Juan del Valle y Caviedes

Juan del Valle y Caviedes (1645?-1697), often referenced as Caviedes, is a Latin American poet and author. Caviedes belongs chronologically to the Spanish American Baroque Colonial period, but he shares little with Baroque writers such as Sor Juana and Bernardo de Balbuena. He is instead a sharp social and political critic, pointing out the shortcomings and hypocrisies of the traditional and smug Spanish American colonial administrators.

Caviedes was born in Porcuna, Andalucía, Spain around 1645. He came to Peru at an early age and settled in the mining area of Huancavelica, where life was hard even for a Spaniard at the top of the social pyramid. It appears he quickly dissipated his fortune on gambling, drink, and women of dubious morals drawn to the money and debauchery of the mining fields. Apparently he contracted a venereal disease, and was badly treated by the primitive doctors in the town, many of whom had minimal training and were basically charlatans. This illness gave rise to one of Caviedes' major themes: the damage done by physicians and their indifferent and rapacious attitude toward their patients.

Work

As a writer Caviedes does share some characteristics with several of the writers of Spanish Golden Age, such as Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora, because of his satirical, biting, vulgar, popular, and picaresque wit. But behind this criticism is a sharp social and moral attack on the abuses, injustices, and double standards of the Colonial period.

When Caviedes moved to Lima the targets of his biting satire included not only doctors, but also the Lima aristocrats and even the Vice-regal court. He attacked the clergy, lawyers, tailors, and street women, with an emphasis on the grotesque, the scatological, the ugly, the pornographic and the immoral. The scandalous aspects of his work made publication difficult during his lifetime, and it was not until years after his death that they were collected in a book titled "Diente del Parnasso" ("Tooth of Parnassus"), a reference to the biting and harsh nature of his satirical criticism and protests against the injustices of his era.

Sample of work

"Colloquium that a seriously ill doctor had with Death"

::From: "Diente del Parnaso/ Tooth of Parnassus", Translated by Jack Child

Take care that in your eagerness

if you treat doctors this way

you'll force the priests and sacristans

to go on all fours.

Because neither sunstroke nor excess

or the worst parents-in-law

fruit or snow without liquor,

bullet, stockade or song

kill in one year as many

as the best doctor.

References

* Chang-Rodríguez, Raquel. "Voces de Hispanoamérica". Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2004, pp. 70-74.

* Child, Jack. "Introduction to Latin American Literature: a Bilingual Anthology". Lanham: University Press of America,1994, pp. 97-101.

* Englekirk, John E. "An Outline History of Spanish American Literature". New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965, p. 29.

* Solé, Carlos A., (ed.) "Latin American Writers". New York: Scribner’s, 1989. (3 volumes), pp. 79-83.