¿Cómo fue que un Guacamayo se Extravió en la Materia? Una Lectura de la Obra de Mario Payeras desde la Historia Ambiental y Animal

Abstract

This article analyzes the story “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” from the series El mundo como flor y como invento, published in 1987 by the Guatemalan guerrilla commander Mario Payeras, with the aim of denouncing the cycles of accumulation that turn the tropical fauna of the global periphery into a motif of contemplative enjoyment in the zoos of the central economies. The objective of this research is to delve into the reading of authors who, without being historians or working in the academic field, produced writings that enrich the sources of what we could call an Intellectual History of Environmental and Animal History in a Latin Americanist key. The problematization starts from an understanding of Latin Americanism as an epistemological positioning in which the knowledge produced by the actors and networks of social movements seeks to be recognized in its value, together with an open reading of the discursive genres in which it has been expressed, these being the essay or the varied literary registers, ranging from memoirs, to short stories, from novels to travel diaries. The invitation to the reader is to strengthen the interdisciplinary character that has been recognized both in Latin American Studies and in Environmental and Animal History. With this, the aim is also to elaborate on the partiality of the so-called “culturalist” and “applied” approaches.