DescriptionThis work discusses how national discourse on the Amazon in the early 20th century served as a façade to hide exploitation and horror in the area. This happened during the lucrative rubber boom, which forced Latin American governments to begin an aggressive expansion of the nation-state in the region. These changes generated competing national representations of an Amazon subjected to neocolonialist practices. I work with models of representation of the Amazon by Brazilian Euclides da Cunha and a number of Peruvians, among them Hildebrando Fuentes, Carlos Valcárcel, and Carlos Rey de Castro. Their opposing views reveal an Amazon that resists normalization and modernization, as well as the horror to which indigenous populations are subjected in this process. I approach this situation from postcolonial, spatial and nation-building perspectives, which relates my study to current topics of debate in Latin American scholarship, among them indigenous resistance or vindication movements, human rights demands, and historic memory. Thus, this project is built upon the intersection of literature and history, as well as comments on exploitation practices that have been common to Latin America at large.