El Dorado (Week 07)

I remembered watching an animation movie about El Dorado when I was younger. It wasn’t very impressive and not very accurate. What’s El Dorado?  It is the name of a Muisca (main aboriginal culture in Colombia) tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dove into the Guatavita Lake in Colombia. Later it became the name of the City of Gold, the legend that fascinated the Spanish conquistadors. Imagine a Kingdom made of gold in the middle of the Amazon jungle.

The first expedition was leaded by Francisco Pizarro and Gonzalo Pizarro departed from Quito in 1541 in an expedition to find this fantastic place. They look everywhere in the Muiscan Territory at the north of South America (Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador). Spanish, English, Portuguese and Dutch try to find this place but never did it. Most of them just disappeared.  

I find this place fascinating. After the 17^th century it became a metaphorical place where wealth could be rapidly acquired. Voltaire, Milton, Poe and other writers have used this place in their stories. Now I want to use this as inspiration for a story, however I want to be far from the cliché that the American DreamWorks’ movie got into. It happened in Mexico (which is not even South America) and the Characters are cliché and mono dimensional.

I would like to develop more the actual legend of the city of gold, its relation with the Muiscas’ culture and the cultural shock with the Spanish. Gold had a different value for the Muiscas, they used it as offerings for the gods, while for the Spanish it was just economical wealth.