Writing As Resistance: Subaltern Nation And Andean Memory In Wancho Lima By José Luis Ayala
Auteurs : Cornejo-paredes Doris .
Résumé
This article examines José Luis Ayala’s novel Wancho Lima (1989) as a narrative project that reconstructs the historical and symbolic memory of the 1923 peasant rebellion in Huancané, Puno. The study argues that Ayala proposes a form of subaltern resistance through the appropriation of writing as a tool for political, legal, and symbolic struggle against the Creole nation-state. Through the category of the cronivela, the author employs three types of prose—mythic, historical, and documentary—that challenge the hegemonic power of official narratives. Special emphasis is placed on the use of the Prose of the Record, understood as “Prose of Counter-Insurgency” (Guha), which, when reappropriated by Andean subjects, transforms the state’s archival apparatus into instruments of insurgency. The article concludes that while Ayala constructs a subaltern nation from the southern Andes, his proposal remains anchored in the coordinates of a mestizo-regional intellectuality, limiting the aesthetic and political radicalism achieved by other authors such as Arguedas or Scorza. Nevertheless, Wancho Lima makes a fundamental contribution to the configuration of an Andean literary memory that confronts national historiography from the margins.
Mots clés
Andean literature ; subaltern studies ; cronivela ; memory ; Aymara nation ; writing and resistance
