Figures and locus of predation: the delirious realism in Tierra amarilla by Germán Marín

Abstract

Germán Marín’s short novel Tierra amarilla (2014) delves into the regional territories of northern Chile to decipher traces of diverse post-dictatorial historical and discursive formations related to current forms of extractivism. Through operations of affiliation and distancing from the literature of the realist tradition, Tierra amarilla brings to the surface a “real narrative” (Horne) of considerable political and ecological significance (Heffes) in which realist procedures yield to delirious disruptions. The novel represents a regional space affected by precariousness, environmental pollution and violence, in which the “urban island” (Ludmer) has fully entered the space of the province. In Tierra Amarilla, Marín elaborates a plot of figures of predation exposed in different fictional loci. The figures of predation, such as “the chupacabra”, the water shortage, the productive farm and the corpse in the mine, combine a mythical and documentary character that creates a new topology of exception. In this new configuration of the regional space, geological, political, economic and gender violence are subsumed, affecting the narrative subject, its environment and the vitality of the narrative.