Those Who Re(count) Matter: Fiction and Testimonial in Emiliano Monge’s Las tierras arrasadas

Abstract

Las tierras arrasadas exemplifies the contribution that literary form makes to representations of the violence Central American migrants suffer in Mexican territory and of the stories they tell. My analysis compares the incorporation of actual migrants’ testimonials with the words associated with Merolico, a fictional migrant who, decades earlier, committed atrocities in an unnamed Central American counterinsurgency. The novel situates the migration crisis in a hemispheric context that elucidates an economy that depends upon the absolute commodification of human beings. I conclude that the intertextual structure of Tierras undermines forms of temporality and subjectivity that sustain such an economy.