Mapping the yucatan peninsula from the mainland caribbean: Hurricane stories

Abstract

Using a corpus that includes both written and oral stories from the Yucatan this paper shows how cultural memory can enable us to create a cartography of our mainland Caribbean region by tracing the routes and signs of hurricanes in these narratives. Written and told in Spanish and in Maya, and originating in coastal towns and also in rural villages from the interior, these hurricane narratives reveal an intricate and complex mapping of the hurricane zone in the mainland Caribbean. I draw attention particularly to how the hurricane, read as a metanarrative (Schwartz2), not only enables us to weave together the lived experiences of the impact of the storms as a literature of disasters and to draw a spatial map of the “hurricane zone”; but also discusses how these stories offer “a way of seeing”, “a way of speaking” and “a way of telling” that reveal the hurricane as a leitmotif for understanding the cultural memory of the region.