Description
The conquest of Mexico by the Spanish wasn’t a leyenda typical of the time. The conquest was real horror that had an everlasting effect on the psyche of the native Mexican mind. Consequently, the idea of the safe home became threatened through violence while in parallel, a Mexican identity was forced to move towards mestizaje and away from its indigenous familiarity. Post-conquest, the threat of an encroaching danger in both the physical and mental home continued through the process of coming to terms with a violent past and the consequent changes. This thesis suggests that through the search for a new home and for familiarity, Gothic literature in Mexico has played an important role. Furthermore, as the idea of the home and the intimacies of pre-conquest society were shattered through colonization, the cultural idea of death went through changes as well. In pre-conquest Mexico, during the Aztec era, death was a part of life and a part of the creation of the world. After the spiritual conquest, Christianity spread through Mexico and transformed this idea of death. The Gothic genre has become a criticism of this Catholic, and inherently, colonial influence. Through this transformation of death from pre-conquest to post-conquest and now in the era of globalization, I set out to explore how the Gothic came to be in Mexico and how it was powered by the writers in the likes of Juan Rulfo and Carlos Fuentes during the 1950s and forward. In the era of globalization and transnationalism, I investigate Guillermo del Toro’s life and cinematic work, Cronos, alongside Carlos Fuentes’ Vlad, and their use of vampires as a platform for social commentary. Lastly, building on the same idea but with an added lens – focusing on the transcultural effects of the border – I will investigate how the fusion of Mexican death culture, Spanish and US colonization and influence, and the Gothic genre have saturated Chicana/o thought and literature. As Barbara L. C. Brodman mentions in The Mexican Cult of Death in Myth and Literature: “Death is...a constant companion of the Mexican in his journey through life” (v).
