The Cult of Violence in Latin American Short Fiction

TO A North American reader, the short fiction of the countries to the southward has an exotic and unfamiliar tone. It is not merely that Buenos Aires supplants New York as the locale for stories of metropolitan sophistication, and that gauchos and peons replace farmers and clerks as characters. Nor is it the obvious contrast in setting, with the pampas of Argentina, the cordilleras of Chile, the tropical forests of the Chaco, the hot, indolent port-towns of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru supplying the most conspicuous backgrounds. There are other differences more fundamental, more striking.' The very structure of the stories is outside the ordinary reader's experience. Here are no well-made plots, no carefully-contrived causal relationships resulting in climactic action and logical denouement. The sketch is more familiar than the incident, the episode more common than the complete story. Action often leads nowhere. The initial exposition, so important to the conventional storyteller, is either telescoped or omitted. One chapter of the protagonist's life may be presented, or a single event may be told. In either case there is no preliminary explanation and no result. Few Latin American writers reveal an adherence to or even an understanding of the principles of traditional fictional art (one outstanding exception is Eduardo Barrios's extremely subtle and Henry Jamesian tale, Brother Ass). They represent instead the disintegration of plot. Another distinction is the strong sense of religion behind many of the stories. The Catholicism of the hinterland is seldom pure or orthodox, and sometimes it is indistinguishable from long-preserved pagan rites or folk superstitions; but invariably it affects the inner life of the peasants and the external life of the privileged classes. Wayside shrines, feast days, the liturgy of the church, priests and cathedrals have their impact. Church festivals may be only attenuations of fertility rites and incantations to the rain gods, but they are an integral part of the diurnal existence. A picaro

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