'With your rifle shooting auroras'- Insurgent songs and narratives of violence and modernity in Central America and Mexico

Armed conflicts have heavily impacted Latin American societies for centuries. Yet the numerous studies that have examined these armed conflicts have devoted little attention to the primary instrument of this violence: the firearm. This dissertation fills this gap by providing the first in-depth study of representations of weaponry in songs and literary texts from various armed conflicts, including the Mexican Revolution, the Sandinista Revolution, and postwar Central America. It examines the function of firearms in songs, photos and texts about revolutionaries, guerrilla fighters and demobilized soldiers. Taking the firearm as an artifact and trope, this dissertation analyzes the relationship between direct violence, politics and different projects of modernity.;The first chapter examines corridos and literary texts about the Mexican Revolution such as El aguila y la serpiente by Martin Luis Guzman and Cartucho by Nellie Campobello. The second chapter analyzes a key but understudied expression of the Sandinista Revolution: the music of Carlos and Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy, in particular the albums Guitarra Armada, Amando en tiempos de guerra and Canto epico al FSLN. The last chapter deals with the figure of the demobilized combatant in Central American postwar literature: in the novel El arma en el hombre by Horacio Castellanos Moya and the short stories "La noche de los escritores asesinos" by Jacinta Escudos and De fronteras by Claudia Hernandez. Incorporating theories about modernity, weapons technology, object-subject relations, affect, militarization and gender, this research shows that: 1) intellectuals are drawn to violence but try to position themselves outside of it; 2) often a female element is used to legitimize armed struggle and to soften its implications; 3) the use of a firearm can be deeply democratic in nature but lead to a profound militarization and traumatization of politics and society; and 4) precariousness lies at the core of many insurgent acts, since it is often precarite that leads to rising up in arms, which is itself a precarious political gesture. This examination of the relation between war technology and society testifies to the deep interconnectedness of modernity and violence and to the need for a more radical democracy.