'Columbia University Libraries/Information Services'
Doi
Abstract
The career of Teresita Arce spans the entire Peruvian entertainment industry in the 20th century. Her full name was Teresita Arce-Bouroncle O’Higgins, and her artist-father may have been of Guatemalan descent. She started to sing and dance in her childhood. Early articles from 1916 describe her as a young lady from a bourgeois theatre company. In 1922 her popularity was growing, and the photographer-painter Luis Ugarte asked her to act in Camino de la venganza/Juanacha/La venganza del indio, the first Peruvian fiction feature film. Arce plays the lead role of Juanacha, a young native woman. The Anglo character McDonald, a hateful mine administrator, is a violent exploiter. He is guilty of the death of the wife of a native miner, the “indio” of the alternative title. The engineer is convicted but manages to escape, taking Juanacha to the capital, where he attempts to seduce her, but without success. In the end, McDonald is assassinated by the widowed miner
