Violence and literature: The novel of cruelty in Latin America

Violence and literature: the novel of cruelty in Latin America

JOSÉ-VICENTE TAVARES-DOS-SANTOS

(UFRGS – PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL).

jvicente@ufrgs.br

The age of late modernity has shown an increasing crisis of social control and policing, as an expression of a worldwide social crisis. In this context, it is possible to distinguish various narratives about violence, drug dealers, and violent crime in the contemporary societies. So, the hypothesis of this paper is to present a new genre in crime fiction, called “the novel of cruelty”, which show a main structural transformation of narrative, although incorporating some trends from the classic detective fiction. To verify this hypothesis, we will analyze some novels published in Latin America countries, since the 1990´s, particularly from important Authors: Carlos Fuentes, from México; Fernando Vallejo and Jorge Franco, from Colombia; and Ruben Fonseca, from Brazil. We will discuss how the characters, the plot, the political actors, including the State, and the new forms of violent crime - such as international trafficking of drugs and people, sexual violence, corruption and so on - are figurate by such novels. This analysis of several literary expressions around Latin America can lead us to discuss the existence of a social representation in contemporary society based in violence as a social pattern.