The Epic Fantasy of the Colonization of Latin America: Logos & Knowledge in Liliana Bodoc’s Saga of the Borderlands
Young adult literature in Latin America (and particularly in Chile) has largely silenced the level of violence that the processes of colonization (by the Spanish Empire) have produced since the sixteenth century onwards. In many texts, consciously or unconsciously, stories have been created, which tend to dissolve cultural differences and to generate a sense of homogeneity, unity, and reconciliation under the slogan of mestizaje (miscegenation).
Moving away from this trend, the work of the Argentine Liliana Bodoc, La Saga de los Confines (2000, 2002, 2004) has stood out in the Latin American sphere as a rewriting of the long and complex processes of material and symbolic domination of Europe over America. This saga, raised from the logic of epic fantasy, is based on the cultural differences of two continents in conflict. Although Bodoc creates a narrative in the manner of the Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), she does not reproduce the style of J.R.R. Tolkien, but rather she builds an anaphoric writing linked to oral tradition, and so, to “an inexorable way of saying” (Enríquez 2).
La Saga de los Confines [Saga of the Borderlands] is a collection of three novels The Days of the Deer (2000), The Days of the Shadow (2002) and The Days of the Fire (2004). This trilogy recounts the attempts of the “Ancient Lands” (which mimic Spain) to dominate the “Fertile Lands” (América), and the social struggle that this phenomenon brings about. Throughout the three novels, extensive battles are depicted, as well as the collaboration and conflicts between the different peoples among the “Fertile Land”, such as the Husihuilkes, the Zitzahay, and the Lulus, among others. All these cultures are fictional ones, nevertheless poetically and epistemologically inspired by the native cultures of the American Continent, whose knowledge, in the novels, is intrinsically connected to nature.
Nature, symbolically erected as landscape (Carroll 22), is a central element in Bodoc's narratives. Consequently, by reading this element in their modes of literary representation, I intend here to reveal, preliminarily, how a remote and magical historical past manages to shed light on the socio-political crossroads that Latin America faces at the present time.
About Topos and Logos
Fernando Aínsa has explained how material space has given rise in Latin American literature to a complete discursive “system of places”. In doing so, a fruitful semantic field of high potential and symbolic projection has been generated (9). The space, aesthetically articulated through words, allows the creation of a “logos”. In other words, we have a concrete material location (topos) and a symbolic articulation about this concrete space (logos), an idea that agrees and complements itself with Carroll's proposal. The Borderlands Saga is a work which generates a broad and rich logos, through which Bodoc celebrates non-Western modes of thought.
In the work of Bodoc there are many ways in which these modes of thoughts are built. Here, I will highlight only two of them. The first one refers to nature as a source of knowledge of temporal and emotional phenomena. The second one relates Bodoc's logos to social and family relations.
Nature as a Source of Knowledge: Temporality and Emotions
Essential phenomena that impact the human condition and experience, such as time, death, and sadness, among others, are constructed in the Saga on the basis of comparisons, metaphors, or references to landscape.
Regarding the construction of time, we see that it is never expressed in minutes or hours (Western systems of time measurement). On the contrary, time is measured in “a place that is five suns away”, a place that “is five nights away”, an action that “lasts a breath", to name but a few examples. Additionally, the relative and multiple characteristics of temporality is highlighted, referring to space, in this way “Time has not one but many wheels (...) I say this because there will be those who want to know how long it has been since the Husihuilkes returned to The Borderlands [southernmost tip of America] after the war (...). I will have to answer that men counted five harvests, the time to see a child grow up. But I will have to add that the fireflies counted hundreds and hundreds of dead generations, a time lost in their memories. And that for the mountain it was just an instant” (The Days of the Shadows 11).
Another element whose essence is understood from the cyclical processes of nature is death. In the second novel, Old Kush, from the village of Husihuilkes, explains to her granddaughter about the central role of death for the unfolding of generations and for the process of learning between them, by comparing life and death with the growing of fruits (The Days of the Shadow 209).
On the other hand, sadness, as a relevant human emotion, is also compared to an element of nature. A Husihuilke girl says to an old woman “If you look at it closely, grief is like winter. One day it goes away, and you realize that it was of some use” (Days of Shadow 364).
It is evident that in these three examples the ways of knowledge are forged from the material experience in the native space aesthetically transformed in Bodoc’s logos.
Logos and Social and Family Relationships
With regard to the second dimension, it is possible to see that Bodoc also creates a logos that links natural spaces with knowledge, knowledge which is contrasted with that of the Ancient Lands. Some elements of this dimension are, for example, the gathering held by the Husihuilkes in the Valley of the Ancestors. Here they dance, sing, and eat, they meet other families and exchange what they have in excess, so that everyone has the essentials during the winter (The Days of the Deer 26).
The valuing of a sense of community is also evident in the ways of government of the Fertile Lands. An extensive section of the first novel shows how they make decisions in assemblies (councils) in which representatives of all the tribes and clans of the Fertile Lands participate. Bodoc opposes this to the logics of the Ancient Lands, who “established (...) an empire of wisdom that (...) should be devoted to the creatures; but should never deliberate with them (...)” (The Days of the Deer 186-187).
Another key element related to socialization is the importance of oral tradition in the creation and preservation of historical memory. Nakín, a woman of the Owls Clan, is chosen as a kind of living archive. Nakín “had to safeguard (...) all the events of a time that was already ancient (...). She realized that it was not enough to retain identical successions, that the straight line fatigued the memory, so she followed the path of the twisting line, because the circular line is more conducive to memory” (The Days of Fire 13). Nakín goes on explaining how she used songs and colors to create a symbolic system and language to keep memories to help her to remember. Thus, we see that memory is not considered a mere progressive accumulation of facts, but instead it is a poetic, cyclical, and multisensorial dimension which allows history to be elaborated and kept alive.
Some closing (or opening?) comments
In her book A Reflection on Decolonising Practices and Discourses (2010), the Bolivian thinker Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has explored the spiral way in which Quechua and Aymara cultures conceive historicity. She points out that “there is no Post or Pre in a vision of history that is not linear, that moves in circles and spirals, that marks a course without ceasing to return to the same point (...). The past-future is contained in the present: the repetition or overcoming of the past is at stake at every crossroad” (54).
It seems to me that Bodoc's proposal seeks to present issues of power and knowledge anchored in landscape, which are not only linked to the past of Latin American history, as Rivera Cusicanqui states. Bodoc's past feeds the future and allows the constitution of a present. Bodoc herself, in a program on Encuentro Channel, where she talks about memory, points out that: “memory is an indispensable tool in the construction of the present, it is not about (...) nostalgia for what has been lost. Memory is not mist but light. It is an act, above all. Memory is made up of transforming acts, never better used the verb 'to do'” (Canal Encuentro). She also states that she wrote fantasy convinced that it is another way of inquiring into reality. Because of Bodoc's ideas, it is not forced to read her Saga as a vehicle to think, reflect, and understand the various forms of colonialism, extractivism we face at present times, as well as, the peripheral space where ancestral native cultures’ knowledge is placed. Just as an example, it is possible to look at the historical struggles of the Mapuche people (native from what is today Chile and Argentina) and other Latin American cultures, who have opposed for decades the devastation of the forests. According to the Frontiers 2022 Report of the United Nations Environment Programme, in 2019 more than 6 million hectares were burned in South America due to widespread deforestation caused by forestry companies. Harmful effects are also seen in the extreme south, in Patagonia, due to the action of the salmon industry (see Greenpeace website). Finally, in the annual report of the Global Witness, an organization that monitors crimes against the environment, it is indicated that 15 Latin American women were murdered in 2020 for defending their lands, seven of them were indigenous people. Similar abuses are seen in Bodoc’s Saga, where many forms of life are devastated to establish a more 'productivist' type of society, and I think that at least for a South American reader the pages feel like a mirror, a spiral reflecting images where all times converge.
In Bodoc's saga, a cleverly spun logos is constructed to make visible certain modes of thought associated with different American cultures. The author indirectly undermines the logics of cultures that are structured on the basis of abusive, extractivist, undemocratic, overly rationalistic, anthropocentric and individualistic power relationships, all complex past, present and future phenomena that the continent faces since colonization began.
Finally, I would like to close this reading of the Saga, sharing the song of the Zitzahay culture. This song, as can be seen below, has not a fixed way, but it is changing depending on the experiences that a Zitzahay messenger is living during its long travels among different regions of the Fertile Lands. This is part of the oral tradition built in Bodoc’s fiction, it talks about the fluid, non-static, spontaneous, organic, artistic and alive way in which American cultures such as the Mayas developed their knowledge. A knowledge based on diversity and differences, which, as Enriquez has pointed out, makes these novels a space that “refuses a soothing end point or a domination that will appease differences” (n.p).
I crossed to the other side,
and the river took care of me
and I was not afraid.
I asked the tree for permission,
I climbed up to its height
and I saw the things that were far away.
But I am a man
and I walked again on the earth.
(The Days of the Deer 85)
&---&----&
I crossed to the other river,
and the tree took care of me
and I was not afraid.
I asked the man for permission,
I climbed up to its height
and I saw the things that were far away.
But I am a shore,
and I walked again on the earth.
(The Days of the Deer 86).
Cited Texts
Aínsa, Fernando. Del logos al topos: propuestas de geopoética. Iberoamericana, 2006. Cusicanqui Rivera, Silvia. Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón, 2010.
Websites
Bodoc, Liliana. Los Confines de la Palabra: La Memoria. Canal Encuentro. 20 Sept. 2017,
https://youtu.be/cm-qbTiN9Vo. Accesed 08 May. 2024.
Enríquez, Mariana. Los relatos originarios. Página12, Radar Libros, 2012.
Greenpeace. ¿Es peligrosa la industria salmonera en Chile? Todo lo que tienes que saber. 11 Nov. 2022,https://www.greenpeace.org/chile/noticia/issues/oceanos/es-peligrosa-la-industria-salmonera-en-chile-todo-lo-que-tenes-que-saber/. Accesed 08 May. 2024.
Greenpeace. Sing to save the Kaweskar Reserve. https://www.nomassalmoneras.cl/. Accesed 10 May. 2024.
UN Environment Programme. Informe Fronteras 2022. 17 Feb. 2022, https://www.unep.org/interactive/frontiers-report-2022/frontiers/es/index.php# Accessed 09 May. 2024.
Vanesa Romo and Gloria Alvitres. Triple riesgo: ser mujer, indígena y defensora medioambiental. 2021. https://es.mongabay.com/2021/11/triple-riesgo-ser-mujer-indigena-y-defensora-ambiental-en-america-latina/ Accessed 09 May. 2024.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Librarian. MA of Arts in Children's Literature from the University of Roehampton, PhD in Literature from the University of Chile. Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education Sciences at the University of O'Higgins. She is co-author of Literatura para infancia, adolescencia y juventud: reflexiones desde los estudios literarios (Universitaria, 2016). In 2023 she received the Research Award from the International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL) for her project "Urban Landscape in Chilean Children's Literature." She is currently directing a 3-years project entitled: "Landscape and geography in the narrative for children in Chile: imaginaries of national/regional identity (2011-2022)" financed by the National Agency of Research and Development (ANID) of the Chilean government.
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