Geographies of Degeographication: Latin America and the Virgin Woods in Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma

Abstract

The expanding field of Latin American ecocriticism has repeatedly shown how environmental approaches to cultural production often transcend national and regional borders. A case in point is Mário de Andrade's modernist novel Macunaíma (1928), whose homonymous protagonist has the ability to rapidly travel across Brazilian territory and into neighboring countries in what Andrade defined as a process of "degeographication." This article proposes that, rather than simply erasing borders, Macunaíma's continental wanderings highlight the singular, ambivalent position Brazil has occupied in conceptualizations of Latin America. Moreover, these transnational journeys occur primarily in the geographically undetermined space of the "virgin woods," where distances and limits on movement are less marked than in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. By investigating how a borderless Latin America is imagined via the space of the virgin woods, this article demonstrates how Macunaíma's degeographication is geographically and environmentally conditioned. In doing so, it aims to reconsider the longstanding debates about Brazil's status in Latin America in light of ecocritical studies and to show how environmental considerations may contribute to this discussion.