This essay examines the narrative of Rubem Fonseca (Brazil) and Rita Indiana Hernandez (Dominican Republic) to propose a new way of reading “texts of violence.” Instead of seeing them as homage to crime or a eulogy to extreme consumerism, I demonstrate how these texts are structured to make visible some of the violent urban realities that are often ignored in contemporary urban societies in Latin America. I demonstrate how Latin American literature destabilizes traditional notions of violence, showing that problems of violence and exclusion go beyond binary victim vs. aggressor issues. I argue that the texts I analyze claim that the lack of access to full citizenship rights is a form of systemic violence that engenders further violence. I illustrate how these texts of invisible violence can be understood as evidence of the power of cultural production to transform social relations in contemporary societies marked by inequality.