Myth and the Position of the Hero in the Early Stories of Salarrué

Abstract

The works of Salarrué emerge partially from the costumbrista tradition in El Salvador, and partially from the avant-garde movements that appeared in the first half of the twentieth century. Within this framework, figures from popular myth, and in particular the Ziguanaba and the Cipitío, appear in his short stories, much the same as they do in the works of his contemporaries, such as Miguel Ángel Espino and Arturo Ambrogi. Salarrué’s works are unique in this respect, however, as he is careful to resist identifying these figures as extant within the lived world of the protagonists of these stories. While other authors utilized myth to help build a collective national consciousness, this article proposes that Salarrué instead uses myth as a means of framing issues of social and cultural importance, such as gender and social class, by inverting the position of the stories’ heroes as being not the central mythic figures, but rather their everyday human protagonists.