A Geography of Hard Times: Narratives about Travel to South America, 1780-1849

Epilogue

The Grand Khan’s atlas also holds maps of the promised lands visited in the realm of the thought. —Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities AT THE END of every voyage comes a moment of looking back so as to reconsider where to go from here. We may link our reading of these four texts, guided by a reflection about the transformations experienced by these travelers in the course of hard times linked to contemporary situations as well. Reading maps, illustrations, and texts simultaneously, we become aware of the coexistence of different systems of knowledge in the generation of South American geography during the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The geography of the nascent republics was constructed like a palimpsest to which different ethnic and social groups contributed their knowledge. Both the travel accounts and their graphic representations are susceptible to an interpretive reading that reveals how these different social sources were conjoined, and what the results of such interaction were. This interpretation allows us to understand how the wave of European travelers to the recently independent colonies contributed to the formation of national narratives and imagery in both the graphical and the discursive realms. Such an interpretation makes us consider, too, the peculiarities of the development of a Latin America postcolonial mentality in relation to the formation of the international myth of “modernity.” Enrique Dussel (2000) distinguishes between the way modernity has been read and the way it might be read. Rather than a phenomenon of exclusively European origin, which then radiated outward toward the peripheries of the globe, relationships and interchange between the imperial center and the periphery generated a postcolonial mentality. Reading from the second point of view offered by Dussel, the foregoing analysis of these four travelers offers evidence that this formative process was a two-way street. Traditionally it has been said that with independence and 123 Epilogue the coincident wave of foreign travelers to Southern lands, Latin America “left” its colonial state to enter into and “pursue” a “modern” European ideal. An analysis of these travelers invites us to explore other possibilities. As Benedict Anderson (1983) has shown, Europeans watched the liberatory experiment of Latin America and traveled, among other reasons, to confront their own liberal ideas. Thus, the moment of interchange facilitated by the winning of American independence is fundamental to the demystification of modernity as a European cultural phenomenon. Comparative analysis of the firsthand reports left by these four travelers prompts a further reflection about the formation of nationalist discourses during the crucial time of transition being considered here. Latin America confronted its colonial past and a multiethnic legacy imbued with critical social tensions. The way this multiplicity was ignored or romantically mythified has had fundamental consequences for the subsequent development of national destinies. The role of diverse ethnic groups in the formation of postcolonial societies is an open wound, a question without an answer. The demands being put forward now by groups such as the Zapatistas of Mexico, which have the whole world wondering at the political agency exercised by Latin American ethnic groups, make us turn our eyes to the foundational discourses of the Latin American nations and the effect of this legacy on postcolonial relations . The transition that our four visitors observed offers a window into the many aspects of the “mutual process of imbrication and contamination” (Gikandi 1996), which the formation of societies emerging from colonial situations implies. A GEOGRAPHY OF HARD TIMES 124 ...