Urban Debris and Networking Imperialism in Un Arte de Hacer Ruinas by Antonio José Ponte

Abstract

In his article, Arriaga analyzes the short story collection Un arte de hacer ruinas (2005) by Antonio José Ponte, as a literary work that represents the global city from the inside out. Contrary contemporary transnational nomadic novelists writing about and from global cities with a complex Latin American point of view, Ponte writes about and from Havana—a globalized colonial city—exiling himself to the interior of the urban ruins in order to bring in global connections as a way to assess political, social, urban and aesthetic local processes. Arriaga also illuminates how Ponte dialogues with the iconic urban fictions of the Boom authors who connected global and local spaces to understand Latin America’s place in the world. Ponte’s Havana, however, inverts such a connection showing how the ruins of the Cuban city extend throughout the globe forcing people to live within and become disposable materials.