COLONIALIDADE E VIOLÊNCIA NA AMÉRICA LATINA: uma leitura do romance Amuleto, de Roberto Bolaño

Abstract

This article aims to approximate the concept of Coloniality and its aspects, by Anibal Quijano, with the novel Amuleto, by Roberto Bolaño. Coloniality, as an epistemic reading of the capitalist domination proposed by Quijano, can also be expanded to the cultural field and, here in particular, with literature. Amulet tells the story of Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan poet, who was based in Mexico in the 1960s. During this period, the Mexican country was chosen to host the 19th Olympic Games, at the same time that a questioning youth took to the streets to denounce the government corruption. The climax of this clash came in 1968, when the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was invaded by the army and a crowd of young people was cowardly attacked by snipers, a government service, in Tlatelolco's Three Cultures Square. These violent events in Mexico are in Bolaño's novel, which presents as his reflections on this violated Latin America based on the memories of Lacouture, who, in fiction, hid in the bathroom of UNAM at the time of his invasion by army troops. From this provocation, it will be defended here that the work Amuleto, has plots that dialogue and intersect with the concept of Quijano's Coloniality, in which violence and domination became an open wound throughout Latin America.