Aconcagua as adventure is a modern construct stemming from the early practices of European mountaineering that began there in the 1880s. Accounts such as Edward A. FitzGerald’s chronicle of the first summit, From the Highest Andes (1899), primarily contoured the adventurous nature of Aconcagua through the voicing of an imperial masculine ethos, the juxtaposition of romantic tropes with documentary exposition, and the marginalization and erasure of local Mendocinos. As Aconcagua mountaineering evolved from its inception as an elitist, First World enterprise into a profitable option for the Mendocino travel industry, its nature as adventure also mutated. Adventure on Aconcagua is now characterized by its commodification, gendered hierarchies, safety concerns, environmental regulations, and an inherent questioning of narrative authority voiced through the registers of neocoloniality and transculturation.
In considering Mendoza’s counter narrative of Aconcagua adventure this paper takes as a focal point, Mendoza Cuenta: Aconcagua (June 2009), a four-hour locally-produced television documentary about Aconcagua mountaineering that echoes the earliest histories while drawing from the most recent kinds of mountaineering narrative modes such as internet blogs, message boards, and YouTube videos. The paper will explore the ways that Mendoza Cuenta: Aconcagua represents the postmodern nature of adventure as it remixes well-worn mountaineering tropes of the romantic sublime, the cult of the individual, and the privileging of science and nation, with the discourses of tourism, the environment, and regionalism.
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