Argentina and the Appropriation of the Inca Past

This chapter explores how and why a mostly European immigrant-constituted country such as Argentina used the Inca past as a source for their own national art music identity. Since the indigenous population of Argentina was a minority and was kept outside the discourses about the nation, the idea of an indigenous past did not represent a threat to the Argentine elites responsible for building the country around the turn of the twentieth century. It was instead the “unwanted” European immigration by laborers who were seen to bring socialist and anarchist ideas with them, which threatened the ideals of the creole (Hispanic) elites. These elites therefore appropriated the Inca past as a way to create their own heritage and to distance themselves from the European model. Even though some composers belonged to this elite, other composers from different immigration heritages also used the Inca background to create national works that would incorporate them into the national space. Yet the knowledge of Inca music was employed more vaguely in the Argentine context. It mainly originated from the success of the performances of the Misión Peruana de Arte Incaico in 1923, and from articles developed from Alomía Robles’s lectures, and also as written by the Ecuadorians Traversari and Durán, published in music journals such as Música de América (1920–1922) and Tárrega (1924–1927). As a result, composers tended to turn to a combination of elements, in many cases of creole origin, such as the vidalita song, to create “indigenous” sounds.