Linda L. Grabner

Department of Romance Languages

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

USA

Abstract

In this paper, I examine constructions and deconstructions of the patriarchical power structures of Peruvian society in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries. I base my analysis on the representations of women and Indians found in three novels: Aves sin nido , by Clorinda Matto de Turner; Los ríos profundos , by José María Arguedas; and La casa verde , by Mario Vargas Llosa. I use a feminist perspective to study the manner in which marginalized identities such as feminine and indigenous are constructed both by the hegemonic sector, and by the members themselves of these two socially peripheral groups. I conclude that clearly, on the surface at least, the dominant groups of society control both power and constructions of group identity; however, both Indians and women find subtly subversive ways to reclaim their voices and attempt to control their personal worlds and their identities.

Locating Power in Peru: Feminist Reflections on the Construction of Indigeneity and Femininity in Three Peruvian Novels

Introduction

It is now more than 100 years since Clorinda Matto de Turner sought to open the publics eyes to the plight of the Andean natives with her novel, Aves sin nido , a narrative which I will argue is an essentially feminist one. Following her lead, I also intend to employ a feminist strategy, for the purposing of deconstructing her 19th century novel and two others belonging to the 20th century, along the lines of gender, nation, ethnicity and nature. I will attempt to show how the three authors use elements of gender, both overtly and covertly, to play upon the traditional social roles of women, Indians, and white men ( criollos 1), and the implications that these have for issues of social and personal power. In addition, I will explain how the use of stereotypical gender roles intertwines with and affects the (re)presentation of nature, ethnicity and nation. None of the lines marking these categories is straight, and they cross and recross often, as will be evident throughout the course of this paper. Such an interwoven or circular outcome is itself more in keeping with a feminist episteme than with the binaristic, either/or view apparent in so much of the extant canonical literature and criticism.

The novels I will analyze are Aves sin nido , as indicated above; Los ríos profundos , by José María Arguedas; and La casa verde , by Mario Vargas Llosa. All of these works are indigenist in the sense that they paint a picture of the life of Peruvian Indians in what Mary Louise Pratt calls the contact zone,2 where the native epistemology clashes with that of the criollos who control society. This clash of cultures in all three narrations illustrates a fundamental bipolarity: european(ized) versus indigenous value systems. A basic message that one may carry away from a reading of any of these stories is that the two epistemes would seem to be mutually exclusive or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the socially dominant cosmovision excludes the possibility of the existence of an indigenous one. However, when two items are considered polar opposites, by definition a relationship is established between them, a continuum along which to travel to reach either polar end. Such a continuum, of course, allows for shades of gray or the opportunity for a blending of positions in a middle ground. The continuum which relates criollo and indigenous in these three works is, in Ileana Rodriguezs words, the plano dialógico entre patrón y subalternos (5); in other words, the various strata of the relationship between the hegemonic and the contestatory forces at work in society.

In Discerning the Subject , in his discussion of feminism, Paul Smith emphasizes the binary nature of the european(ized) patriarchy. He locates the members of the hegemonic class (white males) firmly at the top of the continuum, and women in the marginalized category of Other at the opposite end, the bottom (137). In colonial times, as European nations continued to build their empires, they also continued to encounter new groups which did not fit their definitions of Self. These groups thus became othered like women; and as they had no center position, neither were they permitted to have power or voice, also like women. Because of this multiplicity of feminized, othered groups, I consider that the patriarchal practice of marginalizing the Other might more accurately be represented as a wheel with many spokes, rather than simply a line between two points: the european(ized), white, upper-class male agent seats himself at the center of the wheel, on the hub of his world, while all the various subaltern agents are relegated to the far ends of the spokes.

Anyone who does not fit into the narrow, hegemonic definition of Self falls into one of the vague, often incompletely defined (and hence unknown, desconocido ) categories of opposite or Other. However, there are varying degrees of perception of Otherness: women are Other for different reasons than those for which Indians or Blacks are Other. All subaltern groups do not fit tidily into a single category that runs linearly opposite that of the hegemonys Self; therefore, a wheel model which helps to illustrate the distinctions between and among these groups reflects reality in a truer fashion than a simple line.

The element that does remain the same regardless of degree of Otherness is the fact that being Other is equated with being inferior. I am white, s/he is not; s/he is different (Other) from me, and so by definition, must be inferior to me. This is the unconscious rationale that provides the justification for the exploitation, objectification and oppression which create the context for marginalizing identities in the imperialist epistemology as a whole. Additionally, one notes that in this line of reasoning, difference is defined by absence or lack: s/he is seen as not white, or not of the upper class, or not whatever defining characteristic of Self one might choose. This negates any positive (although different) trait the Other might be or have, and focuses only on the null. Such a way of viewing the world can cause something of an erasure or invisibility, or even to some degree dehumanization: if the Other is defined according to null characteristics, they become null themselves, easy to ignore, or worse yet, easy to view as something less than human and therefore available to be used for the advantage of the person or group doing the defining.

La casa verde , Vargas Llosas work, paints just such a picture of Indians as something slightly less than human. They do not understand the workings of technology or civilized society, and therefore they are incompetent to compete in the modern world. Vargas Llosa presents a political discourse which is modern/nationalistic/colonial, and thus, very masculine. I say it is masculine because the projects of modernization, colonization and nation-building have all traditionally been male-dominated ones, requiring courage, strength, aggression, and the ability to function in the macroespacio , the big, wide world, well beyond the limited bounds of hearth and home. The discourse is modern in the sense that it presents progress and civilization as the driving forces of society. It is colonialistic and nationalistic in that it narrates a re-conquest of the New World, a constant seeking of new frontiers, both ideological and geographical, to incorporate into the nation. Now, in the 20th century, as before in the 16th, the european-influenced agents of change criollos , and european(ized) mestizos seeking to become like them attempt to master new territory.

For example, the criolla nuns kidnap young Indian girls to raise them in the frontier Missions as Christians, para ganar unas almas a Dios (Vargas Llosa 103); such a task is nothing if not attempting to build up the population of the nation-state. The people who live at the Mission also fight a constant battle with nature, trying to impose their will on the jungle, cutting it back to keep it from encroaching on the civilized domain of their Mission compounds. Undoubtedly, such strong-willed people have earned the right to be the masters of their environment.

In contrast to this, Vargas Llosa also illustrates the indigenous paradigm, and we can see from his descriptions that such barbaric people really do not have the capacity to compete successfully in this new, modern nation being shaped by the criollos : the Indians do not wear proper clothes and always go barefoot; they have no conception of good table manners, eating with their hands and chewing noisily; they groom each other for lice like monkeys, and squash the lice with their teeth; and they make no effort to carve themselves out a physical territory in the jungle which they can call their own. Because of this obvious lack of sophistication, Vargas Llosa seems to be saying, they are much better off accepting the help of the criollo society to improve their lives: conversion and acculturation to the dominant culture is for their own good.

This possessive, homogenizing perspective is not apparent in the same way in either Los ríos profundos or Aves sin nido . In the sense that we are shown a picture of life from the Indians point of view, we can see the possessiveness of the hegemonic socius, but it is not presented as the only acceptable way of life, as in Vargas Llosas narration. Where he views the natural subject from the criollo perspective looking down at/on the Indians, Arguedas and Matto de Turner both utilize a paradigm that shows the same society from the subaltern perspective looking up. Their discourses are much more pro-indigenist.

Arguedas, for instance, defines his pro-Indian stance by presenting the story through the eyes of a young criollo boy who had been raised by his step-mothers native servants. As a result of this upbringing, he has a unique and very personal knowledge of both ways of life, the criollo and the indigenous. This point could be better made in Spanish or French, both of which differentiate between two types of knowing, which Michel Foucault emphasizes in his discussion of savoir/saber vs. connaissance/conocimiento . According to Foucault, el conocimiento/connaissance is the kind of knowledge which adds to the total number of things known rationally, the number of facts held in ones head. El saber/savoir , on the other hand, is knowledge which effects an essential change in the person. It is not simply that one knows more pieces of data, but rather that a piece of knowledge has somehow impacted his life, and changed something about who that person is. It is this latter type of knowledge, el saber , which Ernesto, the protagonist of Los ríos profundos , has of the native peoples of the Andean villages in which he has lived. He knows at the rational level that he belongs physically/physiologically to the dominant society ( el conocimiento ); however, he feels in his soul that he is spiritually/metaphysically a member of the native socius ( el saber ). This conflict between who he is and who he believes himself to be provides the foundation for a subaltern twist on the privileged perspective.

Matto de Turner also succeeds in combining privileged and subaltern to present a pro-indigenist discourse, by teaming a female subaltern character, Marcela, with a privileged one. Her text shows her awareness of the similarities and differences in the status of criolla and Indian women. While the criolla , Lucía, is socially privileged simply by the color of her skin, she is still subordinate to men by the fact of her sex. So despite her higher social standing, she can still empathize to some degree with the position of the indigenous woman. Matto de Turner takes advantage of this social reality to create a criolla character who melds hegemonic and contestatory in a single body, and then combines this privileged-yet-subaltern subject with an entirely subordinate character, the Indian woman Marcela. These two women join together in an attempt to confront the male-dominated power dynamic of the community, for the purpose of trying to protect Marcelas family from being taken away from her. Matto de Turners narration is more proactive than Arguedass because while Ernesto of Los ríos profundos sits back and simply observes the world passing by him, Marcela and Lucía of Aves sin nido attempt to take action to protect themselves and their loved ones.

Clearly, then, Aves sin nido is arguably a feminist discourse as well as a pro-indigenist one. Matto de Turner does indeed seek to raise the consciousness of the reading public to the untenable position in Peruvian society of the Indians; at the same time, she puts strong emphasis on the females equally oppressed situation. Of course, she primarily focuses on the Indian females lack of status, but she also to a lesser degree illustrates the objectification/be-little-ing of the criolla woman, in such instances as when Lucías husband humors her and addresses her indulgently, as one might talk to a child. She narrates such stereotypical images of a womans place to be able to counteract them, which she does by creating strong-willed female protagonists who know how to use their brains and seek creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. Matto de Turner also provides sympathetic male protagonists, such as Lucías husband, don Fernando. In this way, she effectively avoids the trap of the traditional patriarchal polarity of us vs. them or boys against the girls, as it were. In essence, she sets a stage of empowerment to the limited degree possible in that era for her female characters. This feminist discourse was all the more unusual because it was produced before the turn of the century (1889) in Latin America, hardly a time when many women felt comfortable speaking out about anything, let alone something as controversial as the rights of the subaltern classes.

Definitions/theoretical framework

Having presented an epistemological overview of the three novels I am examining, I feel it is also important to mention my own epistemological focus. In this section, I will introduce and define some of the paradigms used in my analysis, which will clarify for the reader the foundations on which I have laid my theses. Perhaps the most fundamental of these foundations answers the question why. Why use a feminist perspective? What purpose does it serve in literary analysis/criticism? What purpose does it serve in any case? Lisa Merrill presents Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahns reasoning in discussing the literary canon and the function of feminism within it:

The criteria that have created the literary canon have . excluded the accomplishments not only of women but of people of races, ethnic backgrounds and classes different from the politically dominant one. Feminist criticism questions the values implicit in the Great Works, investigating the tradition that canonized them and the interests it serves. It exposes the collusion between literature and ideology. It is alert to the omissions, gaps, partial truths and contradictions which ideology masks it attends to the silences. (37)

In other words, feminist criticism seeks dis-covery, an uncovering of what really makes the Great Works so great, and to seek a new, less ethnocentric perspective to look at them and other not so Great works which may have been ignored simply because they did not meet the hegemonic criteria of the currently-established literary canon. Such a criticism seeks to grant equal footing to all literary works, to be judged each according to its own merit rather than on whether or not it serves the sociopolitical ends of the dominant group.

Amy Kaminsky, another feminist critic, applies this same concept of feminist deconstruction to sociopolitical life as a whole, rather than solely to literary criticism. She asserts that the western patriarchal epistemology that ranks men as superior to women and whites as superior to other groups has been inculcated into our cultural ways of thinking for so long that it has been internalized, or naturalized. We have forgotten that it was originally nothing more than a cultural construct which can, in its turn, be deconstructed. Kaminsky states this as the prime objective of feminist theory: to deconstruct the artificially i.e., culturally created division between men and women (or white male and Other), with the aim of understanding and ultimately challenging the social processes which subordinate women (18), and in fact, all marginalized agencies.

Talk of hegemony and canons by definition implies power, whether it be physical or psychological. Pamela Fishman discusses the macrosociological aspects of power in her article on conversational interaction between men and women. In the most general terms, power is one agents ability to impose its will on another agent. A more specific definition, and the one which interested Fishman, involves conflicting perceptions of reality, with the more powerful agents perception being the one that ultimately defines truth/reality. This conception of power clearly involves the psychological more than the physical: a person cannot be forced to change his/her beliefs by physical strength a person being tortured, for instance, may say they believe otherwise, but the torturer cannot be sure they are not just acting out of self preservation.

However, such a change of opinions and attitudes can be achieved insidiously over time with psychological manipulation and patience: imposing ones definition of what is possible, what is right, what is rational, what is real (Fishman 89) can be accomplished over time by consistently emphasizing the superiority of the hegemonic values and denigrating those of the subaltern subject. After enough time of constantly hearing negative valuations, the subaltern begins to believe this image also, and hegemony has been attained. Essentially, it becomes a process of breaking someones spirit, and it is exactly the strategy that has successfully been used for centuries on the Peruvian Indians in regard to their own cultures and cosmovisions. As Merrill says, the most insidious oppression alienates a group from its own interests (39). This is the state of affairs that is reflected in all three of the novels discussed in this paper.

This type of power is also evident in the formation of traditional gender roles. These roles were established within the imperialist hegemonic matrix, and as such, one might wonder why such paradigms are being utilized (and hence perhaps validated) in a feminist discourse. The fact is that, male-dominated or not, some of the sex-linked behaviors giving rise to gendered stereotypes do exist and a completely autonomous feminist language does not. Even if it did, it is unlikely that it would be universally understood. So to be able to communicate a message to the widest possible audience, we must avail ourselves of the resources we do have. We must (re)appropriate the male-centered language and ideology to create a feminist discourse by subverting the original intentions of the masculinist discourse. We must work, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak so elegantly phrases it, within but against the grain (13). Therefore, I will use these traditional gender role definitions as the springboard to a hopefully new and different understanding of the functions of gender as presented in these narrations by Vargas Llosa, Arguedas and Matto de Turner.

Typically, people or things are judged to be feminine if they manifest behaviors or attitudes of helplessness, frivolity/silliness (playing dumb), physical and/or emotional weakness such as crying, passivity, or other childish/childlike attributes. Another, more adult, aspect of femininity deals with the responsibilities of home and hearth, the so-called microespacio : protectiveness, nurturance (hence, mother earth), the tender, emotional side of love, forgiveness or any kind of soft emotion that could leave one vulnerable. In fact, all the faces of femininity could very easily be summed up as vulnerability.

As has already been emphasized, female is defined in contrast to male, as his binary Other. Hence, masculinity is perceived to be the opposite of the traits listed above: strong, both physically and emotionally, unyielding, unemotional/rational, serious, defender of the nation (the macroespacio , outside the limited bounds of hearth and home). This last characteristic very often lead to conflict and violence, something not readily associated with thoughts of femininity. The masculine man favors progress and civilization/modernization, and takes steps to ensure these outcomes. In short, the male agent performs an active function in the world, not passively waiting at home.

The above-listed attributes detail differences not between biologically determined sexes, but between socially defined genders. These are the basic paradigms I will use in deconstructing the masculine and feminine aspects and their implications, in the three novels. I will attempt to treat them in separate sections, but because of the overlap in themes, there will necessarily be some overlap and perhaps some apparently paradoxical information between the two sections, which I will try to clarify as the paradoxes arise.

I have already stated that Aves sin nido carries a distinctly feminist tone. The sociopolitical opinions apparent in the other two novels, while not perhaps directly feminist, provide elements that can be read as feminist. Both the indigenist and the feminist are, after all, discourses of marginality and subalternity; and both seek to battle the repression and oppression of othered subjects. They seek an uncovering of the inherent inequalities of the current dominant ideologies, and a means to equalize them, and possibly to mutate (or perhaps even discard altogether?) these hegemonic epistemes in the process.

Femininity and feminism

It is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To a large degree, meaning is equally subjective. What we see, what we hear, what we experience all pass through our personal perceptual filters. And while this may not affect the actual denotation the signified or fact of an experience, it certainly influences the connotation, the signifier or Foucaults fiction of ones perceived truth/reality (36). For most of the western world, our perceptual filters are colored by the imperialist/colonialist perspective which I have been discussing throughout this investigation, which places females and non-whites in an othered position.

I have stated that the term feminine does not apply only to women, but can be applied to any marginalized group. This can be seen from the process of psychological disempowerment of the Peruvian Indians described in the previous section, which ultimately led to their othering, or feminization, as a culture. I have also indicated that the term feminine tends to have a negative connotation, indicating weakness or helplessness, and social/geographical limitation to the bounds of home and family. Rodríguez illustrates both of these points: the distinction between female and feminine, and the negative connotation of femininity. She emphasizes the concrete physicality, the subjectivity of la mujer misma encarnada (30) and the abstract metaphysicality, the objectification of femininity, when she asserts that lo feminino sigue siendo objeto de ironía y de descalificación y metáfora del deseo.... lo femenino se expresa como deseo/pavor, miedo en el hombre a su propia feminización. Sensibilizarse está ligado a la impotencia, esto es, a su pérdida de poder (30). Rodríguez emphasizes that in a mans eyes, being feminine is the same as being impotent and powerless, which the Peruvian Indians have become in their society, for the most part.

This is the same connotation of femininity and feminization that is displayed to various degrees in both Deep Rivers and The Green House . Both women and indigenous peoples are represented as essentially powerless and passive. However, the two novels approach this feminization from different perspectives, and these divergent approaches make all the difference in the impression of Peruvian society which the casual reader would gain by reading only one or the other of them. From Deep Rivers , one receives the impression of a subjugated people who are nevertheless worthy of sympathy and respect. The Green House , on the contrary, draws a picture of the Indian as barbaric and uncivilized, leading the reader to form a much less sympathetic opinion of them.

In either case, then, the Indians are still presented as a very unempowered, often simple, and clearly feminized group. The difference between Arguedas and Vargas Llosa is that Arguedas does not seem to put the same value judgments on this condition that Vargas Llosa does. Arguedas may portray them as feminized relative to the dominant society, similar to Vargas Llosa, but in Arguedass paradigm, this is not an automatic argument for acculturation and erasure of their indigenous identity.

Arguedas also shows a more obvious connection between the interactions of the two social groups and the feminized state of the Indians, so the reader can glean an idea of why the Indians might have come to be as passive as they are. One example is Arguedass narration of the cruel treatment of a native pongo by his criollo master, and the resultant hopelessness that the narrator witnesses in the pongo s eyes (18-23). He constructs an image, not of an inherently feminine culture, but of a socially feminized one. If these are a passive and apparently dominated people, it is because they have been physically and psychologically beaten into submission over centuries of contact with the criollos , shaped by the hegemonic process described by Fishman in the previous section.

Overall, then, Arguedass and Vargas Llosas works seem to share the opinion of an indigenous society which is Other in relation to the hegemony, in which the people are apparently helpless, often childlike, emotionally weak, and limited to the microespacio . Any instances of a feminine/feminized agent showing signs of personal agency or power tend to be more isolated episodes, rather than forming part of the central foundation of the narrations. Nevertheless, such episodes do occur, and after having made the point of feminine objectification so strongly, I would now like to argue that despite typically being used in a paternalistic manner that tends to belittle its object, femininity does not have to be a tool of the patriarchy to keep the Other in its place. Rather, anyone can possess feminine attributes without becoming a marginalized entity, and those attributes can be used to the possessors advantage.

Matto de Turner exemplifies this in several of the characters in the novel. Numerous of her male characters display tenderness and protectiveness, which are, of course, considered to be feminine traits. Two of them one an Indian man, the other, one of the towns notables have even gone so far as to give their names to their spouses illegitimate children, which is clearly a case of acceptance of a status quo to which they did not have to acquiesce. After all, men were not obliged to accept illegitimate children at all, let alone give them their names.

In another case, the relationship of don Fernando and Lucía, a couple who recently moved to this Andean village from Lima a major center of progress and civilization, according to the narrative appears to be as close to equal as one might expect to see in nineteenth century Latin America. Don Fernando, solicits his wifes suggestions; they speak to each other more or less as equals; and Lucía feels free to make plans and act on them independently of her husband. It is because of this relative independence that she is able to help Marcela. In addition to these characters, most of the remaining protagonists are relatively empowered women, in possession of their voices and the knowledge of how to use them to best effect.

In one example from Los ríos profundos , the village women steal rock salt from a local warehouse to distribute to the pongos, Indian servants who were essentially enslaved on the latifundios . This was a deliberate act of defiance against the local authorities, and illustrates an unexpected benefit of being female. Even though the women made no attempt at stealth in their enterprise, the authorities did not try to stop them in the act. Apparently, the taboo against striking a woman was strong enough to prevent them from taking immediate, physical action against the women; rather, it was only after the fact, and in a less visible manner, that they punished the thieving women. Rather than publicly arresting them while they were parading through town with the salt, the police arrested the women later, in their homes, after all the initial excitement had died down. Another instance, this one from La casa verde , occurs when the women of an Indian barrio rise up in arms and burn down the towns whorehouse upon discovering that its founder has been living there in sin with a local blind/mute girl, and she has died in childbirth. In both cases, the women bring private lives into public awareness, and make an example of them for the rest of the world to witness; but only briefly, and then the (his)tories continue on their respective (dis)courses of subjugation and feminization.

I find it significant that it is the Indian women in these last two examples, and not their men, who achieve this public awareness. Traditionally, indigenous women are at the very lowest level of the social order: not only are they second-class citizens because of their indigenous condition, but they are also women, who are nominally subordinate to men in any social class. And yet, both Arguedas and Vargas Llosa show these examples of the most othered group of all inverting the paradigms and taking power, if only momentarily, to attempt to change their situation for the better. While such examples are infrequent in both stories, their mere presence would seem to indicate at least an unconscious recognition of the often unacknowledged physical and moral strength of which women of any class or station are capable.

Clearly, such examples of feminist action are much more frequent and deliberate in Aves sin nido than in either La casa verde or Los ríos profundos . Not only the characters of Matto de Turners novel behave in feminist fashion; the plot itself follows a course of feminine concerns and feminist attitudes. It is not a simple discourse of subjugation by the male criollos and passive acceptance by women and indigenes. Instead, the author draws some interesting relationships between criollo and Indian, man and woman. Throughout the novel, she depicts the male power structure as a typical asymmetrical construct in which the men control the macroespacio of the world at large, and the women are relegated to the microespacio of hearth and home. At the same time, she describes several women, both criolla and Indian, who have learned how the power structure works, and how to manipulate it to their possible advantage. She attempts not so much to invert the locus of power, but to subvert it. The women do not seek to overthrow the men and reverse the power dynamic, but merely to obtain justice from them within the status quo.

As stated previously, the basic premise revolves around an indigenous womans attempts to protect her family and keep it together. Fundamentally, it is set in the microespacio of hearth and home traditionally allotted to women. By using this feminine foundation in her narrative, Matto de Turner has taken the private voice of this specific marginalized (m)other and turned it into a public one: although Marcela is concerned only with her own family, by speaking out, she is revealing a condition common to the native experience and so is (re)presenting a more universal Mother.

Jean Franco explains this concept in her article, Going Public: Reinhabiting the Private, and discusses the empowerment that results from opening up the microespacio to public view. She cites as an example the impact made on social awareness of the situation of los desaparecidos in Buenos Aires by las madres de la Plaza de Mayo. These mothers, grandmothers, sisters and other female relatives of los desaparecidos marched every week in the Plaza de Mayo, carrying signs which displayed photos blown up to poster size of family members who mysteriously disappeared during the Perón regime and are still missing. In opening up their private family lives for public inspection, they sought to make the public, the macroespacio , more aware of their privacy and how easily it was violated. By reinhabiting their private lives in the public sector, they found a voice not previously granted to them. They empowered themselves. Matto de Turner sought to accomplish this same kind of empowerment for the Andean natives by opening a dialogue on the state of their microespacio .

In this effort, she worked from within but against the grain (Chakravorty Spivak 13) of the nationalist ideology of progress and civilization for the elite class of an advanced society. Ileana Rodríguez makes a point about this contrast between powerful and subjugated in her discussion of master and subaltern. She juxtaposes the progress and civilization of the criollos , in the form of codified laws, with the oral traditions and unwritten customs of the ethnic aboriginals (5). Her implication is clear: from the hegemonic perspective, codified laws, words written down, are much more civilized, and thus much more advanced, than mere traditions. In this interpretation, the native ethnicity becomes devalued, or feminized, once again. According to the dominant epistemology, without laws made concrete in writing, men are little more than barbarians.

Matto de Turner takes advantage of and subverts this concept of advanced civilization, this construct of nation, in a triple sense. First, her ethnic, supposedly barbarian protagonist, Marcela, recognizes the value of allying herself somehow with the hegemonic class, and chooses Lucía, the criolla recently arrived from Lima, as her link. Thus, through Lucía, she co-opts the codified laws of progress and civilization of the elite class for her own use. In this sense, she is performing an autoethnography, a concept outlined by Pratt. Autoethnography is a process which involves taking the paradigms of the elite class and (re)appropriating them to ones own advantage. In the case of Marcela, contrary to the notables construction of her, she (re)defines her own existence as that of a person with a voice, which she raises in her own defense using the words the societal paradigms, accessed through her alliance with Lucía of the elite ruling class.

Secondly, in addition to the protagonists (re)appropriation of the European construct of nation, the narrator does so as well, by putting an ethnic twist on the imperialistic meaning. A more appropriate notion of nation from within the Andean indigenous paradigm centers on the concept of family/community (ayllu). In fact, Timothy Brennan reminds us of the meaning of nation which pre-existed our present historically constructed one. He returns to the Latin root of the word, defining natio as a local community, domicile, family, condition of belonging (45). The terms nation and native derive from the same root; so in the forgotten mists of time, nation was the family unit, a very different conception from the present construct of the imperialist hegemony. Thus, in detailing the struggle of this Indian family, the narrator is (re)writing a national discourse with a local perspective, and in the process operating, to quote Pratt, the dynamics of self-representation in the context of colonial subordination and resistance (5).

In the final (re)appropriation of the definition of advanced civilization, the antagonists provide the twist. The towns notables the local high-ranking officials and the parish priest are supposedly members of the hegemonic class, although not representative of Matto de Turners highly civilized Lima vector. These men were born and bred in this small Andean village, and they are very much attached to their traditions and privileges, which result in the subjugation of the Indian population and increase their own wealth. Now, one of the items Rodríguez lists under the category of barbarism is avarice, en el sentido de dinero que no produce capital (6). In the process of increasing their own wealth, these civilized notables do not necessarily generate capital, and so they fall into Rodríguezs category of barbaric. This dichotomy of civilized and barbaric sets up a social contradiction of which the notables are completely unaware: as supposed agents of progress and civilization, they should be more concerned with upholding the written laws and with producing capital, rather than with their own local traditions and personal wealth. This inversion of the european(ized) dichotomy of civilization vs. barbarism ridicules their supposed prestige and refinement. It turns the tables, making the Indian appear more civilized, while these acculturated mestizos and criollos appear the barbarians, the feminized Others.

The Indian and female characters do not exhibit the only manifestation of femininity and feminism in these three narrations. Their very ethnicity, as well as their physical surroundings, the nature on which they depend so heavily for their own self-identification, also maintain very feminine traits. Ethnicity is intimately linked with the natural world in the text, whether through comparative descriptions or details of the indigenous way of life. In Aves sin nido and Los ríos profundos , ethnicity is made to appear natural and eminently acceptable. The texts present the Indians otherness (as seen from the dominant perspective) as a positive attribute, as unique to them rather than merely as a difference from the criollos . Their knowledge and appreciation of the earths ways and rhythms, their rituals to worship those natural rhythms, even their physical appearance, the most obvious physical manifestation of their otherness: all are aspects celebrated by Arguedas and Matto de Turner in one way or another. These two authors make a point of commenting on the natural beauty of the Indian complexion.

The same ethnicity in The Green House, on the other hand, takes on a very different character, as discussed earlier: Vargas Llosa offers images of unclothed, unclean barbarians, eating food with their hands, living in the midst of the jungle without even adequate shelter. Regarding actual physical appearance, their aboriginal features are not presented in attractive terms. In one instance, Vargas Llosa describes the feet of a native girl: sus pies descalzos, del color de las tablas cobrizas del suelo, yacían juntos: dos animales chatos, policéfalos (21); his choice of the word animals here might also imply by extension his opinion of the whole individual.

The very uniqueness of the culture, which Arguedas and Matto de Turner cherish in their narratives and Vargas Llosa seems to despise in his, is therefore what makes it feminine/ feminized in the homogenizing criollo episteme. In other words, the fact that the ethnic manifestation of the indigenous lifestyle is different from the criollos accustomed way of life immediately makes it Other/feminine.

In all three novels, ethnicity is also intimately linked with the natural world. Even the title of Arguedass and Matto de Turners indigenist narratives draw in the natural, and I find it significant that both of them focus on elements not bound to the earth: Los ríos profundos , deep rivers, representing the mystery, the force and unpredictability of water, and by association, of nature in general; and Aves sin nido , nestless birds, flying free in the air, with no place to land. This is an especially good metaphor for the native condition: as the criollos sought to control more and more of the arable territory, the indigenous populations found themselves essentially exiled within their own land, with progressively fewer places in which to seek haven. In contrast, Llosas title, The Green House , plays on the civilized vector of society, emphasizing mans desire to regulate and control life. What could be more representative of civilization and social order than a house? It shelters society and culture within, and locks uncontrollable nature out.

Nature itself has a feminine aspect in both the native and the criollo episteme; the difference lies in the positive or negative connotation that each culture places on that femininity. For the Indians, it is their home, their microespacio ; it provides food and shelter, to protect and nurture them as a mother would. In fact, their word for earth reflects this very association with mother: mama pacha , mother earth. The presence of nature just is , it is accepted at face value as an unchangeable fact of life. It provides harmony and balance, as reflected in one particularly poetic passage from Los ríos profundos :

Se quedaba a vivir algún tiempo en los pueblos de clima templado. Siempre junto a un río pequeño, sin bosques, con grandes piedras lúcidas y peces menudos. El arrayán, los lambras, el sauce, el eucalipto, el capulí, la tara, son árboles de madera limpia. quien busca sombra se acerca a ellos y reposa bajo un árbol que canta solo, conn una voz profunda, en que los cielos, el agua y la tierra se confunden. (29)

This passage clearly shows the native acceptance of natures voice, and its contributions to the comforts and necessities of daily life. This attitude reflects supposed feminine passivity, acceptance of things as they are, as opposed to the masculine desire to subdue all it sees. In this sense, the Indians have feminized their own environment, but for them this has a very positive connotation, rather than the negative one associated with the Western interpretation.

In the dominant ideology, however, nature takes on a very different feminine role: that of el mito del poder, de lo desconocido y lo misterioso (Rodríguez 20), and therefore the Other, as females are for males. But nature is also very often used as a metaphor for the constructs of nation and power: it is the physical space of the nation, its geographical location, and ultimately the source of its power, since the natural resources are what sustains industry and provides the raw materials for the accumulation of wealth. Does this make nature a masculine construct, then, since it is the source of nation and power? I say no. The operative word is source . It is providing once again, nurturing, so again it is playing a maternal role.

Also, since the relationship is an exploitive one, nature is put in an oppressed, feminized role. In accordance with the colonialist episteme, man slowly attempts to occupy or control everything he sees. As Rodríguez indicates, La posición del sujeto que contempla esta naturaleza [is a result of] la visión del que la ve y no la del que la trabaja, o lo que es lo mismo, del que la goza y usufructúa (15). In other words, nature is an object to be possessed, like a woman, or a resource of which to take advantage but not necessarily something to be respected, as implied by Rodríguezs juxtaposition of the views of those who see it (as from a distance), and those who work it and therefore know it and truly appreciate it.

The following two quotes from La casa verde give an indication of the nationalist conception of nature: .la Amazonía es como mujer caliente, no se está quieta (43); El sol agonizaba a lo lejos, aleteando entre los árboles como un ave rojiza y el río era una plancha inmóvil metálica (109). In the first, we see how both females and nature are viewed as objects to be possessed and tamed. In the second, it is interesting to note the mixing of the natural with the technological, tradition with progress; it is especially notable that nature is described in terms of progress/civilization, and not vice versa. This emphasizes the technocentric vision of the progressivist mainstream, and their refusal to acknowledge Nature, as with Woman and Native, as Subject. Nature, like woman and like native, is other, lo desconocido ; as such, it is in need of homogenizing, taming, conquering.

Unlike woman and native, however, man will never be able to conquer nature. It does not have an unconscious on which the hegemonic forces can work their psychological sorcery. No matter how much man pushes, nature pushes back equally hard. It has an inherent power that cannot be completely tamed. Storms and floods can be unpredictable; and no matter how far back one chops the jungle, it will keep growing back and invading the civilized space. In this sense of strength and persistence, feminine nature partakes of the masculinity of the hegemonic discourse. Without ever achieving conscious awareness, it can resist what the subaltern human vectors could not: manipulation by the possessive hands, heart and eyes of the seeing-man (Pratt 7). This is possibly the ultimate subversion of the masculine discourse to the (re)appropriation of the feminine trope.

Masculinity

I have asserted that the discourse presented in La casa verde is a masculine/masculinist one. I would suggest that the stylistic element adds to this impression. Vargas Llosa uses a very aggressive writing style which seems to constantly pelt and jab at the reader, so that one feels almost over -stimulated and on edge while reading it. William Rowe, in his essay on Vargas Llosa, calls his style polemical (45), and continues on to describe La casa verde as the most open of [Vargas Llosas] earlier novels. with the greatest variety of voices and social experience, which are place in unfinished conjunction within exuberant formal shifts (46). These unfinished conjunctions and paradigm shifts add to the tension inherent in the authors style.

Another technique he uses is to shift time frames without warning. Kaminsky describes Julia Kristevas definitions of feminist times, one of which seemed particularly relevant to this tactic of Vargas Llosas. Monumental time is a feminist paradigm which represents time in a hermetically circular mode. Just as there is no beginning and no end in a circle, in monumental time there is no past and no future: everything is inside the circle of the present (Kaminsky 79). This is a remarkably apt phrase with which to describe the time line in Vargas Llosas narrative: everything seems present tense. He does not follow a linear time line, but rather, jumps around so much in time that every episode seems to be concurrent with the surrounding ones. He may present an episode in one chapter that could not have logically happened in time before another event presented in a later chapter. But somehow, this circularity, this lack of a logical starting and ending point, feels more appropriate to his discourse than a linear chronology would. In this sense of monumental time, then, Vargas Llosas text has a feminist edge which the author perhaps did not intend. At the same time, this lack of continuity inspires aggravation and frustration in the reader.

In addition to shifting time frames without warning, he also shifts paradigms when presenting dialogue. Sometimes it appears as the normal turn-taking type of dialogue one is used to seeing in novels, offset with quote marks. At other times, however, he switches to a run-on sentence style, in which a dialogue between several people is mixed in with action, making it hard to decipher exactly what is going on, and thus causing the reader to become even more tense. Following is an example of this style, to illustrate just how effective this technique is:

La Madre Patrocinio está muy pálida, mueve los labios, sus dedos aprietan las cuentas negras de un rosario y eso sí, Sargento, que no olvidaran que eran niñas, ya lo sabía, ya lo sabía, y que el Pesado y el Oscuro tuvieran quietos a los calatos y que la Madre no se preocupara y la Madre Patricinio ay si cometían brutalidades y el práctico se encargaría de llevar las cosas, muchachos, nada de brutalidades: Santa María, Madre de Dios. Todos contemplan los labios exangues de la Madre Patrocinio, y ella Ruega por nosotros, tritura con sus dedos las bolitas negras y la Madre Angélica cálmese, Madre, y el Sargento ya, ahora era cuando. (16)

All of the above discussed techniques contribute to a feeling of impending cataclysm, some great time bomb that the reader is incessantly expecting to fall. Mounting tension, aggravation, the impulse to take some kind of action all fall within the frame of acceptable masculine emotions. While Matto de Turner and Arguedas also presented stories of conflict, they were nevertheless in a straightforward style that engaged the reader without antagonizing him/her. Vargas Llosa adds to his conflictive plot the confusion of his jumbled, apparently unorganized style, and his tight, tense vocabulary in incomplete clauses joined into run-on sentences. This causes the narrative to seem more belligerent towards the reader, as well as inherently within the plot. Where Arguedas flows, Vargas Llosa leaps. All of the elements he incorporates are presented in a juxtaposition designed to arouse aggression. For this reason, I consider his text overall to be a masculine one.

Another element contributing to its overall masculinity is the perspective of the narrator. The viewpoint is very macho, very dominating, aggressive and colonialist. Even the images of ethnicity which are drawn place heavy emphasis on el machismo , with the male Indians or mestizos in the poor barrios sometimes adopting the more binaristic paradigms (superior/inferior, with regard to Indians of other communities) of their criollo superiors, even though they could never hope to achieve equal status. In these episodes in La casa verde , the Indian is presented as more acculturated to criollo ways, so although he may be Indian, he is seen as more civilized than the savages of the interior jungles.

Because these citified Indians have been absorbed by the dominant culture, it can be argued that colonialism has succeeded at least to some degree with this group. In Smiths terminology, the Indian subject has dis-cerned himself, disinherited from his own ancient roots (xxx).3 And in this process, he has put himself or let himself be placed squarely at the bottom of the social ladder, in a milieu in which he has little hope for rising any higher. Or perhaps he is not completely at the bottom: in all three narrations discussed in the present work, women are referred to as separate from the men, as when Arguedas occasionally refers to los indios y sus mujeres. Such a distinction between the sexes would seem to indicate a very strong awareness of the otherness of women; at least criollos and Indians still have maleness in common.

These acculturated Indians in Vargas Llosas work do still identify with their individual ethnic roots. Several times they repeat phrases such as Am I not Mangache? or Everyone knows Mangaches are best, and similar statements of ethnic pride. But even such ethnically oriented attitudes as these reflect the nationalistic episteme insofar as they are attempting to establish a superior/inferior hierarchy, especially regarding women of other ethnic groups. For example, the Mangaches may respect their own women (although we do not necessarily see proof of this in the text), but they feel free to waylay Gallinazo women at will and have their way with them (Vargas Llosa 123). With a very few specific exceptions, in Vargas Llosas narration, women seem to have little more status than the Indian tribes of the jungle.

In fact, all three texts exhibit issues of nation or nationalism to some extent. This paradigm most clearly reflects the masculine image, since nation-building is an endeavor of conquering the macroespacio , requiring much courage and physical strength. Partha Chatterjee proposes the thesis that while nationalism may originally stem from relatively pure motives the universal urge for liberty and progress (2) nevertheless it has the ability to turn from those noble goals and become the justification for mindless chauvinism and xenophobia[,]. organized violence and tyranny (2). Both of these divergent directions of nationalism have been witnessed in Latin America throughout her history, and both are (re)presented in Vargas Llosas discourse in La casa verde .

The nuns in the story would like to lay claim to the pure motives of liberty and progress for the nation, although in reality they are just one more method, along with the armies and the civil patrols, of imposing the homogenizing hegemony of the state on the natural socius. Granted, they have not overtly exhibited mindless chauvinism or violence, and some have even learned to speak some of the local languages and eat local foods with the same apparent relish as the natives. Nevertheless, because they are trying to impose their beliefs on the indigenous population, and because they are ultimately attempting to homogenize the Indians into criollo culture, they still represent the acquisitive/possessive aspect of nationalism.

The negative side of nationalism or nation-building is evident in Aves sin nido through the agency of another of Pratts constructs, what she calls the seeing-man, on his campaign of anti-conquest. She proposes the term anti-conquest to describe the colonizing agents self-delusion that he is not really conquering anyone or anything. All the sweeping changes he strives to make are for the indigenes own good, so he is actually a beneficent force in the new territory. The seeing-man himself is best described in Pratts own words: the European male subject of European landscape discourse he whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess (7).

In La casa verde , the character of Sergeant Roberto Delgado exemplifies perfectly the seeing-man. The sergeant and his men are tracking someone they believe to be a ruthless criminal when they discover a small, apparently abandoned village. The sergeant wanted to see what was available for them to take: Vamos a registrar antes que lleguen los otros.. A lo mejor queda algo que valga la pena (226). Obviously, he was interested in what he could find for himself, and did not want to have to share any loot with more people. In an earlier episode, he was not even concerned that the village might not actually be abandoned; the natives were nowhere to be seen, so he and his men raided the village for what they could find.

Matto de Turner also illustrates this seeing-mans anti-conquest in describing the system of pongos, faenas, and mitas : these were essentially positions of forced, unpaid labor by the subaltern agent in the homes and lands of the privileged. However, this was not conquering or subjugating according to the elites; this was merely continuing a long-standing provincial tradition. The pastor of the local church, for example, accepted as his God-given right the services in every sense of the word of the local maidens as they reached sexual maturity and their natural beauty blossomed. This disregard for the personhood of the natives is essentially an extension of the European vectors disregard for nature in general. Nature is wild; the native agent lives in that wild territory; therefore, they reasoned, the natives must also be wild. And since nature is nothing more than a resource to be tamed and exploited, the same must be true of the natives as well. This attitude is more clearly evident in La casa verde than in the other two novels.

What Matto de Turner expresses through her discourse, however, is that this is not a valid equation to make. While she illustrates the objectification, the feminization, of the native socius in the status quo, she simultaneously negates that image by means of some subtle and not so subtle strategies, as I have demonstrated previously. She narrates the possibility of subverting the power structure by working within the established system. Arguedas does this also, to a more limited degree, at the end of his novel, when the pongos on the latifundios rise up en masse to converge on the town; however, they do this because of an epidemic, and they want desperately to be blessed by the priest. Since their uprising is to demand to be included in this way in the patriarchal system, it can hardly be classified as a revolt. Rather, it might be viewed as one more success of the system, since the Indians have been acculturated to the point of worshipping the criollo God.

Conclusions

In this investigation, I have attempted to differentiate between female, feminine, and feminist. I have examined three novels by Peruvian authors dealing with indigenous themes, and deconstructed them to argue a feminist perspective on issues relating to gender roles and how both the feminine and the masculine function within the paradigms of ethnicity, nation, and the natural world.

I have argued in this presentation that the hegemonic agent has sought to dominate and control his environment, and to subjugate and feminize those he found in that space. To a large extent, he has been successful in stifling the voice of the marginalized other, as is most clearly shown in Los ríos profundos and La casa verde . But ultimately, as Matto de Turner so eloquently manifests, and Arguedas and Vargas Llosa hint, there have always been some who refused to be silenced, and have found ways to work within the system as it currently exists to make their voices heard. As Kaminsky states, the disempowered have earned their right to speak, and they have been required, as the powerful have not, to understand the workings of the systems of the powerful in order to survive (4). In Aves sin nido , the disempowered have discovered methods of cultural (re)appropriation whose surface appearance fits within the parameters of the dominant epistemology, but whose utilization by the othered agents shifts the meaning and restores the subaltern voice.

Notes

1I use the terms criollo and europeanized to refer specifically to the Latin American-born descendants of the European immigrants (e.g., the Spanish colonists), who have traditionally constituted the hegemonic sector of society. While at one time this term may have had connotations of racial purity, there has been so much mestizaje , both acknowledged and unacknowledged, throughout the history of Latin America that I would argue that the term now carries more connotations of social and political power than of race. Essentially, the criollos are those that control the access to power in Peruvian society as a whole.

2Pratt defines contact zones as the social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination (4).

3In his introduction, Smith talks of cerning the subject, or a process of abstraction of the subject. As he says, The word cerning conflates and plays simultaneously upon two rarely used English verbs to cern and to cerne. The first means to accept an inheritance or a patrimony. (xxx). Hence, to dis-cern would be to refuse or reject a patrimony, or perhaps to have it taken away from them, as in the context in which I use it.

Works Cited

Arguedas, José María. Los ríos profundos . Madrid: Alianza (Libro del Bolsillo), 1994.

Brennan, Timothy. The National Longing for Form. Nation and Narration . Ed. Homi K. Bhabha. New York: Routledge. 44-70.

Chakravorty Spivak, Gayatri. Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography. Selected Subaltern Studies . Eds. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 3-32.

Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.

Fishman, Pamela. Interaction: The Work Women Do. Language, Gender and Society . Eds. Annie Thorne, Cheris Kramarae and Nancy Kenley. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983. 89-101.

Foucault, Michel. Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio Trombadori . Trans. R. James Goldstein and James Cascaito. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.

Franco, Jean. Going Public: Reinhabiting the Private. On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture . Ed. George Yúdice, Jean Franco and Juan Flores. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992. 65-83.

Kaminsky, Amy. Reading the Body Politic: Feminist Criticism and Latin American Women Writers . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.

Matto de Turner, Clorinda. Aves sin nido . Buenos Aires: Solar, 1968.

Merrill, Lisa. Gender, Ethnicity and the Politics of Oral Interpretation. Constructing and Reconstructing Gender: The Links among Communication, Language and Gender . Eds. Linda A. M. Perry, Lynn H. Turner and Helen M. Sterk. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1992. 35-44.

Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation . London: Routledge, 1992.

Rodríguez, Ileana. Transición: Nación/Etnia/Género/Lo masculino . Latin American Studies Center Ser. 4. College Park: U of Maryland, 1992.

Rowe, William. Liberalism and Authority: The Case of Mario Vargas Llosa. On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture . Eds. George Yúdice, Jean Franco, and Juan Flores. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992. 45-64.

Smith, Paul. Discerning the Subject . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.

Vargas Llosa, Mario. La casa verde . Colombia: Oveja Negra, 1984.

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