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In the prologue to Home Killings (2001), the first instalment of the Romilia Chacón mystery series by Marcos McPeek Villatoro, lead detective and protagonist Romilia provides readers with a snapshot view of her complex subjectivity. Opening with the line, "I'm twenty-eight, Latina, and a southerner," Romilia lays claim to her pan-ethnic and gendered identity as a Latina while also distinguishing her connection to a specific geographic area within the United States, the South (McPeek Villatoro, 2001, vii). Further delineating this self-identification is the fact that Romilia is of Central American descent, specifically Salvadoran, as well as a single mother. Understood within the broader context of detective fiction, and even that of multiethnic mystery novels, this multifaceted characterization of Romilia by McPeek Villatoro offers a pioneering example of a Salvadoran-American female sleuth. However, read against the backdrop of an upsurge in Latino immigration to the US South in the last few decades, Romilia's portrayal and crime solving are also suggestive of the ways in which Latinos are being integrated into and transforming this region.
As such, this analysis examines how McPeek Villatoro's Romilia Chacón series - Home Killings (2001), Minos (2003), and A Venom Beneath the Skin (2005) - engages with the multifaceted Latino experience in the US South. Given Romilia's particular ethnic background, I am especially interested in looking at the ways in which these novels constitute a key site for exploring the complexities of not just being Latino, but also Central American in a geographic location that has been traditionally marked by a black and white racial divide. Thus, McPeek Villatoro's narratives also help to disclose the contours of Central American immigration and incorporation into the United States from a southern vantage point. Before I embark on my analysis, I will first provide a brief overview of Latino and Latin American migration to the US South, detailing Central American migratory patterns. Second, I will discuss the notion of Central American representation and identity in relationship to McPeek Villatoro's detective fiction, followed by a close reading of Home Killings (2001).
Making Central Americans "visible"
With the exception of the Cuban-American community in Florida and the smaller populations of Mexican farm workers that emigrated to the US South as a result of the Bracero Program (1942-1964),...