ABSTRACT
The awareness of the dialogic relationship between Latin American novels and liberation theology can be traced to texts written by liberation thinkers: while Gustavo Gutierrez begins Teología de la liberacion with a passage from Jose Maria Arguedas' novel Todas las sangres, Leonardo Boff quotes Jose Marti and Horacio Cerutti cites Alejo Carpentier. Traditionally, the Catholic Church in Latin America had focused on the rituals and on the death of Christ on the cross. For many, living in exile began as a temporary condition and became a final state. To draw attention to the numerous affinities that exist among the novels by contemporary Chilean authors in exile does not mean that the coincidences do not occur also in the case of authors from other Latin American countries. The local problems of Chileans studied in these accounts transcend their regionalism to attract the interest of readers all around the world. In the long run, exile has notably contributed to this universalization.
