La imaginación en un burdel, un sueño latinoamericano hecho ficción: los prostíbulos novelescos

Abstract

In the 2009, writer Jorge Volpi published the essay “El insomnio de Bolívar” (“Bolívar’s insomnia”) in which he argues in favor of abandoning, for being unreal and chimeric, the idea of “Latin American literature”. Through the reading of four novels –“Body Snatcher” (“Juntacadáveres” 1964), “The Place Without Limits” (“El lugar sin límites” 1965), “The Green House” (“La casa verde” 1966) and “Captain Pantoja and the Special Service” (“Pantaleón y las visitadoras 1973)– I will seek to reveal how wrong and tendentious such a stance is. To do so, I will base my argument on the minute analysis of the novelistic brothels that found in the four stories, from their appearances to their annihilation. Appearances that, far from being insignificant, show from the beginning an extreme complexity through the series of tensions that are articulated between the characters and the societies represented. This complexity becomes enriched and dense once we think of the types of activities that take place in the whorehouses, activities in which the festivities and carnavals determine a whole series of metamorphoses, completely alien to outside reality. Lastly, I will focus on the dynamics of the pimps or promoters of the brothels, peculiar individuals that manifest an unheard-of will in which imagination searches to deny and replace reality. However, their activities, which in some cases evoke utopian exercises, end up succumbing to social censorship that, in one way or another, destroys the brothels without meaning the end of the changes introduced by them in the societies that receive them. Since very few other fictional spaces are so frequent and rich in values in Latin American literature, in the conclusion I will demonstrate how this type of text (and novelistic space) allows us to justifiably speak of “Latin American literature”.