This dissertation argues that the works of Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Horacio Castellanos Moya, and Rafael Menjívar Ochoa reveal the significant influence that testimonio has in Central American literature today. To begin with, their texts adopt and adapt the narrative and rhetorical conventions present in this form, often parodying or reconfiguring them in order to reveal the tensions and points of rupture in theorizations of canonical testimonial texts. Testimonio's thematic and formal attributes, in turn, have permeated and been absorbed by the two main literary paths chosen by these writers in their fictional production. On the one hand, they have embraced the detective fiction genre-a thoroughly literary form in its use of welldefined conventions and tropes-in order to effectively dismantle the problematic assumptions of testimonio. On the other hand, their fictions have taken it upon themselves to contend with the archive-a site of discursive production and a depository of fragments belonging to the extraliterary realm alluded to in testimonio- and to adopt diverse archival logics in the process of their own construction.