The Latin American Boom, a literary phenomenon that consisted of the Latin American narrative, spread throughout the world. With the Boom, the independent and relatively young and independent Latin American authors became global literary icons.

The magical realism thus became the style of writing which depicted turbulent reality immersed in fanciful overtones. The Boom inspired many writers to explore themes of revolution, social justice, and political oppression in their works. It coincided with the rise of leftwing politics in the region, and many of its writers were sympathetic to socialist and Marxist ideologies. With the death of Peru’s ce – lebrated writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the Boom has finally faded.

Advertisement

He was the last of Latin America’s literary golden generation. He leaves behind a legacy that will resonate for generations. The other Boom writers were Julio Cortázar of Argentina, Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Guillermo Cabrera of Cuba, Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia and José Donoso of Chile. The world got to know the region through the way Boom writers explained political, economic and social events. The Boom cast a surrealist influence on everyone from Salman Rushdie to Toni Morrison, whose novel Beloved bore the echoes of Marquez’s haunted relationship with ghosts and memories. Writers like Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa flirted with Fidel Castro’s revolution, so did French philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

In the early 1960s Sartre and de Beauvoir visited Cuba, travelled across the country with Fidel Castro and fully endorsed the revolution and later published his Cuba reports in France-Soir. Garcia Marquez was a great friend of Cuba and Fidel Castro. Vargas Llosa too saw the Cuban Revolution and the implementation of a socialist society corresponding with his hopes for a better future for Latin America. Both grew disillusioned and denounced Castro’s Cuba. By 1980, Vargas Llosa no longer believed in socialism as a solution for developing nations.

Llosa went as far to lambast Marquez, his one-time friend as “Castro’s courtesan.” Marquez too became a critique of Castro but he avoided such abusive language for the Cuban leader. The Boon later lost its magic even to its staunch defenders. Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez has set a new tone for LatinAmerican literature, one that leaves magical realism and its cultural trappings neatly behind. He writes about “disproportionate reality” saying his writing is “really nitty-gritty realism.” Marquez himself turned defensive on magical realism. He wrote that his novels were real, not magical.

Latin America was going through extraordinary convulsions which the wider world considered unrealistic. He clarified that the fictional world he describes in his novels was a world of fantasy. Latin American writers and intellectuals have donned many hats. While Marquez was deeply involved with Colombian politics, Llosa fought presidential elections and Carlos Fuentes campaigned actively in favour of democratic change in Mexico. As Carlos Fuentes says, “our writers are keeping alive the Latin American tradition of the uncertain border between “reality” and “imagination”.

After all, Fuente says, “we are all children of La Mancha, the descendants of Don Quixote.” Why do Latin American writings fascinate? Latin American culture is not merely characterized by receiving but also critiquing, revising and synthesizing Western culture. It can be regarded as universalist and cosmopolitan precisely because it is not merely or mainly Western but Native, American, African and Asian as well. As Octavio Paz put it, “our literatures did not passively accept the changing fortunes of the transplanted languages: they participated in the process and even transformed it.” During his romance days with the Cuban revolution, Vargas Llosa went to the extent of saying that “in ten, twenty, fifty years all of our countries will have reached, as Cuba has today, the time of social justice and all Latin America will have freed itself from the empire that sacks her, from the castes that exploit her…” Latin American writers like Marquez, Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes were often constrained to switch from one ideological camp to another: communism without freedom and capitalism without justice. They showed greater commitment to the grassroots issues affecting daily lives of Latin America’s poor, unjust societies.

Of course, Vargas Llosa went to the extreme. Disillusioned with the Latin American Left in general and after witnessing the authoritarianism of Castro’s government as well as the authoritarian tendencies of the Left in Peru, Vargas Llosa entered a neo-liberal phase supporting the Thacherite-Reaganian brand of neoconservatism. He sought to strengthen artistic, political, and economic freedoms by actively supporting democracy and free market economics. Vargas Llosa was also critical of both Hispanicism and indigenism. As he writes, while they produced excellent historical essays and highly creative works of fiction, both doctrines “seem equally sectarian, reductionist and false.” Vargas Llosa’s legacy is not just in his works but also in his advocacy for literature’s power to transform and liberate.

Latin America is a region where literature intersects politics. Intellectuals have had great political interests and influence. While accepting the Romulo Gallegos 1967 Prize, Vargas Llosa spoke on the theme, “literature is fire”. It signified nonconformism and rebellion. He said that the writer “has been, is, and will continue to be a nonconformist.” To him, literature was a form of permanent insurrection and recognized no straitjackets. Vargas Llosa wondered in an essay. “Why is it that instead of being basically creators and artists, writers in Peru and other Latin American countries must above all be politicians, agitators, reformers, social publicists and moralists?” Intellectuals have had an enormous political influence in Latin America. providing legitimacy to governments and vigour to various revolutions. It is due to their creation and interpretation of diverse ideas and images that the relevance is given to various ideologies in the public consciousness.

Carlos Fuentes, a great thinker, writer and literary critic, insisted time and again that the Latin American writer had a special responsibility to give voice to the voiceless. A new wave of stories and powerful voices against drug violence and social unrest are causing a second boom in literature in Latin America today. Playfulness continues to be a factor in much of Latin America. The new writers are writing stories that don’t confirm their own experiences but rather ones that challenge their expectations. They are exploring a wide range of themes and styles from gritty realism to experimental fiction.

(The writer comments on global affairs)