LA REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA CIUDAD Y EL DISCURSO DE LA VIOLENCIA EN LA LITERATURA LATINOAMERICANA CONTEMPORÁNEA: MEDELLÍN, CARACAS Y RÍO DE JANEIRO By BELKIS E. SUÁREZ F. A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2011 1 © 2011 Belkis E. Suárez F. 2 To Jeremy, Carmela Isabel and Miguel Matías, por sus sonrisas 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitute to Prof. Efraín Barradas, my committee chair, for accompanying me through my studies as a graduate student and in the process of writing my dissertation. He has always been supportive and has given me a very good model to follow. His sense of humor has given me very good times. His advice was always very sharp so I trusted him not only as a professor but also as a friend. I appreciate the suggestions and comments made by committee members Prof. Charles Perrone, Prof. Tace Hedrick and Prof. Reynaldo Jiménez. Prof. Perrone has been a good teacher and friend since before my studies in literature. I am very grateful to him for guiding me not only in his area of specialization but also for making connections with the other case studies I developed in my dissertation. I highly appreciate the support I have received from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese because it gave me all the backing I needed as a student as well as the possibility to develop invaluable teaching experience. I want to thank in particular Prof. David Pharies, chair of the Department until this year. I want to include in this acknowledgment Prof. Gillian Lord for her wonderful work as a professor, coordinator of the Intermediate Spanish Program and now chair of the Department. Thanks go to Prof. Andrés Avellaneda, whose energy irradiated everywhere and gave his students his brightness and deep knowledge. I need to specially thank Prof. Montserrat Aláns-Brun whose academic career abruptly ended due to a terrible disease and who died this year. From her I learned 20th-Century Peninsular poetry but also endurance, empathy and ultimately, I learned to be a better person. I just wish I could have told her that. I know Prof. Álvaro Bolaños, who also died abrutly in the spring of 2007, would have given me great advice and great academic input on my Colombia chapter. I thank him for being a professor who 4 supported his students as human beings. I want to thank Prof. Ignacio Rodeño for helping me better understand the role of a professor, for his great patience with his students, for the great conversations we had about my dissertation and other academic issues, and for his friendship. I need to thank Richard Phillips from the Latin American Collection. His incredible knowledge about the collection always helped me and was handy when I needed it. I thank to Roberto Briceño-León, whose ample knowledge on violence has accompanied me since I worked with him in El Laboratorio de Ciencias Sociales in Caracas. I need to specially thank Héctor Abad Faciolince who helped me with questions I had regarding his literary work, and thanks also to Héctor Fernández L‟Hoeste for putting me in contact with Abad Faciolince. I would also like to thank Israel Centeno, who helped me find books that are impossible to find in Venezuela and for helping me with his literary work. I also want to thank my colleagues and friends who helped me and accompanied me in many different ways throughout my doctoral studies: Luciana Monteiro, Carolina Gutiérrez-Ribas, Verónica Tienza, Marta Osorio, Natalia Jacovkis, Javier Sampedro, Grazyna Walczak, Victor Jordán, Giada Biasetti, Paola Arboleda and Dania Abreu. I need to thank my students who were always there to make my academic life enjoyable and worth it. I will always be deeply grateful to my parents Ovilia Faillace and Pablo Suárez, my mother-in-law Madeleine Cohen for their support regardless of distance. My special thanks go to Carmela and Miguel because without their smiles and candor my studies would not have been so pleasant to do. I am deeply and highly grateful to Jeremy Cohen who has accompanied me through my graduate studies and my life. The academic discussions I have had with him through my studies 5 have been greatly valuable. Without his brightness, intelligence, patience, kindness, respect and love this would not have been possible. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1 LA REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA CIUDAD ............................................................... 10 Introducción ............................................................................................................ 10 La ciudad como espacio de la violencia.................................................................. 12 Tres milagros y sus desencantos ........................................................................... 14 Colombia .......................................................................................................... 15 Venezuela ........................................................................................................ 18 Brasil ................................................................................................................ 21 Un marco teórico general de aproximación ............................................................ 23 Estructura y organización ....................................................................................... 33 Conclusiones .......................................................................................................... 36 2 MEDELLÍN: LA VIOLENCIA DEL ESPACIO ........................................................... 38 Palabras preliminares ............................................................................................. 38 Producción literaria, violencia y ciudad ................................................................... 40 Medellín: ciudad angosta de vírgenes y sicarios .................................................... 47 Medellín ciudad dividida .......................................................................................... 49 Entre aguas ............................................................................................................ 56 Del flâneur al sicario o viceversa ............................................................................ 68 Del desorden citadino al orden narrativo ................................................................ 81 Quiénes hablan y desde dónde se escuchan ......................................................... 81 Algunas consideraciones finales ............................................................................. 89 3 CARACAS: CAOS Y DESTRUCCIÓN .................................................................... 92 Presentación introductoria ...................................................................................... 92 Urbanismo y violencia, desarrollo y decadencia ..................................................... 97 Literatura, ciudad y política ................................................................................... 101 Aquellos años sesenta ................................................................................... 102 Los setenta también pasaron por Caracas y su literatura .............................. 104 Las crónicas de los ochentas ......................................................................... 105 Los noventa, un fin de siglo convulsionado .................................................... 107 Los revoltosos años 2000 ............................................................................... 109 Caracas de la modernización a la destrucción ..................................................... 110 La ciudad de un espacio no tan simple ................................................................. 112 Moderna y excluyente .................................................................................... 112 Tun, tun ¿Caracas? ........................................................................................ 114 7 Caracas, ciudad gótica ................................................................................... 127 La ciudad se desploma .................................................................................. 131 La ciudad de los fantasmas ............................................................................ 136 De las maravillas de la modernización al infierno de la destrucción: consideraciones finales ..................................................................................... 140 4 RÍO DE JANEIRO: LA VIOLENCIA DE LA EXCLUSIÓN ...................................... 144 A manera de introducción ..................................................................................... 144 Urbanización y violencia ....................................................................................... 148 Literatura y violencia ............................................................................................. 156 El brutalismo de Rubem Fonseca ......................................................................... 165 La ficción de la realidad ........................................................................................ 179 La función del narrador ........................................................................................