LESSON: LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Latin American Literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America
in diverse languages, like Spanish, Portuguese and the Indigenous languages of the
Americas in particular. So, basically Latin is the base language of Spanish, Italian,
Portuguese, and French. It became globally prominent during the second half of the 20th
century, largely because of the international success of the style known as Magical
Realism. Since the region’s literature was much associated only with the 20 thcentury
literary movement known as Latin American
Boom which was actively supported by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Latin American literature
is rich with culture and social commentary and like many cultures Latin American stories
revolve around Universal Themes based on life experiences like poverty, family and
relationship loyalties, gender roles, social protest and exploitation, religion and magical
realism.

History
Latin American Literature has a rich and complex tradition of literary production dates
back many centuries.
Pre-Columbian Literature were primarily oral, while the Aztecs and Mayans produced
elaborate codices.
Colonial Literature when Europeans encountered the New World, early explorers and
conquistadores produced written accounts of crónicas of their experience, like
Columbus’s letters or Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s description of the conquest of Mexico.
Nineteenth Century Literature was the period of foundational fictions. Novels in the
Romantic or Naturalist traditions which attempted to establish a sense of national identity
and focused on the role and rights of the indigenous or the dichotomy of “civilization or
barbarism”. It was also the time of gradual increase in women’s education and writing
that brought more women writers to the forefront.
Modernismo, the Vanguards, and Boom precursors emerged in the late 19 century th

was a poetic movement whose founding text was the Nicaraguan Ruben
Dario’s Azul. This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary
culture outside the region and was also the first truly Latin American Literature in which
the national differences were no longer so much at issue. In poetry, it had been the
renovation of poetic form and techniques, extending the use of free verse.
Avant-Garde also vanguadria (fore - guard) was the next artistic movement after
Modernismo which instituted a radical search for new, daring, confrontational themes and
shockingly novel forms.
The Boom was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, after World War II, Latin
America enjoyed increasing economic prosperity, and a new-found confidence also gave
rise to a literary boom. Boom writers ventured outside traditional narrative structures,
embracing non-linearity and experimental narration. It launched Latin American Literature
onto the world stage, and it was distinguished by daring and experimental novels.

Post-Boom and Contemporary Literature is characterized by a tendency towards

irony and humor and towards the use of popular genres. 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. 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, and Giannina Braschi.

Here are the 21st Century Representative Texts and Authors from

Latin America
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a famous Columbian
novelist, short story writer, journalist, screenwriter and a Nobel Prize winner in 1982 for
his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a
richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts. He was
familiarly known as “Gabo” and considered as one of the greatest authors of the 20 th
century. He had written the most endearing and memorable stories of magic realism in
Latin American fiction:
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in time of Cholera,
and Autumn of the Patriarch. He was Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1972)
and Nobel Prize in Literature awardee (1982).
Carlos Fuentes Macías (11 November 1928- 15 May 2012) was a Mexican novelist and
essayist. He was described by The New York Times as “one of the most admired writers in
the Spanish Speaking World” and an important influence in the Latin American Boom
while The Guardian called him “Mexico’s most celebrated novelist. His many literary
honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, Belisario Dominguez Medal of Honor (1999)
as Mexico’s highest award and was often a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature,
though he never won. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz, Aura, Terra
Nostra, The Old Gringo and Christopher Unborn
.
Mario Vargas Llosa– (28 March 1936) is a Peruvian Spanish writer whose commitment
to social change is evident in his novels, plays, and essays and was awarded the 2010
Nobel Prize in Literature. He was an unsuccessful candidate for president in Peru year
1990. He wrote about this experience “A Fish in the Water: A Memoir” (1993) and became
a citizen of Spain and was awarded the Cervantes Prize of the same year. Despite his new
nationality he continued to write about Peru in such novels “The Notebooks of Don
Rigoberto” (1997), The feast of the Goat (2000, filmed 2005), The Way to Paradise (2003)
The Bad Girl (2006), The Dream of the Celt (2010), The Discreet Hero (2013) and The
Neighborhood (2016). In 2015, Vargas Llosa also made his acting debut at the Teatro
Real in Madrid, where he appeared as a duke in Tales of the Plague his stage adaption of
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron.

Julia Alvarez (27 March 1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist.
Many literary critics regard her to be one of the most significant Latina writers and she
has achieved critical and commercial success on an international scale. Alvarez rose to
prominence with her novels How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of
the Butterflies (1994), and Yo! (1997). Her works as a poet include Homecoming (1984),
and The Woman I kept to Myself (2004) and
Something to Declare (1998) was her autobiographical compilation as an essayist. Her
notable award was the National Medal of Arts (2014) from President Obama .
Many of Alvarez’s works are influenced by her experiences as a Dominican in the United
States and focuses heavily on issues of assimilation and identity. Her cultural upbringing
as both a Dominican and an American is evident in the combination of personal and
political tone in her writing. She is known for works that examine cultural expectations of
women both in the Dominican Republic and the United States, and for rigorous
investigations of cultural stereotypes.

Read and analyze the sample Text entitled Love in the Time of Cholera written by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Love in the Time of Cholera

Dr. Juvenal Urbino, the City of the Viceroy's most esteemed doctor, is sent to
examine the body of his close friend and finest competitor at chess, Jeremiah Saint-
Amour, who has killed himself at the age of sixty so that he will not grow old. The Doctor
returns home and discovers that his pet parrot has escaped from his cage to the top of
the mango tree outside. Dr. Urbino climbs a ladder to the branch on which the parrot sits,
but just as he grasps the parrot, the Doctor falls to his death. Florentino Ariza professes,
for a second time, his "eternal fidelity and everlasting love" to the Doctor and his wife,
Fermina Daza. Fermina is horrified by such an insensitive display, and, for the first time,
realizes the magnitude of the "drama" she had provoked at the age of eighteen.
Although Fermina Daza may have erased Florentino Ariza from her memory, he has
not stopped thinking of her since their long, troubled love affair ended fifty-one years,
nine months, and four days ago. Florentino first meets Fermina when he delivers a
telegram to her father, Lorenzo Daza, who is notorious for his shady dealings. After
watching Fermina, always accompanied by her Aunt Escolástica, walk to school each day
from the Park of the Evangels, Florentino works up the courage to approach her one day.
He asks that she accept a letter from him, but she refuses because she is obligated to get
her father's permission. He demands that she "get it," which she does the following week.
Florentino decides to give her a subdued note (instead of the sixty-page letter he had
originally written) in which he resolutely declares his love for her. He is in agony as he
awaits her reply but is overjoyed when Fermina finally answers approvingly.
 In the two years that follow, Fermina and Florentino see one another only in
passing, though they write love letters daily. Florentino proposes marriage to Fermina,
and again her reply is favorable. Fermina is caught writing a love letter by the Mother
Superior at her academy and is expelled. Lorenzo finds love letters in Fermina's room and
as punishment, banishes Escolástica and forces Fermina to accompany him on a long
journey, not to end until she has forgotten about Florentino. On the journey, Fermina
meets and befriends her older cousin, Hildebranda Sánchez, who helps Florentino and
Fermina communicate via telegraph messages.
Florentino hardly recognizes Fermina upon her return from the long journey,
because, now seventeen, she has matured into a woman. He sees her in the Arcade of
the Scribes and approaches her. When Fermina sees him, she is suddenly disgusted with
him and with herself for ever having been foolish enough to love him. Coolly, she tells
Florentino to "forget it." Florentino tries once more to woo Fermina, but to no avail. In the
fifty-one years, nine months, and four days that follow, not once does Florentino have the
chance to speak or see his beloved Fermina in private. Initially, he vows to save his
virginity for only Fermina, but after being seized by Rosalba aboard a ship to a faraway
city, he turns to sex to ameliorate the pain he feels at having lost Fermina. He returns
home, intent upon once again making her his own. Meanwhile, he conducts affairs,
however secret, with innumerable women, though he is rumored to be a homosexual.
Dr. Urbino courts Fermina, who resists his affections. Lorenzo Daza forces the
Doctor upon his daughter, and she reluctantly concedes. When Florentino hears that
Fermina is to marry a prestigious physician, he vows to make himself worthy of her. His
uncle, Don Leo XII Loayza, gives him a job at the River Company of the Caribbean, of
which, after thirty years, Florentino becomes President. Fermina and the Doctor
honeymoon in Europe for three months. When Fermina returns, she is pregnant with her
first child. Despite his determination to win Fermina, Florentino continues his lustful
affairs with other women, whom he finds at the transient hotel and on the trolley. It is on
the trolley that he meets Leona Cassiani, whom he mistakes for a whore. Leona asks him
only for a job, which he gives to her.
Florentino realizes that he must wait, without violence or impatience, for Dr.
Urbino to die before he can win over Fermina. When in public, he is greeted by Dr. Urbino
with familiar cordiality, though Fermina lends only a courteous glance or smile, and
without memory of their past. Fermina and the Doctor appear to be a very happy couple,
but in reality, they are quite dissatisfied. The unhappy but stable marriage is rocked when
Dr. Urbino conducts a four-month affair with Barbara Lynch, though he ends it when
Fermina confronts him with her knowledge of it. Infuriated by her husband's infidelity,
Fermina goes to live with Hildebranda on her ranch. The Doctor arrives at the ranch
unannounced to take Fermina, who is overjoyed by his arrival, home with him.
Upon the Doctor's accidental death, Florentino, now elderly, abruptly ends his affair
with fourteen-year-old América Vicuña and, at Dr. Urbino's wake, professes his "eternal
fidelity and everlasting love" to Fermina. After having banished him from her home in
anger, she sends him a hateful letter. He responds with a meditation on life and love,
which helps her overcome her grief. Gradually, after a letter correspondence, they
rekindle their relationship and spend afternoons together in Fermina's home. Florentino
asks Fermina to accompany him on a river voyage, and she accepts. On the voyage,
Florentino and Fermina finally make love.
As the ship reaches its last port, Fermina sees people she knows and frets that if
they see her with Florentino, it will cause scandal. Florentino orders the Captain to raise
the yellow flag of cholera, which he does. There remain no passengers on aboard but
Fermina, Florentino, the Captain, and his lover. No port will allow them to dock because of
the supposed cholera outbreak aboard, and they are forever exiled to cruise the river.

ACTIVITIES

Activity 1: Using the graphic organizer, list down the title of works below to its
corresponding authors in each column.

Julia Alvarez Carlos Fuentes Macias Mario Vargas Gabriel Garcia

Llosa Marquez

A. One Hundred Years of Solitude

G. Terra Nostra
B. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
H. Homecoming
C. A Fish in the Water: A Memoir
I. Autumn of the Patriarch
D. The Death of Artemio Cruz
J. Love in the Time of Cholera
E. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
K. The Bad Girl
F. In the Time of the Butterflies
L. The Old Gringo
Activity 2: Appreciation of the sample text: Answer the comprehension questions
about the story “Love in the Time of Cholera”.
1. Who is the main character in the story? Describe the main protagonist in the
story.
2. Does love In the Time of Cholera have anything to do with cholera? Explain.