The solitude of Latin America: Nobel address 1982

Summary

Antonio Pigafetta, the Florentine navigator who accompanied Magellan on the first circumnavigation of the world, kept a meticulous log on his journey through our Southern American continent which, nevertheless, also seems to be an adventure into the imagination. He related that he had seen pigs with their umbilicus on their backs and birds without feet, the females of the species of which would brood their eggs on the backs of the males, as well as others like gannets without tongues whose beaks looked like a spoon. He wrote that he had seen a monstrosity of an animal with the head and ears of a mule, the body of a camel, the hooves of a deer and the neigh of a horse. He related that they put a mirror in front of the first native they met in Patagonia and how that overexcited giant lost the use of his reason out of fear of his own image.

This short and fascinating book, in which we can perceive the germs of our contemporary novels, is not, by any means, the most surprising testimony of our reality at that time. The Chroniclers of the Indies have left us innumerable others. Eldorado, our illusory land which was much sought after, figured on many maps over a long period, changing in situation and extent according to the whim of the cartographers.