My dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine the representation of the crisis of the family in contemporary Latin American cinema of the first decade of the twenty-first century. I argue that the representation of the crisis of the family in certain postmodern Latin American films is a symbol of the effects of the violent transition to a globalized world put into practice by authoritarian regimes and dirty wars. The motif of incest -and in lesser extent, of parricide- is a polysemic narrative device that operates as a sign for the impossibility of representation of the historic events of the recent past, the effects of which emerge as a phantasmagoric (post)memory and discontent in the Latin American society of the present.

The cinematic works I discuss include eleven recent films from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Mexico: the Peruvian films Ojos que no ven (2003) by Francisco Lombardi, Jose Mendez's Dias de Santiago (2004), and Claudia Llosa's Madeinusa (2006); Sebastian Lelio's La sagrada familia (2004), Pablo Larrain's Fuga (2006), and Tony Manero (2008) from Chile; the Argentinean Geminis (2005) by Albertina Carri, and Lucia Puenzo's El nino pez (2009); Matheus Nachtergaele's A festa da menina morta (2008) from Brazil; Ricardo Montreuil's La mujer de mi hermano (2005), a Mexican, Peruvian, and Chilean co-production; and Carlos Reygadas's Batalla en el cielo (2005) from Mexico.

Based on this cinematic selection, I propose that the representation of the crisis of the family, which emphasizes the transgression of the incest taboo, and parricide as motifs or recurrent themes, is an allegory of the culmination of a crisis, and at the same time, operates as an allegory of a symptom and critical device of the homogenized values of the patriarchal order that has lost its legitimacy. The criticism of these values focuses on the different modes of articulation of the roles in the family in terms of class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, which questions at the same time the foundation of modernity as a homogeneous system that the postmodern narrative defies and fragments. The transgression of the incest taboo as a fundamentally masculine act, is at the same time an excess of power, and indicates that what is at question here is the patriarchal discourse as a valid and endurable one in a more heterogeneous and multifaceted emerging postmodern society at the threshold of the new century.