Acceso usuarios
Sharina Maillo Pozo
The decade of the eighties has been recorded as one of the periods of the greatest losses in the Dominican nation. A displacement policy was promoted that became the abandonment of rural areas, an overpopulation of urban territory and a massive exodus to the US and Puerto Rico. This was followed by the greatest economic austerity recorded in the country. These factors, together with the memories of three decades of dictatorship, the twelve years of political hegemony of the balaguerato and the violence that occurred in both stages, affected the origin of a generation thirsting for change. In this devastating panorama and throughout the following two decades a group of writers and artists emerged, both on the island and in their diaspora, which attempts to dismantle the totalizing and homogeneous discourses prevalent in the Dominican imaginary. The work of Aurora Arias is inserted into this literary context. In 1998, her first collection of stories, Invi's Paradise y otros relatos, appeared, followed by Fin de mundo y otros relatos (2000). Both compilations present realities and subaltern subjects-among them Luis Terror Días, Dominican musical and cultural icon who transgressed the limits of official culture-in order to legitimize their existence in the island's imaginary. His presence in the stories of Arias, beyond serving as a basis for a story supported by a group of characters, the seed of a strong countercultural movement, legitimizes an approach, another, to "the Dominican" that includes urban youth of the eighties, unknown by many. The subsequent narrative intention of Arias-Emoticons (2007)-addresses the uncomfortable realities of the current Santo Domingo, mistreated, prostituted and abandoned by the sectors of power.
