José Mármol and the brazilian environment of the 19th century as seen by an exile

Abstract

atin America is a place based on the denial of Old-World architecture. Its conception offers the possibility of constructing a physical reality, different from that prevailing in the European continent, given its varied geographical and spatial perspective. According to Ángel Rama, the city thus becomes the sign representing the new order and opens as the space that can embrace all the dreams of this new spatial understanding, since it is configured to be modern and ideologically opposed to its place of origin. This article presents the relation between the notion of environmental history and the identity project in Latin America, a geographical region that was established through the ideological search for its own characteristics. The constitutional reality of Latin America was through its physical space, an American dream, as said by Ángel Rama. In order to do so the text is composed by a brief introduction, stating the thematic perspective of the study, and three approaches: the first presents a discussion about the term “environmental history”, based on the critical thinking of Enrique Leff, and how this term is structured in the construction of Latin America; the second focuses on the case of José Mármol, an Argentinean exiled in Brazil in the first half of the 19th century, who wrote articles on the local environment for the Ostensor Brasileiro, a Rio de Janeiro newspaper, and how it interfered with the social identity formation of the natives; the third brings the eight texts of the Argentinean writer, published in the newspaper. As conclusion, a short reflection on the role that Latin American literature plays in the process of environmentalization of physical spaces, and how it becomes an effective instrument of interpretation and constitution of environmental history, as proposed by Enrique Lef.