Tamara Mitchell

This study examines the patterns between the artistic reproductions of the Mexican Revolution and narco literature based on the representation of fictional female characters, mainly in the following works: Adelita y las guerrillas (1936) by José G. Cruz and La Reina del Sur (2002) by Arturo Pérez Reverte (including its televisual adaptations: La reina del sur (2011), Telemundo; The Queen of the South (2016), USA Network). In the first chapter, I analyze the mutability of soldaderas by examining and comparing the ways they have been represented. I also show that there is a temporary hiatus between post-revolutionary and narco-literature works because the representation of women in the artistic works of this hiatus was of a more passive subject. Chapter two sustains, through the comparison between Adela Negrete and Teresa Mendoza, that these women have been shaped by civil conflicts (the Mexican Revolution or drug violence) and violence, making them violent. Likewise, they have been constructed through a masculine gaze that eroticizes and sexualizes them. In the third chapter, I study historical and contemporary corridos that sing about adelitas or drug traffickers, to suggest that orality sculpts representations. I examine how the oral representations of the adelitas disfigure the image of the soldadera and prefigure narrative and visual interpretations for the fictional creations of the adelitas, highlighting valor and beauty as some of the main characteristics of these women; elements also found in the narcocorridos.

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The following thesis analyses the style of the novel Temporada de huracanes, by Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor, with the key concept of fictive orality. The novel imitates the oral speech in rural communities from the Southeast of Mexico. I posit that such style allows the reader to listen the concerns of certain people whose living conditions and lifestyle are extremely marginalized. Those concerns include gender violence, the war against drug cartels, lack of employment and natural disasters. In the same way, I argue that the fictive orality is represented through the form of gossip. This form represents an alternative history to the official narrative, which usually omits or suppresses religious ideologies, feminicide, domestic violence, folklore, and legends, which are fundamental components to Melchor’s novel.

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