Travel, tourism and politics in the work of Julio Cortázar

Abstract

Beyond their literary value, the works of Cortázar also represent a social testament to the transformation of the West during the mid-20th century. This paper comments upon Cortázar’s attitude regarding the phenomenon of tourism, seen as an adulteration of the Romantic concept of travelling with formative or regenerative purposes. Some of his short stories, such as “La barca o Nueva visita a Venecia” and “Vientos alisios”, express the vulgarization of the space of alterity due to the tourism industry, which makes travellers incapable of understanding a foreign reality and of escaping the limits of their own prejudices. However, the same phenomenon can be noticed if one reads the book Nicaragua tan violentamente dulce as a diary penned by a writer brought up in the paradigm of high culture, who cannot understand the political transformation of Nicaragua except as a realization of the utopian state of the artist.