Nonoalco-Tlatelolco : images d’un quartier détruit dans l’œuvre de Fernando del Paso

Abstract

Images of a Destroyed Neighborhood in Fernando del Paso’s Work Most of the action of del Paso’s novel José Trigo (1966) takes place in the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco neighborhood. This old part of the center of Mexico City was entirely renovated in the early 1960s. This is where between the end of 1958 and the beginning of I960 railroad men organized a powerful strike which was crushed by the use of force. The novel is thus firmly rooted in reality. However del Paso’s writing goes beyond the technique of conventional realism, as its focus is rather on the concepts of Mexican space and time. The paper attempts to show how the history of this vanished neighborhood becomes a symbolic place for the emergence of an art of writing which from the first novel marks Fernando del Paso's entire work.