Emotional Violence in Mexico: Portraits of Psychological Trauma in Fernando Del Paso’s Noticias del Imperio

As Inés Sáenz points out, Mexican literature contains, on account of its colonial ancestry, hybrid texts in which history cannot be separated from fiction. Such a tradition has been enhanced in relatively recent years by the works of both Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) and Fernando del Paso (1935-). While the internationally-renowned Fuentes has long overshadowed the younger Del Paso, several critics now hold the view that Del Paso is the most important contemporary Mexican writer. Del Paso’s period of residence in London from 1971 to 1985 reaffirmed his hostility to the former imperialist powers whose contempt, he claims, for the “Third World” persists. Yet Del Paso holds that Latin Americans are equal inheritors of the European cultural heritage, in contrast with Octavio Paz’s view of Latin Americans as “uninvited guests who came into the West via the tradesmen’s entrance” (quoted by Fiddian 22). He thus combines a deep sensitivity to Mexico as a colonized country with an equally potent awareness that, as a Mexican and Latin American, he is party to European culture and history (Fiddian 20–21). This apparent contradiction may explain, at least to some extent, his affinity with his protagonist in Noticias del Imperio, the Empress Carlota, whose monologues, found in alternate chapters of Noticias, form the cornerstone of the text: her feelings match, in their passion and intensity, Del Paso’s own convictions although they are expressed inversely, she being a “high” European determined to claim, as an equal partner, her stake in Mexican indigenous culture.