Franz Galich’s Tikal Futura and the Perpetuation of History’s Violent, Eurocentric Cycles

Guatemalan-Nicaraguan Franz Galich’s dystopian novel Tikal Futura: Memorias para un futuro incierto (novelita futurista) (2012) is an unmistakably anti-imperialist text that criticizes U.S. foreign policies and global capitalism broadly. This article argues, however, that the work’s strong focus on external impositions results in the dismissal of Cané, a fictional Indigenous character, and her project of cultural decolonization as represented through the rewriting of official history and the recuperation of marginalized cultural epistemologies. The ethnic and cultural inequalities within Guatemala that Cané confronts thus remain unchallenged by the novel, consequently aligning the work with assimilationist tendencies that reaffirm the Eurocentric hierarchies that the novel supposedly criticizes. These power dynamics are questioned and critically analyzed utilizing a theoretical approach including critics such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. These theorists call particular attention to the repetitive nature of history and forms of social and intellectual resistance, prevalent themes throughout the narrative.