UC San Diego

Detective fiction, as established in Anglo-American traditions, posed a formula for portraying crime and justice. Since its popularity in the 19th century, Latin America and Chicano authors have developed their own forms of detective fiction to portray the realistic conditions of their respective cities. The dissertation employs an interdisciplinary framework that engages with Hemispheric studies, literature studies, and cultural geography to explore the form and political commitment that Latin American and Latino authors use to provide counter-narratives of the city and their communities. Using the framework of hemispheric studies, I bridge Chicano/a and Latin American studies to explore detective novels in in Santiago, Chile, Mexico City, Mexicali, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. I explore how social and geopolitical spaces inform the crimes and characterization of the detective in these respective spaces. Chapter one and two explores vigilante detectives and their nostalgic memory of democracy in their respective cities. Chapter three and four transitions to the U.S.-Mexico border where Mexican and Chicano detectives define crime in terms of how their border cities' socio-economic conditions facilitate the production of crime vis-a-vis the trafficking of women and drugs. Lastly, Chapter five focuses on Chicano/a detectives in Albuquerque to examine how city politics disenfranchise Chicano/a communities in the city. My dissertation concludes with reflections on the development of detective fiction by Latin American and Chicana/o authors. I reflect on how these authors shape a genre of the “Americas” through a political commitment against state corruption and marginalization of dominant cultures.