Upon first consideration, it would seem unusual for José Eustasio Rivera's novel La vorágine to be included in the same breath with Doña Bárbara and Don Segundo Sombra. To begin with, Rivera's work does not evince the overt nationalistic inclinations of the other two novels; there is no counterpart here for the gaucho or the llanero as archetypal representative of national character. Furthermore, the general tone of the novel is one of great pessimism and defeat, contrary to the other two texts, where all setbacks and violent events are overcome through the affirmation of a larger transcendent order. Still, for many years La vorágine, along with its Venezuelan and Argentine counterparts, has been widely considered one of the paramount examples of the novela de la tierra.

I would argue that La vorágine's dissimilarity with the other two novels is essentially the result of a shift in sign from positive to negative in the conception of autochthony that rules the text; that is, the qualities that differentiate it from the works examined earlier are attributable to the fact that it portrays what can be described as a negative autochthonous condition.