Abstract
Central America entered the twenty-first century free of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes yet rife with epidemic violence incited by deep social conflicts and disparities. While the average global homicide rate stands at 6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, in Guatemala and El Salvador the rate is a staggering 39.9 and 41.2, respectively. How is this phenomenon rendered thematically and aesthetically in Central American narratives of the new century? This essay explores approaches to violence in the novels Diccionario esotérico (2006) by Guatemalan writer Maurice Echeverría, and Camino de hormigas (2014) by Salvadoran writer Miguel Huezo Mixco. These authors lament the turbulent past and violent present from different perspectives and generations. Their sense of nostalgic disappointment embodies critic Svetlana Boym's view of nostalgia as resistance to modernity. Expressions of nostalgic disappointment in these works provoke reflections and questions about past and present, leading readers to visualize possible extra-textual futures of reality.
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