Imagining Neoliberal Globalization in Contemporary World Fiction

Walonen, Michael K.

doi:10.4324/9781351120463

Cited by 3 publications

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“…There is an emerging corpus of world literary fiction that seeks to come to terms with the deteriorated social circumstances brought on in different parts of the world by the global turn toward a neoliberal political economy (for analysis see Walonen, 2016; 2018). One way in which contemporary writers have sought to come to terms with neoliberalism that has yet to receive adequate attention is by reconsidering the popular leftist movements of the past either through the vehicle of historical fiction or through characters in contemporary settings who were part of these movements in their younger days.…”

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Enrique Mendieta and the Ghosts of Leftism Past: The Aftereffects of Mexico’s Dirty War in Élmer Mendoza’s Detective Fiction

Walonen¹

2020

Latin American Perspectives

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The continuance of the revolutionary strife of Mexico’s dirty war into the present day, both as a legacy and in the form of its survivors, resonates strongly in the work of the novelist Élmer Mendoza. Mendoza’s early novel Janis Joplin’s Lover uses its protagonist to portray a 1970s Mexico torn between a revolutionary path of collective social amelioration and the corrupt, mercenary self-interest embodied by Mexican narco-traffickers, with the country pushed toward the latter through the repression of student activists by the Mexican state. Mendoza’s five subsequent novels that center on the exploits of detective Lefty Mendieta focus on the fallout from this period of repression, using the figure of Lefty’s brother Enrique, a former leftist guerrilla, to represent a lost (but not totally lost) egalitarian and socially just alternative to the neoliberal political economy that has ravaged the living conditions of most Mexicans for almost four decades. La continuada lucha revolucionaria en el marco de la guerra sucia que ha caracterizado a México hasta la hoy en día, tanto como legado a la vez que en la presencia de sus sobrevivientes, resuena poderosamente en la obra del novelista Élmer Mendoza. La primera novela de Mendoza, Janis Joplin’s Lover, utiliza a su protagonista para retratar a México en la década de 1970, dividido entre un camino revolucionario de mejora social colectiva y el corrupto y mercenario interés propio encarnado por los narcotraficantes mexicanos; el país se ve empujado en esta última dirección a través de la represión de los activistas estudiantiles por parte del Estado. Las cinco novelas posteriores de Mendoza, centradas en las hazañas del detective Lefty Mendieta, se centran en las consecuencias de este período de represión y emplean la figura de Enrique, el hermano de Lefty, un ex guerrillero izquierdista, para representar la pérdida (si bien no total) de una alternativa igualitaria y socialmente justa en oposición a la economía política neoliberal que mermado las condiciones de vida de la mayoría de los mexicanos durante casi cuatro décadas.

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confidence: 99%