Armchair Journeys to The Dark Side of Mexico: Reading Bolaño and Poniatowska As Virtual Dark Tourism

This study examines how literary reading may function as a form of virtual dark tourism through analysis of reader engagement with Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Elena Poniatowska’s La Noche de Tlatelolco. Using an interpretivist qualitative design, twelve readers were followed over sixteen weeks to explore anticipatory motivations, immersive emotional engagement, and post-reading reflection. Findings show that participants approached these texts as symbolic spaces in which national violence, memory, and suffering were encountered and interpreted. The study proposes the Virtual Dark Tourism Reading Model to conceptualise how reading can reproduce experiential patterns associated with dark-tourism visitation while remaining mediated and narrative-based. In this framework, literature becomes a site where imaginaries surrounding violence and historical trauma are formed, negotiated, and revisited. The research broadens conceptual boundaries of dark tourism by showing that meaningful emotional and ethical engagement can occur without physical travel, advancing dialogue between literary studies and tourism studies.