Peruvian Icons T-shirts
The Peru Guide has added a new group of t-shirts that commemorate some of the most important Icons of Peruvian Popular Culture. The first 4 legends featured in this series include a poet, a musician, and 2 saints (one though not recognized by the Catholic Church). Follows a short biography of the celebrated personalities (with excerpts from Wikipedia).
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César Vallejo
Peru’s first poet, César Vallejo was born the youngest of eleven children in Santiago de Chuco, a remote village in the Northern Andes of Peru. Although during his lifetime he published only three books of poetry, he is nonetheless considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century. Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his books was distinct from the others and, in its own sense, revolutionary.
His first book, Los heraldos negros (The black heralds) is a transitional book which blends modernismo, posmodernismo and the beginnings of the avant-garde in the structure and language of its poems. The poet confronts existential anguish, personal guilt, and pain, writing famously, Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes…, yo no sé (”There are blows in life, so hard… I don’t know”).
Trilce, his second book, published in 1922, anticipated much of the avant-garde movement that would develop in the 1920s and 30s. Vallejo’s book takes language to a radical extreme, inventing words, stretching syntax, using automatic writing and other techniques now known as “surrealist” (though he did this before the Surrealist movement began). The book put Latin America at the center of the Avant-garde.
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Sarita Colonia
Although not recognised by the Catholic Church, Sarita Colonia is the unofficial saint of the forgotten and the pauper. Her grave, in the popular port of Callao, is a sanctuary of marginal popular religiosity. It’s visited by prostitutes, homosexuals, transvestites, and criminals who, ready to face death every day, ask Sarita to help them through their dangerous jobs, pray her for a safe return home.
Born in 1914 in Huaraz (in the Andean department of Ancash), Sarita Colonia migrated with her family to Lima, as many Andean families did during the first decades of the 20th century. The fervour and myth around Sarita began after two men raped her (or tried to). Indeed, there are contradictory versions about this event. One of these suggests that, after tearing her clothes apart, the rapists found no sexual organ: it had disappeared. According to Ernesto Vásquez (Sarita Colonia: Popular Resistance in the everyday life of Transnational Migrants), it is precisely because of this ambiguity that she currently represents the most important popular religious icon in Peru
The cult for Sarita Colonia started in the 70s, first confined to the marginal, then gradually extending to more prosper and mainstream strata of society.
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Felipe Pinglo
Known as the father of Peruvian Musica criolla, Pinglo (July 18, 1899 - May 13, 1936) was an influential and prolific poet and songwriter best known for his often covered “El Plebeyo” (The Commoner).
In Peru and Latin America, Pinglo’s name is most often associated with the Peruvian vals criollo, which is a uniquely Peruvian music, characterized by the 3/4 time, elaborate guitar work and lyrics about lost love or the Lima of yesteryear.
Pinglo was born in one of the oldest sections of Lima, (Barrios Altos), known as an historical district with a working class population. The poverty in which young Felipe was raised as well as the instruction received by his father and aunts created a young mind that was both learned and socially conscious. During his lifetime, Pinglo was known as a Bohemian, sickly and frail. In 1917, he produced his first vals, “Amelia” at the age of 18, which instantly became a popular and respected song. For the next 19 years until his untimely death in 1936 he composed approximately 300 songs, many of them lost forever or surviving in fragments only.
Fray Martín de Porres
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Born in Lima (December 9, 1579), he was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a young Afro-Peruvian woman. He grew up in poverty, and at the age of 11 was taken in by the Dominicans as a servant. As his duties grew he was promoted to almoner, and then put in charge of the infirmary. His piety and miraculous cures led his superiors to drop the racial limits on admission to the Order and he was made a full Dominican brother.
His work on behalf of the poor was tireless: he established an orphanage and a children’s hospital. He maintained an austere lifestyle, which included fasting and forswearing meat. Among the many miracles attributed to him were those of levitation, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures and an ability to communicate with animals. It is said that he also was able to feed a dog, a cat, and a mouse together from a same dish; the three didn’t fight among themselves.
Sain Martin was beatified in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and canonized on May 6, 1962 by Pope John XXIII. His feast day is November 3.
As part of a special edition, the Peruvian Icons t-shirts only come in a limited array of models/colours, including the following:
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Add comment February 15th, 2007