Writer Manuel Cornejo: “I wanted to present the modern indigenous subject, with a cell phone and university studies” | Interview

Although he was born in Lima and studied Literature in San Marcos, for 30 years the professional career of Manuel Cornejo Chaparro has been dedicated to studies of the history and problems of the jungle as a member of the Amazon Center for Anthropology and Practical Application (CAAAP) which he now directs. All this experience, of travel and knowledge of the multiple Amazonian cultures, have led him to write “The infinite river”a police novel that takes place in Iquitos, at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, but that delves into the myths and multiple temporalities of ancestral cultures, especially the Kukama people, through the character Yaquichan Tapullimaa law student who represents those current indigenous youth “who have agency,” says Cornejo, and seek to revalue their identity silenced for centuries.

We talked with the author about this story that revolves around bloody murders perpetrated by someone whom Iquiteños call “the head cutter.”

You decide to approach the Amazon theme from the crime scene, what attracts you to this genre?

It is a story that, as the teacher would say Leonard Padura“it’s more of a novel than a police novel”… I’m very interested in cultured crime novels, ones that have nods to history or anthropology, I’m thinking of authors like Philip Kerr or the French fred vargas or benjamin black that have stories of this type, police stories with a good narrative language, with a good construction of characters and with a certain dialogue with the reader, who also builds the story.

You build typical police characters, in addition a city like Iquitos appears, marked by many problems such as failed drains.

Of course, the novel is set between 2011 and 2012 when all the sewers in the city were open and that somewhat symbolizes the abandonment of Iquitos due to the issue of corruption. The genre of this novel is framed within the Latin American crime scene that is used as a pretext for social criticism. So fiction generates possible worlds and other types of discourses that go beyond academic works, and allows me to approach, present, describe other realities. The novel addresses the theme of Amerindian perspectivism, which is a current of thought of Viveiros de Castro, and the concept of multiple realities, of the Colombian Arturo Escobar. I wanted to make a novel in which the contemporary, modern Amazonian indigenous subject is presented, with a cell phone and university studies.

The character of Yaquichán Tapullima, whose name sounds reminiscent of the film character…

Yes, it’s funny, but I had the name about ten years before, when I didn’t even think about writing the novel. I found this name in a baptism book from 1904, while researching the rubber era. There appeared a Yaquichan Tapullima, but without the accent. When I saw it, I thought ‘this is a novel name’, and wrote it down. In the novel, this Yaquichán appears, already with an accent, and his name reflects this cultural dynamism that exists in the Amazonian peoples, this appropriation they make of the foreign. This character reflects this capacity for agency that current Amazonian subjects have and that we see present in the world of art, for example, subjects capable of revealing new forms of aesthetics, based on their traditions.

Despite living in modernity, Yaquichán explores the mythical world, in his dreams, in his Kukama origins.

Yaquichán goes through these multiple realities. The myth is present in this oneiric relationship with his grandfather. Sleep is something valuable in the different Amazonian worldviews. Unlike us, the Kukamas think that when they sleep their body dies and their soul separates from the body and travels through realities and can learn things that they will later apply on a daily basis. That is seen in the novel. Yaquichán learns to face problems, to conquer this Vanesa girl, with whom he is in love…

The novel focuses on the Kukama people, how has your approach to this culture been?

I was struck by this cultural resistance of the Kukamas. When the Spanish arrived, they were one of the great empires that existed in the Amazon, some chroniclers speak of populations of more than 30,000 people. They later had a lot of contact with other peoples, they were in the missions and appropriated Christian stories. In the rubber era, many Kukama migrated to the cities, they were invisible natives because they were not visible from the outside, but they did retain their identity.

An interesting detail is how you use those nouns turned into verbs: to dilute, mansion, etc., which are typical of the Amazonian peoples.

It’s very nice, I’ve heard many of those words and I’ve taken note, many border on poetry. For example, this term ‘mansion’ is used a lot by fishermen when they are in the middle of the river at night and they have the sky, the stars, the forest in front of them, like a mansion. So, they mansion while waiting for the catch, that seems very poetic to me. The whole part of the dream between Yaquichán and his grandfather allows me to develop this regional poetic language.

The center of the novel is marked by these horrendous crimes of the head cutter, does that myth exist among the Kukama or have you reworked it?

The myth of the head cutter is in different towns, in other places of the Amazon they call it the pelacara and in the Andean world the pishtaco. It is a foreign agent that takes out the vital organs and cuts off the heads of the natives. The myth reflects the fear of the foreign. It is also a myth that reappears in the face of issues such as the impact of extractive industries, oil companies, and spills. But we must bear in mind that the cutthroat is a very old pre-Columbian myth that has been recreated… when I traveled from Iquitos to Tabatinga, Leticia, on the triple border, I heard many stories about the head cutter and that was one of the reasons for the novel .

The character Morel, who helps the police discover the murders, is also a writer, but he doesn’t know how to tell his story. Did that happen to you with this story?

No, with the character Morel I wanted to symbolize, from a literary point of view, the difficulties that exist in approaching the Amazonian scene. The character wonders at one point if the Amazon is only to be painted or sung, and evokes the paintings of Bendayán, Ceccarelli, Brus Rubio or Calvo de Araujo, because sometimes words can also limit. There the character talks about how to describe sunrises, some scenes that overflow words, that is the search to find a literary language that comes close to dialogue with the environment of Amazonian nature without falling into exoticism, in exuberance and in places common. That was the challenge facing this lawyer Morel, who in fiction is the grandson of a lawyer close to Julio César Arana, and that also gives me room to reflect on the rubber era.

To finish, the Escazú agreement has just been denied, what is your opinion of this?

It is a shame and a mistake on the part of the government and the authorities not to endorse the Escazú agreement because what it is about is preserving the Amazon, its resources, its natural assets that not only belong to us but to future generations. I believe that we have to learn from the indigenous peoples, from what they call good living, and in that sense it is important to recover those voices, that knowledge in order to build a more harmonious and more inclusive national development… It is necessary to collect those experiences and learning as a national society, that seems important to me. And the Kukama people are one of those who have conceived this the most. That is something that is also seen in the novel, the dialogue of the characters with nature.

The novel The infinite river. The first path of Yaquichán Tapullimaby Manuel Cornejo Chaparro, has been published by Planet231 pp.