Jiménez de la Espada: a spanish naturalist in Amazon

Abstract

The Spanish naturalist Marcos Jiménez de la Espada (1831-1898), a zoologist dedicated to the study of mammals, birds and reptiles, was a member of the Scientific Commission of the Pacific, together with the commission's president Patricio María Paz y Membiela (naval officer); Fernando Amor (geologist); Juan Isern (botanist); Manuel Almagro (anthropologist); Francisco de Paula Martínez (zoologist), taxidermist Bartolomé Puig and Rafael Castro y Ordóñez (draftsman and photographer), on a trip to South America in 1862-65, to study  the American flora and fauna and collect specimens for the Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. However, due to various circumstances, such as a disagreement over the command of the expedition, the scientists were forced to return to their country of origin, but Jiménez de la Espada did not heed the command and set off towards the Pan-Amazonian region to complete the collection. A man of science and a distinguished Americanist, Jiménez de la Espada published Algunos datos nuevos o curiosos acerca de la fauna del alto Amazonas (Mamíferos) in 1870. For this research, we sought to contextualize both the author and his work in the intellectual, cultural and historical environment of the time, as well as translating the aforementioned work into Brazilian Portuguese, in which the author gives a long, detailed description of the animals collected, focusing mainly on animal morphology, as well as comparing these animals with others already catalogued by the Europeans who preceded his journey. To understand the historical and cultural aspect, we used López-Ocón e Pérez-Montes (2000). For the translation analysis, we used Torres (2021) to discuss ecotranslation and Nascimento (2021) to comment on the translation choices of indigenous and Spanish cultural words and expressions from the second half of the 19th century.