Iberoromania, no. 102, 2025.
Drawing on the Amazonian philosophy published by Juan Duchesne Winter, this article analyzes how plants intervene in the form of the silva in “La agricultura de la Zona Tórrida,” by Andrés Bello, and in “Volver a comer del árbol de la ciencia,” by Juan Cárdenas. In Bello’s case, the silva allows him to imagine the territory as a resource that can be extracted from without limit. In Cárdenas’s story, it is through a rhizomatic and decentered narrative form that a sinister human–vegetal alliance is created, revealing the inhuman nature of the exploitation of Black workers.
“Una alegría vinculante: afectos inesperados en "El sueño de toda célula”
En "El sueño de toda célula" la poeta mexicana Maricela Guerrero (2018) plantea la búsqueda de un lenguaje poético que, sin dejar de reconocer el modelo extractivista que ha causado la crisis ambiental, sea también una forma de cuidado: «¿Imaginamos un río de lobos en las mesetas que cobija riachuelos, arroyos y comunidades de vida comunicándose en una lengua que no sea la lengua del imperio?». En este artículo planteo que en el contexto actual de una crisis ambiental cuya dimensión temporal y espacial desafía el pensamiento humano, como señala Timothy Morton (2013), el texto de Guerrero plantea, desde la poesía, una imaginación ambiental que hace énfasis en la importancia de los vínculos y el parentesco biológico que compartimos con otros seres. Así, frente a la devastación de los territorios a nivel global y la conciencia, en ocasiones paralizante, del cambio climático, el texto se distancia de la literatura distópica para proponer la alegría y la ternura como motores afectivos para una resistencia política.
In "The Dream of Every Cell," Mexican poet Maricela Guerrero (2018) proposes the search for a poetic language that, without ceasing to recognize the extractivist model that has caused the environmental crisis, also functions as a form of care:«¿Imaginamos un río de lobos en las mesetas que cobija riachuelos, arroyos y comunidades de vida comunicándose en una lengua que no sea la lengua del imperio?». In this article, I argue that in the current context of an environmental crisis whose temporal and spatial scale challenges human comprehension, as Timothy Morton (2013) notes, Guerrero's text offers, through poetry, an environmental imagination that emphasizes the importance of bonds and the biological kinship we share with other beings. Thus, facing global territorial devastation and the sometimes paralyzing consciousness of climate change, the text moves away from dystopian literature to propose joy and tenderness as affective motors for political resistance.
Cuadernos de Literatura, Revista de la Universidad Javeriana Vol. 29 (2025).
Co-edited with Carolina Sánchez and Sofía Rosa Rivero.
This dossier draws from different networks and collaborations around plants. In 2022, following the conference organized by the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), a group of writers and researchers met virtually from very dissimilar places—such as Cali, New Jersey, Santiago de Chile, and Warwick—to share their research on plant aesthetics from different practices. Fieldwork with indigenous peoples' literatures, participation in reading groups such as "Thinking from Plants," or creative writing initiatives and image composition from plants, were part of the common interests that convened the group. Each day, before presenting and discussing the work, a poem by a Latin American woman author about plants was read. In both the poetic readings and the discussions, the following questions arose: how do we address the silent presence of plants through literary and visual languages? In literature, what does materiality mean—encompassing both paper and inks, as well as the possibilities that texts might be written under the influence of plants? How do plants appear in Latin American literature and how do they burst into other literary traditions? What traditions of thought, methodologies, and concepts allow us to approach plant aesthetics?