Introduction

Abstract

Reading and Writing the Latin American Landscape is an interdisciplinary research project involving the study of the relationship between Latin American literatures and ecology. The rubric “Latin American” includes any country or area that was once a colony of Spain (including the southern United States). With a nod to equal time, we have also included one chapter on what many consider Brazil’s foundational text, one that certainly is a pioneering work in the scientific study of nature, especially human nature, namely Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands; 1902). The research treats Latin America from its beginnings in 1492 up to the present time, and consists of analyzing both literary and testimonial texts through an ecocritical approach. The testimonial texts include the writings of Christopher Columbus, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Euclides da Cunha, while the literary texts analyzed are those of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Horacio Quiroga, Pablo Neruda, Andrés Bello, Rómulo Gallegos, Gioconda Belli, Claribel Alegría, and Fernando Contreras Castro. It should be noted that earlier versions of the chapters on Columbus and Quiroga were published previously in the journals Ometeca (12:1) and ISLE (16:1), respectively.