A place to observe the world: The House with two Palms, of the Colombian novelist Manuel Mejía Vallejo

Abstract

The historic novel genre is an important source of information for anthropologist. The writer as cultural subject is both an ethnograph and an informant, and provide a fictional topography where can be observed cultural characteristics and significant structures of a society and/or a time. In this Manuel Mejía Vallejo’s book, are imbricated Embera Indians mithyc territoriality and the antioqueñan people one, also are illustrated both imaginaries remarked by antioquian colonization, among the end of xix^th century to middle of xx^th century. In this way, is fictionalized an important process in Colombian history.