The Twentieth-Century Spanish American Novel

Eleven: Novelistic and Cultural Contexts in the 1970s and 1980s

Eleven Novelistic and Cultural Contexts in the 1970s and 1980s The s and s were characterized by a flourishing of the most heterogeneous and perhaps the most compelling novelistic production seen in any earlier period of the century. The desire to be modern now took a postmodern turn at the same time that the challenge of modernity was intensely embraced by women writers and other marginalized groups, such as writers of gay, lesbian, and testimonial fiction. The novelistic production in this period indicates that the experience of radical discontinuity that Latin American fiction had been attempting to tell since the vanguardia years of Torres Bodet and Huidobro was coming to fruition.The appearance of novelists such as the Chilean Isabel Allende, the Puerto Rican Rosario Ferré, and the Brazilian Nélida Piñón ushered in a new era for women writers in Latin America. Scholars have not reached a consensus about the major directions of Latin American fiction published since the s, nor is there agreement about nomenclature. In the s, it became apparent that the political, aesthetic, and personal bonds of the writers of the Boom were vanishing; some writers and critics began speaking of a ‘‘Postboom ’’ of Latin American fiction.1 By the mid-s, it was equally apparent that the quantity and quality of fiction authored by women in Latin America were indicative of a shift from a predominantly masculinist aesthetic to a scenario in which some of Latin America’s most notable novelists were women. By the late s, it was also evident that many of Latin America’s most innovative writers were participating in a radical and highly innovative version of modernism—a Tseng 2003.2.4 07:37 6754 Williams / THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPANISH AMERICAN NOVEL / sheet 179 of 280 166 Toward a Postboom, Feminist, and Postmodern Novel, 1968–1999 kind of hypermodernism—that some scholars have identified as the postmodern.2 Experimenting with the postmodern and entering into dialogue with postmodern culture have been yet another end-of-thecentury way of exhibiting the century-long desire to be modern. Politics: Novels of Dictatorship, Exile, and History The most significant cultural and political context of this period was the rise of repressive military dictatorships in the s and their fall in the late s and the s. The fall of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua was a watershed for the history of Nicaragua. The military coup in  that led to the death of Chile’s Salvador Allende, who headed the leftist coalition Unidad Popular, led to the prolonged dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. His sanguine rule was paralleled by military regimes in Argentina and Brazil in the s. In Argentina, the ‘‘Proceso de Reorganización Nacional’’ (–) was the euphemistic name the military dictatorships gave to a program that entailed repressing the more progressive sectors of the citizenry. Since the s, the human and cultural meaning of these dictatorships and others is still being accounted for by novelists. During the s, in fact, enough Latin American writers published novels dealing with military regimes that the ‘‘dictator novel’’ became a common nomenclature.The most celebrated of these novels were Alejo Carpentier’s El recurso del método (), Augusto Roa Bastos’s Yo, el Supremo (), and Gabriel García Márquez’s El otoño del patriarca ();3 these novelists drew upon the historical record to create fictionalized versions of dictators. Other novels about authoritarian figures were Mario Vargas Llosa’s Conversación en La Catedral () and Denzil Romero’s La tragedia del generalísimo (), both lengthy and complex works. Conversación en La Catedral stands out as one of the most ambitious technical enterprises for Vargas Llosa and for the modernist novel in Latin America; the dictator portrayed here is General Manuel Odría (leader of Peru from  to ). In addition to the four above-mentioned novelists, others published works dealing with either dictators or authority figures. For example, Fuentes’s Terra Nostra (), set primarily in sixteenthcentury Spain, can be included here, with the authority figure being Felipe II. Sergio Ramírez’s ¿Te dio miedo la sangre? (), moreover, Tseng 2003.2.4 07:37 6754 Williams / THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPANISH AMERICAN NOVEL / sheet 180 of 280 Novelistic and Cultural Contexts in the 1970s and 1980s 167 is a complex mosaic of Nicaraguan society under the Somoza dictatorship ; it has been described as a ‘‘dictator novel without the dictator.’’4 In the s...