“The German language and the magnetic equator” website

The new production of El Fakir, co-published with Kultura – German Cultural Network, will be online as of Monday, November 23rd.

El Fakir joined forces with the Ecuadorian-German Cultural Center of Guayaquil and Humboldt Association / Goethe Center Quito, institutions that are part of Kultura – German Cultural Network, to be able to offer to readers, students and teachers three essays of cultural and historical criticism centred on the contact between the German world and Ecuador in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It will be a 2.0 publication for this Covid moment and will include content in different formats: texts, illustrations, videos and hyperlinks.

“The German language and the magnetic equator” (a quote from Alexander von Humboldt) will look at the influence of Austrian musician Schönberg on the music of Luis Humberto Salgado; also at the figure of Juan León Mera and the poem “El genio de los Andes: Canto a los ilustres viajeros M.M.W. Reiss y A. Stübel, con motivo de su ascensión al Cotopaxi y al Tungurahua” (The genius of the Andes: Poem for the illustrious travelers M.M.W. Reiss and A. Stübel, on the occasion of their ascent to the Cotopaxi and Tungurahua), and the history of the Polytechnic School of Quito, linked to the German Jesuits who arrived by invitation of Gabriel García Moreno to found it.

Contents of the three essays

1. In the first third of the 20^th century, the Viennese Arnold Schönberg began a radical-critical process of reflection and praxis on the legacy of the “classical” tradition in European music. The result, which was just beginning to be disseminated throughout Europe in the late 1930s, arrived in Quito with unusual speed. Gustavo Salgado Torres, concert pianist, son of Francisco Salgado (in turn, a student of the director of the national music conservatory established by Eloy Alfaro and Domenico Brescia), collected materials during his European stay as a member of Ecuador´s diplomatic corps and delivered them to his brother. Tape recordings, sheet music? We do not know. The fact of the matter is that Luis H. Salgado, from his immense creative solitude, in an environment quite indifferent, if not downright hostile to his passion and talent in the field of academic music, writes, experiments and composes, at the beginning of the 1940s, a revolutionary musical piece: Sanjuanito futurista/ Futurist Sanjuanito (1944). Not only is it the first work of its kind in Latin America, but, as is aptly pointed out in the text, it culturally presents us with a conceptual path that was deemed impossible: the marriage of the radically modern with the vernacular, the “fusion,” as one might say today, between musical nationalism and the avant-garde. The writer points out the twists and turns of this unique encounter between different musical worlds and allows us to glimpse at the rich and dynamic creativity of one of the most relevant and least known figures of twentieth-century Ecuadorian culture. In this article, Guillermo Meza, an important Ecuadorian pianist and in-depth student of Luis Humberto Salgado’s work, establishes essential data, dates and figures to learn in more detail about the arrival of Schönberg’s innovation in Ecuador.
2. In 1873, Juan León Mera, the most important Ecuadorian ideologue of the 19^th century, published a long poem entitled “El genio de los Andes: Canto a los ilustres viajeros M.M.W. Reiss y A. Stübel, con motivo de su ascensión al Cotopaxi y al Tungurahua” (The genius of the Andes: Poem for the illustrious travelers M.M.W. Reiss and A. Stübel, on the occasion of their ascent to the Cotopaxi and Tungurahua). The verses were meant to praise two German expedition members who undertook a nine-year scientific journey that brought them to equatorial lands, inter alia, to study our volcanoes. This text, by Ana and Elisa Sevilla, Ecuadorian historians, narrates the crossing of people, discourses and expectations that are interwoven in late 19^th century Ecuador and whose protagonists are not only figures like Reiss and Stübel, but Mera himself and Gabriel García Moreno. This article also delves into emerging positivist/scientific thought, religious dogma, and the national poetic discourse, along with the great Andean peaks, volcanic explosions, and Ecuador and Germany.
3. The article by historians Ana Sevilla, Elisa Sevilla and Alexis Medina, describes the history of the Polytechnic School of Quito and the role that the Compañía de Jesús played in its creation. One thing highlighted is how the president of Ecuador turned to the Jesuits to raise the scientific-technical level of the country, as well as the problems he encountered with the Spanish Jesuits and his empathy for the manner in which the German Jesuits practiced science. The article also highlights the characteristics of the group of Jesuit scientists who, during a six-year period, taught a wide range of subjects at the Polytechnic School and carried out several scientific expeditions while they released a series of publications.

Launch of the Hipatia Camacho collection

With this website, we are pleased to inaugurate the Hipatia Camacho collection. Camacho was instrumental in bringing about a renewed interest and support for Ecuadorian cultural production at the end of the 20^th century. Hipatia was a visionary cultural promoter and, thanks to her tenacity and energy, the Municipality of Quito reached an agreement with the descendants of Benjamín Carrión to house, in a heritage home, the contents of the personal library of the great writer from Loja. From then on, the Benjamín Carrión Cultural Center, directed by Hipatia Camacho, began the publication of its ambitious project Re/Incidencias, which compiles contemporary research work (as well as archival) centred on the founding figures of Ecuadorian art and literature. This collection aims to extend the work of Hipatia and generate a literary and critical production vis-à-vis the works of our cultural legacy, with the same spirit and passion that characterized the immense work of Hipatia Camacho Zambrano.

The illustration at the top of the page belongs to the artist Geracho Arias and is titled “Humboldt’s route.“ All of us at El Fakir would like to thank him for allowing us to use his magnificent illustration.

If you want to access the page, click here