The geographical design of the nation in a nineteenthcentury mexican novel. Los bandidos de Río Frío by Manuel Payno

Abstract

Los bandidos de Río Frío, by Manuel Payno, is a nationalist novel located in the first decades of independent Mexico, when the idea of nation is sought through the description and cultural construction of the landscape and the national territory. A “geographical literature” is explored through the approach that comes from cultural geography. We follow Tuan, who conceptualizes symbolic places with social qualities, as epicenters that personify cultural life and the identity of a certain community. From this approach ¿how is the author’s spatial perception exposed with respect to the national territory? For this, we analyze three areas of territoriality woven in the novel and that are: the haciendas, the mountains and the roads, which make up the structural design that Payno conceived to seek decipher the spatial system that was interwoven on a national scale.