LATIN AMERICAN BOOM: HISTORICAL CONTEXT, CHARACTERISTICS - LITERATURE - 2025

The Latin American boom was a literary movement led by a group of Latin American novelists whose works were widely disseminated throughout the world, and which took place between the 1960s and 1980s.

The movement is closely associated with the works of the Argentine Julio Cortázar, the Mexican Carlos Fuentes, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On the other hand, one of the two great influences of this trend was European and North American Modernism. But he was also influenced by the Latin American Vanguard movement.

Representatives of the Latin American boom challenged the established conventions of the literature of that region. His work is experimental and, due to the political climate of Latin America in the 1960s, also very political.

These writers became world famous through their writing and political advocacy, drawing attention to the conditions of political authoritarianism and social inequality.

Furthermore, many attribute part of his success to the fact that his works were among the first Latin American novels published in Europe. The avant-garde publishing house Seix Barral in Spain contributed to this success.

The term "Latin American boom" has been the subject of debate. This is used to define the intrinsic qualities of various Latin American works, but it sometimes describes the phenomenon within the literary market.

The boom was not limited to a local audience, but is identified as an international profile and a global reputation. Novels and short stories from various countries of the subcontinent were published in large numbers.

In general, they were written of exceptional quality, characterized by innovative and experimental forms. And it is considered the beginning of modern Latin American literature with strong international appeal.

Origin and historical context

In the 1960s and 1970s, the dynamics of the Cold War marked the political and diplomatic climate in the world. During this time, Latin America experienced strong political upheaval.

Thus, this climate became the backdrop for the work of the writers of the Latin American boom. His ideas, often radical, operated within this context.

The Cuban Revolution

Many experts point to the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 as the origin of this Latin American boom. This revolution, which promised a new era, attracted the world's attention to the region and its writers.

In addition, another fact that marked this period was the attempt of the United States to thwart this revolution, through the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Cuba's vulnerability led it to closer ties with the USSR, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the United States and the USSR came dangerously close to nuclear war.

Latin American authoritarian regimes

During the 1960s and 1970s, authoritarian military regimes ruled Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, among others.

For example, democratically elected President Salvador Allende was overthrown in Chile on September 11, 1973. He was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled until 1990.

Under his mandate, countless acts against human rights were committed in Chile. This included many cases of torture.

On the other hand, in Argentina, the seventies were characterized by the Dirty War. This is remembered for its violations of human rights and the disappearance of Argentine citizens.

Many of these governments, even with support from the US, cooperated with each other in terms of torturing or eliminating political opponents. The so-called Operation Condor, for example, involved the forced disappearance of people.

Changes in Latin American literature

Between 1950 and 1975, there were important changes in the way history and literature were interpreted and written in the region. There was also a change in the self-perception of Hispanic American novelists.

In this sense, several elements contributed to this modification. Some of these were the development of cities, the maturity of the middle class, and an increase in communication among Latin American countries.

In addition, determining factors were the Alliance for Progress, the increased importance of the media, and greater attention to Latin America from Europe and the United States.

Added to all this, political events in the region affected writers. These include the fall of General Perón in Argentina and the brutal repression of urban guerrillas in Argentina and Uruguay.

These and other violent situations in the subcontinent provided a particular context for the writers of the so-called Latin American boom.

The Padilla case

The greatest attention paid to Hispanic American novelists and their international success occurred in the 1960s, after the Cuban Revolution. However, the period of euphoria subsided in 1971.

In that year, the government of the Caribbean island hardened its party line, and the poet Heberto Padilla was forced to reject in a public document his supposedly decadent and deviant views.

So anger over the Padilla case ended the affinity between Hispanic-American intellectuals and the inspiring Cuban myth. Some point to this case as the beginning of the end of the Latin American boom.

Many of the writers in this movement had openly supported the Castro regime. Perhaps the most notorious of these was Gabriel García Márquez.

However, several of his colleagues cut ties with the leader of the revolution. One of the first was Vargas Llosa. This political turn led the Peruvian to run for the Peruvian presidency as a right-wing liberal in 1990.

The disenchantment of the Latin American boom writers with Castro was narrated in Persona Non Grata (1973) by Chilean Jorge Edwards, an account of his three months as Salvador Allende's ambassador on the island.

Characteristics of the Latin American boom

One of the characteristics of the writers of the Latin American boom is the creation of mythical settings. These became symbols that explored the development of culture from socio-political points of view.

Also, unlike their previous generation based on realism, they explored Latin American reality through experimental narrative forms. This break with traditional aesthetics introduced several radical elements.

Among others, a common feature of this movement is the frequent use of magical realism. It is about the introduction of supernatural or strange elements in the narrative. Without these elements, the narrative would be realistic.

Likewise, boom writers adopted the style and techniques of the modern European and American novel. His references were the works of Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Dos Passos, Faulkner and Hemingway.

Thus, some of the techniques used are stream of consciousness, multiple and unreliable storytellers, fragmented plots, and interlocking stories. These were adapted to Latin American themes, stories, and situations.

In general, this sort of poetic aura had been absent from Latin American prose fiction, except in short stories. This new narrative gave the novels that character.

In addition, two elements that until then had been rare in Latin American literature were introduced: humor and frankness in sexual matters.

Frequent Topics

The writers of the Latin American boom broke with the established tendency to focus on regional or indigenous themes.

Instead, they concentrated on representing the complex Latin American political and economic structures. However, it is not simply a realistic reproduction of folklore or a photographic approach to social ills.

These Latin American novelists show a more cosmopolitan vision of their native societies. This includes exploring specific native cultural icons.

In this sense, the characters were inspired by real social and political figures. In this way, they document their national histories, emphasizing the events that shaped their cultural or social identities.

Authors and works

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Among the works that recognized the writers of the Latin American boom and that are considered the epicenter of the movement, is the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez.

It is a world-class masterpiece that has entered the canon of Western literature. This tells the story of the small town Macondo from its founding until it was devastated by a hurricane a century later.

This author is personally credited for the genre of "magical realism," which has dominated literature throughout the South American continent for decades, and continues to do so.

Thus, his creations may vary in tone and style, but continually return to the "realistic" representation of an amorphous and ephemeral territory in which the fantastic and the magical are regularly presented.

Although García Márquez's fiction draws heavily on his own experiences of life in rural Colombia, it is simultaneously an exploration of the fantastic qualities of fiction.

In his stories, the boundaries between the real and the unreal are blurred. This Nobel Prize in literature can tilt time, nature and geography at will and with great mastery.

Julio Cortazar

A second central novel of the Latin American boom is Rayuela (1963), by the Argentine Julio Cortázar. It was the first of the novels of this movement to gain international recognition.

This highly experimental work has 155 chapters that can be read in multiple orders according to the reader's preferences. In it, the adventures and adventures of an Argentine bohemian exiled in Paris and his return to Buenos Aires are told.

Born in Belgium, Cortázar lived with his parents in Switzerland until he was four years old, when they moved to Buenos Aires. Like other colleagues, this writer began to question politics in his country.

Later, his public opposition to President Juan Domingo Perón led him to abandon his teaching position at the University of Mendoza. Eventually, he went into exile in France, where he spent most of his professional life.

He also offered his public support to the Cuban government of Fidel Castro, as well as to the leftist Chilean President Salvador Allende and other leftist movements, such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Of his extensive experimental work, the collections of stories Bestiary (1951), End of the game (1956) and Secret weapons (1959) stand out. She also wrote novels such as Los Premio s (1960) and Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (1967).

Carlos Fuentes

The experimental novels of the Mexican novelist, short story writer, playwright, critic and diplomat Carlos Fuentes earned him an international literary reputation.

In the 1950s, he rebelled against his family's middle-class values, and became a communist. But he left the party in 1962 for intellectual reasons, although he remained an avowed Marxist.

In his first collection of stories, Los Días enmascarados (1954), Fuentes recreates the past in a realistic and fantastic way.

Later, his first novel, The Most Transparent Region (1958), won him national prestige. Using modernist techniques, the story deals with the theme of national identity and bitter Mexican society.

On the other hand, Fuentes is the creator of another of the most representative productions of the Latin American boom, La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962).

This novel, which presents the agony of the last hours of a wealthy survivor of the Mexican Revolution, was translated into several languages. The play established Fuentes as a leading international novelist.

In addition, this prolific author published a series of novels, collections of stories, and various plays. His main work of literary criticism was La nueva novela hispanoamericana (1969).

Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa has had an impressive presence both in Latin American literature and in Peruvian political and social circles.

In his productions, Vargas Llosa implicitly attacks the prevailing cultural machismo in Peru. The modernist styles of European fiction of the early 20th century influenced his early work.

However, this author placed his works in an exclusively South American context. In his novels he reflects experiences of his personal life and reflects on the psychological repressions and social tyrannies of society.

Especially, the creations of his authorship Conversation in the Cathedral (1975) and Pantaleón and the Visitors (1978) attracted the attention of a wider public. These raised him to the forefront of the Latin American boom.

Long before, his 1963 novel, The City and the Dogs, had won the prestigious Seix Barral Prize in Spain. The story centers on the brutal life of cadets in a military school.

References

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