Huerto Cerrado

Last updated • 5 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Huerto Cerrado (English: Closed Orchard) is a collection of short stories written by Peruvian author Alfredo Bryce Echenique. [1] Published in 1968, it was Bryce's debut in the literary world and won him special mention in the Casa de las Américas Prize of that year. The stories form a basis for the development of his later novel, Un mundo para Julius , published in 1970.

The stories take the form of a bildungsroman and are written in a variety of styles and perspectives and follow the protagonist, Manolo, in his journey of self-discovery. Each short story shows Manolo in a different stage of his life and reflects the social and historical context of Peruvian society in the 1960s.

Manolo begins his journey in Italy and returns to Peru in the opening story "Dos Indios".

The collection consists of the following short stories:

An unnamed narrator meets Manolo in Rome. They talk in a bar, and Manolo recalls an encounter with two indigenous men during his childhood in Peru. After their talk, Manolo resolves to return to Peru.

A 13-year-old Manolo accompanies his father on a business trip to Paracas, a luxury resort south of Lima. They meet Jimmy, one of Manolo's classmates, whose higher social station allows him to treat the law and societal norms with contempt.

Manolo and his classmates go on a school cycling trip into the Andes, but Manolo fails to keep up with the other boys. Determined to struggle on, Manolo has a moment of self-realisation in the enormity of the mountain landscape.

Manolo is now 14, and he sells his bike (the same one as in "El camino es así") to Miguel, a gardener of mixed/indigenous descent with whom Manolo used to play football. He then buys himself a brown corduroy jacket with the proceeds. This story explores Manolo's increasing awareness of self-image and his place in the racial hierarchy of Peruvian society.

Around 15 years old, Manolo has passed all of his exams, which leaves him free for the Christmas holidays. However, this gives him a lot of thinking time, and he finds himself increasingly uncomfortable with and detached from the society around him. Of particular interest in this story are his attitudes towards women, as he takes solitary walks and sees how women are treated in a machista society, and feels his impotence to protect them.

This story takes the form of extracts from Manolo's diary, which chronicles his summer romance with Cecilia, a girl he met at the local swimming pool. Manolo learns about the concept of 'playing by the rules' and the difficulties of communication in human relationships. Manolo and Cecilia also appear in Un Mundo Para Julius , Echenique's first novel.

Back in his boys' school after his summer of love with Cecilia, Manolo takes the separation badly. His English teacher, Mr Davenhock, puts his suffering into perspective by telling him about his German girlfriend, from whom he was separated for ever by World War II. This common ground brings the two into a kind of friendship, in their shared isolation.

Manolo visits a brothel with some friends to lose his virginity, as a kind of right of passage into machista society. His encounter with a prostitute, la Nylon, and the characters patronising the brothel are described in grotesque detail. In this microcosm of Lima society, a "cholo" enters the brothel and proclaims himself to be the king. His expulsion from the premises reflects the social position of indigenous peoples in Peru at the time.

In this story, Manolo has entered university, and takes advantage of a gullible schoolgirl by telling her all the things that she wants to hear: that he has rich parents, a big house, drives a sports car etc. Manolo gets his way, but afterwards feels the uneasiness of relationships based on falsehoods.

One of the few stories to mention Manolo's mother, La madre, el hijo y el pintor follows Manolo talking to his mother while she gets ready for a cocktail party she has been invited to by a male friend. This takes place after her divorce from Manolo's father, and she decides to take her almost adult son to introduce him to her new friends. When they arrive, they find a table set for two and a man who seems less than pleased with an unexpected teenager at his dinner date.

After a visit to the cinema, Manolo and a friend head to a bar. On the way, a man is run down and killed by a tram. The pair do not join the crowd that gathers around the victim, and continue to the bar. There, they talk about philosophy, life, and the inevitability of death. Notably, Manolo decides not to drink beer, and instead orders a pisco, showing his rejection of shared routines and traditions.

The final story finds Manolo on the beach at Lima, acting very strangely. He picks up rocks and articles of rubbish, noting everything down in a notebook, and speaks in disjointed phrases and infinitives. There are no references to his age in this story, and it is left to the reader to decide: is this Manolo before he went to Rome, where he was able to get his mind together again? Or is this Manolo after his return to Peru, driven mad by the divided society he thought he could escape in Europe, but was compelled to return?

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Peru</span>

The history of Peru spans 15 millennia, extending back through several stages of cultural development along the country's desert coastline and in the Andes mountains. Peru's coast was home to the Norte Chico civilization, the oldest civilization in the Americas and one of the six cradles of civilization in the world. When the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, Peru was the homeland of the highland Inca Empire, the largest and most advanced state in pre-Columbian America. After the conquest of the Incas, the Spanish Empire established a Viceroyalty with jurisdiction over most of its South American domains. Peru declared independence from Spain in 1821, but achieved independence only after the Battle of Ayacucho three years later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pedro de Valdivia</span> Spanish conquistador

Pedro Gutiérrez de Valdivia or Valdiva was a Spanish conquistador and the first royal governor of Chile. After serving with the Spanish army in Italy and Flanders, he was sent to South America in 1534, where he served as lieutenant under Francisco Pizarro in Peru, acting as his second in command.

Peruvian culture is the gradual blending of Amerindian cultures with European and Asian ethnic groups. The ethnic diversity and rugged geography of Peru allowed diverse traditions and customs to co-exist. Peruvian culture has been deeply influenced by Native culture, Spanish culture, and Asian culture. Other minor influences on their culture are Chinese, Japanese, and other European peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">José María Arguedas</span> Peruvian writer (1911–1969)

José María Arguedas Altamirano was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was an author of mestizo descent who was fluent in the Quechua language. That fluency was gained by Arguedas’s living in two Quechua households from the age of 7 to 11. First, he lived in the Indigenous servant quarters of his stepmother's home, then, escaping her "perverse and cruel" son, with an Indigenous family approved by his father. Arguedas wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfredo Bryce</span> Peruvian writer

Alfredo Bryce Echenique is a Peruvian writer born in Lima. He has written numerous books and short stories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mariano Ignacio Prado</span> President of Peru variously in the 1800s

Mariano Ignacio Prado Ochoa was a Peruvian army general who served as the 17th and 21st President of Peru.

Julio Ramón Ribeyro Zúñiga was a Peruvian writer best known for his short stories. He was also successful in other genres: novel, essay, theater, diary and aphorism. In the year of his death, he was awarded the US$100,000 Premio Juan Rulfo de literatura latinoamericana y del Caribe. His work has been translated into numerous languages, including English.

Peruvian art has its origin in the Andean civilizations. These civilizations rose in the territory of modern Peru before the arrival of the Spanish.

The term Peruvian literature not only refers to literature produced in the independent Republic of Peru, but also to literature produced in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the country's colonial period, and to oral artistic forms created by diverse ethnic groups that existed in the area during the prehispanic period, such as the Quechua, the Aymara and the Chanka South American native groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abraham Valdelomar</span> Peruvian poet, journalist and dramatist

Pedro Abraham Valdelomar Pinto was a Peruvian narrator, poet, journalist, essayist and dramatist. He is considered the founder of the avant-garde in Peru, although more for his dandy-like public poses and his founding of the journal Colónida than for his own writing, which is lyrically posmodernista rather than aggressively experimental. Like Charles Baudelaire in 19th century Paris, he claimed to have made his country aware for the first time of the relationship between poetry and the market, and to have recognized the need for the writer to turn himself into a celebrity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan de Espinosa Medrano</span> Peruvian Indigenous cleric

Juan de Espinosa Medrano, known in history as Lunarejo, was an Indigenous cleric, sacred preacher, writer, playwright, theologian, archdeacon and polymath from the Viceroyalty of Peru. He is the most prominent figure of the Literary Baroque of Peru and one of the most important intellectuals from Colonial Spanish America.

Nazario Chávez Aliaga (1891–1978) was a Peruvian journalist, politician and poet. Chávez Aliaga played a substantial role in the establishment of Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, the largest political party in Peru from 1930 to the late 1980s, as well as being the publisher of an influential newspaper El Peru. In his later life he served in various political offices including Secretario del Congreso and Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic (1956-1962).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auquihuato</span> Mountain in Peru

Auquihuato is a cinder cone in the Andes of Peru, 4,980 metres (16,339 ft) high. It is situated in the Ayacucho Region, Paucar del Sara Sara Province, on the border of the districts Colta and Oyolo. Auquihuato lies northeast of Sara Sara volcano.

<i>The House of Flowers</i> (TV series) 2018–2020 Mexican dark comedy television show

The House of Flowers is a Mexican black comedy drama television series created by Manolo Caro for Netflix. It depicts a dysfunctional upper-class Mexican family that owns a prestigious floristry shop and a struggling cabaret, both called 'The House of Flowers'. The series, almost entirely written and directed by its creator, stars Verónica Castro, Cecilia Suárez, Aislinn Derbez, Darío Yazbek Bernal, Arturo Ríos, Paco León, Juan Pablo Medina, Luis de la Rosa, María León, and Isela Vega.

Polo Ondegardo was a Spanish colonial jurist, civil servant, businessman and thinker who proposed an intellectual and political vision of profound influence in the earliest troubled stage of the contact between the Hispanic and the American Indigenous world. He was born in Valladolid, when the city was the capital of the kingdom of Castile, to a prominent noble family that had strong ties to the royal family. He spent his entire adult life in South America in what is now Peru and Bolivia. He was involved in the political and economic management of the Spanish colony and based on his good knowledge of the laws as licenciado (licentiate) acquired a deep knowledge and practical experience of the Native Americans in the southern Andes, being an encomendero, visitador and corregidor in the provinces of Charcas and Cusco. His administrative reports, well known and appreciated by his peers and contemporaries, have had wide repercussions in the field of Andean studies up to the present time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Huachaca</span> 18/19th-century Peruvian Royalist politician and military leader

Antonio Huachaca was a Peruvian indigenous peasant and loyalist of the Spanish Empire who fought for Spain during the Viceregal era, and then for the Royalist cause during and after the Peruvian War of Independence, reaching the rank of brigadier general of the Royal Army of Peru. He later took part in establishing the Peru–Bolivian Confederation, eventually holding the title of "Justice of the Peace and Governor of Carhuaucran District" until the Confederation's dissolution in 1839.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iquicha War of 1839</span> 1839 conflict in South America

The Iquicha War of 1839 was a brief armed conflict during and after the War of the Confederation between the United Restoration Army and indigenous peasants from Huanta who tried to defend the defeated Peru–Bolivian Confederation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miguel Ángel Arrué</span> Chilean footballer and manager (born 1952)

Miguel Ángel Arrué Padilla is a Chilean football manager and former footballer.

Leandra Josefa Victoria Tristán y Flores del Campo was the First Lady of Peru from 1851 to 1855, during her marriage to the President of Peru, José Rufino Echenique. The district of La Victoria in Lima was named in her honor.

<i>A World for Julius</i> (film) 2021 Peruvian film

A World for Julius is a 2021 drama film written, co-produced and directed by Rossana Díaz Costa. The film is based on the homonymous book by the author Alfredo Bryce Echenique.

References

  1. "Alfredo Bryce Echenique". Britannica Biographies. 2024. Retrieved 25 December 2024 via EBSCOhost.