When you think of the word “Gothic,” what typically comes to mind? Creepy castles? Vampires? Werewolves? While those aren’t incorrect notions, they only make up a small fraction of the broader picture that the Gothic is meant to embody. The genre was created with a blend of horror, romance, and mystery. It’s often associated with dark and decaying backdrops in European countries and cities, and even darker secrets from strange sets of characters. As it is Latine Heritage History Month, it feels significant to explore how the Gothic manifests within Latin American and Caribbean traditions. As a Puerto Rican, I never noticed how easily one could interpret aspects of my culture through a Gothic lens. While Latin Gothic can encompass the famous monsters we associate with the writing style, the “ghosts” in Latin America are not just supernatural figures, but the lingering wounds of colonialism, genocide, slavery, and forced assimilation. The pain of it all becomes woven into folklore, superstition, family histories, and even inherited shame. Latin Gothic is less about haunted castles and more about haunted identities.
If the Gothic genre can take on many forms depending on country or culture, then what makes Gothic, Gothic? The genre has several traits meant to structure the writing style. For example, terror and horror. Author Ann Radcliffe, an iconic figure in the Gothic movement, felt that horror was the fear of something tangible, like a monster or a home, whereas terror was fear that produces psychological consequences. Another trait is the discourse between good vs evil, which is designed as a forum to divulge the darker sides of humanity. Many authors depict characters having internal battles through their controversial actions and secrets. Oftentimes, they end up making less-than-savory decisions as a way to hide what they’ve done. One example of this is from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, specifically through Rochester’s hidden past, his wife being kept in an attic, and the moral consequences of that deceit.
Latin Gothic does an excellent job of combining ghostly specters and tying them into broader discussions surrounding the painful history of colonization that leave deep scars in their wake. The “ghosts” of Latin America can also be depicted as souls confined to a location or bloodline; they are more representative of the pain that those communities historically suffered: slavery, genocide, forced assimilation, etc. Acts of violence such as these are never truly forgotten. The scars and the pain run so deep that they become a part of our folklore. La Llorona, meaning ‘weeping woman,’ is an iconic Mexican figure who is said to walk the riversides, grieving her children, and will take the lives of those who hear her cries. While her story often gets used as a means to scare children into obeying their parents, she represents families being separated by death or conquest, marred by generational trauma.
V. Castro’s The Haunting of Alejandra is a retelling of La Llorona that showcases how Latin Gothic draws on folklore to express trauma. Alejandra, a neglected wife and mother, is being haunted by the ghostly figure known as La Llorona and the generational pain carried by the women before her. Castro uses ghosts in a deeply psychological way, blending Ann Radcliffe’s definition between horror (ghosts) and terror (Alejandra’s despair). The cursed woman trope is very common in Gothic literature, which becomes reimagined as a survival story when Alejandra breaks the cycle of inherited suffering. The Gothic gets transformed into a vessel for cultural memory and resistance, showing that “ghosts” can come from family legacies.
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova is a story rooted in family secrets and inherited trauma, combining magical realism with the Gothic. The novel begins with Orquídea summoning her family back home to Four Rivers in Ecuador for her impending funeral, a request that leaves her family with more questions than answers. Due to its remoteness, the setting aligns with conventional Gothic themes, where families are isolated from the rest of the world. The ghosts in this narrative are both literal and figurative as the family unravels their matriarch’s secrets, connecting the trope of inheritance to pain, memory, and identity. Córdova grounded her personal diaspora experience in the Gothic to show how the past holds onto descendants even after the death of the matriarch.
Silvia Moreno-García’s Mexican Gothic uses a lot of the traditional Gothic tropes as well: decaying mansion, family secrets, and ruin. The central character in the novel is the rotting house, known as High Place. It’s a fungi-infested, oppressive household where death and corruption are found at every corner, mirroring the familiar Gothic setting of castles or manors. What Moreno-García does differently is reframing the genre to confront colonial horror, rather than just the supernatural. The antagonistic family’s wealth and power stem from eugenics and the exploitation of Mexican laborers, revealing that the “monster” is more than just the hallucinogenic fungus. It’s also colonial domination. Furthermore, the novel reclaims the traditionally passive Gothic heroine through the debutante-turned-heroine, Noemí, allowing her to grow into a strong-willed and strategic protagonist,
Latin Gothic places women in systems of colonialism and corruption that were designed to silence them, resulting in their overcoming the pain and finding some peace or justice. One of the biggest things that these novels have in common is that they were all written by women and center their narratives on powerful women protagonists. Whereas Eurocentric Gothic heroines are often depicted as highly vulnerable and passive, Latine Gothic Heroines are survivors who save themselves and those around them. In Mexican Gothic, the protagonist, Noemí, begins as a superficial debutante who grows into a heroine battling corrupt and colonial structures. Zoraida Córdova takes a matriarch, who is usually a background character in European Gothic, and makes her a force that both empowers and curses her descendants. The Haunting of Alejandra reworks the classic trope of the cursed, despairing woman and turns her into a figure of resilience and power, who overcomes her traumas, literal and generational. The women’s perspective in Latin Gothic is beyond incidental; it’s essential to the narratives.
It’s worth noting that when Gothic stories are written by authors of color, they are often categorized as “ethnic fiction” rather than Gothic. The problem with this is that it narrows down their reach and limits their works to a cultural niche rather than a broader literary tradition. Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a classic example of a Gothic novel, using ghosts, living in isolation, plus a dark and mysterious house. Yet it is thought of more as African American literature rather than Gothic literature. This labeling shows how genres have been controlled to keep Gothic narratives related to Europe and pushes works from authors of color into identity-based grouping. Silvia Moreno-García’s decision to title her book Mexican Gothic becomes significant, as it establishes her standing in the Gothic tradition and insists on the fact that the genre does not belong just to European writers or audiences.
The Gothic is a versatile genre. It can exist across various cultures and should not be limited to haunted castles and foggy moors, but extended to other definitions of what makes Gothic, Gothic. While those stories emerge from the history of colonization, slavery, and assimilation, authors like Silvia Moreno-García, Zoraida Córdova, and V. Castro remind us that the “ghosts” of Latin America are equally as Gothic as vampires and werewolves. Reading Latin Gothic allows us to realize that some of the most terrifying monsters aren’t necessarily imaginary, but inherited.