El poder y la palabra: Modelos de identidad Latinoamericana en El recurso del método de Alejo Carpentier

This essay reviews different identity models that have been developed throughout Latin American independent history in order to consolidate national (and continental) unity. However, we point out how these models were in many cases constructed from institutions as the State or literature with the aim of implant hegemonic structures of domination and exclusion. I examine the way the novel El recurso del método by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier does a critical review of the discourses linked with the power exercise and its agenda in diverse periods in Latin America. I propose that the narrative text reveals the contradiction and utilitarian use of models as race, nationalism, Hispanic and Latin heritage, among other, and that it is at the same time trying to promote another one: the social revolution model. In this sense, the novel is continuing the same tradition is actually criticizing.