Abstract

This article problematizes the theme of Andean roads from a qualitative methodological perspective, applying documentary research techniques and assuming a historical and cultural geography approach; revaluing the travel diaries and artistic work of the German painter Ferdinand Bellermann (1814-1889) as sources for Andean studies. The research shows testimonies and practices present in the writings, drawings and paintings made by the artist, cultural products of a time that carry emotions and ways of perceiving places and regions in a complex context that stimulates a geographical perspective. Bellermann's traveling practice is approached recognizing the articulation of the trip with the cartographic and geographical knowledge of the period under study, especially with that of Agustín Codazzi; evidenced in the trip he undertook to the Andes between 1844-1845. The interest in the roads and the artistic images created by travelers allows an approach to the nineteenth-century Andean region, as well as an approach to the territorial process of identification and appropriation of it, within the framework of a mountain landscape that was acquiring visibility and connection in the coupling of a nation that sought to know and imagine its geographical space.

Highlights

historical research article that considers how roads, travel practices and the construction of landscapes were an unavoidable condition in the production of a geographical discourse that described and sought to represent an image of the Andes within the framework of the Venezuelan regional mosaic mid-19th century.