Huasipungo
Huasipungo is a 1934 novel by the Ecuadorian writer Jorge Icaza . Despite some stylistic and narrative flaws, this novel is considered the most important of Icazas and one of the most important in Ecuadorian literature. Huasipungo clearly inscribes himself in the current of indigenism that was widespread in Latin America in the 1930s , and social reform tendencies are also evident.
Huasipungo describes very closely the living conditions of the indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian countryside in the 1930s. The conversations of the indigenous people seem to be reproduced authentically, with many words in Kichwa . Huasipungo also allows an insight into the Ecuadorian society of this time, with its values and compulsions.
In Huasipungo the story is told of kichas-speaking indigenous people who live on and work for a latifundista's land . For their work they get a low wage, but this does not correspond in the least to the expenses. So they are getting more and more into debt for themselves and their children. The indigenous peoples have the right to a piece of land that they can cultivate themselves, the Huasipungo. The latifundista is in constant financial need and is therefore happy to respond to offers from US businessmen who suspect that oil is on their land. Only some work has to be done - by the indigenous peoples who are compulsorily obliged - before this deal comes about. And their Huasipungos are in the way of business. So the story of the oppression of the indigenous people and a hopeless uprising is told.
Through the depiction of the physical and moral impoverishment of the Indians, the work differs from the many desires and projections of an ideal world that characterized romantic Indianismo . It thus becomes a high point of literary indigenism.
expenditure
- (Spanish original) Huasipungo, edited by and with an introduction by Teodosio Fernández , Madrid: Cátedra, 2007.
- (a German version) Huasipungo. Our little piece of earth , Göttingen: Lamuv, 1994, ISBN 3921521262 .
- (an English version) Huasipungo: The Villagers , Southern Illinois University Press: Arcturus Books, 1973.
Individual evidence
- ^ Michael Rössner: Latin American literary history. 2nd expanded edition. Stuttgart, Weimar 2002, p. 339