Literary recommendation: ‘Rebel Letters 1’, a book that brings together essays by Ecuadorian authors who were silenced

By Fernando Endara | Anthropologist and Literature teacher

The editorial Alchemy Effect published in 2020 in digital format the collective book rebel Letters 1, whose physical copies were delivered to their authors and various libraries, journalists, scholars and researchers in the country. A book that consists of six biographical essays that cover the life and work of authors of Ecuadorian letters who, at the juncture of politics and literature, were silenced or erased from the canon.

The book begins with the work of the scholar of Ecuadorian literature, manager of the work and the publisher, Ximena de los Angeles Flores, titled Marietta de Veintimillaa unique woman at the crossroads of the conservative and the liberal, an essay that reflects on how little has been written or disseminated about women writers at the beginning of the republic and that recovers the immense stature of La Generalita, Marietta de Veintimilla, niece of President Ignacio de Veintimilla.

It is no secret to anyone that Marietta controlled the strings of her uncle’s government, serving as first lady and counselor, combining private life with state administration, confronting adversaries and sycophants in the political intrigues of conservatives and liberals. Ecuadorian history depicts the Veintimilla government as a period of mistakes, waste and corruption, which culminated in the exile of the president, his supporters and his family. From exile in Lima, Marietta published Ecuadorian pages, in 1890, under the seal of the Liberal press of F. Macías y Ca, provoking countless controversial and controversial comments. Its literary and historical value is that for the first time a woman wrote and published a work with a high political content, a field almost forbidden to women of her time.

Below is the text Irony and testimony in combat journalism: Sergio Núñez and his weekly Fantoches, written by Fabian Nunez Baquero. An essay that collects the incorruptible memory of Sergio Núñez Santamaría, a skillful critical journalist who denounced, through humor and ridicule, the various slots and betrayals of the Socialist party.

The third text is illuminated by the distinguished figure of José de la Cuadra, the enunciator of the Ecuadorian montuvio. Francis Honeys offers us an excellent academic work that reflects on the historical and human context of the Guayaquil native’s work. Indeed, Mieles’s essay dwells on one of the most interesting topics in Ecuadorian literature: José de la Cuadra as a precursor to magical realism.

The book rebel lyrics 1 maintains its very high academic quality with the work doubles and singles, an essay on Pablo Palacio and Joaquin Gallegos Lara, produced by Pablo Yepez Maldonado. The following item: Sergio Román Armendáriz: from the existential voice of Club 7 to the insurgent equatorial poem for a new homeland, written by Diego Velasco Andrade recalls the figure of the Guayaquil poet who, from the university front, kept his pen and his ideals firm, through an experiential biographical text that dialogues with the voice of Sergio Román taken from various verses, dialogues and encounters. To finish the work, Raul Arias gives us an essay that analyzes the life and work of Rafael Larrea, poet of liberation. Larrea Insuasti was a worthy representative of the Tzántzico movement that “gave an authentic, creative, mobilizing response to the ideological-aesthetic demand of our literature at a specific historical moment”: the 1960s and 1970s. (OR)

*You can find the full version of this review at effectalquimia.blogspot.com.