Seminar: On Fiction and Crime in Twentieth-Century Mexico

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Pablo Piccato (Columbia) - Crime fiction was one of the most popular genres in Mexico during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Through an examination of some famous and other relatively unknown authors, this talk explores the defining condition for the genre in Mexico: the skepticism of readers and authors toward the police and the justice system. How can these stories work if the truth is always elusive and justice rarely achieved? The emergence of readers and authors during these decades was possible thanks to the strong connections between the genre and the local crime news, and the selective use of foreign narrative models.

Prof Pablo Piccato is Professor of History at Columbia University, New York. He has worked on the political and cultural history of Mexico, and on the history of crime. His latest book was The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public Sphere (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). He is currently working on an overview of crime in Mexico during the twentieth century.