Calculando la Amazonía: Ficciones ecológicas y distopías numéricas sobre el boom del caucho en Perú, Colombia y Brasil, siglos xix-xxi

The Amazon rainforest has been chosen—among other forests in the planet—to be a place of contention where conflicting arguments about the environment and economic development, converge. This work examines a gap in knowledge by asking how the Amazon rainforest has been not only exoticized, but also calculated and quantified. Along these lines, my critical intervention problematizes the current perception of biodiversity, extractivism, and conservation as concepts that can always be “measured.” Taking this into account, I center on the representation of this region using an interdisciplinary approach that puts ecocriticism in dialogue with visual culture. Specifically, my work focuses on 19th to 21st-century economic cycles in Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, and analyses diverse primary materials from photography, infographics, literature, and paintings. My dissertation, Calculando la Amazonía: Ficciones Ecológicas y Distopias Numéricas sobre el Boom del Caucho en Perú, Colombia y Brasil, siglos XIX - XXI [Quantifying Amazonia: Ecocritical Fictions and Numeric Dystopias from the Rubber Boom in Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, 19th - 21st centuries], examines a turning point in the representation of the Amazon rainforest during the economic downfall of the rubber boom economy in Latin America. I argue that the collapse of the rubber market set in motion what I call the “numeric making of the Amazon.” That is, a consolidated discursive strategy supported by infographics and photographs that conceived of this area in numeric terms, and consequently, cemented the perception that nature can be quantified. The legacy of this collapse of environmental aesthetics and quantification continues today. My project thus traces how the rubber boom era was particularly influential in establishing longstanding attitudes, beliefs, and practices about the Amazon as an inherently quantifiable nonhuman environment. The first two chapters examine how Latin American governments and elites rationalized narratives of success about the Amazon’s economy and the rubber industry. Chapter 1 highlights the creation of an accounting rhetoric in which the Amazon is imagined through infographics and photographs produced by the Brazilian government to participate in the Chicago (1893) and New York (1912) world’s fairs. These visual representations portray the rubber industry’s continued success and paint a utopian future for the people, while obscuring the truth of an already declining industry. Chapter 2 focuses on the circulation of photographs and postcards of indigenous rubber workers from the Putumayo region, on the border of Peru and Colombia. I analyze how Peruvian elites negotiated the inhabitants’ role in the rubber industry by quantifying their labor and production, while also alienating them from their familiar land. In the second part of my dissertation, I examine the afterlife of the extinct rubber industry and how it resurfaces through 20th-century literature and 21st-century art exhibitions, where common images about nature and “wealth” are reinvented in Latin American cultural production. Chapter 3 is devoted to literature from Colombia, and Peru, and the creation of commercial fantasies and economic dystopias of the rubber boom. The final chapter explores contemporary art exhibitions wherein indigenous painters from Peru problematize and contest the idea of the rubber boom as a period of success, by looking instead at the negative ecological and cultural outcomes.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Spanish

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Gallegos Perez, Carmen Cecilia

Contributors dc:contributor

• Meléndez, Mariselle
• Karam, John Tofik
• Ledesma, Eduardo
• Fornoff, Carolyn

• Amazonia
• Ecocriticism
• Rubber Boom
• Peru
• Colombia
• Brazil

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Carmen Gallegos Pérez

Language dc:language

es, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115943

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115943