A Fragmented New Order: Cinema, Prose, and Rebellion in Jorge Icaza’s Huasipungo

Abstract

This article explores how the novel Huasipungo (1936) by the Ecuadorean writer Jorge Icaza informs and relates to current problems in the Ecuadorean highlands. The revolts of October 2019 in Ecuador prompted by a 123% increase in the price of gas and oil and the sanctions imposed by the International Monetary Fund relate to previous Indigenous struggles at the beginning of the twentieth century. I propose to revisit Huasipungo and understand anew the novel’s impact and lessons for the turbulent present the Andean region of Ecuador faces. First, I propose to read Huasipungo as a narration that emulates cinematic image production. Second, I suggest this production depicts how modern exploitation captured and reshaped labour. In Huasipungo, I argue, the subsumption of labour to capital relies on something other than a transaction: affect and habit are at the core of subsumption. Finally, I offer a reading of the uprising that closes Icaza’s narrative. Just as Walter Benjamin saw in the fragmented order of cinema the possibility of change, Icaza himself informs us of this possibility without cinema but with its fragmented order. At stake in Huasipungo’s depiction of Indigenous uprising in the Ecuadorean Andes is the possibility of reaffirming a threshold for change.