The travels of Saint-Exupery in South America

Abstract

In the late 1920s, French aviators began performing experimental flights connecting Paris to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. The Latecoere airline received its license to operate in Brazil in 1925 and in 1927 began to use the weekly Recife-Pelotas route, with stops in Maceio, Salvador, Caravelas, Vitoria, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Paranagua, Florianopolis and Porto Alegre. That same year, the company's name was changed to Aeropostale and was the first to build the so-called "aeroplaces", landing fields along the Brazilian coast. The company's pilots have become myths for crossing deserts and oceans carrying mail without delay. Heroic pilots Mermoz and Saint-Exupery have also achieved fame in literature. They both became unforgettable aviators and poets, losing their lives while flying. This presentation seeks description of unknown territory in their literary travel journals because, as "knights of modern times", they were admired and welcomed as friends everywhere they landed their planes. We seek to highlight the view of these travelers as examples of the "other", the European of the first half of the century.