Abstract

SOTO-QUIROS, Ronald. Racialized Landscapes and Identity Borders: Traveler’s Stories and the Railway to the Caribbean (1885-1930). Anu.hist.reg.front. [online]. 2021, vol.26, n.2, pp.317-357.  Epub May 30, 2021. ISSN 0122-2066.  https://doi.org/10.18273/revanu.v26n2-2021011.

The article analyzes different texts of foreigners, mostly -but not only- Americans, who mostly visited the country and that could be considered as travel literature, between 1885 and 1930, with the objective of evaluating the narrative generated regarding the ethnic land- scapes that are forged within the Costa Rican state and national geography in which the fiction of homogeneity and whiteness was historically imposed. In this study, it is discovered how foreign authors carry out this exercise in ethnic-racial cartography, especially concerning the route of the railroad between Limón, the port of the Caribbean, and San José, the capital, in the country’s Central Valley. The flow that took place within the framework of the railroad route allowed the authors to draw ethno-landscapes or ethnic territories and, therefore, identity borders: a homogeneous and stable ethno-landscape -a supposed cultural, linguistic, and phenotypical homogeneity and stable in the Central Valley-, and another more fluid and less stable ethno-landscape made up of diverse ethnic groups, but especially of Afro-Caribbean bodies.

Keywords : Landscape; Ethnic Group; Geography; Railway Transport; Travel; Costa Rica.

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