The Witch in Recent Latin American Gothic: Magic, Wonder, and Care
No. 37 (2026-01-05)Author(s)
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Catalina Forttes ZalaquettPontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile
Abstract
This article explores the intersections between Gothic literature, magic, and wonder in recent Latin American narrative, focusing on the witch as an aesthetic and political resource. It argues that in texts such as Nuestra parte de noche by Mariana Enriquez, Las voladoras by Mónica Ojeda, Distancia de rescate by Samanta Schweblin, Cometierra and Miseria by Dolores Reyes, and Brujas by Brenda Lozano, the witch emerges as a response to extractivist violence and patriarchal structures, since her magic offers symbolic practices
that resist, contain, and resignify harm. In contrast to patriarchal figurations that cast her as irrational or deviant, the witch is here read as a mediator between worlds and as an agent of care, resistance, and imaginative social reconfiguration. The Gothic is also emphasized as a genre that enables the witch to articulate the unspeakable through knowledges excluded by Enlightenment modernity.
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