Latin America’s Agrarian Novels Chronicled the Birth of a New World
We begin in medias res, along a path traveled by a landowner. In the opening pages of Rómulo Gallegos’s landmark 1929 novel Doña Bárbara, the novel’s protagonist, Santos Luzardo, travels toward his ancestral estate deep in the plains region of
Rómulo Gallegos's 1929 novel Doña Bárbara follows the protagonist, Santos Luzardo, as he journeys to his ancestral estate in Venezuela's plains region. Upon arrival, Santos discovers that the land has been seized and misused by a mestiza woman, Doña Bárbara, who has claimed ownership despite not being a part of the Luzardo family.
In response, Santos vows to fight against this injustice and promote progress in the region. This "homecoming" of Spanish American fiction, spanning various subcurrents such as criollismo, la novela telúrica, and la novela de la tierra, can be seen as a response to broader concerns that transcended provincial boundaries. Rather than simply celebrating local color, regionalism sought to address real issues within Latin American societies, particularly the challenges posed by large agricultural estates.
By focusing on rural settings, these novels aimed to grapple with the agrarian problem that characterized much of the Latin American countryside. The shift from European-inspired aesthetics to a celebration of local environments and rural life marked a decisive phase in Latin American literature, anticipating a broader economic transition towards a domestic market.
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