Reimagining the Nation: Colonial Indigeneity in El laberinto de la soledad and Estética de la penuria

Abstract

This article presents a comparison between two literary essays, El laberinto de la soledad (1950) by Octavio Paz and Estética de la penuria (2018) by Luis Felipe Gómez Lomelí. The comparison develops the idea that Gómez Lomelí’s text decentralizes problematic representations of colonial Indigeneity that appear in Paz’s construction of Mexican identity, particularly when Paz reimagines the Pre-Hispanic and Colonial times in the twentieth century. The argument is anchored in a textual analysis that investigates the forms in which both texts associate geography and history with Indigenous identities of either sedentary or nomadic communities.