Abstract

BARRERA GALDAMEZ, Allan Armando. Subjectivity, Neoliberalism, and Violence in Threee Central American Novels. Latinoamérica [online]. 2024, n.79, pp.161-190.  Epub Jan 09, 2025. ISSN 2448-6914.  https://doi.org/10.22201/cialc.24486914e.2024.79.57617.

In this article, I interpret the representations of violence and neoliberalism in three Central American novels: Baile con serpientes (1996) by Salvadoran author Horacio Castellanos Moya, Los jueces (2009) by Guatemalan author Arnoldo Gálvez, and Los días y los Muertos (2016) by Honduran author Giovanni Rodríguez. Understanding the literary text as a socially symbolic act in which broader collective and class discourses are expressed, I hope to demonstrate how these works construct a counterpoint to the promise of development under neoliberalism, in terms of how the free market would bring a trickling-down of wealth, social prosperity, and a political peace. Through a situated content analysis of the publications in their corresponding historical moment of neoliberal development in the region, I argue that these works display an unease in relation to a particular moment of the development of neoliberalism and its imaginary.

Keywords : Neoliberalism; Central America; Neoliberal subjectivity; Central american literatura; Violence; Postwar.

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