Letras (Lima)

The reform of the Hospice of Nuestra Señora de Atocha in Lima during the Eighteenth Century

Juan A. González Delgado — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The historiography's approach to the church of the Hospice of Nuestra Señora de Atocha (Lima) has been extensive, pointing out the similarities with Borromini's models and opening debates about the consequences of the 1746 earthquake and the design of the church. A recent study by Gauvin Alexander Bailey, published in the Burlington Magazine, has revitalized those debates about the building. Nevertheless, there is a lack of information about the hospice and the church before the decade of the1740s. The article will be based on the report of 1720 by the architects Íñigo de Eraso and Eugenio de Atienza and their proposals for the hospice and church, viewed in relation to the later reforms. Aspects such as the improvement of health, changes in the configuration of the building or the condition of the church will be examined. Moreover a plan for the hospice drawn up by a military engineer under the viceroyalty of Manuel de Amat will be analyzed regarding the importance of the military engineers and the application of a new architectural language. The unpublished documents and plans found allow a better knowledge of the building and its architecture. This documentation comes from various institutions: the General Archive of the Indies, the British Library, and the Library of Catalonia.

Mountain Views: Postcards and Visual Consumption of the Amazon in Turn-of-the-Century Peru (1896-1919)

Juan Carlos La Serna Salcedo — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

During the turn of the century, illustrated postcards became a key medium for disseminating images of the Peruvian Amazon. Through these graphic artifacts, regional and national modernizing elites projected representations that combined the exoticism of the landscape and indigenous populations with their ideals of material progress and prosperity. Initially, the circulation of Amazonian imagery in printed media was limited to a select audience, via illustrated publications and clichés printed on photographic paper. However, the mass
production of postcards facilitated their incorporation into broader consumption circuits, reaching merchants, travelers, military personnel, literate professionals, and collectors. Publishers such as Guillermo Stolte and Eduardo Polack selected views that reflected advancements in infrastructure and the expansion of the internal Amazonian frontier, aligning themselves with the modernization discourses promoted by the political and intellectual elites of the time. In the city of Iquitos —the epicenter of the rubber trade— photographers such as Manuel Rodríguez Lira and the firm Lira & Gil printed postcards depicting urban scenes, infrastructure, and indigenous groups. These images circulated widely within Peru and abroad, reinforcing a narrative of civilization
and progress promoted by Loreto entrepreneurs. In doing so, they contributed to the construction of a national imaginary that framed the Amazon as an integral space within the modernization project of the Oligarchic Republic (1896-1919).

Studies of Peruvian art in chairs of the Letters and History sections, of the Faculty of Philosophy, History and Letters (1931-1937)

Marco Antonio Caparó Aragón — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The objective of the research is the bibliographic review to show that the studies of Peruvian art flourished with the influence of the chairs of the sections: Letters and History (1931-1935) of the Faculty of Philosophy, History and Letters of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. The analysis methodology follows the proposal
of the historiography of art, disseminated by Hermann Bauer. The results record that the theoretical works of: José de la Riva-Agüero, Rebeca Carrión Cachot and Julio César Tello, seek to narrate the national artistic history from scientific methodologies supported by archaeological and historical disciplines. In this way, it was sought to narrate the national artistic history from the greatness of the art developed in Ancient Peru, Viceregal art and
Republican art. The sources consulted correspond to the Domingo Angulo Historical Archive of a local university, books, magazines (1930-1937), and critical studies by contemporary and contemporary intellectuals. The conclusion is that, within the chronological range of 1931-1937, the Faculty of Philosophy, History and Letters developed the necessary conditions to develop the importance of the visual arts of the past, thus proposing our artistic history as a process that began with the cultures of ancient Peru.

Español

Victor Gonzalo Ramirez Herrera — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article offers a systematic critique of Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 concept of incommensurability, arguing that it is untenable in both its radical and moderate formulations. The discussion addresses its ontological, epistemological, and especially semantic dimensions. Drawing on the contributions of Davidson, Kripke, and Coseriu, the paper challenges the feasibility of conceptual schemes, the constancy of reference, and the supposed impossibility of translation across paradigms. Additionally, it introduces an original argument supported by linguistic data on color categorization and children’s acquisition of causal reasoning, reinforcing
the view that experience precedes and transcends language. The article further contends that language
enables subjects to step beyond their cultural or theoretical paradigms to critically analyze them. This capacity for reflexivity and empirical contrast —through the use of basic statements— provides a compelling avenue for addressing localized instances of incommensurability without resorting to conceptual relativism.

“Things We Lost in the Fire” by Mariana Enriquez: the Resumption of the Myth of Prometheus to Narrate the Reaction to Gender-based Violence

Enrique Ferrari — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 09:34:30 +0000

“Things We Lost in the Fire” by Mariana Enriquez explores the response of a group of women to gender-based violence, joining other contemporary narratives that portray bold reactions against such aggression. What sets it apart is the radical choice of its protagonists: they deliberately set themselves on fire, disfiguring themselves to reclaim and reframe the violence inflicted by men.

This study examines how the Argentine author embeds this unsettling female response within cultural and political frameworks consistent with her poetics. To contextualize this radical act, we propose a second interpretive layer, suggesting that the story’s structure draws on the elements and framework of the Prometheus myth. By deconstructing and reimagining this foundational myth, Enriquez’s narrative positions the bonfires as the genesis of a new civilization—one that envisions a redefined social role for women. In this reconfiguration, they inherit not only Pandora’s legacy but also Prometheus’s defiance, reclaiming fire to challenge the gods once more.

Five versions of a triangle: film adaptations of “La intrusa” by Jorge Luis Borges

Alfredo Dillon — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article offers a comparative analysis of the cinematic adaptations of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “La intrusa”, originally published in 1966. The corpus covers five adaptations from different countries and decades:
Ghazal by Masoud Kimiai (Iran, 1976), A intrusa by Carlos Hugo Christensen (Brazil, 1979), Oraingoz izen gabe
by José Julián Bakedano (Basque Country, 1986), El tres de copas by Felipe Cazals (Mexico, 1986), and La intrusa by Jaime Chávarri (Spain, 1993). The article examines how each film reinterprets the story’s themes — desire, jealousy, loyalty, and violence— and reconfigures the main characters according to various sociocultural
sensibilities regarding gender roles. In all the films, the chronotopic construction —necessarily heterogeneous
when comparing productions from diverse cinematographies— reiterates the contrast between two opposite
spaces: the country and the city, the interior and exterior of the home. This spatial dialectic overlaps with the
gender dialectic that defines the relationships between the main characters. By exploring these films, the article
investigates the universal appeal and local specificity of Borges’ literature, with particular interest in the various
inflections that masculinity and femininity assume in successive audiovisual versions, made in heterogeneous
cultural contexts. It also addresses some challenges of the audiovisual transposition of Borges’ narrative style,
characterized by the radical subordination of character to plot.

Confluences and divergences around folklore and Mexican literature at the beginning of the 20th century. The antagonistic visions of Rubén M. Campos and Alfonso Reyes

Conrado José Arranz Mínguez — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Folklore studies burst with force worldwide at the beginning of the 20th century and the Mexican literary field wonders about the space they occupy both in creation and criticism, considering that popular and traditional literature was already a source of inspiration and study. A historical line is then established to observe what were the main contributions, debates and, in short, ideas that were proposed in Mexico, especially by writers or people linked to the literary sphere. This proposed line leads to three circumstances, whose detailed observation becomes an essential part of the proposed analysis: the publication of the three volumes that constitute the folkloric work of Rubén M. Campos, as well as the reception given to it by Alfonso Reyes and Salvador Novo (the first with a review of one of his books and the second with a fierce criticism in a column, which had the reply of the writer from Guanajuato). In the discursive analysis of these circumstances, we find the keys to understand two extremes of observation of the same phenomenon, always taking as a backdrop the construction of a nationalism that permeated most of the cultural manifestations of the time and forced writers to take a position.

Una Aproximación a la función de las ediciones bilingües y monolingües de literatura quechua en la editorial peruana Pakarina Ediciones

Diana Nicole Macuri Arquíñigo, José Agustín Haya de la Torre Castro — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the Peruvian Literature field, the Quechua literature publication is still a controversial topic because of the hegemonic and canonical Spanish publication predominance. Therefore, this study is focused on the analysis of Pakarina Ediciones’ function; this is a Peruvian publisher that works with indigenous and hegemonic languages. The first specific objective is analyzing the function of bilingual (Spanish-Quechua and Quechua-Spanish) editions, and the second specific objective is analyzing the function of monolingual (Quechua) editions of the referred publisher. Regarding this paradigm, this research discusses the position of a literature that comes from a non-hegemonic language which is also, as a consequence, a non-canonical language in the Peruvian literary system. For that, the publication process and the publisher's motivations will be specially observed. In order to collect data, semi-structured interviews to the general publisher and authors-translators were made. They provided information about the perspectives and motivations of these participants. This data was analyzed through different theories that belong to the Literature and Translation fields. As findings suggest, it can be noted that both literary editions, bilingual (Spanish-Quechua and Quechua-Spanish) and monolingual (Quechua), of Pakarina Ediciones contribute to the development, diffusion, and revindication of Quechua literature; furthermore, they also amplify the hegemonic-canonical Peruvian literary circuit.

Representaciones visuales de una ciudad amazónica contemporánea: reflexiones sobre el ‘espacio fluvial’ iquiteno

Gerardo Castillo Guzmán — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article aims to reflect on the nature and usefulness of the concept of “fluvial space.” To do so, it examines
certain contemporary visual representations of the Peruvian Amazonian city of Iquitos. The text argues that
this concept is particularly appropriate for understanding Amazonian cities by connecting global processes
that structure materialities and spatial practices —alluded to by Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the social production
of space— with particular ecosystems and subjective forms of appropriating space through memory and sensoriality, as implied by the concept of place developed by Tim Creswell. In this endeavor, the article takes
as examples two of the most prominent artists of the contemporary Peruvian Amazonian cultural scene —the
photographer Augusto Falconi and the painter Christian Bendayán— and two of their works: “Chauchero cargando hielo” (Chauchero carrying ice, circa 1980), and “Fuerza animal” (Animal Force, 2019). To account for
the complexity of the processes involved in this visual production, the analysis includes three interrelated
components: the researcher’s own interpretation and reaction, the narrative that the artists elaborate on their
compositions, and the cultural and social context of the city in which the artistic representation is imbedded.

An “artist whose works seem Roman”: Medoro Angelino (1560-1633) in Peru through new documents

Francesco De Nicolo — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Medoro Angelino is one of those figures about whom, although much has already been written, there are still several points to be explored and clarified. In this sense, the article aims to highlight some unpublished aspects of the artist. As a starting point, some clarifications are provided on the painter’s anagrammatic data, id est, his real name, his Roman origin and his year of birth. Next, documents possibly referring to Medoro Angelino’s parents are pointed out and the artist is framed within the Roman painting of the second half of the 16th century, highlighting the masters who could have influenced his art, which is shown to be systematically related to the late Mannerism. Speaking of the late Mannerism, a digression is made on the use of this term and the need to abandon the labels Counter-Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism. The last part of the article focuses on Medoro Angelino’s Peruvian activity in order to contextualize seven documents, six of them unpublished, referring to his twenty years in Lima. These documents provide information about his profession and his daily life, giving us a significant insight into the painter’s dense and varied network of contacts.

Undressing the superman: seventy years after “Collacocha” by Enrique Solari Swayne

Alfonso Santistevan — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Collacocha by Enrique Solari Swayne is, without any doubt, an emblematic play of the Peruvian theatre of the 20^th century. The consensus it achieved in the field of theatre as well as in the imaginary citizenry, maintained its validity for decades through stagings and publications in Peru and abroad. The present work gives an account of the history and context of its production, reception and the debates that took place by analyzing interviews, testimonies, reviews, editions, in addition to what literary criticism and the history of theatre have to say. Likewise, the analysis of the play attempts to answer the reason for its success and validity, what impact it had in the field of national theatre, how it achieves such a consensus, what dramaturgical and ideological mechanisms it mobilized. The main character, Echecopar, as emblematic as the play itself, is deconstructed through the analysis if the different discourses it represents: sexist, anti-oligarchic, anti-communist, ante-internationalist, anti-intellectual, anti-poetic, authoritarian, intolerant, paternalistic, violent and patriotic. This exercise leads us to discover that many of these discourses are still in force and active in Peru and that the mechanism of polarization on which the play builds its protagonist continues to be an efficient means of ideological pressure.

Peralta Barnuevo, P. de, & Rivilla Bonet Y Pueyo, J. de. (2024). Desvíos de la naturaleza: O tratado del origen de los monstruos (1695) (D. F. Slade, Ed.). Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs.

Rafael Felipe Cerpa Estremadoyro — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Review of the book:

Peralta Barnuevo, P. de, & Rivilla Bonet Y Pueyo, J. de. (2024). Desvíos de la naturaleza: O tratado del origen de los monstruos (1695) (D. F. Slade, Ed.). Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs.

Fernandez Juncal, C. (Ed.). (2025). El paisaje linguistico. Un paseo por el discurso publico (Coleccion Cuadernos de Lengua y Comunicacion N.º 2) Centro Internacional del Español, Ediciones de la Universidad de Salamanca.

Jesús A. Meza Morales — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Valero Juan, E. (2024). La ciudad tapada: Lima en las relaciones de fiestas virreinales. Peter Lang.

Said Ilich Trujillo Valverde — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000