Counterpart and Contrast in Julio Ramon Ribeyro's Two Novels

JULIO Ram6n Ribeyro belongs to the spate of Peruvian w iters of the 1950's who vehemently tore down the last trappings of a proud, hierarchic Lima. Ribeyro's powerful Los gallinazos sin plumas,' a collection of stories published in 1955, reveals the specter of degradation and sordidness in a city swollen with the misery of existence. Others in this generation of the '50's' also attacked the squalor, the decadence, and the injustices rampant in the old capital. From their bitter exposures came urban realism which entered the mainstream of Peruvian literature and crowded aside the indigenous-regionalism that had prevailed since the 1930's. Among the early writers of Lima's social deterioration and its human toll, Ribeyro, to many, showed the most promise.3 Ribeyro's two novels appeared in the next decade: Cr6nica de Gabriel (1960) and Los geniecillos dominicales (1965). Considered vertically, they oppose each other in geographical environment, narrative technique, and structural density; horizontally, the probing of social and individual dissolution forms the underlying base of both works. Ribeyro's fascination with collapsing social structures remains constant, unaffected by the plot, the texture or the focus of his novels. It is curious that Ribeyro places his first novel outside the pulsating Lima ambiance of his stories, choosing, instead, the northern sierra of Peru not far from the scenes of Ciro Alegria's El mundo es ancho y ajeno. At first glance the Andean setting of Cr6nica de Gabriel seems familiar, the social hierarchy, intact, the racial lines, clearly drawn. But the moment is not that of the indigenousregionalists. New social and economic forces, seeping into established bulwarks of provincial society and mingling with well-defined value codes, blur the traditional underpinnings of a regional novel. Even the sentimental attachment to the earth, so essential in works with a rural, Andean environment, is absent. Lucho, the young narrator of Cr6nica de Gabriel, is from Lima, but personal circumstances stemming from the death of his parents have brought about a change from the capital to the provinces. Thus Lucho, with his lime~ia mentality, must fit into the feudal world of his relatives who have lived for generations as the owners of the hacienda San Gabrial. He watches the dissolution of this family beset by vast economic problems, moral turpitude, alcoholism, irrational, abnormal behavior, and an inner climate of indolence and lack of direction. This interior and exterior erosion, leading to inevitable ruin, had been progressing for years before Lucho's arrival, and he witnesses the accelerated moments before the final liquidation. The family's adjustments and compromises with differing elements of society embody the decadence and corruption of an entire social class. In this novel, contrary to the precepts of indigenous-regionalism, the Indian Comunidad is in ascendancy. Every year Leonardo, the patriarch of Gabriel, must promise the Indian community something more and more elaborate-a chapel, perhaps a school-in order to curry favor and assure enough workers for the harvest. Provincial officials and rival landowners must also be courted by lavish outpourings of hospitality, and even by an advantageous marriage arrangement for Leticia, the adolescent daughter. Occasional outbursts from the cornered Leonardo uncover his spasmatic maneuvering at the same time that he predicts his own defeat. In this atmosphere of alienation, Lima, far away on the coast, becomes the only hope for escape. All accept the capital as superior in every way to their existence in Gabriel. Lucho often describes Lima to his cousins who join the adults in giving way to Lima's magnetism. Leticia fanta

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