Horror in Literature and Film in Latin America

Latin American horror literature and film is manifold, a heterogeneous landscape with perhaps more differences and peculiarities from country to country than a non–Latin American observer might perceive at first glance. Very often, Latin American horror resides on the borderlines between different genres, permeating a number of nonnaturalistic types of narrative—such as science fiction, fantasy, or crime thriller—and a great deal of horror literature and film embraces parody by means of comedy or experimental works. So, in order to identify and draw a line delineating the so-called Latin American horror genre in both literature and film, one should be significantly open-minded to concepts such as hybridity, multiculturalism, transculturalism, syncretism, non-Western narrative strategies and approaches, and so forth. If the ideal of a pure genre has rarely or perhaps never truly been identified in classical contexts, Latin American horror demonstrates that impurity might be one—that is, if there even is one—distinctive trait of the production of this genre on the Latin American continent. In fact, there is still no crystalized “genre culture” in Latin American literature and film. To attain full-fledged commercial and critical success, a Latin American writer/filmmaker must write/direct mainstream fiction, and this means “realist” fiction in most cases. The reasons for this phenomenon are varied. The infrastructural context (i.e., editorial market, editorial policies, audience, and reader demands) may partially contribute to the situation. Critical and academic orientations, which involve the valorization of the realist novel and authorship (auterism) to the detriment of “industrial” or “escapist” genres, can also be included in this context.