Jorge Ibarguengoitia, Las Muertas [The Dead Girls]

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Jorge Ibargüengoitia (1928) was one of Mexico’s sharpest and most ironic chroniclers until his untimely death in 1983.

Las muertas

[

The Dead Girls

] (1977) is the grotesque fictionalisation of the infamous “Las Poquianchis” scandal. 1964 saw the arrest of three

madrotas

[madams], the Baladro sisters, in the state of Guanajuato where they ran various brothels, buried prostitutes and aborted babies on their unlawful premises (Clark: 1989, p.21). The novel is a humorous attack against certain moral hypocrisies present in Mexican politics and society. It is also a parody of creative nonfiction, particularly of New Journalism, and questions the appropriateness of traditional crime fiction in a Mexican context. Both New Journalism and crime fiction were immensely popular in the 1960s and…

2712 words

Citation: Lange, Charlotte. "Las Muertas". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 November 2022 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=40687, accessed 28 March 2024.]

40687 Las Muertas 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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