No Road to Paradise: María's Unbuilt Infrastructure.
This article reexamines Jorge Isaacs' María through the unexpected lens of Latin America's history of transportation infrastructure. Written while Isaacs oversaw the construction of Cauca's most coveted export road, I argue that the novel echoes broader anxieties about Colombia's inadequate transpor...
| Publicado en: | Revista Hispánica Moderna (0034-9593) Vol. 78; no. 1; pp. 68 - 87 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Jun2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=185994437&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 185994437 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00349593 3BJ5 jtl: Revista Hispánica Moderna (0034-9593) issn: 00349593 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2025 vid: 78 iid: 1 pid: 4636 pub: University of Pennsylvania Press artinfo: ui: 185994437 10.1353/rhm.2025.a962253 ppf: 68 ppct: 19 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 2.2MB tig: atl: No Road to Paradise: María's Unbuilt Infrastructure. aug: au: Seminario, Valeria affil: University of Pennsylvania su: History of transportation Latin American history Infrastructure (Economics) Couples Sentimentalism sug: subj: History of transportation Latin American history Infrastructure (Economics) Couples Sentimentalism keyword: COLOMBIAN LITERATURE INFRASTRUCTURE JORGE ISAACS LATIN AMERICAN MODERNITY TRANSPORTATION ab: This article reexamines Jorge Isaacs' María through the unexpected lens of Latin America's history of transportation infrastructure. Written while Isaacs oversaw the construction of Cauca's most coveted export road, I argue that the novel echoes broader anxieties about Colombia's inadequate transportation technologies. Efraín and María's romance—their tearful separations and longing for reunion—acquires new historical dimensions when read as superimposed over Cauca's key export route. The couple's struggle with separation underscores the urgency for infrastructure to bridge distances, aligning the reader's yearning for their reunion with the belief that connectivity is fundamental to happiness and prosperity. Identifying a pattern that links emotional excess to geographical distance, this article argues that María captures the fears that emerged in Latin America during the steam-powered transportation revolution, when the imperative to join an accelerating and globalizing world clashed with the challenges posed by trying landscapes and inadequate travel routes. Viewed from this perspective, the novel's melancholic nostalgia and sentimentality can be read as a response to the traumatic disjunction between the region's aspirations for integration into global capitalism and the reality of its infrastructural inadequacies that left the region locked in a peripheral position within the structures of capitalist growth. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Revista Hispánica Moderna (0034-9593) is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Revista Hispánica Moderna (0034-9593) holder: University of Pennsylvania Press dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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