Novel
Cumandá: The Novel of the Ecuadorian Jungle
Cumandá o Un drama entre salvajes
Juan León Mera · 1879
Synopsis
In the Ecuadorian Oriente, an Amazonian forest then barely explored, Carlos, son of José Domingo de Orozco, a former landowner of the sierra turned missionary at Andoas, loves Cumandá, daughter of the old Tongana. They meet in secret, for Tongana harbours a fierce hatred of white people. When Carlos goes to the canoe festival at Lake Chinamo, where Cumandá is among the virgins of the ceremony, his presence awakens this hatred, and a secret stemming from an old drama weighs on the two lovers.
Context
Completed in 1877, the novel was sent by its author on 10 March, from Ambato, to the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, in thanks for his recent election. In his letter he distinguished it from the tales of Chateaubriand and Cooper: its action took place in the forests of the Amazon, about which little had yet been written. The book appeared in Quito in 1879, then in Madrid in 1891. In the twentieth century, three Ecuadorian composers, Pedro Pablo Traversari, Sixto María Durán and Luis Humberto Salgado, each drew an opera from it, and Noé O. Vaca translated it into English in 2007.
Who it is for
In Spanish, a romantic prose rich in descriptions of the forest; no French translation, an English translation since 2007.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the culmination of the Indianist novel in the Americas and as the national novel of Ecuador; critical edition by Cátedra in 2005.
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