Published during the debates around the role of the author in response to the Cuban Revolution, at the height of the Latin American literary Boom, Todos los fuegos el fuego (1966) emerges not only as a culmination of Julio Cortázar’s short fiction but also as a volume in dialogue with the literary, social, and political concerns of the time. Constant throughout this collection is the representation of characters who are displaced from familiar surroundings either physically, psychologically, or even fantastically. Characters are forced to share an uncomfortable space in “Autopista del Sur,” a story situated on the highway south of Paris that presents an allegory of human relations. Through the textual transposition of Che Guevara’s diaristic rendition of his trajectory through the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Cuba, “Reunión” also records the historical meeting of revolutionaries. Meanings produced through displacements develop also in the closing story of the volume, “El otro cielo,” in which Paris and Buenos Aires are seamlessly intertwined in the character’s experience. Displacement functions as an organizing thread through Todos los fuegos el fuego; transfers and reverberations in the stories generate disquieting tensions that reflect contemporary sociopolitical realities and the human condition.

The year 1963 is special for Julio Cortázar: he publishes Rayuela (Hopscotch) and visits revolutionary Cuba. The year before one of his stories was adapted into a film (La cifra impar [Odd Number]) and, as Ángel Rama points out in his essay “El boom en perspectiva” (included in the volume Más allá del boom: literatura y mercado) the sales of his books start to increase steadily: 10,500 in 1964, 49,000 en 1967, almost 80,000 in 1969. The Rayuela phenomenon is but one in a myriad transformations that were taking place in the cultural and literary fields: the end of the chasm that had separated mass audiences from Argentinean literature, the Latin-Americanization of the intellectual and artistic fields, the transformation of the publishing industry with the rise of Editorial Sudamericana, among others (in 1962 Eudeba’s edition of Martín Fierro had become a bestseller). Starting with Rayuela and other works published those years (such as Manuel Mujica Lainez’s Bomarzo, which shared the Kennedy prize with Cortázar’s novel), this chapter questions the relationship between fiction and politics in a very troubled period of Latin American history.

According to Alejo Carpentier, Christopher Columbus rounded, rounded off and rounded up the planet. The cost was very high for the indigenous cultures of ‘nuestra América’ [our America]. Gradually, a new culture was founded made of all possible hybrids, that came from Europe, Africa and Asia. Carpentier himself also stated that, in order for the novel to exist, there must be a tradition of the novel; the first narrative manifestations were for domestic consumption: we would have to wait for the mid-twentieth century to begin what would soon become an avalanche. It was the return to Europe of the ships that once left Palos de Moguer, the carriers of another culture.

Several concomitant factors contributed to this reception in Europe. In post-war Europe, new curiosities were being awakened. André Malraux published his Musée imaginaire, thereby breaking the traditional Eurocentric hierarchy that gave Europe a civilizing mission in the face of the barbarism represented by the unfamiliar.

The perception of Gabriela Mistral and her poetry has transformed over the years: the image of Mistral as the traditionalist and conservative poet, fostered by the Pinochet dictatorship, has been replaced by that of a strong independent voice who, in part, stands for the liberation from society’s gender prescriptions. This chapter focuses on the series of poetry, Locas mujeres (Madwomen), published in Lagar (Winepress, 1954), to demonstrate how this new perception of Mistral holds true in her representation of women in these poems. In line with Mistral’s earlier poetry that underscores women’s voices that have typically not been heard, such as those of the pregnant women of Poemas de las madres (The Mothers’ Poems), the women from this series, designated “insane” by the title, and society, expose their true selves. This chapter first places this whole series in the context of Mistral’s poetry, and finally focuses on two poems, “La bailarina” (“The Dancer”) and “La que camina” (“She Who Walks”), to demonstrate their particular expressions of women’s liberty.

The perception of Gabriela Mistral and her poetry has transformed over the years: the image of Mistral as the traditionalist and conservative poet, fostered by the Pinochet dictatorship, has been replaced by that of a strong independent voice who, in part, stands for the liberation from society’s gender prescriptions. This chapter focuses on the series of poetry, Locas mujeres (Madwomen), published in Lagar (Winepress, 1954), to demonstrate how this new perception of Mistral holds true in her representation of women in these poems. In line with Mistral’s earlier poetry that underscores women’s voices that have typically not been heard, such as those of the pregnant women of Poemas de las madres (The Mothers’ Poems), the women from this series, designated “insane” by the title, and society, expose their true selves. This chapter first places this whole series in the context of Mistral’s poetry, and finally focuses on two poems, “La bailarina” (“The Dancer”) and “La que camina” (“She Who Walks”), to demonstrate their particular expressions of women’s liberty.

The decade of the 1960s provoked a specific interest in Latin America and its literature, largely owing to the impact of the Cuban Revolution and the attention it paid to the struggle in the cultural field. If until that point the continent’s great writers were perceived as isolated figures, the new context after 1959 created the conditions for them to be read as part of a group that was committed to the common duty of putting a new face on Latin American literature. In fact, the so-called Boom cannot be understood without considering the specific political context that acted as its sounding board. An intrinsic part of the atmosphere at the time, then, were heated debates that foregrounded the role of the intellectual in society, intense polemics regarding the limits of freedom of expression under socialism, and fiery conflicts about the status of literature in a revolutionary society. Paradoxically, the very same period was also seen by its protagonists as one of transition toward a new, as yet undefined, stage. If the decade of the 1960s was dominated by left-wing thought and by the idea of the continental revolution, the 1970s meant the withdrawal of the left, and a gradual rise for the right. In its own way – always and naturally tangentially – literature has narrated all those transitions.