Vanderzande Eva Masterproef

THE INFERNO OF CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS A Comparative Genre Analysis of the Representation of the Violence in Emiliano Monge’s Las tierras arrasadas and Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends Word count: 23,770 Eva Vanderzande Student number: 01500221 Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Ilse Logie, Prof. Dr. Delphine Munos A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of “Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels-Spaans” Academic year: 2019 - 2020 Vanderzande 2 Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost, … Before me nothing but eternal things were made, And I endure eternally, Abandon every hope, who enter here. — Dante, Inferno, 3.1-9 Vanderzande 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Ilse Logie for inciting my interest in Latin American literature and for introducing me to Valeria Luiselli and Emiliano Monge and their respective literary works. I would also like to thank her for her meticulous readings and suggestions, and, in general, for her guidance, patience, and encouragement throughout the writing process of this thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude to my other supervisor, Prof. Dr. Delphine Munos for her readings and interesting suggestions, but also for introducing me to memory and trauma studies. Furthermore, I would like to thank my boyfriend, my family, and my friends for their encouragement, advice, and trust. Most especially, I would like to thank my father for his readings of this thesis, for listening to my concerns, and for his unconditional support. Vanderzande 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 5 1 Theoretical Framework 14 1.1 Violence along the Central American Migrant Journey 14 1.1.1 Subjective Violence 15 1.1.2 Systemic Violence 17 1.1.3 Symbolic Violence 18 1.2 Literary Genre and the Narrative Representation of Violence 19 1.2.1 Testimonio 19 1.2.2 Fiction, Truth and the Representation of Extreme Violence 22 1.2.3 Hybridization of Literary Genres 23 2 Analysis of Tell Me How it Ends 28 2.1 Non-fiction 28 2.2 Genre and the Representation of Violence 29 2.2.1 The Essay 29 2.2.2 The Chronicle 30 2.2.3 Testimonio 36 2.2.4 Autofiction 39 3 Analysis of Las tierras arrasadas 46 3.1 Fiction 46 3.2 Genre and the Representation of Violence 47 3.2.1 The Contemporary Noir Novel 47 3.2.2 Epic Poetry 49 3.2.3 Tragedy 57 3.2.4 Testimonio 62 Conclusion 64 Bibliography 68 Vanderzande 5 INTRODUCTION Every year, tens of thousands of women, men, and children undertake the perilous journey through Mexico to reach the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes of a new life. Although migration from Latin American to the U.S. has a long history, recently there have been some noticeable shifts in regards to from where and why these migrants1 migrate. Whereas before, these migrants came from Mexico, nowadays most of them are from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, also known as the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA). Since 2014 the number of unaccompanied children and women from the Northern Triangle seeking asylum in the United States has increased to such an extent that the U.S. government declared it a migrant crisis2. Important push factors for Central Americans to migrate are the region’s on-going struggle with systematic violence, extreme poverty, and social inequality (Amnesty International 2016; MSF 2020). Unfortunately, after Central Americans have escaped the violence of their home countries, they are still confronted with violence during their journey through Mexico to the United States. In recent years, human rights organizations have raised alarm over the high rate of violence against Central American migrants as a strategy for profit-making. One of the most concerning tendencies has been the high rate of mass kidnappings for extortion practiced by criminal organizations with the complicity of authorities (CNDH 2009, 2011). If those kidnapped refuse to either pay a ransom or to work as forced labor, they are murdered and buried in a mass grave. On August 24, 2010, the lifeless bodies of 72 migrants, mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, were discovered, piled up in a mass grave, on a recently abandoned ranch in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. The discovery of “Los 72”, those seventy-two who were brutally murdered, offered Mexican society and the rest of the world a glimpse of the horrors that these migrants face while crossing Mexican territory. The “2010 San Fernando massacre” wasn’t an isolated incident, since then, hundreds of additional mass graves have been discovered. Therefore, it has become emblematic of a wider pattern of violence against Central American 1 This thesis will use the neutral umbrella term “migrant”, which denotes someone who moves between countries, instead of the term “refugee”. The word “refugee” is preferred by Luiselli, it implies an obligation to protect these people by giving them the chance to seek asylum. 2 Humanitarian organizations refer to it as “humanitarian crisis” or “refugee crisis” to emphasize the push factors that led these Central American migrants to flee their countries. Vanderzande 6 migrants in Mexico, ranging from their dehumanization through political processes to the systematic mass killing and abuse of these migrants by drug cartels or gangs. The need to understand as a society how such atrocities could have taken place and continue to take place at the border has contributed to bringing the humanitarian crisis at the border at the forefront of not only media and political discourse but also of literature. Recently, there has emerged a mini-genre of literary works that gives central importance to the brutal reality of Central American migrants crossing Mexican territory (Sperling 175; Logie 2). Within non- fiction, the subject is addressed by literary essays and chronicles, such as Tell Me How It Ends (2017) by Valeria Luiselli and Yo tuve un sueño (2018) by Juan Pablo Villalobos. In fiction emerges novels like Las tierras arrasadas (2015) by Emiliano Monge, La fila india (2016) de Antonio Ortuño, Señales que precederán el fin del mundo (2010) by Yuri Herrera, and Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas (2013) by Alejandro Hernández. The works of Luiselli, Villalobos, Monge, Ortuño, Herrera, and Hernández share the tendency to approach the subject of contemporary violence not from a pure realist journalistic approach, but from genre hybridization (Logie 2). From this increasingly-growing corpus, this thesis will focus on the literary representation of the Central American migrant crisis and its violence in two contemporary works, Tell Me How It Ends, an essay by Valeria Luiselli, and Las tierras arrasadas, a noir novel by Emiliano Monge. Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in many countries such as the United States, Costa Rica, South Korea, South Africa, etc. She returned to Mexico to study philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Afterward, she moved to New York where she received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She currently still lives and writes in New York City. Her first three literary works, a collection of essays and two novels, are written in Spanish. In 2016, she wrote an essay “Tell Me How It Ends” in English for Freeman’s Literary Magazine. This essay was based on her experience as a volunteer interpreter for New York City’s federal immigration court during the Obama administration. In the same year, she rewrote the essay to a more extended version in Spanish titled Los niños perdidos which was published as a book by Sexto Piso. In 2017, the book was also published in English as Tell Me How It Ends by the literary publishing house Coffee House Press. In her Vanderzande 7 latest novel, Lost Children Archive (2019), she revisits the themes of her book-length essay, namely the family road trip and the immigration crisis at the southwestern border, however this time in a fictional mode. It is her first novel written in English and has been awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has also been acclaimed internationally. Among others, she won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019 and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020. In her extended essay, Tell Me How It Ends (2017), Luiselli explains how millions of unaccompanied Central American minors are mistreated on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border when they attempt to cross it illegally. Her essay is structured around the forty questions from the intake questionnaire for unaccompanied child migrants who seek asylum at the federal immigration court in New York City. Similar to the questionnaire, the essay is divided into four chapters which follow the phases of the unaccompanied children’s journey to the U.S. (border, court, home, and community). Through the questions of the questionnaire, Luiselli chronicles the horrific experiences of these undocumented minors, while she also recounts her own experiences as a “non-resident alien” in the United States and as a volunteer interpreter for the New York City immigration court. In this latest version of her essay, Luiselli added a new section titled “Coda” which contains eight brief postscripta written after Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Although there are many versions of Luiselli’s essay, this thesis will only analyze its latest publication in English. Emiliano Monge is a Mexican writer and political scientist. He was born in Mexico City and studied political science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he also taught as a university professor until his move to Barcelona.

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