A linguagem e o significado de um lugar na América Latina

Abstract

The article analyses the cultural meaning of the concepts of space and locality and their diversification throughout Latin American history. For the incas and the aztecs, places had a kin conotation of social relations between relatives. In the andean societies, both superior and inferiors parts of their geographic setting indicated complementary activities (p. 78). Local chapels (capellas) were santuaries for harvest and fertility rites. After the Spanish conquest, localities involved a whole network of hierarquic and power relations as between social, national and imperial. During the process of construction of the state local, federative, central and national came to have opposite meanings. Later on, they were substituted for notions like peripheric and metropolitan. Post modern connotations point to new forms of localities and resistance towards burocratic planning. A new and insolite geography responds to touristical organizations (p. 99)