A chronicle and its bones: from testimony war story (to Heaven dressed as a bride you go)

Abstract

The following article provides an analysis of the contemporary Latin American narrative, as contrasted between the written word and organized violence, filtered by two separate modulations: on the one hand, a series related to the narrative of political violence (also linked to the testimonial forms of repression, militancy and heroic tales about revolutionary actions), and, on the other, a narrative deprived of heroism connected to the violence of contemporary cities that have been seized by poverty and drug trafficking. If the first group prefigured utopia, the second one will expose disenchantment. The modulations of violence have been inscribed in diverse narrative forms of contradictory density. Chronicle and testimonial fiction appear intertwined with blurred limits while organizing two distinct reading modes: war stories and exclusion-based fictions.