Bücher der Reihe Cambria Studies in Latin American Literatures and Cultures Series

This book is in the Cambria Latin American Literatures and Cultures Series headed by Rom n de la Campa, the Edwin B. and Lenore R. Williams Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. This book analyzes the relation between cultural changes and experimental fiction written during the 1920s and 30s. This era, known in Latin America as the historical avant-garde, was characterized by a wave of literary and artistic innovation. By framing several Central American novels and short stories from this period within the highly dynamic political and intellectual cultures from which they emerge, this study analyzes the way in which novelists Miguel ngel Asturias, Luis Cardoza y Arag n, Flavio Herrera, Rogelio Sin n, and Max Jim nez employ subversive narrative strategies that undermine previously dominant intellectual paradigms. This study demonstrates how these writers undermine the conventions of nineteenth-century realism and naturalism through a variety of experimental narrative techniques while simultaneously rejecting the discourse of positivism. This had significant social implications given that positivism the notion that true knowledge could only be obtained through observable scientific data was abused by Latin American military dictators during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a means of oppressing indigenous groups and working-class citizens under the guise of social progress. This book thus argues that the use of experimental narrative strategies in these novels is not merely for the sake of artistic innovation, but, rather, that these literary works manifest a desire for modernization through social and cultural change. The study concludes by pointing to the undeniable influence that these authors have had on the trajectory of contemporary Central American fiction. The Central American works analyzed in this study are significant contributions to the Latin American avant-garde, but have been overlooked for two reasons. First, until recently, the main focus of critics of the Latin American avant-garde has been on poetry and manifestos rather than fiction. Second, there has traditionally been a general lack of attention in Latin American literary criticism to the Central American region as a whole. Central American avant-garde fiction is therefore a field that has been dually marginalized by literary critics who have tended to focus on works of other genres by authors from countries with major metropolitan centers and well-established literary circles. Merlon H. Forster and David K. Jackson, authors of Vanguardism in Latin American Literature, have described research on the Central American avant-garde as sketchy, noting that much more careful work is needed. This book thus responds to a real need within Latin American literary criticism by addressing an area of research that, because of being overlooked, remains only partially understood. By identifying innovative Central American texts and demonstrating the ways in which they participate in the broader Latin American avant-garde movement, this study contributes to a more complete picture of this continental project of cultural renovation. The author challenges scholars to rethink the concept of the avant-garde as solely a group phenomenon, and establishes a direct link between literary experimentation and the cultural contexts of these Central American countries. This study contributes to recent scholarship that has emphasized the importance of this brief period of radical experimentation in the development of subsequent literary movements in Latin America and contributes to the ongoing dialogue in the humanities about the concept of modernity in relation to various forms of cultural representation. Central American Avant-Garde Narrative is an important book for all literature, Spanish, and Latin American studies collections.

On September 11, 1973, a right-wing coup overthrew Chile s democratically elected, socialist President Salvador Allende and established an eighteen-year dictatorship. The new government exiled, imprisoned, tortured, and killed Allende supporters. In addition to targeting leftist politicians and labor organizers, the new government took aim at the nueva canci n ( new song ) movement. It banned this style of folk-based music, exiled many nueva canci n musicians, and brutally executed V ctor Jara, the movement s most prominent figure. Meanwhile, supporters of the coup celebrated Allende s overthrow by blasting m sica t pica, a different style of folk-based music, into the streets. The intensity with which Chilean rightists and leftists each came to embrace and attack different styles of folk-based music was the outcome of a historical process in which competing notions of Chilean identity became intertwined with the political divisions of the Cold War era. To date, scholars have paid little attention to the role that music played at political rallies and protests, the political activism of right-wing and left-wing musicians, and the emergence of musical performances as sites of verbal and physical confrontations between Allende supporters and the opposition. This book illuminates a largely unexplored facet of the Cold War era in Latin America by examining linkages among music, politics, and the development of extreme political violence. It traces the development of folk-based popular music against the backdrop of Chile s social and political history, explaining how music played a fundamental role in a national conflict that grew out of deep cultural divisions. Through a combination of textual and musical analysis, archival research, and oral histories, Mularski demonstrates that Chilean rightists came to embrace a national identity rooted in Chile s central valley and its huaso ( cowboy ) traditions, which groups of well-groomed, singing huasos expressed and propagated through m sica t pica. In contrast, leftists came to embrace an identity that drew on musical traditions from Chile s outlying regions and other Latin American countries, which they expressed and propagated through nueva canci n. Conflicts over these notions of Chilenidad ( Chileanness ) both reflected and contributed to the political polarization of Chilean society, sparking violent confrontations at musical performances and political events during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Recent studies of diplomatic and military history have shown that the Cold War in Latin America was a multifaceted contest between various regional proponents of communism and capitalism. This book adds to this new conceptualization of Latin America s Cold War era by extending it to musical culture as well. It examines the manner by which the Chilean right attempted to undermine nueva canci n music, and it disproves common perceptions that the right had no culture of its own by revealing that rightists labored passionately to protect and advance their own style of folk-based music. It also examines how the Allende government and nueva canci n musicians worked officially and unofficially to expand their musical influence and provide cultural assistance to other Latin America countries. By analyzing the development of such endeavors by the right and left, Mularski reveals through the lens of music how national and transnational perspectives shaped social relationships and political conflict among rightists and leftists in Chile. This book contributes a more nuanced conception of music, politics, and cultural nationalism. Most existing research on the cultural components of anti-imperialist movements links nationalist political and economic policies with expressions of cultural nationalism, such as folk revivals, generally asserting that these folk revivals convey nationalist and anti-imperialist perspectives by celebrating traditions of local origin rather than foreign cultural influences. Mularski demonstrates how complex local dynamics complicate the prevailing association of cultural nationalism and anti-imperialism: right-wing Chileans embraced the folk-based m sica t pica style while at the same time crusading against the political and economic efforts of anti-imperialists, and Chilean leftists condemned imperialism while expressing a cultural identity rooted in nueva canci n that was simultaneously both nationalist and transnational. In doing so, Mularski offers a powerful example and multifaceted understanding of the fundamental role that music often plays in shaping the contours of political struggles and conflicts throughout the world. Music, Politics, and Nationalism in Latin American is an important book for Latin American studies, history, musicology/ethnomusicology, and communication.

Poets writing in Spanish by the end of the twentieth century had to contend with globalization as a backdrop for their literary production. They could embrace it, ignore it or potentially re-imagine the role of the poet altogether. This book examines some of the efforts of Spanish-language poets to cope with the globalizing cultural economy of the late twentieth century. This study looks at the similarities and differences in both text and context of poets, some major and some minor, writing in Chile, Mexico, the Mexican American community and Spain. These poets write in a variety of styles, from highly experimental approaches to poetry to more traditional methods of writing. Included in this study are Chileans Ra l Zurita and Cecilia Vicu a, Spaniards Leopoldo Mar a Panero and Luis Garc a Montero, Mexicans Silvia Tomasa Rivera and Guillermo G mez Pe a, and Mexican American U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. Some of them embrace (and are even embraced by) media both old and new whereas others eschew it. Some continue their work in the vein of national traditions while others become difficult to situate within any one single national tradition. Exploring the varieties of strategies these writers employ, this book makes it clear that Spanish-language poets have not been exempt from the process of globalization. Individually, these poets have been studied to varying degrees. Globalization has been studied extensively from a variety of disciplinary approaches, particularly in the context of the Latin American region and Spain. However, it is a relative rarity to see poets being studied, as they are in this work, in terms of their relationship to globalization. Taken as a sample or snapshot of writing tendencies in Latin American and Spanish poetry of the late twentieth century, this book studies them as part of a greater circuit of cultural production by establishing their literary as well as extra-literary genealogies and connections. It situates these poets in terms of their writing itself as well as in terms of their literary traditions, their methods of contending with neoliberal economic models and global information flows from the television and Internet. Although many literary critics attempt to study the connections and relationships between poetry and the world beyond the page, few monographs go about it the way this one does. It takes a transatlantic approach to contemporary Spanish-language poetry, focusing on poets on poets from Spain and the American continent, emphasizing their connections, commonalities and differences across increasingly porous borders in the age of information. The relationship between text and context is explored with a cultural studies approach, more often associated with media studies than with literary studies. Literature is not treated as a privileged object of isolated study, but rather as a system of ideas and images that is deeply interwoven with other forms of human expression that have arisen in the last decades of the twentieth century. The result is a suggestive analysis of the figure of the poet in the broader globalized marketplace of cultural goods and ideas. Contemporary Hispanic Poets: Cultural Production in the Global, Digital Age is an important book for library collections in Spanish, Latin American and Iberian Studies, Chicano Studies.