Beyond Tordesilhas: Uncertain Itineraries

Abstract

The Amazon rainforest, which has been imaginarily and literarily constructed as a region that extends beyond the Brazilian borders, is crucial to the reflections of this article. The opening references to the paradigmatic books written by Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness) and Alberto Rangel (Green Hell), grounded in narratives that construct spaces, journeys and paths, try to express the fascination with the unknown (darkness, hell), which is to say, to terms that are nominated in relation to the civilized world at the turn to the 20th century. This is a starting point for interpretations dealing with narratives and discourses on the Amazon rainforest that oscillate between eulogy and detraction: raw land and spaces beyond the line of the Treaty of Tordesilhas that point to different Brazils, according to their specificities and the constant presence and permanence of the dark side of modernity. I finish the article with references to contemporary interpretations that grasp the region in its universality as an effort at broadening the horizons and conceptions as well as at approximating differences.