LA PALABRA COMO ESPECTÁCULO: ESTRATEGIAS VANGUARDISTAS EN CÉSAR VALLEJO Y CARLOS OQUENDO DE AMAT. WORD AS SPECTACLE: AVANT–GARDE STRATEGIES IN CESAR VALLEJO AND CARLOS OQUENDO DE AMAT Teatro, a peer–reviewed academic journal edited at Connecticut College, published this article. The article has 19 pages and was written and published in Spanish. In this article I show how, through diverse avant-garde strategies, Peruvian poets as different as Cesar Vallejo and Carlos Oquendo de Amat, were able to turn the word into a spectacle of sound and visual significance, beyond its semantic implications. I compare the poetic works Trilce (1922, by Vallejo) and 5 Meters of Poems (1927, by Oquendo de Amat) to show how both poets were able to take advantage of then current avant–garde strategies to create a poetic that, nevertheless, cannot be classified exclusively under a specific avant–garde school. Both poets came from rural corners of Peru: Vallejo, from Santiago de Chuco, and Oquendo, from Puno. I agree with Antonio Cornejo Polar, who argues that the origin of the Andean poets in this period is linked to a new language, which implies not only other linguistic uses but also other ways of socialization. (2003: 147). Last century in the decade of the 20s, both Vallejo and Oquendo published their poetry, which allows for reading the Latin American avant–garde as a cultural process that was inclusive, heterogeneous and more importantly, de–centralized. Peru and Brazil were the main examples that demonstrate that the avant–garde movement was not concentrated in the capital cities. Cultural magazines and journals functioned as the dots that connected the creative efforts all across the continent and allowed a dialogue among the writers and artists in general. Even though there was a significant number of artists who belonged to the avant–garde movement in Latin American, we cannot assume homogeneity in their production, nor at the artistic or ideological levels. In my analysis of Trilce I link this poetic work with the previous one written by Vallejo, Los heraldos negros, where we can find the same preoccupations and anguishes that he is going to develop in his 1922 book: pain, death, abandonment, childhood, time. On the other hand, I analyze 5 Meters of Poems relating this book to the author’s fascination with cinema. This allows us to understand the visual presentation of his book and how he plays with spaces and images to create his poetry. Both books need the reader to play an active role. Starting with