El secreto de la tierra: Entangled Poetics and the Venezuelan Amazon in Una ojeada al mapa de Venezuela (1939) by Enrique Bernardo Núñez

Abstract

In the beginning of the twentieth century, after its rapid insertion into the vortex of oil and mineral extraction, Venezuela was forced to re-think its relationship with nature. This process of rethink, characterised by an eagerness for modernisation, resulted in a series of discourses focused on Venezuela’s Amazonia as a repository of possibilities. This paper analyses how these possibilities were channelled through the metaphor of el secreto de la tierra, tracing an early reading of the ideological configuration of Venezuela and its Amazonia as a land of inexhaustible material and poetic richness. This metaphor was voiced by a set of socio-ecological discourses written about the Venezuelan Amazon, including the essay on Venezuelan geography and culture by Enrique Bernardo Núñez Una ojeada al mapa de Venezuela (1939). The paper focuses on the representation of this region as a set of discursive constructions entangled with the naturalisation of the modernising ideal that has fuelled the imaginaries of material growth and rentier capitalism in Venezuela. The concluding remarks will point to how such a reading can help us to understand a discursive and poetic radicalisation embedded in conflicting approaches to the nature-culture confluence in the Venezuelan Amazon.