Twisting injustice’s whirl: theatre, Peruvian peasantry and social criticism in Víctor Zavala’s work

Abstract

The dramatic work of Peruvian playwright Víctor Zavala Cataño (Huamantanga, 1932) provides a proposal of vindication of Peruvian peasantry based on a Marxist reading of the Andean reality. Through the analysis of his transcendental volume Teatro Campesino (1969) and the later Teatro popular I (1984) this contribution traces the ideological and artistic traits of these texts. In this sense, two different aspects should be pointed out: on the one hand, the portrait of the indigenous peasant as an autonomous political subject, who is willing to react against the source of his and her oppression in a revolutionary way. On the other hand, it highlights Zavala’s efforts to adapt Bertolt Brecht’s teachings to the Peruvian context to build his political and artistic discourses. Therefore, his plays are a link with previous indigenista Peruvian literary tradition, using mainly the dramatic work. The importance given to the indigenous peasant in Zavala’s work happens to be a breakthrough in the Peruvian theatrical tradition, and takes a path that many authors and theatrical groups will thoroughly follow in the years to come.