El caribe nicaragüense en textos de la literatura nacional moderna: de la civilización protectorista a la mulatidad global

Abstract

This article analyzes some of the basic forms in which the modern Nicaragua literature has conceived the Caribbean region, traditionally marginalized by the national discourses. Through the comparison of essays and narratives by three canonical authors, it establishes different views about the «otherness» of the Caribbean. Firstly, in José Coronel Urtecho’s texts, the Caribbean is portrayed as the place of the paradisiacal and pre-civilized. In second place, in Lizandro Chávez Alfaro’s short stories, the Caribbean is a location of authentic but abject cultural era of globalization. In these three examples, literature works inside the national discourse taking as basis some colonial marks such as the project of civilization, the paradisiacal space, the view of the travelogue, the propaganda of «mestizaje», and the abjection of the native. These elements are located inside of the dominant «mestizaje» or in transcultural and contesting projects as Chávez Alfaro’s.