José Eustasio Rivera: The Vortex, Maps and Frontiers

Abstract Published in 1924, José Eustasio Rivera’s The Vortex ( La vorágine ) is still one of the best Colombian novels, highly appreciated not only for its historical value and importance, but also for its new narrative strategies, exquisitely used by the author. The book implies the young writer’s attempt to document certain harsh realities of his native country, being at the same time a modernist approach to literature, an original attempt to impose the cartographic illusion within the context of Latin American literature, usually inclined, at least up to that time, to express mostly the traditional element.