Review of Creating Our Own: Folklore, Performance, and Identity in Cuzco, Peru By Zoila S. Mendoza

Abstract

Creating Our Own offers a detailed accounting of how folklore enters into processes of identity formation and projection in one exemplary setting, Cuzco, Peru, during the first half of the twentieth century. Cuzco is an interesting site for this accounting due to its historical prominence as the center of Inca civilization and its emergence during the time-frame of this study as one of the primary tourist attractions in the Andes. Drawing on contemporary newspaper accounts, archival materials, and interviews she has conducted, Zoila Mendoza traces the evolution of “artistic-folkloric output” in Cuzco through the middle decades of the twentieth century. Her central argument is that this realm of “creative effervescence” cannot be regarded as merely a reflection of identity processes but is instead “an integral and significant part of these processes” (3). Mendoza views these public forms as “privileged areas” and notes that their “close study often reveals paradoxes and contradictions” (2). Creating Our Own makes a strong case for the centrality of folklore in the construction of regional, national, and even continental identities, and provides a thorough, at times bordering on exhausting, examination of the many paradoxes and contradictions that appear upon close inspection of these materials.