Latin American Literature

Article Outline

Introduction; Native American Literature; The Colonial Period; The Period of Independence; The Modern Period; Drama; Assessment

The Modern Period

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The third period of Latin American literature witnesses the attainment of a definitive “authentic” national character after a cataclysmic event. Mexican literature, for example, affirmed its national character after the Revolution of 1910, whereas Cuban literature did so after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Many scholars feel that Puerto Rican literature cannot develop a national character unless the island wins its independence from the United States.

Modernity and Modernism

The movement known as modernism provided the first evidence that Latin American countries were developing unique literary characteristics. By the last quarter of the 19th century, Mexico and Argentina were firmly committed to constructing a society considered modern by western European standards. A literature of modernism also arose from a consciousness of the need to be “modern,” although not necessarily in the countries committed to modernism. Nicaragua’s Rubén Darío officially inaugurated modernismo in Latin America in 1888 with the publication of Azul (Blue), a collection of his poetry. Modernismo lasted until about 1910, when the Mexican Revolution and avant-garde movements from Europe began influencing Latin American literature.

In his poetry Darío successfully blends several literary trends dominant in France at the time. These include parnassianism (see Parnassians), which stressed poetic form and incorporated exotic themes, and the symbolist movement, which emphasized the role of the imagination, expressed through symbols, in literary and artistic creation. Darío’s writings combined these European forms while communicating the conflicts they engendered, especially in terms of the limitations of form, the pretensions of culture, and the nostalgia for an uncomplicated, pre-modern culture. By incorporating French poetic forms of expression, especially the lushness and musicality of language, Darío revolutionized the literary language of Latin America.

Another key figure of the modernism movement is Cuba’s José Martí, known in Cuba as a great poet as well as the father of the country’s independence. After 15 years in exile in New York City, Martí returned to Cuba in 1895 and died that year in his country’s struggle for independence from Spain. His poetry, fiction, essays, and children’s books exemplify the use of literature as an expression of nationalistic fervor and as a forum for political activism.

The Latin American Vanguard

Because the term modernism is associated with Latin America’s French-inspired literature of the late 19th-century, literary scholars use the term vanguard for a later movement that is comparable to the modern movements of Europe and the United States following World War I (1914-1918). These movements rejected anything considered to be conventional, traditional, or old-fashioned.

The poetry of Peru’s César Vallejo exemplifies the humanism of much of the writing of the vanguard period. Despite its modernist experimentation with form and language, his poetry is committed primarily to speaking out against social injustices toward marginal groups in society. Vallejo himself was of humble rural origins. His Poemas humanos (1939; Human Poems, 1968) explore humankind’s suffering and despair. Another member of the Latin American vanguard is Chile’s Gabriela Mistral, who in 1945 became the first Latin American author to win the Nobel Prize. Her writing, like that of Vallejo, shows a deep concern and compassion for the oppressed.

Chile’s Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize in 1971. Although he shared many of Vallejo’s sociopolitical concerns, Neruda is also known for his love poetry, including the early collection Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924; Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 1969), which is remarkable for its lack of sentimentality. Neruda’s Alturas de Macchu Picchu (1958; The Heights of Macchu Picchu, 1966) is both an interpretation of the great Inca ruins in Peru, based on the principles of German political theorist Karl Marx, and a meditation on imperial power and its impact on the common man. The poems of Odas elementales (1954; Elementary Odes, 1961) meditate on the simple things of everyday life and substitute simplicity and crystalline clarity for the wordiness of traditional poetry in the Spanish language.

In his vast poetic output, Mexican writer Octavio Paz combines imagery and themes from Mexico’s pre-Columbian past with borrowings from Hinduism, Buddishm, and the European surrealist movement. Although Paz is best known for his sensual verses, he also wrote prose works, including El laberinto de la soledad (1950; The Labyrinth of Solitude, 1961), a collection of essays in which he provides an interpretation of the Mexican character. Paz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990. The poetry of Cuba’s Nicolás Guillén, whose literary career began in the 1930s and lasted some 50 years, is notable for its revolutionary militancy in which Afro-Caribbean themes and language play a prominent role.

The vanguard period also produced numerous works of fiction, although only a handful are read today. Of particular note are three works that explore modernization using the land as a symbol or motif. Los de abajo (1915; The Underdogs, 1929) by Mariano Azuela narrates the events of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). It includes vivid descriptions of the country’s landscape ravaged by war. Don Segundo Sombra (1926; Don Segundo Sombra, Shadows on the Pampas, 1935), by Argentina’s Ricardo Güiraldes, insists on the need for the landed ruling classes to return to the rugged masculinity of gaucho culture. In Doña Bárbara (1929; translated 1931) by Venezuela’s Rómulo Gallegos Freire the disorderly “femininity” of the rural land is brought under control by the “masculine” modernity of the city. These novels lead to Pedro Páramo (1955; translated 1959) by Mexico’s Juan Rulfo. Although this novel draws a stunning picture of male-dominated rural society in Latin America, it also demonstrates that the rural allegory had begun to lose meaning for a society that by the 1950s had created the urban sprawl that so characterizes Latin America today.

The vanguard period also witnessed the birth of many literary magazines. The most important of these reviews is Sur (South, 1931-1979), headed by Argentine writer Victoria Ocampo, which served as a forum for an international discussion of Argentine and Latin American culture. Ocampo also played an important role in furthering a tradition of Latin American feminism.

The Mid-20th Century

The most prominent figure of Latin American literature in the mid-20th century is the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges. Although he was first identified with the vanguard movement in poetry, Borges made his most profound international impact through his essays and short stories. Beginning with Ficciones, Spanish for “fictions,” (1945; translated 1962), Borges published several major collections of short stories that, along with his essays, explore the complexities of the modern world through symbol, metaphor, and philosophic speculation. His work has been enormously influential on contemporary fiction, leading writers to examine the nature of reality itself. Its universality has led some literary critics to cite Borges as existing in his own cultural realm, outside any relationship to Latin America.

Apart from Borges, Latin American writers following the vanguard period directed an enormous amount of attention to questions of national identity and character. Peruvian writer José Carlos Mariátegui’s long essay Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (1928; Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, 1971) is the first attempt to conduct a sustained interpretation of Latin American society and culture based on Marxist ideology.

The novels of Argentina’s Eduardo Mallea analyzed human experience from a pessimistic point of view. Of particular interest is his bleak Todo verdor perecerá (1941; All Green Shall Perish, 1966). A counterpoint to Mallea’s gloom might be found in the emergence of feminist writing, as in the work of Mexico’s Rosario Castellanos. Her novel Balún-Canán (1957; The Nine Guardians, 1960) tells of a young woman from the landed gentry who comes to understand the importance of indigenous cultural traditions in her daily life and fights against the political repression and exploitation of Native Americans.

Colombia’s Gabriel García Márquez is known for his use of magic realism, a style that blends fantastic elements with realistic narrative, although much of his writing contains social analysis as well. His masterpiece, Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970), tells the story of a family and the village in which they live as well as describing much of Colombia’s history, analyzing its successes and failures as an independent republic. Some literary critics see the analysis of individual and collective histories in Cien años as a Marxist interpretation of Colombian and Latin American history. García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.

The “Boom”

A “boom” of Latin American novel writing took place in the 1960s and 1970s; García Márquez was a part of this trend. Other novelists who contributed to the boom were Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes, Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa, and Argentina’s Julio Cortázar. Fuentes undertook complex analyses of Mexican social history in such novels as La región más transparente (1958; Where the Air is Clear, 1960). He experimented with avant-garde literary techniques such as flashbacks and stream of consciousness to portray his country’s chaotic past. Vargas Llosa analyzes Latin America’s history in the novels Conversación en la Catedral (1969; Conversation in the Cathedral, 1975) and La guerra fin del mundo (1982; The War of the End of the World, 1984). Cortázar’s novel Rayuela (1963; Hopscotch, 1966), in its experimental style, directs the reader to “hopscotch” through the book. As the central character travels from Paris to Buenos Aires, the novel explores the relationship between the cultures of Latin America and western Europe, among its wide range of topics. Cortázar, like Borges and García Márquez, continues to be cited as one of the continent’s most original narrative writers.