This study pieces together an image of Peru as a society through readings of a corpus of literary texts dating from the Conquest to the 1990s. Some chapters focus on recurrent topics: the centralization of power in Lima; the position of the indigenous population; literacy as power; the issue of national identity in a country characterized by diversity. It also examines other literary motifs such as dramatic social changes, communities living in isolation, the mestizo condition, and the hopes invested in modernization.

Drawing on literary, historical and political documents, Kristal examines the fictional representation of the Indian in Peruvian narrative. He reconsiders a major but neglected period of literary production and provides a methodology for the study of literary themes that happen to be significant topics of debate or controversy in the political arena. Novels and short stories can reflect or react to views on the Indian expressed in political programs, literary salons and sociological treatises, but they can also become major factors in the development of political or sociological discourse on the Indian. Kristal demonstrates that the literary representation of the Indian is a complex urban phenomenon.

Mining investment in Peru has been presented as necessary for national progress; however, it also has brought socioenvironmental costs, left unfulfilled hopes for development, and has become a principal source of confrontation and conflict. Fighting for Andean Resources focuses on the competing agendas for mining benefits and the battles over their impact on proximate communities in the recent expansion of the Peruvian mining frontier. The book complements renewed scrutiny of how globalization nurtures not solely antagonism but also negotiation and participation. Having mastered an intimate knowledge of Peru, Vladimir R. Gil Ramón insightfully documents how social technologies of power are applied through social technical protocols of accountability invoked in defense of nature and vulnerable livelihoods. Although analyses point to improvements in human well-being, a political and technical debate has yet to occur in practice that would define what such improvements would be, the best way to achieve and measure them, and how to integrate dimensions such as sustainability and equity. Many confrontations stem from frustrated expectations, environmental impacts, and the virtual absence of state apparatus in the locations where new projects emerged. This book presents a multifaceted perspective on the processes of representation, the strategies in conflicts and negotiations of development and nature management, and the underlying political actions in sites affected by mining.

The years 1909–1930, the eleven-year presidency of the businessman-turned-politician Augusto B. Leguía, mark a formative period of Peruvian modernity, witnessing the continuity of a process of reconstruction and the founding of an intellectual and cultural tradition after a humbling defeat during the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). But these years were also fraught with conflict generated by long-standing divisions and new rivalries. A postwar generation of intellectuals and artists, led by José Carlos Mariátegui and galvanized by left-wing thinking and an avant-garde aesthetic, sought representation in the fields of politics and the arts, and participation in the process of reconstruction initiated by a Positivist oligarchy. New political and artistic conceptions raised their awareness of the fractured sense of nationhood in Peru and the need for a new project of nation-formation centered on a common political and cultural consciousness. They also gave rise to divergent political and artistic practices and projects. Amongst these, Mariátegui’s Indigenist-Marxist politics and Modernist-inspired poetics were pivotal in revitalizing, conciliating and channeling those of his cohorts and challengers. Comprising six full-length chapters, a comprehensive Introduction and Conclusion, this monograph is extensive in scale and scope. It provides fresh readings of key writings of Mariátegui, one of Latin America’s most important and revolutionary political, cultural and aesthetic theorists, through the lens of his poetics, emphasizing the value of this approach for a fuller understanding of his work’s political meaning and impact. It does so through detailed analysis of the poetic, expressive language employed in seminal political essays, aimed at forging a new Marxist position in 1920s Peru. Furthermore, it offers powerful and original critiques of understudied intellectuals of this time, especially aprista-Futurist, Socialist and Indigenist female writers and artists, such as Magda Portal and Ángela Ramos, whose work he championed. These readings are fully contextualized in terms of detailed critical study of complex sociopolitical conditions and positions, and bio-bibliographical, intellectual backgrounds of Mariátegui and his contemporaries. The monograph examines and underscores the fundamental importance of Mariátegui’s, and their, politico-poetic practices and projects for forging a national-cum-cosmopolitan, shared, yet also heterogeneous, political culture and cultural tradition in 1920s Peru.

Explores debates over Peru's modernisation and cultural identity in post-1940 literature, exploring how writers and others confronted challenges of language, style, and narrative form in their attempt to write across their nation's cultural divisions. This book examines the relationship between Peru's white elite and its indigenous majority.

Bread and Beauty is a study of the works and life of José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930), the autodidact Peruvian scholar and revolutionary activist frequently considered the most important Latin American Marxist.

"Clear and well documented, this is a very important contribution to the rich, varied work on British imperial activities and to postcolonial studies."--Helen M. Cooper, Stony Brook University Ramirez examines British literary representations of Latin America from the 16th through the 20th centuries, with particular attention to travel writing and fiction published during and after Latin American independence. Locating these representations within the political and economic histories of the countries in which they are set, she places works by Sir Walter Ralegh, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Malcolm Lowry, and Graham Greene within a critical context that can best be called "Americanist" and surveys the prominent themes of these works. She also examines their imperialist impulses and their changing master cultural narratives, from Charles Gould's "idea" of empire and his faith in commercial development for Latin America in Conrad's Nostromo to Lowry's Under the Volcano, a story of a failed and alcoholic English Consul in 1930s Mexico. Americanist literature, as Ramirez sees it, manifests mostly informal aspects of imperialism, reflecting the British desire to invest, develop, map, and catalog in countries as varied as Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Brazil. Ramirez argues that British representations of Latin Americareveal an authorial freedom to advance imperial and commercial projects on one hand, while questioning the English self and sense of strangeness in the New World on the other. Especially in the 19th- and 20-century works under consideration, she reveals an acute sense of vulnerability, as British power worldwide had begun to crumble. Expanding on the critical conversation surrounding "Orientalism" and "New World Studies," Ramirez's examination of informal British imperialism and the struggle of motives represented in each of the selected narratives opens a fascinating new terrain of texts reflecting the historical relationship between Britain and Latin America.