Regional Literature as Epicenter of the Cultural Heritage – Projections of Literary Tourism in Colombia

Abstract

The literary work of Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Marquez, associated with “magic realism” and the “Latin American boom,” has fostered the management of urban tourist routes whose purpose is to reconstruct the spaces and events associated with his characters and memories in the Colombian Caribbean. The results of these efforts may be suitable for the promotion of literary tourism experiences based on the life and work of unknown local writers. The chapter describes the conceptions of literary tourism proposed from regional experiences, the original efforts of public publishers to promote the visit to Santander for recreating the personality and imaginaries about the Santanderean by the most recognized authors and the proposals in tours of literary tourism carried out by student-researchers when studying the life and literary work of the most representative literary authors of the Santanderean provinces. The research corresponds to the qualitative approach and the hermeneutic method, for which were contrasted the national and international scientific publications on literary tourism and the literary works that were created and published to exalt the Santanderean. Literary tourism is not a priority for cultural and touristic politics but is an alternative to strengthen literary creation and cultural identity.

1. Introduction

Literary tourism is a field of knowledge that integrates the search for places of creation, mention, or reference that are part of literary works, the lives of writers, or the places where they were created. In the case of Latin American literature, the literary works and the creative life of the writers have become a reference for travelers from other countries who wish to explore the spaces or inspiration of the spatial references or the cultural environments that influenced life and creation of the writers. A world reference is a tourism associated with literary places and film sets of literary creations such as “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the rings” [1].

The creation of tourist routes or tours that intertwine the author’s living spaces and the fictional spaces of the characters through similar urban environments is part of the cultural tourism offered in English and French-speaking countries. Those experiences have gradually been adopted and adapted to the particularities of cultural promotion in Spanish-speaking countries, particularly in nations such as Argentina, Chile, or Mexico [2].

However, the academics and promoters of Latin American literature consider from the universities and training centers for creative writing that reducing literary creation to merchandise of external tourism is to ignore the importance and superior condition of literature over other cultural expressions. However, from emerging professions such as cultural tourism or heritage, others consider that the patrimonial articulation between life and literary work with the rediscovery of places and urban practices reiterate local identity, have promoted sociocultural recreation by internal tourists, motivated new generations to relate their vital spaces with places of creative inspiration, and especially, justify the conservation of the past. An example of this is the regional promotion of “Garcia-Marquiano tourism” in the Colombian Caribe, supported by creations of Gabriel García-Marquez (Gabo) [3].

Colombian literature was recognized and strengthened with the Nobel Prize for Literature obtained by Gabo in 1982, but his literary representation of the country only represents a Caribbean geographic region (the “costeños”). This vision does not recognize differences in the sociocultural diversity and the literary representations of other regions and subnational groups that have used literature to recreate their traditions, conflicts, practices, and the exaltation of their cultural landscapes [4].

Parallel to the literature of subregions associated with Antioquia, Cauca, Tolima, Orinoquia, Cundinamarca, or Boyacá. This chapter aims to describe the opportunities and projections of the regional literature as epicenter of the cultural tourism among the people associated with the territory and the gentilic from Santanderean [5]. In particular, the rescue of the creations of the most recognized writers in each province is to be disseminated through tourist tours among national and foreign visitors who arrive in Santander, and with them, contribute to reaffirm the creative diversity of Colombians in contrast with its natural and ethnic diversity.

2. Literary tourism

Between 2016 and 2020, a line of research in “literary tourism” was promoted in the professional program in Tourism of the Industrial University of Santander (UIS), through which they sought to strengthen efforts for regional cultural tourism. Visitors, along with adventure tourism or summer tourism, were expected to have an experience in the “heritage towns” that had been recognized and declared in the “monument cities” of El Socorro, Barichara and Girón, as from the colonial populations of its provincial environment. These efforts to reflect on the interrelationships between history, geography, heritage, literature, and tourism materialized in degree projects by tourism students, participation in presentations at international conferences, and articles published in indexed journals.

From the proposals in literary tourism that were promoted from Spain by Marta Magadán and Jesús Rivas until 2015, especially the references proposed in the book “Literary Tourism” of 2011 [6], the student researchers in tourism from the Industrial University of Santander (UIS) and literature students from the Autonomous University of Bucaramanga (UNAB) developed a regional proposal that interrelated the identity literature of “being Santanderean” with tourist routes and tours that promoted urban heritage and traditions of the provincial cities, of which mention was made in the narrative works associated with Santander.

Some of the results obtained were published in the main geographical publication of the country, the “Cuadernos de Geografía” of the National University of Colombia, in that paper were raised the links between literary tourism, historical environments, and “Santandereanidad” when promoting representations narratives about the Santander territory by travelers as well as by tour guides [7]. Literary tourism was presented as an emerging field of human geography and cultural history through which it was possible to rediscover and reposition the most significant spaces of each territory through narrative representations about them. The construction of the imaginary of “Santandereanidad” was based on a vast literary tradition on the cultural stereotypes of “being Santanderean,” as well as it had been related to the creation of new spaces of identity and collective recreation such as the Chicamocha National Park (Panachi).

The reflections raised in International Congresses on literary imaginaries and their tourist projections in Santander, organized by the University Externship of Colombia and the Magdalena University, motivated the research group to carry out fieldwork in the most emblematic place of literature (Macondo) and the Colombian literary tradition such as the population of Aracataca, where the memory of the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez was born and immortalized. The reflection of this experience was disseminated through an article that analyzed the promotion of tourist-literary routes in the Caribbean from the case of Aracataca and the Macondo Route through the most important scientific publication in tourism in Colombia such as the magazine “Turismo y Sociedad” of the Externship University of Colombia [3].

The limitations and restrictions for the promotion of literary tourism in Santander demonstrated from the experience of the Macondo Route, on the contrary, the processes of consolidation and institutionalization of cultural tourism in the Colombian Caribbean, and in particular of literary tourism, when the effort was achieved comprehensive and articulated between public institutions interested in strengthening the tourist offer and private companies committed to heritage conservation and regional development of their communities. For which, the expressions, manifestations, and goods of the local cultural heritage were articulated in the reconstruction of the vital places and the spaces of inspiration that had inspired García Márquez to create the characters and environments of his stories and novels associated with magical realism in “Macondo.” This fieldwork demonstrated the strengths, risks, and weaknesses of the consolidation of the Macondo Route by depending on the resources and initiatives of private businessmen, as nonexistence of a public policy for the conservation of urban and architectural heritage that could expand the reduced offer to house-museums [4].

These perspectives on literary tourism from the regional experience contracted with the national offers were developed in parallel in other cultural contexts, between nations with the same interests in expanding and growing their tourist offer. In the case of tourism research in Brazil, Thiago Allis and coauthors proposed reflecting on the relationship between tourism, literature, and the use of mobile technologies, for which they propose contrasting cultural heritage and affective computing as part of the paradigm associated with the turn of mobilities. The experience in literary tourism is understood as the confluence between the human body and the textual body through the mediation of the forms of literary access and the tourist transport of readers-travelers to places of cultural interest. Which are analyzed from the experiences and expressions of satisfaction from the contributions of affective computing [8].

Although some research has contributed to redesigning or strengthening literary tourism on traditional routes such as the “Don Quixote Route” in the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain [9], other publications have disclosed efforts to create routes for literary tourism in cities without global recognition such as Borrana in the Autonomous Community of Valencia, Spain. Monferrer, by proposing a literary route from a Mediterranean vision for the coastal city of Borriana, proposes an experiential design that articulates literary tourism with inclusive and sustainable tourism as it is a place without development as a mass tourist destination, especially by attracting tourists interested in destinations that relate literature, local landscapes, and gender or ecological sensitivity. One of the projections of the route is to use it in local schools as a didactic and informative product for visitors and natives, as well as it is proposed as a tourist product that roots local authors and authors, social awareness, and particular idiosyncrasy of the town [10].

Other destinations for “literary travelers” or from the offer of places of tourist interest for cultural travelers in recent years have been associated with the dissemination of literary routes in the Pyrenees to establish the profile of the literary tourist by contrasting the practices of the public-reader with the promotion of reading and cultural tourism offers for each territory [11]. The interest of the cultural offer in the destinations of greatest tourist interest as part of the recommended diversification to guarantee its sustainability, which is why in the case of Portugal, and specifically Lisbon associated with Fernando Pessoa, it is proposed to explore the scope of promoting the vital places of Portuguese writers by becoming unique assets, which are strengthened through the digital media that travelers have and the destinations most in demand by foreigners, which are associated from marketing with digital tourist itineraries [12].

The development opportunities for literary tourism in Portugal and its linkage to the creative and cultural industries have been increasingly and systematically analyzed in the case of the cities of Porto [13], Baiao [14], and Coimbra in the last decade, according to the reports of publications indexed through Scopus. Sousa and Pereira, when mentioned the category of creative literary tourism have considered the opportunities for its promotion based on a route about the writer Miguel Torga, who lived and died in Coimbra, because “Coimbra has good resources and sustainable products for a more or less specialized demand, with material and immaterial testimonies of the presence, over time, of various writers” [15].

Quinteiro and coauthors have proposed developing the literary tourism niche from Coimbra because the city needed to: “implement literary tourism activities articulated with cultural tourism products and experiences or other niches and types of tourism as a way of distributing tourist flows in a balanced way of moving around the city, combating the overload in the classified area and promoting the less visited/known areas of the city” [16]. The tourist diversification mediated with cultural and passive alternatives such as literary tourism led Quinteiro and coauthors to also develop a methodological proposal for the creation of the product and tourist route for Coimbra. For this purpose, they made a contextualization of Coimbra from cultural tourism and literary tourism in Portugal, realized an inventory of existing literary tourism products to articulate them with the biographies of the most representative writers, and finally, they analyzed the literary tourism potential of the city using: “a literary cartography of the city, which enables the development of the literary tourism niche in Coimbra” [17].

In the case of Latin America, and in particular Cuba’s usual relationship with cruise, beach, and traditional artistic expression tourism, it has recently been proposed to diversify tourist itineraries mediated by the analysis of literary works that allow offering and attending to the needs of the contemporary expert tourist. Through reading and literary analysis, it is projected that the traveler knows the scenarios where the plots of the fiction of their favorite authors or works were developed, or failing that, the spaces related to the authors as is done in other cultural tourist destinations in the Caribbean [18].

3. Literary tourism in Santander, Colombia

Literature is a creation of individuality that affects and is significant for the community, but it is not possible for the “establishment” to impose the creative parameters of those who intend to transgress the literary order (whether as a rebel or a revolutionary), to innovate while remaining marginal and dissenting from fashions or cultural sectarianism. The writer of “modernity” finds it necessary to promote their exile from trivial discussions to face the new forms of domination, to rethink the livelihoods of tradition [19].

For the literary innovator, tradition implies the eternal return to the “golden ages” of the different arts and forms of being, as well as the promotion of rebellious actions for the rescue and restoration of the principles and values that laid the foundations of the civilization in which contemporary cultures are founded. Claiming the rescue of tradition, for example, the defense or condemnation of a “Santanderean literature,” implies accepting that in this imaginary both innovative transgression and continuous resistance to change have coexisted. Rather than repeating what happened, promoting tradition leads to the recognition of the fragments of past reality that remain in the memory, which justify the actions and convictions of the present [19].

The writers who grow up immersed in a regional or national tradition and identity, and from which they emerge with products and expressions about universality, for universality, the received literary heritage to make it “flourish or bear fruit before transmitting it to future generations” [19] is not significant if whoever inherits it does not assume it as an expression conducive to renewal, rupture, and the full exercise of freedom. It is only possible to create new visions and stories when the scope and limitations of what is created and preserved as part of the literary tradition are known. It is necessary to have a referent of what is erroneous, suffocating, or normal to rebel and move away from its influence.

Along with the impact of the reconstruction of the national vision of “national territories” through “La Voragine” by José Eustasio Rivera in the first half of the twentieth century, the construction of imaginaries about Santandereanidad or Santanderean literature reveals that the rupture with all forms of national, republican and regenerative literature required transgressing the values and visions of a unilateral and dominant moral order. After 1910, interpretations, narrations, and fictions about immediate reality were published and promoted, appealing to dissimilar fragments about the same country from its natural regions.

Fragments that were inspired by the classic expressions of universal tradition: landscapes, traditions, memories, legendary heroes, human groups, and sociocultural practices that claimed the existence of fragmented homelands as part of an ethnic whole. Places of the same idealized homeland in the capital’s cafes where malaria did not reach, the sterility of the soils, social exclusions, and the scarcity of everything gave their own meaning to daily existence.

The literary representation of each geocultural region is what has given identity (from multidiversity) to the Colombian nation. Along with the efforts of Santander and North Santander to differentiate themselves and at the same time build their own representations as “races” with a “tradition” that went back to the pre-Hispanic period, Tomás Carrasquilla from Antioquia warned the country’s literati and writers that their “obligation as narrators was to deal with the region” [19].

Since then, the best examples of the national literature of the twentieth century have essentially been the promotion, affiliation, or defense of authors and works with the different regions of Colombia. To the reconstruction of the Amazonian world of J. Rivera, the eastern Andean world of Eduardo Caballero Calderón and Pedro Gómez Valderrama, the central Andes of Álvaro Mutis or R. H. Moreno, the western Andes of T. Carrasquilla, Efe Gómez, or H. Abad is added, the Pacific by Eustaquio Palacios and the indisputable representation of the Caribbean region in family memories and traditions reconstructed by G. García Márquez and D. Sánchez Juliao.

Regional literature also evidences the provincial origins of the human groups associated with each territorial identity resulting from the processes of geographic, administrative and sociopolitical isolation that had been configured during the colonial period, and even, it was usual that distancing was a practice of the indigenous in the prehispanic period. Thus, the construction of imaginary worlds in literature reflects the distant worlds represented or yearned for by each author, for example the Caribe with “Macondo” [19].

The literary representation of each geocultural region is what has given identity (from multidiversity) to the Colombian nation. Along with the efforts of Santander and North Santander to differentiate themselves and at the same time build their own representations as “races” with a “tradition” that went back to the pre-Hispanic period, Tomás Carrasquilla from Antioquia warned the country’s literati and writers that their “obligation as narrators was to deal with the region” [19]. Since then, the best examples of national literature of the twentieth century have essentially been the promotion, affiliation, or defense of authors and works with the different regions of Colombia. To the reconstruction of the Amazonian world of J. Rivera, the eastern Andean world of Eduardo Caballero Calderón and Pedro Gómez Valderrama, the central Andes of Álvaro Mutis or R. H. Moreno, the western Andes of T. Carrasquilla, Efe Gómez, or H. Abad is added., the Pacific by Eustaquio Palacios and the indisputable representation of the Caribbean region in family memories and traditions reconstructed by G. García Márquez and D. Sánchez Juliao.

National literature has been founded on the multiplicity of views on each region, coinciding and reuniting the nation in the problems, dilemmas, and vicissitudes of its characters. Hence, for Montoya, there is a line of continuity between what Carrasquilla wrote and what García Márquez wrote, “between Yolombo and Macondo there are undeniable bridges and even characters who are almost brothers” [19].

Each region shapes and justifies the Nation, just as the local interweaves the idea of region. The existence of Santanderean regional literature [20] has been questioned as the best-known authors focus on characters, phenomena, or locations that are dissimilar to each other, without continuity in currents, styles, or territorial visions, a proportional problem raised by G. García Márquez when considering that in several centuries of Colombian literary history the nation had been disappointed by not founding and projecting a “tradition.” For Montoya “there is no robust and universal work and there are only two or three hits” [19]. Paradoxically, his work on a fragment of the Caribbean regional world, colored by various forms of conflict and violence, ended up establishing itself as the sublime expression of the universality that characterized the Colombian nationality and the Latin America of the “Boom.”

Contrary to G. García Márquez’s esthetic notion of a tradition with sustained quality, what led to the condition of national literature, or the imaginary of Santanderean literature, has been the multicultural variations and affectations that give identity to the language with which literature is communicated. And with it, to the representations, themes, or visions of the world that are projected through them regardless of the currents, genres, or fashions in which they are registered.

The nation, along with the region, are mental constructions that exceed any claim or requirement in their “esthetic quality.” For Santanderean writers, the purpose of the writer is to be one but not to seem like a creator who assumes the puerile existential task of reflecting in his work the totality of a nationality. Before the interest in “ridiculous patriotisms and nostalgia for greatness that never took place” [19], what should really matter when thinking about literature from the spatiality of its themes or authors is its integrality.

The transposition of created space to creative spaces reiterates that literature is essentially a journey, “a way of doing tourism” [6], to remote places and times whose vestiges continue to impact our time as evidenced by the historical narrative of Victor Hugo or Leo Tolstoy. It also makes it possible to validate the complaints and setbacks that contemporary “civilized” beings may experience when traveling to the extremes of their “developing” world through the committed narrative of political activists such as José Saramago or Mario Vargas Llosa. And even, through “extraordinary journeys,” the desired living conditions, progress, and comfort are envisioned, as has been the case in the science fiction literature of Jules Verne, J. Wells or I. Asimov.

3.1 Literary editions

Literature and symbolic spaces have been essential for the conformation and consolidation of the Nation projects of the States in formation as well as for the reaffirmation of the feelings of homeland and territorial identity. This has been the case of Santander, a fictitious territory and an imagined community created in 1857 when the political-administrative union of the provinces of Vélez, Socorro, Pamplona, Cúcuta, and Ocaña was established by force of law, which they had their own worldviews and sociocultural interrelationships [21]. The historical period during which a patriotic symbolism neither built (hymn, flag, shield, motto, etc.) nor was an identity literature of the territory published, except for some school manuals and stories about wars and civil conflicts that began or ended in their fields [22].

The members of the Corografic Commission (1850–1852), before the very existence of the sovereign State of Santander, established the first literary tourist circuit between these provinces by describing the socioeconomic relations that justified their integration as a single territory, as well as demonstrating the importance of reviewing and citing throughout their “pilgrimage” the literary texts that had described or recounted the colonial and republican conditions of those territories. Works among which stand out are the religious chronicles of Fray Pedro Simón, Basilio Vicente de Oviedo, and Juan Eloy Valenzuela, the reports of viceregal and republican officials, as the apologetic narrations of anonymous origin about the communal rebellion, the emancipatory revolution or the independence and liberating insurgency.

Manuel Ancízar’s chorographic descriptions are still scientific and literary references to reaffirm the interprovincial ecotourism potential of the Colombian Andes, the gastronomic traditions and urban designs that attract cultural tourists, the creation and promotion of literary tourist routes based on the narratives and experiences of travelers in the mid-nineteenth century. And even, to rediscover the texts that with a book in hand, the foreign travelers M. Ancízar or A. Codazzi was reviewing upon their arrival and accommodation in each district or cantonal capital of the Provinces of Vélez and Socorro, in the extreme south of Santander.

With the fragmentation in 1910 of the old provinces of Pamplona, Cúcuta, and Ocaña to give rise to the Department of Norte de Santander, Santander’s political, economic, and sociocultural elites assumed the challenge of creating discourses and symbolisms that would differentiate Santanderean from the south with those of the north, the Santanderean of the south chose to build their own history and sociocultural ethos, represented by the chronicles and historical literature of protagonists of those changes such as Simón Harker with his “Pages of Santanderean History” from 1933, which was followed by Juan de Dios Arias with his Santanderean history from 1947. Lately, the Santanderean of the north built their own identity inspired by the chronicles of the members of the Ferrero family and the pages of North Santanderean History by Luis Romero in 1970.

While the people of Southern Santander chose to build their identity from history and literature on their regional development and the characterization of the Santanderean ethos, the North Santanderean created and approved the use of national symbols such as an anthem (1932), a flag (1978) and a shield (1978) that allowed them to unify their imaginaries and differentiate themselves from the people of Santander and Táchira.

This type of symbolic imaginary about the nobility, strength, and values that exalted the “Santanderean race” was finally established and institutionalized in Santander as part of a regional nationalist project by a military hero elected as governor by promoting the alteration of symbols traditions such as the flag (1972) and the anthem (1988), adding a shield to the existing symbolic identity (2004), an educational project for the remoralization of Santanderean, a neonationalist ideology called “Santandereanity” [23]. And even, new spaces of cultural identity (monument to the “Santandereanidad”) and tourism (Chicamocha National Park).

The recreations, representations, and experiences of the authors who assumed the task of creating and justifying the imaginary and feeling of Santandereanity through their literary texts, led to the memories of their readings of the landscape (Tomás Vargas Osorio), the idiosyncrasy (Joaquín Quijano Mantilla), the sociocultural ethos (Manuel Serrano Blanco), or the bipartisan spirit (Enrique Otero D’Acosta), were the foundations of the “literary tourist” interested in experiencing, exploring, and perceiving the fetish places sheltered in their imagination.

Those local readers and authors became regional visitors from the Santander provinces, who ventured to go after the memories of their readings, as memories of the best images. This fascination motivated many others to visit the birthplace of the authors, to perceive the sites that inspired their literary creations, and in some extraordinary cases, to rescue and build local literature about the future of their place of origin and that of their ancestors. The best examples of this are the voluminous literary production of prints, chronicles, and romances about Piedecuesta by Vicente Arenas Mantilla, Horacio Rodríguez Plata associated with El Socorro, childhood memories about Zapatoca and its legendary men in the narrative of Pedro Gómez Valderrama, and especially, the stories and fictions about Bucaramanga before and after the War of a Thousand Days (1899–1902) in the narrative of Enrique Otero D’Acosta and Joaquín Quijano Mantilla [22].

This historical experience justified the emergence and consolidation of a fourth tendency or modality of literary tourism such as that related to the publisher, the printer, or the bookseller by becoming the intermediary or mediator between the author and the reader. Along with the contributions of the author, the guide, and the teacher to literary tourism, the most experienced booksellers guide the reader about the life, anecdotes, impacts, etc., of the author and his work, as well as offering other products that complement their literary experience in vital spaces, imagined or recreated through guides, maps or tourist trips designed toward strictly literary destinations and products. The bookstore or publishing house also tends to become an attraction for having been a place for the authors to visit or meet, or for hiding among the editions and versions of the same work that are waiting to be rediscovered.

Without the printing press, the publishing house, or the bookstore, the complicit relationship between author and reader would not be possible, it would not materialize. Hence, in Spain, every thirteenth of November the “day of the bookstores” is promoted as an alternative to search and explore other spaces of literary experiences and atmospheres. The spaces of literary intermediation have as much strength and relevance as the connection that is generated and promoted with the vital or creative spaces of the authors (personal legacies), the places of memory that are assumed to be real when the fictions of the narrative creator are convincing. (personified legacies), as well as for being in most cultural routes one of the stations or obligatory visits for tourist-literary itineraries (customizable legacies) [6].

Considering these formative and experiential perspectives from bookstores as well as from publishers, whose products are kept in libraries, museums, and archives in different places in Colombia, during 2015, the search, identification, and inventory of literary productions and editions that contributed to the construction of the imaginary of “Santandereanity” during the first half of the twentieth century. From the work of the teams of researchers in training from the research hotbeds integrated into a common collaborative project, it was possible to obtain as results of the narrative production preserved and disseminated in its first edition, a total of one hundred and thirty-five narrative and descriptive texts about Santander and its imagined region in the period between 1910 and 1960 [23].

This inventory made it possible to establish that 62% of these publications were printed and disseminated from Bucaramanga, highlighting the editorial role that the Departmental Printing Office of Santander played by becoming the main cultural and publishing industry of the twentieth century. This was demonstrated by being responsible for the production of 60% of the works registered in the Santander capital. From the perspective of the private publishing industry, the main company design and marketing of books of character and literary interest of a narrative nature in Santander was Casa Editorial La Cabaña.

This lithographic and typographic company established in 1905 and whose ventures in the book industry in the region were reflected in the production of 17% of the published and marketed works from Bucaramanga during the first half of the twentieth century, was strategically founded in the center of the city by Cristóbal Uribe Mantilla and preserved by the Uribe & Brother, society established by the successor brothers (Rafael: typographer, Benito: optometrist and watchmaker, Josefina and María: hat designers and merchandise merchants imported). Twenty years after positioning itself in the regional publishing market with products such as the “Almanac La Cabaña” from 1914, its existence was exalted in the Geography of Santander published by the Government of Santander.

The editors disclosed in the Geography by Margarita Díaz Otero that: “La Casa Editorial La Cabaña, the most important typographic company in Eastern Colombia. It was founded in Bucaramanga, in 1905, by Messrs. Uribe & Hermano. Its workshops are equipped with the most modern elements of typography, photoengraving, stereotyping, relief, trichomy, scratching, envelope manufacturing and a complete train of the offset procedure” [24]. Likewise, she considered that the publishing house was recognized as: “Santander’s largest importer of paper and cardboard. In obituary paper, correspondence, envelopes, greeting cards, visiting cards, mourning cards, menus, dances, and reminders, there is the most complete and brand-new assortment that has been imported to date” [24].

The publishing house located its printing, photoengraving, ficinography, trichome, and Altorelieve workshops in Carrera 10, under the direction of co-owner Rafael Uribe O., who had a “Diploma from the Bissell College of Photoengraving of EffinghanIII, and The United Typothetae of America from Indianapolis, Ind.” Which guaranteed him to present the editorial workshops that he directed as: “The best in the Department for all kinds of jobs, modern machinery, art, correction and sharpness” [25]. Productive quality that allowed the Uribe brothers to proudly affirm that: “The House has repeatedly been awarded gold medals in different exhibitions, and is the publisher of “Tierra Nativa,” a prestigious graphic magazine of high culture, inside and outside of the country” [24].

Other editorials from Bucaramanga recognized through each of the works analyzed were the publishing houses responsible for publishing the Vanguardia Liberal and El Frente (conservative) newspapers, the printers of Arturo Zapata, Francisco Páez, Marco Gómez, who in turn they constituted the printing press of Gómez y Páez. The editorial register associated with the Bucaramanga, Mercantile, Perfection, Renaissance, the Artistic Workshop, and even the Salesian printing press is also highlighted. It is worth noting that the importance of the editorial workshops of the Salesian community was reaffirmed with the publication of a text associated with Santander in the “Gráficas Salesianas” established in Mosquera (Cundinamarca).

Thus, in the mid-twentieth century, Bucaramanga had 16 publishing companies represented by registered firms such as La Cabaña; Luis F. Gamez; Gómez & Páez; Renaissance; Marco A. Gomez; Leopoldo Núñez Ortíz; Alarcon; Feetchacon; Minerva; Commercial; Phoenix; Central; Department Printing; Vanguardia Liberal Printing House (newspaper); Printing of El Deber (newspaper), and Printing of El Comunero (newspaper). Its commercial, institutional, or commissioned by the authors’ products were disclosed and marketed by the following bookstores: J. V. Mogollón & Cía.; Will Bookstore S.A.; Ultra Bookstore; Santander Bookstore; San Francisco Bookstore; and Iris Bookstore.

The remaining 48% of bibliographic production was associated with publishers and printers in the country’s capital (29%), other cities in Santander (3%) and distant places in Colombia, and even in other countries (Venezuela, Argentina, Spain) (6%). Some of the regional printers were Salazar (Barrancabermeja), Divino Niño (El Socorro), La Rotativa (Zapatoca), and the printing presses of the Pamplona Seminary.

The editorial production registered in Bogotá evidenced the trends, offers, and options that provincial authors had in the country’s capital. Among the various narrative genres that were published, the interest in publishing in the Minerva publishing house stands out, which corresponds to 15% of the literary production of Santanderean from Bogotá, followed in proportional percentages by the A.B.C. (10%), Colombia or Colombian (10%), Cromos (8%), and Kelly (8%).

In a minimal proportion, the bibliographical production related to Santander is also recognized, mediated by the typographic workshops and the printing houses of the publishing houses: Antares, Argra, Fotograbado, Medardo Rivas, La Luz, Marconi, Santafé, Selecta, Stella, Voluntad, Colón, and Rojas typefaces. At the national level, the editorial presence of the Bank of the Republic, the National Printing Office, the Caro y Cuervo Institute, the Ministry of National Education, Editorial Publications, Floklore Magazine, and the National University of Colombia among others is also recognized. A trend of intervention and institutional cultural promotion in Santander was exemplified by the involvement of the Chamber of Commerce of Bucaramanga.

3.2 Read and travel around Santander

In the absence of agencies and tourist guides that attend to the concerns and searches for cultural attractions or scenic destinations when visiting the Santander provinces, the literary texts of the first half of the twentieth century, especially those of a narrative nature, became tourist guides through which was invited and still is invited: “the tourist to travel the novel fiction scenarios, in addition to serving as a travel guide” [6].

The narrative creations related to places, traditions, or convictions about a human group in the history of reading in the West have recurrently awakened in the reader: “the need or curiosity to want to verify the resemblance between reality and the description embodied in the book. Pushed by this interest, the reader can be motivated to visit the places that have been embodied in the works” [6].

The literary tourist requires only a novel and an inquisitive mind. The experiences that these visitors hope to obtain from a place of the imagination or recreated by fiction take place directly in the places associated with the events of the characters. Thus, promoting this new form of cultural tourism, the imbrication of fiction in the real world, and with it, the adaptation of real spaces to places of the imagination.

With each editorial success, a massive visit to the urban spaces where each story takes place is encouraged, and with it, the productive vocation of those cities and their areas of influence are resized. Successful examples are the reappraisal of the Vatican and Paris by D. Brown’s conspiracy narrative, the esoteric routes associated with the “Potter map” created by J.K. Rowling’s saga or the tracing of urban tracks inside Stockholm offered by the series “Millennium” by Stieg Larsson. In the Colombian case, the urban routes have followed the literary clues about the Medellín cartel and the hit men of the drug trafficking “capos” by reconstructing the places of memory associated with “Don Pablo” Escobar. Or, on the contrary, for the recreation of the streets and places that the doctor Héctor Abad Gómez visited before being killed by the death squads, according to the narrative reconstruction of the family of Hector Abad Faciolince, his son.

The book constitutes the beginning, middle, and end of literary tourism. The raison of being of the tourist products and services associated with the house-museums where great personalities were born, created, suffered, died, etc., is resized when the book renews the “ideas of culture” and heritage conservation that underlie those spaces. The extraordinary power of books and their authors by resizing places of memory reaffirms: “the social value of literary cultural heritage to promote its protection and encourage its use and enjoyment by visitors to a destination” [6].

Literature books are significant and traceable by readers as an expression of the convictions, imaginaries, and imaginations of an author and the community that recreates his works. They also contribute to the creation of fiction through their characters, settings, and narrative atmospheres, from which it has been possible to: reestablish the practices and habits associated with critical reading; increase the number of readers and texts read per year as indicators of human development; for the increase of the lexicon and the improvement of the communication skills evaluated and required to advance in the educational and productive sector, as well as to reaffirm the basic and minimum conditions of coexistence among humans that promote principles, rights, and inalienable conditions to guarantee their dignity.

The literature on places and people who act in accordance with their historical-political or sociocultural project as an autonomous and sovereign nation allows compatriots from other states and hemispheres to reconstruct the places of memory universalized by the authors, as well as the recognition and reaffirmation of universal values of direct experience with the natives recreated in literary works. The search for authentic people in imagined or reconstructed places through authentic texts where beliefs, expressions, traditions, etc. are rescued or recreated, as well as allowing each visitor to recognize the relationship that exists between the authors of these texts with the places and the lives of the real people who embody them [26].

The literary tourist who follows the traces and clues of the narrated places to experience their iconic characters understands at the end of each trip, each “getaway,” each route, that there is a universality of human themes and experiences (love, death, friendship, memory, etc.) that do not vary because of the language or civilization in which they are created; human practices and customs are communicated with words and languages that represent each culture. Which requires identifying and understanding in the texts as in everyday life each of the social codes and social conduct, and especially, the existence of cultural strategies that each human or national group uses to disclose its linguistic wealth as to represent themselves through literary or dominant genres [26].

In accordance with these referents, the literary representation of the Santanderean and their imaginaries of the Santandereanity have changed with each generation of authors and publishers. To the chronicles and “historical news” on the human and administrative origins of the New Granada provinces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the friars, graduates, and learned men who arrived from Spain, the main criollos of the eighteenth century added narratives on the productivity of the people, the economic dynamics of their markets and taxes, as well as the raw materials and mining resources that would increase the wealth of each of these provinces. An example of these attractions for readers is the parish chronicles published as “Qualities and riches of the New Kingdom of Granada” by the priest Basilio Vicente de Oviedo from century eighteenth.

To the patriotic histories and catechisms promoted by the officials and publicists of the Republic of Colombia, conceived and administered by the Creole generals who defeated and expelled the armed forces of Fernando VII and his imperial officials, the New Granada businessmen who promoted the liberal reforms of the mid of the nineteenth century, they contracted the realization of geographical studies and the dissemination of municipal and provincial monographs. Stories of a nation under construction for which descriptive stories and chorographic tables with information of public interest were used, from which they built the first applied cartography and the first stories of a fragmented nation-state that were recognized from different provinces and cultural regions.

Examples of these publishing efforts were the “Physical and political Geography of the provinces of Nueva Granada” (1856) and the “Geographical and historical Atlas of the Republic of Colombia” (1865) based on reports, studies, measurements, observations, stories, etc., of the members of the Chorographic Commission directed by the Italian colonel Agustín Codazzi, according to the interests of liberal utilitarianism and the tendencies of military engineering.

The thematic, investigative, and editorial experience characterized by historical, political, geographical, economic, demographic descriptions, etc., and specific provincial or municipal monographs was replicated in the publications that were made on Santander over the following decades. Examples of these are the “Physical and Political Geography of the State of Santander” (1863) by Felipe Pérez and the “Compendium of Special Geography of the Department of Santander put into verse for the use of Schools and Colleges” (1892) by Luis Felipe French (Pérez Pinzón, 2015a). Works of general interest that, when incorporated into the classroom, led to the writing and dissemination of books and manuals for school use by publishers created by bookstores or religious orders specialized in that market, such as ABC, Bedout, Stella, Voluntad, among others of great recognition [22].

These descriptive tendencies were altered when new genres and literary expressions emerged to represent Santander and Santanderean when their political-cultural territory was fragmented with the creation of the Department of Norte de Santander from 1910. Of the 135 literary works on Santander during the first half of the twentieth century, 37% correspond to geographical and chronic descriptions of the political-cultural origins of municipalities, provinces, and the entire jurisdiction of Santander. Two tourist guides were even produced belatedly in which the dominant discourses in the compendia of regional geographies and histories were synthesized.

Although each literary work did not have the original or main purpose of becoming a didactic reference or tourist guide for readers about places, attractions, landscapes, human groups, etc., it was unquestionable that: “a book that has not been written intentionally to encourage travel, it favors a better selection of interested visitors and also corresponds more closely to reality” [26].

Added to this rupture in the relationship between author, reader, book, and places of memory (recreated or fictional) were the transformations of Santanderean literature with the adoption of modernist literary movements and the promotion of other forms of narrative expression. The traditional agglomeration of monographic descriptions, pictures of customs, and memories about the great men and the founding events of the homeland as well as the nation that characterized the original experiences of Santanderean literary writers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was overcome. The fragmentation of Santander in 1910 and the search for a territorial and sociocultural identity coincided with the adoption and development of new literary genres, in keeping with the movements and trends of the European avant-garde.

Of the 200 narratives that were published between 1910 and 1960 as part of the effort to establish Santanderean literature by Santanderean authors and publishers, the continuity of the New Grenade chronicling practices and geographical descriptions was dominant (37%), joining the genres promoted by the house’s publishers and literary movements of the first half of the twentieth century. There was also a growing production of short stories about territories of cultural interest (7%), published mostly by the Departmental Printing Office, the massive production of novels and stories with a moralistic tendency about large urban centers (11%), promoted in a leading way and majority by the La Cabaña publishing house, as well as the dominant intellectual and literary production of essays about the “landscape,” the “race,” and the Santanderean “soul” among the most recognized authors in Santander led to a great discovery. This essay production corresponded to 14% and was promoted in a repetitive and dominant way by the Departmental Printing Office to disseminate the thoughts of the most illustrious men of each party when they came to power periodically.

The Santanderean writers thus assumed the task of rescuing, disseminating, and promoting the oral heritage of Santander and the values of the Santandereanity through “folk literature” that reaffirmed the symbols of the reason for being, in times when it was advocated for the protection of national memory (6%). They reaffirmed the importance of narrating the fictions, experiences, or founding events of Santandereanidad through biographical narratives (16%) in which metanarratives prevailed over the proto men of independence and the great civil wars. And even a significant group of writers undertook the task of carrying out rigorous literary studies (6%) that reflected on popular expressions, narrative traditions, and theoretical trends that coexisted and were part of the cultural consumption of Santander readers as from the rest of Colombia.

The chronicler, biographer, and folklorist Juan de Dios Arias Ayala published two didactic texts whose purpose was to make the “History of Colombian literature: text according to the official program for the teaching of the subject in the 6th year of high school” (1947), complemented by for the “History of Colombian literature: for the 6th year of high school with an anthology and Hispanic American authors” (1950). An analytical perspective and improvement of literary work were promoted in a primitive way by Belisario Matos Hurtado in his “Compendium of the history of Colombian literature for the use of schools and higher schools of the republic” (1925). Texts in which the theoretical instructions were applied with the help of literary fragments allowed a better understanding and representation of the attributes of the “Santanderean race.”

Gustavo Otero Muñoz broadened these analytical perspectives from the retrospective of what was published by disseminating widely used texts such as the “History of Colombian Literature [abstract]” (1935), “Colombian Semblances” (1938) and “History of universal literature: critical historical manual” (1942). Other intellectuals committed to the Santanderean cause assumed the task of studying and analyzing the production of other regional authors of national fame and recognition, such as the study by Pedro Gómez Valderrama entitled “Dark Night of the Soul (interpretation of the poetry of José Asunción Silva)” (1948), as well as the work of José Fulgencio Gutiérrez published as “Aurelio Martínez Mutis: (Critic study)” (1933).

The relationship that existed between man and landscape transcended the reason for being of history and particularly of “national/regional histories from an idealistic perspective of culture” [27]. Tomás Vargas appealed to the founding vision of the Santander territory (1910) as the regional literature that should give identity to it (1922), in contrast to the territory and cultural expressions of North Santander. His essays and stories invited us to explore and experience the particularities of the Santander territory and reaffirmed the importance of interpretations between the territory (the landscape), culture (the esthetics), and people (the race) from Santander. For this, in one of his first “Santanderean stories” entitled “The Santanderean landscape and man” Vargas expressed:

The Santanderean is in his material life of an ascetic sobriety that contrasts with the superb luxury of his interior life. Perhaps there is no civilized and cultured human type that professes a deeper contempt for comfort: that everything be clean and coarse; On the other hand, when it comes to his spiritual life, his asceticism turns into an unsatisfied yearning for wealth and splendor that reaches, most of the time, to the refined voluptuousness of sybarites. The dry and poor land induces him to seek compensation in his inner life for what nature greedy denied him, and that is why in Santander culture is an authentic necessity, we could almost say that of a biological nature [28].

3.3 Routes for literary tourism from Santander, Colombia

The international trends and the national publications on literary tourism mentioned in the previous subchapters have not influenced nor are they considered relevant in the public policies or in the cultural tourism development proposals that have been recently disclosed in Colombia. Procolombia, the official agency for the international promotion of tourism and foreign trade of Colombia through the work “Cocreate, Connect, Conserving: Illustrated Manual for cultural tourism guides in Colombia” limited its vision in cultural tourism to minority tourism products in 2022 promoted during the last decade [29].

Cultural tourism is assumed as the offer to national and foreign visitors of routes associated with the practices and expressions of ethnic minorities, visits to national monuments, cultural biodiversity as a result of social life in spaces of natural biodiversity, diversity and originality of regional handicrafts and artisans, culinary practices and traditional foods, musical sounds and rhythms, and even religious expressions and rituals in each of the six cultural regions into which the country is divided. This trend has been reaffirmed in 2023 during the 42 Tourist Showcase of the Colombian Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (Anato), the most important international tourism marketing fair in Latin America in which private tour operators and public institutions responsible for promoting culture, tourism, and sports offer products in accordance with the tourist particularities and subregional cultural marketing strategies.

In the case of Santander, recent interuniversity studies have been oriented toward the development and cultural promotion of emerging niches, such as gastronomic tourism associated with adventure tourism. Castellón and coauthors in the study entitled: “Tourist route: gastronomy, cultural identity, rural development in Santander and tourism policies in Colombia,” published in 2022 by the University of Santander and the University of Boyacá, when reviewing trends in tourist companies in the subregion are unaware of the cultural potential of literary tourism. By establishing the tourism development models that they identified in the knowledge networks, they limit their search only to tourism: social, accessible or inclusive, sustainable, supportive, community, fair, and even virtual or digital tourism that managed to consolidate during the COVID-19 pandemic [30].

These studies and scenarios ignore or minimize the fact that in the western Andean, Pacific, and Caribbean subregions cultural-literary tourism is already part of the alternative offers for foreign tourists, at the same time that the review of potential undertakings from universities is ruled out. From the provinces of Santander or those located in the Bucaramanga Metropolitan Area have been done by professionals from different professions when carrying out their degree work [31]. Among these proposals are the investigations of the students of the professional undergraduate in Tourism, members of the Seedbed for Research in Alternative and Sustainable Tourism, who until 2020 made a review of the literary production of each province of Santander and designed a proposal for a tourist route as part of the of an internal research project financed by the Industrial University of Santander (UIS). To this end, Lina Martínez, Manuel Olarte, and Silvia Galindo articulated the life and literary work of the most representative authors of each province with the cultural reconstruction of their spaces and characters to recreate the environments of local memory where tourists could be guided., especially in its historic centers. These degree projects directed by the author of this chapter are summarized below by means of Tables 1–3.

Location	Characteristics	Route	Literary works
Historical Center,; City-capital of Bucaramanga,; Province of Soto- Metropolitan Area,; Department of Santander	Distance: 2 kilometers; Duration: 1 hour,; Difficulty: low,; Demand: High on weekend	Parish church; Catholic cemetery,; Hotel Bucarica,; Santander Park,; Trade club,; Cultural center,; Battle of Palonegro Museum.	Dianas tristes (1924, 2001).; Montañas de Santander (1932).; Leyendas (1938).; Relatos de la guerra de los mil días (2001); Historietas: leyendas y tradiciones (2001)

Table 1.

The route in literary tourism based on the work of Enrique Otero D’Costa.

Based on Martínez [32].

Location	Characteristics	Route	Literary works
Historical Center,; Intermediate city of El Socorro,; Provinces of Commoners and Guanentá,; Department of Santander	Distance: 2 kilometers; Duration: 2 hours; Difficulty: Medium; Demand: High on the weekend	Santa Barbara Chapel.; Main Square.; House Museum.; Parish cathedral.; Freemasonry house.; Capitol walls.; German brewery.	Antigua Provincia del Socorro (1963).; Inmigración alemana a Santander (1968).; Campaña de Boyacá (1969).; Radicalismo en Colombia (1985).

Table 2.

The route in literary tourism based on the work of Horacio Rodríguez Plata.

Based on Galindo [33].

Location	Characteristics	Route	Literary works
Historical Center,; Intermediate city of Malaga,; Garcia Rovira Province,; Department of Santander	Distance: 1 kilometer; Duration: 1 hour,; Difficulty: low,; Demand: High in vacation weeks	Parish church bell tower,; Old houses in the square,; Corner shop,; Jail at the mayor’s office.	La Cárcel (1972).; El día de mí muerte (1955).; La cabra de Nubia (1953).; No todo es así (1948).

Table 3.

The route in literary tourism based on the work of Jesús Zarate Moreno.

Based on Olarte [34].

Martínez reconstructed in 2019 the connections between buildings and places that are mentioned in the stories before, during, and after the battle of Palonegro in the surroundings of Bucaramanga during the War of a Thousand Days, based on the life and literary work of Enrique Otero D’Costa (1883–1964), academic historian and coffee businessman. For this purpose, she identified the places mentioned in the author’s works, connected the urban points through the most important streets, and carried out an urban reconstruction work that allowed him to propose a route that goes from the colonial town to the high neighborhoods during the urban expansion to the east, particularly in the neighborhood where Club de Soto and Club del Comercio led by their relatives originated (see Table 1). As the route is focused on the War of a Thousand Days, the tour concludes in the Palonegro battle museum, one of the sections of the route that has been proposed to read to visitors is a fragment of the story “Memento” in which Otero expresses: “In the late afternoon, we visited the cemetery. There wanders a weeping crowd that sloshes in the mud; the wind from the moor blows icy! So, I raise a prayer to God and deposited a crown of everlasting on the lonely grave of the forgotten hero” [32].

Galindo designed in 2020 a tour proposal based on the life and work of Horacio Rodríguez Plata (1915–1987), cultural manager, director of the house museum and president of the Socorro History Center, based on a didactic proposal for a night tour, which was raised by the director of the seedbed as part of his degree work during one of the colloquiums on tourism held at the UIS in 2017. Rodríguez’s work was focused on the great heroes and martyrs of the insurgency and the liberation of New Granada from Spain and on the migration of the Germans during the consolidation of El Socorro as the capital of the Sovereign State of Santander (see Table 2). The role of the Germans in the history of the central provinces of Santander is recreated during the tour by reading a fragment of their work that says: “Bavaria was born in El Socorro, around the year 1883, the partners were the Kopp brothers, who came from Frankfurt del Maine. In 1894 I was visiting the factory, which was in the north corner of the main square of Socorro. The Commoners had met in that house [1781] and the first patriotic meeting of independence [1810] had been held there” [33].

Olarte, based on the contrast between local tourist offers and collegiate artistic events, designed in 2020 a proposal for a tourist route based on the life and literary work of Jesús Zarate Moreno (1915–1967), lawyer and diplomat. To this end, he used the provincial stories about the daily life of the high mountain Santanderean, which motivated him to recall his experiences in his native Malaga, in particular, he focused his interest on the role and power of social deterrence that the local jail had (see Table 3). A place of power and terror from which one of the sections of the route recalls that: “The city surrounds the prison, as if it were nourished by it, and at the same time as if it were afraid of it. With its cement claws, the city has imprisoned the jail. Seen from here the prison seems like the navel of the small town” [34].

When comparing the three routes, it is evident the interest of literary authors as well as tourism professionals in highlighting the main square or park of each city where the route takes place, and on one of its sides the Catholic church that commemorates the Hispanic origins and the predominance that Catholicism has had in the Catholic provinces. To this are added other emblematic ones such as cemeteries, clubs, shops, and houses that served as jails, museums, or companies. Which reiterates the predominance of issues of social and historical interest typical of regional cultural tourism as established in our first publications on the interaction of tourism and literature [35].

4. Conclusions

Literary tourism associated with the imagination of traveling and experiencing each of the places of memory, imagination, and inspiration in real places through literary texts of a historical, anecdotal, fictional, or fantastic nature, has fostered the promotion of a new subsector of the international tourism industry. A trend of contemporary destinations and services whose vestiges can be traced back to the literary tradition promoted since 1910. In particular, when verified in first-edition literary works and historical narratives that were chosen as a specific research sample that 37% of the them corresponded to geographical and chronic descriptions of the political-cultural origins of municipalities, provinces, and the entire jurisdiction of the Department of Santander. Even belatedly, two tourist guides were produced in which the dominant cultural discourses in the compendiums of regional geographies and histories were synthesized, through which the symbolic, territorial, cultural, historical, folkloric, and ideological differences between being North Santanderean and being from Santander were reaffirmed living reflection of the “Santanderean race.”

The perspectives of historical study of the territory known since 1857 as Santander have changed with the fragmentations that have been made of it, especially with the creation of North of Santander in 1910. To which has been added the adoption of a development platform and regional competitiveness for the twenty-first century associated with the transformation of the existing cultural heritage into a national and international benchmark for tourism of a historical, literary, and reconstruction nature of the indigenous, Hispanic and republican communities that built the State and Nation project that characterize Colombia, based on strategies such as the “Network of Heritage Towns.” One of the best examples of this has been the changing and growing narrative and historical representation that has been made about the movement of the Commoners of 1781 and the subsequent insurgent revolutions in the province of Socorro, supported by the colonial infrastructure as references for the creation and promotion of literary and historical routes associated with the uprising of the commons as a principle, archetype, and imaginary of the Santanderean “ethos.”

Literary tourism is a contemporary manifestation of the material search for spaces and environments that have been significant in the construction of imaginaries and representations derived from literary texts read throughout life by residents, travelers, visitors, and tourists. In the case of the tourist geography of Colombia, and in particular, the tourist resizing that is intended to make the territory of Santander as a “land of adventure,” the existence of a public policy on departmental tourism was evidenced, from the adoption of the identity project of “Santandereanity” since 2005. And with it, the consolidation of strategies in competitiveness that have allowed turning the consumption of cultural heritage into the best way to consolidate the imaginary of Santandereanidad.

From the perspective of Spanish routes in literary tourism as well as from the tourist potential of the stories of the travelers who explored and described the territory of Santander, the possibilities of resizing the notions and experiences of the regional landscape from the associated tourist and heritage approaches have been presented with the Santandereanity. Ideological creation of recent promotion that, from the results of the research carried out by comparing 200 literary works, makes it possible to show that since 1910 one of the first tasks of the intellectual and literary elites in the south of Santander was the construction of an imaginary about “Santandereanity” that differentiated them from the North Santanderean.

These narrative representations also make it possible to recognize the interest of authors born in Santander or descendants of Santanderean in building a literary tradition associable with “Santanderean literature” or “literature from Santander” as reflections and recreations on the landscape become a historical constant that It has become an imaginary from which the promotion of cultural projects of national and international interest has been justified, such as the Chicamocha National Park, as well as from the historic centers of heritage towns and places of Santander identity.

Literature and tourism, as they are mutually associated with the imagination of traveling and experiencing real places, each one of the places of memory, imagination, or inspiration communicated through literary texts of a historical, anecdotal, fictional, or fantastic nature, has fostered the development and promotion of a new subsector of the tourism industry, specifically cultural tourism mediated by the publishing industry and the mass media. The corroboration of these trends was achieved by contrasting the narrative production preserved and published in its first edition of a total of 135 narrative and descriptive texts about Santander and its recreated or imagined region in the period between 1910 and 1960, together with texts analytical and complementary to them, which would add up to a total of 200 references on the origins and literary references of Santandereanidad. Constituting a telling example of those efforts to exalt regional identity with a universal vision in its dissemination, the literary, essayistic, and monographic works of the La Cabaña Editorial House, along with the policy of the Santander Rulers of the first half of the twentieth century for exalting the best authors of “the Santander race” through the Departmental Printing Office.

The tourist interest that symbolic spaces of being and daily life of every Santanderean have had in the last decade, specifically the Chicamocha river and canyon, makes it possible to reaffirm that from literature every “landscape” symbolizes the “Santanderean soul” has had different representations narratives. The authors coincide with their works in highlighting the beauty of the landscape, the characteristics of the dry environment, and the hardships caused by its rugged topography. Relates that can be perpetuated through tourist routes from the high mountains that surround the canyon by recreating the provincial places in the stories and dramas of Jesús Zarate Moreno, the monumental spaces of the Commoner capital and its commercial connections with the river studied by Horacio Rodríguez Plata, the urban connections between the spaces of memory during the War of a Thousand Days recreated by Enrique Otero D’Costa, so as future routes about the transcultural effects of German immigration through family experiences and collective stories narrated by Pedro Gómez Valderrama, from the construction of the roads that crossed the canyon and the river that has given touristic identity to the Santanderean.