The myth of 'El Dorado,' a city of gold in the New World, drove hundreds of Spanish and later English expeditions into the Orinoco and Amazon basins. This persistent legend, based on a Muisca ritual of a gilded chieftain, embodied the European fantasy of easily accessible, limitless treasure. It fueled the conquest of the interior of South America, leading to the destruction of indigenous societies.

The 'El Dorado' myth is the central organizing metaphor for the European literature of conquest and its discontents. Voltaire's 'Candide' famously satirizes the 'Utopian' gold city, but for poets of the Spanish Golden Age, it was a literal aspiration. The epic poem 'La Araucana' by Alonso de Ercilla, while praising the warriors of Chile, critiques the gold-lust of the conquistadors. For post-colonial poets, 'El Dorado' is the ultimate symbol of the 'White Man's' fevered, destructive, and ultimately hallucinatory quest for mineral wealth, a theme powerfully reworked in the poetry of Derek Walcott, where the 'gold' is the ruin left behind.