The Night That Repeats Itself: Social Dystopia in Managua, Salsa City (¡Devórame Otra Vez!), by Franz Galich

Abstract

Broadly speaking, Central America experienced a political and cultural shift in the 1990s away from periods of Civil War to implementations of neoliberal economic policies marked by elitism and corruption. Perkowska contextualizes how Franz Galich’s novel Managua, Salsa City (!Devórame otra vez) represents the transitions occurring within Nicaraguan society, showing a disillusionment with the utopian promises of Revolution. In addition, the novel expresses a new type of violence. The novel highlights this social critique by focusing on the symbolic battle between light and dark, day and night, via a wandering journey through the nightlife of Managua. Perkowska argues that Galich’s novel questions the idea of the city as the center of progress and modernization as seen in idealistic liberal notions of the city in Latin American literature from the nineteenth century on. Galich’s novel presents an image of the city not as utopia, but as dystopia.