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This article examines the issue of whether contemporary Latin American literature can continue to be considered national literature. Through a look at the panorama of publishing in Spain and Latin America, it reflects on the fragmentation of the markets and its effect on the genres and styles of contemporary authors, and posits the appearance of a more individualized literary occupation that is less subject to considerations of national or regional identity. The article discusses the works of a wide range of Latin American authors from generations appearing between 1990 and 2010, marking its discussion within the context of observations of Roger Bartra and Jesús Martín-Barbero regarding the nationalist criticism such as ideology and the breakdown of the role of the nation as a transcendent totality. It also takes note that, together with the pro-government nationalism promoted by national states, an autonomous and individualist tendency has existed among writers, fruit of the modern tradition, which brings them to look for their own space at the margins of bourgeois society. The post-national authors of this day and age, the article notes, are characterized not so much by the desire to expand national borders but rather to reject them. [TRANSLATION]

The article discusses the process of globalization of Latin American literature and the strong need of Latin American authors to create a geographic, ethnic and literary identity. The writers of the 1960s-1970s Latin American literary boom and after, into the 1990s, demonstrated awareness of self, expressed through autobiography or fiction. Literature began to focus on the exile of the narrator, which is cited as a representation of the author who cannot participate in the literary course of history. Modernization required self-representation, the author suggests, so as to leave a permanent legacy of one's contribution to Latin American narrative.

The figure of the soldier writer in literature stories constitutes a foundational paradigm in the construction of the idea about the Latin-American intellectual. Such paradigm is the object of a dynamic that we named the circle of metamorphosis, which evidences the process that begins with the soldier writer in battle —represented by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada— and ends with the hero writer as a constructor of public opinion and narrator of national history. All these images take part in the construction of national identity and in the ideal of the Latin-American intellectual linked to the battle and performance characteristics of Emancipation. Thus, this article aims to open the door for future discussions around the rol of literature stories inside the social and historical development of the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of artistic movement Surrealism in Latin America, with a focus on literary production. It is the author's view that contrary to the common opinion, surrealism did not take root in Latin America, and except for some texts of Mexican poet Octavio Paz, Latin American surrealist literature is rather scarce. Topics discussed include points of disagreement between surrealism and Latin American social conditions, magic realism, and nationalism in Latin American literature.