We statesman successful medias res, on a way traveled by a landowner. In the opening pages of Rómulo Gallegos’s landmark 1929 caller Doña Bárbara, the novel’s protagonist, Santos Luzardo, travels toward his ancestral property heavy successful the plains portion of Venezuela. Two “bronzed” oarsmen alternately plunge poles into the muddy h2o to propel a canoe guardant nether a blazing midday sun. Santos, meanwhile, a achromatic antheral dressed successful the mode of “the metropolis dweller who is cautious of his appearance,” contemplates the wilderness.
His objective, we soon learn, is to merchantability the household estate, Altamira, and, successful keeping with the predilections of the region’s landed elite, determination to Europe. But upon arriving successful the plains, the landowner encounters a caller world that changes his mind: A mestiza (mixed-race) woman, the eponymous Doña Bárbara, has utilized her feminine wiles to usurp immense tracts of land, including a information of the Luzardo estate. For the remainder of the novel, Santos volition stay successful the plains portion to combat the backward forces personified by Doña Bárbara and effort to instate “progress.
What I bash privation to suggest is that regionalism, no substance however fixated connected section color, responded to concerns that were acold from provincial.
Santos Luzardo’s voyage to the plains is emblematic of the homecoming staged by Spanish American fabrication opening successful the 1910s, 1 known successful wide presumption arsenic regionalism. As an umbrella word for assorted subcurrents, specified arsenic criollismo, la novela telúrica, and la novela de la tierra, Spanish American regionalism marked a decisive signifier successful the continent’s literate production.
In wide terms, whereas a erstwhile procreation of poets and novelists had faced outward to clasp European aesthetic forms, objects, and civilizational ideals, aboriginal twentieth-century regionalisms turned inward, to place and incorporated section oregon homegrown materials for literate expression. As an illustration of this shift, 1 of the ascendant literate currents of the precocious nineteenth century, Spanish American modernismo, had famously showcased references to French authors (Paul Valéry oregon the Goncourt brothers), interminable catalogues of bibelots, and sumptuously decorated interiors. Early twentieth-century regionalism, however, inverted this Europhilic aesthetic.
On a spatial level, overseas oregon municipality spaces gave mode to agrarian ones. As an hold of this logic, the satyrs, nymphs, and marble statues that populated erstwhile modernista texts specified arsenic the Nicaraguan writer Rubén Darío’s Azul (1888) were exchanged for “bronzed” oarsmen, bongos, and ranch hands. On a larger level, Spanish American modernismo’s dedication to creation for art’s sake, peculiarly via poetry, gave mode to an effort to evoke section reality—and, much specifically, agrarian reality—by mode of the novel.
When tasked with explaining wherefore this homecoming took spot erstwhile it did, critics person often relied connected a communicative of taste identity. As a well-known communicative goes, regionalists looked to the agrarian to find “traditional” materials with which to trade a much authentic nationalist oregon regionwide literate aesthetic. Carlos Alonso has shown, successful a deconstructionist vein, however this assertion to authenticity was ever thing of a ruse, arsenic texts themselves perpetually undermined their ain authority.
But specified interpretations, portion successful immoderate ways rather helpful, are incomplete insofar arsenic they bash not effort to relationship for the larger structural dynamics astatine play successful the regionalist crook inward and, arsenic a result, the precise ways that novels mightiness person encoded the modulation occurring successful societies crossed Latin America successful the aboriginal twentieth century.
At the precise least, regionalism marked a spatial recalibration successful the literate imaginary, distant from European metropoles and nationalist capitals and toward agrarian hinterlands. Going a measurement further, this spatial recalibration itself anticipated a larger economical transition: a determination distant from a liberal, export exemplary that principally served overseas markets and toward the instauration of a long-delayed and stunted home market. In proposing that we look astatine the worldly lineaments of regionalism, I bash not mean to propose, of course, that literate texts evoked economical transitions successful a transparent oregon straightforward manner: The mediations betwixt texts and societal contexts stay to beryllium uncovered and examined.
Nor bash I mean to suggest that the erstwhile accent connected overseas themes and settings automatically occluded societal realities, portion the crook toward autochthonous ones automatically elucidated them. To the contrary, the foreign-inspired modernista salon mightiness alert america to the existent conditions governing Latin American creator accumulation (and societies) successful a infinitesimal of export-oriented capitalist modernization. Conversely, the regionalist accent connected section settings mightiness conscionable arsenic easy occlude those conditions. What I bash privation to suggest is that regionalism, no substance however fixated connected section color, responded to concerns that were acold from provincial.
The assemblage latifundium, alternatively of being abolished by independence, was strengthened, starring to immoderate fig of nationalist ills.
But if the proposal that the regionalist hunt for the nationalist bases of civilization broadly anticipated a new, nationalist signifier of capitalist accumulation successful Latin America, it remains to beryllium stated why, connected the level of manifest content, this hunt took spot successful the agrarian hinterlands of the nationstate, and not, say, successful expanding cities. As I research passim this chapter, aboriginal twentieth-century regionalist novels were drawn to the agrarian satellite not due to the fact that it was a tract of unchangeable contented (though this is often the ideological effect they produce), but due to the fact that this satellite had go a occupation successful request of a solution. This occupation was nary different than the agrarian occupation successful its earliest instantiation, particularly with respect to what was possibly the cardinal unifying diagnostic of an different intensely variegated Latin American countryside: the persistence of the ample property oregon latifundium (latifundio).
So agelong arsenic export economies dominated, the ample property had not been a pressing occupation for elites oregon the state. In immoderate cases, preexisting latifundia were modernized and adapted to the needs of export commodity production, often connected the ground of outright slavery oregon immoderate fig of coercive arrangements similar indebtedness peonage and sharecropping. In others, the anemic authorities of the interior marketplace allowed them to persist, seemingly unperturbed by either economical exigency oregon the ineligible norms of the state.
But with the decadence of the export exemplary successful the aboriginal twentieth century, the ample property did so go a problem; successful immoderate quarters, it became the pressing occupation facing Latin American societies. As an denotation of its scope, scores of tracts began to beryllium published successful the aboriginal decades of the twentieth period bearing names specified arsenic Mexico’s Rural Problem (1917), The Problem of Agricultural Production (Chile, 1919), Agrarian Questions (Argentina, 1921), and El latifundio (Venezuela, 1937). Tellingly, contempt the nationalist differences specified texts reflect, each statesman with the nonstop aforesaid premise: The assemblage latifundium, alternatively of being abolished by independence, was strengthened, starring to immoderate fig of nationalist ills.
These included, depending connected the country, the nonproductive monopolization of onshore by an absentee landed class, the stunting of nationalist markets, and, successful galore cases, the brutal oppression of peasants tethered to estates. And portion authors would suggest antithetic solutions to this occupation depending connected their governmental leanings, they each agreed connected the intractable quality of the ample property arsenic the veritable cornerstone of the Latin American agrarian question.
The question of the ample property was besides the cornerstone of the regionalist novel. Much similar the Latin American countryside itself, the particularity mobilized by the Spanish American regionalist caller unfolded against a backdrop of a azygous institution: the ample estate. Two of the 3 best-known examples of 1920s Spanish American regionalism, some studied successful this chapter, person landowners arsenic their protagonists: Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara and Ricardo Güiraldes’s Don Segundo Sombra. The protagonist of a 3rd paradigmatic illustration of the genre, José Eustacio Rivera’s La vorágine (The Vortex, Colombia, 1924), is not a landowner, but an municipality writer swept into the convulsive satellite of the Amazonian rubber trade.
As Northrop Frye has remarked, romance tends to beryllium the favored genre of ruling classes, an reflection that rings peculiarly existent successful Latin America.
The wide inclination toward landed characters returns, however, successful lesser-known regionalist novels specified arsenic Mariano Latorre’s Zurzulita (Chile, 1920) and Enrique Larreta’s Zogoibi (Argentina, 1926). Further, the plots of galore regionalist novels hinge connected the destiny of the property itself, on the lines of inheritance and marriage, modernization schemes, oregon the quality of upstart peasants successful the landowner’s midst. In this way, the alleged caller of the onshore is, fundamentally, a caller of and astir the latifundio successful a infinitesimal of transition. The crushed is evident enough: the Latin American novel, erstwhile traveling to the countryside successful the aboriginal decades of the twentieth century, could not debar the ample property oregon the landowner.
This absorption connected the ample estate, successful turn, helps explicate wherefore regionalism was ascendant successful Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela but not successful Mexico, wherever wide peasant insurrection successful 1910 gave mode to a radically antithetic benignant of novel, the alleged “novel of the Mexican Revolution.” Nor was it ascendant successful the Andes, wherever indigenous rebellions ramped up passim the 1920s and 1930s to nutrient twentieth-century indigenismo. Regionalism, and much specifically criollismo, tended to harvest up successful contexts wherever landowner regularisation had not been fundamentally challenged by the anticipation of revolution. Even so, astatine the precise least, the regionalist novel’s gravitation toward the ample property alerts america to a situation of immoderate sort, 1 that authors attempted to lick by communicative means.
But if the aboriginal twentieth-century regionalist caller was a caller of and astir landowners and the latifundio, this is lone a archetypal measurement of analysis. Placing texts successful an economical discourse allows america to spot them successful a caller light, but it is not an extremity successful itself. Rather, my purpose successful the pursuing pages is to amusement however a acceptable of novels by Gallegos and Güiraldes posed and answered agrarian questions successful a mode that lone the caller could, connected the level of aesthetic form. As critics specified arsenic Antonio Candido person remarked, regionalism was astatine bottommost an effort to render Latin American world successful its ascendant agrarian guise.
And indeed, the novels chosen for survey successful this section each instrumentality a factual agrarian world arsenic a constituent of departure: concretely, the latifundio arsenic a occupation successful request of a solution. What is astir intriguing astir the novels examined here, however, is that they can’t instrumentality the way of either naturalism (a literate mode successful vogue astatine the time) oregon realism; instead, they tin lone lick their problems done formation into an older, fantasy-laden portion of romance. As Northrop Frye has remarked, romance tends to beryllium the favored genre of ruling classes, an reflection that rings peculiarly existent successful Latin America. At the aforesaid time, though, due to the fact that these twentieth-century novels instrumentality world arsenic a constituent of departure, they can’t relation purely arsenic romances either.
Taking a cue from Roberto Schwarz’s analyses of nineteenth-century Brazilian literature, I suggest that the aesthetic disunity that characterizes these novels sheds airy connected a wider societal dynamic, 1 that, arsenic I research below, stretches from the agrarian property to the astir abstract realms of the planetary market. For portion novels by Güiraldes and Gallegos contiguous america with alternatively bare people apologetics that corroborate the goodness of landowners, their wildly contradictory textual dynamics attest to thing acold little evident and self-assured: connected the 1 hand, societal contradictions that garbage to beryllium banished and, connected the other, the reactionary energies regularly called distant to incorporate immoderate effort astatine change.
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From Agrarian Questions. Used with the support of the publisher, Verso Books. Copyright © 2026 by Ericka Beckman
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