sport
huaso attire when
writing,
saw Maule as a bastion of social
peace
and the authentic
Chile;
the
complexities
of urban life were distant.
Yet,
Cuentos del Maule reflects
Latorre's fears that urban
society's elite-inspired cosmopolitanism may
be
spreading
to the
countryside.
His
first-person
narrative 'Un
hijo
del
Maule' describes the snobismo of urban aristocrats who venture into the
countryside,
and notes that some maulinos 'had assumed that aristocratic
sense of
superiority
and it was
great comedy
to see them strut about the
streets of the
town,
at the
beach,
on the
pier:
anxious to be mistaken...
[for]...
those who in the summertime fill the hotels and the bed-and-
breakfasts '.24
21
These ideas were
expressed
in Radical
programmes
and other statements.
See,
for
instance,
the
party publications
Proyecto
delprograma (Santiago, 9199); Manifiesto
a los
radicales
delpais (Santiago, 193 I)
and
Programa, estatttos,
reglamento:
de
convencionesy juntas
provinciales (Santiago, I933).
Also consult H. Arancibia
Laso,
La doctrina radical:
programa
de
gobierno (Santiago, 1937)
and the
popular
Radical
Party newspaper
La
Lei,
which was
published
in
Santiago
from
1894
to
1910.
22 Labarca's
nephew,
the criollista Rafael Maluenda
Labarca,
also came to be a noted
fiction
author,
and his work
places
him
among
the
founding
fathers of the movement.
His first
book,
Escenas de la vida
campesina (Santiago, g909)
is a collection of cuentos with
much the same flavour as his uncle's Al amor de la tierra.
Maluenda,
an
outspoken
supporter
in the
daily
press
of liberal
presidential
candidate Arturo Alessandri Palma
in
1920,
went on to
compose
numerous
novels,
anthologies
of cuentos and
plays
while
employed
as a
journalist
for El Mercurio. He became the
newspaper's
director
during
the late
I95os
and
early
i96os. In
I954,
Maluenda was honoured with the National
Journalism
Award.
23
R.
Latcham,
'Aspectos
del criollismo en
America',
in Latcham et al., El criollismo
(Santiago, I956),
p.
62.
24
M.
Latorre,
Cuentos del Maule
(Santiago,
191 ), pp. 33-4. Although
Latorre's
critique
of
aristocratic snobismo is
sharp,
the most
scathing
attack on elite life was issued
by
the
44
Patrick Barr
Melej
As an admirer of the naturalists
also,
Latorre
sought
to
portray
the
pain
and
anguish
sometimes suffered
by
the
campesinos
of his native
province.
The cuento 'Sandfas ribefias' in Cuentos del Maule describes a
drought
situation when 'that sad
landscape
has a
primitive
desolation: the
poverty
of the land
puts
in the
eyes
of men that same
tranquil resignation
shown
by
the old horses and oxen'.25 The
campesinos
weather such
changes
of
fortune and remain on the
fundos.
The
infrequent
use of
dialogue
in this
cuento and
others,
a trait of
early
criollismo,
suggests
that social
harmony
(even
in
tough times)
makes discussion an
unnecessary
endeavour. In
urban
society,
conversation was often a
political
act;
rural
life,
Latorre
suggests,
is
pre-political
or
apolitical.26
There exists no
dissent,
no
debate,
no discourses.
Overall,
it is clear that Latorre's books were well received
by
the urban middle class.27 In a review of Latorre's career
published
in
1929,
one writer describes the Maule native's work in these terms: 'It
incites the love of
country
that snobs
[i.e.
some members of the
elite]
do
not
appreciate...
each one of his books
strengthens
criollo values.'28 Like
that of
Latorre,
the criollismo of Federico
Gana,
a
self-proclaimed
bohemian from a
landowning family, helped
establish rural idealism in
urban
society.
A
lawyer by profession
and one of the more conservative
criollistas,
Gana
published
Dz'as
de
campo
in
I916,
an
anthology
of short stories
published
in
turn-of-the-century periodicals,
which examines the customs
native to rural life.
Though
it stands as Gana's
only published
book,
its
cuentos were described
by
one of his
contemporaries
as the best written to
that date.29 Born in
Santiago
to a
landowning family
that had established
Radical
Party correligionario
Luis
Orrego
Luco four
years
before Latorre's book was
published. Orrego
Luco's Casa Grande
(Santiago, 1908) paints
a
portrait
of a
'squandering
class' rife with
superficiality
and shallowness. Due to its
subject
matter
- elite culture and social life
-
the novel is not considered a work of criollismo.
25
Latorre, Cuentos,
p. 67.
26
Latorre was known to be
apolitical,
but tended to
support
Radicalism and other
political
forces of the centre-left. He never
sought political
office and
only rarely
wrote
in the
santiaguino press.
Interviews with Luis Merino
Reyes, Santiago,
Chile, 4 Sep.
1996
and Luis Durand
Jr., Santiago,
Chile, 3 Sep. 1996.
27 After the success of Cuentos del
Maule,
Latorre went on to
publish
Cuna de cdndores
(Santiago, I918),
Zurzulita
(Santiago, 1920), Ully (Santiago, I923),
Chilenos del mar
(Santiago, I929),
Hombres en la selva
(Santiago, I933),
On Panta
(Santiago, 1935),
Hombresy Zorros (Santiago, I937),
El
choroy
de oro
(Santiago, 1946), Chile, pals
de rincones
(Santiago, i947),
La isla de los
pijaros (Santiago, I955)
and the
posthumous
novel La
Paquera (Santiago, 1955).
Latorre's reflections on his career and Chilean literature are
found in Memoriasy otras
confidencias (Santiago, I971).
28
Domingo
Melfi,
'Mariano
Latorre',
Revista de
Educaidn,
vol.
I,
no. io
(1929), p. 672.
29
R. Silva
Castro,
Panorama literario de Chile
(Santiago, 196I), pp. 353-4.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
45
itself in the
centre-south,
Gana remained in the
capital
to
pursue
a
legal
education,
then served as
secretary
of Chile's
legation
in London
during
the Balmaceda administration
(i886-91).
After the overthrow of
Balmaceda in
I89I,
Gana relocated to his father's
hacienda,
where
disgust
with the
parlamentarismo
in the
capital probably helped spur
the creation
of stories about
campo
life. As is the case with Latorre's Cuentos del
Maule,
Gana's
anthology
casts the
countryside
as a
predominantly
aesthetic
domain,
and constructs a
relatively
static
agrarian
environment of social
tranquility.
The cuento
'Confidencias',
for
example, opens
with a
description
of a rural worker who had
just completed
his
duty
for the
day:
'There,
he heard the soft
rustling
of the stream's waters
slithering
smoothly, kissing
the
damp
roots of the
large weeping
willows. All was
tranquil,
sweetness,
preludes
to the
deep
silence of the
night.'30
To
Gana,
parlamentarismo,
troubled
by political
unrest and
party politicking,31
stood
in
sharp
contrast to
nineteenth-century Portalianism,
with its
powerful
executive branch and a
relatively
stable
political system
that
depended
on
the
countryside
for economic
prosperity.32
In
all,
Gana is considered
by
many
as one of the most talented Chilean writers of the
early
twentieth
century.
After his
untimely
death in
1926,
the
newspaper
La Nacion
observed that 'Federico Gana was the first to cultivate
[strong
sentiments
for the Chilean
landscape]
with love and the true
style
of an artist'.33
The
1920S
saw criollismo
develop
into a more
complex
form,
as a second
generation
of criollistas
began
to
publish
its cuentos about rural life. The
second
generation
of criollista intellectuals
merged
the aestheticism of
Labarca,
Latorre and others of the first wave with active
characters,
substantive
dialogues,
and,
as the decade
progressed, placed
huasos ahead
of all other
pastoral figures
as heroic
protagonists.
The short stories of
Luis Durand - a
postal
administrator,
personal secretary
for President
Arturo Alessandri Palma in the
1930s,
Radical
Party
fellow
traveller,34
a
disciple
and close friend of
Latorre,
and winner of the
1944
National
30
F.
Gana,
Dias de
campo (Santiago, 1916),
p. 104.
31
For
interesting
and
thorough
examinations of the
parliamentary era,
see
J.
Heise
Gonzales,
Historia de Chile:
Elperiodo parlamentario,
2 vols.
(Santiago, 1974-82)
and G.
Vial,
Historia de
Chile, I89I-I973
vols.
I-4 (I981-96).
A fine
abridged
account of
parlamentarismo
is
presented
in H.
Blakemore,
'From the War of the Pacific to
I930',
in Leslie Bethell
(ed.),
Chile Since
Independence (Cambridge, 1993).
32 For a more substantial treatment of Gana's
literary motivations,
see 'Crisis de la
identidad cultural
y genesis
oficial del
campesino
en la cuentistica de Federico
Gana',
in L. Guerra
Cunnigham,
Texto e
ideologia
en la narrativa chilena
(Minneapolis, 1987).
Gana's
allegiance
to Portalianism made him
unique among
criollistas of the
period.
In
general,
most
political groups (including
the conservatives and the Liberal
Party)
had
distanced themselves from the stain of Portalian authoritarianism.
33
La
Nacidn,
8
Aug.
1926.
34 Interview with Luis Durand
Jr., Santiago, Chile, 3
Sep. I996.
46
Patrick Barr
Melej
Literature Award - were
published regularly
in all the
capital's leading
periodicals.
Durand,
a native of rural
Traiguen
in the
centre-south,
began
publishing
some short works in the
mid-g92os
in such
magazines
as the
urban favourite
Zig-Zag
after
moving
to the
capital.35
Durand's 'Humitas'
(named
after a rural corn dish cooked inside dried
husks), published
in
1927,
tells the
story
of
Miguel Rodriguez.
He is a huaso who travels to
court a
chiquilla,
or
young girl,
named Maria
Pochard,
the
daughter
of
landowning parents originally
from France.
Rodriguez,
Durand
writes,
'is a
young
man with masculine and amiable
aspects,
dressed in the
countryside
manner... He
gazes
out on the
peacefulness
of the afternoon
that falls
sweetly
over the
countryside...'3
The huaso
Rodriguez,
a
horseman
inquilino,
feels both a love for rural life and a
growing
attraction
toward Maria. One obstacle,
however,
stands between Maria and the
huaso: senora
Pochard,
the mother. Some
dialogue
between the mother and
Rodriguez
centres on humitas
(the following excerpt begins
with
Rodrfguez,
then alternates with statements
by
Maria's
mother):
-'You, too,
like humitas?'
-'Of
course,
who doesn't like
good things!
Maria makes
good
ones because
she was
taught by
Rosalia,
the cook we once had.'
-'I
suppose you
will invite me to
sample
them some
day.'
-'I would be
delighted,
but who knows if
you
would like humitas made
by
gringos
...'37
Maria's
mother,
with a hint of
animosity,
states that
Rodrfguez
could
identify
humitas that are not
authentically
Chilean. Humitas
(or
material
culture in
general) produced by foreign
hands have
different,
even alien
characteristics that are noticeable to an authentic
chileno,
a huaso. Durand's
cultural nationalism is
clearly
evident:
Rodriguez represents
Chile's
cultural
singularity
within a
cosmopolitan
environment.38
35 The
geographical origins
of
Durand,
Latorre and Gana are of
importance
when
considering
the
proliferation
of rural idealism in the urban
public sphere.
As writers
who remained in contact with their rural roots but chose
lifestyles
of the urban middle
class, Durand,
Latorre and Gana acted as conduits between 'the
pastoral'
and 'the
urban'. Their
interpretations
of rural
life, though
idealised,
were based on
personal
experience.
36 Luis
Durand, 'Humitas', Zig-Zag,
vol.
23,
no. 1186
(1927).
No
page
numbers
given.
37
Ibid.
38 Durand's
long
list of
published
works include Tierra de
pellines (Santiago, 1929),
Campesinos (Santiago, I93z),
Cielos del sur
(Santiago, 1933),
Mercedes
Urizar
(Santiago,
1934), Elprimer
hio
(Santiago, 1936),
Almay
cuerpo
de Chile
(Santiago, I947),
Frontera
(Santiago, I949)
and
Paisajey gente
de Chile
(Santiago, 195 3).
He also
published
columns
regularly
for the
santiaguino newspaper
Las Ultimas Noticias in the
I940s.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
47
By 1930,
criollista stories and huaso
imagery
were common in the
pages
of El
Campesino,
a
magazine published by
the Sociedad Nacional de
Agricultura (SNA),
an
organisation
founded in the
I83os
to
protect
and
serve the interests of conservative landowners. What had
originally
been
the craft of middle-class reformers
piqued
the interests of conservative
landowning
interests who wanted to maintain the socio-economic and
political
status
quo.
In a decade that saw the short-lived Socialist
Republic
of
1932,
the
founding
of the Socialist
Party
in
193 3
and the
expansion
of
rural
unionisation,
some of criollismo's
messages,
such as hard work and
tranquillity, appealed
to
landowning
elites
searching
for some
way
rhetorically
to defend their
political
turf and
justify
the continuation of the
traditional rural socio-economic structure.39 In El
Campesino,
the SNA
turned to short criollista cuentos to make its
own,
interpreted, political
statement. Federico Gana's 'La
sefiora',
a
story
written in
I899
that was
included in the
anthology
Dzas de
campo
in
I9I6
and
published
in the
magazine's April 1933 edition,
describes a visit to a Central
Valley
hacienda
where the
mayordomo huaso,
Daniel
Rubio,
was raised
by
the estate's
sehora.40
Found destitute as a
young boy,
Rubio was
fed,
educated and
unofficially adopted by
the
landowning family.
Rubio never left the
estate,
never
married,
and later assumed full care of the seiora after her husband's
death. The
visitor,
impressed by
the
harmony
and
inter-personal
commitments of hacienda
life,
remarked that he was touched in some
profound way:
'The birds
sang
with
happiness.
The fresh
morning
air
seemed to infuse me with
liveliness,
a
strange
force. I
thought
that this
happiness,
which seemed to overflow with the first
rays
of the
sun,
had
come from the outstretched hand of that man...'41 The huaso
protagonist
contrived
by
Gana reflects a
singular morality
and unmatched sense of
responsibility
considered
typical
of the rural
experience.
'La sefiora' was
interpreted by
the
landowning
elite as a defence of deference and
paternalism,42
facets of
inquilino-patron
socio-economic relations that had
39 The most notable
history
of the SNA is
by
Thomas
Wright,
Landowners and
Reform
in
Chile: The Sociedad Nacional de
Agricultura,
1919-I940
(Urbana, i982).
For a fine
discussion of
early
efforts to enact
agrarian reform,
see B.
Loveman, Struggle
in the
Countryside:
Politics and Rural Labor in Chile
1919-I973 (Bloomington, 1976).
40
Published in a
I935
El
Campesino edition,
Luis Durand's 'La riia de Los Pretiles'
features the
friendship
of two huasos
who,
after a
period
of time without
contact,
find
themselves
working
for the same
patr6n.
The
huasos,
Clodomiro and
Ernesto,
speak
the
poor Spanish
of a rustic
campo
-
using,
for
example,
' ior' instead of 'senor' - and are
presented
as hard workers who
converse,
as Durand
writes,
'about all those little
things
that are of interest to the
simple
and
good people
of the
countryside'.
See
Durand,
'La rifia de Los
Pretiles',
El
Campesino,
vol.
67,
no. 6
(I935),
p.
291.
41
Federico
Gana,
'La
sefiora',
El
Campesino,
vol.
65,
no.
4 (I933),
p.
246.
42 As Frederick M. Nunn has
noted, landowners,
in
general,
were aware that some social
reforms were
necessary
and
preferred
a
paternalistic approach
to
improving
the
conditions of the lower classes. See
Nunn,
Chilean
Politics,
1920-191: The Honorable
48
Patrick Barr
Melej
contributed to rural
stability
(and
inquilino subservience)
since the colonial
period.
Hacendados, who were familiar with the dialectics of deference and
paternalism, understandably
found such stories as 'La sefiora' attractive.
The
criollistas,
as reflected in Gana's
cuento,
sought
to define chilenidad as the
responsible ways
of the traditionalist
people
of the
countryside
that
they
considered
typical
of
campo
life.
Despite
the fact that criollismo was
originally
formulated to include the rural 'other' in the Chilean
family
and
challenge
the
elite,
patron-centred
view of
'nation', its discourse was co-
opted by
conservative landowners.
Although
criollismo was a
widely popular literary
form
among
urban
readers of
many political persuasions
in the
I930s,
many
Chileans
lamented the lack of a
single, great
cuento on a
par
with
Argentine
criollista
Ricardo
Giiiraldes's
Don
Segunda
Sombra that could
capture,
in a definitive
way,
the authentic Chile. El Diario Ilustrado
praised
Don
Segundo
Sombra as
the
'magnificent
novel of the
[Argentine]
pampa,
which has made us
think,
almost with
melancholy,
of that
great
Chilean
novel,
a
synthesis
of the
spirit
of our
race,
which is so late in
arriving'.43 Despite
the lack of a
Chilean hero like the
gaucho Segundo
Sombra,
the criollistas
already
had
fundamentally reshaped
Chile's national
identity by 1930.
A
I929
article in
the Revista de Educacion
by
one Radical
Party correligionario recognised
the
importance
of rural idealism.
Citing
Latorre,
Gana and other
authors,
the
author
explained
that 'now that Chileans
begin
to look with
loving eyes
upon
the
landscapes
our
countryside
offers,
the beauties of our ocean and
all the
magnificence
of our native
mountains,
the writers that have
put
forward this admiration feel the
jubilation
of what is in them a flame of
enthusiasm and love for this
rugged
land that
they brought
forward...'.
He
goes
on to state that these 'writers have drawn the native
landscape,
with its
trees,
characteristic
types
and
customs,
close to
your
heart...'.44
In an article
concerning
'la chilenidad
literaria',
one critic in El Diario
Ilustrado stated in
193
that 'it seems as
though
the
place
where chilenidad
is most
notably
manifested is
among
the lower
class,
especially
in the
countryside'
and that criollismo's
goal
was to
produce
'books that are
specifically
national'.45 Some
40 years
earlier,
as
previously
stated,
the
lower-class
campesino
Lucas Gomez was ridiculed as a semi-barbaric
yokel
in Martinez
Quevedo's classicfollet/n.
Thus,
in three short decades - from
Mission
of
the Armed Forces
(Albuquerque, I970),
p. 14.
See also El Diario
Ilustrado,
2z
Feb.
I930.
43
El Diario Ilustrado,
17 June I930.
For discussions of
Giiiraldes's
novel from
varying
methodological
and thematic
angles,
see G.
Kirkpatrick (ed.),
Don
Segundo
Sombra
(Pittsburgh, I995).
44
Angel Cruchaga
Santa
Maria,
'El nacionalismo
literario',
Revista de
Educacion,
vol.
I,
no.
5 (1929),
pp. 320-2.
45 El Diario
Ilustrado, 5
March
I931.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
49
the time of the criollista Generation of
I900
to the Great
Depression
- a
new
'guiding
fiction'46 had been written and woven into Chile's socio-
cultural fabric
by
the criollistas.
For
many
readers,
193 5
marked the
year
when the criollista
epic
- called
for five
years
earlier
by
El Diario Ilustrado - reached Chilean bookstores.
Joaquin
Edwards
Bello,
a member of the Radical
Party
since
I9I2,47
popular
columnist for the middle-class La
Nacion,
winner of the
1943
National Literature
Award,
and member of one of Chile's wealthier
families,48
lifted rural mannerisms and the
pastoral
horseman - a
figure
perpetually
in the
background
of Portalian literature and a one-time
ridiculed character of the backward
countryside
- to national attention
and acclaim in the
1930s.
From the
pages
of Edwards Bello's La chica del
Crilldn,
the most
widely praised
and read criollista work of the
era,
and
other
publications by
numerous authors
during
the late
I92os
and
1930s,
the
gallant
huaso horseman
emerged
as a national
archetype
and cultural
icon.49
La chica del
Crilldn
(the
Crillon was a luxurious hotel in downtown
Santiago)
describes the fictional
cowboy
Ram6n
Ortega
Urrutia,
a humble
man devoted to his work and with an inner
strength
characteristic of all
huasos in criollismo. In the
story,
an
upper-class
urban
woman,
Teresa
Iturrigorriaga, attempts
-and fails -to maintain a
flamboyant
and
expensive lifestyle typical
of the
capital's
elite after her father's financial
ruin and her mother's death. An
outcast,
she travels to the
countryside.
On her
journey
near the coastal
city
of Vifia del
Mar,
she confronts
46
This term is borrowed from the discussion of
Argentina's
two
competing 'guiding
fictions' in
Shumway,
The Invention
of Argentina. Seeking
to
fortify
further this new
guiding fiction,
the
magazine Zig-Zag
in
93
I launched a series of criollista and criollista-
inspired
stories under the
heading
'El cuento nacional'. See
Zig-Zag,
vol.
26,
no.
1371
(I 93 ).
Luis Durand
published regularly
in this series. His
'
El hombre moreno' follows
the
experiences
of Damian
Monsalves,
a
hard-working
mestigo
(mixed blooded)
huaso
who
speaks Spanish
in a low-brow
style typical, according
to Durand and the
criollistas,
of the
countryside.
Consult
Zig-Zag,
vol.
26,
no.
1362
(I93 i).
No
page
numbers
given.
47 La
Nacidn, 4
Oct. 1962.
48
Joaquin
Edwards Bello was the
great-grandson
of Andres Bello and was a member
of the famed Edwards clan that owned
(and
owns)
the
giant daily newspaper
El
Mercurio. It must be noted here that I have
artificially
constructed the
category
'middle-
class nationalist intellectuals' not as a
precise
socio-economic
one,
but as an umbrella
term that also
applies
to those intellectuals who
adopted
an
urban,
professional lifestyle.
I therefore have
grouped together Joaquin
Edwards Bello with
Latorre,
Durand and
other criollistas as 'middle-class' writers.
49
Edwards Bello's first blockbuster was his
1920
tale El roto. The
book,
which follows
the
experiences
of an
urban,
lower-class
ruffian,
drew
praise
from such
figures
as Rafael
Maluenda and the
popular
criollista Fernando Santivan. More than
6,ooo
copies
were
sold within the first week after
publication.
See La
Nacion,
21
Aug. 1920.
Other works
by
Edwards Bello include El inuitil
(Santiago, 1910),
El monstruo
(Santiago,
91
z),
El
nacionalismo continental
(Santiago, 1925),
Un chileno en Madrid
(Santiago, 1928)
and Criollos
en Paris
(Santiago, 1933).
Edwards Bello took his own life in
1968.
50
Patrick Barr
Melej
Ortega,
a
species
far 'healthier and
stronger...
than the weak and
sickly
men of the
city'.5
One of Edwards's
contemporaries,
Raul Silva
Castro,
states that
Ortega appears
in the
story
as a
supernatural apparition,51
helping
the
young
woman to fend off the cruelties of life.
Ortega's
kind
demeanour toward
Iturrigorriaga represents
a
provincial morality
that
stands in
sharp
contrast to the decadence of
Santiago.52 Iturrigorriaga,
near the end of the
novel,
warmly
describes
Ortega:
'His words were so
filled with
nobility
and
security,
that I threw caution to the wind
and,
sitting
on the haunch of his
horse,
I
grabbed
the reins and
began
to
gallop.'53
From the back of a horse, the huaso introduced
Iturrigorriaga
to
a wondrous environment she had never
explored.
As the urban woman
observes as
Ortega
walks off into the
countryside
at
dusk,
An
immense,
unknown tenderness made
my
heart swell. I
lay
down on the
ground
without a
word;
I saw
nothing
but his shadow
slowly getting
further
away;
the stars were
near, near,
more near than ever before. A
great
smell of the
countryside,
of
grass,
of
nature,
induced
sleepiness; far-away frogs sang
at the
stream
and,
at the same
time,
other sounds of
waterfalls,
of broken
branches,
of
nocturnal
rodents,
of the horses who
stomped
around
searching
for
grass,
formed
a concert
infinitely
more
dignified
than
ajaZg
band.54
To
Iturrigorriaga,
the harmonies of
pastoral
life are
decidedly
more
Chilean than those of the
saxophone
or
trumpet.
Like the music of the
gamacueca,
the
symphony
of nature is authentic. The huaso
Ortega
and his
environment, therefore,
exemplify
what Edwards Bello and others hailed as
features of chilenidad.
Iturrigorriaga
finds herself and her
destiny
in the
countryside
-
as does the Chilean nation. A book reviewer for El Diario
Ilustrado,
in a summation of La chica del Crillon,
states: 'Teresa
Iturrigorriaga
... ends
up
as a
good young lady
in a home without
fantasy
and with a man in whom she sees certain moral traits. His name is Ramon
Ortega
Urrutia and he works in the southern
countryside.
Does all of this
symbolise
a return to the
countryside?'55
The criollista movement
grew
to become a dominant
literary genre
in
Chile
by
the
mid-I930s,
as cultural nationalism extended its
ideological
pull
within the middle and
upper
sectors of
society.
It is
important
to
stress here that criollismo
began largely
as an
urban,
middle-class
phenomenon,
and this fact
proved important
when the immediate
political
interests of the urban middle class and the traditional
landowning
class
diverged. Although
members of the middle class
joined
a number of
50
E.
Coll,
Chiley los chilenos en las novelas de
Joaquin
Edwards Bello
(San Juan, I965),
p.
179.
51
Silva
Castro, Panorama,
pp. 274-5.
52
J.
Orlandi and A.
Ramirez, Joaquin
Edwards Bello
(Santiago, 1943), pp. 26-7.
53
J.
Edwards
Bello,
La chica del Crilldn
(Santiago, 1935),
p. 262.
54
Edwards
Bello,
La
chica,
p.
269.
Emphasis
added.
55
El Diario Ilustrado,
i Feb.
935.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture 5
major political parties
such as the Socialist and Democratic
parties, they
(along
with the
majority
of the
criollistas) primarily
identified with the
Radicals,
an urban-based
party
committed to social reform and
ending
oligarchic
rule.56 Within the Radical
Party,
leftist and
rightist
factions
competed
for
party posts,
but
generally
adhered to a
single agenda:
anticlericalism,
the
push
for industrialisation
by way
of
protectionism,
state intervention in the economic
realm,
the democratisation of
public
education,
and the
implementation
of social reforms to take
political
momentum
away
from
working-class organisations
with
revolutionary
programmes.57
With
support
from the
Radical,
Conservative and Liberal
parties,
Arturo Alessandri won the
presidency
in
1932
after the
collapse
of the
dictatorship
of Carlos Ibiaez del
Campo (I927-3 )
and the short-
lived administrations that succeeded it. Conservative
landowners,
as
supporters
and members of the Alessandri
regime, openly employed
the
criollista
lexicon,
as
previously
stated.
Clearly reflecting
criollismo's
impact
on
political
discourse,
an El
Campesino
editorial in
1932
called for a 'return
to the search for the
simple
life' and that
'[a]
return to
agriculture today
seems a unanimous
aspiration. Everyone
focuses their
sights
on mother
earth with the
hope
that she returns to us
good
times lost
during
these
years
of universal ruin.'58 With the threat of
agrarian
unrest
looming,
and
the
actuality
of economic
depression
and labour
shortages,
landowners
had
fully
embraced the middle-class criollista
interpretation
of Chilean
national
identity
and its
representations
of rural life
(a
stable
life).
Conservatives,
middle-class reformers and cultural nationalist intellectuals
had thus established in the
early 1930S
a
precarious political
accord and
a more
lasting meeting
of the minds
regarding
what constituted lo chileno.
Yet,
as La chica del Crilldn broke
book-selling
records in the
mid-9
3os,
the
political
alliance between middle-class reformers and the more con-
servative alessandristas crumbled
and,
in the
end,
met a
quick
death in
i937.59
The
rupture
between the Radicals
(and
the
criollistas)
and
alessandrismo included a rush
by
both blocs to stake claims to rural
56
On the
origin
and evolution of the Chilean Radical
Party,
consult
J.
Garcia
Covarrubias,
Elpartido radicaly
la clase media: la relacion de intereses entre 1888
y I938
(Santiago, I990); J. Sepdlveda Rondanelli,
Los radicales ante la historia
(Santiago,
1993);
F. Silva
Maquieira,
El
radicalismoy
sus nuevas orientaciones
(Santiago, 1918)
and E.
Vera
Riquelme,
Evolucidn del radicalismo chileno
(Santiago,
1943).
57
P.
Drake, 'Chile,
1930-1958',
in Bethell
(ed.),
Chile Since
Independence, p.
9I.
58
Anonymous,
'La vuelta a la
tierra',
El
Campesino,
vol.
64,
no. 8
(1932), p. 381.
59
The
split
between the Radicals and alessandrismo is well documented in Alessandri's
memoirs,
Recuerdos de
gobierno,
vol.
3
(Santiago, I967).
Studies on Alessandri and the
alessandrista
political
movement include R.
Donoso, Alessandri, agitador y demoledor,
2 vols.
(Mexico
D.F.,
95
2,
I954);
C.
Orrego
Vicuna et
al.,
Siete
ensayos
sobre Arturo
Alessandri Palma
(Santiago, 979)
and F. Pinto
Lagarrigue,
Alessandrismo versus ibanismo
(Curic6, 995).
5
2 Patrick Barr
Melej
imagery. Landowning
conservatives,
conscious of middle-class
political
intentions in the
upcoming presidential
election of
193 8,
began
to criticise
the
middle-class,
criollista
appropriation
of lo rural, and claimed that the
campo
was their exclusive domain.
By doing
so,
landowners believed their
candidate,
Alessandri's Interior Minister Gustavo Ross Santa
Maria,
would be considered an authentic national
persona
- a true leader of the
real Chilean
people (the campesinos).
In an October
1937
address over an SNA-owned radio
station,
a
landowner
spokesman questioned
criollismo's 'vuelta a la tierra',
claiming
that
any
urban
literary
movement to
capture campesino
life seemed like a
somewhat
bogus
venture. The
spokesman
stated that
'[f]or
the huasos of
the Cordillera
[the Andes],
the
city
man is a
gringo'
and that 'to
go
to the
countryside
with the
perception
of a Kodak
[camera]
serves to
capture
only exteriors,
to
produce
imitations'.
Only
the landowner and the rural
worker,
the
speaker argued, really
understood the
campo's
essence. The
spokesman
then
posed
a
simple question:
'Let us ask: does the writer
have
any
mission to
complete
in the
countryside?'60
The comments are
insightful
when
placed
within the context of the
growing political
rift
between alessandrista landowners and middle-class Radicals.
Though
the
Conservative,
Liberal and Radical
parties
had combined to clinch
Alessandri's
victory
over socialist
Marmaduque
Grove and communist
Elias Lafferte in
1932,
Radicals soon believed that Alessandri's failure to
launch a reform
agenda represented
a
relapse
of
oligarchic
rule reminiscent
of the
Parliamentary Republic.
The
Right,
meanwhile,
increasingly
feared
the
possibilities
of a
populist
candidate and his electoral
victory
in the
presidential
elections of
1938.
Aware that Radical reformers 'with a
mission to
complete'
could
potentially
curtail landowner
power,
the SNA
(through
its radio
apparatus)
made it clear that
urban,
nationalist
intellectuals
visiting (or imagining)
the
countryside
were unwelcome
gringos,
a
foreign species.
As the
1938
election
approached,
conservative
landowning
interests
-
and the alessandrista
campaign
in
general
-
actively
hoarded huaso
imagery
to wrest
away
the
newly forged guiding
fiction
from
Santiago's
middle-class cultural nationalists.
The
landowning
class and its candidate embraced the huaso
tipico
as an
unofficial
campaign symbol.
At
campaign stops,
Ross was often met
by
horsemen whom the
press
and his
political operatives
called huasos-
inquilinos probably
'invited' to the events
by
their
patrones.
In
August,
during
Ross's final
campaign swing through
the southern Central
Valley,
some
3,5oo
huasos are said to have
paraded
in Linares in his honour. El
Diario Ilustrado
reported
that huasos from numerous
nearby
haciendas
gathered
at the
city's
athletic field to
pay homage.
The
newspaper,
a
60
'Los intelectuales
y
la vida
campesina',
El
Campesino,
vol.
69,
no. II
(1937),
p.
552.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
5 3
vociferous
supporter
of
Ross,
quoted
Linares' Liberal
Party
leader
Nicanor Pinochet as
saying: '[h]ere [in
the
countryside]
we all know that
the
Popular
Front is the
enemy
of the
patria.'61
Urban
space
- with its
pollution,
disease,
decadence and
immorality
- was construed as the
Popular
Front's domain.
Moreover,
in
Maule,
the native land of the
criollista Mariano
Latorre,
Ross witnessed a 2o-minute
procession
of
huasos. The
newspaper reported
that
'[t]he
huasos
paraded
behind a
large
Chilean
flag...
and
passing
in front of the
balcony
where Ross was
located,
the
parading
huasos lifted their sombreros and burst out in cries of
victory'.62
Although
the
Popular
Front drew some
support
from southern
landowners allied to the Radical
cause,
frentista political
rallies did not
showcase huasos.
Yet,
the alliance claimed rural
imagery
as its own
discursive and
symbolic property
as the
193os
drew to a close.
Seeking
political supremacy
after decades of
settling
for ministerial
posts,
in
I937
the Radical
Party joined
the
Popular
Front coalition founded
by
communists and socialists a
year
earlier
(one
which later included the far-
Right
National Socialists and ibanistas who
joined
weeks before the
election)
to
challenge
landowner
power
and the Ross
candidacy. Many
middle-class
reformers,
though opposed
to the inclusion of communists
in the
coalition,
fervently supported
the
candidacy
of Radical Pedro
Aguirre
Cerda,
leader of the
party's
more conservative
wing,
a
teacher,
former Minister of the Interior
during
the first Alessandri administration
(1920-4)
and Minister of Public Instruction in
I918 during
the last
parliamentary
administration.63
Aguirre
Cerda was born in the rural
village
of Pocuro near the town of Los Andes in
Aconcagua
Province
(northern
Central
Valley).
The son of a small
landholder,
Aguirre
Cerda
is known to have felt a certain
affinity
with his rural roots.
Though
seen
as a candidate of the urban
masses,
Aguirre
Cerda was
praised
in urban
circles for his authentic link to the
campo.
A
late-I938 Zig-Zag
article
lauded the former
campesino:
'Don Pedro is the traditional
Chilean,
an
archetype
of our
people.
He is a Chilean who loves his
country...
Chile
lifts him to
triumph
because Chile is the
people,
the
Popular
Front;
and
Chile is also Don
Pedro,
born in the
countryside
of Pocuro.' The edition
goes
on to state that
'governed by
him,
we will feel more
Chilean,
more
61
El Diario
Ilustrado, 29
Aug. I938.
62 El Diario
Ilustrado, 27 Aug.
1938.
63
Hoping
to
regain
the
populist
and
anti-oligarchy spirit
that
typified
the first Alessandri
administration
(I920-4), many
reformers of the urban middle class
accepted posts
during
the
early years
of Alessandri's second term. Luis
Durand,
for
example,
served
as Alessandri's
personal secretary
from
I932
to
1936.
The notable criollista
supported
the
Popular
Front
presidential candidacy
of
Aguirre
Cerda in
1938.
Interview with Luis
Durand, Jr., Santiago,
Chile, 3 Sep. I996.
For Durand's reflections on his service in the
Alessandri
government,
see
Durand,
Don Arturo
(Santiago, 1952).
54
Patrick Barr
Melej
attached to our land and mountains' and that he
represents
'the Chile... of
the
poncho,
the
dark-skinned,
the
rural,
the
hard-working
and the friend
of
liberty'.64
Aguirre
Cerda was beaten
by
Ross in the
countryside,
but votes from
the urban middle class
(and
the extreme
Right) pushed
the
Popular
Front
to
victory
in
1938.
The
mesocracy,
led
by
the
Radicals,
not
only emerged
as the dominant
political
force in the
country,
but could also now
fully
employ
the
ever-expanding governmental bureaucracy
to
champion
chilenidad and
encourage
sentiments of
national/cultural authenticity
brought
to
public
attention
by
the criollistas. Rural idealism and cultural
nationalist
representations
of
pastoral
life - sanctioned
by
the state -
became 'official'
components
of Chilean national
identity.
In
I939,
for
example,
the new
government published
a
compilation
of free-hand
drawings
and
descriptive passages
that
essentially
sanctioned the huaso as
a national
archetype.
Written
by
Carlos del
Campo
for the tourist bureau
of the
Ministry
of
Development,
Huasos chilenos hails the huaso as the
cornerstone of Chilean
society,
and identifies him as
typically
or
authentically
Chilean.
Composed
in
Spanish
with an
accompanying
English
translation,
Huasos chilenos includes mention of festive
rodeos,
the
Zamacueca,
and the skilled
horsemanship
of huasos. The
cowboy
is,
according
to del
Campo, quite
a hero:
'[w]ith
his wide-brimmed
sombrero,
his
vividly
coloured
chamanto,
high
boots and
clinking spurs,
he
is,
in the
midst of our
panorama,
a handsome and
energetic representative
of the
race.'65 Before the late
1930s, government
leaders or bureaucrats
seldom,
if
ever,
actively engaged
in a discourse that
placed
rural subalterns
(or
constructions of
them)
at the heart of chilenidad.
Although
the
literary
success of criollismo
inspired
cultural nationalist
sentiment in urban
Chile,
cultural
despair
remained a
persistent
force in
the late
193os.
An editorial in the middle-class La
Nacidn,
for
example,
noted that some Chileans remained indifferent 'toward lo
chileno;
toward
what is ours' and that 'we
languish
with the
complaining tango
and we are
made erotic
by
the
foreign rhythm
of la bamba'. The editorial writer
explains
that 'I am not
saying
that
foreign
art cannot contain
beauty,
but
ours also has
beauty
- and it's
pure, spontaneous
and
overflowing
with
the
primal
force of our emotion... The
cueca, furthermore,
liberated from
the alcoholic
disgrace
of the dieciocho
[Independence Day],
is a beautiful
thing.'66 Lingering
concerns in the
press
over chilenidad's obfuscation
eventually
were
soothed,
in
large part, by government-sponsored attempts
to
fortify
it.
6Zig-Zag,
vol.
33,
no.
I76I (I938), p. 29.
65
C. del
Campo,
Huasos chilenos
(Santiago, 1939),
p. I.
66
La
Nacion,
22 Oct.
1938.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
55
Cultural nationalism became manifest in the form of
public policy
during
the
Aguirre
Cerda
administration,
and the
country's public
education
system
was
targeted
as an ideal conduit for its
spread.
The
Instituto
Nacional,
the oldest and most
prestigious secondary
school in
the
country
and the former
employer
of
Aguirre
Cerda,
helped push
an
agenda
for a more cultural nationalist education
during
the
opening years
of the
Popular
Front
regime.
In
May I941,
for
instance,
an editorial in the
Institute's bulletin
explained
that 'chilenidad should be understood and
defined in concrete terms.
Chile,
politically,
is a territorial
domain,
a
geographical concept.
To chileanise is to
give
a Chilean character to
something,
to
impregnate
it with Chilean custom. Chilenidad is the
exaltation of the root of those
customs,
of those
principles,
of those
foundations.'67 With such sentiments in
mind,
the
government-affiliated
Revista de Educacion unveiled
general guidelines
for
teaching
folklore and
folk traditions to
strengthen
chilenidad
among public
schoolchildren. The
publication explained
that
'[t]he genius
of a
race,
its creative
capacity,
its
artistic
sensibility
and its
psychological
traits are
only deeply
understood
when one examines a
pueblo's
roots and its
principle ways
of ex-
pression
... In
folkways,
as in
science,
the
landscape
is
explored.
There we
find, collect,
organise
and
interpret
the
customs,
games, myths, legends,
sayings, proverbs, popular
music and
songs, popular poetry,
dance,
traditions,
traditional
dress,
etc.'68
Many
of the traditions and customs
hailed as
authentically
Chilean
by
cultural nationalists in the
government
were
largely campesino
in
origin
-
typically
huaso customs. In the same
Revista de Educacion
article,
the
Ministry
of Education
printed
a list of
books it considered valuable for the
proper
instruction of
folkways
and
chilenidad.
Among
the
readings
are
publications directly
influenced
by
criollismo,
including
Panorama
y
color de
Chile,
a
1939 anthology
of short
essays
edited
by
Antonio Rocco del
Campo
that describes
campesinos
and
their traditions. A
passage
in Rocco del
Campo's
collection
by
contributor
Victor
Domingo
Silva,
a Radical
Party
activist and
poet heavily
influenced
by
the criollista
movement,69
concerns a rural dieciocho celebration and a
67
Boletin del Instituto Nacional, vol.
6,
no.
9 (1941),
p.
3. Emphasis
added.
68
Gonzalo Latorre
Salamanca,
'El folklore en la
educaci6n',
Revista de
Educacion,
vol.
i,
no. 2
(1941), p. 65.
69
Victor
Domingo
Silva
enjoyed
careers in both
politics
and literature. He was elected
as a
congressional deputy
in
I9I6
as a Radical
representative
from
Copiap6
and was a
central
player
in
many party
conventions.
Silva, moreover, composed
the Radical
Party
hymn
and headed the reformist
newspaper
La Provincia.
Among
his
many published
anthologies
of
poetry
are Hacia alla
(Santiago, I905),
El derrotero
(Santiago, I908)
and
La selva
florida (Santiago,
191
).
His collection of novels include Golondrina del invierno
(Santiago, 1912), Lapampa trdgica (Santiago, 1921)
and El
mestizo
alejo
(Santiago, 1934)
and its
sequel
La criollita
(Santiago, I935).
56
Patrick Barr
Melej
proud
huaso:
'[g]lory
and
happiness
of
September!
The
guaso
even shined
his best
weapon
and
today
he
proudly
shows it off in the tent
put together
in
plain
sun and in the
open countryside.'70
In
addition,
a brief
description
of the
gamacueca
folk dance written
by
the Radical and criollista Edwards
Bello
explains
that 'the cueca is
intoxicating
music and no criollo can listen
to one without
feeling
inebriated'.71 Other
recently published
titles
suggested by
the
ministry
are Cuentos chilenos
by
Blanca Santa Cruz
Ossa,
Cuentospopulares
chilenos
by
Ramon Laval and an assortment of
publications
from the Instituto de Informaci6n
Campesina.72
The
government's
move to bolster cultural nationalism and laud rural
traditions was
accompanied by
events and festivities in civil
society
that
showcased huasos and a recast national
identity.
For
example, large
crowds
filled rodeo arenas
during
and after the
Aguirre
Cerda
presidency, cheering
huasos who
paraded
the
flag
and danced
Zamacuecas
before and after
performing
feats of
horsemanship.
The travel
diary
of Erna
Fergusson
describes the
pageantry
of one such rodeo held in the
early 1940S.
The
North American's detailed account
begins
with a horde ofhuaso
horsemen,
dressed in colourful
patriotic
attire, anxiously waiting
inside the rodeo
arena,
or medialuna.73 One
by
one,
the horsemen take turns
chasing young
steers. As
Fergusson
notes,
'as handsome a lot of men as one would wish
to
see,
completely
at ease with their
mounts,
comfortable with each other
and the onlookers'.74
By
the time of
Fergusson's trip,
Chilean rodeos-
which
began during
the colonial
period
as seasonal
roundups
of cattle
70
A. Rocco del
Campo (ed.),
Panoramay
color de Chile
(Santiago, I939),
p.
297.
71
Ibid.,
p.
296.
72
After
Aguirre
Cerda's
untimely
death in November
1941,
the Revista de Educacion
paid
homage
to the
president
and his nationalist efforts.
Longtime
friend of
Aguirre
Cerda,
Radical
Party
member and education
figure
Maximiliano Salas Marchan wrote that
'Chile should remember with
gratitude
the
patriotic
standard established
by
Mr.
Aguirre
Cerda to
lay
the foundations for national
grandeur
via the re-exaltation
[sic]
of
the values of the
people...'.
The revitalisation of a
unifying
nationalism was of
prime
concern to
Aguirre
Cerda,
the article states:
'[o]ne
of the
aspects
of national life that
Mr.
Aguirre
Cerda observed with
great anguish
was the decline of our
pride
as Chileans.
The decline was not a recent
phenomenon,
but a
long-term
one. We had
experienced
such
pride
in all its
haughtiness
in our historical
past,
when Chile
was, perhaps,
the
finest South American
republic
due to
superior government
direction and the
constructive and
dynamic energies
of its
people.
But that
period
did not continue with
the
consistency
one would have desired... Mr.
Aguirre
Cerda understood the
damage
derived from this illness and he saw the time had come to undertake a
campaign
of
chilenidad.' Maximiliano Salas
Marchan,
'La obra educacional de don Pedro
Aguirre
Cerda',
Revista de
Educacidn,
vol.
2,
no. 6
(1942), pp.
11-12.
73
The name 'medialuna' derives from the
facility's design.
A curved fence divides the
circular area where the horsemen
compete,
thus
giving
the
appearance
of a crescent or
half-moon.
74
E.
Fergusson,
Chile
(New York, I943),
p.
i80.
Today,
rodeos are often
sponsored by
small and
large
communities alike
throughout
the
country.
The national rodeo
championship
is held in
Rancagua,
south of the
capital,
each autumn.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
57
from the outskirts of the haciendas - had been transformed from a
laborious
duty
for
inquilinos
into a national ritual
demonstrating
cultural
singularity.
Huaso clubs
throughout
the
country regularly sponsor
rodeos
in Chile
today (including
the remarkable 'Club de Huasos de Arica' founded
in
I968
in the once-Peruvian and still
non-agricultural
arid
north!).
Cultural nationalism was a hallmark of the
early Popular
Front
years.
A
culturally
oriented discourse that centred on the inclusion of
marginalised
Chileans
(and
their authentic traditions and
lifeways)
into a
more democratised vision of 'nation' dovetailed with the Radical
Party's
strategies
to
politicise
the lower classes
along
reformist
lines,
to combat
the
power
of
oligarchs,
to further criollo economic
development
and to
curtail ties to
foreign capital.
There
existed, however,
strict limits to what
members of the lower class could do with their
newly
bestowed
standing
as full members of the
patria.
As the
presidency
of
Aguirre
Cerda
progressed
and rural unionisation
expanded,
the Radicals moved
against
what
they
called
'professional agitators'
in the
countryside
- much to the
dismay
of their
Popular
Front
partners
on the Left.75 In the
early i94os,
one writer
vigilant
of the Left's efforts to unionise rural
society
observed
'the communist
agitators
have shown
intelligence
in
attacking
this
strong-
hold of reaction
first,
for the
guaso
is,
in
reality,
the
bourgeois
of the
masses'.76 The
peons
and huasos of rural
society,
a
pure
and vital
repository
of the nation's cultural
patrimony,
were in
danger
of
being
cor-
rupted by
detachments of
very convincing
rabble-rousers of
revolution,
or so the Radicals believed. As Minister of the Interior under
Aguirre
Cerda, criollista Guillermo Labarca
Hubertson,
the Radical chieftain and
author of Al amor de la tierra in
I905,
signed
a circular on
17 August
1940
that directed the national
police
force to make
extraordinary
efforts to
arrest those in the
countryside suspected
of
harbouring
or
fomenting
sentiments
that,
in Labarca's
words,
'only
lead to the creation of an
environment of social unrest'. In a written statement sent to
police
director Oscar Reeves
Leiva,
Labarca states that
revolutionary
elements
also cause the 'formation of
unnecessary
and
unacceptable
hatreds that
bring
with them
grave consequences
for our
patria'.77
The
countryside,
Labarca
reasoned, should continue to be the homeland of social
tranquillity
-
as
depicted
in his cuentos
published nearly
four decades
earlier. As faithful
Radicals,
Aguirre
Cerda and Labarca believed that a
gradual
social evolution
through
state-based reform was the
only political
75 The
outrage
demonstrated
by
the Left toward Labarca's actions is evident in the
newspaper
Frente
Popular
in the editions of 26 and
27 Aug. 1940.
76
B.
Subercaseux,
Chile: A
Geographic Extravaganza (New York, 1943),
p. Iz2.
77
Ministerio del
Interior,
Archivo del
Siglo
XX
(hereafter cited as
ASXX), Oficios,
vol.
5,
no.
963 (1940).
58
Patrick Barr
Melej
option.
Concerned with the
possibility
of rural unrest and
pressured by
conservative
interests,
Aguirre
Cerda and the
Popular
Front
agreed
to
illegally suspend
rural unionisation.78 Like the
outspoken
Zola,
who had
vehemently
defended
Dreyfus
in late
nineteenth-century
France,
Labarca
had
managed
the coexistence of both
political
and artistic
projects.79
During
the late nineteenth and
early
twentieth
centuries,
Chileans
witnessed socio-economic transformations common to
many
other Latin
American countries. As literature
(be
it
newspapers, magazines,
books or
folletines)
became a
highly
visible and
widely
used means of communication
between those
sharing
in an
imagined community, Argentines,
Bolivians,
Brazilians,
Peruvians and intellectuals in other countries
expressed
their
political
concerns and
hopes
in both fiction and non-fiction. When
comparing
late nineteenth and
early twentieth-century
intellectual
movements in
general
terms,
one finds that Chilean criollismo shares
certain common characteristics with other
literary/political
trends,
including
Andean
indigenismo. Indigenista
intellectuals,
such as Alcides
Arguedas,
Luis Eduardo Valcircel and Victor
Haya
de la Torre
sought
to
redefine 'nation'
by looking
to the Indian
subject
- his
culture,
history,
economy
and
society
- cast aside
during
a
century
of
post-colonial
oppression.80
The Chilean criollistas likewise
amplified
a
previously
restricted
concept
of what
was,
and who
were,
considered elements of the
patria by eschewing
elite-based constructions of nationhood
through
a
naturalism-inspired
search for the real. Some Brazilian intellectuals also
sought
the inclusion of
marginalised populations
under the rubric of
'nation'. Euclides de Cunha's classic Os sertoes
(1902),
for
instance,
argues
for the
incorporation
of the northeast
region
and its
sertanejos (bandit-like
figures)
into the
imagined community,
but
by way
of a
'civilising'
mission
to
stamp
out backwardness.
Furthermore,
such notable writers as
Joao
Simon6es
Lopes
Neto,
the author of Contos
gauchescos (1912)
and Lendas do
sul
(I 9
3),
and Afonso Arinos (Lendas e tradicoes
brasileiras,
1917),
fostered
78
Loveman, Chile,
pp. 248-50.
The
Aguirre
Cerda administration received numerous
written
complaints
from landowners and rural
police regarding
union
gatherings
and
other manifestations that were
registered
with the
Ministry
of the Interior.
See,
for
example,
Ministerio del
Interior, ASXX, Oficios,
vol.
2,
nos
272
and
233
(1940).
79
Labara,
in a
newspaper
article in
1900,
had
praised
Zola's intent to
relay
how the
common
person
weathers the sometimes harsh realities of life and rises to
forge
socio-
political change.
Labarca, ironically,
hailed Zola's
depiction
of
people
who are 'reborn
with more
strength
now that the collective has the means to make itself heard and to
influence the
organisation
of
governments',
La Prensa,
5 Jan.
900.
For Zola's defence
of his
political
activism,
consult
Zola,
La escuela
naturalista,
trans.
by
A.
Yunque
(Buenos Aires, 1945).
80
Readings
on Andean
indigenismo
and its
political message
include X. Abril et
al.,
Maridteguiy
la literatura
(Lima, 1980);
A.
Cornejo Polar, Literaturay
sociedad en el Peru:
la novela
indigena (Lima, 1980)
and L. E.
Tord,
El indio en los
ensayistas peruanos (Lima,
1978).
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture
5 9
notions of cultural and national inclusion when
discussing
the
gauchos
of
the southeast.
When
considering
the
Argentine
case,
one finds
important
differences.
Although
the
gaucho
was first
popularised
as a folkish hero
by Jose
Hernandez in his
tragic epic
Martin Fierro in the
i87os,
the
gaucho
did not
become a national icon until the
spectre
of
immigrant
hordes
crashing
ashore in Buenos Aires
spawned
nationalist fears after the turn of the
century.
With a
largely reactionary
and chauvinistic
tone,
Leopoldo
Lugones,
in his lectures on Martin Fierro at the
capital's
Teatro Odeon
that were later recast in his book
Elpayador (I916),
claimed the
gaucho
as
a racial and cultural
representative
of the authentic
Argentina
that was
progressively being
debilitated
by open immigration
and liberalism in
general.
Since
gauchos
no
longer
roamed the
pampas by
the time the
genre
became
popular during
the first and second decades of this
century,81
Lugones's
criollismo did not seek to
incorporate existing
rural 'others' into
a more democratised vision of 'nation'. Instead, as a
Janus-faced
movement,
early Argentine
criollismo aimed either to alienate the
immigrant
or to establish a
clearly
defined
pattern
of what can be called
'identity
markers' that could be used
by foreigners seeking
social and
cultural assimilation.82 One area where the
Argentine
and Chilean
movements demonstrate
commonality
is on the issue of worker radicalism.
During
the first two decades of the
century,
intellectuals from both
countries - middle-class reformers in Chile and conservatives in
Argentina
- established a rural idealism
to,
in
part,
criticise the urban social climate
as well as the rise of anarchism and other
working-class-based
revolutionary ideologies. Indigenismo,
in
turn,
was wed to social
movements with
revolutionary potential,
such as Peru's Alianza
Popular
Revolucionaria Americana
(APRA),
which issued a
programme
and
disseminated a discourse based on
concepts
of
economic,
political
and
social
justice inspired by
Marx.
While
Lugones
resurrected Hernandez' tale of the
gaucho
Martin
Fierro,
da Cunha drew attention to the
sertanejos,
and the
indigenistas
offered
alternative national
projects
in the
Andes, many
urban Chileans were
drawn to the huasos
Miguel Rodriguez,
Daniel Rubio and Ram6n
Ortega
Urrutia,
and
today
remain enchanted
by
the huaso
figure
and what he
81
R. W. Slatta's
study
on the
origin,
evolution and ultimate fate of the
gaucho
states that
the
cowboy's lifestyle
fell victim
by
the
I88os
to such factors as
agricultural
commercialisation and the
expansion
of
vagrancy
laws. See
Slatta,
Gauchos and the
Vanishing
Frontier.
82
For more on this
topic,
see the
outstanding study
on
Argentine
criollismo
by
Adolfo
Prieto,
El discurso criollista en la
formacidn
de la
Argentina
moderna
(Buenos Aires, 1988).
Also consult A. R. Cortizar
(ed.), Indiosy
gauchos
en la literatura
argentina (Buenos Aires,
1956)
and
Shumway,
The Invention
of Argentina.
6o Patrick Barr
Melej
represents.
The term huaso is akin to
campesino
in
contemporary
Chile,
and
landowners of the centre and centre-south of the
country
are
commonly
referred to as - and call themselves - huasos. This occurs
despite
the fact
the term 'huaso' has not
completely
shed its
original, nineteenth-century
connotation:
bumpkin.
For
example,
the
phrase
'huaso bruto' is sometimes
employed
when
criticising
a
person's
lack of
manners, education,
intelligence,
etc. The huaso
figure, though
associated with some
negative
traits,
nevertheless evolved as an
overwhelmingly positive
construct in
criollismo and
popular
culture. The
ongoing magnetism
of the huaso
myth
is considerable.83
Los Adobes de
Argomedo,
a
popular
downtown
Santiago
restaurant
with a
countryside
ambiance,
indulges
its diners with fine criollo cuisine
and a
spectacle
considered
typically
chileno. Within the locale's white-
washed,
mud-brick
walls,
dancers dressed as huasos
perform spirited
Zamacueca
folk dances and
proudly
exclaim ' Viva Chile !' while
waving
the
nation's
flag.
Los Adobes de
Argomedo
is but one
public
forum at which
a
ruralesque
cultural
authenticity
is defined and
reproduced
in contem-
porary
Chile. Each
year,
Las
Condes,
an
upper-middle-class
suburb of the
capital, sponsors
a
highly publicised
week of
festivities,
La Semana de
Chilenidad,
to celebrate
Independence Day (i8 September).
The mu-
nicipality,
which is
recognised
as an
important banking
and commercial
centre,
hosts a
parade
of huasos on horseback and crowds flock to a rodeo
to mark the
week-long,
and sometimes
inebriating,
occasion.
Mayor
Joaquin
Lavin of the conservative Uni6n Democrata
Independiente
(UDI), rationalising
the
juxtaposition
of the
'pastoral'
and the
'urban',
explained
in
I995
that 'it is our intention to
bring
the
community
closer
to huaso traditions. We want the
people
to immerse themselves in the
traditional values of the
countryside.'84
Although
these
examples may suggest
that huaso
imagery
is confined to
affluent
venues,
the
cowboy legend
is a mass
phenomenon
in
popular
culture. It not
only
colours
spectacles
of national
importance
and folkish
restaurants,
but is
employed
in
everyday
forms of
representing things
Chilean.
Aspects
of the huaso construct are evident in
advertising (a
83
One writer was so enthused
by
the
cowboy legend
that he went so far as to construct
a
history
of the huaso
tzpico,
with his
flamboyant
dress and
shining
silver
spurs
- not the
historical horseman
inquilino
examined
by
the Chilean historian
G6ngora.
Ren6 Le6n
Echaiz wrote in I9 5 5:
'With his chamanto
[poncho-like garment]
with vivid colours that
fan out in the wind... the huaso constitutes an essential element of the
countryside.
Common and
typical
in some
regions,
scarce in some and unknown in
others,
he
nonetheless is the absolute and total Chilean. That is how
they
knew him
long ago
in
colonial
times,
that is how he lived
during
the
confusing days
of national
independence
and that is how he is
among
us'. R. Le6n
Echaiz,
Interpretacion
histdrica del huaso chileno
(Santiago, I955), p. 7.
84
El
Mercurio, 25 July I995.
The chilenidad festival is now a
yearly
event.
Pastoral
Life
in Chilean Culture 6
domestic
poultry producer,
for
example, represents
itself with a cartoon-
like chicken
wearing
a chamanto and a huaso
hat),
school
festivities,
private
functions and so on. Such wide
incorporation
of the huaso
legend
and the
criollista
vision85 in
popular
culture stems
from
rural idealism's
integration
into the
political
discourses of the
1930s,
the broad
acceptance
of the
cultural nationalist
sensibility among
middle- and
upper-class
interests and
the
government's
elevation of criollismo's cultural vision to the level of
public policy during
the
early Popular
Front
years.
The huaso
legend
and
nationalist
representations
of
pastoral
life
persist
in
popular
culture
despite
the ultimate failure of criollista and Radical efforts to
prevent
a
revolutionary
social
rupture through
the
propagation
of cultural
nationalism.
By
the
I96os,
the idea of 'class'
proved
more
powerful
than
criollismo-inspired
notions of cultural
solidarity.
85
The
only
considerable criticism of criollismo was launched in the late
I920s
by
members
of Chile's small and nascent
modernist/vanguard literary
sector. In
general,
criollismo
was scorned for not
appealing
to universal
concepts
and for
applying
and
reapplying
a more conventional narrative
strategy.
See Dieter
Oelker,
'La
polemica
entre
criollistas e
imaginistas',
Actas
Literarias,
no.
9
(1984), pp. I63-4
and
Latcham,
Criollismo, p. 25.

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