Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 was conceived 10 years ago ...
Tag: South America
Reading with Strangers
On a visit to Bogotá in 2006, riding on the then new TransMilenio bus rapid transit system, I discovered that it sponsored Libro al Viento (Books on the Wind), a series of free publications ...
Ricardo Piglia and the Art of Interruption
With the attendant assurance of a 22-year-old, Ricardo Piglia proposed in 1964 that “Fundamentally, to narrate means to take charge of the distance between the ...
The Author with Birds in His Head
Antonio Di Benedetto’s dreamlike, uncategorizable novel Zama was published in English translation for the first time last year, its arrival long awaited by readers ...
The Art of Protest
I marched with thousands on the streets of New York, asserting that “Trump is Not Our President” and “Love Trumps Hate.” So far we are free to assemble on Union Square in New York, to march up Fifth ...
The Politics of Networking a Nation
In 1981, one year before his death, the Soviet cybernetician and computer pioneer Victor Glushkov published the book What Is the OGAS? OGAS was the Russian acronym for All-State Automated System for ...
Loss in Translation
Walter Benjamin’s well-known essay “The Task of the Translator” claims that “translation is a form,” an artistic act in its own right. For Benjamin, both text and translation yearn toward a mystical ...
Rio, Capital of Disaster Capitalism
The Olympic rings loom large over Rio de Janeiro. Seven years after the city won its bid to host the games, the impending two-week extravaganza has swept changes across the Marvelous City, as Rio is ...
Caravaggio’s Hair
Human hair, as Álvaro Enrigue points out in Sudden Death, is the only part of the human body that does not rot. It accordingly plays a starring role in the novel, which is as interested in the ...
The Inventor of Nature
In 1869 the centennial of Alexander von Humboldt’s birth was celebrated around the world, including in New York City, where bands and speakers gathered in Central Park to honor his legacy. He was ...
Following the Money
“The cultural meaning of money and the many personal touches we give to our exchanges of it can’t be overlooked.”
The Essential Gratuitousness of César Aira
It is not in the least original to begin talking about César Aira’s work by recounting the technique that produces it. But it can’t be helped: Aira has made a discussion of his practice obligatory ...
All Eyes On Brazil
With the 2014 FIFA World Cup now well under way, and the Olympics coming in 2016, Brazil is assuming its place on the world stage. The current tournament has generated more coverage of the ...
The Hope and the Horror
In 1953, a young Jean Franco set sail from Europe for Central America. She arrived in Cuba a few days after Fidel Castro’s ill-fated assault on the Moncada Barracks. Continuing to Guatemala, she ...
Her Own Audience
Gloria, the heroine of this film, has no fear of the grande geste. If her date’s ex-wife won’t stop calling him, Gloria will drop his cellphone in his soup. If, before making love, she must remove ...
Latin America’s Left: Between Demos and Kratos
On March 5, 2013, the Venezuelan government announced the death of president Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. In the New York Review of Books, Alma Guillermoprieto, one of the most perceptive commentators ...
Collateral Melancholy
Two children meet by chance on the night of a historic Santiago earthquake, develop a brief, tentative friendship around a secret task that neither of them understands too well, and then, years ...
Bolaño to Come
The English-speaking world has canonized Roberto Bolaño with astonishing rapidity. It’s not surprising that this consecration has begun to provoke skepticism among Spanish-speaking critics who ...
Choking on Poverty: Inequality and Environmental Suffering
In the summer of 1978, a trucking company illegally dumped 31,000 gallons of used transformer oil along hundreds of miles of roads in Warren County, North Carolina. The location was no accident: This ...
Lives at the Urban Margins
“Every great city,” wrote Friedrich Engels, in The Condition of the Working Class in England, “has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden ...