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title: Andean Novels
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This post forms part of my '[aspects of the novel](/2022/01/04/aspects-of-the-novel/)' collection. Please do note that these entries, which may appear basic, are simply my own notes on the subject. They implicitly or explicitly describe a canon not of my own making or choosing and replicate this from various sources. The original encyclopaedia articles are far more comprehensive, nuanced and worth consulting. I am especially conscious, in this article, of the danger of causing offense by grossly simplifying a national history.

According to Chrystian Zegarra (p. 47), there is no comprehensive history of the Andean novel (referring to novels from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru). These regions comprise several different languages, with Quechua and Aymara speakers, although many novels from these regions are nonetheless written in Spanish.

One of the first and most significant novels from the region is _El padre Horán_ (1848, Father Horan) by Narciso Aréstegui. This is a novel about a priest who abuses his position of ecclesiastic authority to take advantage of local peoples in sexual and economic ways. Another key nineteenth-century Andean novelistic touchstone is Juan León Mera's _Cumandá o Un drama entre salvajes_ (1879, _Cumanda_), which depicts the end period of Spanish colonial rule in Ecuador.

A key term referring to literature from the region was coined by José Carlos Mariátegui: _indigenismo_, which refers to the concerns of local (indigenous) peoples and their exploitation. These concerns are reflected, say, in César Vallejo's _Tungesteno_ (1931, _Tungsten_) and José María Arguedas's _Todas las sangres_ (1971, _All the Bloods_). The concept has also been used to analyse works of literature from the region, such as Matto de Turner's _Aves sin nido_ (1889, _Birds Without a Nest_).

In the early twentieth century, Zegarra claims, all of the most representative texts from the Andean regions are _indigenista_. These include Alcides Arguedas's _Raza de bronce_ (1919, _Race of Bronze_), Jorge Icaza's _Huasipungo_ (1934, _The Villagers_), and Ciro Alegría's _El mundo es ancho y ajeno_ (1941, _Broad and Alien is the World_).

Later in this century, José María Arguedas's _Los rios profundes_ (1958, _Deep Rivers_) focuses on the plight of its protagonist, Ernesto, who is taken away from the care of an indigenous group to a boarding school, where he experiences profound racism. Arguedas continues some of these themes in _El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo_ (1971, _The Fox from Down Below_).

Other significant works from the region include Mario Vargas Llosa's _La ciudad y los perros_ (1963, _The Time of the Hero_) and _Conversación en La catedral_ (1969, _Conversation in the Cathedral_), which Zegarra states is arguably the greatest Peruvian novel.

There is also a substantial period of magical realism in the region, which includes the novels of Demetrio Aguilera Malta from Ecuador. Cosmopolitan issues were addresses in texts such as Jorge Enrique Adoum's _Entre Marx y una mujer desnuda_ (1976, _Between Marx and a Naked Woman_). A strand of historical fiction is provided by Ramón Rocha Monroy's _Potosí 1600_ (2002).

Other significant writers from the region include the Bolivians Marcelo, Quiroga Santa Cruz and Jesús Urzagasti; Pedro Jorge Vera, Miguel Donoso Pareja, and Iván Egüez from Ecuador; and Manuel Scorza, Carlos Eduardo Zavaleta, Osvaldo Reinoso, and Luis Loaysa from Peru. Zegarra closes with a list of writers he deems as trying to work in a more contemporary cosmopolitan tradition, including Edmundo Paz Soldán, Juan Claudio Lechín, and Giovanna Rivero from Bolivia; Javier Vásconez, Leonardo Valencia, and Gabriela Alemán from Ecuador; and Alonso Cueto, Fernando Iwasaki, Santiago Roncagliolo, and Giovanna Pollarolo from Peru.

Further reading: 

* Mariátegui, José Carlos, _Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality_, trans. by Marjory Urquidi, Revised (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988)
* Márquez, Ismael, ‘The Andean Novel’, in _The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel_, ed. by Efraín Kristal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 142–61
* Zegarra, Chrystian, ‘Andes’, in _The Encyclopedia of the Novel_, ed. by Peter Melville Logan, Olakunle George, Susan Hegeman, and Efraín Kristal (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 47–52