Latin American literature

Latin American literature rose to particular prominence during the second half of the 20th century, largely thanks to the international success of the style known as magical realism. As such, the region's literature is often associated solely with this style (and its most famous exponent, Gabriel García Márquez). This largely obscures a rich and complex tradition of literary production that dates back many centuries.

History

Pre-Columbian Literature

Pre-Columbian cultures were primarily oral, though the Aztecs and Mayans, for instance, produced elaborate codices. Oral accounts of mythological and religious beliefs were also sometimes recorded after the arrival of European colonizers, as was the case with the Popol Vuh. Moreover, a tradition of oral narrative survives to this day, for instance among the Quechua-speaking population of Peru and the Quiché of Guatemala.

Colonial Literature

From the very moment of Europe's "discovery" of the continent, early explorers and conquistadores produced written accounts and crónicas of their experience--such as Columbus's letters or Bernal Díaz del Castillo's description of the conquest of Mexico. At times, colonial practices stirred a lively debate about the ethics of colonization and the status of the indigenous peoples, as reflected for instance in Bartolomé de las Casas's Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias.

During the colonial period, written culture was often in the hands of the church, within which context Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote memorable poetry and philosophical essays. Towards the end of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th, a distinctive criollo literary tradition emerged, including the first novels such as José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi's El Periquillo Sarniento (1816). The "libertadores" themselves were also often distinguished writers, such as Simón Bolívar and Andrés Bello.

Nineteenth-Century Literature

The 19th Century was a period of "foundational fictions" (in critic Doris Sommer's words), novels in the Romantic or Naturalist traditions that attempted to establish a sense of national identity, and which often focussed on the indigenous question or the dichotomy of "civilization or barbarism," for which see, say, the Argentine Domingo Sarmiento's Facundo (1845), the Colombian Jorge Isaacs's María, Ecuadorian Juan León Mera's Cumandá (1879), or the Brazilian Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões (1902). Such works are still the bedrocks of national canons, and usually mandatory elements of high school curricula.

Another instance of 19th Century Latin American literature is José Hernández's epic poem Martín Fierro (1872). The story of a poor gaucho drafted to fight a frontier war against Indians, Martín Fierro is an example of the "gauchesque", an Argentine genre of poetry centered around the lives of gauchos.

Modernismo and Boom precursors

In the late 19th Century, modernismo emerged, a poetic movement whose founding text was the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío's Azul (1888). This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside of the region, and was also the first truly Latin American literature, in that national differences were no longer so much at issue. José Martí, for instance, though a Cuban patriot, also lived in Mexico and the USA and wrote for journals in Argentina and elsewhere. And in 1900 the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó wrote what became read as a manifesto for the region's cultural awakening, Ariel.

Though modernismo itself is often seen as aestheticist and anti-political, some poets and essayists, Martí among them but also the Peruvians Manuel González Prada and José Carlos Mariátegui, introduced compelling critiques of the contemporary social order and particularly the plight of Latin America's indigenous peoples. So the early twentieth century also saw the rise of indigenismo, a movement dedicated to representing indigenous culture and the injustices that such communities were undergoing, as for instance with the Peruvian José María Arguedas and the Mexican Rosario Castellanos.

The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges invented what was almost a new genre, the philosophical short story, and would go on to become one of the most influential of all Latin American writers. At the same time, Roberto Arlt offered a very different style, closer to mass culture and popular literature, reflecting the urbanization and European immigration that was shaping the Southern Cone.

Notable figures in Brazil at this time include the modernist novelist and satirist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis and the poets Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade (whose "Manifesto Antropófago" praised Brazilian powers of transculturation), and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

The Mexican revolution inspired novels such as Mariano Azuela's Los de abajo, a committed work of social realism (and the revolution and its aftermath would continue to be a point of reference for Mexican literature for many decades. In the 1940s, the Cuban novelist and musicologist Alejo Carpentier coined the term "lo real maravilloso" and, along with the Mexican Juan Rulfo and the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias, would prove a precursor of the Boom and its signature style of "magic realism."

Poetry after Modernismo

Twentieth-century poetry in Latin America has often expressed political commitment, particularly given the model provided by Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, and followed by such poets as the Nicaraguan Ernesto Cardenal and Salvadoran Roque Dalton.

Other significant poets include the Cuban Nicolás Guillén and the Uruguayan Mario Benedetti, not to mention the Nobel laureates Gabriela Mistral and Octavio Paz, the latter also a distinguished critic and essayist, famous particularly for his book on Mexican culture, The Labyrinth of Solitude.

The Boom

Main article: Latin American Boom

After World War II, Latin America enjoyed increasing economic prosperity, and a new-found confidence also gave rise to a literary boom. From 1960 to 1967, the major works of the boom were published. Many of these novels were somewhat rebellious from the general point of view of Latin America culture. Authors crossed traditional boundaries, experimented with language, and often mixed different styles of writing in their works.

Structures of literary works were also changing. Inspired by North American and European authors such as William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, Boom novels were often non-linear, disregarding conventional rules, and introducing techniques such as internal monologues. Latin American authors were also inspired by each others' works; many of the authors knew one another and influenced each other's styles.

The Boom really put Latin American literature on the global map. It was distinguished by daring and experimental novels such as Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963), that were frequently published in Spain and quickly translated into English. The Boom's defining novel was Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (1967), which led to the association of Latin American literature with magic realism, though other important writers of the period such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes do not fit so easily within this framework. Arguably, the Boom's culmination was Augusto Roa Bastos's monumental Yo, el supremo (1974). Other important novelists of the period include the Chilean José Donoso and the Cuban Guillermo Cabrera Infante.

Though the literary boom occurred while Latin America was having commercial success, the works of this period tended to move away from the positives of the modernization that was underway. Instead literary works focused on the problems and injustices that people were suffering across Latin America.

Political turmoil in Latin American countries such as Cuba at this time influenced the literary boom as well. Some works anticipated an end to the prosperity that was occurring, and even predicted old problems would resurface in the near future. Their works foreshadowed the events to come in the future of Latin America, with the 1970s and 1980s dictatorships, economic turmoil, and Dirty Wars.

Post-Boom and Contemporary Literature

Post-Boom literature is sometimes characterized by a tendency towards irony and towards the use of popular genres, as in the case of the work of Manuel Puig. Some writers felt the success of the Boom to be a burden, and spiritedly denounced the caricature that reduces Latin American literature to magical realism. Hence the Chilean Alberto Fuguet came up with McOndo as an antidote to the Macondo-ism that demanded of all aspiring writers that they set their tales in steamy tropical jungles in which the fantastic and the real happily coexisted. Other writers, however, have traded on the Boom's success: see for instance Laura Esquivel's pastiche of magical realism in Como agua para chocolate.

Overall, contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and varied, ranging from the best-selling Paulo Coelho and Isabel Allende to the more avant-garde and critically acclaimed work of writers such as Diamela Eltit, Giannina Braschi, Luisa Valenzuela, Ricardo Piglia, or Roberto Bolaño. Other important figures include the Argentine César Aira or the Colombian Fernando Vallejo, whose La virgen de los sicarios depicted the violence in a Medellín under the influence of the drug trade.

There has also been considerable attention paid to the genre of testimonio, texts produced in collaboration with subaltern subjects such as Rigoberta Menchú.

Finally, a new breed of chroniclers is represented by the more journalistic Carlos Monsiváis and Pedro Lemebel, who draw also on the long-standing tradition of essayistic production as well as the precedents of engaged and creative non-fiction represented by, say, the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano and the Mexican Elena Poniatowska.

Prominent writers

Main article: List of Latin American writers

Arguably the most eminent Latin American author of any century is the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges. According to literary critic Harold Bloom, "Of all Latin American authors in this century, he is the most universal... If you read Borges frequently and closely, you become something of a Borgesian, because to read him is to activate an awareness of literature in which he has gone farther than anybody else." Perhaps the most important novel to emerge out of Latin America in the 20th century is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien Anos de Soledad; Borges opined that it was "the Don Quixote of Latin America." The greatest poet of Latin America is widely considered to be Pablo Neruda; according to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Neruda "is the greatest poet of the 20th century, in any language." Mexico's Octavio Paz, while being primarily a poet, is perhaps the most outstanding prose stylist of the Spanish language of the century.

Prominent Latin American writers:

• Octavio Paz (Mexico) Awards: Nobel Prize, Cervantes Prize, National Prize (Mexico), Neustadt Prize, Doctor Honoris Causa (Harvard)
• Carlos Fuentes (Mexico) Awards: Cervantes Prize, Alfonso Reyes Prize, Doctor Honoris Causa (Cambridge, Harvard)
• Alejo Carpentier (Cuba) Awards: Cervantes Prize, Alfonso Reyes Prize, Doctor Honoris Causa (La Habana, Cordoba)
• Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba) Awards: Cervantes Prize
• Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina) Awards: Cervantes Prize, Alfonso Reyes Prize, Jerusalem Prize, Doctor Honoris Causa (Oxford, Columbia)
• Julio Cortázar (Argentina) Awards: Medicis Prize, Premio Konex
• Pablo Neruda (Chile) Awards: Nobel Prize, National Prize (Chile), Doctor Honoris Causa (Oxford)
• Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) Awards: Nobel Prize, Romulo Gallegos Prize, Neustadt Prize, Doctor Honoris Causa (Columbia)
• Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala) Awards: Nobel Prize
• Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru) Awards: Cervantes Prize, Romulo Gallegos Prize, Jerusalem Prize, Doctor Honoris Causa (Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Genova, Yale)
• Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brasil) Awards: Neustadt Prize (Candidate)

See also

• List of Latin American writers
• Latin American poetry
• Chicano poetry
• Latin American Boom
• McOndo
• Latin American culture
• The Dictator Novel

References

• Jean Franco, An Introduction to Latin American Literature (1969)
• Jorge Larraín, Identity and Modernity in Latin America (Blackwell, 2000)
• Gerald Martin, Journeys through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1989)
• Philip Swanson, Latin American Fiction: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)

Further Reading

Literature Collections:

• The Oxford book of Latin American short stories / ed. Roberto González Echevarría., 1997
• Short stories by Latin American women : the magic and the real / ed. Celia Correas de Zapata., 1990
• Masterworks of Latin American short fiction: eight novellas / ed. Cass Canfield., 1996
• A Hammock beneath the mangoes: stories from Latin America / ed. Thomas Colchie., 1991
• The Vintage book of Latin American stories / ed. Carlos Fuentes., 2000
• Contemporary short stories from Central America / ed. Enrique Jaramillo Levi., 1994
• Cruel fictions, cruel realities: short stories by Latin American women writers / ed. Kathy S Leonard., 1997
• Prospero's mirror : a translators' portfolio of Latin American short fiction / ed. Ilan Stavans., 1998
• A whistler in the nightworld : short fiction from the Latin Americas / ed. Thomas Colchie., 2002
• Out of the mirrored garden : new fiction by Latin American women / ed. Delia Poey., 1996
• Urban voices : contemporary short stories from Brazil / ed. Cristina Ferreira Pinto., 1999
• Contemporary Latin American short stories / ed. Pat McNees., 1996
• Latin American writers : thirty stories / Gabriella Ibieta., 1993
• The Penguin book of Latin American short stories / ed. Thomas Colchie., 1992
• Twentieth-century Latin American poetry : a bilingual anthology / ed. Stephen Tapscott., 1996
• El Coro : a chorus of Latino and Latina poetry / ed. Martín Espada., 1997
• Messengers of rain and other poems from Latin America / ed. Claudia M Lee., 2002
• The Oxford book of Latin American essays / ed. Ilan Stavans., 1997

Secondary Literature:

• Verity Smith, Encyclopedia of Latin American literature (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997)
• William Luis, Modern Latin-American fiction writers (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992, 1994)
• Roberto González Echevarría, Cambridge history of Latin American literature (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
• David William Foster, Handbook of Latin American literature (New York: Garland Pub, 1992)
• Terry Peavler, Structures of power: essays on twentieth-century Spanish-American fiction (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996)
• Harold Bloom, Hispanic-American writers (Modern Critical Views) (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1998)
• Harold Bloom, Modern Latin American fiction (Modern Critical Views) (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990)
• Philip Swanson, Landmarks in modern Latin American fiction (New York: Routledge, 1990)
• Efraín Kristal, Cambridge companion to the Latin American novel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• David William Foster, Theoretical debates in Spanish American literature (New York: Garland Pub, 1997)
• David William Foster, Twentieth-century Spanish American literature to 1960 (New York: Garland Pub, 1997)
• David William Foster, Twentieth-century Spanish American literature since 1960 (New York: Garland Pub, 1997)
• Daniel Balderston, Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean literature, 1900-2003 (New York: Routledge, 2004)
• Lisa P Condé, Feminist readings on Spanish and Latin-American literature (Lewiston, N.Y: Mellen Press, 1991)
• Roy Boland, War and revolution in Hispanic literature (Melbourne: Voz Hispánica, 1990)
• Alun Kenwood Love, sex & eroticism in contemporary Latin American literature (Melbourne: Voz Hispánica, 1992)
• Susan P Castillo A companion to the literatures of colonial America (Oxford: Blackwell Pub, 2005)
• Mario J Valdés Literary cultures of Latin America : a comparative history (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Willis Barnstone Literatures of Latin America: from antiquity to the present (N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003)
• Leslie Bethell A cultural history of Latin America (N.Y: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

External links

• Literature from Latin America, from LANIC