Green Hells: Monstrous Vegetations in Twentieth-Century Representations of Amazonia

Abstract

José Eustasio Rivera’s La vorágine [The Vortex], first published in 1924, exemplifies the way in which Amazonian nature—the jungle¹—was represented in the early decades of the twentieth century. Contemplating what “upsets and confuses us when we travel through the jungle,” the writer describes the trees as “perverse,” “aggressive,” and “hypnotizing”—all because, we are told, they are bled and “persecuted” by groups of rubber workers who extract their latex juice. The vegetation’s violence is a way of fighting back—and it is this that “scares us,” “makes us shudder,” “oppresses us,” and makes us “want to flee.” Because of this dread, Rivera concludes, “thousands of rubber workers never emerge from the jungle” (1935, pp. 230–231). This vengeful character of nature, consequent upon the “taming” endeavor, is central to Rivera’s text and signals a destabilization of the idea of controlling and consuming the region’s natural resources.