ABSTRACT
The identification with a specific geographic space is the main component of the identity of a community. In the case of Latin American countries, the land between the Straight of Magellan and the Mexican border with the US, has been the focus of its most significant writers in marking their American difference. The Argentine pampa, the jungles of Central America and Brazil, the Andes in Chile, Peru and Bolivia, the Amazon river, or the coffee and banana plantations of Colombia have figured prominently in the works of Spanish American writers, who have endowed nature with a range of significances and created symbolic landscapes. The land connected to literature depends on the perspective, or the “gaze” of the author who depicts it: it can be observed from outside or from inside, as the Other to be dominated by the western subject, or as the source of life to be protected from the barbarism of civilization.
