«Los muertos que no mueren en 'Pedro Páramo' y en 'Cien años de soledad'»

This paper investigates the historical reasons behind the failure of some projects of modernization represented metaphorically both in Pedro Páramo and in Cien años de soledad. These reasons seem related to the traumatic experience of the Conquest and to a compulsion to repeat the dynamics of that historical ancestral event. This failure resonates in the purgatorial condition that characterizes the two novels, both populated by dead people who seem alive and by living people who seem dead. As matter a of fact with the espression “purgatorial condition” we indicate a situation of suspension between life and death metaphorically considered, between a ever present past and a never arriving future, between tradition and modernity. This situation recalls an idea of expiation that nevertheless doesn’t lead to any salvation.