La enfermedad del susto: identidad y discurso crítico desde los Andes

This article explores how the author Gamaliel Churata (Arturo Pablo Peralta Miranda, 1897-1969) connects the Andean social disease, known as susto, with the colonialism, and the call of the ajayu with an identity claim. This essay analyzes “El Kamili” published in 1928 in the Boletín Titikaka (1926-1930). The illness of the susto assumes a metaphorical character that reflects the image of a sick social body, the American one, and denounces the urgency of the return of its indigenous soul. Literature as a therapy, then, that is realized through a critical discourse which aims to explore the symptoms of the pathology of the social being and its causes. The experience of the disease, individual and collective, becomes a tool to claim an American self to retake their social identity. The author's discourse succeeds in destructuring the hierarchies of power within the post-colonial Republics.