Keywords
Echavarría Uribe
Colombian Graphic Novel
Dystopia
Utopia
Speculative Fiction
How to Cite
Abstract
Set in the year 2040, Luis Echavarría Uribe’s graphic novel Liborina (2020) deals with the issues of the Colombian conflict through science fiction tropes, representing an uchronic Colombia in which the armed conflict has ended in 1990 and in which the memory of it has been erased from the official historical discourse. However, focusing on an expedition by a group of young people from Antioquia to a rural area destined to conservation and tourism projects, the novel reveals the heart of darkness hidden behind an apparent utopia. A utopian community that lives hidden in the jungle and that feigns egalitarian ideals, is, in fact, devoted to bloody rituals that evoke the practices and symbols of terror used by the paramilitaries in the rural areas of the country, which is the epicenter of the Colombian conflict. The article frames the analysis of the novel in the context of what María Ospina defines as “rural turn” (2017) in Colombian culture, that is, a renewed attention in cultural works to the socio-political and economic dynamics that are experienced in rural areas of the country, and discusses the emergence of a graphic novel that moves away from the urban settings that have dominated the imaginary of Colombian comics. Following this framework, the present article argues that Liborina, beyond its uchronic premise, employs and subverts utopian tropes of the lost civilization, and its variant inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, as well as the Orwellian trope of a dystopia resulting from the practical application of a utopian project.
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