The Cultural Debate in the Afro-Ecuadorian Essay of the 20th Century: the Cases of Adalberto Ortiz and Nelson Estupiñán Bass

• In Event: Colonialidad/Decolonialidad y Raza

Abstract

Previous important efforts have been made in Afro-Ecuadorian literary studies in order to understand its poetic and its fiction, nonetheless the study of its non-fictional prose has been scarce. In this occasion, it is thought to be urgent to make an analysis of the essays written by two of the most important authors of Afro-Ecuadorian literature such as Adalberto Ortiz and Nelson Estupiñán Bass, and thus to give a prolegomenon towards an history on Afro-Ecuadorian intellectuality. This investigation is delimited to the study of the cultural debate in the 20th century, and it establishes that Afro-Ecuadorian people themselves studied their own culture, and its relations with politics and aesthetics as well. Thanks to the studied phenomenon it is also possible to track the social relations surrounding these texts and the contexts for which they wrote and thought -achieving to trespass national borders. In this way this investigation presents a fragment of the Afro-Latin-American intellectual history.

Author

• Joshua Montaño Paredes, Universidad de Salamanca