Jorge Alcides Paredes
University of Adelaide
Adelaide, Australia

Post-Colonial Writing in Latin America: 500 Years of Tradition.

Abstract

This article is a counter-proposal to two general assumptions in regards to Post-colonial discourses: 1) that they relate only to the former British and French colonies of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and 2) that these discourses emerged in the post -Second-World-War period, when most of the above mentioned colonies achieved independence. Those assumptions present a major contradiction: they choose to ignore that European imperialism/colonialism first took place in what is now known as Latin America. Therefore, it is in these countries where the post-colonial experience started, …ver más…

On the contrary: Latin American intellectuals and writers have consciously deviated from European models from even before the 17th Century and by so doing they have perennially challenged Europe's self appointed authority to dictate cultural and literary models. Obviously, this places Latin American writers and their discourses at the forefront of the postcolonial debate even before the term was coined and the postcolonial reality of the world was perceived as a serious possibility. The fact that Sommer and Yudice choose to limit their analysis to the boundaries of a very short time frame (that of the masterpieces produced by Latin American writers in the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, a period improperly labelled the “Boom of Latin American literature” ) only confirms two of the many malaises of Latin American literary studies: 1) a denial of the past and 2) an attempt to ignore the importance of non-European literary influences in contemporary works of literature. Post-colonial attitudes and discourses do not begin with political independence from the European imperial powers. My argument in this respect is that they emerge on the part of a colonised nation/culture at the very moment when colonialism is imposed on them. The fact that post-colonial thoughts are only strongly and somehow freely expressed after independence is part of another discussion altogether. The fact remains