Post/de/colonial Strategies in Latin America’s Literary and Cultural Discourses

Known as one of 20th century currents of thought which greatly contributed to Comparative Literature, Postcolonial Studies caused a rupture in the discipline’s main axis when they put into check its ethnocentric character, based on a center/periphery dichotomy that focused on European and non-European produc-tions from an uneven and hierarchic perspective. By refusing to approach the literary and cultural production of European ex-colonies as extensions of what was produced in their metropoles, Postcolonial critics have shaken the basis of Western academy and have raised important questions still present in the agenda of international debates. In this paper, we examine some of these issues, and discuss the role they had in a context as that of Latin America, where the political independence from European matrixes had already occurred since the first half of the 19th century, but cultural and economic dependence is still a heavy burden.