“They have always burned us” femicide, finance, and neoextractivism in Latin America

This essay explores how recent Latin American fiction has responded to the marked intensification of colonial-extractivist landgrabs, enclosures, and the plunder of natural resources in the region following the global primary commodities boom of the early 2000s. My specific interest is in the connections that exist between primitive accumulation, sexist violence, and finance capital. These connections have been highlighted by Indigenous, peasant, and feminist groups resisting the post-2000 advance of commodity frontiers into hinterland zones. But they have also been mapped in a new wave of gothic, noir, and horror fiction by Latin American women writers, including Mónica Ojeda, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enríquez, Selva Almada, and Agustina Bazterrica. The essay situates this literary outpouring in the context of neoextractivism – a term that has emerged as a key concept for many Latin American critics analysing the expansion in frontier-led plunder and its articulation with sexist violence and new forms of financial extraction. I then turn to the specific case of Mexico and Fernanda Melchor’s 2017 novel Hurricane Season (Temporada de hurucanes). Hurricane Season repurposes gothic, horror, and detective fiction conventions to address both the history of resource exploitation, patriarchal domination, and financial terror in Mexico, as well as the impact of spiralling femicides, drug war capitalism, and the expansion of extractive activities in the country since the turn of the century.