The 19th-century witnessed a boom in print culture in Latin America. Later nationalist canons, nonetheless, chose from this surge a small number of books, mainly novels celebrating national landscapes and themes, the vast majority written by creole men representing the politics of the literary historian building such canons. With this panel on new scholarly editions, we bring to the fore the ways in which scholars are, through their reedition projects, expanding and challenging the Latin American canon. The four presentations in this panel discuss specific edition projects of forgotten texts or forgotten modes of circulation that have been ideologically excluded from canonical studies. They propose a re-reading of 19^th century Latin America as a reverberating past that has much to say about our present, for example, in relation to women and Indigenous peoples’ place in society. Additionally, they speak to methodological dilemmas editors face when editing 19^th and early 20^th century texts. Ultimately, this panel pushes for the need to produce new scholarly editions of books written from the margins as an essential component for rethinking the field of Latin American studies.

Smith’s paper argues for the importance of a new scholarly edition of Chilean novelist Alberto Blest Gana’s Mariluán. Serialized in 1862, Mariluán is considered Chilean writer Blest Gana’s forgotten novel. It narrates the story of a Mapuche soldier who dreams of the reinvigoration of his race by their incorporation into white society. After signing an unfair and unjust treaty with the Chilean government, Mariluán dies, and his dream remains unfulfilled. This plot has been canonically read as a justification for the extermination of Chile’s indigenous inhabitants. However, the narrative voice constantly vacillates between praising Mariluán’s “civilized” nature and condemning indigenous groups to the nation’s savage past. This paper explores this ambivalence by considering Blest Gana’s newspaper chronicles from 1862, which illuminate a condemnation of criollo attitudes toward indigenous groups. Mariluán encapsulates the tensions inherent in efforts to define Chilean history with regards to the past, present, and future of its indigenous inhabitants. Mayna-Medrano’s paper is based on the author’s 2019 scholarly edition of El padre Horán: Escenas de la vida del Cuzco (EPH) by Narciso Aréstegui (Ediciones MyL). Working on this project allowed her to bring renewed attention to this overlooked novel by reading it beyond its well-known relationship with canonical novel Aves sin nidoby Clorinda Matto de Turner. Originally published as a serialized novel in El Comercio in 1848, EPH has aroused interest among critics since its first appearance. Yet its first edition as a book wasn’t produced until the seventies. Depicting the first years of independence from outside the limeño elites' lens, EPH facilitates facilitates one of the first portrayals of Peru’s Andes region socio-economic problems. While it used a melodramatic rhetoric that literary critics in the 20th century disregarded as a sign of a minor genre, this paper proposes that studying this melodramatic mode provides a better understanding of Andean literary history. Finally, this presentation contributes to a discussion of methodological problems encountered during the scholarly edition process, especially issues that focus the editorial treatment of Indigenous peoples and women. Martínez-Pinzón’s paper introduces the author’s reedition of Adolfo León-Goméz’s memoir about his internal exile in the Leper Colony of Agua de Dios, titled La ciudad del dolor: ecos del cementerio de enterrados vivos y del presidio de inocentes (1923). The talk will also dwell on the reasons and challenges of its reedition during the year of its centennial within Relecturas, a collection rescuing forgotten texts of the Colombian literary tradition, edited in collaboration by Universidad de los Andes, Universidad Nacional, EAFIT and Editorial Panamericana. Simón Alegre’s paper focuses on the analysis of reprints and their transatlantic circulation during the 19^th century, through the study of two of Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer’s works: Madres de hombres célebres (first published in Mexico in 1884, with subsequent reissues in México in 1885 and Spain in 1895) and La mujer juzgada por una mujer (published in Spain in 1882 and reissued in México in 1887), alongside a series of articles and lithographs first published in Mexican newspaper El Álbum de la Mujer (1883-1890) and later included in Madrid newspaper El Álbum Ibero-Americano (1890-1909). The work of reprint ensured the free circulation of political ideologies across the Atlantic; prevented Gimeno de Flaquer’s voice from being forgotten; and promoted her political ideas in her journalistic projects as an alternative to the promotion of a transatlantic Ibero-American global nationalism, advocating for women and Indigenous people’s rights in the public sphere.