In his introduction to the influential AntologĂa de la literatura fantĂĄstica/The Book of Fantasy,1 Adolfo Bioy Casares defines The Castle of Otranto as representative of a tedious genre of castles, spider webs, storms, and bad taste.2 This judgement summarises the canonical view of the Gothic in Latin American criticism during the larger part of the twentieth century, a rejection that, in many cases, had more to do with terminology than with a dismissal of gothic forms. The AntologĂa includes short stories featuring vampires, ghosts, and old castles; although associated with the Gothic in European countries and in the United States, these were branded motifs of fantastic literature in Latin America. Moreover, the Gothic has been considered by some to be a sort of colonial imposition in Latin America, a foreign mode of representation that does not reflect regional identities. Other forms on non-mimetic representation have also been traditionally rejected in favour of a focus on magical realism and/or lo real maravilloso, defined by Alejo Carpentier as the literary representation of Latin American and Caribbean beliefs, identities, and relationships with reality.3 Even though some critics have put forward gothic readings of magical realist texts,4 the two modesâ relationships with the uncanny or supernatural event are diametrically opposed: whereas magical realism accepts it as a part of reality (therefore defining Latin American understanding of the world as a fusion of realism and fantasy), the Gothicâs representation of said event is often connected to fear. However, more contemporary literary critics and writersâsuch as Emil Volek, Lois Parkinson Zamora, and Wendy B. Faris5 among othersâhave pointed to the artificiality of the connection between magical realism and Latin American identity. Some have claimed the need to carry out more inclusive analyses of Latin American literature that go beyond artificial conceptions of nation and begin considering the multi-territorialised realities of literary products in the era of globalisation.6 But even in this moment of increasing interest in redefining local literatures, it is still more common to use terms such as terror and horror to describe the type of literary imaginations that criticism written in English would call Gothic. It is not our intention here to make a value judgement on the use of one term of the other. Nonetheless, we believe that an understanding of the Gothic as a mode that is possible (and definitely present) in Latin American fictions does not attempt to reject or obscure other readings of regional fiction; but rather aspires to advance and enrich criticism by considering new tools to examine existing cultural products.
Following similar premises, there are some critics who have been increasingly centring their attention on Latin American Gothic. Some examples of monographs and edited collections which study this mode in the subcontinent include Ecos gĂłticos en la novela del Cono Sur/Gothic Echoes in the Novel of the Southern Cone (2013) by Nadina EstefanĂa Olmedo; From Amazons to Zombies: Monsters in Latin America (2015) by Persephone Braham; Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture: The Americas (2016), edited by Justin D. Edwards and Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos (2016); Selva de fantasmas. El gĂłtico en la literatura y el cine latinoamericanos/Jungle of Ghosts. The Gothic in Latin American Literature and Cinema (2017) by Gabriel Eljaiek-RodrĂguez; Latin American Gothic in Literature and Culture (2018), edited by Sandra Casanova-VizcaĂno and InĂ©s Ordiz (2018); and Gothic Imagination in Latin American Fiction and Film (2019) by Carmen A. Serrano. Eljaiek-RodrĂguez, interestingly, discusses the process of tropicalisation in relation to Latin American Gothic as a practice of recycling, transforming, and deterritorialising the Gothic, with the aim of highlighting the artificiality of the modeâs construction of Otherness.7 Other critics understand the Gothic as a mode of representation rooted in local realities and histories that mirrors different processes of modernisation including, but not limited to: colonisation and occupation; formation of nation states after independence; and the failure of national projects that lead to violence and inequality.8 Apart from these texts, which specifically use the Gothic to interpret local manifestations of terror and horror, many other volumes have explored the presence of monsters in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some examples include Rosana DĂaz-Zambranaâs and Patricia TomĂ©âs HorrofĂlmico: Aproximaciones al cine de terror en LatinoamĂ©rica y el Caribe/HorrofĂlmico: Approximations to the Film of Terror in Latin America and the Caribbean (2012) and Eljaiek-RodrĂguezâs The Migration and Politics of Monsters in Latin American Cinema (2018).
This chapter offers an overview of some of the authors, themes, and tropes which have been studied as gothic in recent criticism with the aim of proving not only the existence of the mode in the subcontinent, but also its relevance in Latin American cultural production. Even though there are a considerable amount of gothic texts in the Latin American canon in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, we have chosen to mention only a few so that we could centre our attention on texts published in the last thirty years. The publication of these works partly coincided with an increasing critical attention to the Gothic, as well as with the inclusion of critical theories that invite an understanding of the Gothic as a mode intrinsically connected to globalisation, such as Glennis Byronâs globalgothic.9 At the same time, our analysis does not intend to become an all-encompassing theory of Latin American Gothic, but rather to look at some fictions that, in our opinion, represent the different ways in which Latin American and Caribbean authors have engaged with the gothic imagination. We have focussed our brief approximation of the Gothic in Latin America into the analysis of three of the modeâs canonical monstersâzombies, cannibals, and vampiresâfollowed by a section describing one of the most recent directions that the Gothic is taking in Latin America: the conscious appropriation of its global tropes to criticise and denounce local issues pertaining to past and present histories of political, social, and gendered violence. Our analysis, thus, attempts to combine the exploration of different manifestations of monstrosity that originated in Latin America and the Caribbean (the zombie and the cannibal) with other international figures of monstrosity which, although native to other parts of the world, have been widely explored by Latin American authors since the nineteenth centuryâspecifically, the vampire. This multifocal approach aims to underline the complexity and transnationality of Latin American and Caribbean Gothic forms, as well as claiming their relevance in contemporary literature written in Spanish.
Zombies and cannibals are the Caribbeanâs contribution to the gothic mode. The origins of these creatures are rooted in the regionâs folklore and history of colonisation. Specifically, the trope of the zombie, or living dead, has its roots in Haitian Vodou culture. At its inception, the zombie was in fact the soulless body of a plantation slave controlled by a Vodou priest or bokor. For Haitians, therefore, the zombie does not represent a menace to the living, but rather to the dead, who risk being resuscitated, zombified, and enslaved. As such, this creature represents lack of freedom and exploitation, and its portrayal, as noted by Dalton and Potter,10 touches on notions of race and colonialism. At the same time, its connection to Haitiâwhere the first black Republic was proclaimed in 1804 after the triumph of the slave rebellionâmakes the zombie the perfect trope to represent social unrest.11 The idea of a controlled body that is both living and dead, exemplified by Haitian zombies, permeated North American culture during the United Statesâ occupation of Haiti (1915â1934). This can be seen in Victor Halperinâs White Zombie (1932), considered the first zombie film, in which a woman travelling in Haiti with her fiancĂ© is transformed into a zombie by a Vodou master who works in a sugar plantation. The filmâs storyline perfectly exemplifies what Braham has identified as the central theme of the Gothic: violence against women. This is also present in other Caribbean gothic texts with zombies or other forms of zombism,12 such as the novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Dominican13 writer Jean Rhys; the collection of short stories PasiĂłn de historia y otras historias de pasiĂłn/Passion for History and Other Passionate Stories (1987) by Puerto Rican author Ana Lydia Vega; and Cuban writer Mayra Monteroâs short story âCorinne, muchacha amableâ/Corinne, Amiable Girl (1991).14 Therefore, the image of the Haitian zombie was not originally associated with the gory, monstrous creature who rabidly devours human flesh, as popular culture has come to depict it. It wasnât until George Romeroâs zombie filmsâNight of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978)âthat the Caribbean zombie and its connection to slavery gave way to the metaphor of neoliberal consumption.15 Though Night of the Living Dead explores issues of racial segregationâthe hero in the fil...