Logo: a gaucho couple

Question SA-2. Here is the text reference (p. 133/1 & 2):

Among the Costumbristas, Ricardo Palma of Peru distinguished himself by creating his own sub-genre, the "tradición" ("tradition"). At the risk of great simplification, the "Peruvian Tradition" created by Palma can be described as a short historical anecdote, frequently with a surprise ending or a moral which captures a small vignette of life in colonial Peru. Palma himself described his recipe for the "tradición" as follows: "The tradición is a romance and is not a romance; it is history and it is not history. The form has to be light and airy; the narration, quick and humorous. What I had in mind was to sugar-coat pills and give them to the people to swallow, without letting any silly nun's scruples slow me down. Some lying, and even a little more than some, with an equal dose of truth, as infinitesimal as it might be: a lot of care and polishing of the language; and there you have the recipe for writing the tradiciones."

Although his topics ranged from the Peru of El Inca Garcilaso through to his days of the War of the Pacific with Chile in the late 19th Century, his favorite era was the eighteenth century of the Vice-regal capital of Lima. He was especially fascinated with the scandalous era when the viceroy's concubine, Micaela Luján, exercised great influence. She was the subject of various "tradiciones", and her nickname (given by the disapproving upper crust of Lima society) was "La Perrichola", derived from "perra" (female dog) and "chola" (Indian half-breed). Palma himself was of mestizo blood, and his "tradiciones" may also have been a response to his own experiences with the snobbishness of upper-class Lima.