7 - The Andean novel

Summary

The South American subcontinent is a region of marked differences and contrasts not only in its history and geography, but also as the result of the interaction of its many cultures, races, ethnicities, languages, religions, customs, and traditions throughout the ages. A topographically fragmented space, the area and its inhabitants are defined and conditioned by major physical environments and systems that encompass impenetrable jungles in the Amazon basin extending over large areas of Peru and Brazil, to some of the most arid regions in the world, such as the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The dominant and most notable geographical feature of this land is, however, the Andes, a mountain range that boasts some of the highest peaks in the world, running along a general North-South direction parallel to the Pacific Ocean, and occupying significant portions of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, to the southernmost tip of Chile and Argentina.

In this essay we will examine the development of the novel in Andean countries and the crucial effect that their native Indian populations, history, and cultures have had on the genre. It must be noted, however, that this approach can be best be applied to countries whose populations consist of a majority of Indians, as is the case of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Though the natural habitat of the Andean Indians has for centuries centered around agrarian communities, starting in the 1950s, major segments of those populations have gravitated towards urban centers for economic, political, and social reasons. This demographic phenomenon had a powerful effect on the novel.