The stink of deep america: Rodolfo Kusch and dilaceramento in Josefina Plá (1903-1999)

Abstract

The expression Deep America was proposed by Rodolfo Kusch, an Argentine intellectual based in puna, region of the Andean altiplano, in the year 1962. It is used to designate the feeling of the human that springs from the perspective of the knowledge of implicit original peoples and “lived daily in the street or in the countryside” (KUSCH, 2000a). The term has been used since then to designate the conviction that there is a continuity of cultural experience of these peoples originating in the Americas that impels us to undertake “an adventure that is al margen de nuestra official culture ”(ISHIZAWA, 2007). Deep America makes reference, therefore, to the conjunction of the elements primevals that - despite the whole colonizing process - erupt in the daily lives of large cities, forming a world view that makes us aware “that something impels us to be totally occidental aunque us los we promote ”(KUSCH, 2000a). Based on these assumptions, this work aims to examine how the writer Josefina Plá (1903-1999) aesthetically shapes these Americanist elements from the analysis of the short story A Caacupe.