It would be hard to dislike Barranco and I went there to the Museo Pedro de Osma, in a lovely art nouveau mansion, to see paintings and sculpture by Fernando de Szyszlo. To get to the paintings one had to walk through a great deal of colonial art, so that when I got to the Syzszlo room I had no doubt as to why it was a good idea to study the twentieth century.
There were also poems by Salazar Bondy from the sixties, parodying Nájera and Darío, in rare editions illustrated by Szyszlo. I will find these texts again. One I liked was called “La vie en rose” and it is quoted in this interesting essay.
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In my house those who serve speak Quechua and Aymara and those who do not, speak Spanish. These people, however, are in some cases the first, and in some the second generation not to speak Quechua. The aunts, who range in age from 68 up, speak Quechua and can sing together in it, taught by their mother. Their father only spoke Spanish.
I am told that the best Quechua is spoken in lands of Arguedas – Abancay, Andahuaylas, Ayacucho. In Huamachuco more Spanish is spoken and that is why Vallejo is less mestizo and less Indian than people from other parts of the sierra.
Axé.
1 Comment
June 23, 2008 at 8:17 am
[...] Professor Zero is in Lima (Peru, not Ohio!), and went to the Museo de Pedro Osma, which sounds like an interesting palace filled with colonial as well as twentieth-century art. [...]