Pantanal in the eyes of the media: from non-existence to paradise

Abstract

Drawing from History, from Theories of Culture, and from Communications, this article  addresses how the Pantanal transitioned from inexistence to paradise. The analysis begins with the vacuum in the official history that concealed the western frontier, as if nothing beyond the line of the Treaty of Tordesilhas existed; visits narratives written by those who crossed its rivers and wetlands in the 16th and 17th centuries; draws from descriptions of it as an island, a swamp, an ocean, and such; and arrives in the 21st Century, in which it is still viewed polemically by the media with an eye very similar to that of its visitors 300 years ago. From this study, one can perceive traces of the first miscegenation in Pantanal’s culture continuing on to the present.