The Migration and Politics of Monsters in Latin American Cinema

The Migration and Politics of Monsters in Latin America proposes a cinematic cartography of contemporary Latin American horror films that take up the idea of the American continent as a space of radical otherness, or monstrosity, and use it for political purposes. The book explores how Latin American film directors migrate foreign horror tropes to create cinematographic horror hybrids that reclaim and transform monstrosity as a form of historical rewriting. By emphasizing the specificities of the Latin American experience, this book contributes to broad scholarship on horror cinema, at the same time connecting the horror tradition with contemporary discussions on violence, migration, fear of immigrants, and the rewriting of colonial discourses.

1. Introduction: Antipodean Horrors: The return of Latin American Monsters.- 2. Caribbean Monsters: Gothic Migrants in the “Hot-Lands”.- 3. The Mexican Supernatural: Migration in Historical Reverse.- 4. Yurei in the Andes: National Vengeance through Hybridized Ghosts.- 5. Argentina “Rojo Sangre”: Dictatorships through the Lens of a Gore Film Director.- 6. Contact Zones and Their New Monstrosities.

Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez is Head of Spanish Instruction and Latin American Studies at The New School in Atlanta, GA, USA, and Professor of Liberal Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design, USA. His research interests include horror cinema, gothic literature, migration studies, and post-humanism. He is author of Selva de fantasmas. El gótico en la literatura y el cine latinoamericanos (2017).