Nowhere, perhaps, can the endless varieties of huachafería be better appreciated than in literature, because writing and speaking are its natural medium. There are poets who exhibit this quality sporadically, like César Vallejo, and others whose every verse reveals it, like José Santos Chocano. As a poet, Martín Adán was quite sober, but his prose was rife with huachafería. Julio Ramón Ribeyro is an odd case, a writer devoid of huachafería; in Peru, he is naturally the exception. More common are those like Alfredo Bryce Echenique and Salazar Bondy, who, despite their apparent prejudices against and phobia of huachafería, reveal it, like a badly hidden vice, in every line they compose. And then there’s Manuel Scorza, whose very periods and commas positively drip with huachafería.
Allow me a brief list of notable examples of huachafería. In high society: dueling, bullfighting, owning a home in Miami, the use of nobiliary particles in your surname, anglicisms, and, of course, calling yourself white. In the middle classes: watching telenovelas and acting them out in real life, taking stockpots of noodles to the beach on Sundays to gobble them up between breaking waves, saying “I think” when you’re not thinking at all, using diminutives (a nip of champagne), stressing your own or someone else’s Indian heritage, for better or for worse, when convenience strikes. For the workers: wearing pomade, chewing gum, smoking marijuana, dancing to rock and roll, and being racist.
The surrealists said that the archetypal surrealist act was to walk outside and shoot the first person you saw on the street. The emblematic act of huachafería is that of the boxer with a battered face calling out to his mother, who is watching him on TV and praying for his victory, or maybe of the failed suicide who opens his eyes and asks for a priest to take his confession.
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