Golpe de gracia and the Latin American Electronic Literature

Golpe de Gracia by Jaime Alejandro Rodríguez Ruiz is a landmark of Latin American electronic literature. There is no other digital narrative in Spanish that compares in craftsmanship or creativity to Golpe de Gracia. In contrast with other Latin American digital pieces, Golpe de Gracia departs from the premise that this narrative is digital and as such should take advantage of a variety of tools to bring to the fore the most relevant aspects of this piece. In Golpe de Gracia Rodríguez Ruiz challenges the reader/participant to traverse a series of layers to decode the meaning behind a series of intertwined stories and metaphors. To accomplish this goal, Rodríguez Ruiz has incorporated games, animations, a wiki, a blog and a sophisticated layer of narratives. In this presentation I will critically analyze Golpe de Gracia taking into consideration the information systems framework presented by the panel “Rereading E-Lit as Information Systems” in the 2007 ELO conference. This approach which allows for an in depth and innovative analysis of Golpe de Gracia underscores the relevance of each element of this interactive hypermedia narrative following a systematic approach which could be used in other e-lit pieces(Source: Author).