Introduction
The Novel
Literature in nineteenth-century Latin America played an active role in the constitution of the new nations that were emerging within the framework of the political and economic changes at that time in history. Specifically, in the chapter of the novel, we find the origins of the national ideologies, as well as the identifications they assigned, in one manner or another, to the citizens of a given region.
The novel Juan de la Rosa is an exemplary case. Through a combination of different aesthetic traditions inherited by Bolivian culture, it projects an ideal image of the nation, a utopia that proposes the dissolution of the remnants, or anachronisms, of Spanish colonization. In addition, however, it also proposes that the institutions and the languages of the indigenous cultures be left behind.
Juan de la Rosa, written by Nataniel Aguirre and published at the press of the newspaper El Heraldo, came out in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on September 14, 1885. It is the autobiographical story of the narrator’s childhood. Juanito’s own identity and the formulation of the patriotic values are unveiled within the context of the uprising in Cochabamba, and the subsequent confrontations with Royalist armies. The protagonist searches for his identity in a journey through different social spheres and specific familiar situations; these, at the same time, lead him to learn and understand the values of his country.
The novel takes on the classic form of a bildungsroman, or the story of the protagonist’s education and formation. Along the way, it confronts the reader with political, historical, and cultural issues specific to the Andean region. But one can also recognize discourses and situations in it common to those that existed in other Latin American countries as they hurriedly attempted to create the conditions necessary for the process of modernization.
Aguirre conceived of this work from a historical perspective. Juan de la Rosa was to have been the first part of a plan that was to include a series of four installments. Through the telling of the life of the narrator, these were to have presented the struggles for Bolivia’s independence (1809–1825) and recovered the values associated with it. Of this interesting project, the novelist was able to realize only the first part, which was originally titled Memories of the Last Soldier of the Independence Movement, and was signed by Colonel Juan de la Rosa as the author. The second edition was published in 1909, after Aguirre had already died. At that point it gains the title of Juan de la Rosa, as we know it today, and appears with the name of the author, Nataniel Aguirre. This, the first English translation of the work, follows the 1909 edition explicitly in every detail. Any footnotes found in the text itself have been directly translated as they appear in the 1909 edition. Those marked “Editor’s Note” are by Nataniel Aguirre; the others are by the narrator of the book, Juan de la Rosa. We have also included a special section of notes prepared by the translator and the volume editor. These notes can be found at the end of the book.
Although Juan de la Rosa was conceived as a part of a series, not only does it stand completely on its own as a novel, but it also turns out to be the first Bolivian novel that assumes a national public and incorporates it. For, in its apparently classical structure, it defines its readers as a massive public that shares the values of the “Bolivian nation,” emotionally and rationally. Although the country’s socioeconomic conditions when it first came out did not help in the immediate, large-scale diffusion of the novel—as tended to occur, by contrast, with the publication of important European novels of the time—shortly thereafter it was recognized as a milestone of Bolivian literature. Considered a bearer of national values, it was soon incorporated into high school programs by the country’s educational system. Also, it is as a direct consequence of this work that May 27 has been instituted in Bolivia as the Day of the Mother. This date corresponds to the historical event, described and emphasized in the novel, in which the women of Cochabamba came out to the streets with macanas to defend the city from the troops led by the Spanish officer Goyeneche.1
The first interpretations that were made of Juan de la Rosa treated it essentially as a historical novel and valued it to the extent that it recovers an “original” national model. I believe, however, that the virtue of this novel resides in the way that it registers in an allegorical manner—like few historical or literary works of the time—the contradictions associated with the process of modernization at the end of the last century in an Indo-American linguistic and cultural milieu, such as in Bolivia. And how, in this manner, it projects an intertextuality that opens up to the plurality and diversity of Latin American history and cultural traditions.
The Republic of Bolivia
Bolivia—known as Alto (Upper) Perú during the Colonial period—takes its name from the Liberator Simón Bolívar precisely at the moment it declares itself an independent republic. Upper Perú, which, in 1809, was an initiator in the uprising against the Spanish forces, was also one of the last countries in the region to gain its liberation from the Crown. The country was therefore in the war for Independence a very long time, and experienced a very particular situation during that struggle. Until 1816, the armies from the south, from what is now Argentina, sent reinforcements for the fight against the Spanish government; but after that, the patriotic fighters were forced to maintain an isolated fight because they lost complete contact with the other armies of the Independence Movement on the continent. It was only later, in 1824, with the arrival of the armies from the north, led by Grand Marshal Sucre, that the final victory over the Spaniards was accomplished2 (see Map 1).
This meant, first of all, that during the last years of the Independence Movement the government of Upper Perú, which was still Spanish, maintained greater contact with Lima while the Viceroyalty still reigned there. Also, the patriotic forces, which had at first been strongly connected with the Independence Movement in Argentina, later remained quite isolated until Sucre’s arrival. Furthermore, several delegates from Upper Perú, as representatives of their regions, which are today a part of Bolivia, signed the Independence Act of the United Provinces of South America in 1816.
These ties with the very new republics of Perú and Argentina were partially a continuation of those that existed during the Colonial period; but they also emerged, in part, with the spread of the Independence Movement against Spain. The territories of Upper Perú were included under the jurisdiction of the Audience of Charcas, which had at first corresponded to the Viceroyalty of Perú, with its capital in Lima. However, beginning in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, they were passed over to the jurisdiction of the newly established Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, with its capital in Buenos Aires.
The establishment of the Republic of Bolivia resolved a series of tensions implicit in the possibilities that were then being considered of annexing the newly liberated territories either to the Republic of Argentina or the Republic of Perú. It also played a role in a series of events that, at times, were considered an obstacle to Bolívar’s project to create one single, large nation in South America. In reality, however, these events were only the moves necessary to help resolve the problems of predominance and confrontation that were emerging between the different nations.3
Nataniel Aguirre
Nataniel Aguirre (1843–1888) was a statesman and an intellectual in a republic that was already facing the challenges of consolidating its new institutions. In Juan de la Rosa, Aguirre focuses on the origins of the historical processes of these challenges from the perspective of the conflicts present at the end of the nineteenth century. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Bolivia entered a stage in which it sought to adapt the organization of the country to the international economy. This was achieved in such a manner that it set off large, violent forces against internal markets, as well as against indigenous organizations regarding access to land. The serious conflicts with the indigenous sectors of the country, which comprise a majority of the population, arose with the selling of community lands and the successive attempts to privatize property. Labeled as the “first agrarian reform,” these would extend well into the twentieth century.4 Furthermore, control over natural resources for which there was demand in international markets also produced tensions along the country’s borders. This generated another form of external violence, one that led to the outbreak of the War of the Pacific, in which Bolivia and Perú fought against Chile. Nataniel Aguirre actively participated in the major events that shaped the economy and the politics under which Bolivia entered the twentieth century. On the one hand, he was a protagonist in the discussion and the shaping of the laws that were meant to revert collective ownership of the land and modify the system of the Indian head tax (or Tribute) within the framework of a modern and supposedly “democratic” constitution. On the other, he participated in the War of the Pacific, in which Bolivia suffered an early and unfortunate defeat and lost an important stretch of land that represented its only access to the sea. It is important to note, especially in light of what will be seen later regarding Juan de la Rosa, that Aguirre was one of the main voices arguing in favor of democratic rights and for the establishment of an egalitarian political structure in the National Assembly of 1880. In economic matters, he formulated a policy that was not only based on modern liberal ideas, but also one that would strengthen small producers and energize internal markets that had already showed their virtues during the first decades of the republic. These proposals can be seen as part of a protectionist ideology. As an important leader of the Liberal Party, Aguirre argued for progress and modernization. However, proving the autonomy of his political thoughts, he also set forth proposals designed with the specifics of Bolivia in mind, sometimes going against fashionable “free market” ideas. In any case, these were set aside after the deliberations, and a crude, liberal economic policy whose character was based entirely on mining was adopted instead. Nataniel Aguirre spent the last years of his life distanced from political power and from the leaders of the country’s economy.5
Aguirre wrote Juan de la Rosa immediately after these events, once Bolivia was already out of the War of the Pacific. The novel, however, goes back to the beginnings of a previous war, the one that led to the birth of the nation. Although he belongs to the time of the defeat in the War of the Pacific, the voice that conveys the story is that of a narrator who identifies himself as a witness of the first national struggles, and who defines himself as a spokesman of these in a time of chaos. Furthermore, in a move designed to focus the reader’s attention and authorize his own statements, the narrator quotes several well-known historians who have dealt with the period of the Independence Movement (including Bartolomé Mitre, Mariano Torrente, and Eufronio Viscarra). This technique is common to the genre of the historical novel, to which Juan de la Rosa also belongs.
Nation and Narration
A National History
The novel Juan de la Rosa is written in the form of an autobiography. The retired Colonel Juan de la Rosa writes his “memoirs” in first person, recalling his childhood, the time during which he witnessed the events of the uprising of Cochabamba against the Spaniards. It is interesting to note that the narrator’s own name, Juan de la Rosa, is not found written anywhere in the text—although in the first edition it did appear as the name of the author. This is a characteristic typical of the autobiographical genre; the effect it produces is one of creating the impression that the story is the testimony of a real, historical person.
The narrator presents his manuscripts in an introduction titled “Letter—Prologue.” In it, he situates himself in a family setting: he is next to his wife Merceditas, on the occasion of celebrating with a group of friends the anniversary of the Triumph at Aroma, one of the first victories of the Independence Movement against the Spaniards (see Map 2). From there, he addresses his writings to his readers, whom he calls the “youth of my beloved country,” thus establishing a direct and familiar relationship with the “future” citizens of Bolivia.
The solemnity and formality of the qualifier “The Last Soldier of the Independence Movement,” which brings the patriotic values to the forefront, are neutralized and relativized by a sense of humor and the tone of intimacy of the familiar anecdote. Alluding to his age, Colonel de la Rosa’s wife uses an affectionate paraphrase, calling him “the last carrion of the times of the Independence Movement!” It is with this tone that the novel treats the national theme; a tone that is colloquial and familiar rather than official or formal, but that is not for this reason any less serious.
From this brief “Prologue” it is already possible to discern the three periods of the narrator’s life. The period of his childhood will be covered by the story told in the novel. That of his youth, as a soldier in the Independence Movement, is referred to in the narrator’s own characterizations: “lay heavily upon my heart, under my officer’s jacket of the Mounted Grenadiers of Buenos Aires” (p. 12, italics added). Just as further on, when he mentions the titles belonging to the enemy of his homeland, he says: “quite smug with his title of Count of Huaqui—which I, my readers, would never exchange for mine, that of Commander and Aide-de-Camp of the Grand Marshal of Ayacucho” (p. 201, italics added). And, finally, the period of his mature, older years is that in which he carries out this narration. This can be seen in the instances when he reacts emotionally as he criticizes his contemporaries who are adulterating the values of the struggles of the Independence Movement and the institutions achieved through its victory:
… todays soldiers … who break up congresses with the brute force of their weapons, who pitilessly murder the defenseless populace, who hand over Bolívar’s blood-stained medal to a back-stabbing idiot, who laugh at the laws, mock the constitution, betray the country and sell themselves. . . . No, I cannot go on! … Mercedes! I’m choking! …
As you can see, I have had to interrupt my story and scream out for my Merceditas; the anger was suffocating me. But I am calm again, and shall now continue, (p. 126)
This critical attitude toward the institutions of the narrator’s time underlies the novel’s colloquial tone and lends a sense of commitment with the nation’s history that was very much pointed out by the first readings made of the novel in Bolivia.
Thus, from a historical point of view, this narrator’s “memories” encompass almost the entirety of the history of Bolivia of the nineteenth century, focusing on three distinct periods. The story of the narrator’s childhood covers the period of the uprisings aimed at obtaining independence from Spain (1810), which were linked with the Independence Movement of the whole continent. Then, the narrator’s references to his youth correspond with the triumph of these wars (1824), the direct effect of which was the foundation of the Bolivian nation. Finally, the narrator’s present, the time in which the writing of the memoirs is carried out, is framed in the life of the Republic, extending more or less from 1848—according to the Note in Chapter I: “I began to write these memoirs in 1848”—to 1884, the date on the “Prologue.” Thus, the narrator’s point of view is composed of a “memoir” that encompasses almost an entire century of national history. It also projects itself toward the twentieth century by addressing itself to the “youth of my beloved country.”
To construct a modern image of the nation, this voice legitimizes itself by identifying with the original values of the country and the history of the nation. But this legitimization is completed with another kind of identification, one more private than public, as the voice also gains authority by being the father of a family. It was mentioned above that the narrator situates himself in a familiar setting to present his story. This is a nuclear family, and it is contrasted to the kind of family that is shown in the novel; that is, to Doña Teresa’s family, to which Juanito’s father belongs, as the narrator later finds out. The former is also proposed as an alternative to the latter. The difference between the two families is primarily determined by the system of access to property. The family in the story is a “primogeniture,” a structure that held up a number of Colonial institutions. The criollo6 “primogeniture” families were honored with lands and Indians by the “Encomienda.”7 The oldest son of such a family, then, would inherit all the family’s properties, including the lands and other assets. The other children, meanwhile, would serve in the army or take their vows in a religious order. The utopic family that appears in the writings of Brother Justo, or that from which Juan de la Rosa writes his story, on the other hand, imply a more “modern” social organization—although still within the patriarchal society of the nineteenth century—in which each citizen, thanks to his remunerated work, has the possibility of having access to property by purchasing it. Hence, the novel postulates an ideal national value, with the nuclear family as the basic unit of production.
Juan de la Rosa is the father. His wife, Merceditas, plays the role of the mother of that “youth of my beloved country,” the implied reader of the novel, and the element on which the family structure of the novel rests. The nuclear family and the country are superimposed and assimilated, as the narrative function acquires authority and credibility by identifying with certain national values (the history of the criollo and mestizo struggles for Independence, their heroes, “justice”), and by resting on a paternal figure, one with whom any citizen can identify.
But in the opposition between the primogeniture family and the nuclear family, the indigenous community, because it coexisted with other Colonial institutions, is also aligned with the primogeniture family: “[From] the encomiendas … from the Apportionments … from the Tribute … from the Comunidades … arose the greatest degradation of the [Indians]”8 (p. 96). Thus, in the utopia of the modern nation that the narration outlines as the result of civilization and progress, the nuclear family would have to substitute these institutions so as to leave behind the Colonial order. It is also important to remember that the debate regarding the lands of the indigenous comunidades was one of the central themes in Bolivian politics and economics during the second half of the nineteenth century, and that their “privatization” led to major confrontations.9
An Original Project
The narrative play of Juan de la Rosa, however, does not end there. The narrator Juan de la Rosa is complemented by another subordinate narrator, Brother Justo. This second narrator is Juanito’s teacher, from whom the protagonist learns to read and write. It is through the teachings and writings of this character-narrator that the novel presents the original project of national identity. Furthermore, they lead to a resolution of the enigmas surrounding the identity of the protagonist. The writings of Brother Justo, which he leaves to Juanito at his death, complete and explain all the loose ends of the protagonist’s life.
Brother Justo provides information to the past prior to 1810, to which Juan de la Rosa’s personal life experiences do not extend. Thus, he explains the origins of the paternal side of the character’s family in Spain, the story of Juanito’s parents, and his own relationship with them. But he also explains the antecedents of the Independence Movement, and delineates the national project that drives it, as well as its basis on two fundamental characteristics: its inspiration from the Enlightenment and the important participation of the mestizos.
The readings that had fallen into Brother Justo’s hands—Rousseau’s Social Contract, pieces from the works of Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689–1755), Guillermo Tomás Raynal (1713–1796), the Encyclopedia signed by Francisco Pazos Canqui, and, finally, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States10—lead him to sympathize with, and to disseminate, a type of nation that begins to be postulated as a real alternative to the Colonial regime. This narrator is thus the bearer of the revolutionary ideas and of the project that Juan de la Rosa invokes.
Similarly, it is through Brother Justo’s revelations that we learn that Rosita, the protagonist’s mother, is a direct descendant of Alejo Calatayud, a historical personage who led one of the first mestizo uprisings against the Spanish government in 1730.11 This is the first fact the boy comes across as he begins to construct that his identity is of mestizo origin. Brother Justo also postulates that the rebellion Cochabamba is currently experiencing (in 1812) is a continuation of Calatayud’s struggles. At the same time, however, his voice effectively separates Calatayud’s rebellion with the indigenous uprisings of the eighteenth century: “I will not exhaust your attention with … any of the bloody revolts in which the indigenous race insanely attempted to recover its independence” (p. 38). It is important to note the emphasis that Brother Justo lends to the figure of Calatayud in his discourse, and the distance he seeks to establish between Calatayud’s uprising and others. This is especially interesting if we keep in mind that current historiography shows that there was not such distinctly outlined “mestizo” interests in the indigenous rebellions. Studies reveal, on the contrary, the wide range of factors that came into play, and the consequences of their impact on the Colonial government.12
This attempt to specifically exclude the indigenous factors from the national image is a common characteristic of modernization projects of the nineteenth century. These, because they were postulated by the dominant sectors, quite often ignored certain specific social conditions to maintain a privileged situation in relation to the sectors on which the Colonial regime had been traditionally based. This, in turn, necessarily produces a distorted view of the past. The image of Juan de la Rosa’s modern national project contains the paradox of being made up of fragments of songs, icons, and indigenous languages—which were very much present during its time period, and even in the twentieth century—but at the same time affirming that these cultural forms were all but nonexistent in late nineteenth-century Bolivia.
The Figure of the Intellectual
Brother Justo, the “teacher,” and Juan de la Rosa together compose a complex figure that carries out the function of the novel’s narrator. Brother Justo, a member of the Catholic Church and a well-established criollo family, is part of the estates of Colonial power in America. He questions the Colonial system, however, and postulates a different system, thus committing himself to the struggles of the Independence Movement. Furthermore, Juan de la Rosa, the narrator of the period of the Republic, of the Bolivian nation, is a military man with liberal ideas. Even though he is proud of his link with the army, the institution that achieved national independence, he is able to be critical of it.
Both men of letters are critical of their respective institutions; but, so long as they serve their proper functions, they also support them. Thus, Brother Justo finds “truths that derive from Christianity” (p. 294) in Rousseau; and Juan de la Rosa argues that if the army continued to follow the model of the Independence Movement, it would accomplish its goals. In short, Juan de la Rosa recovers Brother Justo’s project for the homeland. In doing so, he has two objectives: to affirm the validity of the original project, and to denounce the fact that, in his own lifetime, it is being adulterated.
Both men are intellectuals who are disseminating the national project and “educating” others about it. Brother Justo expounds and explains it to Juanito, as well as to his parishioners; he also writes it down in a private space, his personal diary. Juan de la Rosa expounds and explains it publicly, through the story of his life, in his “memoirs,” to the “youth” of Bolivia.
The image projected of both of the narrators in Juan de la Rosa is close to what Gramsci has defined in his writings as the “organic intellectual”: both are educators and legitimating voices of a national project, the economic and political circumstances of which they are also capable of criticizing.13 Although it is true that for Brother Justo there is still no “status quo” to legitimize, his figure, however, does legitimate the French and American Revolutions in South America. Further, it also gives Juan de la Rosa the function of legitimizing the nation he feels is having difficulties establishing itself. Hence, they both go a step further than their primary roles as “revolutionary intellectuals.” For, after all, Brother Justo dies defending the entrance to the church from the Spanish enemy, and Juan de la Rosa is, above all else, a soldier of the Independence Movement.
As progressive, learned men, both formulate their projects with the exclusion of, or trying to negate, the indigenous cultural forms along with the Colonial past, for the model that they advocate tends toward a cultural homogenization. However, as we discuss in the next section, while Aguirre creates the public space in which the “organic intellectual” can be validated in this novel, he is unable to completely dispense with the indigenous cultural forms. In fact, he evokes them repeatedly.
We can see, then, that the global narrative strategy consists in seeking to recover the project of 1810, which is tacitly situated in opposition to the forgetting and betrayal of national values in the present lifetime of the narrator, Juan de la Rosa. This occurs in the same manner in which Brother Justo explicitly delineated the original project in opposition to the Colonial regime. Although the novel does not register the War of the Pacific in any way, it is impossible not to associate this silent accusation with Aguirre’s great disillusionment following Bolivia’s defeat in that war and the hurried signing of the Peace Treaty. As a representative, he opposed the Treaty, although he later found himself having to participate in the negotiations because of the majority’s decision in the Bolivian Congress.
Juan de la Rosa reads and rewrites Brother Justo’s ideas from the moment in time of his own life, just like the reader of the novel (the youth of Bolivia) will read and relive Juan de la Rosa’s project. Therefore, this becomes a mise-en-abîme reading contract that the novel proposes to its reader, for in each reading Aguirre would be put into effect as an organic intellectual of the national project. The expectation is for the reader to place the project in the perspective of his or her own historical reality.
National Representation
The insistence on the various visual images and the songs in Quechua recounted in the novel, and questioned by the narrator himself, reveal a pervasive preoccupation with the different modes of representation that can express the nation or the national ideal. A contraposition can be observed between the form of the novel and the other, nonwritten modes of representation present within it. These include the Ollantay, an important Colonial drama in Quechua; the yaraví, a pre-Colombian, poetic musical form; the very uses of the Quechua language; and the abundant descriptions of various visual images. The reflections made about these, and their placement within the story, seem designed to propose literature as the new mode of representation—a mode that corresponds to a modern period, and, above all, is able to surpass the other modes of representation.
From the very first lines of the novel, before establishing the relationships between the characters, the narrative voice stops to place emphasis on how words represent these relationships: “I always called her by the sweet name of ‘mother’. . . . But she only referred to me as ‘the child,’ except for two or three times in which the word ‘son escaped her mouth” (p. 7). These are words or names that reveal how the Colonial order questions this family relationship, that of the “son,” because Juanito is the product of the union between a criollo and a mestiza. But there is also a contrast here between the word “son” and the appellative “the child.” According to uses in Spanish, and not just during the Colonial period, “the child” (el niño) is used by servants to address their master or owner. The blacksmith Alejo also addresses Rosita as “the child.” During Colonial times, mestizos and Indians occupied the place of the servants, and the criollos that of the master. These categories, however, also appear to be relativized in the story, given the fact that Rosita is introduced as a “young criolla’ with “a few drops … [of Indian blood] … in her veins” (p. 8), but that she is later characterized primarily as the sister, daughter, and descendent of mestizos.14
Similarly, at different times, the narrator stops to comment on Quechua songs or words, either praising the language when his mother speaks it (”in the most tender and affectionate language in the world” [p. 9]); devaluing it when he himself speaks it (”I asked him in Quechua, or rather in that awful dialect used by the brutish descendants of the sons of the sun” [p. 135]); or affirming, in a surprised tone, how foreign the language is (”But what am I doing? Can my young readers even understand that language, which is as foreign to them as Syrian or Chaldean?” [p. 118]). Quechua is currently the indigenous language spoken by the greatest number of people in the Americas; it is possible to infer that in the nineteenth century, at least in Bolivia, it was the mother tongue of a third of the country’s population.15
Furthermore, the abundance of descriptions of visual images, such as paintings, engravings, images, and sculptures, presents us with yet another kind of representation, belonging to that of a visual language. I refer to this language, prominent in the novel’s descriptions, as iconic. Within the visual category, pre-Colombian images occupy an especially relevant place in the case of countries like Bolivia.16
The love alliance between the protagonist’s parents, although it is always latent and embodied by Juanito, is never actually realized. This alliance, however, is displaced onto, and reinforced by, the descriptions of the visual representations and the relationships established between them. The roles played by the images delineate a progression by which the indigenous mythical (the Death of Atahuallpa), and the Colonial religious (the Divine Shepherdess and the Virgin of Our Lady of Mercy) advance toward a secularization (literature, or the new artistic representations of the nation). The novel Juan de la Rosa becomes an emblem that projects the utopic image of a nation that is able to integrate the indigenous cultures—as long as, that is, it is able to dissolve them, along with other forms of Colonial culture, within modernity.
The Myths
The role played by the images begins to be constituted in the first pages of the novel, when two representations located in the room where Juanito lived with his mother are described. The first is presented in contradictory terms, similar to the manner in which the narrator refers to the Quechua language: “[An] original illustration stood out, a work by a hand that was as much clumsy as it was daring, depicting the Death of Atahuallpa” (p. 8). Then, immediately afterward, we read the following description: “In the place of honor, there was also an oil painting of the Divine Shepherdess, sitting with a blue mantle between two plain white sheep, the baby Jesus on her knees” (p. 8). These two images refer us to two myths of ritualistic characteristics. One is from the Christian tradition, widely disseminated throughout Europe and the Americas, and the other is of indigenous origin. Although with different cultural origins, these two myths resemble each other by both referring to a specific ritualistic practice.
In the Andean region, the Divine Shepherdess, or the Virgin Mary who brings the baby Jesus into the world, is associated with a series of festivities that commemorate either her Ascension to Heaven, the birth of her child, or her various apparitions. These are ritualistic celebrations that stand out from, and are intermixed with, the agrarian cycles in the calendar of community Andean practices. The intermixing reaches such an extent, in fact, that the image of the Virgin is at times conceived as overlapping with the representation of the Pachamama, Mother Earth.
The Death of the Inca Atahuallpa is a widely utilized poetic, choreographic, and dramatic theme among the indigenous peoples of Perú and Bolivia. The tradition goes back to the sixteenth century, and its use has been documented into the second half of the twentieth century. This representation is also considered to express the vision of the defeated in the war implied by the Spanish Conquest, and simultaneously ritualize the resistance to the colonialization.17The ritualized representation of the Inca’s death projects three basic ruptures: one referring to the confrontation between Spaniards and Indians; another to the division of the Inca from his subjects; and the third, at a cosmic level, between the earth and the sun. This last one is a conjunction that in Quechua culture appears as the base of agrarian production, as well as that of human reproduction, and is assimilated into the duality of the axiom defining the feminine and the masculine. This theme is also related to a myth that is quite widely disseminated today in the Andes: that of the Inkarrí, which predicts a “pachacuti” or a radical change in the current order, with a return of the Inca who is now growing deep in the earth.18
Another detail that is important to mention, from our point of view today, is that these representations were always realized in the context of a celebration in the Catholic calendar. Further, the last ones that we know of took place during the Procession of the Virgin of Socavón.19 Thus, the existence of both rituals—that of the representation of the Divine Shepherdess and of the Death of Atahuallpa—actually appears to overlap in space and time.
In Juan de la Rosa, the feelings of disjunction in cosmic harmony, combined with a messianic projection—represented in the indigenous inscription of the Death of Atahuallpa20—are complemented with the feelings of mediation projected by the representation of the Divine Shepherdess. These two images thus bring into play the feelings between a lost paternal filiation and a mediating maternal figure with messianic characteristics.
But the two images just discussed also enter into a relationship with two other representations. Chapter VI includes a description of the coat of arms of the Márquez y Altamira family at the entrance to the house and a painting of St. Michael inside. Let us consider the coat of arms first. The space that surrounds it is open and clearly depicted; this is not the case, however, with the representation itself, which is accompanied by a description that is very much unassertive (e.g., “what appeared to be,” “something like”):
We arrived at a large arcade with thick adobe and stucco pillars. It supported an arch that had painted on it a monogram of the Virgin and below it what appeared to be the family coat of arms, something like a bull grazing in a field of wheat, (p. 55)
The image of a bull in a field of wheat refers us to a series of ideas associated with agricultural societies. It is a symbol of concrete manifestations of power and strength. In Mediterranean cultures, it is associated with unbound virile forces, as the male counterpart to the conception of a “Mother Earth.”21 Zeus, in turn, takes on the shape of a bull in the rape of Europa.
The associations of strength, power, and virility that emerge from the representation of the coat of arms, and their relationship with the earth, appear to be opposing complements to the characteristics of charity, innocence, and motherhood projected by the image of the Divine Shepherdess. But the symmetrical complementation of the two images—in terms of motherhood/virility, feminine/masculine, charity and innocence/strength and power—is reinforced by another detail that makes this virtual alliance stand out. We only learn of it well into the story, when the protagonist receives that first “oil painting” of the Divine Shepherdess, after a long time, as part of his inheritance. At this point he observes two things: the similarity between the image and his mother, and the presence in the painting of the initials “C. A.” These correspond to Carlos de Altamira, the primogeniture of the family (i.e., the oldest son, who was to inherit everything), who turns out to be Juanito’s father. If we go back now to the description of the coat of arms, we find that the monogram of the Virgin is inscribed right above it (these would be the initials A. M., “Ave Maria,” combined and interwoven in a painted design).
Therefore, we see that there is an exchange, a commutation, in these two cases: the letters—the signs of writing—that accompany one image refer to the other. In this manner, the complementation, or alliance, between the representation of the Divine Shepherdess and that of the coat of arms is strengthened by this link between letter and image. But the commutative relationship also projects a connection, or better yet a tension, between the two kinds of representation: the iconic and the written. A tension that, as I try to show here, turns out to be quite productive in Juan de la Rosa.
This complementation, or alliance, between the two images yields yet another result, for it refers us to that other tension existing in the narrative plane between the resolution of the story and the other possible outcome that is always latent, which I shall call the counterstory. The story will show the impossibility of the union between the protagonist’s mestiza mother and his criollo father, which produces the unknowns surrounding the character’s very identity. This suggested counterstory is precisely the affirmation of that union, which as such is never realized during the Colonial period but is produced as its consequence. In other words, it is the son of the primogeniture of the Altamira family and of Rosita: Juanito, who was able to become Colonel Juan de la Rosa and not Juan de Altamira, as should have been the case during Colonial times.
The fourth image, finally, is inside Doña Teresa’s house: “On the wall, could be seen a large oil painting of the Archangel St. Michael, his foot on the chest of the rebel and the tip of his spear in the rebel’s mouth” (p. 55). This image is related to that of the Death of Atahuallpa, in that both represent a rupture, or a disjunction, as opposed to that characterized by alliances, as we just discussed.
In the Christian tradition, the Archangel St. Michael is the leader of the forces of good that wage war against Satan, who is represented either as a dragon or a dark-skinned heretic; and, if a heretic, then either as an Indian or a Negro. In the image in Juan de la Rosa, he is fighting against a “rebel.” The effect is to extend the representation as a projection of the fight of the Church against heresy—one of the banners the Spaniards raised in their aggressions against indigenous peoples during the Conquest, but that also overlapped into Colonial times. This battle is also present in the representation of the Death of Atahuallpa, as an indigenous, iconographic version of the war of the Conquest. The Christian image, on the other hand, is the Spanish version in terms of the evangelization of the indigenous peoples. The first image, therefore, is marked by loss and death, whereas that of St. Michael bears the traits of the victor and salvation.
It is important to point out that in the paintings portraying the Death of Atahuallpa in the Colonial period, and in theatrical representations performed in our century, the figure of “Santiago Matamoros”—also known in South America as “Santiago Mataindios”22—frequently appears next to the Inca, thus depicting the Conquest as a battle between good and evil, a battle against heresy. In this sense, the figure of St. Michael can be seen to merge into that of Santiago, fighting against that which is different—the rebel as the personification of evil. In other readings of this representation, however, the same image, because of the shining sword, is juxtaposed with the indigenous worship of the thunderbolt—Illapa—that even today warrants great respect and various forms of worship. We can therefore see how the conjunction of the representations of the Death of Atahuallpa and of St. Michael in Juan de la Rosa, and of Santiago in Colonial paintings and in nineteenth- and twentieth-century theatrical representations,23 reveals the polysematic and intercultural value of these images. Hence, these two different perspectives indicate the tremendous difference between the Christian view of the Conquest as a battle between good and evil and the indigenous view of versatile and transformable forces, based on the confrontation of natural phenomena. In the first case, good and evil are expounded as polarized essences; in the second, these are dissolved among other complementary forces, which, although inevitable, are reversible, or at least capable of being transformed.
In Aguirre’s novel, the four images discussed here as mythical representations from different traditions refer to the origins of a confrontation, to a remote time prior to the Independence Movement. In this manner, they begin to give shape to an alliance based on a background of the struggles for Independence that originated at the time of the Conquest.
The alliance that the narrative proposes, however, goes beyond the Independence Movement. It is embodied by the narrator as the son of a mestiza and a criollo, of a tenant family and a property-owning family. This is an alliance that wishes to leave behind the previous struggles, represented by the images of the Death of Atahuallpa, of Archangel St. Michael, or the coat of arms of the Altamira family, which seem to embody the Conquest or Colonial struggles.
In this landscape filled with all the contradictions regarding the categories of criollos, mestizos, and Indians, Juan de la Rosa proposes an alliance between the ruling classes and a broad range of Cochabamba mestizos, including artisans and the tenants of lands owned by criollos. These last two sectors developed a large economic field of activity during the first years of the Republic, for they had constituted and sustained quite an independent internal market whose vigor and productivity surprises scholars to this date. However, it is also evident that these sectors were the most disdained by the ruling classes, which, precisely by installing these “racial” categories, tried to preserve the hegemony inherited from the Colonial system.24
Utopia
Throughout the narrative, however, another image of the Virgin appears several times, and it does so in public spaces, where it no longer connotes a familiar intimacy. It is the image of the Virgin of Our Lady of Mercy, called “la Patriota? which was carried as their only banner by the armies of the Independence Movement. We come across two versions of this Virgin in the novel. The first, the main one, is found in the Church of the Matriz in Cochabamba. It is the one vested with the national values, even though, “Every year, the most illustrious ladies tended to give very luxurious lamé dresses and the most valuable jewels as offerings to her” (p. 126). The second version, however, is a subaltern one. It is found in Francisco Nina’s place, a house in the country whose tenant residents are enthusiastic supporters of the Independence Movement, and who, furthermore, offer their kind hospitality to the protagonist—exactly the opposite of what the Altamira family does. But in this case the description reveals an image that is imperfect, with noticeably disproportionate features:
an image of the Virgin Our Lady of Mercy, with eyes bigger than her mouth and cheeks redder than cherries, balancing a miniature of the child Jesus on the palm of her hand that was so small it looked like a toy with which she was playing, (p. 107)
This attitude of the narrator in pointing out an image’s defects when he describes the representation was already suggested in his depiction of the Death of Atahuallpa: “A work by a hand that was as much clumsy as it was daring” (p. 8). But now the narrator explicitly emphasizes the defects in the making of this image of the Virgin. And because the ideals of the homeland are focused around her, these defects in turn extend to the capability that these peasants might have of realizing representations, specifically regarding the homeland, for which they are fighting next to the criollo patriots.
The identification of the patriotic ideal with representations of the Virgin is not specific to Aguirre’s work. It was common for the troops of the Independence Movement to use it as a banner for their armies. General Belgrano,25 among whose forces the narrator Juan de la Rosa says he fought, had as the patroness of his army this same Virgin of Our Lady of Mercy. This representation, incidentally, has occupied an important role in the symbology of identity in the Argentine army this century. In any case, the proposal contained in Juan de la Rosa, just as it intends to go beyond the indigenous representations, also proposes to go beyond these kinds of religious representations for the nation.
Toward the novel’s end, when the protagonist already knows the story of his direct ancestors and finally finds the house where his father lives, he sees a series of strange drawings and sculptures:
The whitewashed walls were covered with strange drawings, some of them done with charcoal, others with colored chalk. Among the drawings there were men with heads of animals, and animals with human heads; fantastic trees; flowers with wings; and birds hanging from branches as if they were flowers. . . . All along the walls, at a level where they could be reached by a man of average height, boards were nailed up, serving as shelves. These held many clay, stucco, and stone figurines that were as strange and unpredictable as the drawings. I have one of them in front of me right now. . . . (p. 306)
These drawings have the distinctive quality of uniting or bringing together different beings, different natures: the human and the nonhuman, animals and plants. This mixed nature reveals changes and metamorphoses. Further, the place where they are found is the threshold that the protagonist must cross to meet his father. They therefore constitute a boundary, a point of transition, or a crossing over, from one state to another, and suggest the opening of something new, completely unknown, with a certain amount of augury and hope. In effect, these hybrid images, which indicate a transgression of nature and are the work of a repressed or crazy “artist”—as a result of the Colonial system—are constituted at the step, or the transition, toward something new. The narrator conceives this something new as a future national culture, represented by the image that transcends this space. Years later, it will occupy a privileged place in the narrator’s space:
I have one of them in front of me right now; carved out of white stone, it is the figure of a woman dressed in a sheer tunic who is reclining back on one of her arms, resting against the back of a sleeping lion. (p. 306)
The image of the woman in the tunic is precisely an image, a neoclassical symbol, that even today carries the strength of the abstract notions of law, liberty, justice, and so on. Liberalism maintains that these values form the basis of modernity and shape the concept of the independent republic, which is what the intellectuals of the Independence Movement thought at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The origin of this manner of representing the nation is in the neoclassical imaginary utilized by the French Revolution. It can be seen in illustrations and statues. Even today, the image used to personify the nation is a woman in a tunic, with a laurel wreath around her head.
The image of the Virgin of Our Lady of Mercy, identified with the homeland during the times of the Independence Movement, has been substituted by this other image of a woman in a tunic, resting against the back of a lion. The major difference is that this latter representation is no longer inscribed within the mythical-religious associations. We are no longer dealing with a Virgin, or an angel, or another religious symbol, although this one is also ethereal.26 Rather, it is a secular image that—although it does not eclipse the central place of that other feminine image, the Virgin, in the novel—projects more modern connotations. The lion, furthermore, is present in a number of Spanish emblems. Here, the sleeping lion could be thought of as replacing the bull that appears in the coat of arms. This icon would thus represent a national utopia as a result of the triumph of the homeland over the Spanish forces.
The two time periods of the protagonist-narrator run against each other in this fragment: the time of the story, when the boy finally goes to meet his father, and the time of the narration, when the narrator writes his “Memoirs of the Last Soldier of the Independence Movement” and has as his interlocutor and collaborator his wife Merceditas. Her name, furthermore, is also associated with the religious representation of the values of the homeland, the Virgin of Our Lady of Mercy.27 Here, however, it is secularized, and it exists in a familiarized setting. She is thus also stripped of her religious inscription, both as the narrator’s wife and collaborator.
That dividing line, or threshold, that the interaction between the images brings to the forefront, and which projects a national culture, also marks another change: the secularization of culture and art. Juan de la Rosa proposes to found a secular mode of representation that is different from—and surpasses—that constituted by the icons it describes and articulates. The novel proposes the beginnings of a Bolivian literature that would have, among others, the possibility of projecting and constituting an image of the nation. And it is precisely that secularizing impulse that articulates a national utopia aimed at dissolving the outdated Colonial institutions, such as the exacerbated religiousness, and the system of the primogeniture—the structure of family inheritance that made impossible any access to property by those who were not criollos. But in order to be able to leave behind these Colonial forms, this allegory for the homeland also proposes leaving behind these indigenous forms of expression and languages that—although they fought against them—the narrator finds as outdated as the Colonial institutions. He does, however, incorporate them in a conspicuous manner into the novel.
These different modes of representation exist in tension with one another; the novel as representation constitutes itself on the basis of these fragments, but does not strictly represent any one of them. The topic of representation comes to the forefront and is treated several times in the text. But it is also a topic of deeper reflection. Juan de la Rosa postulates itself as a representation that problematizes representation. This makes it a novel that enters the problematics of modernity, even when the form of the story and its interweaving with history are so close to the cannon of the classic romantic novel.
—Alba María Paz-Soldán
Translated by Sergio Gabriel Waisman
NOTES
The original ideas for this essay first appeared in my doctoral thesis, “Una articulación simbólica de lo nacional: Juan de la Rosa de Nataniel Aguirre,” presented at the University of Pittsburgh in 1986.
The present work is greatly indebted to the comments of my thesis advisor, Professor John Beverley; the invaluable observations of Professor Edmond Cross (University Paul Valéry, Montpellier); and the later, detailed reading by Professor Antonio Cornejo-Polar (University of California, Berkeley).
1. Born in Arequipa, Perú, José Manuel Goyeneche (1755–1846) undertook his military education in Spain, where he received high honors. Back in the Americas, he met with the Viceroy of the Río de la Plata, Santiago de Liniers (1753–1810), in Buenos Aires, with whom he planned the propagation and the war campaign on behalf of King Fernando VII in the Americas. Upon the arrival of the Revolution of May in Buenos Aires in 1810, the Viceroy of Perú appointed him to lead the army that was to drive the rebellious provinces back into obedience. He fought the rebels of the uprising of July 16, 1809, in La Paz with a large deployment of troops, then condemned Murillo and three other revolutionaries to death and banished eighty-seven others. In 1811, he reached an armistice with Castelli and Balcárcel for forty days, but betrayed it when he attacked and defeated the armies of the Independence Movement in the Battle of Huaqui. After defeating Castelli in Sipe Sipe, in July 1811, he victoriously entered the city of Cochabamba. Most of these events, and Goyeneche’s role in them, are dealt with extensively in Juan de la Rosa.
2. The victory was sealed by the Battle of Ayacucho on December 8, 1824, in which Marshall Antonio José de Sucre, then a General, defeated the Spanish army after several victories by the Independence fighters. See Alcides Arguedas, Historia General de Bolivia (La Paz: Juventud/reprint, 1980). See also Gunnar Mendoza, Diario del Tambor Vargas, un combatiente de la Independencia (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1984).
3. See Herbert Klein, Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). For further information regarding this historical process, see also Charles Arnade, The Emergence of the Republic of Bolivia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1957).
4. See Tristan Platt, Estado boliviano y Ayllu andino (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1982) and Silvia Rivera, Oprimidos pero no vencidos (La Paz: Hisbol-CSUTCB, 1984).
5. See Porfirio Díaz Machicao, Nataniel Aguirre (Buenos Aires: Perlado, 1945) and Joaquín Aguirre Lavadenz, Guerra del Pacífico. Pacto de tregua. 1884. Correspondencia privada de Nataniel Aguirre (La Paz—Cochabamba: Los Amigos del Libro, 1987).
6. A criollo was a person born in the Americas to European parents; it does not have the same meaning as the contemporary term “Creole.” (Trans.)
7. Encomiendas were the awards granted to conquistadors or Spaniards by the Spanish Crown in the form of a certain number of Indians who would then become workers or servants in one of the properties of that conquistador or Spaniard. Juridically, the Encomienda was based on the transfer from the King to his subjects (the encomenderos) of the Tribute, or the work of a group of indigenous people (the encomendados) in exchange for their protection and instruction in Christianity. In the first stages of the Conquest, trade and the flow of goods was regulated through the encomienda, by which the encomendero received the Tribute that the Indians supposedly owed to the Crown.
Several other aspects of the Colonial economic system are described below, including an explanation of the Tribute, or the Indian tax system. See also n. 8.
8. See n. 7 for an explanation of the Encomiendas. “Apportionments” (the repartamiento) was the name given to the distribution of the Indios de Mita (or Mita Indians) for work in general, but especially for working in the mines. It also refers to the action of determining the tax rate (the “Tribute”) that the Indians had to pay. When the term encomienda is used, the emphasis falls on the responsibilities of the encomendero (the Spanish subject); when the term “Apportionment” is used, on the other hand, the emphasis falls on the distribution of the Indians and their lands.
The Mita system is mentioned in Chapter IV of the novel. The term is derived from the Quechua mittani mittacuni, meaning the time has come for one to do something. It refers to the system of work that organized Indians into various shifts for working the mines, farms, or estates of the Spaniards, all without any compensation. The “Tribute” comes from an old Spanish tradition. In the Americas, the obligation of paying the “Tribute,” or tax, fell on the new, non-Spanish lower classes. In the Spanish juridical conception, the Indians were to pay the “Tribute” as part of their obligation as “subjects” to the Crown, in exchange for the supposed benefits of Spanish civilization. A large number of documents from the sixteenth century refer to the excesses of the encomenderos in the collecting of the “Tribute.” By the nineteenth century, however, the Indians fulfilled their obligation of paying the “Tribute” on the basis of a juridical conception of reciprocity: they paid their tax in exchange for the right to work the land.
The Comunidades were a complex social and work system in the Andes based on the indigenous Aymaran and Quechuan institution of the ayllu. The Spaniards kept very strict records of the comunarios (the members of the comunidades) to collect the Tribute from them.
9. See n.3.
10. The reference to these French writers and intellectuals from the Enlightenment (Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Raynal) through a text “signed” by Pazos Canqui is quite significant, for it alludes to an indigenous historical personage, of Aymara origin, who stood out among the ideologues who participated in the uprisings in Chuquisaca (1809) and Buenos Aires (May 25, 1810). Vicente Pazos Canqui, a journalist and a priest, became the editor of the newspaper La Gaze ta in Buenos Aires in 1811 and translated the Declaration of Independence of the United Provinces of South America, drawn up by the Constituent Congress of Tucumán in 1816, into Aymara. He also published An Outline of the History of the United States of America. Written in Spanish by an Aymara Indian from La Paz [Compendio de la historia de los Estados Unidos de América. Puesta en castellano por un indio aymara de La Paz] in Paris in 1825.
11. See Valentín Abecia, Alejo Calatayud (La Paz: Juventud, 1977). The uprising led by Alejo Calatayud, a silversmith artisan, occurred in Cochabamba in November 1730 following news of the arrival of the Collector Benero y Balero, who was supposedly trusted with undertaking a new registry (or Tribute list) to carry out the charging of a new Tribute from the Indians and new Regalias from the mestizos (Regalías was the head tax charged each mestizo, equivalent to the Tribute placed on each Indian).
12. Scarlett O’Thelan, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales. Perú y Bolivia 1700–1783 (Cuzco: Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas, 1988). Steve Stern, Resistencia, rebelión y conciencia campesina en los Andes (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Perúanos, 1990).
13. Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1959).
14. For a more thorough view of the category of mestizo in Bolivia in this time period, see Silvia Rivera, “La raíz: colonizadores y colonizados,” in Violencias encubiertas en Bolivia (La Paz: Cipca-Aruwiyiri, 1993, 26–139). Also see Rossana Barragán, Espacio urbano y dinámica étnica (La Paz: Inst. de Historia Social Boliviana, 1990).
15. Xavier Albo, in Lengua y sociedad en Bolivia (1976) (La Paz: Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 1980), shows that currently, in the district of Cochabamba, 47.8% of the population is bilingual in Quechua and Spanish, 31.7% is monolingual in Quechua, and 16.7% is monolingual in Spanish. It is reasonable to infer that in Aguirre’s time Quechua was even more widely spoken.
16. See the important work in this subject by Teresa Gisbert, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz: Gisbert y Cía S.A., 1980).
17. Jesús Lara, La tragedia del fin de Atahuallpa (Cochabamba: Imp. Universitaria, 1957); Mario Unzueta, Valle (Cochabamba: Edt. La época, 1945, 134–144); Hernando Balmori, La conquista de los españoles y el teatro americano (Tucumán: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Univ. de Tucumán, 1955); Nathan Wachtel, “La visión de los vencidos: la conquista española en el folklore indígena,” in Juan Ossio’s Ideología mesiánica del mundo andina (Lima: Bib. de Antropología, 1963, 37–75).
18. Juan Ossio, for example, in Ideología mesiánica del mundo andino (Lima: Bib. de Antropología, 1963) presents several versions of this myth.
19. See Luis Bredow, “La escena de la muerte de Atahuallpa,” in Hipótesis, No. 23/24 (Primavera-Verano, 1987), 319–329.
20. See Hernando Balmori, op. cit., p. 52.
21. “El toro en las culturas mediterráneas” in Gran Enciclopedia RIALP (Madrid, 1975), 588–591.
22. “Santiago Matamoros” literally means “St. James the Moor Killer,” although “matamoros” is now used to refer to a bully or a braggart. Likewise with “Santiago Mataindios,” which literally means “St. James the Indian Killer,” but has the same connotations today as matamoros. In the first case, it is the Moor who functions as the “Other”; in the second, the Indian fulfills the same function. (Trans.)
23. See Teresa Gisbert, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz: Gisbert y Cía S.A., 1980) (op. cit.) and the works referred to in n. 17; Jesús Lara, La tragedia del fin de Atahuallpa (Cochabamba: Imp. Universitaria, 1957); Mario Unzueta, Valle (Cochabamba: Edt. La época, 1945, 134–144); Hernando Balmori, La conquista de los españoles y el teatro americano (Tucumán: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Univ. de Tucumán, 1955); Nathan Wachtel, “La visión de los vencidos: la conquista española en el folklore indígena,” in Juan Ossio’s Ideología mesiánica del mundo andina (Lima: Bib. de Antropología, 1963, 37–75).
24. See Gustavo Rodríguez and Humberto Solares, Sociedad oligárquica, chicha y cultura popular (Cochabamba: Serrano, 1990). And, for a study of another region, Roberto Laura, La oligarquía de La Paz (La Paz, Tesis de Sociología, Universidad de San Andrés, 1988), cited in Silvia Rivera, Oprimidos pero no vencidos (La Paz: Hisbol-CSUTCB, 1984).
25. Manuel Belgrano (1770–1820) was a general of the Independence Movement. He participated, from the beginning, in the Revolution of May 1810, and defeated the Spanish troops in Tucumán (1812) and Salta (1813). After his triumph in Tucumán, he handed over the command to the Virgin of Our Lady of Mercy, naming her the Generaless of the revolutionary army. He also designed what is still the national flag of Argentina.
26. These images somehow objectify what Marshall Berman characterizes as the ethereal project of modernity. See Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Verso, 1983).
27. The Virgin of Our Lady of Mercy in Spanish is “la Virgen de las Mercedes.” Juan de la Rosa’s wife, therefore, has literally the same name as the Virgin (i.e., “Mercedes”). (Trans.)