Las luciérnagas de la muerte and Negra pesadilla roja: illumination amidst the tenebrific invasion of Panama

• Autores: Jenny Barranco
• Localización: Estudios del Observatorio, ISSN 2688-2957, ISSN-e 2688-2930, Nº. 61, 2020 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Reshaping Hispanic Cultures: 2019 Instituto Cervantes Symposium on Recent Scholarship Vol. II. Art and Literature / coord. por Marta Mateo Martínez-Bartolomé, María Bovea Pascual, Natalie Ramirez), págs. 45-52
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • As the 30th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Panama approaches, it prompts reflection about the social, economic, and political impacts that have occurred as a result. In various works that address the 1989 intervention the theme of allegorical love surfaces as a salient trope and literary device that is employed in order to provide the reader with the space for interpreting and understanding the relationship between the U.S. and Panama. This article examines intimate relationships in the novels Las luciérnagas de la muerte (1992), written by José Franco, and Negra pesadilla roja (1993), written by Mario Augusto Rodríguez, as a strategy to shed light on tragedy and deception, while also eliciting emotional responses from the reader. Furthermore, it demonstrates the importance of unpacking these tropes in order to understand the attributes that contribute to a Panamanian cultural identity, an identity marked by a more critical stance toward the U.S.