Rivera, José Eustasio

Related Category: Latin American Literature: Biographies

(hōsā´ āstä´syō rēvā´rä), 1889–1928, Colombian novelist. Rivera served on the commission to fix the Venezuelan boundary deep in the rain forest of the Amazon basin. The jungle became the setting and protagonist of his masterly novel, La vorágine (1924, tr. The Vortex, 1935). In fluid language he tells of the hardships and brutal sufferings of rubber gatherers. Rivera wrote sonnets in classical manner about the tropics in Tierra de promisión [promised land] (1921).