ABSTRACT
The anonymous pre-Columbian/colonial drama and musical dance El Gueguense, performed in a blend of Spanish and indigenous languages, is probably the oldest extant example of popular nonreligious street theater in Spanish American literary history. One of the central problems in understanding this play and part of the difficulty that Lopez Vigil experienced in adapting it for children resides in the fact that at least four different versions of the play have been discovered since the 1800s. According to most accounts, Nicaraguan linguist Juan Eligio de la Rocha acquired two copies of the play in 1873 but never published them. Lopez Vigil also makes a number of deviations from original text that indicates her overarching agenda to contribute to the construction of a national identity based on postcolonial resistance. By adapting El Gueguense for children, Lopez Vigil intends to contribute to the construction of an imagined, hybrid and homogeneous Nicaraguan national identity that refuses to submit to unreasoned and unreasonable authority.
