One cannot refer to Mexican gothic fiction without mentioning Carlos Fuentes. In fact, I would dare to say that one cannot refer to Mexican 20th century fiction in general without mentioning Carlos Fuentes. As early as 1962 the author publishes Aura, a short novel that includes many traditional gothic features. Aura can be easily found in English translation (Manchester University Press) as well as in bilingual edition (Macmillan: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). The narrative tells the story of Felipe Montero, a young historian who’s hired to organise and complete the memoirs of a dead gene

A ghostly question has haunted me even since I grew acquainted with Latin American fantastic literature: how is it possible that, apart from short and little-known articles and unpublished doctoral thesis,  nobody has ever used the term Gothic to refer to its fiction? How come the Latin American literary criticism is so rich in interpretations on the fantastic, but there are no organized and systematic study of the prominent Gothic features of many of its texts? The first answer that came to mind had to do with the bad reputation the genre had in its beginnings, which may explain the crit