Abstract

From 1833-1834, Frenchwoman Flora Tristan made a year-long journey to Peru and later published the narrative of her experiences with the title, Peregrinations of a Pariah 1833-1834 [Les Peregrinations d'une paria 1833-1834; 1838]. This text is of interest to scholars for a variety of reasons: it was authored by a woman who took a long journey by herself at a time when proper European women did not travel alone; it offers an interpretation of Peruvian society just a few years after independence was achieved from Spain; and the publication of the book marked Tristan's entry into public life and her transformation into a social activist. As a work of literature, the book is most often explored in an effort to better understand the nature and functions of travel writing. In her influential study of such narratives, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Mary Louise Pratt analyzes Tristan's text as part of her inquiry into the ways in which travel writing "produces" the rest of the world for European readers and how these texts participate in European expansionism. Others have sought to define the genre in which to place the text: is it an autobiography? A bildungsroman? A novel? These critical studies all tend to examine Peregrinations of a Pariah as a carefully constructed discourse revealing the biases inherent in the nineteenth-century, European gaze rather than as an accurate representation of the people and places that Tristan encountered. However, historians of Peru often rely on Tristan's text to document their analyses of life in that South American nation in the 1830s. This suggests that, across disciplines, we have yet to come to an agreement as to the value and reliability of Tristan's travel narrative as a way not only of understanding European cultural ideology in the nineteenth century, but also as a source of valuable information about Peruvian conceptions of identity during the period of transition from colonial status to independence. In this essay, I would like to examine an aspect of Tristan's text that has not received sufficient critical attention, which is her treatment of slavery and her descriptions of Afro-Peruvians in Arequipa. I will devote particular attention to her representation of the participation of people of African descent in a religious procession, for it helps to illustrate the ways in which Tristan's narration provides us with important information despite the prejudices and even the failures of comprehension evident in the text. While Tristan's depictions of institutions and daily practices in Arequipa and Lima clearly expose her racial and cultural biases, she nonetheless reveals the central role of Afro-Peruvians in public and private life and helps demonstrate the tensions of a multiethnic society making the transition from colony to independent country. Thus, a new reading of Tristan's representations of slavery and of Afro-Peruvians helps us to understand the extent to which we can rely on travel narratives to provide us with historical information.1 The facts of Tristan's life are becoming much more widely known as she is a subject of interest to scholars from a variety of backgrounds.2 Nonetheless, a few details of her biography and motivations for traveling and writing are worth mentioning here. Born in France in 1804, Tristan was the daughter of an aristocratic Peruvian, Mariano Tristan y Moscoso, and Frenchwoman Anne-Pierre Laisnay. Her parents' marriage was not considered legitimate under French law because only a religious ceremony rather than a civil one was performed. When Mariano Tristan died intestate, leaving behind his wife and two young children, his property in France was confiscated by the government because of his position in the Spanish army. This was merely the beginning of Flora Tristan's difficulties. After a poverty-stricken childhood, Tristan was forced to marry an abusive man who eventually shot and nearly killed her.3 In the 1830s, separated and in hiding from her husband, Tristan decided to travel to Peru to claim an inheritance from her wealthy father's family. …