“Yo os perdono”. Clorinda Matto y las batallas por El Perú Ilustrado

Abstract

This article examines the epistolary masquerades and posing that Clorinda Matto deployed as strategy to construct her defense against the series of denunciations, attacks, and public punishments imposed on her by the Peruvian Church following the publication of “Magdala” in El Perú Ilustrado (EPI). It suggests reading the core corpus, consisting of three letters –private and public– addressed by the novelist to various ecclesiastical authorities, from the perspective of subsequent shifts that “the stratagems of the weak” (Ludmer) would undergo in turn-of-the-century Peru when women writers gained access to the press and their causes became public. This rhetoric of defense is part of a long-standing genealogy which evinces the conflict arising between the place the female subject assigns herself and the place assigned to her by those in power.