Dancing Cholas in the Archive: Latinx Textuality, Choreography, and Canonicity in Melville's Islas Encantadas

Etymologically speaking, the word “chola” first appears in Herman Melville’s 1865 novella, The Encantadas. The word describes Hunilla, a “half-breed” indigenous woman from Payta, Peru. Anachronistically speaking, the... [ view full abstract ]

Etymologically speaking, the word “chola” first appears in Herman Melville’s 1865 novella, The Encantadas. The word describes Hunilla, a “half-breed” indigenous woman from Payta, Peru. Anachronistically speaking, the word signals a very different set of resonances for us Latinx peoples; often registering under the scope of stereotype, a “Chola” is defined as a “gangster” from the barrio. She puts on excessive makeup, she wears tattoos, she dates cholos. As many urban dictionary contributors remind us, some “look” and perform Choladidad; others “do” it. While it may seem perverse to open up a discussion of Latinidad (or Choladidad) from what is now a 19^th Century canonical text in american literary history, this paper explores the encounter with “the chola,” offering a rethinking about where we find Latinidad and its “silent” presence in our archives. For those of us vested choreographing and centering indigenous-black Latinx presence in our 19^th C archives, we often look toward an “anti-colonial” origin. I read Hunilla’s story, however, as a moment that challenges how we conceptualize Latinx historicity, one that may not depend on the recovery of an archival origin for Latinx coherence. Hunilla’s story—its inscribed black and indigenous histories of sound, dance, performance, and movement—is less about how she is represented or how she self-represents as a “Latina.” Rather, her Latinidad, I argue, exceeds the scope of literary representation, calling for other material forms of Latinx textuality in ways that consider the uncertainty of Latinx movement instead of its definitive presence.