Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Identity, Engagement, And The Space Of The River In Cumandá, Lee Joan Skinner

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

In Juan León Mera’s Cumandá, o un drama entre salvajes (Ecuador, 1879), the River Pastaza and the journeys the novel’s characters take on it form the centerpiece of the narrative. The novel presents rivers as problematic, problematized spaces of shifting meanings. The river is a space of mediation between humans and the natural world, a landscape that both supports humans and is inimical to them. Thus the eponymous, indigenous heroine of Mera’s novel at first navigates the Pastaza with exceptional grace, and yet, once she rejects her clan and tribe, she is unable to traverse the river as easily as …