Ingermina, de Juan José Nieto: antagonismo y alegoría en los orígenes de la novela caribeña.

Abstract

This paper analyzes a pioneering novel in the literary tradition of the Colombian Caribbean: Ingermina, published by Juan José Nieto during his exile to Jamaica in 1844, and practically forgotten for a century and a half, until it was reedited in 1998. Ingermina tells of the conquest of the Kingdom of Calamar and its conversion into the colonial Cartagena of the New Granada. The text revolves around the love between an Indian woman and a Spanish colonist. In contrast to other stories (such as the Mexican Malinche, Iracema in Brazil, etc.), Nieto’s novel offers a notably diverse view of the indigenous population, which is divided between radical and moderate anti-colonialists. My article analyzes the subsumption made by Nieto, of a political antagonism under a moral antagonism. Firmly planted within the context of Colombia in the 19th century, I refer this subsumption to the limits of Nieto’s liberalism, one of the most radical of his time.

Keywords

• Allegory
• Indigenism
• Colombia
• nation
• Colonialism
• Juan José Nieto
• Caribbean Novel.