Literary tourism on the Latin American Integration Route: semiotic approaches and transcultural perspectives

This article analyzes the Latin American Integration Route (RILA) as a cultural and semiotic trajectory, beyond its logistical function, highlighting the cultural and transcultural signs that shape its tourist promotion – landscapes, heritage, and national symbols. The aim is to discuss the potential of literary tourism as a vector of regional integration, emphasizing tensions between integration and identity preservation, as well as between consumer-oriented tourism and experience-based tourism. Methodologically, this is a qualitative study, based on bibliographic and documentary research, anchored in a semiotic-discursive analysis of authors and representative works from Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Chile, such as Manoel de Barros, Hélio Serejo, Raquel Naveira, Augusto Roa Bastos, Josefina Plá, Elvio Romero, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Florencia Bonelli, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, and Isabel Allende. The theoretical framework is grounded in the Cultural Semiotics of the Tartu-Moscow School (Lotman, 1996; 1998; 1999), articulated with the critical epistemologies of the avant-garde (Haidar, 2003; 2005; 2019; 2022; 2023) and studies of cultural and literary tourism (Andrade, 1992; Barretto, 2001; Quinteiro; Baleiro, 2017; Naveira, 2024; Roiphe, 2024). The results point to thematic convergences that allow the construction of transnational literary itineraries – such as nature and poetry, border and memory, urban literature, and female voices – which resignify territories in a cultural key. It is concluded that the RILA is configured as a semiotic border space, in which cultural and transcultural translation strengthens narratives of Latin American integration, paving the way for innovative, sustainable, and inclusive practices of literary tourism.

Keywords
Latin American Integration Route; literary tourism; cultural semiotics; transculturality; regional integration