User:Mwinog2777/Crónica (literary genre

Crónica is a literary genre unique to and widely used throughout Spanish Latin America.

Description
Defining crónica is difficult and contentious, as the genre is flexible, malleable,and mutating. It can be short or long; and, it can be poetry. There are certain broad guidelines that identify and help recognize the genre. The genre has three core attributes: the stories are true, they read as fiction and are socially progressive. Crónica crosses the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction; it has been called a novel without fiction It is a narrative journalism written in a literary style with first hand testimony, a "journalism that has a distinctive Latin American diacritic, form and social undertaking." There are distinct differences between this and the the Brazilian crônica.

Historical roots
It has ben noted that the first colonial histories of Latin America were not written by historians, but by cronistas (chroniclers), whose work should be viewed as "adventures of the imagination." This uniquely Latin American hybrid genre is thought to be descended from early literary traditions, such as seen in Crónicas de Indias. The contemporary crónica made a comeback in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the rise of democracies. This was a period when Latin America modernized, leaving behind the colonial past. The style of the cronistas of this period was poetic and humorous, highlighting the problems of the period. By the 1960s crónicas became more militant, reflecting the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution. This is reflected in Tomás Eloy Martínez's Passion According to Trelew, an account of the massacre of Argentine leftists; and Rodolfo Walsh's Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta, published minutes before he was assassinated.

21st century
The crónica remains thriving and evolving, and the 21st century has seen a movement away from the militant issues of the past, including torture, democracy, disappearance and freedom of the press. Less militant but still engaged, the focus has turned to issues such as gay rights, legalization of marijuana, right to water, violence and drug-trafficking cultures, its engagement with the Internet as platform for communication and ameliorate the desencarto (disenchantment) of the post-dictatorship era.