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City at the Center of the World Space History and
Modernity in Quito 1st Edition Ernesto Capello Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Ernesto Capello
ISBN(s): 9780822977438, 0822977435
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 2.96 MB
Year: 2011
Language: english
City at the Center of the World
Pitt Latin American Series
John Charles Chasteen and Catherine M. Conaghan, Editors
City at the Center of the World
Space, History, and Modernity in Quito

Ernesto Capello

University of Pittsburgh Press

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2011, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6166-6

ISBN 10: 0-8229-6166-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Capello, Ernesto.
City at the center of the world : space, history, and modernity in Quito / Ernesto Capello.
p. cm. — (Pitt Latin American studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-6166-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8229-6166-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Quito (Ecuador)—History. 2. Quito (Ecuador)—Population. 3. Quito (Ecuador)—
Historiography—Social aspects. 4. Collective memory—Ecuador—Quito. 5. Historic
preservation—Ecuador—Quito—History. 6. Place (Philosophy) I. Title.
F3781.3.C37 2011
986.6’13—dc23 2011021269
 Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix
Prelude xiii

Chapter 1. The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism 1

Chapter 2. Mapping the Center of the World 24
Chapter 3. Hispanismo: Site, Heritage, Memory 61
Chapter 4. Governance and the Sovereign Cabildo 85
Chapter 5. The Durini Cosmopolis: Crafting a Hyphenated
Vernacular Architecture 115
Chapter 6. A Phantasmagoric Dystopia 147
Chapter 7. Santa Clara de San Millán: The Politics of
Indigenous Genealogy 179

Postscript 211
Notes 219
Selected Bibliography 263
Index 283
 Illustrations

0.1 Guillermo Illescas, “Untitled” (c. early 1920s) xv

1.1 Las Colonias Promenade, Guayaquil 2
1.2 Las Peñas, Guayaquil 2
1.3 San Francisco Convent, Quito 3
1.4 Surroundings of Quito 3
1.5 Alameda Park, Quito (c. 1900) 13
2.1 Charles Marie de La Condamine, detail of Plan de Quito (1751) 30
2.2 Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Plano de la ciudad de
San Francisco de Quito (1748) 31
2.3 J. Gualberto Pérez, Plano de Quito con los planos de
todas sus casas por J. Gualberto Pérez (1888) 35
2.4 H. G. Higley, Quito en 1903 (1903) 39
2.5 Paul Loiseau-Rousseau, Geodesic Monument, Alameda
Park, Quito 42
2.6 J. Gualberto Pérez, detail of Quito actual y del porvenir (1912) 43
2.7 Detail, Plano de la ciudad de Quito para los trabajos del
Censo (1921) 47
viii \ Illustrations

2.8 Luis Herrera and Ezequiel Rivadeneira, mid-range detail

of Plano de la ciudad de Quito levantado (1922) 49
2.9 Luis Herrera and Ezequiel Rivadeneira, close-range detail
of Plano de la ciudad de Quito (1922) 50
2.10 Froilán Holguín Balcázar, Plano indicador de Quito (1935) 55
2.11 Charles Marie de La Condamine, Plan Profil et Élévation
des deux Pyramides 56
2.12 Servicio Geográfico Militar, detail (photograph of
monument, lower left) from Plano de la ciudad de Quito
(April 1946) 57
3.1 Façade of San Francisco, Quito 74
3.2 Western façade of the royal monastery of El Escorial, Spain 75
3.3 Cover, from Gaceta Municipal (August 28, 1934) 79
3.4 "Bit of Spain in South America," from New York World
Telegram 83
5.1 Pasaje Royal, Quito (early 1920s) 116
5.2 Lorenzo Durini, San José National Theater, stairwell (1897) 123
5.3 Commemorative photo of the Plaza de la Indepen- 126
dencia (1906)
5.4 Detail of commemorative photo of the Plaza de la Indepen- 127
dencia on the occasion of the centennial celebrations (1909)
5.5 Pedro Durini on an Andean polo pony 131
5.6 Pedro Durini, Larrea Mausoleum (1908) 132
5.7 Francisco Durini, Círculo Militar under construction (1920s) 138
5.8 Francisco Durini, Banco del Pichincha (1920s) 140
5.9 Francisco Durini, Gemma Durini House (1940s) 142
5.10 Francisco Durini, Villa Villagómez (1932; restoration, 2007) 143
6.1 Guillermo Latorre, “Nuestros historiógrafos. Sr. de
Gangotena de Cristóbal de Jijón,” from Caricatura (February
29, 1920) 158
6.2 Guillermo Latorre, cover for Pablo Palacio's novel
Débora (1927) 161
6.3 Kanela, back cover art for Débora 162
7.1 Map of Rosaspamba, Cataloma, and Lomagorda 188
 Acknowledgments

This book owes much to the suggestions, advice, and support of numerous
people, each of whom deserves recognition. I have been fortunate to have been
mentored by extraordinary teachers, beginning at Academia Cotopaxi in Quito,
where Arthur Pontes and Eric Little first awoke my interest in history and
Matthew Szweda and the late Buddy Burniske taught me the value of clear prose
and analytical thinking. At Vassar College, David Schalk and the late Hsi-Huey
Liang inspired me to pursue graduate work while Leslie Offutt reintroduced me
to Latin America and has proved a tireless advocate and true friend over the
years. I especially thank Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, with whom I first discussed
this project over a rambling walk through Austin, Texas, that ended with empty
coffee cups and a host of fascinating thoughts to be digested. He has continued
to be a source of inspiration, a dedicated advocate, and strategic contrarian
throughout the many phases of the book’s development. I wish to also thank
several other mentors, including Jonathan Brown, Ginny Burnett, Jay Byron,
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Shane Davies, Susan Deans-Smith, Gary Dibble,
Henry Dietz, Seth Garfield, Aline Helg, Peter Jelavich, Christopher Leff, Mitch
Miller, Michael Murray, and the late Donald Olsen.
x \ Acknowledgments

The book has also benefited from the invaluable advice of a number
of colleagues in Ecuador and the United States. Guillermo Bustos of the
Universidad Andina in Quito proved an invaluable guide as I first began to
explore Quito’s archives, while Valeria Coronel and Eduardo Kingman of
the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) have been
instrumental in shaping my understanding of Quiteño and Ecuadorian history.
Chad Black was a comrade in arms throughout my research and made critical
methodological suggestions that first helped me consider the possibility of
bridging the colonial and national periods. Nancy Appelbaum, Marc Becker,
Lina del Castilo, Consuelo Figueroa, and the late Thelma Foote have read
and commented extensively on drafts of chapters for which I thank them.
My writing group partners Pablo Bose, Margo Thomson, John Waldron, and
especially Ignacio López-Vicuña deserve special recognition. Other valuable
suggestions for contextualizing this study within Ecuadorian historiography
have come from Xavier Andrade, Christiana Borchardt de Moreno, Kim Clark,
Peter Henderson, Ana María Goetschel, Mercedes Prieto, Juan Ramos, Betty
Salazar, Mireya Salgado, and Kate Swanson. I wrote the first draft of this book
in New York where Pablo Piccato not only facilitated library access at Columbia
University but was also a creative listener and friend, while Elaine Carey, Brenda
Elsey, Thom Rath, Christoph Rosenmuller, and Mauricio Borrero provided
intellectual camaraderie during my tenure in the city. My colleagues in the
history departments of the University of Vermont and at Macalester College
fostered a collegial working environment and also provided critical feedback
in writing workshops. I particularly thank Erik Esselstrom, Sean Field, Jim
Overfield, Amani Whitfield, and Denise Youngblood at the University of
Vermont and Lynn Hudson, Jamie Monson, and Peter Rachleff at Macalester
College. I also thank Ramón Rivera-Servera for his ongoing friendship and for
his advice at a crucial moment in the project’s development.
This book would not have been possible without much financial and
institutional support. Vassar College granted me a Dorothy Evans Fellowship
for alumni graduate study while the history department at the University
of Texas at Austin provided me with a University Fellowship and a Perry
Castañeda Fellowship. My research in Ecuador was funded with the support
of a Fulbright IIE Fellowship and facilitated by the impressive individuals who
ran the Fulbright Commission, including former director Susana Cabeza de
Vaca, Ana Lucia Córdoba, Elena Durango, Karen Aguilar, and Mariangela
García. The Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar and the FLACSO in Quito
provided institutional support while a critical post-doctoral research trip was
funded by the Dean’s Fund at the University of Vermont. I wish to thank Mary
Helen Quinn, Marilyn Lehman, Anna Marie Manuzza, Kathy Carolin, Kathy
Truax, and Herta Pitman for their administrative support as well as the scores
of student workers in Austin, Queens, Burlington, and Saint Paul who have
 Acknowledgments / xi

photocopied, scanned, bound, and otherwise supported this book in manuscript

form, especially Luisa Aya and Ina Rojnic for their help with the index.
Multiple archivists, librarians, and private individuals facilitated access to
the sources that shaped this book. At the Archivo Nacional del Ecuador, I thank
Grecia Vasco Escudero and Margarita Tufiño. At the Archivo Metropolitano de
Quito, I thank Dr. Jorge Salvador Lara, Diego Chiriboga, and Marco Carrera.
At the Biblioteca Ecuatoriana “Aurelio Espinosa Pólit” in Cotocollao, I thank
its former director, R.P. José Ayerve, who was gracious enough to allow archival
access despite the library’s closure and also Orlando Bracho. I thank George
Weingard, who introduced me to Pedro Durini, who has been extremely
generous by not only agreeing to participate in an oral history but also facilitated
access to the Durini Collection at the Museo de la Ciudad. Ximena Endara and
Andrea Moreno made my working in the Durini archives a pleasure despite the
collection not yet being fully catalogued. I thank Gloria Gangotena de Montufar
and Carlos Freile for their help in accessing the Cristobal Gangotena y Jijón
papers at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. Perhaps no single archivist
has been more helpful than José Vera Vera at the Fondo Jijón y Caamaño of the
Banco Central del Ecuador. I wish to also acknowledge the entire staff of the
Banco Central libraries, especially Honorio Granja, and of the Biblioteca de la
Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, the Biblioteca de la Pontificia Universidad
Católica del Ecuador, the Benson Collection of the University of Texas Libraries,
the New York Public Library, the Columbia University Libraries, the St. John’s
University Library, the University of Minnesota Libraries, and the Library of
Congress, especially Ginny Mason who gave me a behind the scenes glance at
the library’s map collection. I wish to particularly thank the staff of the Bailey-
Howe Library at the University of Vermont and the DeWitt Wallace Library at
Macalester College, especially the inter-library loan staff.
I must also highlight the extraordinary support that I have received from
the University of Pittsburgh Press. I must first thank the Pitt Latin America
Series editors, John Chasteen and Catherine Conaghan, for their enthusiasm
for the manuscript and also John Beverley for his early interest in my work. The
professionalism of the staff at the press has made a complex process incredibly
smooth. Special recognition is due to Josh Shanholtzer for his championing
of the project and his levelheaded advice over the past two years. I also thank
Maureen Cremer Bemko and Deborah Meade for their copyediting advice, Ann
Walston for her striking cover design, and also David Baumann, Maria Sticco,
and especially Alex Wolfe. I am particularly grateful to the two anonymous
reviewers whose suggestions strongly improved the final manuscript and to Kris
Lane and Mark Overmyer-Velasquez for their comments.
Writing is in many ways a social enterprise. I particularly thank my friends
and colleagues Ellen Arnold, Emily Berquist, James and Kavita Bhandary-
Alexander, Karl and Brienne Brown, Daniel Bryan, Amanda Ciafone and Dan
xii \ Acknowledgments

Gilbert, Paul Deslandes, Jeremy Drosin, Jordana Dym, Lauren Fichtel, Mary
Ellen Fieweger, Moya Foley, Sally Franklin, Juan García, Aldo García-Guevara,
Larry Gutman, Chris and Vicki Hartman, Dan Haworth, Bryen Jordan, Anna
Labykina, Pepo Lapaz, Jeffrey Leib, Jason Lowery, Johanna Maron and Ned
Schodek, Abby McGowan, Terence Murren, Lara Nielsen, the Ortman family,
Mick Ritter, Jeremy Smerd, Leo Sotomayor, Clay Steinman, Mark Stoler,
Patrick Timmons, Julio Vargas, Luis Vivanco, Alex Zakaras, and Frank Zelko. I
also wish to thank my family, especially Carol Boland, Hazel and Ernie Boland,
Napo Capelo, Bernice and E. G. Conklin, Carol and Alan Perlmeter, Jessica
Perlmeter and Anthony Cochrane, Lillian and Jack Perlmeter, and Nancy
Sullivan and Michael Apicelli. My grandparents Cristina and Alejandrino
Capello were among the thousands of midcentury provincial migrants to Quito,
and their memory was always an inspiration. My sisters, Cristina and Emily
Capello, have been comrades and intellectual combatants for so many years,
and I thank them for their emotional support and their caustic humor. I wish
to thank my parents, the late Jorge Capello and Kathy Boland Capello, for that
foundational decision to raise their children binationally, for their love and
encouragement, and especially for ensuring that there were always books upon
the table, even in lean times.
Finally, I wish to express my love, gratitude, and admiration for Rachel
Perlmeter. Not only did she first suggest that I might enjoy exploring Quito’s
history, but she has also discussed, read, edited, re-read, and re-edited every
word of the dozens of papers, articles, and manuscripts that have culminated in
this book. She has patiently endured nightly writing woes, clarified convoluted
syntax, and known when to encourage my more fanciful ideas and when to let
them dissipate. She is simply the most beautiful, stimulating, and dedicated
person I have ever known.
 Prelude

On the afternoon of Friday, December 6, 2002, at the Plaza de Toros on

Quito’s upper-class north side, approximately eighty people gathered to protest
bullfights celebrating the anniversary of the Spanish founding of the city. 1 The
carnivalesque spectacle, dubbed “Kito Anti-Taurino,” wove among a reveling
crowd that was rife with Iberian textures—flat-brimmed sombreros, gaily
patterned ponchos, and wineskins brought out for the holiday. The protesters
unfurled banners challenging the Eurocentric festivities by proclaiming the
pre-Columbian origin of the city with a banner on which a broad black line
slashed through “1534,” the year when conquistador Sebastián de Benalcázar
first arrived in the equatorial valley. Ribald clowns with painted faces satirized
the ritual violence of the bullfight, using juggling pins to stand in for the beasts’
horns and the matadors’ sabers while denouncing the “bloodthirsty” practice
as antithetical to the deep Andean “respect for life and nature.” In the midst of
the cacophony, a storm of flyers and broadsides took the battle to an ontological
level, arguing that the word Quitu stemmed from an ancient Shyri Indian term
meaning “center of the world.”
Seventy-six years earlier, on May 29, 1936—another Friday—the upper

xiii
xiv \ Prelude

echelon of Quito’s diplomatic and administrative corps had gathered near the
small town of San Antonio de Pichincha, twenty-seven kilometers north of
the Ecuadorian capital. The dusty desert landscape contrasted sharply with
the elegant coattails and stovepipe hats of these luminaries, whose presence
graced a site where eighteenth-century French geographer Charles Marie de La
Condamine had erected a commemorative pyramid, destroyed in 1747 by order
of the Spanish Crown due to its inclusion of the French fleur-de-lis. Flanked by
mustachioed French colonel Georges Perrier, acting president and sometimes
dictator Federico Páez dedicated a new monument, based upon the original,
to celebrate the bicentennial of the original mission. Designed by Luis Tufiño,
military cartographer and director of the National Observatory, the monument
site would become a tourist complex known as the Mitad del Mundo (meaning
middle or center of the world) and a key component in the development of a
regional tourist industry trading upon the capital’s equatorial location.
The previous decade, amateur photographer Guillermo Illescas documented
the Chimbacalle train station in Quito’s southern environs (fig. 0.1). One of
his photographs, most likely posed, is dominated by the outward gaze of a
hardened indigenous man who sits on the curb with bare feet outstretched while
he carefully clutches a crust of bread in his right hand, which is cradled in his
left, as one might receive Communion. The broad brim of his coarse white hat
shields his eyes, while a rope emerges from his poncho to advertise his profession
as a porter. Women surround him on either side. The older woman, possibly
his wife, and the young woman, possibly his daughter, bow their heads as they
reach for items from the gunnysacks at their feet while a young boy in a floppy
black hat pleads for a morsel from the girl, presumably his mother. Behind the
family stand representatives of the city’s motley population—an elderly beggar
woman hiding under a crumpled fedora, two chalina-clad girls chatting over
bags of produce, and a light-skinned dandy. This last figure completes Illescas’s
critique of the city’s stagnant inequality; the man’s three-piece suit, walking
stick, cigarette holder, and apparent pomposity desperately contradict the
poverty-stricken scene at his feet. He is a symbol of fashionable modernity in
an unchanging society.
The porter and his family, however, also participate as active agents in the
city’s shifting modern pulse by virtue of their engagement with the loading
and unloading of train cars at a railroad station, a little more than a decade
old, which connected Quito to the port of Guayaquil and thus to the world
economy. The photographer’s vision of history belies this dynamism and
accentuates stagnation, a stance contradicted by the lived experience of his
subject (the porter). This rhetorical (re)production of tradition pregnant with
social denunciations itself corresponds to tropes advocated not only by Illescas
but also, increasingly, by other activists skeptical of the tenets of modernization
and progress trumpeted by elites and state builders. Yet the construct itself also
exists as simulacrum in a city far from the global core.
 Prelude / xv

Fig. 0.1. Guillermo Illescas, “Untitled” (c. early 1920s). Courtesy Archivo Histórico, Banco Cen-
tral del Ecuador.

These three images suggest the resilience and contestation surrounding

a trope identifying Quito as the center of the world, a conceit with multiple
definitions and a complex development that this book seeks to unravel and
trace. In particular, I explore a series of manipulations of Quito’s history
that crystallized between the 1880s and the 1940s, a period of explosive
modernization, social upheaval, and demographic growth that paradoxically
coincided with efforts to preserve the city’s colonial core and to develop a vibrant
tourist economy based on the capital’s historical legacy. As the seemingly
solid firmament of a long stagnant city disappeared, quiteños needed to find a
definable history, one that would be a psychic anchor and also serve as a spatial
framework for engaging a shifting cityscape.
A seminal moment occurred in the wake of the 1895 Liberal Revolution,
which traditionally has been interpreted as a signal of the rising power of
Ecuador’s coastal planter elite, concentrated in the great port of Guayaquil, at
the expense of the highland aristocracy, whose fortunes had long been linked to
Quito’s political and economic hegemony. Of particular importance were radical
reforms that challenged corporate privileges, sponsored public works, and
committed to the secularization of the state. This interpretation prioritizes an
essential political-economic analysis highlighting the nation’s expanding access
to global markets and national integration, especially after the completion of a
railroad between the two cities in 1908. However, because the Liberal Revolution
occurred as part of a continuum of positivist reformism across the nineteenth
century, it should not be a central focus. Moreover, the traditional dynamics that
xvi \ Prelude

operated among various elements of society did not prevent change but instead
were essentially generative, enabling individuals and collectives from across
sociopolitical hierarchies to position themselves in a global and increasingly
local marketplace where history could serve as both resource and political tool.
By embracing and peddling visions of the city as museum, as phantasmagoria,
or as allegorical repository of universal Catholicism, these groups, institutions,
families, and communities defined and created a Quito responding to and
rooted in a “historic” identity.
These constructions represented modern inventions, to be sure, but not
solely of the state-driven form of nationalist political theater tied to official
pageantry and invented holidays described by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
Ranger, though these certainly played a part. 2 Instead, the reinventions of
Quito’s colonial past represent dialogical processes involving re-encounters
with tenets sometimes centuries old or only generations removed from their
origin. The actors most involved in these discursive formulations primarily
came from the city’s traditional elite but also included shifting constellations of
individuals, families, migrants, and even indigenous communities well aware
of the power inherent in controlling history. These salient re-imaginings of the
city’s past thus demonstrate not only the role of tradition as a generating force in
quiteño modernity but also the dynamism and resilience of an urban population
contending with radical change.3
The series of lenses I use to examine this dialogical process are determined
by particular narrative configurations of space and time, or what the Russian
critic Mikhail Bakhtin calls the chronotope (literally, space-time). 4 Bakhtin
argues that chronotopes determine the scope and style of a given literary genre
by codifying a means of apprehending and moving through space within a
temporal trajectory. For example, classical adventure myths feature a hero
traversing multiple landscapes with little attention to a realistic chronology
while folktales depend on the irruption of idyllic quietude by the carnivalesque
presence of rogues, fools, or buffoons. He adds that these genres concretize
social relations by virtue of their repetition, in a manner reminiscent of Maurice
Halbwachs’s views of collective memory.5 Like Bakhtin, Halbwachs argues that
a group framed by shared encounters depends upon constant (re)affirmation
of their collective memories, languages, and codes. Only through reiteration
can the collective continue to exist. This process depends on proximity, regular
engagement, codifiable terminology, common locales, and dialogue. Memory
thus becomes spatial and tangible in its formulation but also contingent upon a
discursive and dialogical process.
During the fin-de-siglo, Quito became the site and the backdrop to the
creation of a number of groups whose articulation as communities helped
determine the shape and character of their city, just as they were themselves
constructed by their environment. This study addresses the crystallization of
six major chronotopes, that is, six critical acts of comprehending, constructing,
 Prelude / xvii

and explaining Quito’s urban milieu that would prove to be of lasting cultural
and social import.6 Each resonates with ancient meaning yet crystallized in the
specific historical age associated with the city’s twentieth-century upheaval.
The book suggests that each chronotope placed the historical experience of
a particular group of individual and collective actors at the center of a global
metanarrative.7 The selective deployment of these collective mythologies
accentuated the power, economic strength, and versatility of the groups in
question, which include elite Hispanist intellectuals, military cartographers,
the members of an indigenous commune, and a family of immigrant Swiss-
Italian architects. From these various positions, each group claimed the right
to reinvent Quito’s geographic form and history on its own terms. By tracing
each chronotope’s origins and reflecting upon their contemporary resonance,
the book reveals how the plasticity of history and memory has (re)shaped the
spatial and cultural landscape of the city to the present day.
My exploration begins with a chapter providing a panoramic view of
Quito’s fin-de-siglo history that seeks to locate this moment within the context
of extended regionalist discourses. Citizenship (vecindad) in colonial Spanish
America associated local urban identity with belonging to a universal corpus
such as the Spanish nation or the Catholic Church.8 I locate the crucial nature
of regionalist politics and poetics in Ecuador’s postcolonial history as an
outgrowth of this bifurcated formulation of collective identity. There follows
a broader discussion of the rivalry between Ecuador’s coastal and Andean
regions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I particularly focus
on the degree to which aspirations toward universality colored expressions of
regional identity that were similar to colonial notions of citizenship. Extending
the analysis of Kim Clark, who has argued that the Liberal program in Ecuador
was tinged with metaphors equating the coast with progress and the Andes with
stagnation, I maintain that the Liberal Revolution proponents’ concern with
positivist narratives necessitated a rehabilitated image of Quito as a historic
center.9 The stirrings of nostalgic regionalism as national phenomena marked
the configurations of actors, identities, and spaces that developed in the wake of
Liberal reforms.
I subsequently trace the intellectual and political genealogy that gave rise
to fin-de-siglo attempts by discrete segments of quiteño society to lay claim to
the city’s essential identity by elaborating universalizing chronotopes. I locate
the colonial and nineteenth-century precursors of these totalizing discourses
by following an archaeological approach that acknowledges the internal logic of
each chronotope while underscoring its contingency. The narratives crafted in
the early twentieth century deployed and manipulated these earlier frameworks
yet should be considered manipulations and inventions by specific collectives of
actors seeking to establish footholds of knowledge, power, or economic vitality
within a rapidly modernizing city. I also highlight the traces of chronotope
formation and their continued sociocultural import in the contemporary city.
xviii\ Prelude

Chapters 2 through 4 focus on institutional formulations of Quito as a

historic center ripe for tourism developed by state organizations whose interests
at times coalesced with those of other establishment actors but just as frequently
diverged. The state did not act monolithically in constituting Quito as a city of
memory but instead operated from a confluence of impulses framed by internal
organizational logics.
Chapter 2 traces the historic ties between cartographic production and the
metaphorical construction of Quito as the mitad del mundo. Colonial imagery
depicted Quito as a new Rome, and an eighteenth-century Franco-Hispanic
mission to measure the arc of the nearby equatorial meridian broadened global
scientific interest in the equatorial Andean province. The allegory linking
Quito’s geographic and scientific centrality continued to flourish during
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The process of local cartographic
production ultimately became institutionalized within the Military Geographic
Service (Servicio Geográfico Militar, or SGM), which used mapping to produce
a sanitized vision of Quito’s touristic predilections during the 1920s and 1930s.
Monuments and commemoration have inscribed this chronotope upon the
urban landscape.
One of the primary marketing strategies in the development of this tourist
economy concerned Quito’s renowned colonial architecture. The image of a
city defined by its Iberian heritage was cultivated by conservative intellectuals
seeking to situate Quito within a global movement called Hispanism, which
theorized a common cultural community among Spain and the nations of
Spanish America. Chapter 3 traces the role the National Academy of History
(Academia Nacional de Historia) played in creating a mythologized Spanish
Quito. Allying itself with the municipality, this body succeeded in reifying
the racial power imbalance of the capital while justifying the preservation of
its colonial city center even as modern structures arose in its environs. These
multiple restrictions and the continuing activism of its cultural elite marked
Quito as a potential World Heritage Site, an award bestowed by UNESCO in
1978. It was the first urban center to receive the honor.
The invention of Quito as a Spanish city found a major ally in the municipal
government during the 1930s, largely as a result of the presence of Conservative
activists led by the industrialist and historian Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño and his
successor, Gustavo Mortensen. During that decade, the municipal government
engaged in a series of political skirmishes with the national government over
control of plans for the city’s future development, a battle that pitted national
party leaders against each other as well as local officials. Chapter 4 situates
the conflict as an outgrowth of a century-old tug-of-war between the city
government and the national state. It emphasizes the impact of this struggle
on urban planning measures between the rise of the Progressive Party at
the national level, in 1885, and the adoption of the city’s first master plan, in
1942. I argue that the success of the conservative municipality built upon its
 Prelude / xix

administrators’ ability to harness a “neocolonial” decentralization of local

governance nationally while systematically implementing modern measures to
centralize Quito’s sociospatial order at the local level.
Chapters 5 through 7 move from an emphasis on institutional chronotopes
to a focus on individuals, families, and collectives recently incorporated into
the urban fabric. Trading on personal identity and communal history provided
flexibility for groups navigating the unfamiliar contours of the modern city.
These chapters also demarcate strategic manipulations of narratives of personal,
local, national, and global history. Groups that were part of the urban fabric
not only weathered Quito’s challenges but also inverted traditional narratives
by situating their own past at the center of the city’s chronotopical landscape.
Chapter 5 considers the difficulties of traversing the burgeoning real estate
and construction markets that accompanied Quito’s demographic boom
from the perspective of the Durini family, recent Swiss-Italian immigrants
who established the city’s premier architectural firm. Extensive research in
the hitherto unavailable Durini business archives reveals a family deploying
its cosmopolitan heritage and training in order to establish itself in what was
originally a relatively “provincial” design market. I argue that the family’s
sensitivity to their elite clients’ desire for modern sophistication helped the
firm rise to the pinnacle of the profession, in the process creating a hyphenated
vernacular architecture peculiar to the family’s adopted city yet reflecting
international norms and styles.
Chapter 6 features another series of migrants—a cadre of provincial
intellectuals linked by a common antipathy to the mythology of Quito’s
traditionalist image—that figures into rising hopes for a revolutionary city.
Their denunciations of traditional views of Quito originated in nineteenth-
century liberalism and were elaborated in the ascetic novels written by socialist
nationalists and indigenistas during the 1930s. I compare these published portraits
to the transcendental imaginaries of the avant-garde, whose ambivalence about
the city’s present colored their equally bemused view of its future potential
and begged the question as to whether modernity had ever visited the ancient
Andean citadel.
These denunciations attempted to decenter the protagonistic role ascribed
to the capital in institutional historiography, partly by developing narratives
featuring elite exploitation of rural populations and incoming migrants.
However, they did not incorporate the voices of indigenous peoples themselves,
whose engagement with the discourses of Quito’s historicity is the subject of
chapter 7. This chapter traces the development of a chronotope of indigenous
autonomy with an emphasis on the community of Santa Clara de San Millán,
in Quito’s northern environs, whose struggle with the municipality over
communal landholdings had begun soon after the Conquest. Using civil court
cases, notary documents, and the community council’s minutes, I argue that
Santa Clara exploited the political and economic opportunity afforded by urban
xx \ Prelude

incorporation while simultaneously manipulating land histories and communal

genealogy to sustain both a measure of autonomy and relative internal stability.
My discussion of these parallel chronotopical narratives challenges the
traditional historiography of Quito, which has largely considered this moment
as a lynchpin in the development of modern class identity. The important
works of Lucas Achig and Fernando Carrión, for instance, build on Manuel
Castells’s influential observation that the modernization of urban form and
construction of monumental avenues à la the Champs-Elysées in the fin-de-siglo
Latin American city demarcated zones of elite hegemony and limited subaltern
access to the centers of power.10 Others, including Guillermo Bustos, Milton
Luna, and Manuel Espinosa Apolo, have extended this analysis to questions of
cultural or racial identity, again subordinated to class.11 While my study does
not contradict these authors’ conclusions that race and class severely constrained
an individual’s social possibilities, it does suggest that corporate identity
was extremely fluid and multivocal. As such, this work has more in common
with Eduardo Kingman’s exhaustive study of urban hygiene that attempts
to situate Quito’s spatial alterations between 1860 and 1940 as outgrowths of
shifting elite visions of the urban polis, in which the identification of place
with class is paramount.12 However, it also questions the continued support
Kingman displays for Castells’s basic presupposition of collusion among elites
and intellectuals hoping to prove their “modern” credentials through urban
planning.13 I maintain that nothing could be further from the truth, as the
upper class exhibited a summarily ambivalent attitude toward a movement that
fundamentally challenged their traditional prerogatives.
This book also seeks to advance a broader understanding of the dialectical
relationship between “tradition” and “progress” in the formation of Latin
American cities. Although early analysts of the urban history of Latin America,
particularly Jorge Hardoy and Richard Morse, attended to cultural resonance
between the colonial and modern cities, the question of the impact of cultural
mores did not receive substantive criticism until the late twentieth century.14
This situation has begun to change; scholars such as Mauricio Tenorio, Marisol
de la Cadena, and Mark Overmyer-Velázquez have highlighted the economic
and political benefits of adopting a “traditionalist” urban imaginary.15 My work
seeks to build upon the insights of these studies by demonstrating the degree to
which “history” proved a tradable commodity that provided a pliable blueprint
for the construction of modern Quito. I thus hope to illuminate the degree to
which even a quaint polis, sometimes thought of as “backward” and “isolated,”
reframed the paradigms of modernity and established its right to be considered
not only a global capital but, indeed, the city at the center of the world.16
City at the Center of the World
 Chapter 1

The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

In 1935, as part of an early attempt to develop a tourist economy in Ecuador, the

Dirección General de Propaganda y Turismo issued a series of picture postcards
designed to advertise the country’s charms to the world at large. Printed in Italy
by the Instituto Geográfico de Agostini, the series was available in sepia, blue,
or green and sold as sets as well as individually.
The pictures on the fifty postcards are equally divided among images of
the coastal and Andean regions of the country, with two landscapes from each
area and twenty-three shots of each of the country’s two largest cities, Quito
and Guayaquil, indicating the importance of these two urban centers. Perhaps
more revealing of the cities’ importance is the rhetorical schema developed
throughout the collection. Of the twenty-three Guayaquil postcards, twenty-
two feature twentieth-century construction (parks, promenades, and statues of
prominent independence heroes) while the twenty-third features a bare-chested
young man rowing a traditional dugout canoe by moonlight down the Guayas
River. Of the twenty-three Quito postcards, one duly features a poncho-clad
indigenous boy herding sheep in the woods of Itchimbia in the eastern environs
of the city. Three demonstrate the new building of the Central University (an

1
2 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

Fig. 1.1. Las Colonias Promenade, Guayaquil. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photo-
graphs Division, lot 2779.

Fig. 1.2. Las Peñas, Guayaquil. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
lot 2779.

institution dating to 1651), while the remaining nineteen feature colonial-era

churches.
Taken as a set, the postcards serve as a panoramic performance of regional
stereotypes. Guayaquil is offered to the modern tourist eager to stroll along a
promenade with lovely young girls in spring dresses (fig. 1.1) and represented
by a gallant, imported from impressionist Argenteuil, who prepares to launch a
yacht at the “tourist paradise” of Las Peñas (fig. 1.2). Quito, meanwhile, seems
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 3

Fig. 1.3. San Francisco Convent, Quito. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, lot 2779.

Fig. 1.4. Surroundings of Quito. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
lot 2779.

more like a museum to be admired by the connoisseur of baroque antiquity,

adorned as it is by sumptuous colonnades, majestic interior courtyards, priests
(fig. 1.3), and, if one passes into the countryside, picturesque Indians (fig. 1.4).
The postcards offer an impression of bifurcation, one that equates Guayaquil
with modernity and Quito with tradition.
While this binary stems partially from each town’s architectural record (old
Guayaquil having been largely destroyed in an 1896 fire and Quito boasting one
4 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

Table 1.1 Ministry of Tourism sample postcards and captions

No. City Image title Postcard caption*

1 Guayaquil Las Colonias Visit Ecuador, that welcomes you.

Promenade Enjoy the modern conveniences of our
cities.
4 Guayaquil Bolivar Park The favorable money exchange makes
Ecuador one of the most inexpensive
Tourist Countries to visit. The rate of
exchange is stabilized at 15 sucres per
dollar.
10 Quito Façade–La Visit Ecuador, land of history and
Compañía tradition, land of ancient and colonial
art. See the celebrated churches of San
Francisco, La Compañía, La Merced.
25 Itchimbia Surroundings Visit Ecuador, let her enchant you with
of Quito her clear sky and pleasant climates,
with her abundant curative waters and
with her many and luscious fruits.
*The captions are the original translations on the postcards.
Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, lot 2779.

of the best preserved colonial centers in South America), the rhetoric also exhib-
its a more deliberate plan to capitalize on a denial of coevalness.1 The postcard
text, presented in both English and Spanish on the back of each card, crystal-
lizes this schematic (table 1.1). Guayaquil is framed as a favorable business zone,
with contemporary architecture and cultivated urban green space, where one
receives the “modern conveniences of our cities” and “the favorable currency
exchange rate . . . at 15 sucres per dollar.” The majesty of Quito, on the other
hand, signifies the “land of history and tradition, land of ancient and colonial
art” where one can “see the celebrated churches of San Francisco, La Compañía,
La Merced.”
This presentation of Guayaquil and Quito as the symbolic, political, eco-
nomic, and social engineers of regional identities by no means expressed the
contemporary or, worse, the historical situation of Ecuadorian regionalism.
Instead, it displays a particularly banal attempt to profit from conventions that,
by the 1930s, had become commonplace in a country that had long sought to
overcome the economic and political rivalry of these two centers. These rivalries
arose in the politics and poetics of regionalism from the colonial period into the
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 5

early twentieth century. In the complex relationship between locality, collective

identity, and citizenship, there existed a process whereby a multipolar colony
dominated by the Quito marketplace became transformed, at least officially,
into a biregional nation coalescing around the poles of Quito and Guayaquil.
It was this process that necessitated the disputation of Quito’s past and that
was itself informed by that competition to control the city’s frame. Embracing
the identification of the city with a now mythologized past made it possible to
challenge Guayaquil’s preeminence as a national site of modernity. Indeed, this
potentiality allowed Quito to claim a global signification dating back to the six-
teenth century—a history that could propel the city toward future glories.

Quito as Colonial Capital

The history of regionalism in Ecuador rests on a firm foundation linking ur-

ban spaces with citizenship—a system with roots in the colonial era. Beginning
in 1501, with Queen Isabella’s presentation of detailed instructions to Nicolás
de Ovando regarding the design of Santo Domingo, centrally planned urban
settlements became the administrative, commercial, and military cornerstones
of Spanish rule over a vast rural hinterland. These ideal cities were character-
ized by the use of a grid plan strongly influenced by Leon Battista Alberti’s trea-
tises on urban form, and, as such, they represented the pinnacle of Renaissance
modernity. Beyond the grid, the Spanish American city instituted a particular
social model based on proximity to the urban center. At the core lay a plaza that
determined the hieratic and civic center, characterized by the presence of the ca-
bildo, or municipal council, as well as a church. The surrounding blocks housed
the chief citizens, or vecinos, followed by merchants, artisans, and mestizos. The
schematic terminated with poor neighborhoods that abutted semi-autonomous
indigenous parishes or towns (pueblos de indios) in the nearby environs, the resi-
dents of which would labor for their European overlords but ideally remain in
their own (rural) sphere. Towns and cities were arranged in an interlocking net-
work, with small towns overseeing the surrounding countryside, larger centers
administering the small towns, and so on, up through the viceregal capitals,
which answered directly to the Crown.
This spatial map delineated not only the imperial bureaucracy but also a
crystallized consideration of citizenship, or vecindad. This Castilian concept
built upon a complex matrix of legal and extralegal codes that determined
one’s standing in a community according to a set of norms seldom defined but
generally understood. Establishing vecindad necessitated verifying customary
characteristics such as Catholicism, masculinity, and the intention to reside in
a community. Such norms proved flexible enough for foreigners to apply for
and achieve vecino status and had proven enormously effective during the Re-
6 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

conquista’s purging of Moorish and Jewish populations. Similar civic structures

were instituted in the Americas but were soon altered due to shifting circum-
stances—for instance, residence requirements diminished in importance in
areas that had been settled by Europeans for only a short time. Instead, racial
and at times economic distinctions between vecinos became established, even as
kinship networks continued to link individuals across regions according to their
common origins in Europe.2
The structural importance of locating one’s belonging in a community of
vecinos in a particular city first and extending that membership to one’s place in
a national (Spanish) or universal (Catholic) corpus nevertheless shaped Spanish
American considerations of vecindad. At times, these sentiments became mani-
fest in panegyrics establishing what Richard Kagan has termed “communicen-
tric” representations of urban communities. These were expressions of belong-
ing in which individuals and corporations qualified the particular characteris-
tics that denoted membership in their community of urban dwellers. Examples
include patron saints (of which Mexico City’s Virgin of Guadalupe is the best
known), urban views featuring prominent citizens, allegorical landscapes, and
illustrations of leading economic enterprises such as Potosí’s silver mines.3 Such
images are ancestors of the peculiar depictions of Quito that would be adopted
and reimagined during the fin de siglo. This is particularly true of the Hispan-
ist ones, which directly referenced the colonial heritage in promoting Quito’s
hidebound character.
The geography of a colonial Spanish American city thus established radiat-
ing categories of power and belonging according to spatial, racial, and aesthetic
segregation. While this ideal pattern was easily sketched on paper and zealously
guarded in newly built centers such as Lima, it was increasingly difficult to ad-
minister in areas with existing indigenous populations.4
Quito’s history serves as a case in point. As a northern Incaic stronghold and
the birthplace of the emperor Atahualpa, the Andean citadel of Quito attracted
the attention of conquistadors in the midst of the wars of the Conquest. One of
Pizarro’s original partners, Diego de Almagro, established a charter for the city
in August 1534 soon after decisively defeating Atahualpa’s lieutenant, Rumiña-
hui, near present-day Riobamba in central Ecuador. Almagro’s envoy, Sebastián
de Benalcázar, entered Quito on December 6, too late to save its legendary trea-
sures and the grand imperial palaces from the blaze set by the retreating Incan
armies. The conquistador drew the first traza, or central grid, among the ashes
and consecrated the city to Saint Francis. Despite the monumental possibilities
of developing the great Añaquito plains to the north, Benalcázar emulated his
Incan forebears by exploiting the military advantages of the steep hills, deep
ravines, and narrow approach of the original site. A substantial quantity of raw
material for construction also lay among the ruins of the old city. The Francis-
can monastery that began to rise in 1535, for instance, incorporated the remains
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 7

of the great Incaic Temple of the Sun, which had made the city the most splen-
did in the northern Andes. Thus, from the start, colonial Quito existed as a
hybrid space where various elements competed for predominance.
The uneven topography and existing population also altered the spatial and
social map of the new city from the Spanish ideal. The grid morphed to conform
to the rough terrain and was interrupted in numerous places by rushing creeks.
Settlement patterns quickly abandoned the ideal radial structure and instead
adopted a pattern reminiscent of the Incaic upper-half/lower-half dichotomy.
The parish of El Sagrario replaced the “upper” section that had housed the Inca
nobility, the Temple of the Sun, and the palace constructed by Atahualpa’s fa-
ther, Huayna Capac. There, the new symbols of Spanish power congregated,
including the Franciscan monastery, the cabildo, the cathedral, the parish seat,
and elite residences. To the east, downhill, lay the urban parishes of San Sebas-
tián and San Blas, regions that were reserved for indigenous dwellings and that
had previously housed the lower strata of Incaic Quito. Even this socioracial
segregation changed over the course of the seventeenth century as the city grew
to perhaps as many as fifty thousand inhabitants during the height of colonial
power.5 Indigenous households, for example, began to stray westward to the
upper slopes of Mount Pichincha in the parishes of San Roque and Santa Bár-
bara, drawn by the construction of the Franciscan monastery and its artisan
workshops.
A shifting local and regional economy influenced these new settlement pat-
terns. During the sixteenth century, economic development in the Audiencia
of Quito had been dominated by gold mining. Major mines lay at Zaruma, in
the contemporary southwestern province of El Oro, and at Almaguer, near the
northern city of Popayán in present-day Colombia. The Zaruma mines petered
out in the 1590s, and, while Almaguer lasted a few years longer, by the turn of
the century the Audiencia was facing a potentially grave economic crisis. These
economic pressures took on a political dimension because creoles resented the
viceregal imposition of an alcabala, or sales tax, in 1592. This crisis led to the
expulsion of the Audiencia president by a rebellious cabildo, a move that in turn
inspired armed intervention by a viceregal militia and the curtailing of cabildo
autonomy in subsequent decades.6
The region slowly recovered from this crisis after the textile sector began to
expand. Local entrepreneurs embraced the obraje system, in which sweatshops
staffed by indigenous workers produced cheap woolen goods for sale throughout
the Andean empire, as far north as Panama and as far south as Chile. The pio-
neers of this system, such as Chambo-based encomendero (labor grant recipient)
Rodrigo de Ribadeneira, capitalized on their waning access to free indigenous
labor to supply the emerging market at the great silver mines at Potosí, which
had become the engine not only of the Spanish imperial economy during the
late sixteenth century but would also subsidize the expansion of European en-
8 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

terprise into the huge Asian market of that era.7 The success of entrepreneurs
like Ribadeneira gave rise to a series of other obrajes throughout the region, par-
ticularly near the cities of Latacunga, Quito, and Otavalo.
Quito’s expansion in the seventeenth century was partly due to regional
demographic recovery as well as its dual role as an administrative center and
as a marketplace.8 The city’s plazas drew merchants from throughout the An-
dean corridor as well as from the fertile Chillo and Tumbaco valleys to the east,
which also were home to important obrajes. Another increasingly important in-
dustry, the production of religious art, began to develop simultaneously. Quito
had been established as a bishopric in 1545, it became the seat of an Audiencia in
1563, and it soon came to house the regional headquarters for both the regular
and secular clergy. The Franciscans took the lead in training local artisans de-
voted to producing icons, sculpture, and painting.
This process began through the efforts of Friar Jodoco Ricke in the 1540s
and continued with the introduction of a number of sculptors from Seville and
Granada in the late sixteenth century. These trained artisans constructed the
largest religious complex in South America, the San Francisco monastery. Its
8.6 acres included a convent six patios deep (see fig. 1.3). The main façade, a
masterpiece of Spanish American baroque, emulated Juan de Herrera’s majestic
fortress of El Escorial while the interior incorporated subtle indigenous motifs
in gold leaf.9 By the end of the century, Quito’s artwork began to travel—indeed,
the oldest extant American painting is a portrait of three mulatto lords from
the Ecuadorian port of Esmeraldas painted in 1599 by the Quito master Andrés
Sanchez Gallque and sent to Madrid as a gift for Philip II.10
The “Quito school” of polychromatic sculpture exploded during the seven-
teenth century. In addition to the workshops maintained by the Franciscans,
a number of competing concerns arose in connection with the Dominican
monastery on the city’s southeastern edge. The secular clergy and other orders
followed, including Jesuits, Dominicans, and Carmelite nuns, among others.
Their myriad churches helped employ numerous artisans, particularly at the
Jesuits’ convent (1605–1765), which brought the city great renown for its extraor-
dinarily opulent gold leaf adornment of the nave and the retablo. The sculpture
itself traveled the extent of the Audiencia’s jurisdiction and was soon revered
throughout the empire for its delicacy and fine detail.11
Thus, by the seventeenth century, Quito had not only become an economic
and administrative center but had also crafted a regionally renowned reputation
as an artistic haven accentuated by religiosity—a city of God, or even a new
Rome.12 However, the eighteenth century brought a stagnant economy and a
notorious challenge to the city’s cultured image abroad. The latter had arisen
largely due to the Franco-Hispanic Geodesic Mission (1736–1745), a scientific
voyage to measure the arc of the Quito meridian to answer a dispute about the
shape of the Earth.13 The French academician Charles Marie de La Condamine
and the Spaniards Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa subsequently penned ac-
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 9

counts of their travels in the Quito region. La Condamine’s accounts of his cel-
ebrated trek down the Amazon proved an instant success in Europe, not only
because of the exotic nature of the tropical flora and fauna he described but
also because of his vivid emphasis on the barbaric qualities of Quito natives. He
was particularly critical of the indigenous population—with whom he could not
communicate—and also stressed the gory details of a murder he had witnessed
in a public plaza in the southern city of Cuenca.14 Ironically, the geographic
study that was to have firmly placed Quito within the corpus of modern cities
thus served to undermine its claim to a progressive spirit in keeping with con-
temporary European social attitudes.
La Condamine’s critiques represented a major embarrassment to the Quito
elite, who were simultaneously undergoing other troubles due to prolonged eco-
nomic woes occasioned by the severe decline of Potosí mining. The erosion of
the Potosí market made Quito’s obrajes dependent on Lima’s appetite for luxury
textiles. Moreover, a century-long process of administrative reorganization
collectively known as the Bourbon Reforms opened up American ports to non-
Iberian trade for the first time. This restructuring hampered Quito’s textile ex-
ports as a flood of inexpensive, high-grade French cloth undercut its product in
the viceregal capital. While the cheap woolens that were produced in the north-
ern regions of the Audiencia continued to be distributed throughout the rest of
the Viceroyalty of New Granada, under whose jurisdiction the Audiencia had
been placed in 1739, Quito underwent a serious slump. A series of plagues hit
the city in the 1750s, exacerbating its problems. When the viceroyalty attempted
to expand the alcabala on aguardiente—sugarcane liquor—in 1765 following the
decimation of the imperial treasury due to the Seven Years’ War, a widespread
and cross-class rebellion broke out, which anticipated the better-known Tu-
pac Amaru and Tupac Katari uprisings of the 1780s. In addition, the so-called
Rebellion of the Barrios affected relations between urban officials and the sur-
rounding indigenous population.15
Thus, as the colonial era waned, Quito was entering a period of pro-
found crisis. The uncertainty encouraged widespread migration from the tor-
mented city. Those departing represented all classes and races, and the loss of
population virtually froze the city in time as new construction stagnated over
the next century. This mass migration also affected the subsequent growth of
regional conflicts as Cuenca and the port of Guayaquil boomed due to their
embrace of the capitalist possibilities offered by trade deregulation. Cuenca de-
veloped as an important center for quinine harvesting and millinery production
while Guayaquil’s nascent shipbuilding industry fueled the city’s rise as a major
cacao port. The shift in economic and population concentration bred serious
regional competition between the three urban centers over the next century, and
this tension soon became inscribed in cultural and political wars that domi-
nated the nation’s politics and poetics during the nineteenth century.
10 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

Competitive Regionalism in the Nineteenth Century

By the late eighteenth century, the economic and cultural model that had
prevailed in colonial Quito had fallen victim to centrifugal pressure. Local crit-
ics, however, continued to argue for imperial reform rather than structural ad-
justments designed to make the local economy more competitive. Perhaps the
most strident voice was that of quiteño doctor Eugenio Espejo, whose many sa-
tirical writings located the contemporary crisis within the scholastic pedagogy
of the Jesuit population and the limited development of local medicine. The
Quito censors tolerated these works because of imperial antipathy toward the Je-
suits, who were expelled from the empire in 1767, but they reacted quickly when
Espejo turned his attention to Charles III and José de Gálvez, minister of the
Indies, in his polemical tract Retrato de golilla (Portrait of a Magistrate). Arrested
in 1788 and sent to Bogotá, Espejo and his politics became radicalized. On his
return to Quito, he formed the patriotic society Amigos del País, one of several
across South America that agitated for greater local autonomy and the exten-
sion of the franchise to subaltern groups without challenging Catholic religious
dominance.16 Despite his attention to Quito’s particular foibles, however, Espejo
continued to conceive of the crisis as one stemming from imperial decadence in
the face of a global political, pedagogical, and scientific turn.
Meanwhile, regional economic tensions increasingly affected political rela-
tions with the Crown. Guayaquil and Cuenca had been named separate prov-
inces or gobernaciones during the mid-eighteenth century, a designation that gave
them greater control over internal affairs. Despite Cuenca’s larger population,
Guayaquil’s rising cacao trade with New Spain accelerated its status, inspiring a
royal decree that gave the Viceroyalty of Peru authority over the port’s economic
affairs. The indignity of this measure was a key reason Quito became the site
for one of the first resistance juntas in the aftermath of Napoleon’s invasion of
the Iberian Peninsula. Led by the Marques de Selva Alegre, Juan Pío Montufar,
the conspirators behind the junta, proclaimed on August 10, 1809, deposed the
president of the Audiencia, Count Ruiz de Castilla. Their call to the other ju-
risdictions of the Audiencia to join in proclaiming independence was met with
ambivalence in Cuenca, Guayaquil, and Popayán, however, which ensured the
failure of this first movement, the incarceration of the original conspirators, and
their execution in August 1810. A second independence movement erupted in
Quito later that month, led by a now disgruntled Ruiz de Castilla in alliance
with Archbishop Pedro Cuero y Caicedo. Again, the regionalist divide was made
manifest as Guayaquil and Cuenca remained loyalist centers over the next two
years, a situation accentuated by the Viceroyalty of Peru’s formal annexation of
Guayaquil.
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 11

On the eve of independence, therefore, severe regional tension already ex-

isted among the three major districts of what would eventually become Ecua-
dor. The Guayaquil elite only sought to redress their grievances with the capital
after the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814 and his subsequent repudiation
of the liberal Constitution of Cádiz. In 1815, a group of Guayaquil notables,
including the Cádiz delegate and poet José Joaquín de Olmedo, officially peti-
tioned that the district be returned to the jurisdiction of New Granada. Their
request garnered strong support in Quito due to the port’s extensive customs
duties. Despite the Crown’s approval of this measure in 1819, Olmedo and his
fellows broke decisively with the Crown a year later while his cousin, Vicente
Rocafuerte, also a veteran of efforts to establish the Cortes de Cádiz, became a
high-profile diplomatic supporter of Bolívar’s Colombian experiment.17 Access
to Guayaquil granted a foothold to an army led by Bolívar’s lieutenant, Antonio
José de Sucre, who marched up the Andean corridor the following year. On May
24, 1822, he defeated the Spanish garrison in the capital city at the Battle of
Pichincha, formally ending the independence wars in the Audiencia.
Interprovincial strife grew complicated during the short-lived Gran Colom-
bian experiment. Bolívar’s eradication of indigenous tribute threatened the tra-
ditional alliance between Cuenca and Guayaquil because the Andean economy
depended more heavily on the indigenous poll tax than did that of the coast.
Cuenca, which, like Quito and Guayaquil, served as the capital of a district
overseeing provincial governments, thus began to serve as arbiter between the
port and the capital. This role became even more critical following the establish-
ment of the Republic of Ecuador in 1830, when internal regional conflicts rose
to the fore.18 The leaders of this expanding antagonism were Juan José Flores, a
Venezuelan-born general who married into the Quito landed aristocracy, and
the aforementioned guayaquileño, Vicente Rocafuerte. A brief truce existed in
the 1830s as the result of an agreement to have the president come from one city
and, the next term, from the other, on an alternating basis, an accord that fal-
tered the following decade because of a fiscal crisis precipitated by a drastic dip
in world cacao prices. A spate of civil wars ensued, highlighted by the now exiled
Flores’s 1844 attempt to reinstall a Spanish monarch in the country.19
The progressive general José María Urbina, best known for abolishing
slavery in 1852 and eradicating tribute five years later, suggested a solution via
electoral reforms designed to limit the centrifugal tendencies of the tripartite
district system by granting provincial assemblies the right to elect national
deputies. This arrangement had the unintended effect of cementing local power
bases at the provincial level, which in turn threatened to split the country apart
after its defeat in a border war with Peru in 1858.20 Instability increased over the
next year to the point that four governments (one each in Quito, Cuenca, Guay-
aquil, and in the dusty southern border town of Loja) each claimed national
sovereignty.21 Order finally returned after the rise of a staunchly conservative
12 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

magistrate named Gabriel García Moreno, whose extended arguments in favor

of greater centralization and bolstering Catholic power provided a potential re-
sponse to national fragmentation.
A onetime liberal and native of Guayaquil, García Moreno had long been
one of the foremost advocates for renewing the national commitment to the
Catholic Church. His positions had put him at loggerheads with the anticlerical
governments of the 1840s, leading to a period of European exile during which he
witnessed the aftereffects of the 1848 revolutions. A return visit to France in 1854
solidified his favorable impression of the autocratic regime of Napoleon III, who
would later be invited to annex the Andean nation by his conservative admirer
at a moment of particular despair. García Moreno became active in Quito’s mu-
nicipal politics in 1857 and was also selected to be rector of the city’s university.
Upon ascending to the presidency in 1861 he immediately set about quelling the
regional forces that had threatened to split apart the country while enhancing
the Catholic credentials of the nation.
García Moreno’s reforms resurrected modified versions of a number of
structures of colonial life inflected with a centralized autocracy inspired by the
French emperor. Like Urbina before him, García Moreno turned to the provin-
cial authorities to tackle the thorny regional divides, expanding the number of
provincial administrators and increasing their influence while eradicating the
district system altogether. This policy again served local landholding interests,
particularly in the Andean corridor, which was granted a majority of provincial
delegations. The move also limited the power of the three major urban centers.
Cuenca was particularly diminished; its original jurisdiction had included the
most populous areas in the country. Henceforth, the city would be marginalized
by a central government increasingly dominated by the port and the capital.
Paradoxically, García Moreno increased the autonomy of local municipalities
in a manner similar to the Spanish Habsburg imperial system of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. This move limited the political maneuverability of
larger blocs and also supplied an easily mobilized national network that proved
particularly useful in quelling indigenous opposition to other new institutions,
such as concertaje (labor conscription or debt peonage), an institution that would
literally work to break down regional divides.22
Concertaje not only bolstered the hacienda system by replacing tribute but
also fueled national public works projects designed to create a serviceable in-
frastructure. The system’s indigenous conscripts, who often worked without
the benefit of even hand tools, built hundreds of miles of roads in the southern
Andes that helped integrate the Andean and coastal regions. 23 Their labor also
built railroad lines in the coastal lowlands, which soon linked Guayaquil with
a navigable river system where paddlewheels began hauling cacao destined for
the world market, ushering in a boom that would last until the 1920s. Plans to
expand the railway to the Andean slopes, however, remained incomplete due to
the harsh mountainous terrain and mudslide-prone jungles.24
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 13

Fig. 1.5. Alameda Park, Quito (c. 1900). Courtesy Archivo Histórico, Banco Central del Ecuador.

Whereas the coast received infrastructure improvements designed to pro-

mote its rise as a global economic player, the capital became García Moreno’s
site for symbolic construction. His intent was to update the city’s façade in
hopes of resurrecting its seventeenth-century role as an international leader in
the arts. The most ambitious project was a massive gothic basilica, based on
the Cologne cathedral, that would rise atop the Pichincha slopes and take more
than a century to complete. García Moreno also invited several foreign archi-
tects to build temples to the civic religion of positivistic science. These struc-
tures included Juan Bautista Menten’s Astronomical Observatory—the first of
its kind in South America—and, to the south of the basilica, Thomas Reed’s
panopticon prison, which combined surveillance with interior walls painted a
terrorizing black.25 Menten’s observatory doubled as the centerpiece of the city’s
most fashionable park, the Alameda (fig. 1.5), which also boasted a monumental
arch entry, strolling paths, and boating canals.26
The patronage of architecture formed one of the pillars of a corresponding
cultural agenda to create what Derek Williams terms a modern pueblo católico.27
An alliance with the papacy resulted in the signing of a concordat in 1863, which
in turn led to increased clerical involvement in educational and government af-
fairs. Rural schools were the first institutions targeted for expansion, which re-
sulted in a massive construction campaign, again fueled by labor conscription.
The effort helped double the rural student population by 1875.28 The regime si-
multaneously expanded higher education in the major urban centers, often act-
ing in collusion with the Jesuit order, whose cause García Moreno had champi-
oned since his journey to Europe in the 1850s. Quito received the majority of the
new institutions, including the Colegio de San Gabriel (1862), the Polytechnic
14 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

University (1870), and the School of Fine Arts. The state subsidized tuition for
promising students at these institutions and even sent the best of them to study
abroad. Such was the case of landscape painter Rafael Salas, whose somber por-
trayals of Andean peaks encircled in fog highlighted their mysterious character
in a manner strongly influenced by Frederick Edwin Church’s depictions of
the Ecuadorian mountains. These vistas also became the first to be distributed
widely as souvenirs to visiting foreigners.29
Despite the global aspirations of the regime and its patronage of science, the
arts, and education, the era also featured extreme censorship and the repression
of dissidents. Leading opposition figures were exiled, most importantly the es-
sayist Juan Montalvo (1832–1889). Montalvo hailed from the central Andean city
of Ambato, where he began penning stark critiques of the regime’s censorship
in his review, El cosmopolita (1866–1869). These led to his eventual banishment
to Colombia, where his vitriolic prose continued to attract further converts. His
1874 book, La dictadura perpetua, accused García Moreno of monarchist preten-
sions, and it circulated widely in an underground network of associates, liberals,
and students across the country.30 When García Moreno reinstalled himself as
president for a third term in 1875, young liberals who had been in contact with
Montalvo took matters into their own hands, attacking the president on the
steps of Quito’s cathedral, where a Colombian native named Faustino Reyes cut
him down with a machete.31
García Moreno’s death not only led to Montalvo’s famous quip—“Mi pluma
lo mató”—but also inaugurated a period of strife and civil war in which regional
caudillos competed to fill the power vacuum. A military dictatorship under
General Ignacio de Veintimilla brought a brief period of stability in the late
1870s, but the suspension of civil liberties and Veintimilla’s reluctance to give
up power in 1882 sparked uprisings by two other military leaders: the moder-
ate Francisco Salazar and a radical liberal from the coastal province of Manabí
named Eloy Alfaro, known as Viejo Luchador (Old Warrior) because of his con-
stant insurrections. Salazar’s troops managed to defeat Veintimilla and ushered
in a renewed truce under the Progressive Party, a new political organ made up of
coastal and sierran moderates who touted progress while maintaining the cleri-
cal and economic policies of the Garcían era. Alfaro’s refusal to bow to a govern-
ment he characterized as a more benign version of the Garcían dictatorship led
to his eventual exile over the next decade until the regionalist fires that had been
temporarily banked flared again.

The Liberal Revolution

The Progressive period between 1883 and 1895 ought to be viewed as one of
compromise, when regional antagonisms were pacified. While the Church con-
tinued to play a major part in the administration, the new government avoided
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 15

the massive repression of the dictator’s earlier rule. Provincial rule continued to
define national politics and also began to play a more important role in tightly
controlling funds for local development projects, in effect restricting the relative
autonomy municipal authorities had enjoyed during the previous generation.
The major cities of Quito, Cuenca, and Guayaquil were particularly affected;
their budgets were overseen not only by the provincial authorities but also by
the national congress. As in the Garcían age, the national treasury bankrolled
projects employing new technologies, of which the most important were the
stringing of a telegraph line between Quito and Guayaquil, the elaboration of a
relatively efficient postal service, and the provision of electrical lighting to the
major cities.
Improvements and expansion in the coastal cacao economy accompanied
and partly subsidized these innovations in the national infrastructure. While
the Garcían steamship networks had increased local production capacity, the
introduction of a new bean that flourished in the hitherto underutilized An-
dean foothills generated soaring harvests that catapulted Ecuador into the posi-
tion of leading global cacao producer from the 1890s to the 1920s.32 The growing
prosperity did not trickle down to the general population, with more than 70
percent of revenue going into the hands of ten families. Nevertheless, chronic
labor shortages on the coast fueled a desire to loosen the traditional landed ties
of rural workers in the sierra. A new regional crisis began to develop in the mid-
1890s due to the reluctance of sierra landowners to eradicate concertaje. Guaya-
quil again became the center of vigorous opposition, given that the majority of
the cacao barons resided there and were linked through trade and fiscal ties to
the new banking sector, whose credit also helped fuel speculation and further
growth of the export sector. These tensions lay at the heart of the cacao indus-
try’s embrace of Eloy Alfaro’s revolution in 1895, despite initial reservations
about the radical populism of his agenda.33
Regional and political tensions also colored the literary flowering of costum-
brismo, a South American romanticism centered on the portrayal of local color.
Conservatives such as Juan León Mera provided idealized images of serrano
gentility in works like Cumandá, a novel featuring a love story between the scion
of a landowning family and a virginal Amazonian Indian.34 Fray Solano (José
Modesto Espinosa) expanded the genre with his lampooning feuilletons depict-
ing Quito’s provincial quietude and the ironic humor of its inhabitants, for the
first time identified as sal quiteña.35 Costumbrismo also emerged as an important
influence on the plastic arts of the late nineteenth century. The two primary
artists to embrace this movement, quiteños Joaquín Pinto and José Agustín
Guerrero, highlighted their politics in their watercolors depicting daily life in
the capital. The conservative Pinto celebrated images of street vendors, festivals,
and indigenous dancers while the liberal Guerrero foregrounded the misery of
indigenous conditions in a manner reminiscent of Manuel Fuentes’s depictions
of poverty in Lima.36
16 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

While Quito’s artists embraced costumbrismo’s examination of internal tradi-

tions, Cuenca and Guayaquil’s cultural sphere began to show signs of increasing
diversification. The new school of painting inaugurated in 1893 at Cuenca’s Uni-
versity of Azuay featured foreign faculty such as Seville native Tomás Povedano
Arcos.37 Guayaquil’s cacao elite, many of whom maintained residences in Paris,
imported scores of paintings and sculptures from Europe to decorate homes in-
creasingly built on a Parisian model.38 These diverging attitudes toward art and
culture fueled the increasingly acrimonious debate surrounding the nation’s
participation in the 1889 Universal Exposition in the French capital. Archbishop
Ordóñez of Quito condemned Ecuador’s contribution to the exposition as an
immoral display because it featured images of naked Amazonian Indians. Juan
León Mera adopted the archbishop’s position and waged a campaign to force
Progressive president Antonio Flores y Jijón of Guayaquil into canceling Ecua-
dor’s participation in the exhibit. The president refused, arguing that the expo-
sition would not only illustrate the advanced state of Ecuadorian culture before
a global audience but would also increase the market for Guayaquil’s cacao ex-
ports. Following a dramatic attempted resignation by Flores, summarily refused
by Congress, the matter was dropped. Flores’s success led to Ecuador’s later
participation in the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago and a number
of other similar events, all in the hope of attracting foreign investment.39 This
linking of business, art, and cosmopolitanism marked the urban development
of the port as well, which built the country’s first indoor central marketplace just
prior to the 1896 fire that destroyed most of Guayaquil’s colonial architecture.
By the mid-1890s, an intensifying regional political-economic polariza-
tion with cultural overtones was developing in the country. Matters came to a
head after a succession of events in 1894–1895 sparked a massive insurrection
that put the Radical Liberal Party firmly in power for several generations. The
first of these events was a scandal concerning the publication of the fourth vol-
ume of a history of Ecuador penned by the bishop of Ibarra, a moderate cleric
named Federico González Suárez. The work’s treatment of the sexual exploits
of seventeenth-century Dominican friars raised the hackles of the conservative
establishment and provoked a heated debate regarding clerical participation in
politics. More vituperative gossip erupted the following year, when the Ecua-
dorian navy secretly brokered the sale of a Chilean warship to Japan, then at
war with China. This “venta de la bandera” (sale of the flag) scandal implicated
several officials in the Progressive government and led to the resignation of both
President Luis Cordero and the governor of Guayas.40 Liberals perceived the en-
suing power vacuum as a golden opportunity and quickly contacted the Viejo
Luchador—Eloy Alfaro—then in exile in Panama.
Alfaro’s return was at first embraced by small cacao planters but opposed by
the cacao elite until he marched to Guayaquil at the head of an army made up of
rural and urban cacao workers, many of whom were of indigenous and African
extraction. Though nonplussed, the cacao barons agreed to back his insurrec-
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 17

tion since it would give them the opportunity to increase their pool of labor. The
subaltern army Alfaro commanded caused even more havoc in Cuenca, where
the socially conservative elite actively resisted the uprising. In abandoning its
traditional alliance with Guayaquil and moving more conclusively into Quito’s
orbit, Cuenca effectively ended the tripartite regional scheme that had domi-
nated the politics of the nineteenth century. 41 Despite this deepening polariza-
tion, the liberal army rapidly defeated the discredited Progressive government
and entered the capital in December 1895 with a mandate for change.42
There were two main components to the liberal modernization program
that shifted the regional power structure. The first sought to curb the power
of the Catholic Church, whose alliance with Andean landowners had bolstered
their political dominance through most of the nineteenth century. Although
continued pockets of conservative resistance hampered Alfaro’s ability to intro-
duce secularizing reforms in his first term, the voluntary exile of the majority
of the episcopacy limited the Church’s ability to mount a serious challenge to
the government. By 1900, the Vatican had decided on a pragmatic course and
thus endorsed Bishop Federico González Suárez’s condemnation of a planned
invasion of conservative forces massing in Colombia. Open strife diminished,
but jockeying over control of social functions continued under Alfaro’s actively
anticlerical successor, Leonidas Plaza. The year 1900 saw the institution of a
civil registry, followed by civil marriage two years later and the declaration of
freedom of worship in 1904. The state confiscated clerical lands that same year,
though for the next four years it allowed the Church to keep rental income. In
1906, the Vatican countered the land confiscations by naming González Suárez
to the archbishopric of Quito. His moderate politics and national reputation al-
lowed him to advance policies designed to limit the state’s anticlericalism, such
as rebuilding an episcopacy decimated by exile and death during the previous
ten years.43
Creating a national economic infrastructure formed the second pillar of the
Liberal program. One of the key aspects of this endeavor involved the migra-
tion of the untapped labor pool of the Andes to the cacao plantations. Concertaje
remained the major obstacle to planters’ longtime desire to access that labor,
and it was therefore repeatedly attacked in the Liberal press. A bill calling for
its eradication was introduced in Congress in 1899; however, the landholding
classes managed to block its passage until 1918. Thereafter, migration to the
coast boomed. By 1950, 41 percent of the national population resided in the lit-
toral as opposed to just 15 percent in 1840 and 30 percent in 1909.44
The most important initiative, however, was the building of a railway link-
age between the capital and the main port. As Alfaro’s signature work, the costly
and controversial rail venture transformed the country’s spatial dynamic. In-
terregional cargo shipments increased dramatically after the railway’s comple-
tion in 1908 as an integrated national market developed for the first time, with
agricultural staples traveling down the mountains and imported commodities
18 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

flowing into the highlands. Internal transportation of agricultural products

increased from an annual average of 27,511 tons in 1910 to 158,272 in 1942. Ship-
ments of lumber and manufactured goods also increased dramatically while
those of livestock and minerals doubled.45 These figures represented a marked
change from the nineteenth century, when the central highland district’s main
customer was Colombia and the littoral’s need for grains and other staples was
fed largely by both Colombia and Peru.46
The construction of the railroad transformed Ecuadorian regionalism more
profoundly than any other effort since the days of García Moreno. Perhaps its
most salient impact was to exclude Cuenca from benefiting from the increased
commerce by avoiding the city’s orbit altogether. The route planning for the
railway effectively marginalized the city and accelerated an increasingly bipo-
lar constitution of the national economy.47 Liberals rhetorically proclaimed the
railway to be a “redemptive work,” as Kim Clark has put it, arguing that decades
of stagnation would be wiped away with a chug and a whistle. This argument
usually featured regionalist metaphors that equated the Andes with insular-
ity, clerical lethargy, and stagnation while the coast was presented as vibrant,
mobile, and progressive. The railroad, by opening isolated pockets of the Andes
to the wider world, would thus redeem the nation and force it to embrace the
progress of the twentieth century.48
As the longtime stronghold of the Conservative Party, the city of Quito, with
its myriad churches, legions of indigenous laborers, and provincial reputation,
was also a ripe target for the liberal establishment. Critics such as Cuencan-
born journalist Manuel J. Calle and Juan Montalvo’s erstwhile associate, Ro-
berto Andrade, penned a flurry of essays and novels that echoed José Agustín
Guerrero’s ribald castigation of the city’s insularity. Alfaro himself made the
transformation of Quito a personal goal, freeing government funds for public
works projects. These included a new marketplace modeled on Les Halles in
Paris and a national exposition. Construction was paralleled by increased offer-
ings in secular education, beginning with the 1897 establishment of the Instituto
Nacional Mejía, a secondary school that by the 1920s had come to rival the Jesuit
Colegio de San Gabriel as the foremost educational institution in the country.
Among its graduates were major figures of the literary renaissance of the 1920s
and 1930s such as Gonzalo Escudero, Jorge Carrera Andrade, Humberto Salva-
dor, and Jorge Icaza.49 Another key institution was the Escuela de Bellas Artes,
founded in 1904, which provided the training for many of the artists, such as
Camilo Egas, who came to redefine indigenista painting, as well as traditionalists
like the portraitist Victor Mideros.
The first phase of the Liberal Revolution devolved into a power struggle be-
tween Leonidas Plaza and Eloy Alfaro. It came to an end in 1912, with Alfaro’s
death and martyrdom. Although the Viejo Luchador remained popular as late
as 1910 due to his bold march to the southern border to defend against a possible
Peruvian invasion, his attempt to install himself as dictator the next year met
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 19

stiff resistance. He left for exile but returned after the premature death of Presi-
dent Emilio Estrada, a Plaza ally. Alfaro supported Pedro Montero, a member
of the Guayaquil elite, in his bid to succeed Estrada and was arrested in his com-
pany in January 1912. The two then traveled by rail to Quito, where they were
interned in the García Moreno penitentiary. On January 28, a mob broke into
the prison, killed them both, and dragged Alfaro’s corpse through the streets to
the Ejido—a pastureland on the northern edge of the city. Following the gory
incident, Plaza returned to power as the undisputed leader of the Liberal Party,
ushering in thirteen years of relative calm and orderly political succession.

The Julian Crisis

The reforms of the Liberal Revolution, particularly the construction of the

railroad, provided much-needed national economic and political integration
and shifted the tenor of the regionalist strife that had dominated Ecuadorian
history since the colonial period. This regional divide, and particularly the ri-
valry between Quito and Guayaquil, did not disappear following the early de-
cades of the twentieth century. However, conflict between capital and labor that
ensued as a result of the modernization of the 1920s began to supersede the re-
gionalist impulse as the dominant force in national politics during this decade.
The crisis of the 1920s and 1930s had its roots in the liberal socioeconomic
program. Although large projects such as the railroad had strong government
involvement, independent local juntas oversaw hundreds of smaller projects
with little regulation, leading to a bloated budget and increasing deficits as most
of these projects remained unfulfilled. For example, in 1905, only 55 of the 346
authorized projects were actually under construction.50 The government’s lack
of revenue and poor international credit rating led to extensive borrowing from
local banks. Matters came to a head with the outbreak of World War I, which led
to an international fiscal crisis that caused numerous currencies to rapidly lose
value. The hitherto stable Ecuadorian sucre fell dramatically over the war years,
from US$0.486 in 1914 to $0.365 by 1917, finally stabilizing in 1920 at $0.20.51
Simultaneously, cacao prices plummeted as the European market declined dur-
ing the war years, a situation that also led to greater dependence on trade with
the United States. The recession only deepened in the postwar era as the cacao
industry crumbled due to a combination of disease, competition from Brazil
and British West Africa, and advances in refining techniques that decimated
the market for the high-grade bean in which Ecuador specialized. For example,
Hacienda Tenguel, the nation’s largest producer in 1920, harvesting more than
30,000 quintals of beans, was forced to cut its workforce in half as production
declined steadily, reaching a low point of 883 quintals in 1925.52
The onset of economic turmoil helped swell the nation’s major cities.
Guayaquil grew the fastest, its increase being first due to an expanding cacao
20 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

market and then improvements in public health, which included inoculation

campaigns and the efforts in 1919 of the Rockefeller Yellow Fever Commission,
which finally eradicated this deadly disease from the port.53 Quito’s population
remained a close second until the 1950s, with its population expanding from
51,858 in 1906 to 80,702 in 1922, passing 100,000 in the early 1930s and doubling
again by 1947.54 The eradication of concertaje in 1919 freed rural indigenous work-
ers to cut their traditional ties to highland haciendas. In droves, they headed
to the southern environs of Quito, where they joined the burgeoning industrial
communities that had begun to grow due to the Liberal administration’s sup-
port for manufacturing and the formation of local banks such as the Banco del
Pichincha, which offered credit to enterprising industrialists. The arrival of the
railroad in 1908 had accelerated this process, particularly with regard to tex-
tile factories such as La Internacional or Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño’s Chillo-Jijón
industries in the Chillo Valley to the east of the city.55 Local artisans at first
kept pace by expanding the size of their concerns, but, by the 1920s, they were
hard pressed to compete with the industrial sector—a reprise of the eighteenth-
century demise of the obraje system.56
Slowly but surely, the industrialization of Quito and the cacao crisis in
Guayaquil led to the onset of modern labor strife. Workers’ groups had begun
to organize in the late nineteenth century, beginning in 1892 with the Sociedad
Artística e Industrial de Pichincha (SAIP), an artisan society in Quito allied
with conservative groups. Although temporarily shut down in 1896 following
the Liberal Revolution, the SAIP returned as a potent force and eventually
adopted a socialist stance in the 1930s.57 Another important group in Quito
was the Centro Obrero Católico (COC), founded in 1906 by the tailor Manuel
Sotomayor y Luna and a group of elite youths, including future conservative
politician Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño. Plagued by miscommunication between
its student leaders and the rank-and-file artisans, the COC ceased operating in
1909 but was reestablished as a supporting arm of Jijón’s reconstituted Conser-
vative Party following the 1925 Julian Revolution.58 The Guayaquil labor move-
ment, on the other hand, developed a radical bent in the 1890s, largely through
the influence of Manuel Albuquerque Vivas, a Cuban tailor and activist who
helped found the Confederación Obrera del Guayas in 1896. A strong anarchist
sentiment also infiltrated the first major trade union in the city; cacahueros, or
workers who dried and transported bulk cacao, formed their union in 1908.
The Ecuadorian labor movement came of age in the early 1920s, driven to
collective protest by the steady inflation and decline in the value of the sucre
after World War I.59 In 1922, railway workers and cacahueros organized a general
strike in Guayaquil that was brutally repressed by the military, resulting in at
least several dozen and perhaps as many as a thousand casualties.60 The massa-
cre discredited the reigning Liberals, who resorted to fraud in the 1924 elections
and thus set the stage for increased worker involvement in politics. The Right
 The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism / 21

struck first, however, as Jacinto Jijón led a failed coup attempt with support
from the Centro Ecuatoriano del Obrero Católico (CEDOC). Jijón then went
into exile in Colombia, and a group of leftist intellectuals led by the economist
Luis N. Dillon agitated against the corrupt administration and its close ties with
Guayaquil’s Banco Comercial y Agricola, the state’s largest creditor. Magazines
from across the political spectrum, such as the military review El abanderado
and the socialist La antorcha, joined in criticizing the government. In July 1925, a
group of disaffected army lieutenants allied with Dillon’s leftist supporters and
overthrew the government.61
The Julian Revolution installed Ecuador’s first government with socialist
tendencies. However, once in power, the tenientes abandoned their calls for social
reform and instead resorted to regionalist politics, placing the blame for the cur-
rent crisis squarely on the shoulders of the Guayaquil banking aristocracy. This
rhetorical castigation deepened under the government of the liberals’ hand-
picked president, Dr. Isidro Ayora, a former mayor of Quito. Ayora’s prioritiz-
ing of fiscal reform led him to invite the “money doctor,” American economist
Edwin Kemmerer, to visit in 1926. Kemmerer advocated establishing a central
bank, leading Quito and Guayaquil’s elites to wrangle over the location of this
institution the following year. Although the economist favored establishing the
bank’s headquarters in the capital, a larger subsidiary was simultaneously built
in the port city to calm local jealousies.62 Ayora’s government also adopted a
progressive new constitution in 1928 that was the first in Latin America to grant
women the right to vote. These reforms, however, could not overcome the Great
Depression. Amid more social unrest, Ayora fell in 1931.
Despite ongoing attempts to paper over national social tensions by evoking
regionalist pretensions, the 1930s saw increasing militancy from both the Left
and the Right as well as concomitant clashes with the state. The most critical
conflagration involved the military and the Falangist-inspired Compactación
Obrera Nacional (CON) in August 1932 over the presidential succession to
Ayora. The CON supported the candidacy of Neptalí Bonifaz, a conservative
and former president of the Banco Central who, though legally elected, turned
out to be ineligible for the presidency because he had been born in Peru. After
weeks of demonstrations by both sides, several military squadrons from the
greater Quito area engaged CON brigades, igniting the capital’s bloodiest battle
since independence, a four-day skirmish known as the Guerra de los Cuatro
Días. Elections held the following year confirmed the growing importance of
labor when populist candidate José María Velasco Ibarra, a highly skilled ora-
tor, won his first term. He would be elected to the presidency five times over
the next three decades, though he managed to serve a full term only twice. La-
bor was not the only sector of society becoming more militant, however. The
younger intelligentsia increasingly joined the ranks of the Socialist Party in the
aftermath of the Julian Revolution. Many of these progressive intellectuals en-
22 \ The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

tered the bureaucracy within the Ministerio de Previsión Social (Ministry of

Social Welfare) with hopes of establishing a welfare state and expanding their
organization.63

Chronotopes of Nostalgic Regionalism

In addition to this mounting chaos, the 1920s also saw the explosion of pop-
ularly consumed nostalgic columns, stories, theater, and art emulating the cos-
tumbrista portraits of the nineteenth century. These chronicles of “traditional”
ways were particularly popular in Quito and Guayaquil, the cities undergoing
the greatest change during these years. One school emulated the tradición, a cos-
tumbrista variation developed by Peruvian historian and critic Ricardo Palma in
the 1870s that consists of a vignette depicting a colorful aspect of the national
past, often tinged with irony and satire.64 The genealogist Cristóbal Gangotena y
Jijón crafted scores of Quito chronicles whose picaresque friars and wily gentle-
men recalled the sal quiteña elaborated by José Modesto Espinosa a generation
earlier. Guayaquil’s great cronistas (chroniclers), Modesto Chavez Franco and
Gabriel Pino Roca, on the other hand, substituted heroic soldiers saving the
port from pirates by day and seducing young girls by night. Another school
embraced the rogues of society, highlighted by the port’s José Antonio Cam-
pos, who published under the confrontational pseudonym of Jack the Ripper. A
somewhat stiffer embrace of colorful deviants appeared in the guided city tours
of Quito’s Alejandro Andrade Coello, art critic and literature professor at the
Instituto Nacional Mejía, who joined the cronista fray in the mid-1930s.65
It is among these rhetorical constructions of the old city that the postcards
with which we began this chapter truly belong. As such, they form part of an on-
going tradition attempting to develop a sense of regional distinctiveness dating
to the colonial period but that had come to the forefront in the late nineteenth
century. While these tensions had themselves sparked extensive strife, economic
rivalry, and political dysfunction, the growing class division of a shifting society
made affirming regional specificity a nostalgic, whimsical, and apolitical en-
terprise. In the case of Guayaquil, this desire was a longing for the world’s larg-
est cacao port, a place peopled by elegant bankers, a place of romantic moonlit
strolls and prosperity. In the case of Quito, it was a desire for the certainty of the
city of vecinos safely removed from the indigenous rabble that labored for them,
for a city of priests whose exhortations to their flock consisted of gently mocking
the local boor who discovered the image of the Virgin Mary in the lard remains
on his empanada, as described in one of Gangotena’s fables. In short, this desire
was a nostalgic constitution of regionalism that had little resemblance to the
historical record but that had gained credence amid the chaos of the present.
This book is not about a series of postcards but instead about the evolution
of this specific form of nostalgic regionalism. While the Ministry of Tourism
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
espèces, mais il ne reconnaissait que les oies sauvages, qui volaient
sur deux longues lignes formant un angle.
Plusieurs bandes d’oies avaient déjà passé. Elles volaient très
haut, mais il entendait pourtant leurs cris: «Nous partons pour les
fjells. Nous partons pour les fjells.»
Lorsque les oies sauvages apercevaient les oies domestiques qui
se promenaient dans la basse-cour, elles abaissaient leur vol, et
criaient: «Venez avec nous! Venez avec nous! Nous partons pour les
fjells.»
Les oies domestiques ne pouvaient s’empêcher de lever la tête
pour écouter. Mais elles répondaient, pleines de bon sens: «Nous
sommes bien ici. Nous sommes bien ici.»
C’était, comme nous l’avons dit, un jour merveilleusement beau
avec un air qui invitait au vol, si frais, si léger. A mesure que de
nouvelles bandes passaient, les oies domestiques devenaient plus
inquiètes. Elles battaient par moment des ailes comme décidées à
suivre les oies sauvages. Mais chaque fois il se trouvait parmi elles
quelque vieille commère qui disait: «Ne faites donc pas les folles.
Celles-là auront à souffrir de la faim et du froid.»
Or, il y avait un jeune jars à qui les appels des oies sauvages
avaient donné une grande envie de partir.—«S’il vient encore une
bande, je l’accompagnerai», dit-il.
Une nouvelle bande arriva, appelant comme les précédentes.
Alors le jars répondit: «Attendez! Attendez! Je viens.»
Il déploya ses ailes et s’éleva dans l’air, mais il avait si peu
l’habitude de voler qu’il retomba à terre.
Les oies sauvages semblaient cependant avoir entendu son cri.
Elles revinrent lentement en arrière pour voir s’il allait les rejoindre.
«Attendez! Attendez!» criait-il, en faisant un nouvel effort.
 Le gamin entendait tout du mur où il s’était caché. «Quel
dommage si le grand jars allait s’envoler! Père et mère en auraient
du chagrin s’il était parti lorsqu’ils reviendront du temple.»
Il en oublia une fois encore qu’il était petit et sans force. Il sauta
au milieu des oies, et jeta ses bras autour du cou du jars. «Tu
resteras ici, tu entends», cria-t-il.
Mais juste à ce moment, le jars avait compris ce qu’il fallait faire
pour s’élever du sol. Il ne put s’arrêter pour secouer le gamin, et
celui-ci fut emporté dans l’air.
Il fut enlevé avec une rapidité qui lui donna le vertige. Avant
d’avoir pensé à lâcher prise, il se trouva si haut qu’il se serait tué s’il
était tombé à terre.
Il n’avait plus qu’à essayer de se hisser sur le dos de l’oie. Il y
parvint, mais avec beaucoup de peine. Il n’était pas facile non plus
de se maintenir sur le dos lisse et glissant, entre les deux ailes
battantes. Il dut plonger ses deux mains dans les plumes et le duvet
pour ne pas être précipité.

L’ÉTOFFE A CARREAUX

Un long moment le gamin eut des vertiges qui l’empêchèrent de

se rendre compte de rien. L’air sifflait et le fouettait, les ailes
frappaient, les plumes vibraient avec un bruit de tempête. Treize oies
volaient autour de lui. Toutes caquetaient et battaient des ailes. Les
yeux éblouis, les oreilles assourdies, il ne savait si elles volaient haut
ou bas ni quel était le but du voyage.
Enfin il se ressaisit, et comprit qu’il devait tâcher de savoir où on
le conduisait. Mais comment aurait-il le courage de regarder en bas?
Les oies sauvages ne volaient pas très haut, car leur nouveau
compagnon de voyage n’aurait pu respirer un air trop léger. A cause
de lui elles volaient aussi moins vite qu’à l’ordinaire.
 Enfin le gamin eut l’audace de jeter un regard au-dessous de lui.
Il fut surpris de voir étendue là-bas comme une grande nappe,
divisée en une infinité de grands et de petits carreaux.
«Où pouvons-nous bien être?» se demanda-t-il.
Il regarda encore. Rien que des carreaux. Il y en avait d’étroits et
longs; quelques-uns étaient de biais, mais partout l’œil rencontrait
des angles et des bords droits. Rien de rond, aucune courbe.
«Qu’est-ce donc que cette grande pièce d’étoffe à carreaux?»
grommela-t-il, sans attendre de réponse.
Mais les oies sauvages qui volaient autour de lui crièrent
immédiatement: «Des champs et des prés. Des champs et des
prés.»
Il comprit alors que l’étoffe à carreaux était la plaine de Scanie
qu’on traversait. Et il comprit aussi pourquoi elle semblait si bariolée.
Les carreaux vert tendre, il les reconnut d’abord: c’étaient les
champs de seigle ensemencés l’automne précédent et restés verts
sous la neige. Les carreaux gris-jaunâtre étaient des chaumes où en
été il y avait eu du blé, les carreaux bruns, d’anciens champs de
trèfle, les noirs, des champs de betteraves dépouillés et nus ou bien
des terres en friche. Les carreaux bruns bordés de jaune étaient
certainement des bois de hêtres, car dans ces bois les grands arbres
du milieu se dépouillent en hiver tandis que les jeunes arbrisseaux
de la lisière gardent jusqu’au printemps leurs feuilles jaunes et
desséchées. Il y avait aussi des carreaux foncés avec quelque chose
de gris au milieu: c’étaient les grosses fermes aux toits de chaume
noircis entourant des cours pavées. D’autres carreaux encore étaient
verts au milieu avec une bordure brune: c’étaient des jardins où les
pelouses verdissaient déjà, bien que l’on vît encore l’écorce nue des
buissons et des haies.
Le gamin ne put s’empêcher de rire en contemplant tous ces
carreaux.
 Mais quand elles l’entendirent, les oies sauvages crièrent sur un
ton de reproche: «Pays bon et fertile, pays bon et fertile».
Il reprit vite son sérieux: «Comment, songeait-il, oses-tu rire
après la plus terrible mésaventure qui puisse arriver à un être
humain?»
Il demeura grave un moment, mais bientôt la gaieté le reprit.
Il s’habituait à cette façon de voyager, à la vitesse, et pouvait
songer à autre chose qu’à se maintenir sur le dos du jars; il
commençait à observer combien l’espace était rempli de bandes
d’oiseaux, tous en route vers le nord. Et c’étaient des cris et des
appels d’une bande à l’autre.
—Ah! vous voilà, vous avez fait la traversée aujourd’hui? criaient
les uns.
—Mais oui, mais oui, répondaient les oies. Où en est le printemps
ici?
—Pas une feuille aux arbres et l’eau est glaciale dans les lacs,
répondit-on.
Lorsque les oies traversaient un endroit où l’on voyait des
oiseaux domestiques, elles les hélaient: «Comment s’appelle cette
ferme! Comment s’appelle cette ferme?» Alors le coq tendait le cou
et chantait: «La ferme s’appelle Petit-Champ, cette année comme
l’an dernier, cette année comme l’an dernier.»
La plupart des fermes portaient le nom de leur propriétaire,
comme c’est l’usage en Scanie, mais au lieu de répondre que c’était
la ferme de Per Matson ou de Ola Bosson, les coqs inventaient des
noms qu’ils trouvaient plus convenables. Dans les chaumières
pauvres et les petites métairies, ils criaient: «Cette ferme s’appelle
Grain-volant»; et dans les plus misérables: «Cette ferme s’appelle
Mâche-petit! Mâche-petit! Mâche-petit!»
 Les vastes fermes des paysans riches recevaient de beaux noms,
comme Champ fortuné, Colline aux œufs, Bourg d’argent.
Mais les coqs des châteaux et des grands domaines étaient trop
orgueilleux pour plaisanter. L’un d’eux chanta et cria comme s’il avait
voulu se faire entendre jusqu’au soleil: «Voici le château de Dybeck,
cette année comme l’an dernier, cette année comme l’an dernier!»
Et un peu plus loin un autre criait: «Voici Svaneholm. Tout le
monde le sait.»
Le gamin remarqua que les oies ne se dirigeaient pas en ligne
droite. Elles volaient et planaient sur toute la grande plaine de
Scanie comme si, heureuses d’être de retour, elles voulaient saluer
chaque maison.
Elles arrivèrent à un endroit où se dressaient quelques grands
bâtiments lourds, surmontés de hautes cheminées, et entourés de
maisonnettes.
«C’est la raffinerie de Jordberga, criaient les coqs. C’est la
raffinerie de Jordberga!» Le gamin tressaillit. Comment n’avait-il pas
reconnu cet endroit? Ce n’était pas très loin de chez lui; l’été
précédent il y avait été placé comme petit pâtre. Mais vu d’en haut,
tout avait un autre aspect.
Jordberga! Jordberga! Et Asa, la gardeuse d’oies, et le petit Mats
qui avaient été ses camarades! Comme il aurait aimé savoir s’ils
étaient encore là. Qu’est-ce qu’ils auraient dit, s’ils s’étaient douté
que Nils volait en ce moment au-dessus de leur tête?
Mais bientôt on perdit de vue Jordberga; on vola vers Svedala et
Skabersjö, pour revenir vers le couvent de Börringe.
Le gamin vit plus de la Scanie en cette seule journée que
pendant toutes les années qu’il avait vécu.
Lorsque les oies sauvages rencontraient des oies domestiques,
c’est alors qu’on s’amusait le plus; elles volaient très lentement en
appelant: «Nous voilà en route pour les fjells. Venez-vous? Venez-
vous?»
Mais les oies domestiques répondaient: «L’hiver est encore dans
le pays. Vous êtes venues trop tôt. Repartez! Repartez!»
Les oies sauvages descendaient très bas pour se faire bien
entendre, et criaient: «Venez, nous vous apprendrons à voler et à
nager!»
Irritées, les oies domestiques ne daignaient même pas caqueter
une réponse.
Les oies sauvages s’abaissaient encore davantage jusqu’à
effleurer presque le sol, puis elles remontaient comme des flèches
en faisant semblant d’être effrayées. «Aï, aï, aï! criaient-elles. Ce
n’étaient pas des oies. Ce n’étaient que des moutons. Ce n’étaient
que des moutons.»
Alors les oies domestiques étaient furieuses et criaient: «Puisse-t-
on vous fusiller et vous abattre toutes tant que vous êtes, tant que
vous êtes!»
En entendant ces plaisanteries, le gamin riait. Puis, l’idée de son
malheur lui revenant, il pleurait, pour rire de nouveau quelques
moments plus tard. Jamais auparavant il n’avait voyagé avec cette
rapidité; il avait toujours aimé aller à cheval, vite, follement vite.
Mais naturellement il n’avait jamais imaginé que l’air fût là-haut si
délicieusement frais ni qu’on y respirât d’aussi bonnes senteurs de
terre humide et de résine montant du sol. Jamais non plus il ne
s’était rendu compte de ce que ce serait que de voler si haut au-
dessus de la terre. C’était en quelque sorte s’envoler loin des soucis
et des chagrins et des ennuis de toute espèce.
 II

AKKA DE KEBNEKAÏSE

LE SOIR

Le grand jars qui s’était élancé à la suite des oies sauvages, se

sentait très fier de parcourir le pays en leur compagnie et de
taquiner et railler les oiseaux domestiques. Mais tout heureux qu’il
fût, il n’en commença pas moins à se fatiguer vers le soir. Il essaya
de respirer plus profondément et de donner des coups d’ailes plus
rapides, mais il eut beau faire, il resta de plusieurs longueurs en
arrière.
Quand les oies de l’arrière-garde s’aperçurent que le jars
domestique ne pouvait plus les suivre, elles crièrent à celle qui
conduisait la bande et qui volait à la pointe de l’angle: «Akka de
Kebnekaïse! Akka de Kebnekaïse!—Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?—Le blanc
reste en arrière. Le blanc reste en arrière.—Dites-lui, qu’il est plus
facile de voler vite que lentement!» cria Akka en continuant comme
auparavant.
Le jars essaya bien de profiter du conseil et d’augmenter sa
vitesse, mais il se trouva bientôt épuisé et tomba presqu’au niveau
des saules étêtés qui bordaient les routes et les champs.
—Akka, Akka, Akka de Kebnekaïse! crièrent de nouveau les oies
de l’arrière-garde qui voyaient les pénibles efforts du jars blanc.—
Qu’y a-t-il encore? demanda la conductrice de la bande d’un ton
colère. —Le blanc tombe. Le blanc tombe.—Dites-lui qu’il est plus
facile de voler haut que bas! répondit Akka. Elle ne diminua
nullement sa vitesse mais continua comme auparavant.
Le jars tâcha encore de suivre ce conseil, mais quand il voulut
s’élever plus haut, il s’essouffla à croire que sa poitrine allait éclater.
—Akka, Akka! crièrent de nouveau les oies placées aux ailes.—
Vous ne pouvez donc pas me laisser tranquille? répondit une voix
plus agacée que jamais.—Le jars blanc va mourir. Le jars blanc va
mourir.—Celui qui ne peut suivre la bande, qu’il s’en retourne chez
lui! répondit l’oie de tête. Et pas un instant elle n’eut l’idée de
ralentir.
—Ah, c’est comme ça, se dit le jars. Il venait de comprendre que
les oies sauvages n’avaient jamais pensé l’emmener en Laponie.
Elles avaient simplement voulu lui faire quitter la maison pour
s’amuser.
Il était furieux d’être trahi par ses forces et de ne pouvoir
montrer à ces vagabondes qu’une oie domestique les valait bien. Le
plus agaçant, c’est qu’il était tombé sur Akka de Kebnekaïse. Il avait
beau n’être qu’un oiseau de basse-cour, il n’en avait pas moins
entendu parler d’une oie chef de bande qui s’appelait Akka et qui
avait plus de cent ans. Elle avait une telle réputation que les
meilleures oies sauvages voulaient faire partie de sa troupe. Mais
personne n’avait plus de mépris pour les oies domestiques que cette
Akka et sa bande; aussi aurait-il bien voulu leur montrer qu’il était
leur égal.
Tout en réfléchissant à la décision à prendre, le jars blanc volait
lentement un peu en arrière des autres. Tout à coup, le petit bout
d’homme qu’il portait sur son dos éleva la voix: «Mon cher jars
Martin, tu comprends bien qu’il te sera impossible, à toi qui n’as
jamais volé, de suivre les oies sauvages jusqu’en Laponie. Ne ferais-
tu pas mieux de retourner à la maison avant de te faire du mal?»
Or, le fils de la maison, ce mauvais garnement, le jars l’avait en
horreur. Aussi, dès qu’il eut compris que le gamin le croyait
incapable de faire le voyage, résolut-il de tenir bon. «Si tu dis un
mot de plus, je te jette dans la première marnière que nous
rencontrerons» siffla-t-il. Et la colère lui donna de telles forces qu’il
se mit à voler aussi bien que les autres.
Il est probable qu’il n’aurait pas pu continuer longtemps malgré
tout; heureusement ce ne fut point nécessaire; le soleil descendait
rapidement; dès qu’il fut couché, les oies piquèrent droit vers le sol.
Avant d’avoir même eu le temps de réfléchir, le gamin et le jars se
trouvèrent sur les bords du lac Vombsjö.
—C’est probablement ici que nous passerons la nuit, se dit le
gamin en sautant à terre.
Il était sur une mince bande de sable; devant lui s’étendait un
assez grand lac d’aspect pas très rassurant: une couche de glace le
recouvrait presque entièrement, noire, rugueuse, pleine de crevasses
et de trous comme l’est d’ordinaire la glace au printemps. On voyait
qu’elle était condamnée à disparaître bientôt. Déjà détachée de la
rive, elle était entourée d’une large bande d’eau noire et lisse.
Pourtant elle était encore là, et tant qu’elle y était, elle répandait du
froid et une tristesse hivernale sur tout le paysage.
De l’autre côté du lac il semblait y avoir un pays ouvert et clair,
mais à l’endroit où les oies s’étaient abattues, s’étendait une grande
plantation de pins. On aurait dit que la forêt résineuse avait le
pouvoir de retenir l’hiver. Partout ailleurs le sol était nu, mais sous le
branchage enchevêtré, la neige avait fondu et gelé à plusieurs
reprises et était devenue dure comme de la glace.
Le gamin pensa qu’il était arrivé dans un désert au pays de
l’hiver, et ressentit une angoisse telle qu’il en aurait crié.
Il avait faim, il n’avait rien mangé de la journée. Mais où
trouverait-il quelque chose? Au mois de mars, le sol ni les arbres ne
portent rien de mangeable.
 Oui, où trouverait-il à manger? Et qui l’hébergerait? Qui lui ferait
son lit? Qui le réchaufferait à son foyer? Qui le protégerait contre les
bêtes sauvages?
Le soleil était maintenant couché. Le froid montait du lac. Les
ténèbres tombaient du ciel, l’épouvante se glissait sur les pas de la
nuit, et dans le bois on entendait des pas furtifs et des
bruissements. C’en était fait du joyeux courage que le gamin avait
montré là-haut. Dans son angoisse il se tourna vers ses compagnons
de voyage: il n’avait plus qu’eux.
Il s’aperçut alors que le jars était encore plus mal à l’aise. Il
demeurait à l’endroit où il s’était abattu, et semblait près de mourir.
Son cou s’allongeait inerte sur le sol; il avait les yeux fermés, et sa
respiration n’était qu’un faible sifflement.
—Cher jars Martin, dit le gamin, essaie de boire une gorgée. Le
lac est à deux pas.
Mais le jars ne fit pas un mouvement.
Le gamin avait auparavant été méchant pour tous les animaux et
aussi pour le jars. Mais il pensait maintenant que le jars était son
seul appui, et il eut grand’peur de le perdre. Il se mit à le pousser
pour le mettre à l’eau. Le jars était grand et lourd, et le gamin eut
fort à faire, mais enfin il réussit.
Le jars tomba dans le lac, la tête la première. Un instant il
demeura immobile dans la vase, mais bientôt il releva la tête, secoua
l’eau qui l’aveuglait et souffla. Puis il se mit à nager fièrement parmi
les joncs et les roseaux.
Les oies sauvages s’étaient jetées à l’eau avant lui. Elles ne
s’étaient inquiétées ni du jars ni de son cavalier, mais s’étaient
précipitées dans le lac. Elles s’étaient baignées et nettoyées;
maintenant elles mâchonnaient du potamot à demi pourri et du
trèfle d’eau.
 Le jars blanc eut la chance d’apercevoir une petite perche. Il la
saisit rapidement, nagea vers le rivage et la déposa devant le gamin.
«Voilà pour te remercier de m’avoir poussé à l’eau», dit-il.
Pour la première fois de la journée le gamin entendait un mot
amical. Il en fut si joyeux qu’il aurait voulu sauter au cou du jars,
mais il n’osa pas. Il était content du cadeau. D’abord il jugea
impossible de manger un poisson cru, puis il eut envie d’essayer.
Il se demanda s’il avait encore son couteau. Heureusement il le
sentit pendu à la ceinture de son pantalon, mais tout petit, pas plus
long qu’une allumette; c’était suffisant pour écailler et vider le
poisson. Bientôt la perche fut avalée.
Rassasié, le gamin fut tout honteux d’avoir mangé quelque chose
de cru.
—On voit que je ne suis plus un être humain, mais un vrai tomte.
Pendant que le gamin mangeait, le jars demeura silencieux
auprès de lui; après la dernière bouchée, il dit à voix basse: «Nous
sommes tombés sur une bande d’oies fières qui méprisent les
oiseaux domestiques.—Oui, je l’ai remarqué.—Cela me ferait grand
honneur, si je pouvais les suivre jusqu’en Laponie et leur montrer
qu’une oie domestique est bonne à quelque chose.—Oui, dit le
gamin hésitant, car il ne croyait pas que le jars en serait capable,
mais il ne voulait pas le contredire.—Mais je ne crois pas que je
puisse me tirer d’affaire seul en un tel voyage, dit le jars. Je voudrais
te demander si tu ne pourrais pas m’accompagner pour m’aider.»
Le gamin n’avait naturellement pas d’autre projet que de rentrer
chez lui le plus vite possible. Il fut surpris et ne sut que répondre:
«Je croyais que nous étions ennemis, toi et moi», dit-il. Mais il
semblait que le jars ne s’en souvînt plus. Il se rappelait seulement
que le gamin venait de lui sauver la vie.
—Il faudrait bien que je retourne chez mon père et ma mère, dit
le gamin.
 —Je te ramènerai chez eux en automne, dit le jars. Je ne
t’abandonnerai pas avant de t’avoir déposé sur le seuil de ta maison.
Le gamin pensa qu’il serait bon de ne pas se montrer à ses
parents avant quelque temps. Le projet ne lui déplaisait point, et il
allait répondre qu’il acceptait, quand ils entendirent derrière eux un
grand bruit. Les oies sauvages étaient sorties de l’eau toutes
ensemble, et secouaient leurs ailes. Puis elles se formèrent en une
longue ligne, l’oie-guide en tête et vinrent vers eux.
Lorsque le jars blanc considéra les oies sauvages, il se trouva mal
à l’aise. Il avait cru qu’elles ressemblaient davantage aux oies
domestiques et qu’il se sentirait davantage leur parent. Elles étaient
beaucoup plus petites que lui; aucune n’était blanche; toutes étaient
grises, striées de brun, et leurs yeux lui firent presque peur. Ils
étaient jaunes et brillaient comme si du feu brûlait derrière. Le jars
avait toujours appris qu’il était convenable de marcher lentement en
se dandinant. Or, elles ne marchaient pas, mais couraient. Il fut
surtout inquiet quand il vit leurs pieds. Ils étaient larges, avec des
semelles usées et déchiquetées. On comprenait que les oies
sauvages ne se demandaient jamais sur quoi elles marchaient. Elles
ne faisaient jamais de détours. Elles étaient bien mises et très
soignées, mais on voyait à leurs pieds qu’elles étaient de pauvres
habitantes des déserts.
Le jars eut à peine le temps de glisser au gamin: «Réponds
hardiment pour toi, mais ne dis pas qui tu es.» Elles étaient déjà là.
Les oies sauvages les saluèrent du cou plusieurs fois, et le jars en
fit autant, mais plus longuement. Après qu’on se fut assez salué,
l’oie-guide dit: «Nous voudrions bien savoir qui vous êtes?»
—Je n’ai pas grand’chose à dire sur moi, répondit le jars. Je suis
né à Skanör le printemps dernier. En automne j’ai été vendu à
Holger Nilsson de Vemmenhög chez qui je suis resté depuis.
—Tu sembles n’avoir aucune famille de qui te réclamer, dit le
guide. Qu’est-ce donc qui te prend de vouloir aller avec les oies
sauvages?—C’est peut-être pour montrer aux oies sauvages que les
oies domestiques sont bonnes à quelque chose.
—Nous ne demandons pas mieux, dit Akka. Nous savons
maintenant de quoi tu es capable en fait de vol, mais peut-être es-tu
plus fort en d’autres sports. Veux-tu par exemple lutter avec nous à
la nage?
—Je ne me vante pas de savoir nager, dit le jars (il avait déjà cru
comprendre que l’autre était décidée à le renvoyer, et ne faisait plus
attention à ce qu’il disait), je n’ai jamais nagé plus loin que la largeur
d’une mare.
—Je suppose alors que tu es très habile à courir, dit l’oie
sauvage.
—Jamais je n’ai vu courir une oie domestique, et jamais je n’ai
essayé, moi non plus, répliqua crânement le jars.
Il en était sûr maintenant, Akka allait lui dire qu’on ne voulait pas
l’emmener. Aussi fut-il très surpris lorsqu’elle s’écria: «Tu réponds
courageusement aux questions, et celui qui est brave, peut devenir
un bon compagnon, même s’il est ignorant au début. Que dirais-tu si
l’on t’offrait de rester avec nous quelques jours jusqu’à ce que nous
ayons vu de quoi tu es capable?—Je veux bien, répondit le jars, tout
content.
Là-dessus Akka montra du bec le gamin: «Mais qui amènes-tu
avec toi? Je n’ai jamais vu un être comme celui-là.—C’est mon
compagnon de voyage, dit le jars. Il a été gardien d’oies toute sa
vie. Je crois qu’il pourrait nous être utile.—Peut-être utile à une oie
domestique, répondit Akka. Comment l’appelles-tu?—Il a plusieurs
noms, répondit le jars avec un peu d’hésitation, et ne sachant à
l’improviste qu’inventer (il ne voulait pas trahir le gamin et révéler
qu’il avait un nom d’homme). Il s’appelle Poucet, dit-il enfin.—Il est
de la famille des tomtes? demanda encore Akka.—A quelle heure,
vous autres, oies sauvages, vous mettez-vous à dormir? répliqua le
jars pour interrompre la conversation sans répondre à cette dernière
question. Mes yeux se ferment de sommeil à cette heure-ci.
L’oie qui parlait avec le jars était très vieille, c’était facile à voir.
Son plumage était entièrement gris, d’un gris de glace sans stries
foncées. Elle avait la tête plus grosse, les pattes plus fortes, les pieds
plus usés que les autres. Ses plumes étaient raides, ses épaules
saillantes, son cou maigre. Effets du temps. Il n’y avait que les yeux
que l’âge n’avait pu vaincre. Ils brillaient plus limpides, et en quelque
sorte plus jeunes que ceux des autres.
Elle se tourna vers le jars avec beaucoup de hauteur: «Sache que
je suis Akka de Kebnekaïse. L’oie qui vole près de moi à droite est
Yksi de Vassijaure, celle qui vole à ma gauche est Kaksi de Nuolia. La
seconde oie de droite s’appelle Kolme de Sarjektjokko et la seconde
de gauche est Neljä de Svappavaara. Derrière elles volent, à droite
Viisi des fjells d’Ovik et Kunsi de Sjangeli. Sache-le: toutes, et de
même les six oisons qui volent en arrière, trois à droite et trois à
gauche, toutes nous sommes des oies des hautes montagnes et de
la meilleure famille. Ne va pas nous prendre pour des vagabondes
acceptant n’importe quelle compagnie, et sois-en persuadé, nous ne
partagerons pas notre gîte de nuit avec qui ne veut pas dire de
quelle famille il descend.»
A ces mots d’Akka, le gamin fit rapidement un pas en avant. Il
avait été ennuyé d’entendre le jars qui avait si bien répondu pour
son propre compte, donner des réponses évasives lorsqu’il s’agissait
de lui, Nils. «Je ne dissimule pas qui je suis, dit-il, je m’appelle Nils
Holgersson, et je suis le fils d’un tenancier. Jusqu’à ce jour j’ai été un
homme, mais ce matin...»
Il n’eut pas le temps d’aller plus loin. Dès qu’il prononça le mot
homme, l’oie-guide recula de trois pas et les autres encore
davantage. Et toutes elles tendirent le cou et sifflèrent, furieuses.
—Voilà ce que j’ai soupçonné dès que je t’ai vu sur la rive, dit
Akka. Et maintenant va-t-en. Nous ne souffrons pas d’homme parmi
nous.
Mais le grand jars s’interposa: «Ce n’est pas possible, dit-il, que
vous, oies sauvages, vous ayez peur d’un être aussi petit. Demain il
rentrera certainement chez lui, mais pour cette nuit vous pouvez
bien le laisser parmi nous. Comment pourrions-nous laisser ce
pauvret se défendre seul contre les renards et les belettes.»
L’oie sauvage s’approcha, mais avec une méfiance visible. «J’ai
appris à redouter tout ce qui est homme, grand ou petit, dit-elle.
Mais si tu réponds de lui, jars, il peut rester. D’ailleurs il est peu
probable que notre gîte de cette nuit vous convienne, à toi et à lui,
car nous allons dormir sur la glace flottante du lac.»
Elle pensait sans doute que le jars hésiterait à les y suivre. Mais il
se contenta de dire: «Vous êtes sages de choisir un gîte aussi sûr.»
—Tu promets cependant qu’il s’en retournera chez lui dès
demain? ajouta Akka.
—Alors il faudra que je vous quitte aussi, dit le jars, car j’ai
promis de ne pas l’abandonner.
—Tu es libre d’aller où il te plaît, répondit l’oie sauvage.
Sur ces mots elle souleva ses ailes et s’envola sur la glace, suivie
des autres oies sauvages, l’une après l’autre.
Le gamin fut désolé de voir échouer son rêve de voyage en
Laponie, et en outre il eut peur pour la nuit. «Cela va de mal en pis,
jars, dit-il. Nous allons mourir de froid sur la glace.»
Mais le jars avait bon courage. «Il n’y a pas de danger, dit-il. Je
te prie de ramasser en hâte autant d’herbe et de paille que tu
pourras en porter.»
Lorsque le gamin eut ramassé une bonne brassée d’herbe sèche,
le jars le saisit par le col de la chemise, le souleva, et s’envola vers la
glace où les oies sauvages debout, l’une à côté de l’autre, dormaient
déjà, le bec sous l’aile.
—Etends maintenant l’herbe pour que j’aie quelque chose sous
les pieds qui les empêche de coller à la glace! Aide-moi et je
t’aiderai! dit le jars.
Le gamin obéit, et quand il eut fini, le jars le saisit de nouveau
par le col de la chemise et l’enfonça sous son aile. «Je pense que tu
y seras au chaud,» dit-il en refermant son aile.
Le gamin se trouva si bien enfoui dans le duvet qu’il ne put
répondre; il était en effet au chaud; très fatigué, il ne tarda pas à
s’endormir.

LA NUIT

C’est une vérité reconnue que la glace est perfide et qu’on a tort
de s’y fier. Au milieu de la nuit la plaque de glace flottante du
Vombsjö, changea de place et vint s’échouer sur la rive. Or il arriva
que Smirre, le renard, qui demeurait alors à l’est du lac dans le parc
d’Œvedskloster s’en aperçut pendant sa chasse nocturne. Smirre
avait vu les oies sauvages dès la veille au soir, mais il n’avait pas
espéré pouvoir en attraper aucune. Il se mit tout de suite en route.
Les oies se réveillèrent, et battirent des ailes pour s’envoler, mais
Smirre fut plus rapide. Il fit un bond en avant, saisit l’une des oies
par l’aile et s’enfuit avec elle vers la terre.
Mais cette nuit-là les oies sauvages n’étaient pas seules; il y avait
parmi elles un homme, quelque petit qu’il fût. Le gamin s’était
réveillé lorsque le jars avait ouvert ses ailes. Il était tombé, et se
retrouva tout à coup assis sur la glace, encore ahuri par son brusque
réveil. Il n’avait rien compris à cette alerte, avant de voir un petit
chien, bas sur pattes, qui se sauvait à travers la glace, une oie dans
la gueule.
Le gamin se précipita sur ses traces afin de reprendre l’oie au
méchant chien. Il entendit bien que le grand jars criait derrière lui:
«Prends garde, Poucet! Prends garde!» Mais Nils ne voyait pas
pourquoi il devait avoir peur d’un aussi petit chien, et il continua à le
poursuivre.
L’oie sauvage que Smirre emportait entendit le bruit des sabots
de bois contre la glace, et elle n’osa en croire ses oreilles: «Est-ce
que ce gamin penserait pouvoir m’arracher au renard?» se dit-elle.
Et quoiqu’elle fût en bien mauvaise posture, elle ne put retenir un
petit gloussement tout au fond de sa gorge, qui ressemblait à un
rire.
—D’abord il va tomber dans une crevasse, pensa-t-elle.
Mais malgré l’obscurité de la nuit, le gamin distinguait très bien
les fentes et les trous, et il les évitait. Il avait maintenant des yeux
de tomte qui voient dans les ténèbres.
Smirre le renard quitta la glace à l’endroit où elle touchait la terre
et se préparait à escalader la pente de la rive, lorsque le gamin lui
cria: «Veux-tu bien lâcher l’oie, canaille!» Smirre, ignorant qui
l’interpellait, ne se donna même pas le temps de regarder en arrière,
mais courut plus vite.
Il entra dans une forêt de grands hêtres magnifiques, suivi du
gamin qui ne se rendait toujours pas compte du danger. Nils
songeait à la réception dédaigneuse que les oies lui avaient faite la
veille au soir; il brûlait du désir de leur montrer qu’un homme est
quelque chose de plus que les autres créatures.
Il cria plusieurs fois au chien de lâcher l’oie: «A-t-on jamais vu un
chien aussi effronté, qui n’a pas honte de voler une grosse oie,
hurlait-il; veux-tu bien la lâcher, sinon tu seras rossé d’importance!
Lâche-la, ou je dirai à ton maître ce que tu as fait.»
Lorsque Smirre se vit prendre pour un chien qui a peur des
coups, cette idée lui parut si drôle qu’il manqua laisser échapper
l’oie. Smirre était un brigand redouté, qui ne se contentait pas de
chasser des rats et des taupes dans les champs, mais qui se
hasardait jusque dans les fermes pour y voler les poules et les oies.
Il était la terreur de toute la contrée. Depuis qu’il était tout petit, il
n’avait rien entendu de plus drôle.
Le gamin courait si vite que les gros troncs des hêtres semblaient
se précipiter à sa rencontre; il gagnait sur le renard. Enfin, il fut
assez près de lui pour l’attraper par la queue. «Je te prendrai
pourtant l’oie», cria-t-il, en tirant de toutes ses forces. Mais il était
incapable d’arrêter Smirre. Celui-ci l’entraîna si rapidement que les
feuilles sèches tourbillonnaient autour d’eux.
Smirre s’était enfin rendu compte que son agresseur était
inoffensif. Il s’arrêta, déposa l’oie par terre, la maintint de ses deux
pattes de devant, et se prépara à lui couper la gorge; mais il ne
résista pas à la tentation de taquiner d’abord un peu le gamin.
«Cours vite te plaindre au maître, car je vais tuer l’oie», dit-il.
Quelle ne fut pas la stupéfaction de Nils quand il vit le nez
pointu, et entendit la voix enrouée et rageuse de ce drôle de chien.
Mais en même temps il fut si furieux d’être raillé par le renard qu’il
en oublia d’avoir peur. Il s’accrocha plus fort à la queue de son
ennemi, s’arc-bouta contre une racine de hêtre, et au moment
même où le renard ouvrait la gueule sur la gorge de l’oie, le gamin
tira brusquement de toutes ses forces. Smirre fut si surpris qu’il se
laissa traîner quelques pas en arrière, et l’oie sauvage se trouva
libre. Lourdement, elle s’envola; l’une de ses ailes était blessée et
presque hors de service. En outre, elle était comme une aveugle
dans les ténèbres de la forêt, et ne put nullement aider le gamin.
Elle chercha une ouverture dans le toit des branchages et vola vers
le lac.
Smirre fit un bond pour attraper le gamin. «Si l’un m’échappe,
j’aurai toujours l’autre», dit-il, et sa voix tremblait de colère.—«Tu
crois? eh bien, tu te trompes», fit le gamin, tout ragaillardi de son
succès. Il ne lâcha pas la queue du renard.
 Ce fut une danse folle sous le bois dans les tourbillons de feuilles
sèches. Smirre tournait, en rond, sa queue tournait aussi, et le
gamin s’y accrochait.
D’abord Nils ne fît que rire, et se moquer du renard, mais Smirre
avait la persistance tenace d’un vieux chasseur, et le gamin
commença à craindre que l’aventure ne tournât mal pour lui.
Tout à coup il aperçut un jeune hêtre qui avait poussé, mince
comme une gaule, pour arriver à l’air libre au-dessus des branches
que les vieux hêtres étendaient sur lui. Il lâcha subitement la queue
du renard et se mit à grimper le long du petit hêtre.
Dans son ardeur Smirre ne s’en aperçut pas tout de suite, mais
continua un moment encore à danser en rond. «Tu as assez dansé,
tu sais», lui cria le gamin.
Smirre, qui ne pouvait supporter la honte de s’être laissé berner
par un petit bonhomme de rien du tout, se coucha alors au pied de
l’arbre pour attendre.
Le gamin était mal à l’aise, à cheval sur une faible petite branche.
Le jeune hêtre n’arrivait pas à la hauteur du toit de branches formé
par les grands hêtres. Nils ne pouvait donc pas se hisser jusqu’à un
autre arbre, ni descendre à terre. Il fut bientôt si transi de froid qu’il
avait du mal à se maintenir; il dut aussi lutter contre le sommeil,
n’osant s’endormir par crainte de tomber.
La forêt était terriblement sinistre à cette heure de la nuit. Jamais
auparavant il ne s’était bien rendu compte de ce que c’est que la
nuit. Le monde entier semblait engourdi pour toujours.
Enfin l’aube vint. Le gamin vit avec bonheur que tout reprenait
son aspect ordinaire, bien que le froid se fît encore plus piquant.
Lorsque le soleil se leva, il n’était pas jaune, mais rouge. On l’eût
dit rouge de colère, et le gamin se demandait quelle était la raison
de cette colère. Etait-ce parce que la nuit, en son absence, avait
rendu la terre si sombre et si froide?
 Les rayons du soleil jaillissaient en grandes gerbes, courant
partout pour s’assurer des méfaits de la nuit, et toutes les choses
rougissaient comme si elles avaient la conscience mal à l’aise: les
nuages au ciel, les troncs soyeux des hêtres, les fins rameaux
enchevêtrés de la forêt, le givre qui couvrait la couche de feuilles par
terre, tout s’embrasait d’une vive rougeur.
Toujours plus nombreuses, les gerbes de rayons parcouraient
l’espace; bientôt il ne resta plus rien de la terreur de la nuit.
L’engourdissement avait cessé, et il sortit de partout un nombre
étonnant d’êtres vivants. Le pivert noir à calotte rouge se mit à
frapper du bec contre un tronc d’arbre; l’écureuil sortit de son nid en
emportant une noisette, et s’installa sur une branche pour la
décortiquer. Le sansonnet survint, une racine dans son bec, et le
pinson chanta au sommet d’un arbre.
Le gamin comprit que le soleil avait dit à tous ces petits êtres:
«Éveillez-vous! et sortez de vos demeures! Je suis là. Vous n’avez
plus rien à craindre.»
On entendit du côté du lac les cris des oies qui se mettaient en
rang pour s’envoler. Quelques moments après, les quatorze oies
passèrent au-dessus de la forêt. Nils essaya de les appeler, mais
elles volaient trop haut: sa voix ne parvint pas jusqu’à elles. Elles
croyaient sans doute que le renard avait fini par le manger. Elles ne
le cherchaient même pas.
Le gamin aurait voulu pleurer d’angoisse, mais le soleil rayonnait
maintenant dans le ciel; jaune comme l’or, et joyeux, il semblait
donner du cœur à toute la création. «Comprends bien, Nils
Holgersson, disait-il, que tu n’as ni à t’affliger ni à t’inquiéter, tant
que je suis là.»

LE JEU DES OIES

Lundi, 24 mars.
 Rien n’arriva plus dans la forêt pendant le temps qu’il faut à peu
près à une oie pour déjeuner, mais vers la fin de la matinée, une oie
sauvage solitaire passa, volant sous l’épais toit des branches. Elle
semblait chercher lentement son chemin entre les troncs et les
ramées, et avançait très lentement. Dès que Smirre l’aperçut, il
quitta sa place sous le jeune hêtre, et se glissa vers elle. L’oie n’évita
pas le renard, mais vola tout près de lui. Smirre fit un bond pour
l’atteindre, mais la manqua, et l’oie continua son chemin vers le lac.
Peu de moments après, une nouvelle oie apparut. Elle suivit le
même chemin que la première, volant encore plus bas, et plus
lentement. Elle aussi passa tout près de Smirre le renard, et il fit un
grand bond après elle: ses oreilles effleurèrent presque les pattes de
l’oie, mais elle poursuivit son chemin vers le lac, silencieuse comme
une ombre.
Un moment encore passa et voilà de nouveau une oie sauvage;
volant plus bas et plus lentement, elle semblait éprouver plus de
peine à trouver son chemin entre les troncs des bouleaux. Smirre
bondit: un doigt plus haut, il l’attrapait. Cette fois encore l’oie se
sauva vers le lac.
Elle avait à peine disparu qu’une quatrième oie se montra. Elle
volait si lentement et si bas que Smirre pensait bien pouvoir s’en
emparer sans difficulté s’il avait voulu; toutefois il eut peur d’échouer
encore une fois et résolut de la laisser passer. Elle prit le même
chemin que les autres, puis, arrivée juste au-dessus de Smirre,
descendit si bas qu’il ne résista pas à la tentation de sauter après
elle. Il arriva assez haut pour l’effleurer de la patte, mais elle se jeta
brusquement de côté et se sauva.
Smirre n’avait pas eu le temps de souffler que trois oies
survenaient, volant sur une ligne. Elles firent comme les autres, et
Smirre bondit éperdument.
Puis ce furent cinq oies qui apparurent. Elles volaient mieux que
les autres, et bien qu’elles semblassent vouloir tenter Smirre, il les
laissa passer sans essayer de les attraper.
Un assez long moment s’écoula; une oie seule apparut. C’était la
treizième. Elle était si vieille, celle-là, qu’elle était uniformément
grise, sans une seule strie foncée. Elle paraissait ne pas pouvoir se
bien servir de l’une de ses ailes, et elle volait piteusement, tout de
travers. Parfois elle effleurait presque le sol. Smirre ne se contenta
pas de bondir après elle; il la poursuivit en courant et en sautant
jusque vers le lac, mais cette fois encore ses efforts furent vains.
Lorsque la quatorzième oie arriva, ce fut un joli spectacle. Elle
était toute blanche; on aurait dit qu’une éclaircie courait dans la
sombre forêt lorsqu’elle agitait ses grandes ailes. En la voyant,
Smirre fit appel à toutes ses forces et sauta, mais l’oie blanche
s’échappa saine et sauve comme les autres.
Il y eut un moment de tranquillité sous les hêtres.
Smirre se rappela soudain son prisonnier et leva les yeux vers
l’arbre. Le petit Poucet n’y était plus, comme on peut bien s’y
attendre.
Smirre ne put réfléchir longtemps à sa perte, car la première oie
revenait du côté du lac, volant lentement sous le feuillage. Malgré sa
récente malchance, Smirre fut content de la voir revenir et se jeta à
sa poursuite; il n’avait pas assez calculé son élan; il la manqua.
Après cette oie il en vint encore une, puis une troisième, une
quatrième, une cinquième, jusqu’à ce que la série s’achevât avec la
vieille oie gris d’acier et la grande oie blanche. Toutes arrivaient très
lentement et très bas; au moment de passer au-dessus de Smirre,
elles s’abaissaient encore, comme pour l’inviter à sauter. Et Smirre
sautait, il faisait des bonds et se lançait à leur poursuite, mais il ne
réussit pas à en attraper une seule.
C’était la plus mauvaise journée que Smirre eût jamais vécue. Les
oies sauvages passaient toujours au-dessus de lui: elles allaient et
venaient, et repassaient encore. Ainsi de magnifiques bêtes qui
avaient grandi et s’étaient engraissées dans les champs et les landes
d’Allemagne, traversèrent toute la journée la forêt sous les branches,
l’effleurant souvent, sans qu’il pût les attraper pour calmer sa faim.
L’hiver était à peine fini, et Smirre se souvenait de jours et de
nuits où il avait rôdé oisif sans apercevoir le moindre gibier, les
oiseaux de passage étant partis, les rats se cachant sous la terre
gelée, les poules encore enfermées. Mais la famine de l’hiver n’était
rien en comparaison des déceptions de cette journée.
Smirre n’était plus un jeune renard, il avait eu maintes fois les
chiens à ses trousses et avait entendu les balles siffler à ses oreilles.
Il était demeuré tapi, au fond d’un terrier pendant que les bassets
rampaient dans les couloirs souterrains, bien près de le trouver. Mais
l’angoisse qui l’avait étreint pendant la chasse harcelante n’était pas
comparable à ce qu’il ressentait maintenant après chaque bond
manqué.
Le matin, lorsque le jeu avait commencé, Smirre le renard était si
beau que les oies en avaient été comme éblouies. Smirre aimait la
splendeur: sa fourrure était d’un rouge ardent; sa poitrine était
blanche, son museau noir et sa queue opulente comme une plume
d’autruche. Mais le soir de ce même jour, la fourrure de Smirre
pendait en touffes enchevêtrées, il était baigné de sueur, ses yeux
avaient perdu tout éclat, et sa langue sortait de sa gueule haletante
d’où coulait de l’écume.
L’après-midi Smirre fut si las qu’il eut comme du délire. Il ne
voyait partout que des oies en plein vol. Il bondit vers des taches de
soleil qu’il découvrit par terre et vers un pauvre papillon éclos trop
tôt de sa chrysalide.
Pourtant les oies sauvages ne se lassaient pas de voler par la
forêt et de tourmenter Smirre. Elles n’eurent aucune pitié, bien que
Smirre fût anéanti, tremblant, fou. Elles continuaient encore bien
qu’elles comprissent que Smirre les voyait à peine, bondissant après
leurs ombres.
 Ce n’est que lorsque Smirre se fut affaissé sur un tas de feuilles
sèches, impuissant et inerte, prêt à rendre l’âme, qu’elles cessèrent
le jeu.
«Tu sauras dorénavant, renard, ce qu’il en coûte d’attaquer Akka
de Kebnekaïse», crièrent-elles à son oreille, en le laissant enfin.
 III

AVEC LES OISEAUX SAUVAGES

DANS LA FERME

Jeudi 24 mars.

Pendant les mêmes journées précisément il se passa en Scanie

un événement qui fut très discuté, occupa même les journaux, et
que beaucoup de gens qualifièrent de conte, faute de pouvoir en
donner une explication.
Voici l’histoire: une femelle d’écureuil avait été prise dans un
taillis de coudriers sur les rives du Vombsjö; on l’avait portée dans
une ferme voisine. Jeunes et vieux, tout le monde dans la ferme se
réjouissait de regarder la petite bête, si jolie avec sa belle queue, ses
yeux intelligents et curieux, et ses mignonnes petites pattes. On
comptait se distraire tout l’été de ses mouvements agiles, de sa
façon leste et rapide de décortiquer les noisettes et de ses jeux
joyeux. On l’installa dans une vieille cage à écureuil, composée d’une
petite maison peinte en vert et d’une roue en fil de fer. La petite
maison, qui avait portes et fenêtres, servirait de salle à manger et de
chambre à coucher; on y arrangea une couchette de feuilles et on y
mit un bol de lait et une poignée de noisettes. La roue devait être la
salle de jeu où la petite bête pourrait courir et grimper.
Les gens de la ferme trouvaient qu’ils avaient arrangé tout très
bien pour l’écureuil et s’étonnèrent que son habitation ne parût
guère lui plaire. Elle restait triste et revêche dans un coin de la
chambrette: de temps en temps elle faisait entendre un cri de
douleur aigu. Elle ne toucha pas à la nourriture. «C’est parce qu’elle
a peur, disaient les gens; demain, lorsqu’elle se sentira chez elle, elle
mangera et jouera.»
Or, à ce moment, les femmes de la maison besognaient aux
préparatifs d’un banquet, et le jour où l’on captura l’écureuil, on
cuisait du pain. Soit qu’une malchance eût retardé le travail en
empêchant la pâte de lever, soit qu’on eût été nonchalant, on dut
veiller bien avant dans la nuit.
Dans la cuisine régnait une activité fiévreuse, et l’on ne prenait
certes pas le temps de songer à l’écureuil. Mais il y avait à la maison
une vieille grand’mère, trop âgée pour aider à la cuisson du pain.
Elle s’en rendait parfaitement compte, mais elle ne pouvait accepter
l’idée d’être mise de côté.
Trop triste pour aller se coucher, elle s’était assise à la fenêtre et
regardait dehors. A cause de la chaleur, la porte de la cuisine était
restée ouverte; la lumière qui sortait de cette porte éclairait toute la
cour. C’était une cour entourée de constructions des quatre côtés, et
la maison d’en face était si bien illuminée que la vieille femme
pouvait distinguer les trous et les crevasses dans le mur en torchis.
Elle voyait aussi la cage de l’écureuil, suspendue juste à l’endroit
le plus éclairé.
Elle observa que l’écureuil courait toute la nuit sans repos de la
petite maison à la roue, de la roue à la petite maison. Elle pensa que
l’animal était en proie à une étrange inquiétude, mais elle supposait
que c’était la forte lumière qui l’empêchait de dormir.
Entre l’étable et l’écurie se trouvait un large passage couvert qui
menait à la porte cochère. Ce passage était situé de façon qu’il était
éclairé lui aussi. Assez avant dans la nuit, la vieille grand’mère vit
tout à coup sortir à pas prudents de dessous la voûte un petit
homme pas plus haut qu’un revers de main. Il était en sabots et en
culottes de cuir comme un ouvrier. La vieille grand’mère comprit tout
de suite que c’était le tomte et elle n’eut pas peur. Elle avait toujours
entendu dire qu’il demeurait par là et elle savait que le tomte portait
bonheur partout où il passait.
Dès que le tomte fut entré dans la cour, il courut à la cage de
l’écureuil. Ne pouvant y atteindre, il alla chercher une gaule qu’il
plaça contre la cage et le long de laquelle il grimpa ensuite comme
un marin le long d’une corde. Il secoua la porte de la petite maison
verte, mais la vieille grand’mère était bien tranquille; elle savait que
les enfants y avaient mis un cadenas de crainte que les enfants du
voisin ne vinssent voler leur écureuil.
Le tomte ne pouvant ouvrir la porte, la vieille femme vit l’écureuil
sortir dans la roue. Là tous deux eurent un long conciliabule, puis le
tomte se laissa glisser à terre le long de la gaule, et disparut par la
porte.
La vieille femme pensait ne plus le revoir cette nuit-là; elle resta
cependant près de la fenêtre. Au bout d’un instant elle le vit revenir.
Il était si pressé que ses pieds ne semblaient pas toucher le sol; il
courut à la cage. La vieille femme le vit nettement de ses yeux de
presbyte. Elle s’aperçut même qu’il tenait quelque chose dans ses
mains, mais sans pouvoir distinguer ce que c’était. Il posa sur le
pavé ce qu’il tenait dans sa main gauche et porta jusqu’à la cage ce
qu’il avait dans la droite. Il heurta de son sabot la petite fenêtre, la
brisa, et tendit ce qu’il tenait à l’écureuil. Puis il redescendit, prit ce
qu’il avait posé sur le sol et regrimpa à la cage. Aussitôt après il
s’enfuit, si vite que la vieille put à peine le suivre des yeux.
Ce fut alors la vieille grand’mère qui ne put rester tranquille dans
la maison; tout doucement elle gagna la porte, et se cacha dans
l’ombre de la pompe pour guetter le tomte. Un autre être l’avait
aussi aperçu, et était intrigué. C’était le chat. Il se glissa doucement
jusqu’au mur et s’arrêta un peu avant le rayon lumineux. Ils
attendirent longtemps dans la froide nuit de mars. La vieille pensait
à rentrer quand elle entendit du bruit sur le pavé, et vit que le petit
tomte revenait en trottinant. Comme précédemment il avait les deux
mains chargées, et ce qu’il portait piaillait et s’agitait. La vieille
comprit qu’il avait été chercher les petits de l’écureuil dans le bois de
coudriers, et qu’il les lui rapportait pour les empêcher de mourir de
faim.
Elle demeurait immobile pour ne pas l’effrayer et il ne semblait
pas que le tomte l’eût aperçue. Il allait poser l’un des petits sur le sol
pour s’élancer avec l’autre vers la cage, quand il vit briller tout près
de lui les yeux verts du chat. Il demeura immobile, déconcerté, un
petit dans chaque main, puis il se retourna, regarda de tous côtés et
aperçut la vieille grand’mère. Il n’hésita pas longtemps, courut à elle
et lui tendit l’un des petits.
La vieille grand’mère ne voulait pas se montrer indigne de cette
confiance. Elle s’inclina, prit le petit écureuil, et le garda jusqu’à ce
que le tomte eût porté l’autre à la cage et vînt chercher celui qu’il lui
avait remis.
Le lendemain matin, quand les gens de la ferme s’assemblèrent
pour le déjeuner, la vieille ne put s’empêcher de raconter ce qu’elle
avait vu dans la nuit. Tous se moquèrent d’elle naturellement et
prétendirent qu’elle avait rêvé. Il n’y avait pas de petits écureuils à
cette époque de l’année.
Mais elle était sûre de ce qu’elle disait, et les pria d’aller regarder
dans la cage. Ils le firent. Il y avait là sur le lit de feuillage quatre
petits à demi-nus et demi-aveugles qui avaient au moins deux ou
trois jours.
Quand le patron de la ferme les vit, il dit: «Quoi qu’il en soit, une
chose est certaine: nous devrions avoir honte.» Puis il tira de la cage
l’écureuil et les petits, et les remit dans le tablier de la vieille
grand’mère. «Emporte-les au bois de coudriers, dit-il, et rends-leur
la liberté.»
Tel est l’événement dont on parla tant jusque dans les journaux,
et que beaucoup refusèrent de croire parce qu’ils ne pouvaient
l’expliquer.
 DANS LE PARC D’ŒVEDSKLOSTER

Pendant toute la journée que les oies passèrent à se jouer du

renard, Nils dormit dans un nid d’écureuil abandonné. Quand il
s’éveilla vers le soir, il était très inquiet. «Je vais être renvoyé à la
maison et ne pourrai éviter de me montrer à père et à mère»,
pensait-il. Mais quand il alla retrouver les oies qui se baignaient dans
le Vombsjö, aucune ne lui parla du retour. «Elles pensent peut-être
que le blanc est trop fatigué pour me ramener ce soir», songea-t-il.
Le lendemain matin les oies étaient éveillées à la première aube,
longtemps avant le lever du soleil.
Nils crut qu’on allait sûrement le renvoyer, mais chose étrange,
lui et le jars blanc purent suivre les oies sauvages dans leur
promenade du matin.
Il ne comprenait pas la cause de ce retard; il se dit que les oies
sauvages ne voulaient pas le renvoyer avant qu’il se fût bien
rassasié. Quoi qu’il en soit, il se réjouissait de chaque instant qui lui
était accordé avant de retrouver ses parents.
Les oies sauvages passèrent au-dessus du domaine
d’Œvedskloster, situé avec son parc magnifique à l’est du lac. C’était
un beau domaine avec un grand château, une belle cour d’honneur,
pavée, entourée de murailles et de pavillons, un vieux jardin aux
charmilles taillées, aux allées couvertes, pourvu de pièces d’eau, de
fontaines, de grands arbres, de pelouses rectilignes, et dont les
bordures s’ornaient des fleurs du printemps.
Quand les oies passèrent à une heure matinale au-dessus du
domaine, personne n’était encore levé. Après s’en être bien
assurées, elles s’abaissèrent vers la niche du chien, et crièrent:
«Comment s’appelle cette petite cabane? Comment s’appelle cette
petite cabane?»
Le chien de garde se précipita aussitôt hors de sa niche, furieux,
aboyant vers le ciel. «Vous appelez ceci une cabane, misérables
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