Latin American Writers

10 Pages 2611 Words

en in Cuba, revolutionist spirit allied the independent Latin American countries in a common fight for emancipation.4 The Cuban Revolution was especially exciting to Latin America and was seen as a major step to a better future for all the nations in South America. Fidel Castro’s oust of the Batista dictatorship drew world interest on problems in Latin America and the forces in conflict there.5
Latin American writers had long been in the shadow of Anglo-European writers, partially because of the language barrier. During the “Boom,” widespread interest in Latin American novels grew. Some read them for a different settings but the self-promotion between the writers themselves and the influence of the Biblioteca Breve Prize, which was awarded to five Latin American writers throughout the 1960s, encouraged the development of an eager reading public.6 These factors provided for a situation favorable to a widespread literary and cultural change.
The novels written before and during the “Boom” are linked together by defining characteristics. In the beginning, they tended to be heavily influenced by writers such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Proust and Sartre but then many turned their attention inward, to examine local issues and experiment with literature in their own way. Early Latin American writers, such as Jorge Borges and Octavio Paz, set the precedent for the writers of the “Boom.”7 The novels of the “Boom” tend to have complex narrative structures, linguistic experimentation, and a rejection of typical, moral upper middle class values and social traditions. Unlike the current European trend, Latin American books were not written primarily to attack the very concept of the novel. The rejection of the usual values may be a reaction to the elite “whites” of South America, who typically held the best jobs and welded political power. The revolutionary spirit of discontent also may have driven it, which naturally...