This project examines representations of feminine subjugation in the natural world in 20th century Latin American narrative, in particular narrative from Mexico and Colombia respectively, through the lens of ecocriticism and,more specifically, eco-feminism. I explore the ways in which some literary works represent the interconnectedness of humans and the environment and how this relationship mirrors the hegemonic patriarchal structures of Western society, paying particular attention to the oppressive structures operating against feminine, marginal beings, human or non-human. When referring to the feminine, I include any marginal individuals, regardless of their sex. Most importantly to this project is the two-pronged domination of the earth and the marginal beings who inhabit it. In this introduction, I will examine discussions on feminism and the environment as well as recapitulating criticism regarding environmental reevaluation of literature eventually narrowing it down to ecofeminism in Latin America. In Chapter One I review the literature regarding ecocriticism, a field concentrated on reviewing the representation of nature in literature, as well as review the field of ecofeminism within a Latin American context. In Chapter Two I explore the impact of globalization and industrialization and its implications on the natural world in La tierra pródiga (1960) by Agustín Yáñez and La parcela (1898) by José López Portillo y Rojas. I posit that the domination of nature mimics the domination of marginal beings which thus produces a differential in society. In Chapter Three I focus on two urban novels, Morirás lejos (1967), by José Emilio Pacheco, and Paraíso Travel (2001) written by Jorge Franco. In discussing these novels, I extend the discussion of ecocriticism to include the city, which is to be considered a living and adapting organism. For this novel, my intent is to focus on the domestication of nature that is imposed by the incessant need for humans to control and find order amongst the chaos of the natural world. In the final analysis chapter, Chapter Four, I draw my focus onto the Colombian novel by Jorge Franco, El mundo de afuera (2014). For the analysis of all aforementioned novels, I draw from theories of colonization stemming from the studies of Anibal Quijano and Nelson Maldonado-Torres as well as drawing from the ample gender studies of Judith Butler.

This dissertation focuses on the portrayal of human attitudes and actions and their impact on the environment in the works of Mexican authors, Agustín Yáñez and Homero Aridjis, and Colombian writers, Tomás Carrasquilla and Pablo Montoya. Although, these writers did not identify themselves as environmentalists, (with exception of Homero Aridjis), I observe that overall, their works implicitly denounce human actions on the environment. In my chapter “Return to Nature in Frutos de mi tierra (1896),” by Tomás Carrasquilla, I analyze how Medellín’s Nineteenth-Century capitalist society promotes a life-style that desensitizes human identification and coexistence with the natural world. In “Domination or Coexistence in Nature in Las tierras flacas (1962),” by Agustín Yáñez, I observe how the use of sustainable technology is implemented in a rural town to improve agriculture, as well as the different positions of domination, stewardship, and coexistence between humans and nature, arguing that Yáñez’ portrayal suggests that both stewardship and dominion, like patriarchy, assume human superiority over all non-human beings. In “Cultural Attitudes Towards the Environment in El hombre que amaba el sol (2005),” by Homero Aridjis, I reflect on the representation of environmental injustice of the State failing to educate society in environmental awareness so that it might more harmoniously coexist and protect nature, and particularly the Monarch butterfly. In “The Colonization of Nature in Tríptico de la Infamia (2014),” by Pablo Montoya, I explore how human actions impact the environment. I also study the imperial gaze brought by French colonizers during Sixteen-Century to the “New World” and contrast it the Timucuas’ interdependence with the nonhuman world.

In this dissertation I examine the representation of historical events in contemporary narratives. I offer a psychoanalytical approach to the understanding of a history that reappears in the present. I argue that the return of history to consciousness is itself the awakening of a traumatic loss. In the novels examined, history emerges from the ashes of a forgotten past manifesting a return to a wounded memory. My concern with the study of history and trauma is situated in a particular time frame, the post-revolutionary Mexico.

In chapter 1, I explore the politics of forgetting history in the narrative of Nadie me verá llorar and La Castañeda, by Cristina Rivera Garza. In both readings, the erasure of a history implicates the disappearance of a memory and a displaced identity. For the characters, the inaccessible occurrences of the revolution become graspable many years later through the reemerged images of violence and death. The confrontation with the past opens up the possibility of a future, one that emerges through a new language: the victims’. In chapter 2, I discuss the condition of coerced bodies, political-economical violence and complicity in La voluntad y la fortuna by Carlos Fuentes. Here a process of dehumanization allows for prisoners in a state of suspension between life and death to become targets of horrible torture crimes and genocide. Violence becomes a spectacle to be witnessed by the normative gaze of spectators. Furthermore, there is no public act of grieving for victims of a sovereign power that fails to recognize a loss. This leads to the debate on mourning and melancholia, rooted in Sigmund Freud’s work, and into a discussion on politics of memory. In my project I critique the politics of melancholia and argue for the advancement of an active mourning whereby the lost object is subsumed under a newly found object of affection. However, this does not entail a concluded mourning work since the substitution never fully erases the past by acknowledging the singularity of the lost object. Therefore, in an active mourning there is a connection to the legacy of trauma but also a perception of an imaginable future. In chapter 3, I consider the integration of performance in David Toscana’s Los puentes de Königsberg, as an act of transfer, transmitting a historical and cultural knowledge. The embodied performance of war and disappeared girls, participates in the transmission of communal traumatic memories. The reenactment of trauma serves as a witnessing of the event and also as a possibility of intervention with the past.

En este trabajo se analizan Balún Canán (1957) y Oficio de tinieblas (1962) de Rosario Castellanos como discursos que intentan dar con las raíces de problemas sociales, culturales y políticos que surgen a través de la imposición de sistemas de índole occidental en tierras indias. Dado el enfoque en temática social, propongo que desde las dos novelas de Castellanos se concientiza sobre la complejidad que encierran soluciones a estos problemas que han afectado al indígena desde la época colonial hasta el presente. Además, me interesa cómo se contraponen, en el modo de vida indígena, proyectos occidentales que surgen desde la España medieval.

En Balún Canán se indaga el origen y evolución de la novela Archivo como se postula en la teoría de mito y archivo propuesta por Roberto González Echevarría. Se analiza esta novela como novela archivo neoindigenista. Es decir, como archivo que incluye y se aparta de mediaciones que rigieron la narrativa latinoamericana desde el discurso de la ley en las crónicas de Colón hasta el discurso antropológico en el siglo XX. Este archivo neoindigenista privilegia la creación literaria y surge desde una concepción indígena que remonta a los orígenes de la ficción, de la novela misma, y la instauración de instituciones de índole occidental, como el latifundio, y los problemas que causan en territorios indígenas.

En Oficio de tinieblas se problematiza el concepto de heterogeneidad propuesto por Antonio Cornejo Polar. Además, esta novela se proyecta al futuro por incluir un entendimiento profundo del ente indígena, su cosmovisión, su entorno y sus problemas. Estos problemas incluyen la falta de tierras, el estar fuera de proyectos gubernamentales, falta de educación, salubridad, entre otras cosas. Estas cuestiones se intentan resolver por medio de una reforma agraria, una educación laica, el integrarlos y asimilarlos a la nación mexicana por medio de una política indigenista. Se critican estos programas por enfatizar el etnocidio como una de las vías para solucionar el problema indígena. Finalmente, se compara la novela neoindigenista e indigenista en México y en el Perú señalando cómo estos problemas son descritos en ambas corrientes literarias y cómo se aparta la novela de Castellanos de la corriente indigenista tradicional.

This study analyzes diverse anthropocentric and ecocentric tendencies, fluctuations, and changes among environmental perspectives that present themselves in Latin American narratives chosen for evidencing characteristics of environmentally related literature. In this project, I contend that although anthropocentric discourse concerning the environment has declined throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, in Latin America, this type of discourse has evolved, rejecting earlier misconceptions of the natural world but holding on to technocentric beliefs. At the same time, I present how the works I analyze in this dissertation convey ecosophies, Luddite discourse, and ecological apocalyptic imaginations that portray non-fictitious environmental crises and satirize excessive human dependence on advanced technology. This project also examines the postmodern novel and presents how in certain instances, characteristics of the postmodern novel serve as the "ideal" for the exposition of environmental issues. While analyzing anthropocentric discourses present in The Cosmic Race and in Doña Bárbara, this study identifies the following rhetorical sources for these works: the Christian perspective of providential unconditional provision, which I call the Jehova Jireh Argument; a discourse of subalternity and dominion of the aborigine and the natural world; and technocentric worldviews. None of the works analyzed in this dissertation suggest a return to a pre-modern past as a solution to the present ecological crisis; instead, some of these works, namely, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Mantra, indicate the use of technology by unqualified people as the cause for the continual self-destruction of the human race. Thus, these more recent novels suggest the proper use of technology and learning to live in harmony with nature as a solution to the ecological crisis. In examining The Storyteller, this study exposes the project of The Storyteller, which consists in the transformation of the Amazon region for economic benefit. Furthermore, this study presents that the supposed machiguenga Storyteller of the work offers a pro-indigenous discourse, but does not provide a voice for the indigenous people, maintaining this population unrepresented throughout the work. The works analyzed in this dissertation, I contend, portray anthropocentric and ecocentric regional approaches for a global environmental crisis.

This dissertation analyses the many ways in which the notion of "the poetic" can be perceived in the novels of three contemporary Latin American writers: the Chilean Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003), the Colombian Darío Jaramillo Agudelo (1947), and the Mexican Cristina Rivera Garza (1964). In all cases, I demonstrate the many ways in which the "poet's vocabulary" -which includes images, topics, and several technical procedures that express his or her perception of the world through the poetic word- permeates the novels and how it allows to expand his or her poetics. Furthermore, I explain how the individual aesthetic of these three authors is closely related to precepts of the historical avant-garde and certain marginal figures in Latin America in order to take up again the project of developing "new" modalities of writing. In addition to this, I point out some of the subtle political gestures involved in the transition from poetry to prose, which include among other things the loss of ideals and convictions of youngsters during the second half of the twentieth century and the addressing of the violence as a way of life in contemporary Latin America. I begin by discussing some theoretical approaches related to the interaction of genres, the different conceptions of "prose writing" and "poetic writing," and the manner in which a "poetic novel" can be conceived. In the second and fourth chapters, I focus on finding the correspondence between Bolaño's early poetry and selected novels from his early and late production: Consejos de un Discípulo de Morrison a un Fanático de Joyce, Amberes, Los detectives salvajes, 2666, and Los sinsabores del verdadero policía. In the third chapter, I study the novels La voz interior by Jaramillo, and Lo anterior and La muerte me da by Rivera Garza, always in relation with their early poetry. In my conclusion, after synthesizing the similarities and differences between the poetics of Bolaño, Jaramillo, and Rivera Garza, I propose how a poetic reading of the novels I address here can bring new light to interpretation and critical approaches to the analysis of these works.

This dissertation, "Representing the Natural World: The Uruguayan Novel at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (1888-1916)," studies the importance of the natural world in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Uruguayan novel. This study carries out the first critical analysis of the Uruguayan novel of this period using an ecocritical approach and emphasizes the importance of the natural environment with the purpose of caring for and preserving it. I argue that practices that began to be put into use during the time period that this study analyzes are anti-environmental and lead eventually to the full-fledged environmental crisis that we have been experiencing since the 1970s. This dissertation exposes how certain environmental conflicts arise in the various novelistic worlds studied. Each chapter embraces a different perspective in regard to these environmentally-based conflicts: struggle for independence, urban/rural conflicts, relationship between characters and the natural world, and how the natural world affects characters' psychological development. The pioneering work of Lawrence Buell in his The Environmental Imagination (1995) figures prominently as a theoretical basis for this study, but is complemented both by the environmentally-conscious work of Eduardo Galeano and by the work of various North American ecocritical theorists. This dissertation finds that the Uruguayan novel from the time period indicated is highly pertinent to the theme of the natural environment and that the natural world appears in a number of different forms in the four novels that this study explores. This study contributes to the already great body of ecocritical writing by exploring a specific facet of Latin American literature, the Uruguayan novel, in environmental terms.

The following study is a close analysis of five Mexican writers: Parménides García Saldaña (1944-1982), Rosina Conde, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, Xavier Velasco and José Eugenio Sánchez. I concentrate on two of García Saldaña's works, the first one is his first novel Pasto verde(1968), and the second one is his posthumous work. In García Saldaña's novels, we see how his work can be observed as an example of the so called "Onda". I offer an overview of the "la Onda" and the influence of this movement on the Mexican writers Xavier Velasco (1964), and José Eugenio Sánchez (1965). "La Onda" is primarily related to Mexico City, however it is also present in northern Mexico specially in cities that share a border with the United States. I analyze how characteristics of "la Onda" were perceived and received by Rosina Conde and Luis Humberto Crosthwaite. I emphasize on the influenced that "la Onda" had on writers from the Mexican American border and contemporary writers, and how studies that had been done about "la Onda" writers can also be used to analyses novels by Conde, Crosthwaite, Velasco and Sánchez because they share many characteristics. I explore how "la Onda" rather than been a momentary and irrelevant literary movement was able to transcend and influence contemporary writers.

Re-Structuring Fairy Tales in Four XX and XXI Century Mexican and Colombian Novels, offers a critical and analytical study of contemporary authors who present a revisionist writing of fairy tales. The first two chapters focus on how Colombian authors, Fanny Buitrago, and Albalucía Ángel incorporate fairy tales within their narrative, highlighting different aspects of this tradition following a feminist perspective. In Chapter One, I contend that Ángel incorporates Alice in Wonderland into her work to explore questions of female identity and social conditioning. In Chapter Two, I demonstrate how Fanny Buitragro's work draws on fairy tale structure to reinterpret women's experiences. I also explore how current Mexican writers Cristina Rivera Garza, and Jorge Volpi have turned to fairy tales to make sense out of the violent state of the country. In Chapter Three, I consider how Rivera Garza's work appropriates common fairy tale characters following her own concept of narrativas de desapropiación, which attempts to destroy authorship. In my final chapter, I study how Volpi utilizes the fairy tale by assigning new meaning to traditional European fairy tales in order to bring to light the violent reality and deaths in Mexico.

In this dissertation I argue that the recent fiction and film produced after the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in 1994 in Chiapas displays a concern for re-examining the importance of the Mexican Revolution's multiple discourses. The novels and films included in this study are Muertos Incómodos: falta lo que falta (2005) by Subcomandante Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Zapata (2006) by Pedro Ángel Palou, Nadie me verá llorar (1999) by Cristina Rivera Garza, Los años con Laura Díaz (1999) by Carlos Fuentes, El violín (2005) directed by Francisco Vargas Quevedo, and the documentary Los últimos Zapatistas: héroes olvidados (2002) by Francesco Taboada Tabone. All of these works reflect upon and reexamine the themes of the Mexican Revolution. In their works, they demonstrate a preoccupation for the unresolved social problems that includes attitudes of disenchantment with respect to the legacy of the Mexican Revolution. I introduce the concept of mitonimia to understand Emiliano Zapata as a key figure in the contemporary social movements. For the texts studied I use the concept of collective memory introduced by Maurice Halbwachs as well as cultural memory proposed by Jan Assmann. I conclude that there is a continuity of the Mexican's Revolution themes among this works in the present, that is to say, there is a persistent dialogue among the studied works and the present moment in Mexico.