Raça, gênero e nação na Bolívia através da obra de Antônio Diaz Villamil (1922- 1948)

Abstract

The research analyzes the narratives about race in Bolivia in the first half of the 20th century, in the period before the 1952 Revolution, through the works of the Bolivian Antonio Díaz Villamil; author who, in addition to being a recognized writer, was a great manager in Bolivian Public Education. Villamil introduced in his texts a discourse of racial gradation between criollos, indigenous and mestizos. As a member of the Government, he made contributions to national and transnational efforts to develop plans for the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the national state. Both in Villamil's fiction and in the Bolivian social experience, nationalism is projected and proposed as a tool with the purpose of fostering peaceful coexistence between subordinate groups and the local white elite. This social reality is reproduced with verisimilitude in the author's works – especially in La ninña de sus ojos, from 1948 -, turning the literary works into sources of guidelines for the political debate in his period of production and publication of the book. In addition to the use of novels produced by Villamil, to compose the study of the historical and social context, periodicals published in the 1940s, minutes and bulletins that record the meetings between state leaders and intellectuals were used.