Water World: Amazonia's Literary Wellsprings Fill a New Journal
By Emily Harrison Weir
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Amazonia is a nation of nations, six million square kilometers bridging
linguistic, cultural and political borders and bound by the web-like waterways
of its 3,900-mile-long lifeline. The area -- which spans regions of Bolivia,
Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela -- is a traditional research
site for anthropologists and a recent cause among environmentalists. Yet
scant attention has been paid to the Amazon's literary side. Until now.
Spanish and Portuguese department colleagues Charles Cutler and Nicomedes
Suárez founded the Center for Amazonian Literature and Culture (CALC)
in 1993 to allow the region's literary light to shine beyond South America.
CALC's first publication, the annual Amazonian Literary Review, debuts this
fall. That issue focuses on Amazonian poetry, and future issues will showcase
other literary genres. All original work will be presented in Spanish or
Portuguese and in English, with critical essays and reviews printed in English.
In addition to the journal, CALC's directors hope to organize a symposium
next year that will include literature and music, and they eventually would
like to publish an anthology of contemporary Amazonian writing. Two STRIDE
scholars, Carrie Cegelis '99 and Amanda Darling '99, are helping with this
project by locating bibliographic references on the World Wide Web.
Cutler and Suárez intend the center to be a forum for Amazonians
in the arts and literature to speak to a more international public. "Although
the Amazon is a focus of international concern because of the environmental
crisis," Cutler notes, "very little attention is being paid to
the area's cultural and literary activity. Anthropological research appropriately
concentrates on indigenous cultures, but this leaves out ninety percent
of the population, which is of mixed origin."
The professors note that when they first thought of the idea for CALC, they
expected to learn of similar centers already in existence. "We were
surprised to find that no one in the humanities was doing anything like
this, even in Amazonia," Cutler says. Part of the reason, according
to Suárez, is that "Amazonian peoples have felt marginalized
by and isolated from the centers of power. It is telling that Peru, Ecuador
and Bolivia, despite having more than fifty percent Amazonian territory,
are universally known as 'Andean countries.'" Cutler adds, "Because
of this isolation, Amazonian intellectuals and writers have tended to retain
a local, rather than a Pan-Amazonian, outlook."
Although Suárez and Cutler live in western Massachusetts, both have
strong ties to the Amazon region. Suárez is a well-known Bolivian
Amazonian poet and fiction writer whose critical works consider the philosophic
idea of amnesia as a source of literary and artistic inspiration. Cutler's
field is Brazilian studies. He has lived in Brazil and is currently preparing
a bilingual edition of the Brazilian poet Cruz e Sousa's prose poems. He
is also working on the Amazonian writers Thiago de Mello, Jorge Tufic and
Paes Loureiro. Suárez and Cutler's intellectual interests, and their
friendship, led them to collaborate in creating the center.
Although a "center" implies a grand edifice with a brass plaque
on the door, the revolution in communication technology has transformed
this concept. Several of the universities and research centers linked to
UNAMAZ, an association of institutions dedicated to Amazonian studies, have
access to electronic mail. This has allowed "the center" to become
a broad-based community of writers and critics from the Amazon basin. Use
of World Wide Web home pages gives CALC even greater international reach.
After conceiving the idea of the center, Suárez and Cutler spread
the concept throughout Amazonia via e-mail, letters and questionnaires.
To promote the project further and establish contacts, Suárez spent
the last two summers visiting and lecturing in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia,
Colombia and Peru. Cutler plans to visit Brazil this year to gather material
for the CALC anthology.
The duo wondered what the reaction would be to their proposal for an Amazonian
center based in North America, but they found it enthusiastically embraced.
Many of the region's key cultural figures joined CALC's advisory board,
and Amazonian novelists, short-story writers, poets and playwrights contribute
to the journal. Academic specialists in Europe, South America and North
America (including Smith's professor of Spanish and Portuguese Alice Clemente)
will add scholarly reviews and commentary.
Uncommon Lives, Common Themes
There's a lot to write about: nearly six million people in six countries
are joined into a single homeland by the river's embrace. Regional, ethnic
and national differences remain, but Amazonian literature is also marked
by common themes. Not surprisingly, the river's overwhelming presence tops
the list. It gives life and takes it, isolates people and connects them,
and on its banks the titanic struggle of humans against nature is constantly
replayed.
A second theme is neocolonialism. Indigenous peoples have survived centuries
of explorers and exploiters who came up the Amazon seeking cinnamon, gold,
rubber and other treasures. Through each boom-and-bust cycle, the land and
people have endured. "From this history comes the feeling that nothing
in Amazonia lasts forever except the jungle," says Suárez. "All
we can count on is constant change."
Literary and cultural amalgams are also common in Amazonian writing. "As
European influences moved upstream over the years, native cultures floated
downstream," Suárez says. "A highly syncretic culture emerged,
where the indigenous mingles with the foreign, so that in the midst of the
jungle you have strange cultural dislocations." In one spectacular
example, 19th-century European rubber barons transported a neoclassical
opera house from Italy and reconstructed it in the jungle. Similar juxtapositions
occur in literature. For example, the Bolivian poet Raúl Otero Reiche
combines classical mythological images, surrealism, the rhythms of Poe's
poetry and indigenous motifs to represent the astounding experience of life
in the jungle.
Terra Incognita Rediscovered
Why did no one think earlier to share this rich literary heritage? Partly
because it has been dismissed by the traditional centers of culture. "Since
the European conquest of South America, the ancient dialectic of cities
as 'civilized' and everything else-including all of Amazonia-as 'barbaric'
has been the prevailing attitude," Suárez explains. "Civilization
was equated with the urbanized centers of the Andes and the coast, while
the Amazonian regions were considered terra incognita: savage, primitive
and of no importance." Amazonia's residents heard this so often that
they eventually came to believe it themselves.
To this was added "nationalistic pride that led to a blindness to the
fact that we were all living within the same bio-region and have much more
in common with each other than with our compatriots in many cases,"
according to Suárez. But now residents of Amazonia are recognizing
their own worth and how much they share. The Center for Amazonian Literature
and Culture hopes to play a part in unifying Amazonians, whom Brazilian
poet Thiago de Mello referred to as inhabitants of "a homeland of waters." |
