Environmental Apocalypse and Uncanny Technology: Gothic Visions of the Future in Three Mexican Literary Dystopias

The reality of the production of literature that follows a non-mimetic code in Latin America is definitely a complex one.With the exception of Magical Realism, a mode of writing considered native to the territory and, therefore, respected and reinforced because of its necessary connection to (and acceptance of) the magic dimension of Latin American reality, the critics generally show a consistent lack of interest in narratives belonging to other forms of "the unusual".However, ignoring the great complexity of the several shapes that the "literary extraordinary" can take in the diverse fictions of Latin America, implies disregarding a great deal of hybrid fictions containing essential (yet distorted) reflections of the multifaceted reality of the territory.There are indeed several fictions that conform to a Magical Realist code; however, the narratives belonging to the fantastic genre, the Gothic, and science fiction should not be overlooked.We can think of these modes of representation as establishing an essential relationship towards a higher concept of non-mimetic literature that encompasses all of them, in a theory similar to the one presented by Rosemary Jackson:It could be suggested that fantasy is a literary mode from which a number of related genres emerge.Fantasy provides a range of possibilities out of which various combinations produce different kinds of fiction in different historical situations.Borrowing linguistic terms, the basic model of fantasy could be seen as a language, or langue, from which its various forms, or paroles, derive.Out of this model develops romance literature or 'the marvellous' (including fairy tales and science fiction), Ordiz Alonso-Collada 2 'fantastic' literature (including stories by Poe, Isak Dinesen, Maupassant, Gautier, Kafka, H. P. Lovecraft) and related tales of abnormal psychic states, delusion, hallucination, etc. ( 7)The modes of writing included in this higher conception of the fantastic are, especially in postmodern times, necessarily hybrid.In Lucie Armitt's words, fantasy is "constantly overspilling the very forms it adopts, always looking, not so much for escapism but certainly to escape the constraints that critics … always and inevitably impose upon it" (3).The hybridization of the different discourses of fantasy is directly connected with what Gary Wolfe has labelled "post-genre fantastic," or the essential mélange of horror, Gothic fiction and the recent "dark fantasy", that so well represents a confused (and confusing) contemporary reality marked by "globalized flows, strange interpretations and simultaneities" (Luckhurst 33)."Fantasy", "post-genre fantastic", "the literature of the unusual"; whatever the term we use to describe this postmodern crossbreed monster, it is already a reality of western literature in general, and of Latin American fictions in particular.It is not my intention to offer a detailed examination of all the different modes of the literary extraordinary in the Latin American territory, but rather to narrow down the scope of my analysis to the Gothic resources used in Mexican contemporary science fiction.I will mainly be focusing on the way in which this combination reproduces a mixed reality which, as the country's fictions, navigates between the preservation of a native identity, the recollection of a pre-Hispanic past and the acknowledgement of the overwhelming power of globalization.Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado, in his anthology of Mexican science fiction, asserts that the study of this mode in Mexico necessarily brings along a "double marginality" (Ordiz 1045; Fernández Delgado 17) generated by the unconventionality of the genre in a country not traditionally associated with it.Adding the Gothic to the equation might be, then, exploring a path three times marginalized, but also deeply rooted in the popular cultural imagination of the Ordiz Alonso-Collada 3 country.The fictions I will be taking into account are, not surprisingly, intrinsically hybrid.As Rachel Haywood Ferreira points out, not only is SF a genre with "nebulous borders", but Latin American SF shows a "strong propensity to form hybrids with neighbouring genres" (8).A Gothic perspective implies a study of the points of intersection between both genres, which are defined by Fred Botting as "dark and disturbing, obscure regions, populated by terrors and horrors that knowledge has failed to penetrate or control" (131).As if these types of fictions were not enough of a muddle, we also need to take into account that the Gothic fictions of the 20 th and 21 st century commonly set off in two directions, conveying both a globalized reality and a specific set of cultural fears.As Glennis Byron suggests in her article "Global Gothic", the reality of contemporary forms of terror necessarily depends upon this universalization of culture: "the literature and film of different countries are feeding off each other to produce new forms of Gothic that reveal the increasing cross-cultural dynamics of the globalized world" (373).Also, "[a]s the global thrives on producing the local, commodifying it, and marketing it, so contemporary global Gothic increasingly appropriates and commodifies local or regional folklores" (374).The result of this dependent relationship between the specifically cultural and the global results in a type of narrative addressed both to local and universal audiences.This dual feature of the global Gothic acquires a special interest in a territory which has such a love-hate relationship with the United States, the ultimate "giant" of globalization.Addressing this type of cultural colonization, the younger generations of Latin American writers seem to propose an acceptance of the new power of globalization and its necessary connection to the contemporary reality of the continent.In the prologue of the 1996 book McOndo, 1 Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez state the following:1 By the use of the word "McOndo," the authors introduce a wordplay referencing both Macondo (the fictional town described by Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude) as something distinctly Latin American, and McDonald's as a product of globalization.Ordiz Alonso-Collada 5 description of the poor urban slums of futuristic Mexico City in the novel La leyenda de los soles ("The Legend of the Suns", 1993).These two novels, along with the cyberpunk fiction La primera calle de la soledad ("The First Street of Solitude", 1993), by Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, provide a staunch critique of a system where political authority equals economic power and "Caudillismo", or selfish leadership, is still being practiced.These themes, while bringing to mind contemporary concerns about the current world order, are also deeply rooted in Latin American reality (Kreksch 178).The prospective city that these authors draw is also highly polluted, suffering from continuous acid rain and covered in smog as a reflection of the contamination problems that the city has been registering for the past sixty years.Impoverished, contaminated, decaying, governed by monstrous individuals, the future version of Mexico becomes a terrifying projection of present fears.Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz also comments on the powerful vision of destruction and insecurity that the earthquake hitting Mexico City on September 19 th 1985 projected.Just as

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