User:Lionthanatos

Annotated Bibliography For Matt S.- McOndo

The book Rosario Tijeras by Jorge Franco Ramos is the perfect embodiment of the anti-magical realism of Latin American writing better know as McOndo. This book is shear realism presented to us in a very raw, dark and gritty manner showing the lives of three young Colombians from the gang and cocaine ruled city of Medellin. The book is told in both the past and present tense being narrated to us by Antonio depicting the life of the young woman Rosario Tijeras in almost a biographical way. Rachel Aviv describes Rosario as " gun-toting, crack-snorting junkie street waif, [a] glamorous urban wild child, as she sexualizes female domination" (Aviv). Rosario as a single character encompasses almost every aspect of the McOndo movement being from a small impoverished urban town in Colombia plagued by violence and crime, using her sexuality and violent nature to try and get out of the gritty criminal world she lives in.

The main character in this book suffered from a young age, Rosario lived in a urban slum in Colombia with a mother that could care less about her and did not believe her when she accused one of her mothers husbands of raping her at the age of eight(Ramos, pg 25) which persisted till her older brother Jonefe intervened and took her to live with him. She was then raped again at the age of 11 (Ramos, pg 35) which pushed her into a darker world when she sought to get her revenge on the man using a pair of scissors to cut his testicles off(Ramos, pg 37). The level of description used in the book helps create the perverse gritty depictions of the criminal world this book takes place in, where murder and rape are just another occurrence of day to day life. Drug use and alcohol abuse along with sex are quite a large part of this book, giving us a glimpse of what it must have been like to live in Medellin in the 1980's, all this along with Rosarios sad and violent life create a world in this book that is truly believable that requires nothing magical to make the readers visualize and believe what is being narrated to us.

Jorge Francos goal with this book was to show the nature of the city of Medellin and the Colombia the way it was in the 1980's during the reign of Pablo Escobar, but modernizing it so that it would appeal to a new generation; to both depict the past and present state of the dark and gritty world doing so in the most realistic form he could aiding in the McOndo movement (Aviv). "Franco depicts street crimes, bar brawls, police brutality and poverty, and yet at times his world -- one of profound disillusionment and anger -- appears just as grotesque and fantastical as does his literary forefathers' magical ones"; many would say that Franco's goal of creating something as great as the magical realism pieces of his predecessors was achieved with Rosario Tijeras which sold out rapidly and even became known as 100 years of solitude on crack (Aviv).

As one of the more well known McOndo books Rosario Tijeras works well in its opposition to the magical realism of Latin American literature; using realism, violence, sex, poverty, an urban environment, as well as a raw, dark and gritty criminal world to drive home a message of realism in Latin American literature and culture.

Sources

100 years of solitude -- on crack By Rachel Aviv http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2004/01/21/mcondo/

Rosario Tijerras By Jorge Franco Ramos