Tungsten

The characters in this 1931 agitprop novel by the celebrated Peruvian poet Vallejo (who died in 1938) are all stereotypes. Mr. Taik, pipe-smoking manager of a U.S. mining company, drools arrogant paternalism. Fat, crafty Jose Marino, labor contractor and accomplice of the yanquis, willingly hands over his Indian girlfriend Graciela for a gang rape. Servando Huanca, the working-class hero, is pure Indian, humble yet noble. With its sloganeering and flimsy, schematic plot, Tungsten might be unreadable today, except that Vallejo, himself half-Indian, summoned up his lyrical powers and rage in documenting how the Quechuan Indians were swindled out of their farms and ``conscripted'' to slave in Andean mines and plantations for the gringos' profit. The deft translation by poet Mezey captures Vallejo's gritty portrayal of neocolonialism. In an extensive introductory essay, O'Connor sets the noveltranslated into English here for the first timein the context of South American protest literature. (Nov.)