24

Mexican Literature in the Neoliberal Era

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado

In the context of a book such as A History of Mexican Literature, the

discussion and selection of works from a literary period in progress is, at
the very least, a problematic endeavor. It is always possible that the most
recognized works of the contemporary epoch will slowly slide into obliv-
ion – or that the masterworks that capture the present in all its intensity are
being written unbeknownst to literary critics. Mexican literature of the
neoliberal era, which roughly starts with the cultural policies of the
administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994) and continues to
this day, is still a work in progress. To account for it, one must mainly focus
on the processes that have defined literature as a set of institutional under-
takings that differ in fundamental ways from the postrevolutionary period
covered in the other articles in this section, as well as on the aesthetic,
ideological, and cultural consequences of these endeavors in works cur-
rently considered significant. Some of the phenomena that unfold
throughout the 1990s include: the emergence of the Consejo Nacional
para la Cultura y las Artes (Conaculta) and its impact on funding for
writers; the corporate consolidation of the editorial world and the emer-
gence of independent publishers against the grain of corporatization; the
decentralization of literary writing away from the institutions of Mexico
City; and the emergence, in particular, of a strong current of writing in
northern Mexico and the changes brought forward by the Internet in
contemporary writing.
Conaculta is an institutional body of the Mexican government that
concentrates the financing and promotion of a large percentage of artistic
and cultural production in Mexico. It was created in 1988 in order to
coordinate cultural activities of the federal government, and it exists as a
“decentralized” organism under the purview of the Secretaría de Educación
Pública (SEP). As far as literature is concerned, Conaculta has developed
substantial efforts in different parts of the process. Through its fellowship
arm, the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA), it sustains
365

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 366 ignacio m. sánchez prado
an extensive system of fellowships devoted to the financing of literary
artists, ranging from new writers under the age of thirty-five (called
Jóvenes Creadores) to authors with a substantial career (in the Sistema
Nacional de Creadores Artísticos, under which writers may even get a
lifetime fellowship). In addition, Conaculta sustains a thriving publishing
program that not only issues its own books but also subsidizes a consider-
able array of independent publishers through wide-ranging coedition
schemes. Finally, Conaculta owns the Educal bookstore network, the
largest in the country. The idea of this kind of institution in Mexico,
particularly the support for writers embodied by the FONCA, has its
origins in the influential writings of Gabriel Zaid – collected recently in
the volume Dinero para la cultura (2013) – and in different manifestos that
Zaid published with the backing of many other intellectuals, echoing
much of the literary community’s demand for the proper professionaliza-
tion of the writer’s work.
Clearly, Conaculta has a strong presence in the whole chain of literary
production and distribution, from writing to point of sale. This kind of
centralization of resources undoubtedly carries negative effects. Through
this system, most Mexican writers have a direct economic relationship to
the state, which leads to frequent accusations of co-optation and to a
problematic contradiction when intellectuals seek to position themselves
as public figures trying to critique the political regime. In addition, access
to both funding and distribution is subject to selection processes by juries
(mostly composed of other writers), and it is not uncommon to see that
authors who belong to similar aesthetic trends, literary groups, or publica-
tions as the jurors are favored over writers pursuing “minor” genres (such as
science fiction) or forms of writing not yet validated by the literary field. It
is also true that the magnitude of public expenditure invested in literature
in particular, and in culture in general, is subject to intense debate.
Proponents consider that only through public financing can culture thrive
in a country where audiences do not always have the economic capacity or
educational levels to sustain cultural activity. In turn, detractors contend
that this subsidy masks the underlying problems: the lack of substantial
audiences due to the ruinous state of public education in Mexico and the
use of resources to subsidize a cultural bourgeoisie at the expense of sectors
with greater economic need.1
Despite these critiques, it is absolutely true that the Conaculta structure
has had two major positive effects on Mexican literature. First, in funding
writers from all of Mexico and in providing bookstores and distribution in
places where private companies have failed to bring books, Conaculta has

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 Mexican Literature in the Neoliberal Era 367
in fact contributed to the process of decentralizing Mexican literature away
from Mexico City. Second, in providing funding to writers at all stages of
their careers and in all genres, and in publishing works that may not have
an outlet in commercial presses, Conaculta has undoubtedly contributed
to fostering greater diversity in literary production. Perhaps the best
illustration of this is the Tierra Adentro program. Tierra Adentro was
born in 1974 as a magazine published at the behest of Víctor Sandoval in
the city of Aguascalientes, and in 1990 it was integrated into Conaculta,
becoming a “cultural program.” Since then, Tierra Adentro has continued
publishing the magazine (which is currently a monthly publication), but
the truly important part of the program is its book series. Since 1990, it has
published over five hundred volumes in five genres: novel, short story,
poetry, drama, and essay. Many of its earlier publications indicate impor-
tant phenomena that would grow through subsequent years. For instance,
En la línea de fuego (1990) compiled short detective stories from the U.S.-
Mexico border region, foreshadowing the growth of literature from the
northern region of Mexico that began in the 1990s and the boom of
detective fiction as a literary mode of narconarrative. Another important
example is the three-volume collection Más allá de lo imaginado (1991), the
first major effort to compile Mexican science fiction, which led, along with
a literary prize based in the city of Puebla, to recognition of the genre
within mainstream Mexican literary institutions. Other efforts included
Los escritores indígenas actuales (1992) and Teatro joven de México (1992), the
first of many efforts spearheaded by Tierra Adentro in supporting the
publication of playwrights. Even though this is no longer the case, a
notable feature of Tierra Adentro’s early years was the fact that they only
published writers born outside of Mexico City, providing a reliable venue
for authors from regions of the country that were lacking in adequate
publication infrastructure. In addition, due to Educal, Tierra Adentro
books actually enjoy circulation across all major cities in the country,
and they do so at a fixed subsidized price (sixty pesos, or four dollars, at
the time of this writing). Of course, backing younger writers involves risk;
many Tierra Adentro authors are no longer active. But it is astonishing
how many major writers published their first work, or among their earliest,
in the series. Just by looking at the first fifty books, one encounters the
names of many authors whose careers are currently thriving: Ernesto
Lumbreras, Pedro Ángel Palou, Hugo Salcedo, José Homero, Patricia
Laurent Kullick, Dana Gelinas, Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz, David Toscana,
Luis Vicente de Aguinaga, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, and Silvia Eugenia
Castillero are among those who stand out. In more recent years, writers

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 368 ignacio m. sánchez prado
such as Cristina Rivera Garza, Yuri Herrera, Carlos Velázquez, Alberto
Chimal, and many others have benefited from Tierra Adentro as the
launch pad for successful careers in literary writing.
While Conaculta built a state infrastructure that would decidedly con-
tribute to the promotion and distribution of literature, the world of private
publishing suffered major changes due to corporate neoliberalization. As
Spain emerged from the Franco dictatorship and became an economic
force to reckon with, the country’s publishing sector acquired a sizable
influence in Latin America. Major Spain-based houses such as Planeta and
Alfaguara expanded into Latin American countries either by aggressively
pursuing contracts with large numbers of writers or by directly acquiring
established publishers in individual nations. This had a particularly intense
effect on the production and circulation of prose fiction – decried in many
cases as a phenomenon of homogenization and what Barrera Enderle calls
“alfaguarización” (2002) – but has also led to a different relationship
between Mexican fiction and the Spanish-speaking world. Planeta bought
the Joaquín Mortiz publishing house in 1985 – a notable feat, considering
that the press had been instrumental in the development of Mexican
literature for decades. The presence of these publishing houses, however,
did not stall the development of Mexican fiction. Rather, the young
writers’ output gradually became the territory of Tierra Adentro, and
presses such as Alfaguara and Planeta would more often than not be
associated with more consecrated authors. In any case, many landmark
books of the decade were published by these two houses: Juan Villoro’s El
disparo de argón (1991), Daniel Sada’s Una de dos (1994), and Ana Clavel’s
Los deseos y su sombra (2000) were published by Alfaguara, while Joaquín
Mortiz, as a Planeta-owned imprint, released landmark works such as
Enrique Serna’s El miedo a los animales (1995), Álvaro Enrigue’s La muerte
de un instalador (1996), and David Toscana’s Estación Tula (1995). It is
undeniable that both Alfaguara and Planeta remain major publication
venues for Mexican writers. Carlos Fuentes’s entire works (including late
masterpieces such as Los años con Laura Díaz [1999]) are part of the
Alfaguara catalog, along with influential works by other writers, such as
Xavier Velasco’s Diablo guardián [2003]).
The best-known response to this new editorial reality was the Crack
group, a collective of six authors (Jorge Volpi, Pedro Ángel Palou, Eloy
Urroz, Ignacio Padilla, Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, and Vicente Herrasti)
who launched their efforts in August of 1996 with the release of a manifesto
and one novel authored by each one of them, all constructed around the
trope of the Apocalypse. The Crack group was fairly controversial due to

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 Mexican Literature in the Neoliberal Era 369
the nature of their endeavor. Their onomatopoeic name sought to chal-
lenge the epigonal heritages of the Boom and magical realism by claiming
the right to write on universal topics rather than on regional identities. At
the same time, the release of simultaneous books and a manifesto were part
of a concerted marketing effort that struck many readers as dissonant with
the group’s claims to high literature. Although the movement made a
splash in Mexico, the moment of true consecration came when Jorge
Volpi’s Nazi-themed erudite thriller, En busca de Klingsor (1999), won
the prestigious Premio Biblioteca Breve in Spain (the first iteration in a
revived version of the award that, in the Boom years, had launched the
careers of authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa) and was published by Seix
Barral, also a Planeta imprint. This was immediately followed by another
major award, the Premio Primavera, granted to Ignacio Padilla’s
Amphytrion (2000) – an exploration of the question of evil that also centers
on topics connected to Nazism – which was published by another Planeta
imprint, Espasa Calpe. These two awards had the important effect of
changing the notion of Mexican and Latin American literature as primarily
defined by regional identity and magical realism, and were notable for
affirming commercial viability without falling into the stereotypes
denounced by the Crack manifesto. Even though the Crack did not last
long as a unified group, its writers remain central to Mexican literature:
now an Alfaguara author, Jorge Volpi remains one of the most widely read
Mexican writers in the transnational sphere; Ignacio Padilla and Eloy
Urroz continue to be referential figures; and Pedro Ángel Palou, after
winning a national award with his boxing-themed novel Con la muerte en
los puños (2003), has continued to publish a novel every year and has
recently emerged as an important writer of historical fiction.
The names tied to Alfaguara and Planeta are undoubtedly among the
most widely read authors. Writers such as Eduardo Montagner
Anguiano, Aline Petterson, Jaime Mesa, Tryno Maldonado, Brenda
Lozano, and Margo Glantz are just a small sample of authors in the
Alfaguara catalog today. However, other transnational houses have been
crucial to the development of Mexican literature. Random House
Mondadori (now Penguin Random House) has become a central pre-
sence in Mexican publishing life in the 2000s, and it recently purchased
Alfaguara. It has yielded major books by authors such as Martín Solares,
Gilma Luque, Laia Jufresa, and Hilario Peña. However, two other (more
independent) houses, Tusquets and Anagrama, were central to the
development of literary writing in Mexico in the 1990s and 2000s.
Tusquets was a crucial venue in the evolution of northern Mexican

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 370 ignacio m. sánchez prado
literature in the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly through their
publication of two books: Élmer Mendoza’s Un asesino solitario (1999)
and Daniel Sada’s Porque parece mentira nunca se sabe (2000). These
works proved crucial for the visibilization of literary works from the
north of the country, but they are also notable for the enormous risks
that they entailed at the time. Mendoza’s writing employed northern
Mexican vernacular in highly innovative ways while delving into the
killing of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in 1994. But Sada
was the most noteworthy case: a nearly eight-hundred-page book written
in verse-like sentence structures (using poetry patterns based on eight-,
eleven-, and fourteen-syllable meters) telling a baroque story. It is
undoubtedly the most daring and original work of the period, and
Sada remains a major reference point for writers and readers in
Mexico. Tusquets has also been the platform through which one of
Mexico’s most original and influential writers of the last fifteen years has
flourished: Cristina Rivera Garza. In 1999, Tusquets picked up her
award-winning historical novel, Nadie me verá llorar, a retelling of the
early twentieth century through the eyes of a psychiatrist and his female
patient, another landmark work in the period. From there, Rivera Garza
has continued to produce unique work, driven by experimentation,
perspective, and a strong theoretical basis, that encompasses poetry,
fiction, and the essay. In recent years, Tusquets has promoted writers
with highly original voices (such as David Miklos and Luis Felipe
Lomelí), as well as a notable array of women writers: Susana Iglesias,
Carla Faesler, and Norma Lazo, to name a few. Tusquets was recently
purchased by Planeta, so changes are likely in the future editorial line.
For its part, Anagrama has become a relentless promoter of Mexican
fiction. In its early days in the 1980s, the publishing house recognized
Sergio Pitol as one of the leading figures of the Mexican novel; as of the
1990s, it became a venue that gives transnational visibility to major
Mexican writers. Juan Villoro is the most visible figure today, particu-
larly after receiving the Herralde award for his major novel El testigo
(2004) and after publishing his key works in the press. Anagrama is also
the current publisher of Álvaro Enrigue and of the late Daniel Sada’s
works, both also recognized with the Herralde prize. Another notable
author is Guadalupe Nettel, whose idiosyncratic and highly subjective
fiction has made her one of Mexico’s most recognized women writers.
Anagrama has also published the landmark chronicles and essays of
Sergio González Rodríguez, including Huesos en el desierto (2002),
which has turned him into an enormously influential author in his

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 Mexican Literature in the Neoliberal Era 371
representations of the context of violence, femicides, and the drug war
plaguing Mexico. In more recent years, another Spanish publishing
house, Periférica, has been the venue for a key Mexican writer, Yuri
Herrera, who has gone on to become a leading author after achieving
great success in Tierra Adentro with his book Los trabajos del reino
(2004).
As Spain-based presses have come to control major segments of Mexican
literature and to publish some of its most relevant writers, it is also true that
relying on foreign editors is a problematic ordeal. Other than Anagrama,
presses headquartered in Spain do not guarantee Mexican writers distribu-
tion beyond Mexico. More often than not, presses such as Alfaguara and
Planeta have signed books and authors and, after selling out a modest print
run in Mexico, have then let the book go out of print, making no effort to
promote many writers in their transnational markets. In addition, the sales
and profitability standards of a corporate press do not always allow for the
development of certain forms of writing – especially those that, like poetry,
are nearly absent from commercial circuits. In these terms, it is equally
important to consider the role played by presses that have either emerged
or been consolidated during the neoliberal era in preserving the literary
ecosystem in Mexico. The most storied of these presses is Era. Founded in
the 1960s, Era remains a crucial venue for some of the most important
writers in the country. As a longstanding publisher of key writers in the
Mexican field, Era is always a repository of major books. It is a central
venue for the chronicle genre – a prose tradition that hybridizes the essay,
journalism, and fiction, discussed in the “Nonfictions” chapter of this
history. Era published Carlos Monsiváis’s landmark Los rituales del caos
(1996), while publication with Era of Sergio Pitol’s El arte de la fuga (1996)
allowed the already well-known writer to gain further recognition for his
unique brand of hybrid writing, flowing back and forth between fiction
and essay. Era also made a major literary discovery with Monterrey-born
writer Eduardo Antonio Parra, a talented author of short stories who has
gained wide recognition thanks to books such as Los límites de la noche
(1996). Other key independent presses include Oaxaca-based Almadía,
where the works of novelist-chronicler J. M. Servín (such as D.F.
Confidencial [2004]) and other unique writers have appeared, and Sexto
Piso, publisher of a carefully curated collection of translations but also
contributor to the launch of major young Mexican writers such as Valeria
Luiselli and Emiliano Monge. A more recent effort, the collection Hotel de
Letras in Editorial Océano, has already yielded major books, most notably
Antonio Ortuño’s La fila india (2013). The list of presses has expanded

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 372 ignacio m. sánchez prado
notably: houses such as Tumbona Ediciones, Libros Magenta, Surplus,
Simiente, Ficticia, Cuadrivio, and many others are contributing to the
diversification of Mexico’s literary world, countering the trend of consoli-
dation observed in the corporate publishing world.
The impact of some of these presses is more widely seen in the world of
poetry, which lacks the commercial profitability that prose provides to
corporate publishers. Planeta and Random House are mostly disconnected
from the poetry business (Planeta used to publish the winners of the
Aguascalientes National Poetry Award, but they stopped doing so a few
years ago). Conaculta thus stepped in by supporting a considerable number
of young poets in Tierra Adentro and more-credentialed ones in the
collection Práctica Mortal. Fondo de Cultura Económica has been another
venue, because they also undertake collections of complete or collected
poetry by authors who reach a certain level of status and recognition. But
many major poetry collections, perhaps some of the most definitive ones,
have been published in private independent presses. One can highlight
here Era’s catalog, which includes David Huerta’s Incurable (1987), Fabio
Morábito’s Alguien de lava (2002), Julián Herbert’s Kubla Khan (2005),
and Coral Bracho’s Ese espacio, ese jardín (2003), among many others.
Similarly impressive collections have been issued by Almadía (which
includes the works of authors such as Tedi López Mills, Luis Felipe
Fabre, José Eugenio Sánchez, and Hernán Bravo Varela) and by
Bonobos, one of the boldest and most original poetry presses in Mexico
today, where one can find books by authors such as Malva Flores, Myriam
Moscona, Román Luján, and others.
Poetry offers a particularly complex challenge for this chapter because it
is by far the most copiously published genre: it occupies over half of the
Tierra Adentro catalog; there are many small presses (such as the afore-
mentioned Bonobos, as well as El Tucán de Virginia, Ediciones Sin
Nombre, and the recently born Valparaíso) devoted fully or mostly to
poetry; and there is a considerable number of poetry anthologies that
appear every year, usually to great controversy between those excluded
and the editors. There are many great poets from established generations
who publish notably strong work. Some of the many who come to mind
include Luis Vicente de Aguinaga, Elsa Cross, Mónica Nepote, Antonio
Deltoro, José Luis Rivas, Javier Sicilia (at least until he quit poetry to
become a leading social activist), Héctor Carreto, and some of the pre-
viously mentioned authors. There is also a middle generation of poets who
have made a major splash in Mexican literature: Julián Herbert, Luis Felipe
Fabre, María Rivera, Mario Bojórquez, and Hernán Bravo Varela are

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 Mexican Literature in the Neoliberal Era 373
perhaps the best known. And, finally, there is an emerging generation of
poets who are subverting many accepted elements and truly reconfiguring
the genre: Yaxkin Melchy, Rodrigo Flores Sánchez, Inti García
Santamaría, Óscar de Pablo, Paula Abramo, Karen Villeda, Maricela
Guerrero, and many others. I present these names with a big caveat:
contemporary poetic output is so copious and diverse that it is impossible
to establish anything close to a definitive list of authors, which means that
there are many other poets equally deserving of mention. Though hardly
free of controversy, there are a few anthologies that compile most – though
certainly not all – of the poets who have earned recognition. The second
volume of Juan Domingo Argüelles’s Antología general de la poesía mex-
icana (2014) is among the most inclusive, while El manantial latente (2002)
by Ernesto Lumbreras and Hernán Bravo Varela, El oro ensortijado (2009)
by Mario Bojórquez and other members of the group Círculo de Poesía,
and two compilations of translations – Luis Cortés Bargalló’s Connecting
Lines (2006) and Jen Hofer’s Sin puertas visibles (2003) – all provide partial
but interesting representations of the contemporary landscape.
As I noted earlier, a discussion of this period must account for the
forceful emergence of literature from the northern states of Mexico as a
genre of its own. The category of “Literatura del Norte” – and the subset of
books devoted to the drug trade, “narconarrative” or “narcoliterature” –
constitutes a problematic classification, because it ultimately flattens a very
diverse literature due to its authors’ geographical origins. However, the
category makes a very important point in the context of Mexican literature,
where literary consecration has always required validation by institutions in
Mexico City, even when authors were born elsewhere in the country. If
anything, “Literatura del Norte” authors have managed to acquire great
relevance and prominent positions in national literature – and have been
able to create alternative institutions such as the fabulous press Yoremito –
while challenging the centralism of the country’s literary world. There are
some precursors, such as Federico Campbell, Jesús Gardea, Ricardo
Elizondo Elizondo and Severino Salazar, who preceded the neoliberal
era, but the generation that emerged in the 1990s is the one that truly
established the category: Eduardo Antonio Parra, Élmer Mendoza, David
Toscana, Daniel Sada, and Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, whose novel
Contrabando (1994) is generally considered to be a founding text of
narconarrative. It is unquestionable that writers from the Mexican
north – dealing with a legacy of exclusion from histories of Mexican
literature, regional histories, and cultures with layers and nuances typically
ignored by the more stereotypical portrayals of their region in national

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 374 ignacio m. sánchez prado
literary texts, and favored both by the decentralizing forces of Tierra
Adentro and by the ability to distribute their work increasingly on the
Internet – have not only become a force to reckon with, but have also
produced some of the most original literary work and critical thinking in
contemporary Mexico. In Tijuana, for instance, writer Luis Humberto
Crosthwaite has earned a deserved reputation as a unique writer and
garnered a substantial following, particularly since the release of his origi-
nal novel El gran preténder (1992) with Tierra Adentro. An equally forceful
voice is that of Heriberto Yépez, who burst onto the national literary scene
with the novel A.B.U.R.T.O. (2005) and has developed work not only as a
fiction writer, but also as a poet. Perhaps even more important is his work
as a literary and cultural critic, with interventions in questions of literary
aesthetics, philosophy, psychology, and the politics of the literary field that
have turned him into one of the most polarizing voices in Mexican
literature, but undoubtedly also one of the most important ones, in the
past twenty years. Also hailing from the north are authors previously
mentioned, such as Cristina Rivera Garza, born in Tamaulipas and cur-
rently based in the San Diego-Tijuana region; Eduardo Antonio Parra, a
leading voice within a boom of writers from the industrial city of
Monterrey (including David Toscana, Luis Felipe Lomelí, Orfa Alarcón,
Antonio Ramos Revillas, and Óscar David López, among others); and
Élmer Mendoza, hailing from Sinaloa, like Juan José Rodríguez and César
López Cuadras. It must be asserted that, even though there are important
overlaps among many of these writers due to shared legacies of violence and
immigration across the Mexican north, “Literatura del Norte” is by no
means a homogenous category or an aesthetic marker; rather, it constitutes
a recognition of the talent and diverse work of writers from regions that
had long been ignored by the Mexican mainstream.
To conclude this entry, it is worth remembering that Mexico has a
lively editorial and journalistic world that, in recent years, has built upon
the legacies of the twentieth century to continue engaging in critique and
debate. Two leading magazines, Nexos and Letras Libres, remain central
to literary production, even though both are also active in politics. Born
as a left-wing magazine in the 1980s and converted into what many
considered to be a neoliberal publication in the early 1990s, Nexos
remains a central publication, particularly due to its association with
major writers such as its director, Héctor Aguilar Camín, and Ángeles
Mastretta (the authors of important books mentioned in Ryan Long’s
essay in this book) and because, although centered mostly on politics, it
maintains an influential section devoted to literary criticism and

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 Mexican Literature in the Neoliberal Era 375
commentary. Letras Libres, founded by Enrique Krauze in 1999 after the
closure of Octavio Paz’s Vuelta following his death, remains a major
venue for literature and criticism, both in the print magazine and on a
thriving website. Some of Mexico’s most influential literary critics,
essayists, and other writers who previously contributed to Vuelta –
including Christopher Domínguez Michael, Fernando García Ramírez,
Guillermo Sheridan, and Gabriel Zaid – remain central to Letras Libres.
These have been joined by younger critics who are involved in shaping
the public conversation on literature: Rafael Lemus (who has since
moved to other publications), Geney Beltrán Félix, Rafael Toriz, and
Eduardo Huchín Sosa are frequent contributors. The predominant role
of these magazines is not without controversy, but they both face the
challenge of a growing editorial world that has diversified tremendously
the number of venues where publication is possible – rendering virtually
impossible the type of cultural caudillismo exercised by the likes of
Alfonso Reyes and Octavio Paz in the twentieth century. Magazines
attached to universities, such as Crítica, Luvina, Revista de la
Universidad de México, Casa del Tiempo, and Unidiversidad, as well as
newspaper supplements such as Laberinto and Confabulario have opened
up the conversation. But perhaps more importantly, the advent of the
Internet has lead to the emergence of many Web magazines that have
evolved into editorial ventures or widely read portals. This is the case of
Cuadrivio, a website that has grown considerably; Ficticia, an online
portal devoted to the short story that also has a print publisher in the
genre; Círculo de poesía, an online magazine identified with a poetic
group that publishes extensively and has built substantial ties with pub-
lishers such as Valparaíso and Visor; and the website Mexico City Lit, a
prolific English-language forum about literature in Mexico City. It is of
note that Mexican writers today have an extensive online presence,
including through highly developed blogs and Twitter accounts (of
which writers such as Cristina Rivera Garza and Alberto Chimal provide
good examples), widely read online columns (such as Daniel Espartaco
Sánchez’s and Guillermo Sheridan’s blogs in Letras Libres), and heavy
presence in social media.
The final remark in this entry is to note that, even though neoliberal-
ism does involve strong forces of homogenization – such as a consolidated
corporate publishing field or a system of government fellowships that
frequently favor certain aesthetics over others – it is also true that
Mexican literature has been defined by a level of basically unprecedented
diversification and proliferation. I do not dare view any of the

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 376 ignacio m. sánchez prado
aforementioned authors or trends as canonical or definitive; literary out-
put is so vast and with such constant movement that it is hard to pin
down specific currents. I will be the first to admit that this account has
major gaps. Some of these gaps, for instance, involve the explosion of
genres. These include science fiction (in the work of many writers, such as
Bernardo Fernández [Bef] and Pepe Rojo); the so-called “literature of
imagination” (of which Alberto Chimal and Verónica Murguía are only
two of many representatives); literature referencing Japanese manga and
harajuku culture (developed by Eve Gil) and horror (as seen in the recent
work of Bernardo Esquinca); innovative forms of online publishing (as
developed by the unclassifiable writer Ruy Xoconostle); object-poetry (as
developed by Mónica Nepote) and collaborative online writing; literature
not only in indigenous languages (which have their own chapter in this
book), but also in previously unacknowledged language traditions such as
Ladino (in Myriam Moscona’s Tela de sevoya [2012]) and the Véneto
language spoken by the descendants of Italian immigrants to Chipilo,
Puebla (as in Eduardo Montagner Anguiano’s Al prim [2006]); forms of
the literary essay that become more and more hybridized over time (as
evidenced in Verónica Gerber Bicecci’s Mudanza [2010] and Ingrid
Solana’s Barrio Verbo [2014]); continuations of the twentieth-century
tradition of the literary chronicle into new forms of engaging the present
(including the work not only of cronistas like Jezreel Salazar and Magali
Tercero, but also of a new generation of investigative journalists that
include Diego Osorno, Marcela Turati, Anabel Hernández, and others);
booming generations of emerging playwrights (Hugo Alfredo Hinojosa,
Ximena Escalante, and David Gaitán, to mention just a few); literary and
cultural critics whose writings are expanding the notions of literature,
cinema, and other arts (Roberto Cruz Arzabal, Marina Azahua, Jorge
Téllez, Fernanda Solórzano, and many others); and probably many other
trends that escape my memory and my experience as a reader. One can
undoubtedly affirm that the long and rich history contained in this book
is continuing on with a literary tradition – rich and very much alive – that
will engage readers, scholars, critics, and literary historians in the years
to come.

Note
1. A good summary of these debates may be found in Ortuño, “FONCA.
Mecenas rico de pueblo pobre.” For a study on FONCA’s effects on literary
aesthetics, see Sánchez Prado, “La generación como ideología cultural.”

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 Mexican Literature in the Neoliberal Era 377
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