Utopian amazons

a communitarian matriarchy in the jungle

Abstract

This article discusses the portrayal of the mythical Amazons. In the past, the legend of a fearsome all-women tribe went hand in hand with a dystopian vision of the territory as a “green hell.” I contend that, with the development of the Amazon region in the wake of the rubber boom and, especially, with the rise of environmental concerns, the Amazons become part of an idealized image of the rainforest. I analyze two modes of utopian representation of the Amazons: Gastão Cruls’s depiction of a lost tribe of women in the novel The Mysterious Amazon (1925); and Abguar Bastos’s vision of the promised land of the Amazons in The Amazon Nobody Knows About (1929).