The dictator novel is a genre of Latin American literature that challenges the role of the dictator in Latin American society. The theme of caudillismo—the régime of a charismatic caudillo, a political strongman—is addressed by examining the relationships between power, dictatorship, and writing. Moreover, a dictator novel often is an allegory for the role of the writer in a Latin American society. Although mostly associated with the Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, the dictator-novel genre has its roots in the nineteenth-century non-fiction work Facundo (1845), by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.
Juan Manuel de Rosas, 19th-century Argentine dictator, by Cayetano Descalzi.
Nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia holding a traditional yerba mate gourd. Dr. Francia's autocratic rule was immortalized in Augusto Roa Bastos' I, the Supreme (1974).
Latin American literature
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the international success of the style known as magical realism. As such, the region's literature is often associated solely with this style, with the 20th century literary movement known as Latin American Boom, and with its most famous exponent, Gabriel García Márquez. Latin American literature has a rich and complex tradition of literary production that dates back many centuries.
Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most renowned Latin American writers
Sculpture of Alfonso Reyes writer of influential pieces of Mexican surrealism.
Roberto Bolaño is considered to have had the greatest United States impact of any post-Boom author
Octavio Paz helped to define modern poetry and the Mexican personality.