Latin American Literature: Magical Realism and the Works of Juan Rulfo
The Latin American Novel and Short Story (Mid-20th Century to Present)
Juan Rulfo and the New Narrative
Twentieth-century Latin American narrative follows two major guidelines relating to the authors’ worldview: realism and innovation, which reached its peak with the works of the new narrative.
The break with traditional realism involved a challenge to the perceived real world and the concept of probability. The work of Jorge Luis Borges and the influence of surrealism were fundamental in this process of change.
In the 1940s, a series of works showcasing this change were published, but final recognition didn’t come until the 1960s. However, there were earlier works that anticipated this approach, such as Mad Toy (1926) by Roberto Arlt, or Not Everyone is Awake with Their Eyes Open by Macedonio Fernández.
Different trends can be observed in the new narrative, but magical realism stands out. It incorporates elements of the marvelous, and fantastic realism, which introduces the irrational and inexplicable into apparent normality or presents reality as fiction or illusion.
Within the latest trends, three lines are included:
- Testimonial literature of protest and complaint, which arose in the late 1970s: If I May Speak (1977) by Domitila Barrios de Chungara.
- Postmodernism, which continues with experimental techniques and anti-realism: Artificial Respiration (1980) by Ricardo Piglia.
- The majority line, which shows a return to realism, a style more accessible to the reader, the presence of humor, and a preference for subjects such as love or feminism: Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende, Like Water for Chocolate or Malinche by Laura Esquivel, The Neruda’s Postman, I Dreamed the Snow Was Burning, or Dancing the Victory by Antonio Skármeta.
New Latin American fiction was configured with its own thematic and formal features, reflecting a peculiar worldview.
Thematic Aspects
Certain constants can be highlighted in the thematic aspects:
- Magic: Reason is not sufficient to account for reality. The stories incorporate magic and wonder as integral parts of the real. The extraordinary is not only permissible but common. This is the essence of magical realism.
- The Fantastic: A complex, messy, and ambiguous reality is perceived, reflected in the outbreak of the mysterious, the inexplicable, or the irrational in everyday life, or in the creation of fictional worlds that speculate about reality and the possibility of knowing it.
- The Human Condition: It poses significant problems of humanity in contemporary society, rooted in the historical, social, and physical realities of Latin America. The search for the protagonists’ identity is highlighted, sometimes symbolized by journeys or historical events that have marked Latin American culture. The vision, in general, is rather pessimistic: fatalism and despair (Rulfo), defeat and unhappiness of the characters (Cortázar, Onetti), and loneliness and the circularity of history (García Márquez) predominate.
- Literature: The narrators in their works show a concern for literary creation and present their views (Borges, Cortázar).
- Humor: It has several expressions: the funny joke (Cabrera Infante), satire (García Márquez, Vargas Llosa), and metaphysical or tragic humor (Borges, Cortázar).
- Eroticism: Part of the human condition, it appears related to the social and cultural circumstances of the characters. However, in general, love is not a way out of existential troubles.
Discourse Features
From the perspective of discourse, we must highlight some features:
- The Narrator: The omniscient narrator gives way to the protagonist, a character, or a witness, and a multiplicity of angles occurs.
- Time: Temporal linearity is broken through resources such as time reversal, interleaved parallel stories, temporal breaks, or temporal chaos, which is achieved by combining all the aforementioned procedures with sleep, memory, and hallucination.
- Language: Among the new narrators, there is great concern for linguistic development, from prose rhythm and the use of images and suggestions to the extent that there has been talk of a Baroque style trend in these novels. The tendency towards neologisms, typical of Latin American Spanish, translates into literature with the invention of languages like the “gíglico” in Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar.
The Rise of Magical Realism and Fantastic Realism
At the beginning of the new narrative, the influence of Surrealism, which questioned the notion of reality, was decisive. The renovation was manifested primarily in two trends: magical realism and fantastic realism.
Magical realism poetically integrates the marvelous into the fictional universe without producing strangeness or being viewed as opposing or different from the real. It is the search for one’s own reality through nature, myth, and history, to express the stamp of originality and uniqueness in the American world.
The writers who began the journey of magical realism were the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias and the Cuban Alejo Carpentier.
Fantastic realism introduces fantastic or extraordinary events that inexplicably disturb the order of the everyday or create unreal worlds that delve into the enigma of existence. In the 1940s, the undisputed master of the new narrators emerged: the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges.
The idealistic conception of Jorge Luis Borges led him to build fictional worlds that question the logic of reality. His works include Ficciones, El Aleph, The Book of Sand, and other stories collected in different publications.
Parallel to the contributions of the mentioned writers, great works emerged that confirmed the search for new forms of expression. As examples, we can cite The Short Life by Juan Carlos Onetti, The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato, Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, Three Trapped Tigers by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes, The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, one of the Hispanic masterpieces, which combines the best technical elements that summarize the features of magical realism.
Juan Rulfo: A New Narrative Voice
The emergence of Juan Rulfo in the literary scene provided confirmation of a new narrative.
Juan Rulfo (1918-1986)
Born in the town of Sayula, Jalisco (Mexico), into a family of landowners ruined during the years of the revolution. He held various jobs before becoming Editorial Director of the Department of the National Indigenous Institute.
His work is practically reduced to two books: El llano en llamas (1953) and Pedro Páramo (1955). He also published a screenplay, The Golden Cockerel, and other material for film (1980).
El llano en llamas, a collection of stories set in rural areas, anticipated features of magical realism found in Pedro Páramo. Rulfo uses realistic techniques and incorporates the magical and mysterious vision of a desolate world. The main themes are fate, misery, violence, death, and guilt. Most stories are told in the first person and are characterized by their brevity. The language includes dialectal and popular features of the oral speech of peasants and brief statements in which the poetic bursts forth.
Pedro Páramo: A Landmark of the New Narrative
Pedro Páramo offers new features that make it a point of reference for the new narrative: a fragmented structure, temporal disorder, complexity, and the interrelation of narrative threads and stories.
The story revolves around a character, Pedro Páramo, who is dead at the time of the story. The story begins with the arrival of his illegitimate son, Juan Preciado, in Comala, who had never met his father. Juan finds an uninhabited village full of ghosts. Realizing that he is in a world of death, he dies of terror, while the dead narrate the events of Comala’s life under Pedro Páramo.
Pedro Páramo is presented in two ways: as a violent and ambitious cacique (local political boss), and as a disconsolate lover of Susana San Juan. All he has done in life was to get her, but she died. There are also two opposing realities in Comala: an ideal, beautiful village, remembered by the characters, and an infernal Comala in ruins, which Juan Preciado encounters.
The novel incorporates aspects of the Mexican tradition of death, considered as a daily event, and popular beliefs such as those about souls. This environment shows the loneliness and despair of characters who never manage to realize their dreams. Nor does the promise of salvation of the Christian religion help the characters, who wander in a world of suffering and death, denied absolution for their sins by the representative of the Church, Father Rentería.
The Novelty of Pedro Páramo
Pedro Páramo’s novelty lies in the treatment of time, which succeeds in creating a world where reality and fantasy blend. The novel, with its fragmented structure, superimposes different levels: Juan Preciado’s dialogue with Dorotea, which describes the entry into Comala and the sensations experienced, and the interrelation of stories narrated by different narrators, who are often dead, memories, or hallucinations.
Juan Rulfo’s Legacy
Juan Rulfo, represented by his short work, marks the culmination of the novel of the Mexican Revolution. However, the intensity of Rulfo’s narrative, his refinement of style, and his ability to penetrate the human condition exceed the limitations of the genre.