Latin American art and literature today: boom or bubble?/Literatura y arte Latino Americanos hoy: ?boom o burbuja?

This article aims to trace the relay ofLatin American literature by the visual arts as to its international diffusion within half a century. While the Latin American literary Boom of the 60s was extinguished gradually and almost imperceptibly, there are critics who claim that the market distribution and demand as well as exploded monetary value of the visual arts threaten to disappear all of a sudden. This phenomenon is evoked through the metaphor of the bubble, which we examine here in its multiple economic, artistic and literary facets. As an artistic device the plastic image of fragility can paradoxically illustrate violence, besides fugacity. In the processes described in this article, we may ask the question to what extent it is the market demand which creates or strengthens homogenizing movements or collective and aesthetic programs. The sudden and massive success through canonization, fame, and circulation can always act as a catalyst in the formation of aesthetic schools. In Latin America, the Boom with its global impact also promotes a pan-American and transnational orientation. Influential curators, collectors and art fairs contributed decisively to remove the visual arts from a rather fragmentary, rhizomatic, reduced diffusion of individuals, in which literary writers are currently moving. Keywords: Latin American art and literature; boom; bubble; fugacity; transnationalization; market; dissemination; canon; Valeria Luiselli and Teresa Margolles. El presente articulo intenta caracterizar el reemplazamiento de las letras latinoamericanas por las artes visuales, en lo referido a su proyeccion internacional, en el ultimo medio siglo. Mientras que el Boom latinoamericano de la literatura de los anos 60 se extinguia paulatina y casi imperceptiblemente, hay criticos que afirman que la difusion, la demanda en el mercado y el explotado valor monetario de las artes visuales amenazan con desaparecer repentinamente. Este fenomeno suele evocarse a traves de la metafora de la burbuja, que examinamos aqui en sus multiples facetas, economicas, artisticas y literarias. Como motivo, dicha imagen plastica de fragilidad ilustra la fugacidad y, en clave paradojica, la violencia. Con respecto a los procesos descritos en este articulo, tambien cabe preguntarse hasta que punto es la demanda del mercado la que crea y consolida movimientos o programas esteticos colectivos y homogeneizantes. El exito repentino y masivo de canonizacion, notoriedad y circulacion siempre pu