Editing Latin America (section)

===Literature===
{{Main|Latin American literature}}
{{Unreferenced section|date=April 2022}}
{{See also|List of Latin American writers}}
[[File:Gabriela Mistral-01.jpg|thumb|right|175px|Chilean poet [[Gabriela Mistral]], first Latin American to win a [[Nobel Prize in Literature]], in 1945]]

[[File:Gabogarciamarquez1.png|thumb|left|175px|upright|[[Gabriel García Márquez]] Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, primarily for his masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" ("Cien años de soledad").]]

[[File:Paz0.jpg|thumb|upright|175px|[[Octavio Paz]] Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990 for his influential body of work, which explored existential themes, Mexican identity, and the complexities of modernity]]
[[File:Miguel_Angel_Asturias.jpg|thumb|left|175px|upright|[[Miguel Ángel Asturias]] received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967 for his literary contributions, particularly for his novels that delve into the complexities of Latin American society and its indigenous cultures.]]
[[File:Mario Vargas Llosa (crop 2).jpg|175px|thumb|upright=.7|Peruvian [[Mario Vargas Llosa]], the winner of the 2010 [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] and the 1994 [[Miguel de Cervantes Prize]], among others]]

Pre-Columbian cultures were primarily oral, although the Aztecs and Maya, for instance, produced elaborate [[Aztec codices|codices]]. Oral accounts of mythological and religious beliefs were also sometimes recorded after the arrival of European colonizers, as was the case with the [[Popol Vuh]]. Moreover, a tradition of oral narrative survives to this day, for instance among the [[Quechua languages|Quechua]]-speaking population of Peru and the [[K'iche' people|Quiché (K'iche')]] of Guatemala.

From the very moment of Europe's discovery of the continents, early explorers and [[conquistadores]] produced written accounts and crónicas of their experience{{spaced ndash}}such as [[Christopher Columbus|Columbus]]'s letters or [[Bernal Díaz del Castillo]]'s description of the conquest of Mexico. During the colonial period, written culture was often in the hands of the church, within which context [[Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz]] wrote memorable poetry and philosophical essays. Towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, a distinctive [[Criollo (people)|criollo]] literary tradition emerged, including the first novels such as Lizardi's ''[[El Periquillo Sarniento]]'' (1816).

The 19th century was a period of "foundational fictions" in critic Doris Sommer's words, novels in the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] or [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalist]] traditions that attempted to establish a sense of national identity, and which often focussed on the Indigenous question or the [[dichotomy]] of "civilization or barbarism" (for which see, say, [[Domingo Faustino Sarmiento|Domingo Sarmiento]]'s ''[[Facundo]]'' (1845), [[Juan León Mera]]'s ''Cumandá'' (1879), or [[Euclides da Cunha]]'s ''[[Os Sertões]]'' (1902)). The 19th century also witnessed the realist work of [[Machado de Assis]], who made use of surreal devices of metaphor and playful narrative construction, much admired by critic [[Harold Bloom]].
[[File:Jorge Luis Borges 1951, by Grete Stern.jpg|thumb|[[Jorge Luis Borges]] in 1951]]
At the turn of the 20th century, ''[[modernismo]]'' emerged, a poetic movement whose founding text was Nicaraguan poet [[Rubén Darío]]'s ''Azul'' (1888). This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside of the region, and was also the first truly Latin American literature, in that national differences were no longer so much at issue. [[José Martí]], for instance, though a Cuban patriot, also lived in Mexico and the United States and wrote for journals in Argentina and elsewhere.

However, what really put Latin American literature on the global map was no doubt the literary [[Latin American Boom|boom]] of the 1960s and 1970s, distinguished by daring and experimental novels (such as [[Julio Cortázar]]'s ''[[Hopscotch (Julio Cortázar novel)|Rayuela]]'' (1963)) that were frequently published in Spain and quickly translated into English. The Boom's defining novel was [[Gabriel García Márquez]]'s ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude|Cien años de soledad]]'' (1967), which led to the association of Latin American literature with [[magic realism]], though other important writers of the period such as the Peruvian [[Mario Vargas Llosa]] and [[Carlos Fuentes]] do not fit so easily within this framework. Arguably, the Boom's culmination was [[Augusto Roa Bastos]]'s monumental ''Yo, el supremo'' (1974). In the wake of the Boom, influential precursors such as [[Juan Rulfo]], [[Alejo Carpentier]], and above all [[Jorge Luis Borges]] were also rediscovered.

Contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and varied, ranging from the best-selling [[Paulo Coelho]] and [[Isabel Allende]] to the more avant-garde and critically acclaimed work of writers such as [[Diamela Eltit]], [[Giannina Braschi]], [[Ricardo Piglia]], or [[Roberto Bolaño]]. There has also been considerable attention paid to the genre of [[Testimony#Literature|testimonio]], texts produced in collaboration with [[Subaltern (postcolonialism)|subaltern]] subjects such as [[Rigoberta Menchú]]. Finally, a new breed of chroniclers is represented by the more journalistic [[Carlos Monsiváis]] and Pedro Lemebel.

The region boasts six [[Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize winners]]: in addition to the two Chilean poets [[Gabriela Mistral]] (1945) and [[Pablo Neruda]] (1971), there is also the Guatemalan novelist [[Miguel Ángel Asturias]] (1967), the Colombian writer [[Gabriel García Márquez]] (1982), the Mexican poet and essayist [[Octavio Paz]] (1990), and the Peruvian novelist [[Mario Vargas Llosa]] (2010).