Hybridity: Revolution in Latinx Performing Arts
Ollantay was an Inca drama from 1470 that was originally written in Quechua. It followed Ollantay, its namesake, as he fell in love with Inca Pachacutec's daughter, Cusi Coyllur. Since Ollantay was Inca Pachacutec's best warrior, Pachacutec called him a "son". This exclamation emboldened Ollantay to ask him for Cusi Coyllur's hand in marriage. However, he did not allow it because she was a daughter of the Sun and Ollantay was a son of the Earth. According to Inca laws, which were Pachacutec's decrees, they cannot be together. They cannot mix.
Despite this restriction, they married in secret and carried his child before Ollantay asked for his blessing. He separated them, and Ollantay became the "Inca", or "Emperor", of his own jurisdiction called "Ollantay-tambo". He and Inca Pachacutec had a ten year feud where Cusi Coyllur was imprisoned and Yma Sumac, their daughter, was in the Convent of the Virgins of the Sun. For as long as Pachacutec lived, they could not be with their daughter or each other.
Inca Túpac-Yupanqui, Pachacutec's successor, ordered Rumiñahui, the chief general, to crush Ollantay. Unfortunately, he tricked Ollantay instead of honorably defeating him. As a result, Túpac-Yupanqui named Ollantay his permament chief to replace Rumiñahui. The play ended with Yma Sumac telling her father's side of the story: his cry against the theocratic system (Karnis).
The following three objects are tied together by identity politics: the notion of asserting oneself within ethnic communities to progress society. Each of these pieces offered the insight of how hybridity has been used to other people and justify discrimination. Therefore, society accepted extreme marginalization to the point of irreversible erasure. Despite the odds, the Indigenous heritage was immortalized in the performing arts to inspire revolution on the stage, page, and air waves.
Karnis’s breakdown of Ollantay particularly highlighted each character’s inner thoughts and emotions amid the familial and political turmoil. Inca Pachacutec’s theocratic society was determined to separate his daughter of the Sun, Cusi Coyllur, from the son of the Earth, Ollantay. This notion of purity forced them apart from their daughter, Yma Sumac, who was the pinnacle of peace and prosperity by being a "new race" formed from two opposing sides. Ironically, the drama of Ollantay only survived because of a Jesuit priest’s, Father Antonio Valdez, 1780 Spanish translation. A theocratic society saved a cultural piece of the Indigenous People they were destroying.
In the bittersweet reunion of this photograph, otherness was expressed in mixed blood. Love between "bloodlines" was the cause of immense pain and anguish for Ollantay and Cusi Coyllur. Otherness often drove people into violent streaks of defiance to reclaim their rightful property, both land and family. In this scene, Ollantay was finally recognized and rewarded. He was silenced for ten years, so his righteous rage boiled over into the lives of his own people in Ollantay-tambo.
Over the past 550 years, the otherness of mixed blood evolved into the otherness of mixed identity. In terms of the U.S. Census, those with mixed identity quite literally did not fit in a box. With an American society that relied on categorization, people of mixed descent confused hegemonic order. They were left to find their own areas to flourish. This split resulted in a multitude of initiatives to include all those excluded.
Renowned director and actor Luis Avalos introduced the Pre-Columbian drama to the 21st century audience. He created space for Latinx performing arts creatives through his Americas Theatre Arts Foundation. He staged and supported productions of Latin American-inspired dramas. Before Ollantay: Warrior of the Sun opened in the El Portal Theatre on October 2004, he researched Ollantay in the Benson Latin American Collection as well. In fact, photographs of his production were previously exhibited and are currently stored in their archive (Leahy).
Before Avalos, the Ollantay Center for the Arts established spaces for Latinx art to thrive in 1990 New York City. The organization was fueled by various Latinx creatives. One of their projects included a magazine press for writers to experiment and share their stories. One was called “Hispanic Immigrant Writers and the Identity Question.” In their introduction, Silvio Torres-Saillant outlined the diversity of Latinx identities despite the popular American monolith. Immigration fostered mixing people and resulted in breaking from the white America's blue blood mentality. His argument was imperative to the “new race” Ollantay created because it was the instrument of unity and welfare.
Avalos and the Ollantay Center for the Arts' efforts were preceeded by one Magda Portal. In the 20th century, Latin America endured turbulent political periods. The 1940s in Chile and Peru saw the rise and fall of the socialist and feminist movements (Rock). However, the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, which Magda Portal notably served, persisted because of its commitment to cultural reform (Weaver). They prized and taught the Indigenous heritage of the Incas to rejuvenate their particular Latinx identity (Trimberger).
This mission was present in a radio transcript Portal wrote to teach secondary students about Ollantay. Similar to the original story, she fostered an anti-government spirit in the youth by describing the National Savings as a leech for their money (Wallace Fuentes). She also expressed how Jesuits were intrigued by Ollantay’s mix of reality and fantasy, but the Inca refused to uncover their secrets. Pre-Columbian art remained pure, powerful, and transcendent. Above all, Portal asserted that Latin America would be free through Ollantay because of the character of Yma Sumac. She combined heaven and Earth, which symbolically represented the political elite and common people. The transcript defied classist rules against mixing and frames the next generation as the only hope for peace. Despite these encouragements, hegemonic institutions still sought to extinguish the flame of hope and history.
Here, otherness was marked by economic class. Portal encouraged the small defiances against government through the National Savings Bank and expressed them through Ollantay. She inhabited these mythological characters to critque her Peruvian government during her exile in Chile. The elite wanted her silenced, just like Ollantay and mixed Americans. Nevertheless, she fought valianty for her commoners' rights, especially women's suffrage, for decades.