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The Chronicle (Latin American Studies)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The chronicle is a somewhat unstructured genre that combines literary aestheticism with the journalistic responsibility to inform. Many important Latin American literary figures, from César Vallejo to Gabriel García Márquez, have penned chronicles, and this practice has been instrumental to their literary contributions in other genres, such as poetry and the novel. At the turn of the 21st century, the most prominent public intellectuals can be primarily identified as chroniclers: such is the case of Mexico’s Elena Poniatowska, Chile’s Pedro Lemebel and Argentina’s María Moreno. But the genre’s visibility and recognition among literary scholars was slow in coming. For Spanish American modernistas such as Rubén Darío, José Martí, and Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, the chronicle was a necessary obligation that gave them the income to devote themselves to endeavors that they considered more literary, such as poetry. Many of the chroniclers of modernismo worked as correspondents, writing about Paris or New York for a Latin American public, and establishing the association between travel and the chronicle that would continue to evolve throughout the 20th century. During the 1920s and 1930s avant-garde movements and modernizing media began to change how writers and readers thought about literature, and the genre’s concern with questioning cultural hierarchies enabled chroniclers be more at ease with the genre’s dual links to high culture and urban popular culture The chronicle’s literary relevance in Latin America extends to Brazil, where it is considered by many as a national genre. The chronicle in Brazil followed a slightly different trajectory than in Spanish America, with the genre gaining literary recognition much sooner thanks to the importance of Machado de Assis, who published chronicles during most of his writing life. Chronicle writing in Brazil would also come to be strongly associated with Rio de Janeiro, and recognized chroniclers from other cities remain a minority. In the early 1970s the chronicle began to take an increasingly politicized role that heightened the genre’s affinities to testimonial narratives, and the works by Mexico’s Elena Poniatowska and Carlos Monsiváis would be instrumental in this new shift in the genre. The chronicle’s greater visibility, as well as its focus on political or social events enabled it to circulate in book form rather than primarily in newspaper articles, as had previously been the norm. As a genre that dwells on intimate portrayals of city life and idiosyncratic urban practices, the chronicle has frequently functioned as a medium to reflect on urban sexualities, be they emerging women writers or gay chroniclers. The chronicle remains a thriving and evolving practice, and the early 21st century has seen a number of new developments in the genre, from its increased focus on the violence and drug-trafficking cultures, to its engagement with the Internet as platform for communication.
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  5. General Overviews
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  7. As a flexible and malleable genre, the chronicle is notoriously difficult to define. For this reason, various texts have struggled with pinpointing the rhetorical and historical characteristics of the chronicle. The texts cited in this section all provide broad guidelines to reflect on the genre and its particularities in Spanish America (for definitions of the Brazilian chronicle, see Brazil). They do not, however, necessarily draw the same conclusions, as can be seen in the dialogue among the chroniclers José Joaquín Blanco, Vicente Leñero, and Juan Villoro in Blanco, et al. 2002. Corona and Jörgensen 2002, in which this dialogue is included, draws from chroniclers and critics alike. Although focused on Mexico, it showcases a diversity of approximations that can be helpful to scholars interested in the genre throughout Latin America. Sefchovich 2009 confirms the difficulties of defining the genre but transforms this limitation into an analytical tool that guides the author’s reflection. Egan 2002 takes a different stance by methodically defining the chronicle as opposed to the essay, thus avoiding the common gesture of recurring to the loose label of “hybrid genre.” Bielsa 2006 also develops the notion of hybridity, parting from a solid contextualization of the high/low culture debate in relation to the chronicle. Monsiváis 1987 was one of the first essays to comprehensively approach the genre’s manifestations in Mexico beyond a specific historical period, thus making the continuity of the chronicle visible to literary history. González 1993 is an analysis of the convergences between literature and journalism in Spanish America: while not devoted exclusively to the genre, it helps situate the chronicle within a broader literary context, and as part of an affinity that spans the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, Jorgensen 2011 offers a broad and productive theoretical reflection on nonfiction writing that builds on González 1993 and delves into the political and ethical dimensions of the late-20th-century chronicle.
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  9. Bielsa, Esperança. The Latin American Urban Crónica: Between Literature and Mass Culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006.
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  11. Chapters 1 through 4 offer a very useful introduction to the contemporary chronicle by focusing on the high/low culture debate that has long surrounded the genre. Chapters 5 and 6 compare the urban locations of Mexico City and Guayaquil, offering original close readings of two seldom-studied chroniclers: Emiliano Pérez Cruz and Jorge Martillo.
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  13. Blanco, José Joaquín, Vicente Leñero, and Juan Villoro. “Questioning the Chronicle.” In The Contemporary Mexican Chronicle: Theoretical Perspectives on the Liminal Genre. Edited by Ignacio Corona and Beth E. Jörgensen, 61–68. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
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  15. A brief and engaging discussion by three contemporary chroniclers on their practice. Focuses on the chronicle’s ethical commitment, foreign influences, and the genre’s political and aesthetic dimensions. This text is perhaps most fascinating because of the diverse range of responses from these authors: their differences point to the inherent difficulties in defining the genre.
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  17. Corona, Ignacio, and Beth E. Jorgensen. The Contemporary Mexican Chronicle: Theoretical Perspectives on the Liminal Genre. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
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  19. Although this edition focuses specifically on the contemporary chronicle in Mexico, it includes a wide range of important reflections by scholars and chroniclers that are pertinent to the chronicle as practiced throughout Latin America. An excellent first read for anyone looking to get a grasp on current debates surrounding the genre.
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  21. Egan, Linda. “Play on Words: Chronicling the Essay.” In The Contemporary Mexican Chronicle: Theoretical Perspectives on the Liminal Genre. Edited by Ignacio Corona and Beth E. Jörgensen, 95–121. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
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  23. An in-depth analysis of the rhetorical differences between the essay and the chronicle, two genres often described as hybrid and with almost interchangeable characteristics. Egan bases her argument on a contrast between a chronicle by Carlos Monsiváis and an essay by Héctor Aguilar Camín.
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  25. González, Aníbal. Journalism and the Development of Spanish American Narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
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  27. An essential reference to contextualize the role of the chronicle in the complex relationship between journalism and literature in Latin American letters. Of special relevance are chapter 5 on the chronicle during modernismo and chapter 6 on the ethics of writing. The book is written in a remarkably clear and approachable manner, very useful for advanced undergraduate courses or graduate seminars.
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  29. Jorgensen, Beth E. Documents in Crisis: Nonfiction Literatures in Twentieth-Century Mexico. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011.
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  31. This book does not focus exclusively on the chronicle, but its excellent theoretical grasp of nonfiction writing (chapter 1) makes it important reading for scholars interested in the political and ethical dimensions of the chronicle. Especially worth reading are chapter 5 (chronicles on crisis and catastrophe) and chapter 6 (on the Subcomandante Marcos’s chronicles from Chiapas).
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  33. Monsiváis, Carlos. “De la santa doctrina al espiritu público (sobre las funciones de la crónica en México).” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 35 (1987): 753–771.
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  35. Focusing on the works of Mexican chroniclers from colonial to modern times (Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Ignacio Altamirano, José Tomás de Cuellar, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Martín Luis Guzmán, Salvador Novo, Elena Poniatowska), Monsiváis argues for the value of the genre and critiques its invisibility in literary history.
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  37. Sefchovich, Sara. “Para definir la crónica.” Chasqui 38.1 (May 2009): 125–151.
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  39. A productive meditation on how difficult it is to define the chronicle, the questions that should be asked to grasp its implications, and the different mechanisms of representation that are made manifest in the genre. More than attempting an absolute definition, this essay offers guidelines to evaluate and analyze the diverse corpus of texts that are categorized under the rubric of “chronicle.”
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  41. Anthologies
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  43. Many anthologies grouping chronicles according to specific themes or national traditions have been published, and many are listed throughout this entire entry. Worth noting is the Argentinian María Moreno’s work as editor of the press Eterna Cadencia, which publishes a series devoted to anthologies of chronicles (two volumes are listed in this article, see under Travel Chronicles and Urban Sexualities). This anthologies section lists only two entries, and both are important volumes to consult for very different reasons. Jaramillo Agudelo 2012 is the most recent and comprehensive anthology of contemporary Latin American chronicles: it offers an excellent means to evaluate the genre’s new directions. Monsiváis 1980, since updated, was one of the first anthologies of chronicles to be published. As such, it marked a turning point in the recognition of a genre that often has been relegated to secondary importance in comparison to other literary genres.
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  45. Jaramillo Agudelo, Darío. Antología de la crónica latinoamericana actual. Madrid: Alfaguara, 2012.
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  47. The most recent and most comprehensive anthology of contemporary Spanish American chronicles (Brazil is not included). Includes many established chroniclers (such as Juan Villoro, Cristian Alarcón, and Pedro Lemebel) but also leaves room for many young original voices. An excellent source for finding new directions in the contemporary chronicle.
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  49. Monsiváis, Carlos. A ustedes les consta: Antología de la crónica en México. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1980.
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  51. Monsiváis’s anthology of Mexican chronicles, first published in 1980, was instrumental in establishing the continuity of the genre and in making the tradition of chronicle writing visible to Mexican literary history. New editions are not as easy to find in libraries, but they have been updated with recent chronicles by figures such as Fabrizio Mejía Madrid and Héctor de Mauleón.
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  53. The Colonial Period
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  55. Most critics differentiate the chronicle penned during the colonial period from the journalistic chronicle. The primary critics of the chronicle during modernismo, Susana Rotker, Julio Ramos, and Anibal González, consider the Latin American chronicle to have originated with the modernization of the press in the late 19th century (see Journalism and Modernismo). Some critics, however, emphasize the continuity between both periods, a choice that serves to highlight the chronicle as a fundamentally Latin American genre. For example, in Monsiváis 2006, in the introduction to A ustedes les consta, the author situates the origins of the genre in Mexico with Hernán Cortés. In a similar manner, Samper Pizano 2003 begins with an introduction to the author’s anthology of Colombian chronicles also covering the colonial period.
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  57. Monsiváis, Carlos. “‘Y yo preguntaba y anotaba, y el caudillo no se dio por entendido’ (prologue).” In A ustedes les consta: Antología de la crónica en México. Edited by Carlos Monsiváis. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2006.
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  59. Monsiváis’s prologue to this anthology traces the origins of the Mexican chronicle to Hernán Cortés’s “Cartas de relación” (see “Homero en Tenochtitlan”) and proposes that the chronicle was a tool that enabled the conquistadors to propose the new world as a promising territory where the colonial enterprise could be fulfilled.
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  61. Samper Pizano, Daniel. Antología de grandes crónicas colombianas. Bogotá: Aguilar, 2003.
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  63. In the introduction to his selection of the most important chronicles written in Colombia, Samper Pizano traces the origins of the chronicle to the colonial period. This is a good example of a line of thought that links the genre’s contemporary aesthetic characteristics to the social and cultural circumstances of the colony.
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  65. Journalism and Modernismo
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  67. Some of the most important scholarly works on the chronicle focus on Spanish American modernismo, and the scholarship of Aníbal González, Susana Rotker, and Julio Ramos can be credited with igniting the broad interest now given to the genre in US academic circles. González 1983 first argued for the literary value of the chronicle by linking the genre to philology. Susana Rotker’s scholarship focuses on José Martí and presents the chronicle as “literature under pressure” that would serve as a springboard for poetic experimentation (Rotker 2000, Rotker 2005). It was through the chronicle, Rotker argues, that modernistas rehearsed their style. Ramos 2001 (the groundbreaking Divergent Modernities) remains one of the most indispensable studies of modernismo, it reads the chronicle as a marginal genre that was caught between the professionalization of writing and the desired autonomy of literature and as such, revealed the pressures that Latin American intellectuals faced in a changing public sphere.
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  69. González, Anibal. La crónica modernista Hispanoamericana. Madrid: Porrúa Turanzas, 1983.
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  71. One of the first books of literary criticism to argue for the literary value of the 19th-century chronicle. González argues that the chronicles of modernistas such as Julián del Casal, José Martí, and Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera respond to the philological urge to consider language and literature as objects of knowledge.
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  73. Ramos, Julio. Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Translated by John D. Blanco. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
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  75. One of the most lucid studies on the period of Latin American modernismo, and an indispensable reference for anyone interested in understanding the foundation and importance of the chronicle in Latin American letters. Of particular relevance are chapters 4 (“Limits of Autonomy: Journalism and Literature”) and 5 (“Decorating the City: The Chronicle and Urban Experience”).
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  77. Rotker, Susana. The Chronicles of José Martí: Journalism and Modernity in Spanish America. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000.
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  79. Translation of Rotker’s Fundación de una escritura: las crónicas de José Martí (1992). Very useful book to introduce an Anglophone audience to Martí’s journalistic work and to explain the origins of the chronicle. Suitable for both graduates and advanced undergraduates.
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  81. Rotker, Susana. La invención de la crónica. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005.
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  83. Studies the foundation and evolution of the Latin American chronicle as a genre intrinsically linked to the professionalization of writers and journalists, as well as to the modernization of the press. Focuses primarily on Spanish American modernismo. This selection of essays was published posthumously and edited by Tomás Eloy Martínez.
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  85. Chroniclers during Modernismo
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  87. The most important writers of Spanish-American modernismo worked as chroniclers, and the journalistic genre was instrumental to the development of modernista poetics. While the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío was a prolific chronicler (Darío 2007), perhaps the most important chronicler during modernismo would be the Cuban José Martí, who penned numerous chronicles on the United States (especially New York City), which were published and read in Latin American capitals such as Mexico City, Caracas, and Buenos Aires (Martí 2003, Martí 2004). Julián del Casal, also Cuban, would also publish notable texts on Havana in the 19th century (del Casal 1963). For Mexican chroniclers during modernismo, such as Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and Amado Nervo, see Mexico City in the Era of Porfirio Díaz.
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  89. Darío, Rubén. Obras completas. Vol. 2. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, Círculo de Lectores, 2007.
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  91. This collection contains many of Darío’s “semblanzas,” or brief narrated portraits of artists and writers. Perhaps of more interest are his chronicles on Paris written at the turn of the 20th century.
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  93. del Casal, Julian. Crónicas habaneras. Santa Clara, CA: Dirección de Publicaciones, Universidad Central de Las Villas, 1963.
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  95. Like many poets of modernismo, a significant part of Casal’s writings was chronicles. The texts united here describe Havana at the end of the 19th century, and they range from reviews of literature, art, and theater to comments on current events. Casal published under numerous pseudonyms, such as Hernani, Alceste, and el Conde de Camors.
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  97. Martí, José. En los Estados Unidos: Periodismo de 1881–1892. Madrid: Allca XX, 2003.
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  99. An indispensable reference that brings together all of Martí’s chronicles on the United States. Includes a chronology and a dossier with texts from the most important Martí scholars (Rotker, Ramos) as well as reactions from some of his contemporaries (Sarmiento, Darío).
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  101. Martí, José. Ensayos y crónicas. Madrid: Cátedra, 2004.
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  103. Contains only a few chronicles by Martí, but the excellent introduction and annotations make it a useful book for anyone wanting to introduce Martí’s journalism to an undergraduate class.
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  105. Mexico City in the Era of Porfirio Díaz
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  107. Mexico City was one of the most widely chronicled Latin American cities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The modernization project of Porfirio Díaz promoted dramatic changes in the city’s structure: neighborhoods were rebuilt, and large Parisian-like avenues were constructed. Chroniclers such as Ángel de Campo (who signed under the penname “Micrós”) would document the capital’s disappearing lifestyles (Campo and de Mauleón 2009). Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (frequently known by one of his pseudonyms, “El Duque Job”) is mostly remembered as a chronicler of the Porfirian elite, yet his chronicles covered much more complex social and ethical issues as well (Gutierrez Nájera, Perez Gay 1996). Amado Nervo and Luis Urbina, a few years younger, would continue to document the changes lived by the Mexican capital during the last years of the Porfiriato and the start of the revolution (Nervo 1971, Urbina 1946). José Juan Tablada, a chronicler and poet who found himself between the literary generations of modernismo and the avant-gardes, would give testimony on the end of modernismo, eventually replacing the Parisian ideal that had marked chroniclers such as Guriérrez Nájera with the influence of another emblem of modernity, New York (Tablada and Saborit 2008).
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  109. Campo, Ángel de, and Héctor de Mauleón. Angel de Campo. Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 2009.
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  111. Writing under the pseudonyms of “Micrós” and “Tick-Tack,” Ángel de Campo chronicled the changes in Mexico City at the turn of the 20th century with an amazing eye for detail: demolitions and new construction, the arrival of the automobile, electricity, and the telephone. Contains a large selection of chronicles with bibliographic annotations and an introduction by Héctor de Mauleón.
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  113. Gutierrez Nájera, Manuel, and Rafael Perez Gay. Manuel Gutierrez Nájera. Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 1996.
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  115. Gutiérrez Nájera is considered the quintessential chronicler of elite Porfirian Mexico City. Although this volume also contains poetry and short stories, the majority consists of his articles for the press, as in sections “La vida en México” and “Crónicas de colores.” Includes two maps of Mexico City in 1886 and 1891, excellent resources to understand the changes the city underwent at the end of the 19th century.
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  117. Nervo, Amado. Cuentos y crónicas de Amado Nervo. Mexico City, Mexico: UNAM, 1971.
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  119. Contains a broad selection of Nervo’s chronicles published in the Mexico City daily El Imparcial (incidentally, some of Nervo’s chronicles were also reproduced in Buenos Aires’ La Nación). These brief, humorous and approachable texts describe life in the capital with subtle irony, although many also take poetic license and wander from urban themes.
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  121. Tablada, José Juan, and Antonio Saborit. José Juan Tablada. Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 2008.
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  123. Tablada’s writing is located between modernismo and the avant-garde, and many of the chronicles here compiled can be read as a testament to the end of modernismo in Mexico City. While this edition also includes poetry, the section devoted to chronicles focuses on important figures such as Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Julio Ruelas, and Guillermo Prieto.
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  125. Urbina, Luis. Cuentos vividos y crónicas soñadas. Mexico City: Porrúa, 1946.
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  127. In many ways a disciple of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Luis Urbina also infused his chronicles with a light-hearted, conversational humor that nonetheless renders insightful social portraits of late Porfirian society. Urbina went into exile in 1915, living in Cuba and Spain and never residing in Mexico again.
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  129. Travel Chronicles
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  131. Since Spanish American modernismo, the journalistic chronicle has often been associated with movement, or as Julio Ramos puts it in Divergent Modernities (see Ramos 2001 in Journalism and Modernismo), with “a rhetoric of strolling.” It is only natural then that the chronicle be such an apt genre for travel writing. Chroniclers such as Rubén Darío and José Martí worked as correspondents, writing about Paris and New York for a Latin American audience (see Journalism and Modernismo). Fombona 2005 and Tinajero 2004 explore modernismo’s fascination with travel, focusing on Europe and the Orient respectively. But the tradition of writing travel chronicles goes far beyond the 19th century, as the varied anthology of travel chronicles Colombi 2010 well shows. Most travel chroniclers focused on specific geographical areas, such as Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Two Latin American writers in particular, the Cuban Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cabrera Infante 1999) and the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (García Márquez and Guilard 1984), traveled broadly through Europe and the Americas, and the experience of writing travel chronicles would become instrumental to their literary style.
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  133. Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. Libro de las ciudades. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1999.
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  135. Contains an eclectic selection of Cabrera Infante’s travel chronicles, from locations as diverse as London (where he resided for the last forty years of his life), Paris, Las Vegas, and Río de Janeiro. In his introductory piece “Elogio de la ciudad” (“praise of the city”), the Cuban writer muses that his urban journeys have permitted him to look for Havana’s lost splendor in other cities.
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  137. Colombi, Beatriz, ed. Cosmópolis: Del flâneur al globe-trotter. Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia Editora, 2010.
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  139. Useful selection of travel writing from Spanish America’s most important chroniclers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, from Martí to Cabrera Infante. Most pertinent is the selection of chronicles written by women, who are rarely given a prominent place in anthologies or studies. Includes an introduction by Beatriz Colombi that considers travel as intrinsic to the chronicle’s rhetoric.
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  141. Fombona, Jacinto. La Europa necesaria: Textos de viaje de la época modernista. Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo, 2005.
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  143. Keen analysis of the importance of travel for Spanish American modernista aesthetics. Contextualizes the tradition of European travel writing, dedicates chapters to Italy and Spain. The most provocative chapter is reserved for Paris, the “necessary” metropolis that resonates in the chronicles of Julián del Casal, Enrique Gomez Carrillo, and Rubén Darío.
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  145. García Márquez, Gabriel, and Jacques Guilard. De Europa y América (1955–1960). Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1984.
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  147. These are volumes 5 and 6 of a broader multivolume collection of García Márquez’s journalistic works and a good place to start exploring his many articles written for the press. They include the chronicles that García Márquez wrote during his travels in Europe and Latin America during the 1950s and express much of the trademark humor that would later characterize his fiction.
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  149. Tinajero, Araceli. Orientalismo en el modernismo Hispanoamericano. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004.
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  151. Although a substantial part of this work is devoted to poetry, it also analyzes the chronicles written by Gómez Carrillo and Tablada during their travels to Asia. Offers a reflection on orientalism in relation to modernismo that helps contextualize the era and provides background for the study of travel chronicles on Asia written during the 20th century.
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  153. The Americas
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  155. While the destination of choice for most chroniclers during the late 19th and 20th centuries was Europe, the United States—and especially New York after José Martí penned his North American chronicles from that city in the 1890s (see Chroniclers During Modernismo)—became an important emblem of modernity. During the 1920s José Juan Tablada lived in New York and published his column “Nueva York de día y de noche” in Mexico City (see Tablada and Hernández 2000). Two decades later, the Chilean Rosamel del Valle would continue the tradition of representing New York for a Latin American audience (Valle, et al. 2002), while Octavio Paz would instead focus on another city, San Francisco, from where he chronicled the 1945 peace conference (Paz and Saborit 2007). Travels through Latin America were not published as frequently, and Roberto Arlt’s chronicles on Patagonia, written during the early 1930s, deserve notice (Arlt and Saítta 1997). Mexico’s Salvador Novo was not a frequent traveler, yet he did pen a few notable chronicles on his journeys to Hawaii, South America, and Mexico’s states of Jalisco and Michoacán (Novo, et al. 1996).
  156.  
  157. Arlt, Roberto, and Sylvia Saítta. En el país del viento: Viaje a la Patagonia (1934). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Simurg, 1997.
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  159. A collection of chronicles written during Arlt’s travels through Patagonia in the first months of 1934. These chronicles are unique in that they describe a journey through natural landscapes. There is no doubt that this fundamentally urban chronicler finds himself out of context in this setting, and consequently he cultivates a very different tone from that of his chronicles set in Buenos Aires.
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  161. Novo, Salvador, Rodríguez S. González, Antonio Saborit, Mary K. Long, and Lligany Lomelí. Viajes y Ensayos. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996.
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  163. The first volume of Novo’s Viajes y ensayos includes “Return Ticket” (narrating his 1927 trip to Hawaii to attend a conference on education), “Jalisco-Michoacán” (a fascinating, if understudied, chronicle of national travel outside the capital), and “Continente vacío” (detailing his 1934 trip to Buenos Aires). Other shorter travel narratives are also included. The section on travel chronicles is introduced with a comprehensive essay by Antonio Saborit.
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  165. Paz, Octavio, and Antonio Saborit. Crónica Trunca de Días Excepcionales. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2007.
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  167. A brief, tiny, and beautifully written volume containing the chronicles that Octavio Paz wrote for Mañana about the 1945 peace conference in San Francisco, which he attended as journalist. With an introduction by Antonio Saborit.
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  169. Tablada, José J., and Palacios E. Hernández. La babilonia de hierro, crónicas neoyorkinas. Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veracruzana, 2000.
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  171. A selection of Tablada’s chronicles written from 1920s New York City and published in the Mexico City daily El Universal as the column “Nueva York de día y de noche.” Includes a useful introduction, which places Tablada’s work as a chronicler in the context of his poetry and a chronology.
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  173. Valle, Rosamel, B. P. P. Zegers, and Leonardo Sanhueza. Crónicas de New York. Providencia, Chile: RiL Editores, 2002.
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  175. The Chilean poet and chronicler lived for fifteen years in New York City, arriving in the mid-1940s. This volume contains some fifty chronicles written during this period. Clearly directed to a Latin American audience, the chronicles describe such diverse neighborhoods as Chinatown, Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx, with a poetic imagery that denotes a clear avant-garde influence.
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  177. Asia
  178.  
  179. Few Latin American chroniclers have written on journeys through Asia, but Enrique Gómez Carrillo and José Juan Tablada both wrote on their experiences in Japan and their chronicles—Gómez Carrillo 1958 and Tablada 1919—exemplify modernismo’s fascination with the orient.
  180.  
  181. Gómez Carrillo, Enrique. El Japón heroic y galante. Mexico City: Novaro, 1958.
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  183. Although Gómez Carrillo also wrote travel chronicles of his journeys through Europe, the narratives that resulted from his journey to Japan are perhaps the most notable for their originality and for their orientalist depiction of Japanese mores.
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  185. Tablada, José Juan. En el país del sol: Crónicas japonesas de José Juan Tablada. New York: Appleton, 1919.
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  187. The articles included in this book were published originally in literary magazines in Mexico (such as Revista Azul and Revista Moderna) between 1894 and 1912. The aesthetic exploration of Japanese literature, which is detailed in many of the chronicles here, led to Tablada’s experimentation with Haiku poetic forms in Spanish.
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  189. Europe
  190.  
  191. Paris was the destination of choice for modernistas such as Rubén Darío, and Enrique Gómez Carrillo was based in the city when he traveled to Russia: Gómez Carrillo 1906 was originally published in Paris. Peru’s César Vallejo would also take residency in the French capital during the 1920s and 1930s, as would Cuba’s Alejo Carpentier during the 1930s. Both would write numerous chronicles on Paris during this period (Carpentier 2004, Vallejo, et al. 2002). Meanwhile, Roberto Arlt was sent as a correspondent by the Argentine newspaper El Mundo to Spain. He traveled throughout the country and even into North Africa, but his most memorable chronicles are from Madrid, where he described the early moments of the Spanish Civil War (Arlt and Saítta 2000).
  192.  
  193. Arlt, Roberto, and Sylvia Saítta. Aguafuertes madrileñas: Presagios de una guerra civil. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 2000.
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  195. When Arlt reached Madrid in January 1936, he had already been traveling through Spain for more than a year. The thrill of finding himself once more in an urban environment is apparent in these pages. Arlt witnessed the start of the Spanish Civil War, and from then on much of his writing on Europe would be marked by more outspoken political commentary.
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  197. Carpentier, Alejo. Crónicas de España. La Habana, Cuba: Letras Cubanas, 2004.
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  199. Selection of chronicles written by Alejo Carpentier during the 1930s in Europe. Includes a few chronicles on Paris, and a section entitled “España bajo las bombas” on the bombings during the Spanish Civil War.
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  201. Gómez Carrillo, Enrique. La Rusia actual. Paris: Garnier Hermanos, 1906.
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  203. Results from Gómez Carrillo’s trip to Russia, a journey he presents as a momentary distancing from the pleasure and frivolity of Paris to explore the harshness and poverty of a snow-covered country.
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  205. Vallejo, César, Febres S. Lerner, and Jorge Puccinelli. Artículos y crónicas completos. 2 vols. Lima, Perú: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2002.
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  207. A very complete edition of Vallejo’s chronicles written from Lima and Europe between 1918 and 1937. Includes an introductory study by Jorge Puccinelli, as well as illustrations, facsimile texts, caricatures of the period, and a map detailing Vallejo’s European journeys.
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  209. The Avant-Gardes
  210.  
  211. Like their 19th-century predecessors from the period of Spanish American modernismo, many chroniclers affiliated with avant-garde movements published chronicles while traveling or residing abroad, such as César Vallejo, Alejo Carpentier, Roberto Arlt, and Salvador Novo (see Travel Chronicles). The period also saw a renewed focus on local cityscapes: chroniclers wrote for an audience who shared the same urban contexts and trajectories, they were no longer the mediators between a distant European or North American modernity and a Latin American public that had lagged behind. This local perspective came with a consciousness of the peripheral nature of Latin American modernity (as Sarlo 1988 argues with regard to Buenos Aires), and as Rosenberg 2006 notes, a greater geopolitical conscience that enabled writers to critique the global project of modernity. Mahieux 2011 shows that the avant-garde movements and the technological changes that were brought about during the decade of the 1920s had a distinct effect on avant-garde writing, and in particular, on the chronicle. The increasing use of photography in illustrated magazines (Gabara 2008) and the modernization of the press (Saítta 1998) are two factors that also shaped the aesthetics of the chronicles written during the avant-gardes and marked their relation to an imagined public.
  212.  
  213. Gabara, Esther. Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
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  215. Approaches avant-garde movements in Brazil and Mexico by analyzing how writers and artists conceptualized photographic practices. While Gabara does not directly focus on the chronicle, this book sheds light on how avant-garde figures such as Salvador Novo and Mário de Andrade engaged with visual media in ways that shaped their journalistic work.
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  217. Mahieux, Viviane. Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.
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  219. A comparative approach to chronicles written in the 1920s and 1930s in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and São Paulo. Considers the literary avant-gardes as a turning point in the trajectory of the genre, and approaches the literary journalistic chronicle as both a literary tradition and a daily practice. Chapters on Roberto Art, Salvador Novo, Mário de Andrade, Alfonsina Storni, and Cube Bonifant.
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  221. Rosenberg, Fernando. The Avant-Garde and Geopolitics in Latin America. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
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  223. Studies Latin American avant-garde movements from a geopolitical perspective, reading them as a critique of the global project of modernity. Rosenberg’s focus on the chronicles of Roberto Arlt and Mário de Andrade, especially as relates to travel writing, makes this a relevant work for those interested in the manifestations of the genre during the early 20th century.
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  225. Saítta, Sylvia. Regueros de tinta: El diario Crítica en la década 1920. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1998.
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  227. A history of the popular daily Crítica (where Roberto Arlt got his start as a journalist) in 1920s Buenos Aires. An important reference to contextualize how the modernization of the newspaper industry and of advertising shaped the practice of the chronicle in the early 20th century.
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  229. Sarlo, Beatriz. Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires, 1920 y 1930. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión, 1988.
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  231. An enlightening and indispensable reflection on the modern imagination in Buenos Aires of the 1920s and 1930s. Because Sarlo moves seamlessly between analyzing literary works and other cultural forms such as the press, her study of peripheral modernities recreates the heterogeneous cultural spaces through which the chronicle circulated. An important part of this work is devoted to Roberto Arlt.
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  233. Local Cityscapes
  234.  
  235. Various Latin American cities come alive through the chronicles written in the 1920s and 1930s. Roberto Arlt’s Buenos Aires, as documented in his “Aguafuertes porteñas” (“etchings of Buenos Aires”; see Arlt 1998) is a multicultural city undergoing a radical process of modernization and change. Salvador Novo (Novo, et al. 1996; Novo, et al. 1999) writes about the lively and cosmopolitan cultures of Mexico City after the revolution with sly humor, and Leduc 1997 dwells on experiences during and after the revolution. The Cubans José Lezama Lima and Nicolás Guillén each contribute a different angle to representing life in Havana: while the former (Lezama Lima 1991) deals primarily with the city’s intellectual circles in his unique baroque style, the latter (Guillén 2002) focuses on issues of race and social injustice.
  236.  
  237. Arlt, Roberto. Obras, tomo II. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1998.
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  239. Contains some of Arlt’s most important “Aguafuertes porteñas” that appeared in the popular daily (or tabloid) El Mundo starting in 1928. These “etchings” offer a multifaceted portrait of a diverse, changing city. Also includes a small selection of his articles written from Spain and Morocco.
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  241. Guillén, Nicolás. Prosa de prisa: 1929–1985. La Habana, Cuba: Ediciones Unión, 2002.
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  243. This volume’s title translates as “hurried prose” and attests as to the conditions of production that shaped the chronicles included here. Guillen was one of the few (if not the only) chronicler of his period to devote attention to race and racial discrimination in Cuba and in the United States (see in particular his chronicle on New York City’s neighborhood of Harlem).
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  245. Leduc, Renato. Historia de lo inmediato. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997.
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  247. A brief selection of Leduc’s most important chronicles, as chosen by the author. Includes an introduction (titled “advertencia,” or warning) where Leduc explains his selection criteria and reflects on the genre’s journalistic pressures. Most notable are a chronicle on Leduc’s encounter with John Reed in Mexico, and his humorous “Autominibiografía.”
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  249. Lezama Lima, José. La Habana. Madrid: Verbum, 1991.
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  251. The many meditations on La Havana collected in this volume show to what extent Lezama’s poetic gaze could not be dissociated from his journalistic prose.
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  253. Novo, Salvador, Rodríguez S. González, Antonio Saborit, and Mary K. Long. Viajes y ensayos. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996.
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  255. Essential reading for anyone interested in Novo as chronicler. Volume 1 includes much of his best known early prose on Mexico City, bringing together chronicles that had previously been published individually (such as “En defensa de lo usado,” “Nueva grandeza Mexicana”). Includes a general introduction by Sergio González Rodriguez.
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  257. Novo, Salvador, Rodríguez S. González, Antonio Saborit, and Mary K. Long. Viajes y ensayos. Vol. 2. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999.
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  259. Volume 2 groups most of Novo’s early articles that have not been previously reissued in book form. Includes articles written for the weekly Universal Ilustrado, as well as columns such as “Consultorio al cargo del niño Fidencio” (Excélsior). Includes an introduction by Mary K. Long and, essential for any scholar planning archival work, an exhaustive list of Novo’s articles in the press.
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  261. Brazil
  262.  
  263. The chronicle occupies a unique place in Brazilian letters. Not only did the chronicle obtain literary recognition earlier in Brazil than in the rest of Latin America (undoubetdly as a result of Machado de Assis’s enormous literary importance and his devotion to the genre) one can affirm that the country’s most important writers, such as Mário de Andrade, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and Clarice Lispector, have also been chroniclers. Despite the genre’s great importance in Brazil, and regardless of the fact that the chronicle can be considered an indispensable genre in Latin America as a whole, there are very few works that comparatively study the genre in Brazil and in Spanish America. Because of this, the Brazilian chronicle deserves its own section in this article, even if the country’s strong tradition of chronicle writing is comparable to that of other national productions, such as Mexico. There are a variety of general resources available for a scholar just beginning to delve into the genre in Brazil. Library of Congress 1935 has a section devoted to the Brazilian crônica, and it is an indispensable first stop to gain information of specific chroniclers or scholarly works. The collective book project Cândido 1992 offers studies on specific chroniclers, as well as broader reflections on the genre that help pinpoint the national characteristics of the Brazilian chronicle. Sussekind 1997 reflects on the professionalization of writers and the changes brought about by technology during the first decades of the 20th century, and her book is instrumental in explaining the evolution of the Brazilian chronicle as a result of the modernization of the press. Finally, two anthologies of chronicles are particularly useful: Preto-Rodas, et al. 1994 offers an ideal selection for undergraduate teaching, in particular for language and culture courses; while Ferreira Dos Santos 2007 provides a detailed and structured overview of the genre’s primary practitioners.
  264.  
  265. Cândido, Antonio, ed. A Crônica: O gênero, sua fixação e suas transformações no Brasil. Papers presented at a seminar held at the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 19–21 October1988. Campinas, Brazil: Editora da UNICAMP, 1992.
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  267. Should be one of the first obligatory readings for any scholar beginning to explore the Brazilian chronicle. Includes the short essay “A vida ao res do chão” (“life on the ground floor”) by Antonio Cândido, an indispensable reflection on the genre, as well as sections on Machado de Assis, humor, theater criticism, and visual chronicles (exploring links between the genre and photography).
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  269. Ferreira dos Santos, Joaquim F. As cem melhores crônicas Brasileiras. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2007.
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  271. As title indicates, includes a selection of one hundred Brazilian chronicles organized chronologically. An excellent volume for anyone first exploring the genre in Brazil. The introduction, written by Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos, provides a useful overview on the particularities of the Brazilian crônica.
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  273. Library of Congress. Handbook of Latin American Studies. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1935.
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  275. An important reference that includes a regularly updated section on the crônica, with entries on specific chroniclers as well as on scholarly works that pertain to the genre. Post-1990 articles available online.
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  277. Preto-Rodas, Richard A., Alfred Hower, and Charles A. Perrone. Crônicas Brasileiras: Nova fase. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.
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  279. A bilingual edition of some of Brazil’s most important chronicles, from Machado de Assis to Luis Fernando Verissimo. Includes annotations, extended vocabulary, and grammatical exercises. Provides excellent context and is very user-friendly for teaching, especially as an introduction to Brazilian literature for undergraduates.
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  281. Sussekind, Flora. A Cinematograph of Words: Literature, Technique, and Modernization in Brazil. Translated by Paulo Henriques Britto. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
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  283. A beautifully written work on the effects of technology on early-20th-century Brazilian letters. While not directly on the chronicle, provides great context for the professionalization of writers and the modernization of the press, and many of the writers studied are chroniclers. Essential reading for any scholar interested in this period.
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  285. Machado de Assis
  286.  
  287. Machado de Assis is generally considered the founder of the journalistic chronicle in Brazil. His relentless wit and his subtly disguised social critiques would certainly influence generations of chroniclers who wrote after him. Reading Machado’s chronicles and understanding the literary and cultural context in which he wrote is therefore crucial to comprehend the particular direction the genre would take in Brazil (see Assis 1994). It is no coincidence that Cândido 1992 (cited under Brazil), perhaps the most important contribution to defining the genre in Brazil, devotes an entire section to Machado. Gledson 2006 provides a selection of essays that together offer a comprehensive overview of Machado that is helpful in placing his work as chronicler within the context of his broader literary production. Both Grángia 2000 and Kvacek Betella 2006 offer more detailed readings of his journalistic work, with the latter focusing on “Bons días!” one of his most popular columns.
  288.  
  289. Assis, Machado. Crônicas escolhidas. São Paulo: Editora Atica, 1994.
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  291. Selection of chronicles written in late-19th-century Rio de Janeiro. With his characteristic humor, Machado de Assis satirizes current events and reflects on the origins of the chronicle. Indispensible reading for anyone interested in the genre in Brazil, as his influence can be traced in many modern and contemporary Brazilian chroniclers.
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  293. Gledson, John. Por um novo Machado de Assis. São Paulo: Companhia das letras, 2006.
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  295. A collection of essays by one of the most important Machado scholars. Provides useful context on Machado’s historical period and analysis of various columns, such as “Bons días!” that appeared in Gazeta de notícias 1888–1889.
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  297. Grángia, Lúcia. Machado de Assis: Escritor em formação (à roda dos jornais). São Paulo: FADESP/Mercado de Letras, 2000.
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  299. Useful analysis of Machado’s formation as a writer in the context of his journalistic work.
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  301. Kvacek Betella, Gabriela. Bons dias! O funcionamento preciso da inteligênia em terra de relógios desacertados: As crônicas de Machado de Assis. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Revan, 2006.
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  303. Parts from an analysis of the column “Bons Días!” to offer a broader reflection on Machado’s chronicles as microhistories of Brazil.
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  305. Rio de Janeiro
  306.  
  307. As Resende and Neves 1995 argue, Rio de Janeiro has been fundamental to the development of the genre in Brazil: in many ways, the Brazilian chronicle cannot be comprehended without a consideration of its intricate links to this city. It is not surprising, therefore, that criticism on the chronicle in Brazil tends to focus either on reconstructing the cultural particularities of Rio, or on the chroniclers that have made this city their home. The essays included in Resende and Neves 1995 testify as to the ways in which a broad range of chroniclers have engaged with these shared urban referents. Conde 2012 aptly links the development of the chronicle in Rio during the early 20th century to another important emblem of modernity: the cinema. And focusing on Lispector’s work during the second half of the 20th century, Nunes 2006 studies, from the perspective of gender, another important period for chronicle writing in Rio.
  308.  
  309. Conde, Maite. Consuming Visions: Cinema, Writing and Modernity in Rio de Janeiro. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012.
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  311. Explores the relationship between chronicle and cinema in early-20th-century Rio de Janeiro. Of particular interest is chapter 1, “The Cinematographic Work of the crônica,” which traces the cinematographic way of seeing apparent in chronicles penned by figures such as João do Rio and Olavo Bilac.
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  313. Nunes, Aparecida Maria. Clarice Lispector jornalista: Páginas femeninas and outras páginas. São Paulo: Senac, 2006.
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  315. An analysis of Lispector’s chronicles written from Rio de Janeiro through a focus on gender and the constraints of writing “feminine” columns for the press.
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  317. Resende, Beatriz, and Margarida S. Neves. Cronistas do Rio. Rio de Janiero, Brazil: Olympo Ediora, 1995.
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  319. An essential volume to gain insight on the influence of Rio de Janeiro on the Brazilian tradition of the crônica. Includes essays on chroniclers such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Clarice Lispector. Especially pertinent is Beatriz Resende’s chapter “Rio de Janeiro: cidade da crônica,” which contextualizes Rio de Janeiro’s formative role in shaping the singularity of the genre in Brazil.
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  321. Chroniclers of Rio
  322.  
  323. Without a doubt, Brazil’s best-known chroniclers have written from Rio de Janeiro, starting with Machado de Assis (see Machado de Assis). During the early 20th century, the changes brought about by modernity (such as electricity, cinema, and the rise of advertising) were chronicled by figures such as João do Rio (Rio 1997) and Lima Barreto (Barreto, et al. 2004), while a few years later Braga 1978 would become indispensable. Carlos Drummond de Andrade (also one of Brazil’s most important poets; see Andrade 1992) would publish his light and humorous articles during the 1960s and 1970s at around the same time as Clarice Lispector, who was writing her column for Jornal do Brasil (Lispector and Pontiero 1996). Rio’s chronicler with the longest writing career was probably Rachel Queiroz, whose work spanned many decades; see Queiroz 2004. Toward the last decades of the 20th century, Rio’s most important chroniclers would become Fernando Sabino and Paulo Mendes Campos (Campos 1981, Sabino 2000).
  324.  
  325. Andrade, Carlos Drummond de. Cadeira de balanço: Crônicas. Rio de Janeiro: Olympio, 1992.
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  327. The title of this collection, “Cadeira de balanço” (“rocking-chair”), is taken from Drummond’s radio program of the same name, which aired in the 1960s and evokes both the movement and tranquility of walking through Rio de Janeiro. These chronicles are brief, conversational, and poetic and an excellent way to explore how Drummond fused his vocations of poet and journalist.
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  329. Barreto, Lima, Beatriz Resende, and Rachel T. Valença. Toda crônica. Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 2004.
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  331. A mulato writer whose chronicles depicted Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the 20th century, Lima Barreto was known for colloquial use of language and his militant approach to issues of social injustice. Considered a precursor of the avant-gardes.
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  333. Braga, Rubém. 200 crônicas escolhidas: As melhores de Rubem Braga. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1978.
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  335. Braga began publishing chronicles in 1930s Rio de Janeiro and continued to write prolifically throughout his life. This volume includes chronicles published until the late 1960s. Braga’s articles exhibit a distinct warmth and sensitivity to the happenings of daily life.
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  337. Campos, Paulo Mendes. Crônicas escolhidas. São Paulo: Editora Atica, 1981.
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  339. Although originally from Belo Horizonte, Mendes Campos wrote most of his chronicles from Rio, and his texts possess an undeniable “carioca” air. Not one to hesitate from experimentation, he occasionally chose to write chronicles in verse, as is apparent in “Crônica suína” (“pig chronicle”) and “O pobre no supermercado” (“the poor in the supermarket”), both included in this volume.
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  341. Lispector, Clarice, and Giovanni Pontiero. Selected cronicas. New York: New Directions, 1996.
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  343. An excellent volume to initiate a reader to Lispector’s chronicles in English translation, contains about two thirds of all the chronicles included in Discovering the World (“A descoberta do mundo”). Chronicles were originally published in Jornal do Brasil between 1967 and 1973.
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  345. Queiroz, Rachel. Melhores crônicas. São Paulo: Global Editora, 2004.
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  347. Originally from Fortaleza, Queiroz is another Rio transplant whose literary and journalistic career developed in this city. Her early writing was admired by modernists such as Mário de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira, but Queiroz had a very long writing life, and her chronicles can be read as a testimony of the evolving everyday life in Rio during the 20th century.
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  349. Rio, João. A alma encantadora das ruas: Cronicas. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997.
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  351. The quintessential Rio de Janeiro flâneur, João do Rio (whose real name was Paulo Barreto), narrated the latest happenings in fashionable streets such as Rua do Ouvidor, but he also depicted poverty and street life at the turn of the century. This edition is an excellent introduction to his style as chronicler. It also offers a glimpse into a fascinating period in Rio’s history.
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  353. Sabino, Fernando T. As melhores crônicas: Fernando Sabino. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 2000.
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  355. Recognized as one of the most important Brazilian chroniclers of the 20th century, Sabino’s chronicles offer amusing snapshots of Brazilian mores, parting from apparently inconsequential anecdotes.
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  357. São Paulo
  358.  
  359. While Rio de Janeiro has traditionally been the city of the chronicle in Brazil, São Paulo began to gain importance as a cultural destination starting in the 1920s as a result of the boom in coffee exports and events such as the “Week of Modern Art” in 1924. Modernism would be crucial in fomenting the practice of the chronicle in this rising city, but as Faria Cruz 2000 shows, journalistic modernity in São Paulo was already in the making in the late 19th century. Mário de Andrade, remembered as “the pope” of Brazilian modernism, would be the most important chronicler of the period, with columns such as “Táxi” (Andrade 1976), and the subsequent edition in book form of Los filhos da candinha (Andrade 1963). Another important figure linked to both modernism and the genre of the chronicle would be the painter Tarsila de Amaral, who penned chronicles from São Paulo starting in the 1930s (Amaral and Amaral 2001).
  360.  
  361. Amaral, Tarsila, and Aracy A. Amaral. Tarsila cronista. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2001.
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  363. Avant-garde visual artist Tarsila do Amaral published chronicles in late 1930s and 1940s São Paulo, as a result of economic hardships that left her needing to earn a living. Her chronicles would confirm her ongoing engagement with the visual arts and the avant-garde, as many consisted of reflections on art, literature, and architecture.
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  365. Andrade, Mário de. Os filhos da candinha. São Paulo: Livraría Martins, 1963.
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  367. The title of this collection translates loosely as “those that gossip” and captures perfectly the light, conversational tone that characterizes these chronicles. This was the only edition of chronicles (selected by the author) to be published in his lifetime, so the volume is also telling of how Mário de Andrade conceptualized the genre.
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  369. Andrade, Mário de. Táxi e crônicas do Diario Nacional. São Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1976.
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  371. Edition of chronicles published in the column “Táxi” in São Paulo’s Diario Nacional in 1929. The title of the column points to Mário de Andrade’s interest in speed and modern transportation and indicates that he saw his column as a moveable guide through the city’s cultural offerings.
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  373. Faria Cruz, Heloisa. São Paulo em papel e tinta: Periodismo e vida urbana 1890–1915. São Paulo: EDUC, 2000.
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  375. A study of the importance of journalism in the growth and modernization of São Paulo, which until the 1920s and 1930s lagged behind Rio de Janeiro as a cultural and economic center.
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  377. Contemporary Chroniclers
  378.  
  379. The chronicle remains a very popular genre in contemporary Brazil, with a number of chroniclers publishing regularly both in the press and in book form. Even in the 21st century, Rio de Janeiro remains an important hub for the production of chronicles, but there are now many chroniclers who reside and write from other smaller cities (such as Medeiros 2005, Verissimo 1994 from Porto Alegre). The Brazilian chronicle continues to be characterized by its light humor and informal tone. Texts remain brief and accessible, with a focus on the poetics of the mundane, as exemplified by Prata 2001, a collection of chronicles that focuses on objects of daily life.
  380.  
  381. Medeiros, Martha. Coisas da vida: Crônicas. Porto Alegre, Brazil: L&PM Editores, 2005.
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  383. These chronicles were originally published in the dailies Zero Hora and O Globo between 2003 and 2005. Madeiros writes brief portraits of moments in contemporary middle-class life, ranging from meditations on botox to email and online relationships.
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  385. Prata, Mário. Minhas tudo. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2001.
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  387. Here Prata offers brief, humorous meditations on mundane objects, such as mattresses or binoculars, thus exemplifying Antonio Cândido’s definition of the Brazilian chronicle as a genre that remains intimately connected with daily life.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Verissimo, Luis F. Luis Fernando Verissimo: Comédias da vida privada; 101 crônicas escolhidas. Porto Alegre, Brazil: L&PM Editores, 1994.
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  391. One of Brazil’s most visible contemporary chroniclers, who publishes dispatches from Porto Alegre. His chronicles are notable for their humor and as a satire of social manners. Has also published cartoons and written scripts for television.
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  393. 1968 and Beyond
  394.  
  395. During the 1960s and 1970s the chronicle became increasingly politicized. While the genre had previously privileged aesthetic depictions of daily urban life, during this period chroniclers began to narrate events that marked an interruption of the everyday and produced moments of national or communal introspection. In Mexico, the political turning point for the chronicle was the 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco, and figures such as Elena Poniatowska and Carlos Monsiváis would become the most important proponents of the testimonial chronicle. Two decades later, another devastating event would halt the flow of the Mexican metropolis: the 1985 earthquake. Once again, the chronicle would cover the stories that were hidden or ignored by mainstream media. Starting in the 1980s chroniclers became increasingly fascinated with other types of events that congregated multitudes: media spectacles such as soccer matches or concerts that offered moments illustrating local practices of cultural consumption.
  396.  
  397. Monsiváis and Poniatowska
  398.  
  399. The early work of these two prominent Mexican chroniclers exemplifies the testimonial turn taken by the genre during the 1970s. Poniatowska first became known as a chronicler with her work Massacre in Mexico (or in its original Spanish title, La noche de Tlatelolco; see Poniatowska 2007), which depicts the 1968 massacre. She would soon follow with Poniatowska 2006, another book of chronicles that draws on political disappearances and social minorities that were being ignored by official media. Jorgensen 1994 explores Poniatowska’s political commitment, emphasizing her role as listener and interviewer. Mexico’s Carlos Monsiváis published his first book of chronicles, Días de guardar, in 1970, also focusing on popular uprisings and the effects of authoritarianism. This work, cited here under Monsiváis 1991, would be the first book of chronicles of a long and extremely prolific career. Despite his widespread recognition, few translations of Monsiváis’s work are available in English, and Kraniauskas’s translation of selected chronicles remains an indispensable reference for readers of English (Monsiváis and Kraniauskas 2000). A substantial number of scholarly works on Monsiváis have been published over the past twenty years, such as Moraña and Prado 2007 and Salazar’s analysis of Monsiváis’s urban chronicles (Salazar 2006). Egan 2001 offers a rigorous examination of the chronicler’s work, and this remains the only scholarly book exclusively on Monsiváis to be published in English.
  400.  
  401. Egan, Linda. Carlos Monsiváis: Culture and Chronicle in Contemporary Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.
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  403. The first book in English to comprehensively approach Monsiváis’s work as a chronicler. The first section analyzes the genre of the chronicle in its poetic and political implications; the second section devotes chapters to various writings on Monsviáis’s books, from “Días de guardar” (1970) to “Los rituales del caos” (1995).
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  405. Jorgensen, Beth. The Writing of Elena Poniatowska: Engaging Dialogues. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
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  407. A very useful analysis of Poniatowska’s writing, with substantial attention paid to the chronicle. Draws out one of the most original aspects of Poniatowska’s work, which consists of infusing her writing with an oral, conversational element that draws from many voices.
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  409. Monsiváis, Carlos. Días de guardar. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1991.
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  411. Originally published in 1970, this was Monsiváis’s first book of chronicles. While it is not only about the 1968 student movement and the massacre at Tlatelolco, these events mark the entire work in its focus on mass movements, popular culture, and the effects of authoritarianism.
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  413. Monsiváis, Carlos, and John Kraniauskas. Mexican Postcards. London: Verso, 2000.
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  415. The only translation of Monsiváis chronicles available in English in book form. Includes selections from many of his books, essays on important figures in Mexican popular culture (from comic Cantinflas to film star Dolores del Río). With an introduction by John Kraniauskas that analyzes Monsiváis’s approach to culture as a form of “critical closeness.”
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  417. Moraña, Mabel, and Ignacio Sánchez Prado, eds. El arte de la ironía: Carlos Monsiváis ante la crítica. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2007.
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  419. A compilation of essays on the multifaceted aspects of Monsiváis’s stature as one of Mexico’s most prominent public intellectuals. Various chapters explore themes pertinent to his work as chronicler, such as his takes on mass culture, cultural studies, violence, and nationalism.
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  421. Poniatowska, Elena. Fuerte es el silencio. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2006.
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  423. Dwells on the marginalized and forgotten events, geographies, and populations of Mexico City: street children, hunger strikes, and political disappearances. First published in 1980.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Poniatowska, Elena. Massacre in Mexico. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007.
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  427. Perhaps Poniatowska’s best-known work, this testimony of the 1968 massacre in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco plaza (originally published in Spanish in 1971 as La noche de Tlatelolco), is presented as a fragmented collage of voices that reconstruct the moments leading to the massacre, as well as the event itself. Poniatowska’s voice occasionally peeks through the multiple interviews that are layered throughout the book.
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  429. Salazar, Jezreel. La ciudad como texto: La crónica urbana de Carlos Monsiváis. Monterrey, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2006.
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  431. A lucid and elegantly written study of Monsiváis’s trajectory as a chronicler, focusing on his conceptualization of urban space and poetics. The second section of the book relates Monsiváis’s writing to a broader reflection on the genre of the chronicle and its urban implications.
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  433. Disasters
  434.  
  435. The 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, in its magnitude as disaster and tragedy, also marked a moment in which civil society organized itself: during this time, the chronicle filled the media vacuum created by the absence of television stations and centralized information. The collective disorientation lived by the population is reconstructed in the chronicles Poniatowska 2010, Monsiváis 2001, and Pacheco 1986, which strive to textually recreate both the moments of chaos and the organization of informal rescue brigades. Twenty-five years later, Juan Villoro lived the 2010 earthquake in Santiago, Chile, an experience that he puts in the context of his previous experience of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake (Villoro 2010).
  436.  
  437. Monsiváis, Carlos. Entrada libre: Crónicas de la sociedad que se organiza. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2001.
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  439. Parting from the 1985 earthquake and other disasters or events, reflects on the liminal moments when civil society organizes itself and intervenes in collective life. First published in 1987.
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  441. Pacheco, Cristina. Zona de desastre. Mexico City: Ediciones Océano, 1986.
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  443. Part of the significant corpus of chronicles that was published about the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City.
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  445. Poniatowska, Elena. Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexico City Earthquake. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010.
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  447. Translation of Nada, nadie: Las voces del temblor, Poniatowska’s chronicle of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City. Like her previous work Massacre in Mexico, this book privileges an oral element and is constructed through the juxtaposition of fragments.
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  449. Villoro, Juan. 8.8: El miedo en el espejo: Una crónica del terremoto en Chile. Oaxaca, Mexico: Almadía, 2010.
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  451. Fairly recent volume chronicling Villoro’s experience of the 27 February 2010 earthquake in Santiago, Chile, where he was attending a literary gathering. Particularly relevant for its dialogue with narrations of Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake, which confirms the ongoing importance of this event in Mexico’s urban imaginary.
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  453. Spectacles and Popular Culture
  454.  
  455. Starting in the 1980s popular spectacles (such as concerts, sports events, and political marches) became recurring topics for Latin American chronicles such as Rodríguez 2004 (Puerto Rico), Villoro 1995 (Mexico), and Caballero 1994 (Colombia). Media and the local patterns of consumption that global cultural products incited also became matters of attention, as can be seen in Monsiváis 1995, a book of chronicles that covers both individualized media consumption, such as television, and communal experiences such as concerts.
  456.  
  457. Caballero, Antonio. A la sombra de la muerte: Toros, toreros y públicos. Madrid: Turner, 1994.
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  459. Although not well known internationally, Caballero is one of Colombia’s most important contemporary chroniclers. This book contains a selection of the articles he has published on bullfighting as art and spectacle, in newspapers in Spain and Colombia.
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  461. Monsiváis, Carlos. Los rituales del caos. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1995.
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  463. The overarching theme of this collection of chronicles is “relajo,” loosely translatable as “subversive fun,” and its different manifestations as apparent in the congregation of urban multitudes in rush-hour subways, concerts, and protests. Chronicles range from reflections on Mexican pop stars such as Luis Miguel and Gloria Trevi, to popular figures such as the shaman Niño Fidencio.
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  465. Rodríguez, Juliá E. Cortijo’s Wake: El entierro de Cortijo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
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  467. First published in Spanish in 1983, this book-length chronicle narrates the funeral of popular Puerto-Rican plena musician Rafael Cortijo. It is at once an ethnographic portrayal of Afro-Puerto Rican culture and a meditation on intellectual privilege. Includes a very useful introduction by Juan Flores.
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  469. Villoro, Juan. Los once de la tribu: Crónicas. Mexico City: Aguilar, 1995.
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  471. Contains chronicles written during the 1980s and 1990s. Although Villoro began writing chronicles when he worked as a rock critic for the Mexican daily Unomasuno, this volume covers a wide range of topics related to mass culture, from soccer (the title refers to the eleven players who play for a team during a match), to boxing, pop art, and the Zapatista movement.
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  473. Gender and Sexuality
  474.  
  475. During 19th-century modernismo, the journalistic chronicle was essentially a masculine genre. The principal prototype of the chronicler was the flâneur, whose ability to roam the streets and observe urban lifestyles in relative anonymity reflected an inherently male privilege. But the 20th century saw a gradual shift in this tendency. Starting in the 1920s more women became professional journalists and began to practice the genre with regular columns in newspapers and magazines of broad distribution. The chronicle also became a genre through which gay male writers explored and defined alternative sexual cartographies of their cities. This affinity of the chronicle for opening up new spaces for sexual identity has been related to the genre’s formal flexibility and malleability, is intimate portrayals of public space, and its propensity to serve as a performative platform for a chronicler to construct a theatrical public persona.
  476.  
  477. Women and Early Journalism
  478.  
  479. While many prominent chroniclers since the late 20th century are women (Brazil’s Clarice Lispector, Mexico’s Elena Poniatowska, Argentina’s María Moreno, to mention some of the most notable), women writers from the 1920s and 1930s paved the way. Both Alfonsina Storni (Argentina) and Cube Bonifant (Mexico) published women’s chronicles, undermining from within the restrictions imposed on them by the feminine orientation of their columns (Bonifant 2009, Storni 2002). Diz 2006 and Kirkpatrik 1990 are especially useful to understand the context in which Storni wrote. Unruh 2006 further explores Storni’s journalistic persona, and the comparative approach that guides her study offers very useful parameters to consider the works of other early women chroniclers, many of whom have received very scarce critical attention.
  480.  
  481. Bonifant, Cube. Una pequeña Marquesa de Sade: Crónicas selectas 1921–1948. Edited by Viviane Mahieux. Mexico City: DGE/Equilibrista, 2009.
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  483. Edition of more than one hundred journalistic texts published by Cube Bonifant during the first half of the 20th century. The witty and irreverent writing of one of Mexico’s first professional female chroniclers offers a unique window on the urban life and mores of Mexico City after the revolution. Includes a small selection of film criticism written from the early 1930s to the late 1940s, introduction, annotations, and chronology.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Diz, Tania. Alfonsina periodista: Ironía y sexualidad en la prensa argentina (1915–1925). Buenos Aires: Libros del Rojas, 2006.
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  487. One of the few books to focus exclusively on Storni’s work as a woman’s columnist. Includes good contextual detail and numerous useful references. Draws pertinent parallels between Storni and Roberto Arlt as journalists who wrote during a similar time frame in Buenos Aires.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Kirkpatrik, Gwen. “The Journalism of Alfonsina Storni: A New Approach to Women’s History.” In Women, Culture and Politics in Latin America. Edited by Emilie Bergmann, 105–129. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
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  491. An excellent essay on Storni’s journalism, with very pertinent reflections on the commercial motivations that guided both her poetry and her prose.
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  493. Storni, Alfonsina. Obras: Prosa, narraciones, periodismo, ensayo, teatro. Vol. 2. Buenos Aires: Losada, 2002.
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  495. Includes numerous essays published by Storni in the Buenos Aires press of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as chronicles from her two regular columns in La Nota and in La Nación (the latter under the penname “Tao Lao”). In these texts Storni alternates between a frivolous, tongue-in cheek tone and more socially oriented, pedagogical pieces.
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  497. Unruh, Vicky. Performing Women and Modern Literary Culture in Latin America: Intervening Acts. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
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  499. Focuses on the performative strategies used by women writers to gain entry into modern Latin American literary culture during the early 20th century. Although Unruh covers various genres, this study is pertinent to understand the public personas of women chroniclers during the early 20th century. Particularly relevant are sections on Victoria Ocampo, Mariblanca Sabas Alomá and Ofelia Rodríguez Acosta.
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  501. Urban Sexualities
  502.  
  503. As Quiroga’s chronicles on gay cultures illustrates (Quiroga 2010), the chronicle’s affinity for gay cartographies has been varied and long lasting. Without a doubt, Mexico’s Salvador Novo, who began writing in the 1920s as a relatively open gay man, was a precursor of figures who began writing in the 1970s and 1980s, such as José Joaquín Blanco (Mexico) and Pedro Lemebel (Chile), cited here under Blanco 1990, Blanco 1997, Lemebel 1997, and Lemebel 2000. Monsiváis 2004 is a literary biography of Novo and is particularly helpful in understanding the transgressive nature of an otherwise politically conservative Novo: also covers his subsequent influence on other generations of chroniclers, including Monsiváis himself, as the posthumously published edition of his chronicles on sexual diversity confirms (Monsiváis 2010). María Moreno is one of the few women chroniclers to break into the otherwise male-dominated niche of chronicles on gay sexualities, and her reflections on sexuality draw from the spheres of media and popular culture (Moreno 2002).
  504.  
  505. Blanco, José Joaquín. Un chavo bien helado: Crónicas de los años ochenta. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1990.
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  507. Collection of chronicles that depicts 1980s Mexico City, from elite debauchery to the effects of the financial crisis. Selection evokes Blanco’s trademark topics of youth culture, erotic cartographies, and popular urban cultures. Presented with his characteristically poignant wit.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Blanco, José Joaquín. Función de medianoche: Ensayos de literature cotidiana. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1997.
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  511. Originally published in 1981, and including chronicles written since the late 1970s, this edition contains some of Blanco’s best depictions of Mexico City street life. Of special note is the last section, “El íntimo transar del corazón,” that covers topics of urban love, solitude, and sexuality, and the last chronicle “Ojos que da pánico sonar,” a meditation on homosexuality in Mexico.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Lemebel, Pedro. La esquina es mi corazón: Crónica urbana. Providencia, Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1997.
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  515. Chile’s most important contemporary chronicler and performance artist. Explores gay and subversive sexual cartographies as they are articulated under Santiago’s authoritative urban structures (in particular, see “Anacondas en el parque” and “Lagartos en el cuartel”).
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  517. Lemebel, Pedro. Loco afán: Crónicas de sidario. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2000.
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  519. Covers the AIDS epidemic and its impact on gay urban cultures in Latin America and New York (see “El Bar Stonewall”). Writes in a very complex, almost baroque style that resists the deceptive lightness that can sometimes accompany the genre of the chronicle.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Monsiváis, Carlos. Salvador Novo: Lo marginal en el centro. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2004.
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  523. Monsiváis’s biography of Salvador Novo situates the chronicler’s formative years in early 1920s Mexico City and explores how his homosexuality influenced his relationship to literature and to urban space. Also focuses on Novo’s later years as a politically conservative chronicler, especially his opposition to the 1968 student movement.
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  525. Monsiváis, Carlos. Que se abra esa puerta: Crónicas y ensayos sobre la diversidad sexual. Mexico City: Paidós Mexicana, 2010.
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  527. Although Monsiváis never openly spoke of his own sexual orientation, he was a strong supporter of gay rights throughout his life. This posthumously published edition of essays and chronicles on sexual diversity, written over the course of many years, testify to this ongoing commitment.
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  529. Moreno, María. El fin del sexo y otras mentiras. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2002.
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  531. Penned by Moreno between the early 1980s and 2002, the chronicles collected here cover a variety of topics, from Argentine soccer player Maradona to the deaths of Lady Diana and Gianni Versace. The guiding theme, however, is an ongoing meditation on sexuality, be it in the form of sexual taboos, the tensions between public and private sexualities, pornography, or eroticism.
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  533. Quiroga, José, ed. Mapa callejero: Crónicas sobre lo gay desde América Latina. Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia Editora, 2010.
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  535. With an introduction by José Quiroga, this edition explores gay urban cartographies—clandestine, closeted, or explicit—as they appear in chronicles penned by Latin American figures as varied as José Martí, Julián del Casal, Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Salvador Novo, and Manuel Ramos Otero.
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  537. The Turn of the 21st Century
  538.  
  539. Latin American urban life evolved dramatically during the last decades of the 20th century, and the chronicle has followed suit, expanding its themes, rhetorical approaches, and geographical referents. These shifts in the contemporary chronicle can be roughly divided into three main categories. First, the Latin American cities that have fostered a tradition of chronicle writing have become full-fledged metropolises, and this demographic and spatial shift has led to certain conceptual changes in the genre. Second, within its urban focus, the chronicle continues to document underrepresented lifestyles, be they from smaller cities unassociated with the genre or from marginal neighborhoods in the region’s largest cities. And, third, Internet-based communications have greatly facilitated communications, enabling chroniclers to document social conflict from remote areas. Consequently, many politically committed chroniclers are no longer writing primarily from urban areas.
  540.  
  541. The Megalopolis
  542.  
  543. As the modern city transforms into a megalopolis, the chronicler as flâneur has become a more specific, neighborhood-bound observer, only focusing on certain aspects of city life. This shift is readily apparent in the thematic divisions that characterize Gallo and Fox 2004 (even if the Spanish version of the book is nostalgically titled “lecturas para paseantes,” or “readings for strollers”), and in the geographical boundaries that define the work of Loaeza 1997 (Mexico) and Navia 1998 (Colombia). To a lesser extent, this specificity can also be traced in Monsiváis 2009, which is the author’s last book of chronicles, where the theme of gathering multitudes in the city’s center recurs as central motif. Bencomo 2002 explores these rhetorical shifts in the turn-of-the-century chronicle, focusing primarily on Mexico City. Rotker and Goldman 2002 offers a variety of readings on what has tragically become one of the unifying characteristics of Latin American metropolises; fear and violence. These are factors that undoubtedly help explain the genre’s increasingly fragmented nature.
  544.  
  545. Bencomo, Anadeli. Voces y voceros de la megalopolis: La crónica periodística-literaria en México. Frankfurt, Germany: Vervuet, 2002.
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  547. Focusing on works by Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monsiváis, and José Joaquín Blanco, Bencomo proposes that the massive scope of the Mexican megalopolis at the end of the 20th century calls for a new logic of representation and brings about a shift in the poetics of the chronicle.
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  549. Gallo, Rubén, and Lorna S. Fox. The Mexico City Reader. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
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  551. A refreshing selection of chronicles on Mexico City published since the 1970s and organized around topics such as “Metro,” “Monuments,” and “Corruption.” Provides excellent translations of chronicles by significant authors whose journalistic pieces can seldom be read in English, such as José Joaquín Blanco, Jorge Ibargüengoitia, and Ricardo Garibay.
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  553. Loaeza, Gudalupe. Las reinas de Polanco. Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 1997.
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  555. A collection of chronicles that depicts the lives of elite Mexico City women from the well-heeled neighborhood of Polanco during the 1980s economic crisis. Narrated with a keen sense of irony, in a mock-ethnographic style that also characterizes Loeza’s other writings, this book provides a valuable portrait of Mexico’s extreme inequalities from a seldom-seen angle.
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  557. Monsiváis, Carlos. Apocalipstick. Mexico City: Debate, 2009.
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  559. The last book of chronicles to be published in Monsiváis’s lifetime, this volume revisits his fascination with Mexico City’s “postapocalyptic” quality, as described in Los rituales del caos (1995). Topics covered range from the new millennium, to Spencer Tunick’s nude portrait of crowds in the Zócalo and political marches in favor of 2006 presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
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  561. Navia, José. El lado oscuro: Crónicas urbanas. Bogotá: G. Rivas Moreno Editor, 1998.
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  563. A selection of chronicles originally published in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo during the 1990s. Covers mostly street culture in Bogotá’s poor neighborhoods, although some sections focus on other cities such as Medellín, Cali, and Buenaventura. Covers topics such as youth subcultures, life in communes, violence, and informal economies.
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  565. Rotker, Susana, and Katherine Goldman. Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
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  567. A collection of essays examining the manifestations of urban violence in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela during the late 20th century from a range of perspectives. Includes academic essays as well as a section (“the stories”) comprising chronicles. Especially relevant to the study of the chronicle are reflections on the effects of fear on urban citizenship, written by Carlos Monsiváis, Rossana Reguillo, and Jesús Martín Barbero.
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  569. Urban Others
  570.  
  571. The chronicle has documented disappearing urban lifestyles since 19th-century modernismo, often with a nostalgic gaze that deplored the losses that accompanied modernization. Today, however, chroniclers tend to focus on marginalized populations that are rarely visible in urban literature and whose cultures, often linked with crime and delinquency, are thriving and evolving. This is the case of Alarcón 2003, who writes on marginalized neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, and of Bedoya 1991, who focuses on the cultures of Lima’s barriadas (slums). Rossana Reguillo (Reguillo and Monsiváis 1999) and Yépez 2006 also dwell on themes of violence, crime, and poverty, and they focus on Guadalajara and Tijuana respectively, cities in Mexico that have not seen a tradition of chronicle writing as prominent as that of Mexico City. Héctor de Mauleón, a writer chose chronicles tend to be very difficult to categorize, chooses to focus on forgotten crimes in Mexico City, offering what can be considered an alternative archeology of the capital throughout the 20th century (Mauleón 2000).
  572.  
  573. Alarcón, Cristian. Cuando me muera, quiero que me toquen cumbia: Vidas de pibes chorros. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2003.
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  575. Through the figure of “El frente” Vital, a young thief killed by the Buenos Aires police at the age of seventeen, Alarcón explores themes of social conflict, violence, immigration, drug trafficking, and urban myths in marginalized neighborhoods at the outskirts of the Argentine capital.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Bedoya, Jaime. Ay que rico: Crónicas periodísticas. Lima, Perú: Mosca Azul Editores, 1991.
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  579. Set in poor neighborhoods on the margins of Lima during the 1980s, Bedoya’s chronicles offer humorous takes on local imitations or appropriations of global pop-culture icons, such as Michael Jackson, the New Kids on the Block, and Mexican soap opera characters.
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  581. Mauleón, Héctor de. El tiempo repentino. Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 2000.
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  583. Has the unique paradoxical quality of consisting of archival chronicles: De Mauleón digs in newspaper archives to reconstruct telling moments in 20th-century Mexico City history, with a focus on incidents taken from the crime pages.
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  585. Reguillo, Cruz R., and Carlos Monsiváis. Ciudadano N: Crónicas de la diversidad. Tlaquepaque, Mexico: ITESO, 1999.
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  587. Reguillo combines her academic training as a sociologist with journalistic documentation in this book of chronicles, which focuses on urban youth cultures. With an introduction by Carlos Monsiváis.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Yépez, Heriberto. Tijuanologías. Mexico City: Libros del Umbral, 2006.
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  591. A collection of chronicles and essays on Tijuana at the turn of the 21st century. Discusses ongoing myths on this border city and its problematic status as an emblem of Latin American postmodernity.
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  593. Beyond the City
  594.  
  595. Since the 19th century, the chronicle has been primarily an urban genre, focused on describing city life for a local public or for Latin American readers interested in lifestyles from abroad (see Travel Chronicles). However, the genre’s increasingly political orientation since the 1970s (see Monsiváis and Poniatowska) have rendered it an ideal genre to document and reflect on social struggles and guerrilla movements that have taken place in remote rural areas. Castro Caycedo 1997 and its most notable chronicles are set in the Colombian Amazon or in rural areas occupied by the M-19 guerrilla group. In Mexico, Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN penned many chronicles on the movement (also called “communiqués”) from Chiapas, which were published in Mexico City left-leaning newspaper La Jornada (Marcos and Ponce de León 2001). Without a doubt, the rise of Internet-based communications since the 1990s has played an important role in enabling this shift in the locus of the chronicle.
  596.  
  597. Castro Caycedo, G. Obra completa. 3 vols. Bogota: Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1997.
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  599. Perhaps Colombia’s best-known contemporary chronicler. He is the author of a significant body of work, having published on themes such as the M-19 guerrilla group, drug trafficking, the Colombian Amazon, and Colombian immigration to the United States. Although these volumes do not include his most recent works, they offer a good way to become familiar with his wide-ranging body of work.
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  601. Marcos, and Juana Ponce de León. Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings. New York: Seven Stories, 2001.
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  603. Many of the communiqués written by Subcomandante Marcos on the Zapatista insurgency since 1994 were published either in the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada or in the local San Cristobal daily Tiempo. While a portion of the texts included here are transcriptions of speeches or letters, also included are many short chronicles of a more literary bent, such as the series on “Don Durito de la Lacandona.”
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  605. Latin America and the United States
  606.  
  607. While the Latin American chronicle has long-lasting connections to the United States—many chroniclers such as José Martí and Rosamel del Valle have written on New York and other cities (see Travel Chronicles)—recent manifestations of the genre cannot necessarily be defined as travel writing. Chronicles in English and in Spanish are now published in the United States, and although these texts also have Latin American readers, many are written with a US-based audience in mind. Such is the case of Bowden and Cardona 2010 and its portrayal of violence-ridden Ciudad Juárez, and Guillermoprieto 2001 on Latin American conflicts and political movements, both published originally in English. Another effect of the broader circulation of writers, ideas, and texts between Latin America and the United States are chronicles of migration, such as those grouped in Fonseca and El-Kadi 2012, and published in Spanish.
  608.  
  609. Bowden, Charles, and Julián Cardona. Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields. New York: Nation Books, 2010.
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  611. Bowden’s meticulously documented yet poetic depiction of Ciudad Juárez as a border city plagued with the violence of drug trafficking ranks among the best contemporary chronicles of narco-culture.
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  613. Fonseca, Diego, and Aileen El-Kadi. Sam no es mi tío: Veinticuatro crónicas migrantes y un sueño americano. Doral, FL: Santillana USA, 2012.
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  615. Various Latin American writers, residing in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, reflect on their arrival to the United States, their first experiences, and their identities as immigrant writers. Includes texts by Daniel Alarcón, Yuri Herrera, and Ilan Stavans, among others.
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  617. Guillermoprieto, Alma. Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America. New York: Pantheon, 2001.
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  619. Written over the course of many years for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, the chronicles included in this book cover important turning points in late-20th-century Latin American history. The articles included cover Mexico, Cuba, and Colombia, and also offer portraits of figures such as “Che” Guevara, Eva Perón, and Mario Vargas Llosa.
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  621. Ongoing Projects
  622.  
  623. Many of today’s most notable venues for the chronicle can be found online. Gatopardo is perhaps the most important publication for young chroniclers and a good source for learning about new developments in the genre and to discover new writers. In Colombia, two important projects highlight the local and the pan-American potential of the genre. Universo Centro, based in downtown Medellín, is a good example of the chronicle’s links to urban revival, while Gabriel García Márquez’s Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano coordinates discussions and workshops that approach the genre from a broader Latin American perspective. It does not publish chronicles per se, but it is an excellent reference for discovering new debates surrounding the genre. Finally, a new online journal, Textos Híbridos, publishes academic essays and book reviews exclusively on the genre of the chronicle.
  624.  
  625. Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano.
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  627. This foundation, established by Gabriel García Márquez in 1994, sponsors workshops, seminars, and awards an annual prize for new journalism published in different media. It has counted on the participation of prominent chroniclers, such as Alma Guillermoprieto and Cristian Alarcón, and facilitates reflection on the ethical responsibilities of journalistic practices.
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  629. Gatopardo.
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  631. First established in Colombia, this publication circulates in print throughout Latin America and provides a good barometer for discovering new developments in the genre of the chronicle.
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  633. Textos híbridos.
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  635. The only academic journal to be devoted completely to studies on the chronicle in Latin America. It is an online biannual publication that approaches the genre through a transdisciplinary and transnational approach. The first issue, published in 2011, focused on the works of Carlos Monsiváis.
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  637. Universo Centro.
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  639. A relatively new journalistic project in Medellín, Colombia, that publishes a variety of literary chronicles on the city’s downtown area. It aims to foment the renovation of the urban community and the reappropriation of public space by society following decades of violence. It serves as a good illustration of the contemporary civic and political potential of the chronicle.
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