Debris and Poetry: A Critique of Violence and Race in the Peruvian Eighties

By turning the figure of the colonial chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala into an indigenous migrant during the tumultuous nineteen eighties in the poem “His Body Was an Island of Debris” (1987), Domingo de Ramos critiqued the transhistorical nature of colonialism, as it manifests through the displacement and killing of thousands of indigenous peoples. I interpret de Ramos’ work as an opportunity to center ideas about race, an analytic overlooked in the literary criticism of the time. His portrayal of migration mobilizes a poetic critique of the main discourses of Peruvian literary studies that conveniently left racial hierarchies unchallenged, even while being invested in the new political potential of migrants. This specular relationship that de Ramos creates between himself and Guamán Poma allows him to ponder about his own positionality in the literary field of the eighties, which was uncritically participating in the migrant trend almost exclusively through De Ramos’ personae.

Title	Debris and Poetry: A Critique of Violence and Race in the Peruvian Eighties
Creator	Rodriguez-Ulloa, Olga Cristina
Publisher	Latin American Literary Review
Academic Department	Languages and Literary Studies
Division	Humanities
Organization	Lafayette College
Date Issued	June 2020
Date Available	2020-11-25
Type	Article
Language	English
Keyword	race
	Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala
	Domingo de Ramos
	coloniality
	migration
Bibliographic Citation	Rodriguez-Ulloa, Olga Cristina. 2020 Jun. "Debris and Poetry: A Critique of Violence and Race in the Peruvian Eighties." Latin American Literary Review 47 (94): 9-18.
Standard Identifier	Handle 10385/nc580p048
Permalink	http://hdl.handle.net/10385/nc580p048
Rights Statement	Creative Commons - Attribution
Rights Holders	Rodriguez-Ulloa, Olga Cristina