The Fair in La guerra mortal de los sentidos by Roberto Castillo as a Vehicle for Honduran Identity Reconstruction from a Postcolonial and Carnivalesque Perspective

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the carnivalesque elements in La guerra mortal de los sentidos (2002) by Roberto Castillo, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnivalization. It examines how, through the representation of “the fair” held in honor of Lempira’s death, the novel recreates a symbolic space that subverts the social and religious hierarchies inherited from the colonial period, establishing an alternative order governed by laughter, profanation, and renewal. The study focuses on three main categories—language, the banquet, and the grotesque image—in order to demonstrate how these manifestations construct an ambivalent universe where the sacred and the profane, the high and the low, coexist on the same plane. Through the analysis of these images and symbols, the article reveals how literary carnival becomes a mechanism of resistance and reinterpretation of the historical past, proposing a utopian vision of the Lenca world and a reconfiguration of Honduran postcolonial identity.