Fantasy and artistic creation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

In Latin America and the Caribbean artists have had to invent very little, and perhaps their problem has been the opposite: to make their reality credible.  This has always been the case since our historical origins, to the point that there have been no writers in our literature less credible and at the same time more attached to reality than our chroniclers of the Indies. They too, to use an irreplaceable commonplace, found that reality went further than imagination.  The Diary of Christopher Columbus is the oldest piece of this literature. Starting with the fact that it is not known for sure if the text existed, since the version we know was transcribed by Father Las Casas from some originals he claimed to have known.  In any case, this version is only an unfaithful reflection of the amazing imaginative resources that Christopher Columbus had to appeal to so that the Catholic Monarchs would believe in the greatness of his discoveries.