This dissertation proposes an analysis of representative texts that portray the earthquake that hit Mexico City in 1985 as a historical event that contributed to forging new ways of interaction among the people itself, as well as between the community as a whole and its government. By examining the representations of this historically important episode in the life of the city, this project compensates for a significant omission of literary criticism—that has relegated the substantial corpus of texts about this catastrophe to brief comments or footnotes on other topics. Through analysis of testimonial chronicles, newspaper articles, political cartoons, music videos, poetry, drama, and narratives, this dissertation investigates the process through which intellectuals created discursive constructions of a new relationship between Mexican society and its government. The following pages give an account of the debate to shape the historical interpretation of the catastrophe: some texts challenged the patrimonialism institutionalized by the government bureaucracy of the PRI State, while others supported the structures in place even though they acknowledged the need for a nimbler bureaucracy. Therefore, this study is focused on texts that incorporate previous discursive traditions to propose new symbolic ways to understand the nation after the earthquake. This discussion engages texts by authors committed to diverse perspectives—such as Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monsiváis, José Emilio Pacheco, Carlos Olmos, Enrique Serna, and Rodrigo Fresán, among others—to offer a panorama on the arguments presented on the cultural field. This dissertation considers four specific moments in the construction of the new national narrative: (1) the call for solidarity with the victims of the disaster; (2) the redefinition of the idea of civil society; (3) the debate within mass media to impose a particular meaning to both solidarity and civil society; and (4) the questioning of the main discourses related to the earthquake. This study illuminates the ways that the earthquake narratives have been deployed to challenge political inequities and injustices and to attempt political change towards a modern Mexican State.

This dissertation proposes an analysis of representative texts that portray the earthquake that hit Mexico City in 1985 as a historical event that contributed to forging new ways of interaction among the people itself, as well as between the community as a whole and its government. By examining the representations of this historically important episode in the life of the city, this project compensates for a significant omission of literary criticism—that has relegated the substantial corpus of texts about this catastrophe to brief comments or footnotes on other topics. Through analysis of testimonial chronicles, newspaper articles, political cartoons, music videos, poetry, drama, and narratives, this dissertation investigates the process through which intellectuals created discursive constructions of a new relationship between Mexican society and its government. The following pages give an account of the debate to shape the historical interpretation of the catastrophe: some texts challenged the patrimonialism institutionalized by the government bureaucracy of the PRI State, while others supported the structures in place even though they acknowledged the need for a nimbler bureaucracy. Therefore, this study is focused on texts that incorporate previous discursive traditions to propose new symbolic ways to understand the nation after the earthquake. This discussion engages texts by authors committed to diverse perspectives—such as Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monsiváis, José Emilio Pacheco, Carlos Olmos, Enrique Serna, and Rodrigo Fresán, among others—to offer a panorama on the arguments presented on the cultural field. This dissertation considers four specific moments in the construction of the new national narrative: (1) the call for solidarity with the victims of the disaster; (2) the redefinition of the idea of civil society; (3) the debate within mass media to impose a particular meaning to both solidarity and civil society; and (4) the questioning of the main discourses related to the earthquake. This study illuminates the ways that the earthquake narratives have been deployed to challenge political inequities and injustices and to attempt political change towards a modern Mexican State.

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This dissertation asserts that the tortuous relationship Spanish American literature had with cosmopolitanism since the Wars of Independence reached a turning point towards the end of the second half of the twentieth century. While the literary production of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century was centred on the Spanish American nation and the continent, contemporary literature has become increasingly deterritorialized, and has begun to present narrative worlds and discuss issues that transcend this circumscribed universe. The discerning of this articulation of global issues in contemporary literature – which I contend is predicated on the concept of cosmopolitanism – is the primary objective of this investigation. The five novels examined here are Elena Poniatowska’s La “Flor de Lis” (1988), Mario Vargas Llosa’s El Paraíso en la otra esquina (2003) and El sueño del celta (2010), and Jorge Volpi’s El fin de la locura (2003) and No será la Tierra (2006). This study aims to describe and assess an evolving perspective on the treatment of cosmopolitanism in Spanish America. I trace the shift from the previous generations’ main preoccupation with aesthetic cosmopolitanism, which sought to engage Latin American literary discourse with the Western canon, to what I identify as the current political implication of the concept. To this end, I show that whereas mid-twentieth century authors displaced cosmopolitanism in favour of more politically expedient concepts, authors now plot it in their novels as a means of discussing issues of identity and citizenship in an increasingly globalized world.

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.