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The present research is devoted to the concept ‘patria’ (homeland) analysis in the Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer Miguel Angel Asturias’s novel El señor presidente (Mister President). The verbalizations of the studied concept in the novel are counted and their linguistic context is analysed. The totalitarian society described by the writer is not fully fictional. The dictatorship of Estrada Cabrera, though unnamed in the novel, is depicted. The linguistic realization of the studied concept is based on two groups of antithesis. The perception of homeland by real patriots, who are now considered the traitors of their homeland, and that of the people, who conform to the current conditions, but it is obvious that they are the ones who are ready to betray. The second antithesis is the fear of the president and calling the president the honoured citizen, the father and the defender of the homeland. The analysis of the linguistic means used to verbalize the concept ‘homeland’ in the studied novel shows that the said concept can be used by a totalitarian society as a tool of manipulation. Further analysis of the concept ‘homeland’ in other literary works by the authors writing in Spanish and belonging to different Hispanic countries will reveal the linguistic differences of the national variants of Spanish.

While the idea of a named language as a separate and discrete identity is a political and social construct, in the cases of Sardinian and Asturian doubts over their respective ‘languageness’ have real material consequences, particularly in relation to language policy decisions at the state level. The Asturian example highlights how its lack of official status means that it is either ignored or subjected to repeated challenges to its status as a language variety deserving of recognition and support, reflecting how ‘official language’ in the Spanish context is often understood in practice as synonymous with the theoretically broader category of ‘language’. In contrast, the recent state recognition of Sardinian speakers as a linguistic minority in Italy (Law 482/1999) illustrates how legal recognition served to overcome existing obstacles to the implementation of regional language policy measures. At the same time, the limited subsequent effects of this Law, particularly in the sphere of education, are a reminder of the shortcomings of top-down policies which fail to engage with the local language practices and attitudes of the communities of speakers recognized. The contrastive focus of this article thus acknowledges the continued material consequences of top-down language classification, while highlighting its inadequacies as a language policy mechanism which reinforces artificial distinctions between speech varieties and speakers deserving of recognition.

Though historically food has been considered not worthy of serious analysis within literary studies, new lenses and theories are revisiting this theme with surprising findings for all periods and genres of Latin American literature. Since food can be a powerful symbolic tool within poetry, prose, and drama, critics need to reconsider its role within Hispanic literature. Minor Cooper Keith is a central figure within the process of banana trade.4 Since the end of the nineteenth century and even today, the export of bananas and sugar has been a tremendously profitable business and an important economic resource for most Caribbean and Central American countries. Since the very beginning, this market was controlled by US companies and, undoubtedly, the most influential among them was the United Fruit Company (UFCO), which maintained its commercial operations from 1899 until 1970.5 Briefly, the plot of Strong Wind can be summarized as follows: a US fruit company, named Tropical Banana Inc. is establishing banana plantations on the Pacific coast of an unnamed Central American country. Since the company controls the media and the government, Mead finds that the only way to gain the release of his friends is through bribery. The greed of the Tropbanana, which does not want to share the profit with smaller growers, creates all sort of social problems. [...]the novel is a social protest narrative with a clear anti-imperialist message, in fact it could be considered as thesis novel.

In his two-part “The literary history of world-systems” Matthew Eatough utilizes world systems theory to examine literary studies. He makes use of Baucom’s “speculative epistemologies” to explore the connection between the global economy speculative financial instruments and the rise of the novel in 18th century. But Eatough is interested in tracing the history of literary studies and world systems theory. In this paper, I use speculative epistemologies to indicate ways of knowing that are speculated in fiction. My starting point is the decolonial critique of world system theory, which I use to formulate border reading; a reading strategy that is attentive to indigenous epistemologies. I apply this reading to two entirely different to two works of fiction that have nothing in common save for their articulation of indigenous epistemologies from two entirely unrelated epistemic terrains, two entirely different colonial experiences, and two separate geocultures within the world literary system. Miguel Ángel Asturias’ Hombres de maíz (Men of Maize) and Al-Tayyib Salih’s Bandarshah present viable speculative epistemologies that are profoundly engaged with their respective political contexts Their speculative epistemologies are contextually grounded in the very real experiences of the postcolonial condition in Guatemala (1940s) and Sudan (1960s).

In order to do so, the paper begins by addressing flattery within the novel as a harmful political phenomenon that, on the one hand, legitimates the discussed dictatorial regime in the text and, and, on the other, serves to dismiss the possible criticism against the autocratic regime. The proposal, finally, matches the idea that flattery is both contrasted and overcome within the novel through the frankness and bravery of the student. Al mismo tiempo, \"nutre el ego del autócrata, quien puede mostrarse con mayor propiedad como alguien aclamado por el pueblo\" (Cañete, 2008, p. 128). En otros casos, sin embargo, la adulación resulta menos comprensible (y más indignante): se trata de aquellas situaciones en las que el autor de los halagos al dictador no es alguien preocupado de salvar su vida, sino un adulador profesional cuyo objetivo es cosechar honores y riquezas. Sin embargo, no se ha abordado en profundidad la forma en que la obra problematiza la adulación.

This work gathers the context around the novel book El Señor Presidente(Mister President), published in 1946 by the Guatemalan writer MiguelÁngel Asturias. It briefly looks into History of Guatemala and its State, relevantdetails about president Manuel Estrada Cabrera, and the author’s life.It addresses some general aspects of the novel book, to later refer to specifictopics from my personal view. The paper has the particularity of showing aparallel accompaniment for the reading process. It consists of writing poetryverses according to the chapter structure of the novel, mostly décimas espinelas3as an initial goal. Writing verses seeks to map out, reflect on, describe,or condense relevant aspects about topics, characters, and events. In somecases, difficulties forced me resort to a smaller verse structure called redondilla4.Verses cover two of the three parts of the novel, and resulted in 25décimas and 7 redondillas. They are attached to this work. En este trabajo abordo el contexto alrededor de la novela El Señor Presidentedel guatemalteco Miguel Ángel Asturias, publicada en 1946. Contemplo unrepaso breve por la historia de Guatemala y su Estado, datos relevantes sobreel presidente Manuel Estrada Cabrera, así como de Miguel Ángel Asturias.Luego refiero algunos aspectos generales de la novela, para posteriormenteocuparme de temáticas desde una óptica más personal. El documento cuentacon la particularidad de mostrar un proceso de acompañamiento de la lecturaque consistió en escribir versos correspondientes a capítulos de la novela,mayoritariamente décimas espinelas1, como meta inicial. Tal ejercicio aspiraa documentar, mapear, reflexionar, describir o condensar aspectos relevantesde las temáticas, los personajes y los acontecimientos. La dificultad querepresentó realizar esta tarea derivó en el apoyo de estructuras más cortasllamadas redondillas2. Los versos abarcan dos de las tres partes de la novela,que resultaron en 25 décimas y 7 redondillas. Se incluyen como anexo.

Junot Díaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) plays on the tensions between the two definitions of dictate: on the one hand, to order or command authoritatively and absolutely and, on the other hand, to speak aloud words that are to be written down or transcribed. This article argues that the novel’s narrative techniques and formal structures dictate, or tell, a story against dictatorship, analyzing how the novel manipulates the character-system and modes of narration to resist oppressive domination. First, I explicate how the novel marginalizes and parodies the dictator and centralizes socially marginalized characters in the overall narrative structure to challenge authoritarian power and hegemonic discourses. Subsequently, I demonstrate how the novel mobilizes underground storytelling modes—specifically hearsay, footnotes, and silences—formally to represent and critique the dissemination and repression of information under dictatorship. I end by situating The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in an emerging set of dictatorship novels written by Latina/os, arguing that contemporary Latino authors such as Díaz are generating a counter-dictatorial imaginary rooted in intersectional analyses of authoritarianism, racial domination, heteropatriarchy, and imperialism in the hemisphere.

Este trabajo estudia dos novelas representativas del realismo maravilloso, Los pasos perdidos de Alejo Carpentier y Mulata de tal de Miguel Ángel Asturias, a fin de destacar cómo cada escritor encara la relación entre las estructuras novelísticas y las representaciones ideológicas de la identidad hispanoamericana con la reactivación de elementos estéticos sacados de diferentes ámbitos de la cultura popular.

Embedded in the historical transition from the defeat of twentieth-century national popular movements to the neoliberal-administered globalization of the new millennium, postwar Central American narratives are obliged to come face to face with the crisis of the nation state model once embraced by intellectuals of the previous generations, and with the neoliberal logic which, against its liberating promises, is causing increasingly abstract and intensified forms of exploitation. While the national articulation tends to repress local heterogeneities, the neoliberal-administered globalization implies the elision of structural inequality that persists within the contemporary hybridization. Therefore, the construction of the national, collective subject during the national popular movement and that of the deterritorialized individual subject under the neoliberal logic, despite their differences, are two forms of ideologies that similarly contain at their heart the logic of exclusion and violence as the very condition of their articulation. This dissertation examines the narratives works of Horacio Castellanos Moya from El Salvador, Rodrigo Rey Rosa from Guatemala, Gioconda Belli from Nicaragua, and the Guatemalan- American author Francisco Goldman, and argues that most of them manage to enact a double refusal of the two ideological articulations mentioned above. Through the literary figures of paranoia and the labyrinth, they create an alternative way of imagining and narrating reality that is guided neither by the national perspective nor by the free-floating individualism, but by an effort of remembering, instead of forgetting and repressing, the moments of contingency, violence and ambivalence that lie at the heart of the establishment of previous political and cultural projects during the twentieth and twenty-first century Central America.

Este artículo realiza un recorrido por los relatos que integran el volumen de la escritora ecuatoriana Solange Rodríguez Pappe, La primera vez que vi un fantasma, publicado en 2019. Los cuentos se insertan en una doble tradición: la europea y la propiamente hispanoamericana, donde los nombres de Miguel Ángel Asturias y Juan José Arreola resultan determinantes para la activación de los recursos simbólicos y temáticos propios de la esta reciente narrativa de lo fantástico o, según nuevos catálogos críticos, de lo “inusual”.