Childhood Migrants: Territories, Journeys and Displacements, in Cronwell Jara’s Montacerdos

Abstract

This article analyzes the writing of forced displacement in the novel Montacerdos (1981), by the Peruvian author Cronwell Jara. The narration gives an insight in the mobile universe of migrant children and suggests a cultural construction of childhood that, in contrast to the hegemonic vision, validates its existence in the displacement. The marks of migration that shape the childhood of the principal characters are narrated through the memory of a female voice. The body and the house appear as topoi of violence and marginality.