McOndo

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A recent Latin American literary movement that seeks to distance itself from Latin America's long-dominant magic realist literary tradition and to pull itself out from the shadow of literary giant Gabriel Garcia Marquez. McOndo is charactered by realism, references to American and Latin American popular culture, contemporary urban or suburban settings, and often hardboiled, 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 magic realists.

1 History
2 Origins of the Term
3 An Effort to Move Beyond Stereotypes
4 Critics and Supporters of McOndo
5 Notable Writers

[edit] History

The term "McOndo" was coined by Chilean writer Alberto 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 magic 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."

[edit] Origins of the Term

The term itself stems from the McOndo writers' rejections of, or efforts to distance themselves from, magic realist Gabriel Garcia Márquez and his imaginary Colombian village of Macondo. Fuguet explains: "[m]y own world is something much closer to what I call 'McOndo' -- a world of McDonald's, Macintoshes and condos."

[edit] An Effort to Move Beyond Stereotypes

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 magic realism.

[edit] 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. 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, likely murdered by secret police, and his caricature of a mean-spirited pro-Pinochet grandmother (out of the mold of Charles Dickens's Madame Defarge).