Freddy Fuentes, visiting assistant professor of English at Washington and Lee University, pr e s e nt e d a paper entitled “Latin Amer ican Magical Realism as the Original Eco Writing: Advocating for Our Planet Through Magic” at the 72nd annual Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies conference held in Mexico City on April 25.
In the paper, Fuentes contends that magical realism emerged as a literary response to environmental and colonial destruction in Latin America, positioning the genre as inherently ecological literature that advocates for the planet through a narrative approach. He asserts that magical realism was born from a Latin American desire to make sense of the virtually magical levels of destruction of peoples and lands executed by parasitic presences there beginning with Spanish conquistadors, on to their descendants, the Latin American political and corporate elite, and, to no small degree, the impact of U.S. political and corporate exploitation.
Magical realism’s power, to a great degree, lies in its ability to dissolve the Western conceptual barrier between humans and nature, presenting a worldview where “the plants and the animals and the rain and streams are not the other of us, it is us, and, like magic, it heals us.” Using several examples, Fuentes demonstrated how magical realism employs beauty and magic in partnership with the natural world to process “inexplicable loss” and envision pathways toward healing.
To create further connection to his topic, Fuentes added elements of nature to the meeting space where he was presenting. “On presentation day, I stopped at a bodega to buy birdseed, then borrowed about 10 potted plants from the conference center’s courtyards and arranged them around my presentation room, lining the windowsills with birdseed,” he said. “We were rewarded because birds and a squirrel visited the windowsills. I joked about my gimmicky efforts to bring nature into my nature-related talk, passed out books for audience members to read highlighted excerpts, and delivered my argument supported by beautiful magical realist nature passages.”
Fuentes has served as a member of the W&L faculty since 2017. He holds a bachelor of arts in Latin American Studies from Columbia University and master of fine arts in English from Virginia Tech.
