The Estridentistas and Contemporáneos Reimagined: Debating the Legacy of the Mexican Literary Avant-Garde

Abstract

The article discusses how prominent Latin American authors have reimagined the two Mexican avant-garde groups—the Contemporáneos and Estridentistas—in novels published between 1992-2011. It is obvious that the authors pay tribute to the Mexican avant-garde by casting members of the Contemporáneos and Estridentistas as lead characters in their novels. What is less obvious is the way in which the later authors stylistically borrow from the earlier avant-garde authors. Although critical tradition has tended to separate the Estridentistas from the Contemporáneos, a side-by-side reading of their 1920s prose both argues against this division and lays claim for a more prominent position for the Mexican avant-garde in Latin American letters. Between 1921 and 1929, both Estridentistas and Contemporáneos obsessively produced experimental literary self-portraits. These fragmented, pseudo-autobiographical texts serve as models for the later works from the 1990s to early 2000s, all of which paint portraits of Mexican intellectuals amidst turmoil while using literary devices that simultaneously undermine questions of authorship and the possibility of telling a coherent story. Both sets of experimental autobiographies (those from the 1920s and more recent versions) deeply question the meaning of being an intellectual in Mexico, both then and now. Considering the Estridentistas and Contemporáneos in tandem not only reveals a fuller picture of the 1920s literary scene in Mexico, but allows us to see an organic style that emerged in Mexico and influenced authors and artists throughout the Americas from the 1920s until the current day.