Lettres de l'Inde de María Cruz: las letras de la tierra

Abstract

The article analyses the Travel Writing Lettres de l'Indeof the Guatemalan writer María Cruz (1876-1915) during her stay in India in 1912. The text, written in French and in the form of epistles, reveals the tensions that Cruz faces as woman and "mestiza" when desiring territorial, intellectual and corporal possession from which she is restricted by national sovereignty. Traveling to metropolitan centers ensures a certain intellectual identity that challenges authoritarianism of the Guatemalan society while, at the same time, it reinforces the sense of being immobilized and aimlessness. The key issue is how through the essentialism of the spiritual in a distant periphery, Cruz seeks to legitimize a social and corporeal feminine space that erases the desire of the local and the anguish of intellectual diaspora towards the metropolitan centers of culture.