McOndo

McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks away from Latin America's long-dominant magical realist literary tradition by strongly associating itself with mass media culture and the modernity of Latin American urban living . Often closely associated with Mexico`s Crack Movement, McOndo attempts to contextualize being Latin American in a world dominated by American pop culture . The movement challenges the rural, magical world typically depicted in the works within the Magical Realism genre which tend to exoticise Latin America while permeating,“reductionist essentialisms that everyone in Latin America wears a sombrero and lives on trees.” The works within the McOndo movement are often characterized by realism, references to American and Latin American popular culture, contemporary urban or suburban settings, and often contain hard boiled and gritty depictions of crime, poverty, globalization, class differences, sex, and sexuality. Though McOndo works often deal with the underlying consequences of politics, they usually are less overtly political than those of the magical realists.

History

Origins

Although many Latin American authors began to shift away form the fairy tale styles of Magical Realism during the 1980`s, the inception of the McOndo movement is believed to have begun in 1994 when a short-story of Chilean writer Alberto Fuguet was rejected by the Iowa Review on the grounds that 'it was not Latin American enough.'. The editor was convinced that the lack of magical realist or fantastical components made it seem as if, "the story could have taken place right there in [North] America," thus making it extremely hard to publish in the United States. The term "McOndo" was coined by Fuguet, who as a young writer in the 1980s had his work repeatedly rejected by a U.S. literary establishment which expected Latin America writers to adapt to the structure, style, themes of magical realism, a literary movement that dates from the 1960s and that often focuses on exotic atmospheres, collective social injustices, spiritual or metaphysical phenomena, and rural settings. Fuguet argued that his own transnational middle-class upbringing in both urban Chile and the suburban United States made it difficult for him to relate to such themes. Still the rejections kept coming and the advice from writing coaches and publishers was the same: "Add some folklore and a dash of tropical heat and come back later."

In one essay, Fuguet railed against the picturesque, exotic stereotypes the publishing world had come to expect of Latin writers, citing well-known Cuban author-exile Reinaldo Arenas's pronouncement that the literary world expected Latin American novelists to tackle only two themes: underdevelopment and exoticism. Fuguet wrote that he does not deny that there are picturesque, colorful, or quaint aspects to Latin America, but that the world he lives in is too complicated and urban to be bound by the rules of magical realism.

Precursor

The McOndo movement has been greatly influenced by a previous literary current from the 1960s in Mexico known as La Onda. This group of Mexican writers, whose main focus are the qualities of youth culture and popular mass media wrote to provoke reaction; there were critics, much like with the McOndo movement which criticized their work as being ‘antiliterary,’ while others applauded their dynamic work and viewed the group as popular or alternative literature. Examples of work from La Onda authors include Gustavo Sainz’s Gazapo in which he discusses the contradictory and volatile world of adolescence, in addition to José Austín’s De perfil, which follows the life of a young uninterested student, and the adolescent experiences he endures. ²

Critics and supporters of McOndo

Critics of McOndo such as Chilean author Ricardo Cuadros argue that its irreverence for Latin American literary tradition, its focus on American culture, and its apolitical tone tend to dismiss important ideas about writing developed by older Latin American writers who lived under, opposed, and were often suppressed by dictatorial regimes. Some critics go so far as to accuse Fuguet and his ilk of the trivialization or McDonaldization of a rich Latin American literary tradition.

But supporters, including some magic realists such as Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, argue that McOndo is capturing the Latin America of today rather than yesterday and that McOndo writers have not completely forgotten the past. In Giannina Braschi's mock diary, "The Intimate Diary of Solitude" (published in Empire of Dreams), the narrator of the Latin American Boom is shot by a lonely make-up artist who works at Macy's and despises the commercialization of her solitude. Even Fuguet, in his 2003 novel The Movies of My Life, captures some of the terror of the Augusto Pinochet regime in his depictions of a grim Pinochetist boarding school, his mention of a pro-Salvador Allende cousin who disappeared and his caricature of a mean-spirited pro-Pinochet grandmother (out of the mold of Charles Dickens's Madame Defarge).

Notable writers

Writers associated with McOndo include:

• Alberto Fuguet
• Jorge Franco
• Giannina Braschi
• Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
• Mario Mendoza
• Edmundo Paz Soldán

Themes

McOndo is a movement that was founded with an established connection to previous Latinamerican works and responses to said works. The messages, portrayals and themes of Latinamerican society in the art and literature of McOndo have direct relation and naturally compared to works of the "boom generation" and Magical Realism especially.

Relationship between Latin America and the United States

Part of the McOndo movement as a response to the global reception of Magical Realism works and those by Gabriel Garcia Marquez especially, deals with the reality of the power relationship between Latinamerica and the United States. This relationship is also relevant in seeing the influence of globalization and corporate imposition on Latinamerica. The appearance of the idea of the McJob is directly connected in several ways to the connection between these two American countries, both through immigration and results of globalization and expanding quantities of corporations providing many low-paying jobs in Latin America. This relationship between the United States and Latin America in modern times is visible in McOndo through various depictions.

References

• Amar Sánchez, Ana María (2001). "Deserted Cities: Pop and Disenchantment in Turn-of-the-Century Latin American Narrative". In Edmundo Paz-Soldán and Debra A. Castillo(eds.) (ed.). Latin American Literature and Mass Media. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 207–221. ISBN 0-8153-3894-5. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
• Arias, Claudia M. Milian (2005). "McOndo and Latinidad: An Interview with Edmundo Paz Soldán". Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. 24: p139-149. Retrieved March 28, 2010. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• De Costa, Juan E (2008). The Spaces of Latin American Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-230-60625-3.
• Fuguet, Alberto, in Hidalgo (2007). "National/transnational negotiations: the renewal of the cultural languages in Latin America and Rodrigo Fresáns Argentine History, The Speed of ThingsandKensington Gardens". LL Journal. 2 (1): p 1-11. Retrieved March 28, 2010. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Hidalgo, Emilse Beatriz (2007). "National/transnational negotiations: the renewal of the cultural languages in Latin America and Rodrigo Fresáns Argentine History, The Speed of ThingsandKensington Gardens". LL Journal. 2 (1): p 1-11. Retrieved March 28, 2010. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

http://www.letras.s5.com/af0812047.htm

²Edmundo Paz-Soldán and Debra A. Castillo: Latin American Literature and Mass Media. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 2001. Print.

See also

• Latin American Boom
• McJob