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“El país Que No Se parece A otro”:
Negotiating Literary Representations Of
Yucatán In Narrative Texts From Within And
Without The Region.
MARGARET SHRIMPTON
And this network branched out at various points to the beaches of
the south of the country, at Diamant and Petit Anse, and it could
well be that it flowed under the sea, through the Canal of St. Lucia
in the south and the Canal of Dominica in the north, converging
with the force of Soufrière in Guadeloupe and that of Castries and
of other hills and mountains scattered as far as the Andes in
Venezuela […) and perhaps it connected in a Great Flood one
continent to the other, the Guyanas to Yucatán through this string
of craters, dispersed among tiny islands. (Edouard Glissant,
Tout-monde, 1994, pp. 224 trans. Michael Dash, 1998, pp. 157).
Introduction
Questions of nation and identity so often at the centre of every discussion in
the Caribbean take on new developments when we look at the positioning of the
Continental Caribbean, especially in areas –like Yucatán –where we cannot isolate
a nation state or island-state. The inclusion of many of the Continental areas of the
Caribbean in current definitions of the area tends to stem from two dominating
aspects: one, the afro-Caribbean component (common to the coastal regions of
Guyana, Surinam, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and
Belize), and secondly, to the nation/island-space where the whole territory
responds to the “Caribbean” characteristics, as if it were an island. In the case of
Colombia and Venezuela, much of the discussion also centers on their island
territories –San Andrés and Margarita, who fit the bill as Caribbean island states,
and “justify” the Caribbean-ness of their nations. These two characteristics leave
Yucatán out of the discussion, being neither an island, nor a Nation-state, nor
having a large Afro-Caribbean population.
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Historically, however, the Yucatán peninsula has developed in isolation
from the rest of Mexico, due to the geographical and physical distance that
separates the peninsular from the rest of the Mexican republic, but more
profoundly in a cultural sense, perceived in the auto-proclamation as “the co