José Eustasio Rivera (1889–1928)

After the publication of a book of romantic sonnets entitled The Promised Land (1921), Rivera wrote The Vortex (1924), the prototype of the Latin American jungle novel. Rejecting the traditional romantic view of the jungle as magnificent landscape peopled by innocent natives, Rivera presented a cannabilistic, terrifying green trap that closes on the protagonist. The narrator is Arturo Cova, a persona of Rivera, whose memoirs relate his seduction of a young girl, their escape into the jungle, crime and corruption in the rubber industry, and the extreme violence that results when people's instincts are unchecked by civilization. Based on historical data, personal observation, and travel logs, The Vortex grew out of the conflict Rivera saw between literary presentations of the jungle and his own experiences of it. Rivera died of diseases contracted in the jungle in the course of his work as member of a commission appointed to settle a boundary dispute between Colombia and Venezuela. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from The Vortex… (lisätietoja)