Barr Melej+Cowboys+and+Representations

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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 30, 35-61. Printed in the United Kingdom ? 1998 Cambridge University Press

Cowboys and Constructions:Nationalist Representations of PastoralLife in Post-Portalian Chile*PATRICK BARR MELEJAbstract. This articleexaminespolitical ideology, cultural nationalism and thecontesting of identityin earlytwentieth-centuryChile. It does so by tracingtheemergence of a unique cultural construct the huasocowboy - in the literarysphereand by exploring a 'rural idealist' discourseemployed by middle-class,reformist ntellectualswho hoped for the mitigationof the 'social question' andthe displacementof traditionaloligarchsfrom culturalandpoliticalcentrality.Italso seeks to explainhow the fiction genre known as criollismochallengedelitistconceptionsof 'nation' and 'culture' in the context of dramaticsocio-political,economic and demographicchange.Carlos Valdes Vasques, a young Chilean musician with artistic tastesrooted in rural folk culture, appeared in urban theatres during anationwide tour in 1930, and proved to be a sensation in a metropolitanenvironment that had increasingly become estranged from campesinolifeways since the late nineteenth century. Dressed as a huasocowboy -with his characteristicponcho-likechamanto, black riding boots, silver spursand flat-brimmed hat - Valdes strummed his guitar and sang tamacuecas,traditional songs of the Central Valley countryside. In attendance at oneSantiago performance was a critic for a large daily newspaper, whoapparently found more than technical merit in Valdes's spectacle. Theartist, he wrote, '[made] us remember that we are Chileans' and that 'ifthere were many people in Chile like Carlos Valdes Vaisques that wereconcerned with what is ours, we could aspire to create a solid race, rootedin tradition, truly Chilean, truly criollo'. The reviewer went on to state that'now is the time to begin a difficult task: to dignify this music, makeeveryone understand it, realise its miracles that make us proud, and for thecountry to adopt it and reject the intrusive tangoand the petulant fox-

PatrickBarrMelejis a doctoral candidate n history at the Universityof CaliforniaatBerkeley.* The author wishes to thank ArnoldJ. Bauer, Tulio Halperin-Donghi, James Cane,Claudio Barrientos, Florencia Mallon and three anonymous JLAS reviewers foroffering excellent comments on earlierversions of this article. He also thanks theMellon Foundation, the UC BerkeleyDepartmentof History and the UC BerkeleyCenterfor Latin AmericanStudiesfor generouslyproviding financialsupport.

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36 Patrick Barr Melejtrot'.l Valdes's representation of 'huaso culture' was, in the observer'smind, indelibly linked to a peculiar existence that seemed authenticallychileno.

As an urbanisation boom, industrialisation and the mining exporteconomy altered life's rhythms during the oligarchy-controlled Par-liamentary Republic (I89I-i925), many urban Chileans began to graspimages of the countryside and its campesinos in their searches for traits ofnational and cultural singularity. In particular, the huaso figure wasextolled as a cultural icon, and came to constitute an archetype of chilenidadby the late parliamentary years. The heralded huaso tzpico,2 who todaystands among a collection of figures and symbols tied to Chilean nationalidentity, is an imagined hero - a Latin American cowboy legend born andnurtured in the pages of print culture between 1900 and the I94os.3 Thehuaso icon emerged within the fiction genre known as criollismo as adiscursive strategy to delineate and valorise lo chileno (what is Chilean) orlo criollo (what is native or autochthonous). Drawn to idealism andinspired by such European naturalist writers as Zola, Maupassant, Daudetand Flaubert, the criollistas sought to portray the day-to-day existence oftheir subaltern countrymen - their environments, customs, styles ofspeech, labours, relationships, tragedies, successes - to navigate Chileanliterary culture away from the aristocratic element so common in

El Diario Ilustrado, 22 Jan. 1930. Similar productions were regularly presented by theSantiago-based Los Cuatro Guasos[a less common spelling of the term] during the era.Remarking on one show, a critic explained: 'There was among us [in the audience] ajustified scepticism for everything that smelled like the soil... That was natural.' Yet,once the music began: 'it only took the first song for the public to breathe a sigh ofrelief and tranquillity'. The audience, he went on to state, quickly realised that 'thesong and dance of our countryside are melodious, spicy, virile and at the same timewithin the limits of a certain dignity and decency... The greatest merit of Los CuatroGuasoswas to make us understand this and to have taken popular art to the stage.' ElDiario Ilustrado, 21 July 1930.

2 The origin of the name 'huaso' may have evolved from the Quechua word wasu,meaning 'rustic man'. See M. Subercaseaux, Diccionariode chilenismos(Santiago, I986).The Argentine term gaucho s thought to be related.

3 For a comprehensive survey of cowboys in the Western Hemisphere, see R. W. Slatta,Cowboysof the Americas (New Haven, I990). On Brazil's version of the gaucho,see L.da Camara Cascudo, Vaqueiros e cantadores Sio Paulo, 1984) and A. L. Lapenda, Amissa do vaquieros: uma abordagemcultural (Recife, I990); for the Venezuelan andColombian llaneros,see V. M. Ovalles, El llanero: estudiosobresu vida, sus costumbres, ucardctery supoesia (Caracas, I990) and A. Narino Baquero, Joropo- identidad lanera: laepopeyacultural de las comunidades el Orinoco(Bogota, i990). On the Mexican charro,seeK. Mullen Sands, CharreriaMexicana: An EquestrianFolk Tradition(Tuscon, I993); J.Alvarez del Villar, Orzgenes el charromexicano(Mexico D.F., 1968) and J. Silva Valero,El Libro del la charreria Mexico D.F., 1987). Among the important books concerningthe famed Argentine gauchoare Slatta, Gauchosandthe VanishingFrontier (Lincoln, 1992)and the discussion of gaucho magery and nation-state formation in N. Shumway, TheInventionof Argentina (Berkeley, 1993).



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 37nineteenth-century fiction. They looked to the countryside, and to thecampesinowhom fin-de-siecleurban circles had considered a backwardbumpkin, and transformed him into a national folk symbol.The architects of criollismo,a diverse assembly of santiaguino eachers,journalists, bureaucrats and other urban professionals, were centralparticipants in a post-9Ioo wave of cultural introspection that sought todefine chilenidad n cultural terms. They had clear political purposes.Largely committed to the reformist Radical Party or allied to othermoderate political groups, the criollistas sought to democratise theconcepts of 'nation' and 'culture' by demonstrating the value of lower-class traditions and lifeways, thereby incorporating the campesinoother'into a broader, more inclusive vision of patria.Both during the Portalian Republic (1833-9 ), an era of constitutionalauthoritarianism established by businessman Diego Portales, and in theearly years of the Parliamentary Republic, a largely upper-class, patron-dominated outlook on what and who constituted the nation guided bothartistic and political expression; the criollistas and their allies in politicsaimed to de-centre the figure of the landowner and the urban upper classin both literary culture and the political realm. Though originally targetsof criollistacriticism, during the 1930S landowning elites staked claims tohuasoimagery, arguing that the cowboy symbolised patrdn benevolenceand traditional social relations. The short stories (cuentos)and novels ofcriollismoalso established a clearly defined code of conduct for the urbanlower class as the 'social question' became a pressing issue during theparliamentary years. The hardworking and traditionalist campesinorepresents the ideal worker who is truly Chilean; he is healthy in body andmind, and remains uninfected by the foreign anarchist and communistviruses that threaten culture and authenticity.

Through criollismo, he press, popular culture and politics, an entourageof urban, middle-class intellectuals propagated a 'cultural nationalism', abinding sense of cultural affinity that recognised a singular constellationof cultural norms, symbols, traditions, myths and folkways considerednative to the nation. Cultural nationalism and criollistarepresentations ofpastoral life disseminated in literary culture gradually reconfigured theway in which many Chileans imagined their community during the firsthalf of this century. We must not, then, examine criollismomerely in termsof artistic content and style, but rather explore the personal histories of itscraftsmen, the political mission they assigned as their own, their audienceand the basic principles that drove them. This article, therefore, will focuson the formation and evolution of criollismon Chilean literature by brieflyexamining the works of such notable authors as Guillermo LabarcaHubertson, Mariano Latorre, Federico Gana, Luis Durand and Joaquin



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 39curious species, the horseman is not presented as a national archetype orfolkish hero, nor are rural society's cultural traditions touted as lo chileno.

Accompanying Martin Rivas and other examples of Portalian-era fictionon the market were folletines, inexpensive publications of lesser printquality reproduced in the late nineteenth century for widespreadconsumption among an increasingly literate public.6 A favoured folletinwas Don LucasGo6me,o sea un huasoenSantiago,written by Mateo MartinezQuevedo and published in the mid-i88os.7 As the title suggests, the storyfollows a huaso'sjourney from the small rural settlement of Curepto toSantiago, where he is faced with a troubling situation. In a plot slightlyreminiscent of Blest Gana's Martin Rivas, Lucas Gomez' santiaguinobrother, Genaro, attempts to hide the true, rural origin of his jinete(horseman) sibling. The huasoG6mez, according to Genaro and his urbanrelatives, is a comical, backward representative of an underdevelopedcountryside. Genaro, who most likely had emigrated to the capital fromthe campo, had become civilised by urban society. In short, the huasoembarrasses Genaro by being too huaso.After achieving some notoriety,the story was transformed into a theatrical production in the i89os, andwas performed from time to time in Santiago and other major cities wellinto the twentieth century. Don LucasGomeZ, n summation, demonstratesin a fairly accurate manner the prevailing attitude in the urban spheretoward the rural lower class in the late-nineteenth century: relics such asthe cowboy Lucas weigh down a modernising nation, but remaininteresting 'others' with rustic cultural habits (the second and final act ofthe stage production ends with a traditional gamacueca folk dance).8Subsequently, as we shall see, the image of the huasounderwent a dramatictransformation. Urban Chileans - especially members of the middle class- came to view the huaso as a national icon rather than a somewhatembarrassing bumpkin of rural society. By undermining the position ofelite literature, criollismooffered a new portrait of national life - a moredemocratic one that challenged the hegemony of the ParliamentaryRepublic's conservative oligarchy and was allied to ideas of gradual social6 Statisticsshow thatliteracyrates ncreased teadilythroughoutthe nineteenthcentury.In 1854,13.5percent of the populacewas consideredfunctionally iterate.By 1875,theproportion had grown to 22.9 per cent and, by i885, the percentagereached 28.9.Analesde la Universidade Chile:articulosientificosyiterarios, ol. 5, Second Trimester(1927). Educational reform in the last quarterof the nineteenth century extended

literacy to some members of the urban working class. See A. LabarcaHubertson,Historia de la ensehanZaSantiago, I939).7 Some 30,ooocopies of thefolletinwere sold. See B. Subercaseaux,HistoriadellibroenChile (Santiago, I993), pp. 90-1.8 On the long historyof the Zamacueca,onsultA. Acevedo Hernandez,La cueca:ortgenes,historia,antologia Santiago, 1953) and P. Garrido, Historia dela cueca(Valparaiso, I979).



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40 Patrick Barr Melejreform. An anti-revolutionary message also came to constitute anunderlying theme of criollismo.

Bloody confrontations between workers and the state in 1905 and 1907,the founding of the Federaci6n Obrera de Chile (FOCh) in 1909 and amarked increase in urban strikes and anarchist-led demonstrationsbetween 1910 and 1920 prompted fear among the middle and upper strataof society.9 The social impact on Chile's political landscape of whatnationalists regarded as pestilential foreign ideologies was evident by theend of the Parliamentary Republic. Many hacienda abourers (includinginquilinos)who migrated to mining regions in the near- and far-north,joined sindicatos,embraced revolutionary ideas and pressed the govern-ment for a resolution to the 'social question'. Strikes and unionisationefforts were not unique to nitrate and copper zones. Between I916 and1920, some 240 strikes nationwide involved more than 125,ooo workers.l0Criollismo,by embracing the campoand campesinos s authentically chileno,rejected the validity of the foreign, urban existence from whichrevolutionary ideas sprang. As we shall see, the genre's constructedcowboy and its representations of rural life delivered a political message:the ideas and cultures of the extranjeroswere disruptive and, in general, ill-suited for incorporation into the Chilean 'reality'. The problems of urbansociety - from strikes to diseasesl - were simply the manifestations of asickly city environment infected by viruses not of the 'real' Chile. Thecultural cosmopolitanism of the parliamentary years, they held, was anaffront to lo criolloand the aloofness and weak sense of chilenidadamongoligarchs had allowed revolutionary ideologies to make headway in the9 A substantiveexaminationof the working classand unionisation s beyond the scopeof thisarticle.Important tudieson thesetopics includeP. DeShazo, UrbanWorkers ndLabor Unionsin Chile I902-I927 (Madison, I983); M. Monteon, Chile in the Nitrate Era

(Madison, 1982); J. Barrfa Ser6n, El movimientoobreroen Chile (Santiago, 1972); andA. Angell, PoliticsandtheLabourMovementn Chile London, 1972).0 B. Loveman, Chile: The Legacyof HispanicCapitalism New York, 1988), p. 203.Accounts of the social question are found in, for example,C. Gazmuri,Testimonioseuna crisis: Chile, 1900-192- (Santiago, 1979); A. Quezada Acharan, La cuestion ocial enChile(Santiago, I908); and M. A. Parada,La armoniantre l capitalyel trabajo:breveestudio sobre el problemaobrero(Santiago, 1927).1 Discussionof the tuberculosisepidemic n Santiagodemonstrateshow 'the urban'wasequatedwith 'the sick'. The health campaignto fight the diseaseincluded a call forspending more time 'al aire libre'. The countryside (a healthier place) became adestination for many who were battling the ailment. In 1917, for example, anorganisation alledtheJuntade Beneficiencia onstructedanew casadesalud n SanJosede Maipo, a rural,foothill region outside Santiago,for tuberculosispatientswantingto escape the sickly capital. El Mercurio,22 April I916 and 29 April 1917. Aside fromtuberculosis,alcoholismand venereal diseaseswere also importanthealth issues in thecity. Overall, living conditions in Santiagobecamepoor enough, accordingto an ElMercurioditorialheadline,to warrant he name'La ciudaddesaseada'.El Mercurio, 4April 1917.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 41political arena.12 The countryside, the criollistas believed, provided apattern of cultural traits, social relations and behaviours that were typicalof the authentic Chile.

As one historian has observed, with 'the beginning of the new centurythere arose poets and novelists who, in addition to demonstrating a newsensibility, originated from different social sectors [from the Portalianwriters] and made their literary aspirations compatible with theiroccupations as bureaucrats and teachers'.13 According to a literary criticwriting in the newspaper La Nacidn in 1926, these intellectuals wereimaginative people 'in search of exotic landscapes'.14 In their search forcultural authenticity, the criollistas found an exotic landscape outside thecity, among the campesinos ivorced from modern urban life. They lookedto the countryside and sought to apply the literary realism of Zola and thenaturalists - a project of documentation and description - to the Chileanexperience.15 The literary projects of criollismo's first wave of authors(known collectively as the Generation of 1900) rapidly gained publishingnotoriety and came to represent a fundamental shift in Chilean printculture away from the elite-oriented literature and the restricted vision ofpatria of the nineteenth century. Central to what became criollismo'sportrait of lo criollo are huasos.As artists seeking subjects, the criollistasturned to an historically differentiated campesinoor a pattern of physical,linguistic and relational characteristics that could embody the 'real'Chile.16 The huasotipico,a cowboy legend, evolved as an urban, nationalistrepresentation of the inquilinodecaballo,a campesinoervice tenant commonto the archipelago of fundosthat extended from the southern stretches ofAconcagua Province to the Province of Maule. As Mario Gongora has12 For general descriptionsof elite tastes for imported popularand materialcultures aswell as the intellectualenvironmentof the late nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies,see H. Godoy Urzia, El cardcterhileno(Santiago, 1976); F. Silva, 'Expansi6n y crisisnacional, 1861-1924', in S. Villalobos et al., Historia de Chile (Santiago, 1993) and B.Subercaseaux,Fin desiglo(Santiago, I988).13 Silva, 'Expansi6n y crisis nacional, I86I-I924', p. 688.14 La Nacidn, 8 Aug. 1926.15 Dieter Oelker, 'El criollismo en Chile', Actas Literarias, no. 8 (I983), p. 43. Thecriollistas,in general, utilised the objective description techniques of the naturalists, butgrafted on a certain idealist sensibility. European naturalist novels, moreover, seldomventured from the urban scene and delved into the sometimes prurient nature of itslower-class subjects. The majority of criollismo,on the other hand, explore rural themesand generally circumvent campesino haracteristics that could be considered negative.On the role of naturalism in Chilean and Latin American literature, see G. Ara, La

novelanaturalistahispanoamericanaBuenos Aires, 1965) and V. Urbistondo, Elnaturalismoen la novelachilena(Santiago, 1966).16 Although the majority of works labelled criollista are based on rural society, the genrewas not restricted to that setting. Baldomero Lillo, for instance, set his criollistasstoriesin the mining centres of the far-north. See Lillo's Sub-terra(Santiago, 1904) and Subsole(Santiago, 1907).



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42 PatrickBarrMelejshown,17 the history of Chilean inquilinajes an extended and complex one,and need not detain us here. The history of the huasotipico, however,begins during the Parliamentary Republic, when reformers of the urbanmiddle class and the criollistas sought to stake-out their social domainbetween the forces of revolution and reaction. We must begin byexamining the works of Labarca, Latorre and Gana - authors who wereamong the founders of the criollista movement and Chilean ruralidealism.18

Labarca, a longtime leader within the Radical Party, Minister of PublicInstruction in 1924, mayor of Santiago in the mid-I93os and Minister ofboth War and the Interior after the Popular Front victory in 1938,produced some of the earliest examples of Chilean literature infused withrural idealism. Labarcapublished his widely praised anthology Al amordela tierra in I905, which stands as his only published collection of cuentos.Here campesinosre presented as hard workers with passions like any otherhuman. In the short cuento'Despues del trabajo', Labarca describes theinquilinoOlegario's sense of fulfilment while laying down to rest with hiswife after completing his daily duties, once again defeating the blisteringsun that beats down on thefundo of his patrona: 'And there they stayed fora long time, both of them enjoying the placid and enviable happiness ofa day now done, which seemed to float over the tranquil shack. Thesanctity of a rest well earned filled their souls with an ineffable joy...'9Another couple of recently married campesinos lso take great enjoymentfrom time alone after their daily labour on the patron's land in the cuento'La siembra' (a title with an intentional double meaning).20 Although Alamor de la tierra convinced many readers that Labarca had a promisingfuture as a fiction writer, he soon chose to concentrate on politics. Aformer leader of the Federaci6n de Estudiantes de Chile (FECh) andoutspoken critic of the dictatorship of Carlos Ibifiez del Campo in the lateI920S, Labarca became close friends with Radical standout Pedro Aguirre'7 See M. G6ngora, Origen elos 'inquilinos' eChilecentralSantiago, I960). A. J. Baueralso offers a fine discussion of inquilinaje n his Chilean Rural Society rom the SpanishConquest o I93o (Cambridge, I975).18 I have borrowedthe term 'rural dealism'from Simon Miller'stwo interestingarticlesthat examine urban views of the rural landscape in early twentieth-century England:'Land, Landscape and the Question of Culture: English Urban Hegemony andResearch Needs', Journal of Historical Sociology,vol. 8, no. i (I995), pp. 94-I07, and'Urban Dreams and Rural Reality: Land and Landscape in English Culture, I920-45 'Rural History, vol. 6 ('995), pp. 89-I02.19 G. Labarca Hubertson, Al amorde la tierra (Santiago, I905), p. i6. Labarca publishedsome cuentosn the magazineZig-Zagduringthe firstdecadeof the century,suchas 'De

luengas tierras'. See Zig-Zag, vol. 2, no. 129 (1907). He published his only novel,Mirando l oceano,n 91 i. For a review of Labarca's iterarycareer,see David Perry,'Guillermo Labarca Hubertson', Atenea, nos. 353-4 (1954), pp. 107-14.20 Labarca,Al amor,pp. 55-8.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 43Cerda after the turn of the century, and never drifted from the Radicalprogramme. His criollismoclearly demonstrates themes adopted by theparty during the early twentieth century: the value of order, thedistinction of labour and the warmth of family.21 Borrowing much fromLabarca's artistic style and what the Radical (re)presented in Al amor delatierra,22Mariano Latorre took images of the campesinos nd the landscapeof his home province in the country's centre-south to the urban bustle ofSantiago.

Latorre's first book, Cuentos del Maule ( 9 12), is generally considered theanthology par excellence f early criollismo.Through his collection of sevenshort stories he relates the majesty of rural life near his birthplace, thetown of Cobquecura in the Province of Maule, a riverine region some 250miles south of the capital. Latorre, a teacher of Hispanic literature, rectorof the country's Pedagogical Institute in the 192os and the first winner ofthe National Literature Award in 1942, assembled stories that convey, inthe words of one literary critic of the era, 'the traditions, legends, andcustoms of the land'.23 Latorre, who was known to sport huasoattire whenwriting, saw Maule as a bastion of social peace and the authentic Chile; thecomplexities of urban life were distant. Yet, Cuentosdel Maule reflectsLatorre's fears that urban society's elite-inspired cosmopolitanism may bespreading to the countryside. His first-person narrative 'Un hijo delMaule' describes the snobismoof urban aristocrats who venture into thecountryside, and notes that some maulinos had assumed that aristocraticsense of superiority and it was great comedy to see them strut about thestreets of the town, at the beach, on the pier: anxious to be mistaken...[for]... those who in the summertime fill the hotels and the bed-and-breakfasts '.2421 These ideas were expressed in Radical programmes and other statements. See, forinstance, the party publications Proyectodelprograma (Santiago, 9199); Manifiestoa losradicalesdelpais (Santiago, 193I) and Programa,estatttos, reglamento:deconvencionesyuntasprovinciales (Santiago, I933). Also consult H. Arancibia Laso, La doctrina radical:

programadegobierno Santiago, 1937) and the popular Radical Party newspaper La Lei,which was published in Santiago from 1894 to 1910.22 Labarca's nephew, the criollista Rafael Maluenda Labarca, also came to be a notedfiction author, and his work places him among the founding fathers of the movement.His first book, Escenasde la vidacampesina Santiago, g909) s a collection of cuentoswithmuch the same flavour as his uncle's Al amor de la tierra. Maluenda, an outspokensupporter in the daily press of liberal presidential candidate Arturo Alessandri Palmain 1920, went on to compose numerous novels, anthologies of cuentosand plays whileemployed as a journalist for El Mercurio. He became the newspaper's director duringthe late I95os and early i96os. In I954, Maluenda was honoured with the NationalJournalism Award.

23 R. Latcham, 'Aspectos del criollismo en America', in Latcham et al., El criollismo(Santiago, I956), p. 62.24 M. Latorre, Cuentosdel Maule (Santiago, 191 ), pp. 33-4. Although Latorre's critique ofaristocratic snobismo s sharp, the most scathing attack on elite life was issued by the



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44 PatrickBarrMelejAs an admirer of the naturalists also, Latorre sought to portray the painand anguish sometimes suffered by the campesinos f his native province.The cuento 'Sandfas ribefias' in Cuentosdel Maule describes a droughtsituation when 'that sad landscape has a primitive desolation: the povertyof the land puts in the eyes of men that same tranquil resignation shown

by the old horses and oxen'.25 The campesinosweather such changes offortune and remain on the fundos. The infrequent use of dialogue in thiscuentoand others, a trait of early criollismo,suggests that social harmony(even in tough times) makes discussion an unnecessary endeavour. Inurban society, conversation was often a political act; rural life, Latorresuggests, is pre-political or apolitical.26There exists no dissent, no debate,no discourses. Overall, it is clear that Latorre's books were well receivedby the urban middle class.27In a review of Latorre's career published in1929, one writer describes the Maule native's work in these terms: 'Itincites the love of country that snobs[i.e. some members of the elite] donot appreciate... each one of his books strengthens criollovalues.'28 Likethat of Latorre, the criollismo of Federico Gana, a self-proclaimedbohemian from a landowning family, helped establish rural idealism inurban society.A lawyer by profession and one of the more conservative criollistas,Gana published Dz'asde campo in I916, an anthology of short storiespublished in turn-of-the-century periodicals, which examines the customsnative to rural life. Though it stands as Gana's only published book, itscuentoswere described by one of his contemporaries as the best written tothat date.29 Born in Santiago to a landowning family that had established

Radical Party correligionarioLuis Orrego Luco four years before Latorre's book waspublished. Orrego Luco's Casa Grande (Santiago, 1908) paints a portrait of a'squanderingclass' rife with superficiality nd shallowness.Due to its subjectmatter- elite culture and social life - the novel is not considered a work of criollismo.25 Latorre, Cuentos,p. 67.26 Latorre was known to be apolitical, but tended to support Radicalismand otherpoliticalforces of the centre-left.He neversought politicalofficeandonly rarelywrotein thesantiaguinoress.Interviewswith LuisMerinoReyes, Santiago,Chile,4 Sep. 1996and Luis Durand Jr., Santiago,Chile, 3 Sep. 1996.27 After the success of Cuentos el Maule,Latorre went on to publish Cunade cdndores(Santiago, I918), Zurzulita (Santiago, 1920), Ully (Santiago, I923), Chilenosdel mar(Santiago, I929), Hombres en la selva (Santiago, I933), On Panta (Santiago, 1935),HombresyZorrosSantiago,I937), El choroyeoro(Santiago,1946), Chile,palsderincones(Santiago, i947), La isla de lospijaros (Santiago, I955) and the posthumous novel LaPaquera Santiago, 1955).Latorre'sreflectionson his careerand Chilean iteraturearefound in Memoriasy trasconfidenciasSantiago, I971).28 Domingo Melfi, 'Mariano Latorre', Revista de Educaidn,vol. I, no. io (1929), p. 672.29 R. Silva Castro,Panoramaiterario e Chile Santiago, 196I), pp. 353-4.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 45itself in the centre-south, Gana remained in the capital to pursue a legaleducation, then served as secretary of Chile's legation in London duringthe Balmaceda administration (i886-91). After the overthrow ofBalmaceda in I89I, Gana relocated to his father's hacienda,where disgustwith the parlamentarismon the capital probably helped spur the creationof stories about campo ife. As is the case with Latorre's Cuentosdel Maule,Gana's anthology casts the countryside as a predominantly aestheticdomain, and constructs a relatively static agrarian environment of socialtranquility. The cuento 'Confidencias', for example, opens with adescription of a rural worker who had just completed his duty for the day:'There, he heard the soft rustling of the stream's waters slitheringsmoothly, kissing the damp roots of the large weeping willows. All wastranquil, sweetness, preludes to the deep silence of the night.'30 To Gana,parlamentarismo,roubled by political unrest and party politicking,31 stoodin sharp contrast to nineteenth-century Portalianism, with its powerfulexecutive branch and a relatively stable political system that depended onthe countryside for economic prosperity.32 In all, Gana is considered bymany as one of the most talented Chilean writers of the early twentiethcentury. After his untimely death in 1926, the newspaper La Nacionobserved that 'Federico Gana was the first to cultivate [strong sentimentsfor the Chilean landscape] with love and the true style of an artist'.33The 1920S saw criollismodevelop into a more complex form, as a secondgeneration of criollistasbegan to publish its cuentosabout rural life. Thesecond generation of criollista intellectuals merged the aestheticism ofLabarca, Latorre and others of the first wave with active characters,substantive dialogues, and, as the decade progressed, placed huasosaheadof all other pastoral figures as heroic protagonists. The short stories ofLuis Durand - a postal administrator, personal secretary for PresidentArturo Alessandri Palma in the 1930s, Radical Party fellow traveller,34 adisciple and close friend of Latorre, and winner of the 1944 National30 F. Gana, Dias de campo (Santiago, 1916), p. 104.31 For interesting and thorough examinations of the parliamentary era, see J. HeiseGonzales, Historia de Chile: Elperiodo parlamentario,2 vols. (Santiago, 1974-82) and G.Vial, Historia de Chile, I89I-I973 vols. I-4 (I981-96). A fine abridged account ofparlamentarismo s presented in H. Blakemore, 'From the War of the Pacific to I930',in Leslie Bethell (ed.), Chile SinceIndependenceCambridge, 1993).32 For a more substantial treatment of Gana's literary motivations, see 'Crisis de laidentidad cultural y genesis oficial del campesino en la cuentistica de Federico Gana',

in L. Guerra Cunnigham, Texto e ideologiaen la narrativa chilena(Minneapolis, 1987).Gana's allegiance to Portalianism made him unique among criollistas of the period. Ingeneral, most political groups (including the conservatives and the Liberal Party) haddistanced themselves from the stain of Portalian authoritarianism.33 La Nacidn, 8 Aug. 1926.34 Interview with Luis Durand Jr., Santiago, Chile, 3 Sep. I996.



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46 PatrickBarrMelejLiterature Award - were published regularly in all the capital's leadingperiodicals.Durand, a native of rural Traiguen in the centre-south, beganpublishing some short works in the mid-g92os in such magazines as theurban favourite Zig-Zagafter moving to the capital.35Durand's 'Humitas'(named after a rural corn dish cooked inside dried husks), published in1927, tells the story of Miguel Rodriguez. He is a huaso who travels tocourt a chiquilla,or young girl, named Maria Pochard, the daughter oflandowning parents originally from France. Rodriguez, Durand writes,'is a young man with masculine and amiable aspects, dressed in thecountryside manner... He gazes out on the peacefulness of the afternoonthat falls sweetly over the countryside...'3 The huaso Rodriguez, ahorseman inquilino, eels both a love for rural life and a growing attractiontoward Maria. One obstacle, however, stands between Maria and thehuaso:senoraPochard, the mother. Some dialogue between the mother andRodriguez centres on humitas (the following excerpt begins withRodrfguez, then alternates with statements by Maria's mother):

-'You, too, like humitas?'-'Of course, who doesn't like good things! Mariamakesgood ones becauseshe was taught by Rosalia,the cook we once had.'-'I suppose you will invite me to samplethem some day.'-'I would be delighted, but who knows if you would like humitasmade bygringos ...'37Maria's mother, with a hint of animosity, states that Rodrfguez couldidentify humitas that are not authentically Chilean. Humitas (or materialculture in general) produced by foreign hands have different, even aliencharacteristics that are noticeable to an authentic chileno,a huaso.Durand'scultural nationalism is clearly evident: Rodriguez represents Chile'scultural singularity within a cosmopolitan environment.38

35 The geographical origins of Durand, Latorre and Gana are of importance whenconsidering the proliferation of rural idealism in the urban public sphere. As writerswho remained in contact with their rural roots but chose lifestyles of the urban middleclass, Durand, Latorre and Gana acted as conduits between 'the pastoral' and 'theurban'. Their interpretations of rural life, though idealised, were based on personalexperience.36 Luis Durand, 'Humitas', Zig-Zag, vol. 23, no. 1186 (1927). No page numbers given.

37 Ibid.38 Durand's long list of published works include Tierra de pellines (Santiago, 1929),Campesinos Santiago, I93z), Cielos del sur (Santiago, 1933), MercedesUrizar (Santiago,1934), Elprimer hio (Santiago, 1936), Almay cuerpode Chile (Santiago, I947), Frontera(Santiago, I949) and Paisajey gentede Chile (Santiago, 1953). He also published columnsregularly for the santiaguinonewspaper Las Ultimas Noticias in the I940s.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 47By 1930, criollista stories and huasoimagery were common in the pagesof El Campesino,a magazine published by the Sociedad Nacional de

Agricultura (SNA), an organisation founded in the I83os to protect andserve the interests of conservative landowners. What had originally beenthe craft of middle-class reformers piqued the interests of conservativelandowning interests who wanted to maintain the socio-economic andpolitical statusquo.In a decade that saw the short-lived Socialist Republicof 1932, the founding of the Socialist Party in 193 3 and the expansion ofrural unionisation, some of criollismo'smessages, such as hard work andtranquillity, appealed to landowning elites searching for some wayrhetorically to defend their political turf and justify the continuation of thetraditional rural socio-economic structure.39 In El Campesino, he SNAturned to short criollista cuentos o make its own, interpreted, politicalstatement. Federico Gana's 'La sefiora', a story written in I899 that wasincluded in the anthology Dzas de campoin I9I6 and published in themagazine's April 1933 edition, describes a visit to a Central Valley haciendawhere the mayordomohuaso, Daniel Rubio, was raised by the estate'ssehora.40 Found destitute as a young boy, Rubio was fed, educated andunofficially adopted by the landowning family. Rubio never left the estate,never married, and later assumed full care of the seioraafter her husband'sdeath. The visitor, impressed by the harmony and inter-personalcommitments of hacienda ife, remarked that he was touched in someprofound way: 'The birds sang with happiness. The fresh morning airseemed to infuse me with liveliness, a strange force. I thought that thishappiness, which seemed to overflow with the first rays of the sun, hadcome from the outstretched hand of that man...'41 The huaso protagonistcontrived by Gana reflects a singular morality and unmatched sense ofresponsibility considered typical of the rural experience. 'La sefiora' wasinterpreted by the landowning elite as a defence of deference andpaternalism,42 facets of inquilino-patron ocio-economic relations that had39 The most notable history of the SNA is by Thomas Wright, Landownersand Reform inChile: The Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura, 1919-I940 (Urbana, i982). For a finediscussion of early efforts to enact agrarian reform, see B. Loveman, Struggle in theCountryside:Politics and Rural Labor in Chile 1919-I973 (Bloomington, 1976).40 Published in a I935 El Campesinoedition, Luis Durand's 'La riia de Los Pretiles'features the friendship of two huasoswho, after a period of time without contact, findthemselves working for the same patr6n. The huasos,Clodomiro and Ernesto, speak thepoor Spanish of a rustic campo using, for example, ' ior' instead of 'senor' - and are

presented as hard workers who converse, as Durand writes, 'about all those littlethings that are of interest to the simple and good people of the countryside'. SeeDurand, 'La rifia de Los Pretiles', El Campesino,vol. 67, no. 6 (I935), p. 291.41 Federico Gana, 'La sefiora', El Campesino,vol. 65, no. 4 (I933), p. 246.

42 As Frederick M. Nunn has noted, landowners, in general, were aware that some socialreforms were necessary and preferred a paternalistic approach to improving theconditions of the lower classes. See Nunn, Chilean Politics, 1920-191: The Honorable



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48 PatrickBarrMelejcontributed to rural stability (and inquilino ubservience) since the colonialperiod. Hacendados,who were familiar with the dialectics of deference andpaternalism, understandably found such stories as 'La sefiora' attractive.The criollistas,as reflected in Gana's cuento, ought to define chilenidad s theresponsible ways of the traditionalist people of the countryside that theyconsidered typical of campo life. Despite the fact that criollismo wasoriginally formulated to include the rural 'other' in the Chilean family andchallenge the elite, patron-centred view of 'nation', its discourse was co-opted by conservative landowners.

Although criollismowas a widely popular literary form among urbanreaders of many political persuasions in the I930s, many Chileanslamented the lack of a single, great cuento n a par with Argentine criollistaRicardo Giiiraldes's Don SegundaSombra hat could capture, in a definitiveway, the authentic Chile. El Diario Ilustradopraised Don Segundo ombraasthe 'magnificent novel of the [Argentine] pampa, which has made us think,almost with melancholy, of that great Chilean novel, a synthesis of thespirit of our race, which is so late in arriving'.43 Despite the lack of aChilean hero like the gauchoSegundo Sombra, the criollistasalready hadfundamentally reshaped Chile's national identity by 1930. A I929 article inthe Revistade Educacionby one Radical Party correligionarioecognised theimportance of rural idealism. Citing Latorre, Gana and other authors, theauthor explained that 'now that Chileans begin to look with loving eyesupon the landscapes our countryside offers, the beauties of our ocean andall the magnificence of our native mountains, the writers that have putforward this admiration feel the jubilation of what is in them a flame ofenthusiasm and love for this rugged land that they brought forward...'.He goes on to state that these 'writers have drawn the native landscape,with its trees, characteristic types and customs, close to your heart...'.44In an article concerning 'la chilenidad iteraria', one critic in El DiarioIlustradostated in 193 that 'it seems as though the place where chilenidadis most notably manifested is among the lower class, especially in thecountryside' and that criollismo'sgoal was to produce 'books that arespecifically national'.45 Some 40 years earlier, as previously stated, thelower-class campesinoLucas Gomez was ridiculed as a semi-barbaric yokelin Martinez Quevedo's classicfollet/n. Thus, in three short decades - from

Mission of the Armed Forces (Albuquerque, I970), p. 14. See also El Diario Ilustrado, 2zFeb. I930.43 El Diario Ilustrado, 17 June I930. For discussions of Giiiraldes's novel from varyingmethodological and thematic angles, see G. Kirkpatrick (ed.), Don SegundoSombra(Pittsburgh, I995).44 Angel Cruchaga Santa Maria, 'El nacionalismo literario', Revista de Educacion,vol. I,no. 5 (1929), pp. 320-2. 45 El Diario Ilustrado, 5 March I931.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 49the time of the criollista Generation of I900 to the Great Depression - anew 'guiding fiction'46 had been written and woven into Chile's socio-cultural fabric by the criollistas.For many readers, 1935 marked the year when the criollistaepic - calledfor five years earlier by El Diario Ilustrado reached Chilean bookstores.Joaquin Edwards Bello, a member of the Radical Party since I9I2,47popular columnist for the middle-class La Nacion, winner of the 1943National Literature Award, and member of one of Chile's wealthierfamilies,48 lifted rural mannerisms and the pastoral horseman - a figureperpetually in the background of Portalian literature and a one-timeridiculed character of the backward countryside - to national attentionand acclaim in the 1930s. From the pages of Edwards Bello's La chicadelCrilldn, the most widely praised and read criollista work of the era, andother publications by numerous authors during the late I92os and 1930s,the gallant huasohorseman emerged as a national archetype and culturalicon.49

La chica del Crilldn (the Crillon was a luxurious hotel in downtownSantiago) describes the fictional cowboy Ram6n Ortega Urrutia, a humbleman devoted to his work and with an inner strength characteristic of allhuasos in criollismo.In the story, an upper-class urban woman, TeresaIturrigorriaga, attempts -and fails -to maintain a flamboyant andexpensive lifestyle typical of the capital's elite after her father's financialruin and her mother's death. An outcast, she travels to the countryside.On her journey near the coastal city of Vifia del Mar, she confronts46 This term is borrowed from the discussion of Argentina'stwo competing 'guidingfictions' in Shumway, The Inventionof Argentina.Seeking to fortify further this newguidingfiction,the magazineZig-Zagn 93I launcheda seriesof criollista ndcriollista-inspiredstories under the heading'El cuento nacional'. See Zig-Zag,vol. 26, no. 1371(I 93 ). Luis Durandpublishedregularly n thisseries. His 'El hombre moreno' followsthe experiencesof DamianMonsalves,a hard-workingmestigomixed blooded) huasowho speaksSpanish n a low-brow styletypical,according o Durandandthe criollistas,of the countryside. Consult Zig-Zag, vol. 26, no. 1362 (I93 i). No page numbers given.47 La Nacidn, 4 Oct. 1962.48 Joaquin Edwards Bello was the great-grandsonof Andres Bello and was a memberof the famed Edwards clan that owned (and owns) the giant daily newspaper ElMercurio.t must be noted here thatI haveartificially onstructed he category middle-class nationalist ntellectuals'not as a precisesocio-economicone, but as an umbrellatermthat alsoapplies o those intellectualswho adoptedanurban,professional ifestyle.I therefore have grouped together JoaquinEdwardsBello with Latorre,Durand andother criollistas s 'middle-class' writers.49 EdwardsBello's first blockbusterwas his 1920 tale El roto.The book, which follows

the experiencesof anurban, ower-classruffian,drewpraisefrom suchfiguresas RafaelMaluendaand the popularcriollistaFernandoSantivan.More than 6,ooo copies weresold within the first week after publication. See La Nacion, 21 Aug. 1920. Other worksby Edwards Bello include El inuitil(Santiago, 1910), El monstruo(Santiago, 91 z), Elnacionalismo ontinental(Santiago, 1925), Un chileno nMadrid(Santiago, 1928) and Criollosen Paris (Santiago, 1933). Edwards Bello took his own life in 1968.



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50 Patrick Barr MelejOrtega, a species far 'healthier and stronger... than the weak and sicklymen of the city'.5 One of Edwards's contemporaries, Raul Silva Castro,states that Ortega appears in the story as a supernatural apparition,51helping the young woman to fend off the cruelties of life. Ortega's kinddemeanour toward Iturrigorriaga represents a provincial morality thatstands in sharp contrast to the decadence of Santiago.52 Iturrigorriaga,near the end of the novel, warmly describes Ortega: 'His words were sofilled with nobility and security, that I threw caution to the wind and,sitting on the haunch of his horse, I grabbed the reins and began togallop.'53 From the back of a horse, the huaso ntroduced Iturrigorriaga toa wondrous environment she had never explored. As the urban womanobserves as Ortega walks off into the countryside at dusk,An immense, unknown tenderness made my heart swell. I lay down on theground without a word; I saw nothing but his shadow slowly getting furtheraway;the starswerenear,near,more near than ever before.A greatsmell of thecountryside,of grass, of nature,induced sleepiness;far-away rogs sang at thestreamand, at the sametime, other sounds of waterfalls,of brokenbranches,ofnocturnalrodents,of thehorseswho stompedaroundsearching or grass,formeda concert infinitelymore dignifiedthan ajaZg band.54To Iturrigorriaga, the harmonies of pastoral life are decidedly moreChilean than those of the saxophone or trumpet. Like the music of thegamacueca,he symphony of nature is authentic. The huasoOrtega and hisenvironment, therefore, exemplify what Edwards Bello and others hailed asfeatures of chilenidad.Iturrigorriaga finds herself and her destiny in thecountryside - as does the Chilean nation. A book reviewer for El DiarioIlustrado, in a summation of La chica del Crillon, states: 'TeresaIturrigorriaga ... ends up as a good young lady in a home without fantasyand with a man in whom she sees certain moral traits. His name is RamonOrtega Urrutia and he works in the southern countryside. Does all of thissymbolise a return to the countryside?'55The criollistamovement grew to become a dominant literary genre inChile by the mid-I930s, as cultural nationalism extended its ideologicalpull within the middle and upper sectors of society. It is important tostress here that criollismo began largely as an urban, middle-classphenomenon, and this fact proved important when the immediate politicalinterests of the urban middle class and the traditional landowning classdiverged. Although members of the middle class joined a number of50 E. Coll, Chiley los chilenos nlas novelasdeJoaquinEdwardsBello (San Juan, I965), p. 179.51 Silva Castro, Panorama,pp. 274-5.52 J. Orlandi and A. Ramirez, JoaquinEdwards Bello (Santiago, 1943), pp. 26-7.53 J. Edwards Bello, La chicadel Crilldn (Santiago, 1935), p. 262.54 Edwards Bello, La chica,p. 269. Emphasis added.55 El Diario Ilustrado, i Feb. 935.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 53vociferous supporter of Ross, quoted Linares' Liberal Party leaderNicanor Pinochet as saying: '[h]ere [in the countryside] we all know thatthe Popular Front is the enemy of the patria.'61 Urban space - with itspollution, disease, decadence and immorality - was construed as thePopular Front's domain. Moreover, in Maule, the native land of thecriollista Mariano Latorre, Ross witnessed a 2o-minute procession ofhuasos.The newspaper reported that '[t]he huasosparaded behind a largeChilean flag... and passing in front of the balcony where Ross was located,the parading huasos lifted their sombrerosand burst out in cries ofvictory'.62

Although the Popular Front drew some support from southernlandowners allied to the Radical cause, frentista political rallies did notshowcase huasos. Yet, the alliance claimed rural imagery as its owndiscursive and symbolic property as the 193os drew to a close. Seekingpolitical supremacy after decades of settling for ministerial posts, in I937the Radical Party joined the Popular Front coalition founded bycommunists and socialists a year earlier (one which later included the far-Right National Socialists and ibanistas who joined weeks before theelection) to challenge landowner power and the Ross candidacy. Manymiddle-class reformers, though opposed to the inclusion of communistsin the coalition, fervently supported the candidacy of Radical PedroAguirre Cerda, leader of the party's more conservative wing, a teacher,former Minister of the Interior during the first Alessandri administration(1920-4) and Minister of Public Instruction in I918 during the lastparliamentary administration.63 Aguirre Cerda was born in the ruralvillage of Pocuro near the town of Los Andes in Aconcagua Province(northern Central Valley). The son of a small landholder, Aguirre Cerdais known to have felt a certain affinity with his rural roots. Though seenas a candidate of the urban masses, Aguirre Cerda was praised in urbancircles for his authentic link to the campo. A late-I938 Zig-Zag articlelauded the former campesino: Don Pedro is the traditional Chilean, anarchetype of our people. He is a Chilean who loves his country... Chilelifts him to triumph because Chile is the people, the Popular Front; andChile is also Don Pedro, born in the countryside of Pocuro.' The editiongoes on to state that 'governed by him, we will feel more Chilean, more61 El Diario Ilustrado, 29 Aug. I938. 62 El Diario Ilustrado, 27 Aug. 1938.63 Hoping to regain the populist and anti-oligarchy spirit that typified the first Alessandri

administration (I920-4), many reformers of the urban middle class accepted postsduring the early years of Alessandri's second term. Luis Durand, for example, servedas Alessandri's personal secretary from I932 to 1936. The notable criollista supportedthe Popular Front presidential candidacy of Aguirre Cerda in 1938. Interview with LuisDurand, Jr., Santiago, Chile, 3 Sep. I996. For Durand's reflections on his service in theAlessandri government, see Durand, Don Arturo (Santiago, 1952).



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54 PatrickBarrMelejattached to our land and mountains' and that he represents 'the Chile... ofthe poncho, the dark-skinned, the rural, the hard-working and the friendof liberty'.64

Aguirre Cerda was beaten by Ross in the countryside, but votes fromthe urban middle class (and the extreme Right) pushed the Popular Frontto victory in 1938. The mesocracy, led by the Radicals, not only emergedas the dominant political force in the country, but could also now fullyemploy the ever-expanding governmental bureaucracy to championchilenidad and encourage sentiments of national/cultural authenticitybrought to public attention by the criollistas.Rural idealism and culturalnationalist representations of pastoral life - sanctioned by the state -became 'official' components of Chilean national identity. In I939, forexample, the new government published a compilation of free-handdrawings and descriptive passages that essentially sanctioned the huasoasa national archetype. Written by Carlos del Campo for the tourist bureauof the Ministry of Development, Huasos chilenoshails the huaso as thecornerstone of Chilean society, and identifies him as typically orauthentically Chilean. Composed in Spanish with an accompanyingEnglish translation, Huasos chilenos ncludes mention of festive rodeos, heZamacueca,and the skilled horsemanship of huasos. The cowboy is,according to del Campo, quite a hero: '[w]ith his wide-brimmed sombrero,his vividly coloured chamanto,high boots and clinking spurs, he is, in themidst of our panorama, a handsome and energetic representative of therace.'65 Before the late 1930s, government leaders or bureaucrats seldom,if ever, actively engaged in a discourse that placed rural subalterns (orconstructions of them) at the heart of chilenidad.

Although the literary success of criollismoinspired cultural nationalistsentiment in urban Chile, cultural despair remained a persistent force inthe late 193os. An editorial in the middle-class La Nacidn, for example,noted that some Chileans remained indifferent 'toward lo chileno; owardwhat is ours' and that 'we languish with the complaining tangoand we aremade erotic by the foreign rhythm of la bamba'. The editorial writerexplains that 'I am not saying that foreign art cannot contain beauty, butours also has beauty - and it's pure, spontaneous and overflowing withthe primal force of our emotion... The cueca, urthermore, liberated fromthe alcoholic disgrace of the dieciocho[Independence Day], is a beautifulthing.'66 Lingering concerns in the press over chilenidad'sobfuscationeventually were soothed, in large part, by government-sponsored attemptsto fortify it.

6Zig-Zag, vol. 33, no. I76I (I938), p. 29.65 C. del Campo, Huasos chilenos(Santiago, 1939), p. I.66 La Nacion, 22 Oct. 1938.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 55Cultural nationalism became manifest in the form of public policy

during the Aguirre Cerda administration, and the country's publiceducation system was targeted as an ideal conduit for its spread. TheInstituto Nacional, the oldest and most prestigious secondary school inthe country and the former employer of Aguirre Cerda, helped push anagenda for a more cultural nationalist education during the opening yearsof the Popular Front regime. In May I941, for instance, an editorial in theInstitute's bulletin explained that 'chilenidadshould be understood anddefined in concrete terms. Chile, politically, is a territorial domain, ageographical concept. To chileanise is to give a Chilean character tosomething, to impregnate it with Chilean custom. Chilenidadis theexaltation of the root of those customs, of those principles, of thosefoundations.'67 With such sentiments in mind, the government-affiliatedRevista de Educacionunveiled general guidelines for teaching folklore andfolk traditions to strengthen chilenidadamong public schoolchildren. Thepublication explained that '[t]he genius of a race, its creative capacity, itsartistic sensibility and its psychological traits are only deeply understoodwhen one examines a pueblo's roots and its principle ways of ex-pression ... In folkways, as in science, the landscape is explored. There wefind, collect, organise and interpret the customs, games, myths, legends,sayings, proverbs, popular music and songs, popular poetry, dance,traditions, traditional dress, etc.'68 Many of the traditions and customshailed as authentically Chilean by cultural nationalists in the governmentwere largely campesino n origin - typically huaso customs. In the sameRevista de Educacionarticle, the Ministry of Education printed a list ofbooks it considered valuable for the proper instruction of folkways andchilenidad.Among the readings are publications directly influenced bycriollismo, ncluding Panorama colorde Chile, a 1939 anthology of shortessays edited by Antonio Rocco del Campo that describes campesinos ndtheir traditions. A passage in Rocco del Campo's collection by contributorVictor Domingo Silva, a Radical Party activist and poet heavily influencedby the criollistamovement,69 concerns a rural dieciocho elebration and a67 Boletindel Instituto Nacional, vol. 6, no. 9 (1941), p. 3. Emphasis added.68 Gonzalo LatorreSalamanca,El folklore en la educaci6n', RevistadeEducacion,ol. i,no. 2 (1941), p. 65.69 Victor Domingo Silva enjoyedcareers n both politics and literature.He was electedas a congressionaldeputyin I9I6 as a Radicalrepresentativerom Copiap6and was a

centralplayer n manypartyconventions.Silva,moreover,composedthe RadicalPartyhymn and headed the reformistnewspaperLa Provincia.Among his many publishedanthologies of poetry are Hacia alla (Santiago, I905), El derrotero(Santiago, I908) andLa selvalorida Santiago, 191 ). His collection of novels include Golondrinael invierno(Santiago, 1912), Lapampa trdgica Santiago, 1921) and El mestizoalejo(Santiago, 1934)and its sequel La criollita (Santiago, I935).



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56 PatrickBarrMelejproud huaso:'[g]lory and happiness of September! The guasoeven shinedhis best weapon and today he proudly shows it off in the tent put togetherin plain sun and in the open countryside.'70 In addition, a brief descriptionof the gamacuecaolk dance written by the Radical and criollista EdwardsBello explains that 'the cueca s intoxicating music and no criollocan listento one without feeling inebriated'.71 Other recently published titlessuggested by the ministry are Cuentoschilenosby Blanca Santa Cruz Ossa,Cuentospopulareshilenosby Ramon Laval and an assortment of publicationsfrom the Instituto de Informaci6n Campesina.72The government's move to bolster cultural nationalism and laud ruraltraditions was accompanied by events and festivities in civil society thatshowcased huasosand a recast national identity. For example, large crowdsfilled rodeoarenas during and after the Aguirre Cerda presidency, cheeringhuasos who paraded the flag and danced Zamacuecasbefore and afterperforming feats of horsemanship. The travel diary of Erna Fergussondescribes the pageantry of one such rodeoheld in the early 1940S. TheNorth American's detailed account begins with a horde ofhuaso horsemen,dressed in colourful patriotic attire, anxiously waiting inside the rodeoarena, or medialuna.73 ne by one, the horsemen take turns chasing youngsteers. As Fergusson notes, 'as handsome a lot of men as one would wishto see, completely at ease with their mounts, comfortable with each otherand the onlookers'.74 By the time of Fergusson's trip, Chilean rodeos-which began during the colonial period as seasonal roundups of cattle70 A. Rocco del Campo (ed.), Panoramay color de Chile (Santiago, I939), p. 297.71 Ibid.,p. 296.72 After Aguirre Cerda's untimely death in November 1941, the Revista de Educacionpaid

homage to the president and his nationalist efforts. Longtime friend of Aguirre Cerda,Radical Party member and education figure Maximiliano Salas Marchan wrote that'Chile should remember with gratitude the patriotic standard established by Mr.Aguirre Cerda to lay the foundations for national grandeur via the re-exaltation [sic] ofthe values of the people...'. The revitalisation of a unifying nationalism was of primeconcern to Aguirre Cerda, the article states: '[o]ne of the aspects of national life thatMr. Aguirre Cerda observed with great anguish was the decline of our pride as Chileans.The decline was not a recent phenomenon, but a long-term one. We had experiencedsuch pride in all its haughtiness in our historical past, when Chile was, perhaps, thefinest South American republic due to superior government direction and theconstructive and dynamic energies of its people. But that period did not continue withthe consistency one would have desired... Mr. Aguirre Cerda understood the damagederived from this illness and he saw the time had come to undertake a campaign ofchilenidad.'Maximiliano Salas Marchan, 'La obra educacional de don Pedro AguirreCerda', Revista de Educacidn,vol. 2, no. 6 (1942), pp. 11-12.

73 The name 'medialuna' derives from the facility's design. A curved fence divides thecircular area where the horsemen compete, thus giving the appearance of a crescent orhalf-moon.74 E. Fergusson, Chile (New York, I943), p. i80. Today, rodeosare often sponsored bysmall and large communities alike throughout the country. The national rodeochampionship is held in Rancagua, south of the capital, each autumn.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 57from the outskirts of the haciendas had been transformed from alaborious duty for inquilinosnto a national ritual demonstrating culturalsingularity. Huaso clubs throughout the country regularly sponsor rodeosin Chile today (including the remarkable 'Club de Huasosde Arica' foundedin I968 in the once-Peruvian and still non-agricultural arid north!).Cultural nationalism was a hallmark of the early Popular Front years.A culturally oriented discourse that centred on the inclusion ofmarginalised Chileans (and their authentic traditions and lifeways) into amore democratised vision of 'nation' dovetailed with the Radical Party'sstrategies to politicise the lower classes along reformist lines, to combatthe power of oligarchs, to further criolloeconomic development and tocurtail ties to foreign capital. There existed, however, strict limits to whatmembers of the lower class could do with their newly bestowed standingas full members of the patria. As the presidency of Aguirre Cerdaprogressed and rural unionisation expanded, the Radicals moved againstwhat they called 'professional agitators' in the countryside - much to thedismay of their Popular Front partners on the Left.75 In the early i94os,one writer vigilant of the Left's efforts to unionise rural society observed'the communist agitators have shown intelligence in attacking this strong-hold of reaction first, for the guaso is, in reality, the bourgeois of themasses'.76 The peons and huasos of rural society, a pure and vitalrepository of the nation's cultural patrimony, were in danger of being cor-rupted by detachments of very convincing rabble-rousers of revolution,or so the Radicals believed. As Minister of the Interior under AguirreCerda, criollistaGuillermo Labarca Hubertson, the Radical chieftain andauthor of Al amor de la tierra in I905, signed a circular on 17 August 1940that directed the national police force to make extraordinary efforts toarrest those in the countryside suspected of harbouring or fomentingsentiments that, in Labarca's words, 'only lead to the creation of anenvironment of social unrest'. In a written statement sent to policedirector Oscar Reeves Leiva, Labarca states that revolutionary elementsalso cause the 'formation of unnecessary and unacceptable hatreds thatbring with them grave consequences for our patria'.77 The countryside,Labarca reasoned, should continue to be the homeland of socialtranquillity - as depicted in his cuentospublished nearly four decadesearlier. As faithful Radicals, Aguirre Cerda and Labarca believed that agradual social evolution through state-based reform was the only political75 The outrage demonstrated by the Left toward Labarca's actions is evident in thenewspaper Frente Popular in the editions of 26 and 27 Aug. 1940.76 B. Subercaseux, Chile: A GeographicExtravaganza (New York, 1943), p. Iz2.77 Ministerio del Interior, Archivo del Siglo XX (hereafter cited as ASXX), Oficios,vol.5, no. 963 (1940).



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58 PatrickBarrMelejoption. Concerned with the possibility of rural unrest and pressured byconservative interests, Aguirre Cerda and the Popular Front agreed toillegally suspend rural unionisation.78 Like the outspoken Zola, who hadvehemently defended Dreyfus in late nineteenth-century France, Labarcahad managed the coexistence of both political and artistic projects.79

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chileanswitnessed socio-economic transformations common to many other LatinAmerican countries. As literature (be it newspapers, magazines, books orfolletines)became a highly visible and widely used means of communicationbetween those sharing in an imagined community, Argentines, Bolivians,Brazilians, Peruvians and intellectuals in other countries expressed theirpolitical concerns and hopes in both fiction and non-fiction. Whencomparing late nineteenth and early twentieth-century intellectualmovements in general terms, one finds that Chilean criollismo sharescertain common characteristics with other literary/political trends,including Andean indigenismo. ndigenistaintellectuals, such as AlcidesArguedas, Luis Eduardo Valcircel and Victor Haya de la Torre sought toredefine 'nation' by looking to the Indian subject - his culture, history,economy and society - cast aside during a century of post-colonialoppression.80 The Chilean criollistas likewise amplified a previouslyrestricted concept of what was, and who were, considered elements of thepatria by eschewing elite-based constructions of nationhood through anaturalism-inspired search for the real. Some Brazilian intellectuals alsosought the inclusion of marginalised populations under the rubric of'nation'. Euclides de Cunha's classic Os sertoes (1902), for instance, arguesfor the incorporation of the northeast region and its sertanejos bandit-likefigures) into the imagined community, but by way of a 'civilising' missionto stamp out backwardness. Furthermore, such notable writers as JoaoSimon6es Lopes Neto, the author of Contosgauchescos(1912) and Lendas dosul (I 9 3), and Afonso Arinos (Lendas e tradicoes brasileiras, 1917), fostered78 Loveman, Chile, pp. 248-50. The Aguirre Cerda administration received numerouswritten complaints from landowners and rural police regarding union gatherings andother manifestations that were registered with the Ministry of the Interior. See, for

example, Ministerio del Interior, ASXX, Oficios,vol. 2, nos 272 and 233 (1940).79 Labara, in a newspaper article in 1900, had praised Zola's intent to relay how thecommon person weathers the sometimes harsh realities of life and rises to forge socio-politicalchange.Labarca,ronically,hailedZola's depictionof people who are 'rebornwith more strength now that the collective has the means to make itself heard and toinfluence the organisation of governments', La Prensa, 5 Jan. 900. For Zola's defenceof his political activism, consult Zola, La escuelanaturalista,rans. by A. Yunque(Buenos Aires, 1945).80 Readings on Andean indigenismond its political message include X. Abril et al.,Maridteguiya literaturaLima, 1980);A. CornejoPolar,Literaturay ociedadnel Peru:la novelandigenaLima, 1980) and L. E. Tord, El indioen losensayistaseruanosLima,1978).



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 59notions of cultural and national inclusion when discussing the gauchosofthe southeast.

When considering the Argentine case, one finds important differences.Although the gaucho was first popularised as a folkish hero by JoseHernandez in his tragic epic Martin Fierro in the i87os, the gauchodid notbecome a national icon until the spectre of immigrant hordes crashingashore in Buenos Aires spawned nationalist fears after the turn of thecentury. With a largely reactionary and chauvinistic tone, LeopoldoLugones, in his lectures on Martin Fierro at the capital's Teatro Odeonthat were later recast in his book Elpayador (I916), claimed the gauchoasa racial and cultural representative of the authentic Argentina that wasprogressively being debilitated by open immigration and liberalism ingeneral. Since gauchosno longer roamed the pampas by the time the genrebecame popular during the first and second decades of this century,81Lugones's criollismodid not seek to incorporate existingrural 'others' intoa more democratised vision of 'nation'. Instead, as a Janus-facedmovement, early Argentine criollismo aimed either to alienate theimmigrant or to establish a clearly defined pattern of what can be called'identity markers' that could be used by foreigners seeking social andcultural assimilation.82 One area where the Argentine and Chileanmovements demonstrate commonality is on the issue of worker radicalism.During the first two decades of the century, intellectuals from bothcountries - middle-class reformers in Chile and conservatives in Argentina- established a rural idealism to, in part, criticise the urban social climateas well as the rise of anarchism and other working-class-basedrevolutionary ideologies. Indigenismo, in turn, was wed to socialmovements with revolutionary potential, such as Peru's Alianza PopularRevolucionaria Americana (APRA), which issued a programme anddisseminated a discourse based on concepts of economic, political andsocial justice inspired by Marx.While Lugones resurrected Hernandez' tale of the gauchoMartin Fierro,da Cunha drew attention to the sertanejos,and the indigenistasofferedalternative national projects in the Andes, many urban Chileans weredrawn to the huasosMiguel Rodriguez, Daniel Rubio and Ram6n OrtegaUrrutia, and today remain enchanted by the huasofigure and what he81 R. W. Slatta's study on the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the gauchostates thatthe cowboy's lifestyle fell victim by the I88os to such factors as agricultural

commercialisation and the expansion of vagrancy laws. See Slatta, Gauchosand theVanishing Frontier.82 For more on this topic, see the outstanding study on Argentine criollismoby AdolfoPrieto, El discursocriollista en la formacidnde la Argentina moderna(Buenos Aires, 1988).Also consult A. R. Cortizar (ed.), Indiosygauchosen la literaturaargentina Buenos Aires,1956) and Shumway, The Inventionof Argentina.



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6o PatrickBarrMelejrepresents. The term huaso s akin to campesinon contemporary Chile, andlandowners of the centre and centre-south of the country are commonlyreferred to as - and call themselves - huasos.This occurs despite the factthe term 'huaso' has not completely shed its original, nineteenth-centuryconnotation: bumpkin. For example, the phrase 'huasobruto'is sometimesemployed when criticising a person's lack of manners, education,intelligence, etc. The huasofigure, though associated with some negativetraits, nevertheless evolved as an overwhelmingly positive construct incriollismoand popular culture. The ongoing magnetism of the huasomythis considerable.83

Los Adobes de Argomedo, a popular downtown Santiago restaurantwith a countryside ambiance, indulges its diners with fine criollo cuisineand a spectacle considered typically chileno. Within the locale's white-washed, mud-brick walls, dancers dressed as huasos perform spiritedZamacuecaolk dances and proudly exclaim ' Viva Chile ' while waving thenation's flag. Los Adobes de Argomedo is but one public forum at whicha ruralesque cultural authenticity is defined and reproduced in contem-porary Chile. Each year, Las Condes, an upper-middle-class suburb of thecapital, sponsors a highly publicised week of festivities, La Semana deChilenidad,to celebrate Independence Day (i8 September). The mu-nicipality, which is recognised as an important banking and commercialcentre, hosts a parade of huasoson horseback and crowds flock to a rodeoto mark the week-long, and sometimes inebriating, occasion. MayorJoaquin Lavin of the conservative Uni6n Democrata Independiente(UDI), rationalising the juxtaposition of the 'pastoral' and the 'urban',explained in I995 that 'it is our intention to bring the community closerto huaso traditions. We want the people to immerse themselves in thetraditional values of the countryside.'84

Although these examples may suggest that huasoimagery is confined toaffluent venues, the cowboy legend is a mass phenomenon in popularculture. It not only colours spectacles of national importance and folkishrestaurants, but is employed in everyday forms of representing thingsChilean. Aspects of the huaso construct are evident in advertising (a83 One writer was so enthused by the cowboy legend that he went so far as to constructa history of the huasotzpico,with his flamboyant dress and shining silver spurs - not thehistorical horseman inquilinoexamined by the Chilean historian G6ngora. Ren6 Le6nEchaiz wrote in I9 55: 'With his chamanto[poncho-like garment] with vivid colours thatfan out in the wind... the huaso constitutes an essential element of the countryside.

Common and typical in some regions, scarce in some and unknown in others, henonetheless is the absolute and total Chilean. That is how they knew him long ago incolonial times, that is how he lived during the confusing days of national independenceand that is how he is among us'. R. Le6n Echaiz, Interpretacion istdricadelhuaso chileno(Santiago, I955), p. 7.84 El Mercurio, 25 July I995. The chilenidad estival is now a yearly event.



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PastoralLife in ChileanCulture 6domestic poultry producer, for example, represents itself with a cartoon-like chicken wearing a chamanto nd a huasohat), school festivities, privatefunctions and so on. Such wide incorporation of the huasolegend and thecriollistavision85 in popular culture stems from rural idealism's integrationinto the political discourses of the 1930s, the broad acceptance of thecultural nationalist sensibility among middle- and upper-class interests andthe government's elevation of criollismo'scultural vision to the level ofpublic policy during the early Popular Front years. The huasolegend andnationalist representations of pastoral life persist in popular culturedespite the ultimate failure of criollista and Radical efforts to prevent arevolutionary social rupture through the propagation of culturalnationalism. By the I96os, the idea of 'class' proved more powerful thancriollismo-inspirednotions of cultural solidarity.85 The only considerable riticismof criollismo as launched n the late I920s by membersof Chile's small and nascentmodernist/vanguard iterarysector. In general,criollismowas scornedfor not appealingto universalconceptsand for applyingand reapplyinga more conventional narrative strategy. See Dieter Oelker, 'La polemica entrecriollistas e imaginistas', Actas Literarias, no. 9 (1984), pp. I63-4 and Latcham,Criollismo, . 25.

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