The dictator novel () is a genre of Latin American literature that challenges the role of the dictator in Latin American society. The theme of caudillismo—the régime of a charismatic caudillo, a political strongman—is addressed by examining the relationships between power, dictatorship, and writing. Moreover, a dictator novel often is an allegory for the role of the writer in a Latin American society. Although mostly associated with the Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, the dictator-novel genre has its roots in the nineteenth-century non-fiction work Facundo (1845), by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. As an indirect critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas's dictatorial régime in Argentina, Facundo is the forerunner of the dictator novel genre; all subsequent dictator novels hearken back to it. As established by Sarmiento, the goal of the genre is not to analyze the rule of particular dictators, or to focus on historical accuracy, but to examine the abstract nature of authority figures and of authority in general.
To be considered a dictator novel, a story should have strong political themes drawn from history, a critical examination of the power held by the dictator, the caudillo, and some general reflection on the nature of authoritarianism. Although some dictator novels centre on one historical dictator (albeit in fictional guise), they do not analyze the economics, politics, and rule of the régime as might a history book. The dictator novel genre includes I, the Supreme (1974), by Augusto Roa Bastos, about Dr. Francia of Paraguay, and The Feast of the Goat (2000), by Mario Vargas Llosa, about Rafael Leónidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. Alternatively, the novelist might create a fictional dictator to achieve the same narrative end, as in Reasons of State (1974), by Alejo Carpentier, in which the dictator is a composite man assembled from historical dictators. The genre of the dictator novel has been very influential in the development of a Latin American literary tradition, because many of the novelists rejected traditional, linear story-telling techniques, and developed narrative styles that blurred the distinctions between reader, narrator, plot, characters, and story. In examining the authority of leadership, the novelists also assessed their own social roles as paternalistic dispensers of wisdom, like that of the caudillo whose régime they challenged in their dictator novels.
Literary context
Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría argues that the dictator novel is "the most clearly indigenous thematic tradition in Latin American literature", and traces the development of this theme from "as far back as Bernal Díaz del Castillo's and Francisco López de Gómara's accounts of Cortés's conquest of Mexico." The nineteenth century saw significant literary reflections on political power, though on the whole the dictator novel is associated with the Latin American Boom, a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. For critic Gerald Martin, the dictator novel marks the end of the Boom and even (as he says of Roa Bastos's I, the Supreme) "the end of an entire era in Latin American history, the era which had stretched from Sarmiento's Facundo in 1845." In the 1970s, many dictator novels focused on the figure "of the aging dictator, prey to the boredom of a limitless power he is on the verge of losing."
Definition
Miguel Ángel Asturias's El Señor Presidente (written in 1933, but not published until 1946) is, in the opinion of critic Gerald Martin, "the first real dictator novel". Other literary treatments of the dictator figure followed, such as Jorge Zalamea's El Gran Burundún Burundá ha muerto, but the genre did not gain impetus until it was reinvented in the political climate of the cold war, through the Latin American Boom.
The dictator novel came back into fashion in the 1970s, towards the end of the Boom. As Sharon Keefe Ugalde remarks, "the 1970s mark a new stage in the evolution of the Latin American dictator novel, characterized by at least two developments: a change in the perspective from which the dictator is viewed and a new focus on the nature of language." By this she means that the dictator novels of the 1970s, such as The Autumn of the Patriarch or I, the Supreme, offer the reader a more intimate view of their subject: "the dictator becomes protagonist" and the world is often seen from his point of view. With the new focus on language, Keefe Ugalde points to the realisation on the part of many authors that "the tyrant's power is derived from and defeated by language." For example, in Jorge Zalamea's El Gran Burundún Burundá ha muerto the dictator bans all forms of language.