PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Navarro, Enrique Camacho
TI  - Photographic postcards as places for memory of the circum-Caribbean area
DP  - 2018 Aug 1
TA  - Romanica Olomucensia
PG  - 59--80
VI  - 30
IP  - 1
AID - 10.5507/ro.2018.004
IS  - 18034136
AB  - In the region bathed by the Caribbean Sea - the continental territories of Central America and part of South America - two interesting historical processes converged at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, the arrival of American investors led to the shaping of economies into supposed ways of achieving progress through the arrival of foreign capital, while, on the other hand, the production of postcards, which initially functioned as a means of achieving communication over long distances, eventually allowed the building of an imaginary that, through visual representation, endorsed the liberal discourse that contributed to the consolidation of transnational corporations such as the United Fruit Company and shaped the infamous idea of the Banana Republics. In this context, the aim of this paper is to perform an iconological reading of postcards and images that were edited in the area under scrutiny in the early twentieth century, in which iconology is understood as the interpretation of images beyond what can be seen in iconography. The hypothesis proposed in this paper is that visual traces of this kind constructed an imaginary of progress that, seen in perspective, was oblivious to what was lived - and would continue to be lived - in many nations of the circum-Caribbean area.