Just Some Write-Ups

  Original image from  The New Yorker From a radical agrarian reformist ordering the evacuation of whole urban populations and moving them to the countryside to toil in rice paddies, to a voodoo-obsessed physician ordering the execution of all black dogs across his small island nation amid rumors that his most dangerous political rival could morph into said animal, “the pathological fascist tyrant” (to use book critic William Kennedy’s words) has been a staple of many a postcolonial nations’ literary works throughout much of the twentieth century, with some regimes even extending well into the present day. In addition to Africa and much of Southeast Asia, the Spanish-speaking world has seen its fair share of these maniacal, ostensibly messianic despots: from Spain’s Francisco Franco to Mexico’s Antonio Lopez de Sta. Anna to Paraguay’s Alfredo Stroessner; each of these strongmen—typically hailing from military backgrounds—came to power through less-than-democratic means and rul...