Towards a new history of the police genre in Latin America: early origins

This article investigates the history of the detective and crime literature in Latin America and attempts to dismantle the critical consensus regarding its beginnings in the 1940s. It shows how the historic-critical construction of these origins denies a significant number of previous texts. This established history 'elevates' and 'ennobles' the genre by linking its origin with the 'high literature' of members of Sur (Borges, Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo). In this way, the links between crime fiction and popular culture and literature were concealed. In turn, this article characterizes the first period of crime and detective fiction in Latin America (which runs from 1870 to the 1910s), where these links are of great importance.