From Macondo to Mcondo and Beyond Spatial Imaginations of Transnationality in Two Anthologies of Young Latin American Writers

Chapter 15 From Macondo to McOndo and Beyond Spatial Imaginations of Transnationality in Two Anthologies of Young Latin American Writers

Liesbeth François

The reformulation of the sense of Latin America and its nations as cultural, geographical and literary units in the present-day context of accelerat- ed globalization is an omnipresent topic in critical discourse. According to Francisca Noguerol (2008), the most appropriate concept to describe the contemporary narrative production in Latin America is its “extraterritori- ality”, its moving away from the framework of the nation-state ― although she also notes that there exists a large tradition of cultural hybridization in the literatures of the continent. As Nadia Lie, Silvana Mandolessi and Dag- mar Vandebosch note in their text “The Transnational in Hispanic Studies” (2011), various literary discourses are indeed characterized by this opening- up of their reflections on Hispanic identity through their inclusion of issues such as displacement and new forms of hybridity, but at the same time they often tend to ambiguously promote a more essentialist discourse on the uniqueness of this identity. (75) What these discussions have in common is, of course, the question as to how the transnational networks in which the continent is immersed influence Latin American nations and the notion of “Latin America” itself. I would like to address this problem through the discussion of the spatial imaginaries proposed in two emblematic anthologies of young writers, one from 1996 and the other from 2008, that enter explicit- ly into discussion with each other as to the image of Latin America that they intend to create. In 1996, Chilean writers Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez launched their polemical and much-debated anthology McOndo as a satirical reaction to what they perceived as a certain stereotype, based on demands of international publishing houses, of the kind of fictional worlds Latin American literature should represent. This collection includes seventeen short stories written by young authors (born after 1959, the year of the triumph of the Cu- ban Revolution) from different Latin American countries and from Spain. The prologue of this collection ― the title of which is an obvious parody of the mythical, rural and exotic Macondo that appears in the stories of García

Márquez1 ― functions as a kind of manifest, in which the editors explain their intention to distance themselves from the ever-popular magical realism to which Latin American literature tended to be reduced on the international market. Instead, the stories they selected emphasize the urban character of the contemporary metropolises and the influence of globalization: “We think that selling a rural continent when it, in reality, is urban […] is aberrant, too easy, and immoral.” [“Vender un continente rural cuando, la verdad de las cosas, [sic] es urbano […] nos parece aberrante, cómodo e inmoral.”2] (16) McOndo has been followed by several other publications edited by the same authors or along the same lines, such as Líneas aéreas (Airlines) or Se habla español (We Can Speak Spanish). The “McOndian” arguments are summarized and debated in the prologue of El futuro no es nuestro. Nueva narrativa latinoamericana (The Future Is Not Ours. New Latin American Prose Fiction), published in 2008 and edited by the Peruvi- an author Diego Trelles Paz. El Futuro no es nuestro presents twenty short stories written by young authors (born, in this case, between 1970 and 1980) from different countries of the continent. Trelles Paz recognizes the merits of the McOndo proposal in that it granted visibility to a generation of authors who “managed to write down and to describe a literary world that had already dis- tanced itself from the limiting frontiers of the national” (19) [“una generación de escritores latinoamericanos (y españoles) que, con una mirada propia aun- que con distinta fortuna, consiguió escribir y describir un mundo literario ya alejado de las fronteras limitantes de lo nacional”], but he critiques its lack of theoretical solidity and its own tendency towards a stereotypical vision of Latin America, now reduced to urban spaces that are defined in terms of their function as centers of consumption for the middle classes. With respect to the McOndians, El futuro no es nuestro “announces itself, here and now, with a scal- pel between its fingers and the happy certainty that in literature, like in every art, there are no changes without ruptures.” (19) [“se anuncia, aquí y ahora, con el bisturí entre los dedos y la alegre certeza de que en la literatura, como en todo arte, sin rupturas no hay relevos.”] The editor observes that the short stories share the McOndian rejection of the total novel and Boom aesthetics, but that their authors wish to shake off both the burden of this tradition and the limitations of the literary market alike.

1 As Trelles Paz notes (16), it should be clarified, however, that Fuguet and Gómez did not target García Márquez and his work in the first place, but that they primarily reacted against writers they considered as his epigones, who continued reproducing, according to them, the same stereotypes of magical realism. 2 All translations in this article are mine.