“Los vampiros no darán un paso más”: narrativa fantástica e imaginario heroico militar en Maxente de Carlos E. Freyre

Abstract

In the following paper, I will examine how Maxente (2016), a novel by the Peruvian author Carlos E. Freyre, develops a narrative within the fantastic genre in which members of a military patrol confront a group of vampires led by a pair of senderistas (militants of Communist Party of Peru-Sendero Luminoso). Through the use of Gothic and horror tropes and conventions, the book represents the context of the Peruvian post-conflict from a non-dialogic place of enunciation that celebrates a series of values ​​traditionally linked to the military imaginary and that articulates an ideological “fantasy of recognition” in favor of the Armed Forces. In this way, the novel is inserted into the struggle for the memory of the period of the internal armed conflict in Peru.