{"id":58750,"date":"2023-06-15T10:23:27","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T17:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=58750"},"modified":"2023-07-06T10:24:05","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T17:24:05","slug":"dont-call-it-magical-realism-latin-american-writers-use-imagination-and-fantasy-to-explain-the-world-around-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=58750","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Call It Magical Realism: Latin American Writers Use Imagination and Fantasy to Explain the World Around Them"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Pilar Marrero<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Across Latin America, writers who once turned to magical realism to capture the realities of the region are increasingly turning to science fiction and fantasy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n

For countries in the Global North, the \u201cpolycrisis\u201d has become a kind of dark cloud obscuring the horizon. The concept is increasingly the stuff of dystopian fantasies about a future set aflame by the convergence of multiple, global and existential challenges.<\/p>\n

In Latin America, the polycrisis has defined much of its history, and where once writers turned to magical realism, many now look to science fiction to depict that reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cConfusing what we are doing in Latin America\u2026 with magical realism is a common mistake,\u201d says Mexican writer and editor Libia Brenda, a slight irritation in her voice. \u201cMany in the North think that if it\u2019s not the science fiction they know, then it must be magical realism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, what writers like Alberto Quimal and Gabriela Dami\u00e1n Miravete (Mexico), Fernanda Trias and Mariana Enriquez (Argentina), Ignacio de Loyola Brandao (Brazil) or Liliana Colanzi and Edmundo Paz Soldan (Bolivia) are doing with literature today has little relation to the works of writers like Colombia\u2019s Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, the greatest exponent of Latin American magical realism.<\/p>\n

Marquez, whose best-known work, \u201cOne Hundred Years of Solitude,\u201d centers on the fictional town of Macondo, often drew for inspiration from the lives of everyday people and from history. By contrast, today\u2019s boom in Latin American literature delves into themes as varied as horror and environmentalism, technology, dystopia, and fantasy.<\/p>\n

According to some observers, these new works focus less on reconciling the past than on making sense of a fraught present and uncertain future.<\/p>\n

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