15 short Latin American stories (beautiful and very inspiring)

Latin American literature has given the world great works. It has a characteristic style of the region, easily recognizable in the rest of the world. Although it is not the only genre, Latin American short stories have a prominent place in literary appreciation.

Thanks to the so-called “Latin American boom” that emerged between 1960 and 1970, authors such as Julio Cortazar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes, among others, are recognized throughout the world.

• Related article: "The 20 best short poems (of the best authors)"

The magic of Latin American literature, in 12 short stories

The short story is a literary genre that, among other things, is characterized by its minimal length. Despite being very brief, they have everything you need to tell a story: setting, development, climax and denouement.

Without leaving aside the Latin American flavor, the great authors of Latin American literature express in these short stories stories about daily life, the comings and goings of love and heartbreak, social injustices and, in general, the day-to-day life in that part of the world.

• It may interest you: "The 10 best Latin American writers of all time"

1. "Instructions to cry" (Julio Cortázar)

Leaving aside the reasons, let's stick to the correct way of crying, understanding by this a cry, that does not enter the scandal, nor that it insults the smile with its parallel and awkward resemblance. The average or ordinary cry consists of a general contraction of the face and a spasmodic sound accompanied by tears and snot, the latter at the end, because crying ends the moment you blow your nose strongly.

To cry, he direct your imagination towards yourself, and if this is impossible for you because you have contracted the habit of believing in him outside world, think of a duck covered in ants or those gulfs of the Strait of Magellan where nobody enters, never. When the crying arrives, he will cover his face with decorum using both hands with the palm facing inward. Children will cry with the sleeve of the jacket against their face, and preferably in a corner of the room. Average duration of crying, three minutes.

• Julio Cortazar He is one of the most important representatives of the Latin American Boom. Argentine by birth and a French national in protest against the military regime. This micro-story is an ingenious and very detailed description of what happens when we cry.

2. "Literature" (Julio Torri)

The novelist, in his shirt sleeves, put a sheet of paper into the typewriter, numbered it, and began to relate a pirate boarding. He did not know the sea and yet he was going to paint the southern seas, turbulent and mysterious; He had never dealt with in his life more than employees without romantic prestige and peaceful and dark neighbors, but he had to say now what pirates are like; he heard the goldfinches of his wife chirping, and in those moments populated by albatrosses and great seabirds the gloomy and frightening skies.

* The fight that he sustained with rapacious publishers and with an indifferent public seemed to him the approach; the misery that threatened his home, the wild sea. And describing the waves in which corpses and red masts swayed, the miserable writer thought of his life without triumph, ruled by deaf and fatal forces, and in spite of everything fascinating, magical, supernatural from him. *

• This short story was written by Julio Torri, Mexican writer who, together with other notable figures of his time, worked for literary and scientific dissemination and dissemination. In this beautiful story he narrates the bittersweet reality of the writer.

3. "The tail" (Guillermo Samperio)

That opening night, outside the cinema, from the box office people have been forming a disorderly line that descends the stairs and stretches out on the sidewalk, next to the wall, passes In front of the candy stall and the one with magazines, and newspapers, an extensive snake with a thousand heads, an undulating viper of various colors dressed in sweaters and jackets, a restless nauyaca she contorts along the street and turns the corner, a huge boa that moves her body anxiously for her, whipping the sidewalk, invading the street, rolling up to the cars, interrupting the traffic, climbing the wall, over the ledges, thinning in the air, its rattlesnake tail slipping through a second-story window, behind the back of a pretty woman, taking a melancholic cafe before a round table, a woman who listens alone to the noise of the crowd in the street and perceives a fine jingle that suddenly breaks her air of nightmare, brightens and she helps to collect a weak light of joy, she then remembers those days of happiness and love, of nocturnal sensuality and hands on her body, firm and well-formed, she gradually opens her her legs, he strokes her pubis, which is already wet, slowly removes her pantyhose, panties, and allows the tip of her tail, tangled in a chair leg and erect under the table, possess it.

• This short story with erotic touches belongs to Guillermo Samperio, a notable Mexican writer who contributed his extensive work to Mexican and Latin American literature. In addition to his short stories, his poetic prose and his essays stand out.

4. "The bat" (Eduardo Galeano)

When time was still very young, there was no bug in the world uglier than the bat.The bat went up to heaven in search of God. He said:I'm sick of being hideous. Give me colored feathers. No. He said: Give me feathers, please, I'm dying of cold.God had no pen left over.Each bird will give you one - he decided.Thus the bat obtained the white feather of the dove and the green one of the parrot. The iridescent feather of the hummingbird and the pink of the flamingo, the red of the cardinal's plume and the blue feather of the back of the Kingfisher, the clay feather of the eagle's wing and the feather of the sun that burns on the chest of the toucan.The bat, lush with colors and softness, walked between the earth and the clouds. Wherever he went, the air was happy and the birds dumb with admiration.The Zapotec peoples say that the rainbow was born from the echo of its flight.Vanity puffed out his chest.He looked disdainfully and commented offended.The birds gathered. Together they flew towards God. The bat makes fun of us - they complained -. And we also feel cold because of the feathers that we lack.The next day, when the bat flapped its wings in mid-flight, he was suddenly naked. A shower of feathers fell on the ground.He's still looking for them. Blind and ugly, enemy of light, he lives hidden in caves. He goes out to chase the lost feathers when night has fallen; and he flies very fast, never stopping, because he is ashamed to be seen.

• Eduardo Galeano, the author of this story aimed at children, is one of the most influential writers and intellectuals of the last decades, not only in his country, Uruguay, but in all of Latin America.

5. Love 77 (Julio Cortázar)

And after doing everything they do, they get up, bathe, tighten, perfume, dress and, thus progressively, they go back to being what they are not.

• Another tale of Julio Cortazar. Undoubtedly one of the shortest by the author, and at the same time one of the most popular among short Latin American stories. This story tells us how, to go out into the world, we put on a character that we rarely really are.

6. "The fortune teller" (Jorge Luis Borges)

In Sumatra, someone wants to get a doctorate as a fortune teller. The examining witch asks him if he will be failed or if he will pass. The candidate responds that he will be disapproved ...

• Jorge Luis Borges he is one of the most important Latin American writers. He is of Argentine origin and his work covers practically all literary genres. Among the many short stories he has written, "The Fortune Teller" is one of the most popular.

7. "One of two" (Juan José Arreola)

I have also fought with the angel. Unfortunately for me, the angel was a strong, mature, and repulsive character in a boxer's robe.Shortly before we had been vomiting, each one by his side, in the bathroom. Because the banquet, rather the revelry, was the worst. My family was waiting for me at home: a remote past.Immediately after his proposition, the man decisively began to strangle me. The fight, rather the defense, developed for me as a quick and multiple reflective analysis. I calculated in an instant all the possibilities of loss and salvation, betting on life or dream, dividing myself between giving in and dying, postponing the result of that metaphysical and muscular operation.I was finally unleashed from the nightmare as the illusionist who undoes his mummy ligatures and steps out of the armored chest. But I still have on my neck the mortal marks left by the hands of my rival. And in conscience, the certainty that I only enjoy a truce, the remorse of having won a banal episode in the irretrievably lost battle.

• Juan Jose Arreola he is a Mexican writer, one of the most influential in his country. In this story, he narrates in a few words a struggle between consciousness and unconsciousness that we all seem to have. A short story that has all the necessary elements to excite.

8. "Episode of the enemy" (Jorge Luis Borges)

So many years running and waiting and now the enemy was in my house. From the window I saw him trudging up the rough path of the hill. He helped himself with a cane, with a clumsy cane that in his old hands could not be a weapon but a staff. He had a hard time noticing what he expected: the faint knock against the door.

I looked, not without nostalgia, at my manuscripts, the half-finished draft and Artemidorus's treatise on dreams, a somewhat anomalous book there, since I don't know Greek. Another wasted day, I thought. I had to struggle with the key. I was afraid that the man would collapse, but he took some uncertain steps, dropped the cane, which I did not see again, and he fell on my bed, exhausted. My anxiety had imagined him many times, but only then did I notice that he resembled, in an almost brotherly way, the last portrait of Lincoln. It would be four in the afternoon.

I leaned over him so he could hear me.

"One thinks that years pass for one," I told him, "but they also pass for others." Here we are at last and what happened before does not make sense. While I was talking, the overcoat had been unbuckled. His right hand was in his coat pocket. Something was pointing at me and I felt that he was a revolver.

He then said to me in a firm voice:-To enter your house, I have resorted to compassion. I have him now at my mercy and I am not merciful.

I rehearsed a few words. I am not a strong man and only words could save me. I tried to say:

-In truth, I mistreated a child a long time ago, but you are no longer that child and I am not that fool. Furthermore, revenge is no less vain and ridiculous than forgiveness.

"Precisely because I am no longer that child," he replied, "I have to kill him." It is not about revenge, but about an act of justice. His arguments, Borges, are mere stratagems of his terror so that she does not kill him. You can no longer do anything.

"I can do one thing," I replied."Which one?" He asked me.-Wake up.

So I did it.

• Jorge Luis Borges it was characterized by fine humor, sarcasm, and an astonishing narrative. This story of the "Enemy Episode" is a clear example of this.

9. "David's sling" (Augusto Monterroso)

Once upon a time there was a boy named David N., whose aim and slingshot skill aroused so much envy and admiration in his friends from the neighborhood and from school, who saw in him - and thus commented on it among themselves when his parents could not hear them - a new David.

He passed the time.

Tired of the tedious target shooting that he practiced shooting his pebbles at empty cans or bottle pieces, David found that it was much more fun to exercise. against birds the ability with which God had endowed him, so that from then on he undertook it with all who came within his reach, especially against Squirrels, Larks, Nightingales, and Goldfinches, whose bleeding little bodies fell gently on the grass, their hearts still agitated by the fright and violence of the night. stone.

David ran joyfully toward them and buried them Christianly.

When David's parents found out about this custom from his good son they were very alarmed, they told him what it was and they ugly his behavior in such harsh terms and convincing that, with tears in his eyes, he acknowledged his guilt, sincerely repented and for a long time applied himself to shoot exclusively at the others kids.

Years later dedicated to the military, in World War II David was promoted to general and decorated with the highest crosses. for killing thirty-six men alone, and later degraded and shot for letting a carrier pigeon escape alive. enemy.

• Augusto Monterroso he was a writer born in Honduras, later nationalized as a Guatemalan, but who lived many years of his life in Mexico. He is considered the highest representative of the Latin American micro story.

10. "The siren of the forest" (Ciro Alegría)

The tree called lupuna, one of the most originally beautiful in the Amazon rainforest, "has a mother." The jungle Indians say this about the tree they believe is possessed by a spirit or inhabited by a living being. Beautiful or rare trees enjoy such a privilege. The lupuna is one of the highest in the Amazon forest, it has a graceful branch and its stem, leaden gray, is trimmed in the lower part by a kind of triangular fins. The lupuna arouses interest at first sight and, on the whole, when viewed, it produces a sensation of strange beauty. As it "has a mother," the Indians do not cut the lupuna. The axes and machetes of the logging will cut down portions of the forest to build up villages, or clear fields of yucca and plantain crops, or open roads. The lupuna will be dominating. And anyway, so there is no slash, it will stand out in the forest for its height and particular conformation. It makes itself seen.

For the Cocamas Indians, the "mother" of the lupuna, the being that inhabits said tree, is a white, blond and singularly beautiful woman. On moonlit nights, she climbs the heart of the tree to the top of the canopy, comes out to let herself be illuminated by the splendid light and sings. Over the vegetal ocean formed by the treetops, the beautiful woman spills her clear and high voice, singularly melodious, filling the solemn amplitude of the jungle. The men and animals that listen to it are left as enchanted. The forest itself can still its branches to hear it.

The old cocamas warn the waiters against the spell of such a voice. Whoever listens to it should not go to the woman who sings it, because she will never return. Some say that she dies waiting to reach the beautiful one and others that she turns them into a tree. Whatever her fate, no young Cocama who followed the fascinating voice, dreaming of winning the beauty, ever returned.

She is that woman, who comes out of the lupuna, the siren of the forest. The best thing that can be done is to listen with contemplation, on some moonlit night, to her beautiful song near and distant from her.

• Ciro Alegría, of Peruvian origin, he was one of the most important writers of his country. Some of her stories are considered as great works that the Latin American boom gave to the world. Her narrative is always full of folklore and everyday life.

11. "Arriad the jib" Ana María Shua

Harness the jib! Orders the captain. Harness the jib! Repeats the second. Hammer to starboard! Yells the captain. Orzad to starboard! Repeats the second. Watch out for the bowsprit! The captain yells. The bowsprit! The second repeats. Knock down the mizzen pole! Repeats the second. Meanwhile, the storm rages and the sailors run up and down the deck, bewildered. If we do not find a dictionary soon, we are hopelessly plummeting.

• Ana Maria Shua She is of Argentine origin and currently, at 68 years of age, she is one of the few female writers who has several micro stories among her works. "Raise the Jib" is a tale full of humor.

12. "The new spirit" Leopoldo Lugones

In a notorious neighborhood of Jafa, a certain anonymous disciple of Jesus was arguing with the courtesans."The Magdalene has fallen in love with the rabbi," said one."His love for her is divine," replied the man.-Divine... Will you deny me that she adores her blond hair, her deep eyes, her royal blood, her mysterious knowledge, her dominion over people; the beauty of it, anyway?-No doubt; but she loves him without hope, and for this reason her love is divine.

• Leopoldo Lugones he was, along with Rubén Darío, one of the great exponents of Latin American modernism. Of Argentine origin, Leopoldo Lugones does not have many short stories among his work.

13. "Etching" (Ruben Darío)

From a nearby house came a metallic and rhythmic noise. In a narrow room, between sooty walls, black, very black, men worked in the forge. One moved the puffing bellows, making the coal crackle, sending whirlwinds of sparks and flames like pale, golden, blue, glowing tongues. In the glow of the fire in which long iron bars were reddened, the faces of the workers were looked at with a tremulous reflection. Three anvils assembled in crude frames resisted the beat of the males that crushed the red-hot metal, sending out a reddened rain.

The smiths wore open-necked woolen shirts and long leather aprons. They could see the fat neck and the beginning of the hairy chest, and the arms protruded from the baggy sleeves. gigantic, where, as in those of Anteo, the muscles looked like round stones from which they wash and polish the torrents. In that cavern blackness, in the glow of the flames, they had carvings of Cyclops. To one side, a window barely let through a beam of sunlight. At the entrance to the forge, as in a dark frame, a white girl was eating grapes. And against that background of soot and coal, her delicate and smooth shoulders that were naked made her beautiful lilac color stand out, with an almost imperceptible golden hue.

• Tale of Ruben Dario. This Nicaraguan writer is considered the greatest exponent of Latin American modernism. He was a pivotal influence on subsequent generations of writers, and his work stands out above all for its poetry.

14. "Soledad" (Álvaro Mutis)

In the middle of the jungle, in the darkest night of the great trees, surrounded by the humid silence spread by the vast leaves of the banana wild, the Gaviero knew the fear of his most secret miseries, the fear of a great emptiness that haunted him after his years full of stories and landscapes. All night the Gaviero remained in painful vigil, waiting, fearing the collapse of his being, his shipwreck in the swirling waters of madness. From these bitter hours of insomnia, the Gaviero was left with a secret wound from which at times flowed the thin lymph of a secret and unnameable fear.

The commotion of the cockatoos that flocked across the rosy expanse of dawn, brought him back to the world of his fellow men and he returned to place in his hands the usual tools of man. Neither love, nor misery, nor hope, nor anger were the same for him after his terrifying vigil in the wet and nocturnal solitude of the jungle.

• Alvaro Mutis he is of Colombian origin. This novelist and poet is one of the most important writers in all of Latin America in recent times. Until his death in 2013, he lived in Mexico where he lived for more than 50 years.

15. "The dinosaur" (Augusto Monterroso)

When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.

• This micro-narrative of Augusto Monterroso it is perhaps the most famous of its kind. For many years it was the shortest story in Latin American literature. And although he is no longer currently, he is still the most popular.