“The Voragine” by José Eustasio Rivera”

Nestled between the so-called novels of the land en “La Vorágine”, by José Eustasio Rivera , bearer of the turn-of-the-century events of the 19th century, which colored the Latin American reality of that time, giving way to the stage of the 20th century in the midst of a neo-colonial and dependent situation that would disfigure economic activity in these lands and the development of native capitals, just the moment to promote a solid novelistic trend known as the period of the earth novels.

These changes, which were happening, conditioned in the novelistic genre a leap from romanticism to realism and naturalism breathed at the beginning of the century. Modernism also left its traces, above all, in the language permeated with symbology and artistic exquisiteness.

The Hispano-American novel is perceived in its entrance to the 20th century oriented in two aspects; on the one hand, idealistic, subjective, pregnant with aestheticism, and on the other, bearer of Spanish realism, evidencing a regionalist and social attitude in his view and interpretation of the problems of the American world.

Although not all the artists of this century adopt the same way when it comes to approaching local, regional realities, etc., we are interested in focusing on those who enriched their stories about the countryside, the jungle, the mountains, the coasts, the pampas , the plain, the life of the Indian, of the mestizos and blacks, of the Creole, of the gringo, as this allowed the approach to the inclusion of elements of history, ethnicity, the social, among others, which crystallized the so-called novelas de la tierra o período de superrealismo.

The value of the novels of the land, despite the criticism, lies in the way they exhibit the desire of the writers to show the national from their art, the legitimately American, the veiled denunciation of the unfavorable social conditions of backwardness and barbarism; highlights the poor living conditions of man and his struggle for survival against the inclement nature.

Among many works, we are interested in “ La Vorágine”, inserted in the trilogy of the rural cycle together with “Don Segundo Sombra” and “Doña Bárbara”, in which we found certain similarities and differences.

It is “The Maelstrom” who first appears in his type and José Eustasio Rivera, his author. Colombian born in the department of Huila on February 19, 1889, he was first a poet, then a novelist. Man of great culture: teacher normalista, doctor in Law graduated from the National University.

He began very young to explore the world of letters; at the age of 15 he published some of his poems in the magazines and newspapers of the capital, Bogotá. A part of them (sonnets, the largest number) are collected in the book "Promised Land" where the theme of Colombian nature becomes his muse.

As part of the work he did as a government lawyer, José had to reach corners of Colombia with which he came into contact, including the eastern plains, the Amazon basin and the Magdalena River. As he passed, these places would leave marked traces that were somehow captured in "La Vorágine".

He also got to know other countries on his work trips: Mexico, Peru and even Cuba. He was in New York to review an edition of his only novel, the one that would make him famous in the world, when he found his death on February 19, 1928.

“La Vorágine” narrates with powerful fantasy and impressive descriptive capacity all that he experienced in his youth due to his beauty, and at the same time due to his pathetic portrait of the tragic and inhuman situation of the rubber tappers of the Colombian jungles. Nature is the one who steals the leading role of the work.

The dichotomy is in the anguished struggle of man against the reckless and dark nature that resists him and the defeat of man by nature that devastates him. When Arturo Cova and his companions travel through the Jungle, they are unable to dominate it or escape from it until they are completely devastated.

Thus, in the novel the action suggests a universal theme: the fatal fate. The author was closely acquainted with the life of the jungle and how miserable it was for the rubber workers, but by capturing it in the work he recreates with more force the tragedy of the exploited salaried rubber workers; in the same way, he exaggerates nature to the point of making it seem that she is responsible for the terrifying and unjust situation that the characters live in, actually caused by social scenarios.

The novel is structured in an initial prologue, three parts and an epilogue end. The ingenious prologue helps to hide the author's identity after attributing that Arturo Cova's manuscripts have been the sustenance of the narration.

The first part takes place in the plain and revolves around the love affair between Alicia, a young woman from a wealthy class, and young Arturo, a cultured poet, poor with a reputation as a womanizer. On her part, Alicia, engaged in marriage and dissatisfied, sees in the young poet her salvation to avoid the consummation of the marriage. Alicia's fiancé finds out and sentences Arturo to jail and the pair of lovers decides to flee to Casanare.

The second part focuses on the escape of Arturo, Franco, Correa and Pipa al Vichada and the meeting with different aboriginal tribes, who supply them for the trip to the jungle; the background theme will be in the action of revenge that Cova plans.

The third part recounts the journey of Cova and his companions accompanied by Clemente Silva through the jungle in search of the remains of Silva's son, and then continue with the revenge. Among stories is the world of the rubber tappers and the effort to denounce the prevailing exploitation there.

Three narratives are clearly distinguished within the novel: Cova's journey with his friends chasing Barreras; the story of Clemente Silva and the butcher shops of Funes.

The epilogue contains a letter that the consul of Manaus addresses to the Minister of Colombia and that frames the fate of the protagonist with two sentences: «Neither trace of them. The jungle devoured them!”

In the novel “La Vorágine” the first suggestion of its content could be in the title, since vorágine comes from Latin meaning 'swallow'. Some of its synonyms refer to turbulence, whirlpool, funnel, hole, etc., which, when taken to the oversized nature presented by the author, gives us a measure of the subject matter. It has been seen that the social denunciation of violence, barbarism and exploitation of the rubber tappers is joined by the struggle of man against the hostility of nature.

In the novel moments of different styles are combined. For example, when women are idealized, the display of the force of destiny, the marked individualism in Cova's character, the theatrical exclamations and gestures, the emotional imbalance of the hero, the impressionable and subjective nature, all of them, permeating the passages of pure romanticism. In the same way we perceive the modern in the descriptions of naturalistic incision, of jungle spectacles full of horror and human misery.

The nature seen through the evil jungle that is shown, and the stories of exploitation of rubber to enrich foreign monopolies and native pockets, constitute the essence of the denunciation of deep social content made in this novel of the land that became the first and legitimate great novel of Latin American nature. His sensitivity and artistic capital, his expression of wealth in Americanisms, give him a prominent place on the continent and in literature.