Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

chapter 15
Boom Goes the Literature: Magical Realism
as the True Latin America?
“La culpa es de los Tlaxcaltecas” (“It’s the Fault of the Tlaxcaltecas”), by
the Mexican author Elena Garro, is a short story written in the magical
realist style. Garro wrote the story in the early 1960s, just as magical realism
was beginning to be consolidated into a genre of international proportions.
Even though Garro’s work was not accepted as a leading voice in this
movement, her style was on the cutting edge of it. “It’s the Fault of the
Tlaxcaltecas” is no exception.
Born in Mexico in 1920, Elena Garro traveled far beyond her nation’s
borders. She lived in many countries, and in each one she took up political
and social issues dear to her. She embarked on many different career tracks,
including choreographer, playwright, and news reporter, but she is best remembered
for her fi ction, which broke through many boundaries and prejudices
faced by female writers in Latin America. Perhaps it is for that reason
that her work was disparaged throughout much of her life. After marrying
Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and philosopher, Garro went to Spain and
joined other Latin American intellectuals in support of the Republicans in
the Spanish Civil War (1935–1939). Upon returning to Mexico, she worked
as a reporter for a while before leaving again for New York. From there she
went to Europe to join Paz and the community of artists living in exile in
Paris. In the 1960s Paz and Garro’s relationship ended while he was serving
as ambassador to Japan. In 1968 Garro left Mexico as an exile because
the government accused her of participating in the 1968 student rebellions.
When she returned in 1991, she fi nally received recognition for her writing
and has since come to be regarded as one of Mexico’s great writers of the
twentieth century. She died in Mexico in 1998. 1