Ofelia Huamanchumo the Cuba (Lima, 1971) has published a case study, Witchcraft and fantasy in the work of Manuel Scorza. Towards a structural reflection of the silent war (Lima: Ed Firebird, December. 2008). This is a book designed to invite students to debate literature and is dedicated to Manuel Scorza - innovator of the literary movement known Peruvian 'indigenous' from the 50 - as a tribute to his life, he devoted to literary activity largely from exile. The author, based in Germany, says his views on various issues related to the work scorziana literature, exile, political commitment.
Huamanchumo Ofelia de la Cuba, in Munich, May 2009.
born when and how your interest in the work of Manuel Scorza?
Following his death in November 1983. When news of the crash or issued got my hands on Rancas Strengthen , and became fascinated with the first chapter. My parents had been in Cerro de Pasco in the sixties, participating in the reform program Agricultural sponsored by the military government then, shortly after the massacres that Scorza making base for their stories, so my parents recalled those days of death telling stories of that experience, and researching his book in our library. Until then, Indian-themed stories seemed the most tired and serious. Overall, I enjoyed reading everything, but Ciro Alegria, Clorinda Matto, Arguedas. That was for me to see pictures and get bored sad lives of the mountain villages of Peru. I had traveled through the mountains with my parents to plan a walk, had another view of things: i r to Ticlio in the car was fun look at the world's tallest chimney in La Oroya and buy pots of mud in the Huancayo fair.
Scorza When you spread the awareness about the problem of the most neglected of Peru? Was reading The silent war?
Well, Scorza's death I heard about the central reason he had moved up his life and his work, from his poem Song of miners Bolivia, for example, to the novels and know. Social his beautiful poetry and then the black humor that the tragedies Scorza account the abuse of peasants and miners in the Peruvian Andes was what captivated me, made me laugh mourn first, and pain, after, because in those years also coincided with other pictures I found in the everyday reality of my life when she returned from school and read in the car Scorza in red lights Javier Prado Avenue miners were put newcomers to Lima to sell alfajores claims with little signs of missed payments round the chest, "the mine such mining center is. " These were as vivid pictures that made you 'click' on the cab eza and will start to ask questions.
What you wondered?
No questions such as whether Peru was 'a promise or a possibility', but say that I was beginning to seem that the situation in Peru had a rat. In those years I was in high school. A young Peruvian l is generally like other things. In principle the work of Scorza I was fascinated by their language fun, good storyteller, as he has serious business with great humor, as Benigni shooting the Nazi Holocaust. But there the matter rested. There were many years later when seriously cherish his novels from the point of view of literary criticism and as an example of a true writer, who devotes all his art to a work well: break the silence those stormy stories that the press and the power had fallen silent at the time of the massacre of miners and peasants in the Peruvian central highlands of the 60's, and were also uncovered by journalist César Hildebrandt ten years later, following a Scorza sent letters to the press in a tone of complaint.
How then would you become aware of the protest scorziana?
Scorza On the way we approach the tragedy of the peasants and miners, with the proper treatment of magic and fantasy of the stories he tells, which is worthy of mention, as does awareness the most indifferent of the Peruvians, or citizens of the world. Because when I started my studies in Literature at the Catholic University of Lima, my s literary interests were different, I liked a lot and almost exclusively English Golden Age and read enough German literature at the Goethe Institute Library of Lima. I have also little social activist spirit of mass, I was never any progress at all, to those who did see were my colleagues in the university, like going to a social gathering, it seems to be left clear in those years was a democratic intellectual elite. I remember it was almost like a status go to the marches of Alejandro Toledo. I do not care about the marches, and I also read aloud and lost 'friends' for it. I am a bookworm type, I enjoy reading, and writing was my only way to raise any objection, I'm afraid of crowds.
What political protests have posted, for example?
Bueno, protestas tipo panfleto político: ninguna. Sólo saqué por los años 90 un boletín literario, Café con Letra , donde en la columna editorial escribía sobre lo que me inspiraba el mundillo literario limeño que yo frecuentaba en esa época: la falta de una política seria contra la piratería de libros, la falta de interés por motivar la lectur a a través de bibliotecas públicas, el exilio acelerado de muchas promesas de la literatura, etc. Me acuerdo que dediqué un número a criticar a los poetas por la paz, por la democracia, por la dictadura, por la justicia total, etc., los puse a todos en un mismo saco de poetas panfletarios, I think, especially since the late 90's there was a wave of literary recitals political air in Lima and I did not see, as I see now, no 'chant general' or no 'from me this cup' was left of those years. Maybe worth the try, was politically and morally run ct for some poets and writers to participate in these recitals.
And your book is not part of the publications of political protest?
Of course not, because it is publishing a literary research thesis is aimed on all teachers and students of literature, or Scorza readers, inviting them to debate. In Peru, very little is published essay, much less the thesis, how much they lend themselves to reading room in university libraries, as if they were great mysteries. I think my thesis is when I graduate here in Germany on the silent war, investigated the entire social, political, artistic, etc.. Manuel Scorza that writes and publishes his work, that's when, in the distance of exile, I open many questions about Peru, and Peru starts hurting contrary.
How?
Well, my parents had taught me, by example of life, with some social consciousness for others. My mother devoted her career to fighting social assistance for the dignity of the people in the shanty towns in the 70's were a lot of speed in the southern and north of Lima. And my father, as an agronomist, also took his life in the farmer support programs, especially in the jungle with alternatives to illegal crops of coca leaf, and also published on it, shattering misconceptions and objectively criticizing policy Land of governments. In the distance I realized then that there was a kind of co ethical mpromiso it had to add anyone who is not patriotic feel Peruvian, but simply human in whatever their occupation. So that's why I also decided to publish an article in the journal TASK in 2003 to remind them all the work and the merit of Scorza in his craft as a writer, which coincided with the anniversary of twenty years of death and the 'killing of Uchuraccay'. I had only three years living in Lima and Germany and it seemed that everywhere was published a lot about terrorism, but in the same tone deaf and crying, and no one made the main question was to why it had emerged that the phenomenon of terrorism in our society. That was what caught my attention.
Then do you think the literature or the test can be a weapon of social protest?
Every word can be a weapon, even double-edged. There are those who make use of the word an admirable example, but there are charlatans and demagogues. It is difficult to bring the truth on his lips. Without going too far, the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation You've worked hard. Many 'only politically responsible 'to the end and little of discussion about the origin of matter. The same with the desired memory controversial museums. Memory of the consequences of terrorist scourge of the murderers, the paramilitaries, the rape, missing persons, the informers, the repentant. But who is responsible for the counting of the reasons ... I refuse to believe that the causes of the rise of terrorism are in the genes or bad luck of the innate relegated Peru.
Do you think that the silent war, or the work Scorza iana general, you can still force in Peru?
I think the silent war could be listed among the classics of the twentieth century Peruvian literature, not so much because if the problem of farmers, miners and land appears to have banished the Peru, but as a model of committed literature, not in the sense of having been written with a specific political ideology of its author, but because it exemplifies the commitment of a writer with his work and his office, for those who came into the world : write, say, not silenced. Every literary work is a c aesthetic and social ommitment writer himself and his environment, as seen in the book, very tender and humane, with notes and poems about life and dreams of the great writer, who last year Mrs. Hoyle, widow of Scorza published. For my part, I reported at conferences and literary evenings silent war through photo galleries and reading passages from the novels, because I think it is worth bringing to the public is very aesthetic enjoyment of reading, rather than discourse on the impact that reading can raise, which is something that is at the individual level of the reader. What saddens me is still failure to disclose as it should be the poetry of Scorza, but it is a problem copyright to this day has not been resolved, and which have been locked up reissues in print and some other projects reprints of the poetry scorziana abroad. A shame really wroth silencing size!.
