No one who comes to these lands can escape seduction or the fright of our volcanoes. They have dominated the representation of Central America as a place where there are no shortages and eruptions. Thrown between two seas, the Central American isthmus is one of the most beautiful places in the world, where an uncontrollable desire to fly is born, far away.
A little less than two centuries ago it was a federation of five countries - Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica - a little larger in extent than Spain. Twenty years of bowel wars ended up tearing it apart. It should not have been easy to gather so much clumsiness and so much resentment. Henceforth, being Central American became a peculiar way of being and not being.
Our story is a long river that we drag like a dirty sheet. This is what our poets have sung. They are our true heroes, and their heads should be sculpted on top of the volcanoes so that they are admired and remembered forever and ever.
A good foreign friend told me that the most attractive thing about Central America is its tragic destiny and its ruins
Literature is a path seeded by misunderstandings. Some time ago, in the course of a drink talk, a good foreign friend, a great connoisseur of the history of the region, told me that the most attractive thing about Central America is its tragic destiny and its ruins. After hearing my allegations in favor of our lyrics, he ended up granting that in this region there are three or four masterpieces. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.
Rondas later a list was born: Los raros , by Rubén Darío; Mr. President , by Miguel Ángel Asturias; About the angel and the man , by Claudia Lars; The weather begins in Xibalbá , by Luis de Lión; to which were added, among exclamations, The Lone Insurrection , by Martínez Rivas; The man who looked like a horse , by Arévalo Martínez; The route of his escape , from Yolanda Oreamuno… Being “nobody” outside his plot is the legend that surrounds almost everyone.
For several years I have been participating in tables on Central American literature, in universities and book fairs, which often lead to regrets tournaments about the ignorance that prevails, inside and outside our borders, on the literature of the isthmus. Yes. There is no doubt that there is injustice in the world. No one escapes. Sooner or later, said a disgraceful and stark Borges, "we all walk towards anonymity." Then he added: "Only the mediocre arrive a little earlier."
Happily, the Central American literature of our days and nights lives a good time
Good literature, let's say, is little less than a miracle. Writing novels, stories and poems is a work of nuts. This is the case in China and in the " shithole countries ", as they call us in the White House. In addition to a lousy business. Almost no one in the world lives on it. Like any subject in the market, we sell our workforce in activities such as teaching, journalism, communications and advertising to bring bread to our table. Are the rules. We accept them or leave the game. All that roll of ignorance and misunderstanding only moves to laughter.
Literature is an arduous and not particularly pleasant activity. Central America is a thorny and beautiful place. However, the geographical area or the country from which it is written is the least important. Some of the best Central American works have been written, or are being written, far from these limits. Others, especially in poetry, not even in Spanish. After all, one writes from a desk located in a neighborhood and in a particular street.
Happily, the Central American literature of our days and nights lives a good time. It is not measured by the volume of income received by the authors, or by the number of mentions that Google Alert records, but by their characters - transgressors, perverse, vicious, typical of shitty countries. Hallucinated migrants who get stuck stuck in their memories. Indigenous people caught in the nightmare of progress. War heroes asking for alms in the bocacalles. Homosexuals, lesbians and transvestites that break down sexual boundaries. Cold ghosts that return to agonize in bathrooms. Desperate women willing to cut their own mother into pieces. Among the ruins of a hundred wars, in the shadow of the volcanoes, swirls are formed that drag cane ash, bio-sanitary waste and beer cans.
It was also Borges who said that finding the voice of a character is not just a technical achievement. It is equivalent to discovering a destination.
In these shithole countries we are willing to take all the risks and experience all the worries to find that literary language that has the spontaneity and brightness of our dazzling oral language. A language that gives form, substance and impulse to hybrid, peripheral works that may not find space in an editorial industry designed to convert even the most provocative dissidents into trademarks.
Miguel Huezo Mixco (El Salvador) is a writer. His most recent publication is 'Days of Olympus' (Alfaguara, 2019).