abstract: Las personas públicas de mujeres fuertes mexicanas generalmente se definen como desafiantes y contrarias a los roles sociales generalmente aceptados de las mujeres sumisas. Dichas personas públicas exigen atención y buscan incluirse en la cultura popular. Sin embargo, cuando se analizan mediante los rubros de la teoría queer, se revelan arquetipos heternormativos. Esta tesis examina cronológicamente la obra de tres cronistas mexicanos de los siglos XX y XXI, Salvador Novo, Carlos Monsiváis y Sara Sefchovich, analizando su retrato de mujeres fuertes que ocupan sitios urbanos públicos en la Ciudad de México. Se investigan los efectos sociales elitistas de las imágenes públicas de mujeres fuertes, revelando restricciones patriarcales de mujeres en espacios públicos y construcciones subsecuentes de personas públicas como exóticas y cosificadas, asimismo facilitando interacciones con una sociedad sumamente masculinista y machista. La falta de agencialidad social real se revela cuando el patriarcado se reafirma, a pesar de la índole disconforme de las mujeres retratadas. Los constructos de familia y de masculinidad exigen la existencia tanto del padre y del esposo ausentes como del hipermacho y de la acompañante mujer sumisa limitada a sitios privados. El retrato de mujeres fuertes en la obra analizada desnaturaliza la imagen de domesticidad, señalando que las mujeres mexicanas salen del hogar para ocupar sitios públicos en la Ciudad de México. Como la normalización del constructo de familia se cuestiona, la teoría queer se utiliza en una manera innovadora para analizar dichos retratos de mujeres fuertes y agencialidad sociopolítica. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2013

This doctoral thesis studies the relationship between journalism and literature in contexts in which freedom of speech is at risk. It takes as primary sources a variety of nonfiction, crónicas, literary journalism and testimonial novels published by Latin American authors in Spanish, from the 1950s to the 2000s. I propose the concept ‘documentary narratives’ to refer to all literary modes of discourse which are related, in diverse degrees, to a journalistic representation of reality. My corpus covers a wide range of topics such as social protests, dictatorships, civil wars, natural disaster, crime and migration. While scholars have focused on the rhetoric and history of this kind of narratives, my reading considers the real, face-to-face encounter between the journalist and others. I argue that the representation of these encounters influences the pact with the reader and challenges the notion of truthfulness. I contend that documentary narratives can serve as a tool for the transmission of knowledge and the production of public debate in societies marked by political and social instability. In a world overwhelmed by data production and immersed in violent acts against those to be considered ‘Others’, I argue that storytelling is still an essential form of communication among individuals, classes and cultures. Contrary to the authors’s intentions of documenting others’ lives, I conclude that these stories offer an (interrupted) account of oneself, that is, the account of a contemporary storyteller pursuing a rarely fulfilled desire of getting to know the Other truly. The thesis has two appendices. Appendix 1 showcases archival material that support some of my arguments. Appendix 2 includes the transcripts of the interviews that I conducted with eight Latin American authors: Elena Poniatowska, Leila Guerriero, Cristian Alarcón, Arturo Fontaine, Santiago Roncagliolo, Francisco Goldman, Martín Caparrós, and Juan Villoro.