Jesse Ira H. de Leon

Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
Junior, Anthropology
Laurentian University

The Bicultural Heritage of Peru: Representations of the Hispanic and the Indigenous in Peruvian Art

Interviewer: What is art?

Picasso: What is not?

INTRODUCTION

Despite greatly enjoying the subject matter and the processes of the discipline, and despite finding an intellectual home wherein I can associate with peers both like-minded and not, I must confess that despite all this, anthropology was never my first love. When I was younger, I did not dream of becoming an anthropologist. Indeed, I did not even know what one was.

Instead, I wanted to become an artist, and it was towards art that my youthful energies were directed. I began my studies into the more esoteric aspects of art, and I started to acquire a familiarity with art history, with Orientalism, with movement and dynamism and balance -- in short, I started to acquire the vocabulary and the mindset of an artist.

Quite often in life, though, expectations and reality do not match, and I did not end up studying art but anthropology instead. However, I have always kept an interest in art, and it was that interest that drew me to my subject matter.

Having been born and raised in the Philippines, another former Spanish colony, I wondered how Peruvians related to their colonial and indigenous cultural legacies, and how they expressed this relationship in their art. How does the fact of Peru's bicultural heritage affect Peruvian art and artists, if it even affects them at all? That was what I wanted to find out in my ethnographic fieldwork, and I set out on my work with the goal of answering that question.

BACKGROUND

I conducted my research in Trujillo and Huanchaco. Trujillo is the capital city of the departamento of La Libertad, and it is a regional centre with about 700 000 residents. In the case of Huanchaco, it is a small town about 12 km away from Trujillo, with a population of about 10 000 - 50 000 people, depending exactly on how one defines its borders. Formerly, the local economy was centred around fishing done with boats constructed from reeds, the caballitos de totoras. Today Huanchaco is in transition, for fishing no longer can support the residents, especially considering how rapidly the town has grown in population in the last decade or two.

I went to Peru as part of Utah University's ethnographic field school, and one of the characteristics that distinguish the work done in this field school is the brevity of the research time. Five weeks is not a long time to do much in-depth work, but it is enough to do some exploratory work on a particular subject.

With the social sciences, it is always important to note the condition of the researcher, and especially so in ethnography. The efficacy of the researcher as a measuring tool is always affected by the researcher's background, and especially the researcher's linguistic background, in my case. I studied Spanish for one year in university, but that was three years ago, and I cannot at all be called fluent in it. I can understand much in a conversation in Spanish, but too many times I do not understand all. At best, I apprehend the general course of a conversation. However, while I am not fluent, I am not ignorant either, and I can generally make myself understood.

I have already stated that I was born in the Philippines, and I lived there until I was ten years old. I thought it would be fascinating to observe how similar and how different two ex-colonies of Spain would be, considering that both are also developing countries. I also wondered how Peruvians would fit me into their worldview, considering that I am a foreigner but am not Caucasian, and that I somewhat resemble Peruvians themselves in appearance.

These were some of the reasons that I wanted to go to Peru, but the reason that I wanted to study Peruvian art specifically was because of my own background in art. I studied art for five years in high school, and I learned enough to be conversant in its subject matter. However, I have not had much occasion to practice my artistic skills for the last few years, and I chose my research question specifically so I would have the chance to take up art again.

Finally, the reason I was interested in studying how Hispanic and indigenous themes are produced and reproduced in Peruvian art is because I wondered how Peruvians define their identity, considering that is also an issue in the present-day postcolonial period of the Philippines. What does it mean to be Peruvian? Do Peruvians identify more with their European heritage, or do they consider themselves as purely descended from their country's pre-Hispanic peoples, or is it some sort of mixture of the two? How are these issues expressed in their art?

METHODS

I conducted most of my work with two artists in Huanchaco, Miguel Angel Vargas and Pedro Anhuam‡n. I also interviewed several people involved in art, as well as having informal conversations with some Huanchaqueros.

I conducted my fieldwork first with Miguel Vargas. With him, I worked as a participant observer, taking an apprenticeship role and studying under him as his alumno in painting and sculpture. He taught, or rather, refined my artistic techniques, for two or three weeks is not enough to learn the basic techniques of balance, composition, movement, and so on, not to mention the details of using a brush or the proper way of handling clay. I had a base of artistic knowledge, which Sr. Vargas cultivated in teaching me how to become a better artist.

In my fieldwork with Sr. Vargas I conducted my research primarily as a peripheral member in his everyday life, for while he often worked on his art everyday, I only worked with him on some days, and only for a few hours at most, usually in the afternoons. I would classify myself as having undertaken only moderate participation, for I did manage to create one painting and one sculpture under Sr. Vargas, and I did become a familiar enough sight around his work site that his neighbours would greet me and ask seriously after my health if I saw them on the street (my health having been seriously affected at least once in the field by the rigours of life in a developing country). However, my participation was only moderate in that I commuted to the field, only visiting Sr. Vargas' house once during my entire fieldwork, and I did not stay and work with him for even the majority of a single day's work.

I also conducted informal interviews with Sr. Vargas, talking with him about various topics as I worked beside him during the day. I also conducted more formal semi-structured interviews, wherein I set out with several questions in mind, but was willing to allow the dialogue to go off on interesting tangents.

In the case of Pedro Anhuam‡n, he acted more as my guide to the art world of Trujillo, and I acted more like a reporter than a participant observer with him. In fact, I hardly participated in the doings of Sr. Anhuam‡n's work and life. I conducted informal interviews with him on the bus to and from Trujillo, and while walking with him to various places in Lima. With him, I met and conducted a semi-structured interview with Lalo Vel‡squez, a Trujillano artist, and I also conducted an informal interview with some of Sr. Vel‡squezÕs students. I also visited the Banco Continental art gallery in Trujillo with Sr. Anhuam‡n, during which he acted rather like a tour guide, discussing the various themes of the works.

I would describe my fieldwork with Pedro Anhuam‡n as having been moderate participation, but consisting of far less participation than with Sr. Vargas. I was involved in Sr. Anhuam‡n's life, but for a far-shorter and less-intense duration than with Miguel Vargas.

I managed to conduct one piece of actual participant observation with Sr. Anhuam‡n, and it was when we went to the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna to work on our art. He painted while I sketched and made pastel drawings.

With Pedro Anhuam‡n's help I also managed to enter the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in Trujillo as a researcher, and I received an informal tour from Sr. Anhuam‡n around the school and saw the gallery of student work. I also managed to conduct semi-structured interviews with one professor and several students about art and about themselves.

Finally, over the course of my stay in Peru I had unplanned and unstructured conversations with several of the people of Huanchaco in various settings. Sometimes the conversation topic would touch upon the pre-Hispanic culture and history of the region around Huanchaco, and I learned a great deal about the relationship that ordinary Huanchaqueros had with their indigenous heritage.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

At the beginning of my investigation of how people around Trujillo and Huanchaco locate the Hispanic and the indigenous in their artistic creation and representation, I expected to find a clear dichotomy between European and indigenous art and the artists that make them. Instead, I found something more complex, and several themes emerged over the course of my work.

Communication Problems

The first overarching theme that I noticed in my work would have to be my difficulties in communicating with my informants. I speak Spanish well enough to be generally understood, but the topic I picked required a higher level of fluency in obscure subjects than I possessed, and often I had to break the flow of a conversation when I asked informants to repeat and rephrase in simpler terms something they had said. I was misunderstood often, and I feel that I probably missed opportunities for greater explication of many topics because of my level of Spanish fluency.

Outsider Status

My position as an outsider to Peruvian society afforded me considerable access to all sorts of aspects of Peruvian life that I most likely would not have had. Several times, Pedro Anhuam‡n introduced me as a Canadian researcher interested in studying Peruvian art, and immediately afterwards the person whom he had introduced me to would eagerly do what they could to answer my questions (which in the case of one professor involved leaving his class in progress to give me a tour of his school, though in his defense the students were all busily at work on their art pieces anyway). The flip side of my outsider status, though, would be the fact that I felt like I'd only been shown a portion - and possibly a non-representative portion - of art in Peru, and I had no way of knowing at all whether or not what I was being told and what I was seeing was actually true.

Appreciation for Pre-Hispanic Culture

Over the course of my work, I noticed that my informants invariably had a great appreciation of pre-Hispanic culture, as well as having great pride in it. Oftentimes, they were also well-informed about pre-Hispanic history. For example, while interviewing a professor in the Escuela de Bellas Artes about art education, the conversation turned to the archaeological treasures of Sip‡n, and the professor entered into a short speech about them:

Las tumbas reales que tiene bastante trabajo de aqu’ de los Moches. No que llevaron a es decir que enterraron en un cerro las partenensuas de la localidad de Sip‡n. Que se conoce con el nombre del Se–or de Sip‡n es bastante rico en joyas. Te digo as’ porque es famoso por sus orejeras (points to her ears).

What was especially fascinating about the speech was the fact that the professor was so familiar with the subject that she could discuss it off the cuff, meaning that it was either a subject taught in art schools, or that the professor was so interested in the subject that she studied it on her own. Either way, this points to a great appreciation for native art and history in Peru.

I also saw how greatly Peruvians respected the pre-Hispanic past when I visited Miguel Vargas' house. He showed me three different broken and dirty vases which he told me were authentic Moche pottery, and he seemed rather proud at owning them.

Appreciation of Spanish and European Culture

However, Peruvians also have a great appreciation for Spanish and European culture. For instance, several minutes after showing me his Moche pottery, Sr. Vargas went into his house and brought back a pen and ink drawing he owned which was made by Pablo Picasso, and he seemed especially proud at the fact of his ownership.

I am also reminded of my interview with Lalo Vel‡squez, wherein he explained to me in detail how a still-life painting of a bunch of fruit and flowers was meant to serve as an exercise in studying the effects of light and texture. At that moment, he sounded exactly like my old art teacher in Canada, and she was most definitely trained in the European artistic tradition.

The Blending of Pre-Hispanic and European Culture

I think that instead of speaking of a dichotomy between the pre-Hispanic and the Spanish and European halves of Peruvian culture, it would be better to speak of Peruvian culture as one unit, with both indigenous and European elements. Take, for instance, the example of costumbrista art. Raquel Chang-Rodriguez and Malva E. Filer define costumbrismo literature as being, "[la] tendencia o genero literatura que se caracteriza por el retrato e interpretaci—n de las costumbres y tipos del Pa’s" (Voces de Hispanoamerica 535).

Similar subject matter exists in costumbrista art, which is concerned with depicting the quotidian life and the customs and manners of a certain region. To simplify (and possibly over-simplify), costumbrismo art is Hispanic art which gives a romanticized vision of country life. It is a style of representation which came from 19th century Spain, but in Huanchaco and Trujillo, it is being used to represent pre-Hispanic customs and manners.

Both Miguel Vargas and Pedro Anhuam‡n, for instance, paint scenes of Huanchaquero fishermen using their totora reed boats to fish (see Fig. 1 and 2), in the same way that their ancestors did centuries before the Spaniards ever set foot on the Americas. A European style of representation, then, is being used to represent an indigenous way of life.

There is also the example of the bishop Martinez Compa–on, who painted scenes of everyday life among the colonized indigenous people of Peru (see Fig. 4). The bishop arrived in the Americas as a colonizer, and he went to Peru in order to solidify the position of the Roman Catholic religion in the country. In doing so, he was also weakening the pre-Hispanic culture which he documented, for he was destroying part of their way of life. However, Pedro Anhuam‡n, despite identifying himself clearly as an indigenous artist, did not make an issue of Martinez Compa–on's religious work, but instead expressed satisfaction that pre-Hispanic culture was so well-documented by the bishop.

The indigenous and the European, then, exist together at the same time in Peruvian art and culture, and they do not exist in direct opposition to each other. Mario Vargas Llosa speaks of Latin America as being one continent with two histories, and it is true that in much of the Peruvian artistic expression which I investigated, there exists a balance of the European and the indigenous in their work.

Supremacy of European Culture

However, while Peruvian artistic expression mixes elements of the European and the indigenous, it is important to remember that the mix of cultures is not equal. Peruvians are more Hispanicized than not -- after all, they speak Spanish, not Incan or Moche (though of course, lately a larger and larger proportion speak Quechua).

Formal artistic education is done after the European model, and the subject matter is largely identical to what is taught in art schools in Europe or North America. For example, the studio work component of the sculpting class at Escuela de Bellas Artes includes, "Estudio de torso femenino." These studies of the female torso consist of copying a model (see Fig. 3), and the model and the copies are done in the classical realist style of Greek and Roman sculpture, as well as later Renaissance work.

While European styles of art might be used to express indigenous themes, it must be remembered that these representations follow European conventions in balance, form, and general artistic expression.

Thus, while the European and the indigenous exist simultaneously in Peruvian art, it is the European form of expression which takes the greater share in the Peruvian artistic toolkit. While indigenous expression might be experiencing a greater prominence in Peruvian art, it is still subordinate to European modes of expression.

CONCLUSION

I think that the subject matter of this study should be re-examined in the future for several reasons. First, I think that further investigation into representations of Hispanic and indigenous themes in Peruvian art should have an investigator who is more fluent in Spanish, especially in the artistic vocabulary necessary for such an endeavour. The themes of this work can be obscure, and I think that the ability to explore in greater depth the topics I have touched upon will serve the investigator well.

Second, I feel that my work is simply a preliminary foray into Peruvian art, and that while five weeks may have given me some time to explore the gross limits of my subject, it is hardly enough for an in-depth understanding, which I think greater time will provide. A think that a longer study will give the researcher a greater foundation upon which he or she can speak confidently of themes in Peruvian art.

Lastly, I feel that an investigation into expressions of Peruvian identity should be done more holistically. Instead of simply concentrating on the area around Huanchaco and Trujillo, I think that a wider geographical range, possibly encompassing more South American countries than Peru, would do well to give a greater understanding into the European-indigenous dynamic in Peruvian and Latin American life. I also think instead of an investigation into artistic expression only, it would be very informative to examine the attitudes and feelings of ordinary Peruvians towards their double heritage of the Hispanic and the indigenous. What does it mean to be Peruvian, and how is that meaning expressed in Peruvian art? My study may have touched the surface of those questions, but so much more remains to be investigated.

WORKS CITED

Chang-Rodriguez, Raquel, and Malva E. Filer. Voces de Hispanoamerica.

Llosa, Mario Vargas. In Foreign Policy, 2000 vol. 122 (66-71).