Latin American Literature Commons^™

Carnality In ‘El Matadero', Lee Joan Skinner

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Esteban Echeverria's short story "El matadero" is generally acknowledged as a literary masterpiece in miniature. It is widely anthologized and has been called the inaugural work of Argentine short fiction, if not the first Latin American short story. Seymour Menton positions it as the first story in his influential anthology El cuento hispanoamericano and calls it "una verdadera obra de arte" (34); David William Foster refers to it as "the founding text of Argentine fiction" (Sexual Textualities 135). Although the story has been popularly and critically acclaimed, it also presents certain problems for its readers. Written by an avowed Romantic, …