This talk by Jorge Marcone was hosted by the Andean Cultures and Histories working group of the Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University.

In Peru, as well as in other Andean countries, the Amazon is easily associated with a history of extractivism, peasant colonization, international border conflicts, guerrilla warfare, drug trafficking and, most recently, environmental disasters of planetary repercussions. Nevertheless, the Amazon remains highly unknown and exotic, even for these countries' intellectuals.

What has been the role of 20th-century Amazonian fiction in this process? What misunderstood stories about nature and society it has told? And why are these stories currently relevant for the resilience of socio-ecological systems in the Peruvian Amazon?

Jorge Marcone is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Program in Comparative Literature, and in the Environmental Studies Major at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.