Dictator novel
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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).
Dictator
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A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times of emergency.
20th-century leaders typically described as dictators, from left to right and top to bottom, include Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany; Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile; Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party; Benito Mussolini, Duce and Prime Minister of Italy; Kim Il Sung, Supreme Leader of North Korea
Julius Caesar outmaneuvered his opponents in Ancient Rome to install himself as dictator for life.
Giuseppe Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily in 1860.
Under Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Syrian military inflicted industrial-scale atrocities on civilian population during the Syrian civil war. These include hundreds of chemical attacks, such as the Ghouta chemical attack, the largest chemical attack in the 21st century.