Rethinking coloniality and empire in popular culture: Pérez Reverte’s Mexico

• In Event: Reading Coloniality in Mexico through a Transhistoric, Transgeographic Lens

Abstract

In 2015, Arturo Pérez-Reverte was accused of plagiarism by Mexican author Verónica Murguía. Although the former acknowledged “coincidences” between both texts and apologized to Murguía, he refused to accept there was plagiarism. Murguía did not pursue the matter further, stating: “No quiero dinero ni voy a entablar una batalla legal con un hombre que es mucho más poderoso y rico que yo.” (La jornada 3/17/15). This anecdote serves as a point of departure to reflect on literary and cultural relations between Spain and México and how they ask us to reconsider (post)colonial and imperial thinking in the 21st century.

Reverte’s works enjoy international circulation and, together with his public image as an opinionated polemicist, help project him as a voice able to merge the intellectual and the popular writer into one seamless persona. In the past two decades, coinciding with his popular Alatriste fiction-series, his writings have increasingly focused on Latin America and México, in particular. Both phenomena go hand in hand, as his project to remember and reevaluate Spain’s imperial past necessarily entailed a reevaluation of the conquest and colonization of America as well as of the present-day relationship between both sides of the Atlantic. Reverte’s work is symptomatic of a larger cultural shift in Spain regarding memory, coloniality, and empire. While ostensibly critiquing Spanish contemporary imperialist fantasies, he rewrites the Mexican text in order to reinstate imperial cultural authority. His works help us to reformulate concepts of (post)coloniality and decoloniality in the 21st century.

Author

• Alejandro Mejías-López, Indiana University