Testigo en tierra salvaje: la cita tropical de Levi-Strauss y Theodore Roosevelt

Abstract

The present article compares Claude Léví-Strauss’ text Tristes Tropiques with Theodore Roosevelt’s Through the Brazilian Highlands, both of which regard the same region of Brazil. The U.S. President’s visit (1913-1914) antedated the anthropologist’s stay by two decades. At issue are the ways in which Roosevelt’s book (although unacknowledged) influenced the subsequent anthropological text, on the one hand, and how the two works differed on the other. It is argued that the contrastive interpretations – Roosevelt’s pervasive optimism and Lévi-Strauss’ unrelenting pessimism – provided by the two observers are attributable as much to their respective life histories and characters than to their subject matter per se.