Central America

Overview

Ruben Dario published Azul in 1888 from Chile and launched from there modernismo, the first literary current to start in the Americas and be taken up in Spain: a twenty-one-year-old Nicaraguan reversed the direction of travel. The twentieth century here is one of dictatorships and civil wars, and literature takes them as its subject, from Asturias's The President, written under Estrada Cabrera, to Argueta's One Day of Life. Cinema remains rare and late: most of these countries have produced only a few features, often with foreign funding.

What circulates

The book market is that of the Spanish language, and a Guatemalan author is published in Mexico City or Madrid rather than in Guatemala. Belize, anglophone, takes no part in it and is read with the Caribbean. Political exile long moved writers towards Mexico City and Havana, which served as refuge and as publishing house.

Limits of this grouping

The isthmus does not form a literary area: Belize is read with the anglophone Caribbean, Panama long looked towards Colombia from which it separated in 1903, and Costa Rica did not know the wars that gave its neighbours their subject matter. What the zone gathers is a geography and a history of foreign intervention.

Works cited

• TaleAzul…Rubén Darío · 1888not translated into EnglishTales and verse written in Chile by a young journalist from Central America, in which he speaks of the artist's condition in a society ruled by money.Literature
• NovelThe PresidentEl señor PresidenteMiguel Ángel Asturias · 1946The terror of a Central American dictatorship, told in the language of nightmare.Literature
• NovelOne Day of LifeUn día en la vidaManlio Argueta · 1980The novel appears just as the country enters civil war, and the government bans it.Literature
• CinemaEl silencio de NetoLuis Argueta · 1994A childhood during the overthrow of Árbenz, in a house in the capital where people keep silent.Cinema