SUSPECT PARADISE: AMAZONIA IN THE VORTEX by Leopoldo Bernucci, University of California, Davis

Nearly one hundred years since its first edition (1924), a reappraisal of The Vortex (known as La vorágine in Spanish), by the Colombian novelist José Eustasio Rivera, was a timely necessity. While it has been widely enjoyed by millions of readers, since the date of its publication, this novel had not been properly explored or understood in all its potentialities. Despite the powerful historical and social message The Vortex so successfully communicates, regrettably, Rivera’s protest had been almost ignored or forgotten. This message, of course, has always been about the genocide and human rights atrocities committed mainly against the Indian peoples in the Putumayo and Caquetá regions, during the heydays of rubber extraction in early 1900s. During this period, modern historians have estimated that 30,000 lives were destroyed under the relentless grip of the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company. My presentation, based on a recently published book of mine, will cover literary, historical, and anthropological issues as well. The Vortex has been and will continue to be one of the most accomplished modern Latin American novels, both for its ability to please our aesthetic mind and to deliver one of the most powerful messages about human rights violation in Amazonia.

 Professor Leopoldo Bernucci is Distinguished Professor of Spanish, The Russell F. and Jean H. Fiddyment Chair in Latin American Studies, at the University of California, Davis. He has an extensive and successful career as researcher on Latin America, with many books and essays published in the United States and abroad.