The Pongo’s Dream by José Maria Arguedas
(Arguedas learned Quechua as a boy from servants in the household of his stepmother and his father, an itinerant lawyer. Until his suicide in 1967, the novelist and anthropologist was perhaps more responsible than any other Peruvian for the impassioned defense of the Incan tongue and cultural autonomy for millions of Quechua speakers, challenging the powerful ideologies of “modernization” and “national integration” predicated on the erasure of Peru’s indigenous past. Although there was a strong utopian strain in Arguedas, he was not just interested in indigenous traditions. He also wrote about the challenges of migration and modernity, and proclaimed himself an “hombre Quechua moderno,” a modern Quechuan man, reflecting his desire for a cultural pluralism for Peru that would go beyond a retreat into a narrow traditionalism. An adaptation of a story Arguedas heard from a Cusco peasant, “The Pongo’s Dream” captures the rigidity of the feudal order that still prevailed in many parts of the Andes in the mid-twentieth century. But the denouement, where the world turns upside down as in the Inkarri myth, suggests the existence of a spirit of independence and opposition, which was to fuel the peasant movements of the 195os and the break-up of the landlords’ rule.) ******* A little man headed to his master’s mansion. As one of the serfs on the 1ord’s estate, he had to perform the duty of a pongo, a lowly house servant. He had a small and feeble body, a meek spirit. His clothes were old and tattered. Everything about him was pitiful. The great lord, owner of the mansion and lands surrounding it, could not help laughing when the little man greeted him in the mansion’s corridors. “What are you? A person or something else?” the lord asked the little man in front of all the other serfs. The pongo bowed his head and did not answer. He stood frightened, eyes frozen. “Let’s see!” the lord said. “With those worthless little hands, you must at least know how to scrub pots or use a broom. Take this garbage away!” he ordered. The pongo knelt to kiss his master’s hand and followed him to the kitchen hanging his head. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/07/10/the-pongos-dream/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
