Abstract
Spanish America is a multilingual continent where more than 500 indigenous languages are spoken. This essay discusses the resurgence of indigenous literatures from Mexico to the south of Chile and from Peru to Paraguay, focusing on the central role that the practice of self-translation plays in such process. With this aim in mind, the work offers a panoramic overview of the bilingual literary production of authors belonging to various indigenous nations across the continent and traces the development of a new aesthetics based on hybrid identities and border-crossing linguistic practices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Natalio Hernández recientemente ha destacado que este poema fue escrito en 1980, en el contexto del movimiento de reivindicación de las lenguas indígenas, y que actualmente él se asume como “náhuatl”, “mexica” o “azteca” (Comunicación personal con el autor, 16 de mayo de 2018).
- 2.
[By the edge of a ravine, / By the edge of the reeds, / By the edge of a ravine.]
- 3.
[Walked by, crying, / The ‘lacha’ in love, / When she became pregnant.]
- 4.
[I have run to gather, in the plains, / in the beach, / in the mountain, / my grandparents’ lost form of expression.]
- 5.
[the silence, / the fear / put a muzzle on life.]
- 6.
[What is happening to my land! / It has lost its words!]
- 7.
[Do not put the voice in chains, / let it roam the roads,/ let it search for spaces, / let life renew itself, / in my land!]
- 8.
[Forging a thousand illusions, / you nest in the land / …… / only to be left, anyway, / with those empty hands.]
- 9.
[May it drizzle like this / a timid sound / quietly, / sweetly cool. / May it lick the skin, / may it penetrate deep, / wounding itself / into the bottom / of my soul.]
- 10.
[It is enough / too long have we endured / this is over / damn it! [……] // We were promised peace / and war was made against us / —their blows were always made in treason— / they enslaved us with their religion / and their laws / and with their laws they dug the graves / of thousands of our own / they fenced us into States / in order to weaken us. // Yes / it is enough / for a long time, injustice / has been the demolishing prayer / that has treaded on the joy / of our air. // Yes / it is enough / too long have we endured / no more ‘maythelordrepayyou’ / no more ‘father priest’! / no more ‘my lordy your mercy’ / no more ‘waukiku / of the United States’! / no more kissing hands / or kneeling humbly / before the oppressor / this / is over / damn it! // Now kichua runas / we must lift / the ragged body of the dawn / we must crown the ancient head / of our sacred mountains / with the uma watarina of the women! / now kichua runas / we must unite / with the other indian people / we must unite with all the people / who wish to continue being / themselves / now people in conflict / warriors of old / poets born / of the sharpest thorn / we must aim well / with our warakas / we have to through them with strength / and with a steady pulse / so that they arrive precisely / upon the enemy! // Now / we must loudly / play our drums / so that they all come / so that they come, all, / to share the ritual bath / of the inti raimi / so that in this way / absolutely all of us shall advance / so that no one at any moment / and under no pretext / shall take a step back, / Comrades!]
- 11.
[I take up the word: / …… /this one, with which you tied to the stones /our history, /Old Grandfather.]
- 12.
[And to the beat of our drum /we sit at the edge of the world /to ruminate our word. /Old Grandfather.]
- 13.
[When I wrote /my first letters, /my tears /were made of blood.]
- 14.
[Is it my woes /or my parents’ ancestry /what I nest in my chest?]
- 15.
Natalio Hernández has recently remarked that this poem was originally written in 1980, in the context of the movement for the revindication of indigenous languages, and that he now identifies himself as “Nahua,” “Mexica,” or “Aztec” (Personal communication with the author, May 16th, 2018).
- 16.
[I am indian: / because I was thus named by white men / when they arrived to this new land. // I am indian: because of the ignorance of white men / when they came to the lands that my grandparents ruled. // I am indian: / because I was thus signaled by white men / to justify their rule and discrimination. // I am indian: / because this is what the white called us, / all the men in this continent. // I am indian: / now I am proud of this word / with which white men used to mock me. // I am indian: / now I am not ashamed to be called so, / because I know of white people’s historical mistake. // I am indian: / now I know that I have my own roots / and my own way of thinking. // I am indian: / now I know I have my own face, / my own gaze and feelings. // I am indian: / now I know that I am truly Mexican, / because I speak the Mexican tongue, the language of my grandparents. // I am indian: / now my heart is very happy / because a new day comes, a new dawn. // I am indian: / now I feel that this sadness will soon be over, / once again my heart will be able to laugh and be stronger. // I am indian: / now I can behold the beauty of the dance, / listen to the music and the singing. // I am indian: / now I can hear / the words of the elders. // I am indian: / now the earth gives me roots again: / our Mother Earth.]
- 17.
[Chapter I: The beginning. /The time when I left our town lies far in the past; I left because of the poverty we suffer, I left because my late parents no longer wanted me to see the suffering our town had been enduring. /Upon leaving I had to be brave and mix with what is not ours, and this is why I now know, I understand things that many do not comprehend and do not understand and sometimes cannot even imagine exist; such us, for instance: the place where I arrived when I left this town, it was a house where there were many other children like me, when I arrived I did not realize that they were children who had caused damage: children who had murdered their little classmates, some of them, their stepparents; there were children who liked to steal and also children whose parents were in jail or were disabled and, therefore, could not provide for their children, and the rest, they were orphans; instead, I, at that time, my parents were still alive, they were not disabled, they were not in jail and, back then, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Oh! we who were born among the weeds, if we can get out of poverty, if we can get out of the place…]
Bibliografía
Aguilera Milla, Pedro, José B. Ancán Pilquián, José Blanco Painequeo y Victorio Pranao Huenchuñir. 1987. Pu mapuche tañi kimün / El Conocimiento de los mapuches. Temuco: Küme Dungu.
Ak’abal, Humberto. 2005. “Si no fuera por la poesía, el mundo ya se habría quedado mudo,” entrevista de Pablo Cingolani. Letralia 10, no. 130 (septiembre). https://letralia.com/130/entrevistas01.htm.
Antequera, José de [Martín Almada]. 1986. Las manos vacías. Roma: CMOPE.
Berman, Antoine. 1984. L’épreuve de l’étranger: Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique. Paris: Gallimard.
Carrasco, Iván. 1991. “Textos poéticos chilenos de doble registro”. Revista Chilena de Literatura 37: 113–122.
———. 2000. “Poetas mapuches en la literatura chilena”. Estudios Filológicos [Valdivia, Chile], 35, pp. 139–149.
Castellanos Martínez, Javier. 1994. Cantares de los vientos primerizos / Wila che be ze ihao: Novela zapoteca. México: Diana.
Chirinos Rivera, Andrés. 2001. Atlas lingüístico del Perú. Cusco: Ministerio de Educación; Centro Bartolomé de las Casas.
Delgado, Susy. 1999. Ayvu membyre / Hijo de aquel verbo. Ed. bilingüe. Asunción, Paraguay: Arandurã.
García, Arturo. 2002. “Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. Entrevista con Arturo García: El mundo enterrado en el sur de Texas”. Pterodáctilo: Revista de Arte, Literatura y Lingüística 2: 10–17.
González, Gaspar Pedro. 1998. Sq’anej maya’ / Palabras mayas: Poemas en maya q’anjob’al y español. Rancho Palos Verdes, California: Fundación Yax Te’.
Guarania, Félix de. 1997. “Pehendu che ñe’ê” / “¡No encadenen mi voz!” [publicado en Poesía paraguaya de ayer y de hoy. Tomo II (guaraní-español), ed. Teresa Méndez-Faith. Asunción, Paraguay: Intercontinental.] En Portal Guaraní. http://www.portalguarani.com/391_felix_de_guarania/11140_pehendu_che_ne_7868_y_ha_namandu_che_ru_papa_tenonde__poesias_en_guarani_de_felix_de_guarania.html.
Guerra Cunningham, Lucía. 2002. “La identidad mapuche y la poesía de Leonel Lienlaf”. Revista Casa de las Américas 228: 67–76.
Gutiérrez Estévez, Manuel. 2009. “Políticas democráticas y pueblos indios en un tiempo postcolonial” [publicado en 2001, en Revista de Occidente 246: 109–127]. En América indígena ante el siglo XXI, ed. Julián López García y Manuel Gutiérrez Estévez, pp. 3–20. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Hernández, Natalio. 1994. Canto nuevo de Anáhuac / Yancuic Anahuac Cuicatle: poesía náhuatl. México: Diana.
Kowii, Ariruma. 2000. Tsaitsik: poemas para construir el futuro. Quito: Abya Yala.
Lienlaf, Leonel. 1989. Se ha despertado el ave de mi corazón. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria.
Miller, Grady. 1999. “The Author as Translator”. ATA Spnaish Language Division: Selected Spanish-Related Presentations, pp. 11–17. St. Louis, MO: ATA 40th Annual Conference.
Moens, J. Anita 1999. “La poesía mapuche: Expresiones de identidad”. Tesis de Licenciatura, Universidad de Utrecht.
Nash, Susan Smith. 2001. “Translating Bilingual Texts: The Guaraní / Spanish Poetics of Susy Delgado”. Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 21–22: 136–142.
Peñalosa, Fernando. 2002. “La literatura maya: Tres perspectivas: el editor”. Itsmo: Revista de estudios literarios y culturales centroamericanos 4 (julio–diciembre): Foro Debate. http://istmo.denison.edu/n04/foro/maya.html.
Regino, Juan Gregorio. 2005. “Las lenguas indígenas en la literatura mexicana”. http://interbilingue.ajusco.upn.mx/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=213.
Sylvester, Richard S. 1963. Introduction. In The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 2: The History of King Richard III, ed. Richard S. Sylvester. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Torres, Mamerto. 1994. “Ariruma Kowii, Tsaitsik: poemas para construir el futuro. Ibarra: Centro de Ediciones Culturales de Imababura, 1993, 128pp.” [Reseña.] Kipus: Revista andina de letras 2: 83–84.
Waldman, Gilda. 2005. “El florecimiento de la literatura indígena actual en México: Contexto social, significado e importancia”. Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual del Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la UNAM. https://archivos.juridicas.unam.mx/www/bjv/libros/2/740/10.pdf.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Santoyo, JC. (2019). Autotraducción y resurgimiento literario indígena en Hispanoamérica. In: Bujaldón de Esteves, L., Bistué, B., Stocco, M. (eds) Literary Self-Translation in Hispanophone Contexts - La autotraducción literaria en contextos de habla hispana. Translation History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23625-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23625-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-23624-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-23625-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)