Welcome to Latin American horror!
Latin American horror literature reflects human darkness. Beyond ghosts, what scares us the most is what we carry inside.
It is not the monsters or the ghosts that add the disturbing component to our literature. It is the deep exploration of the human condition and its possibilities that leave readers with a dry throat. It is the ability of Latin writers with their stories that allow us to feel loneliness, hatred, abandonment, and resignation. The supernatural feels smaller than the narratives of what we Latin Americans can carry inside. Horror in contemporary Latin American literature is fueled by domestic and everyday events.
The Latin American horror genre has been gaining space in the world in recent decades. Authors who invite us to look better at reality through narrative territories where the possible converges with the fantastic. The horror of the domestic is making its way into contemporary literature and leaving us with new and unmistakable voices that reaffirm the insistent work with darkness that characterizes Latin American literature.
The Latin American horror story has its tradition. The legacy of Latin American writers becomes visible thanks to contemporary writers who have known how to embrace and work with excellence in literature from that place. Keeping tradition alive by renewing it is a great challenge for every writer. Our responsibility is to know how to find those passages between contemporary literature and tradition to form a general and precise idea of everything that the genre implies and who has contributed to its greatness over time. Because without genealogy there is no history of our literature. In Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, and other Latin American countries, many writers resort to fantasy, horror, and the unknown to disturb readers and express criticism about social problems. A narrative of the unusual that describes the current trend of literary production in the region. The “narrative of the unusual” is attentive to the social environment, explores Latin America in an intimate and unconventional way, and questions the nature of our closest personal relationships. The representations of normal life do not attempt to highlight the effect of the fantastic or supernatural; rather, the unreal is used to sharpen the reader’s perspective on what is true. The fact that Latin American horror is better known and spreads throughout the world with its fear, which is the basis on which every form of representation of horror is built, is the force that moves the characters on their path to survival, and it is also the origin of the process of empathy that readers experience. Those who read Latin American horror can feel the threat, which is fearsome, for the protagonists who reflect the reality of our countries.
Sandra Becerril is considered one of the most important writers of the horror genre in Latin America. Member of the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, writer and screenwriter, nominated for the Ariel Award 2015 and 2020 for Best Adapted Screenplay, Doctor Honoris Causa by the Ibero-American Congress of Education in Peru, member of the HBO scriptwriting team and the Horror Writers Association. Forty-five of her novels have been published in the most important international publishers and translated into ten languages, as well as adapted for feature films shown in various countries. She has credited 45 productions of scripts of her authorship, films, and series, which have won awards around the world, among the most recognized Nightmare Cinema, Santiago Apostle, From your hell, and The Apartment. Specializing in horror and thriller genres, she has directed four feature films and six successful television series. She has been a juror at 80 of the most renowned film and literature festivals.
She is the first Mexican to write for the horror masters of Hollywood. Find more about her here.