Introduction Points of Departure

Abstract

The essays in Pushing the Boundaries of Latin American Testimony showcase a new generation of scholarship on a hybrid, and sometimes maddening yet always fascinating, subgenre of Latin American literature: testimonio. The contributors included here often make only a sideways glance to the saturated debates of previous decades. A core group of pro- and anti-testimonio critics were at the top of their theory game in the 1980s and 1990s—a time when Rigoberta Menchbecame the icon for those multilayered debates. Thereafter, the new millennium brought with it an air of (r)evolutionary movement for the exchange of information across the globe and, within the academy, across the disciplines. Yet, scholars were still clinging to Rigoberta Menchú and other classic testimonios, such as Biografía de un cimar-rón (Biography of a Runaway Slave) by Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, in their efforts to theorize outward and upward regarding complex issues of representation in peace and social justice work. Indeed, Arturo Arias’s collection of essays, The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy (2001), ushered in the first decade of the new millennium.