1 - A clearing in the jungle: from Santa Mónica to Macondo

Summary

The Roman legalistic tradition is one of the

strongest components in Latin American culture:

from Cortés to Zapata, we only believe in what is

written down and codified.

Carlos Fuentes

After a painful journey away from the modern world, the protagonist of Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos (1953) reaches Santa Mónica de los Venados, the town founded by the Adelantado, one of his traveling companions. Santa Mónica is but a clearing in the South American jungle on which a few huts have been built. The nameless protagonist has arrived, or so he wishes to believe, at the Valley-Where-Time-Has-Stopped, a place outside the flow of history. Here, purged of civilization, he hopes to rekindle his creative energies, to return to his earlier life as a composer; in short, to be true to himself. The narrator-protagonist plans to write a threnody, a musical poem based on the text of the Odyssey. Musical ideas rush to his mind, as if he had been able at last to tap a deep well of creativity within him. He asks the Adelantado, or Founder of Cities, for paper to write all this down. The latter, reluctantly, for he needs them to set down the laws of his new society, gives him a notebook. The narrator fills it very quickly in a frenzy of creativity and begs for another. Annoyed, the Adelantado gives it to him with the admonition that it will be the last one.