AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
José Miguel Oviedo in The History of Hispanic American
Literature. From Borges to the present, gave a suggestive title to
one subchapter Disappearances and the Dead: A Tragic List
mapping the literary events of the last four decades of the 20th
century. At the very beginning, he mentions that politics in the
Hispanic American environment has always tended to intertwine
with intellectual life and for many, also important authors (eg
García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes) it did not remain only
on the level of difficult matters, but touched them personally, as
well as touched national communities in the form of exile,
imprisonment, torture and death. Naturally it influenced the
creative process, as these were obvious forms of silencing (2005,
434).
Isabel Allende and Elsa Osorio, in their literary works from
exile, dealt with the topic of dictatorship in their countries of
origin. Neither of them did not come from the lived experience,
although both were inspired by real events in Chile and
Argentina. Their narratives take the form of fiction in which the
authors become the voice of the silenced and the “memory of the
forgotten” (Oviedo, 2005, 373), or, as Allende claims, the voice
“which speaks for those who in our earth suffer and are silent”
(1985: 451). In that the prose writer Allende also sees the sense
of literature (Correas Zapata, 1999, 17) and in her work she tries
to fill it by thematising the issues of gender and other
marginalization.
Allende's novel The House of the Spirits describes the
circumstances of the fall of Salvador Allende's government, the
novel Of Love and Shadows (De amor y de sombra, 1984) is the
memory of so called “desaparecidos” (lost victims of the
regime) during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet
(1973-1990). Based on the facts and in the background of the
love story of two young people, the writer describes the
atrocities of the Chilean dictatorship - fear for the missing
people, torture, revelation of illegal cemeteries, confirming the
cruelty of the military government. The novel The House of the
Spirits made her to join the most important Chilean "resistance"
novels (González-Ortega, 1999, 204), inspired by the military
dictatorship: Diary of a Chilean concentration camp (Tejas
verdes, 1974) by Hernán Valdés, A House in the Country (Casa
de Campo, 1978) written by José Donoso and the novel For the
Fatherland (Por la patria, 1986) by Diamela Eltit. Osorio's
novel My name is Light (A veinte años Luz, 1998) brings the
reader closer to the events of the last Argentine dictatorship,
which began in 1976, when was the political power in the
country taken over by the army and the country began the so-
called the process of national reorganization (Proceso de
Reorganización Nacional) led by General Jorge Rafael Videla.
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Osorio, dealing with the theme of dictatorship, also integrated
the group of the Argentine authors who developed the theme of
dictatorship before her (authors as Ricardo Piglia, Juan José
Saer, Angélica Gorodischer, Griselda Gambaro) and almost
simultaneously with her, i. e. in the eighties and nineties of the
20th century (e.g. Alicia Kozmech in the novel Steps Under
Water - Pasos bajo el agua, 1984).
In the context of genre typology, as it was developed by Nelson
González-Ortega (1999, 204), and based on certain specific
features that emerge from the novels The House of the Spirits
and My name is Light, it is more appropriate to define them as
symbolic prose with elements of testimony. These are, in
essence, fictional works in which the reliability of the narrator is
difficult to examine, in contrast to the autobiographical narrative,
where an act of legitimacy applies “to confirm whether textual
references correspond to the facts” and subsequently, “in case of
agreement, the truth of the story, sincerity of narration and at the
same time the reliability of the narrator is recognized” (Görözdi,
11
The political violence of the 1970s reached such proportions in Argentina that it
could not be compared to any other period of Argentine history. According to Daniel
Nemrava, it was one of the most violent regimes in the country's history, resulting in
more than 30 million lost people, so called desaparecidos, the forced exile of a large
number of Argentine intellectuals and an economy on the verge of bankruptcy. (2013,
34)
2013, 31). Nevertheless, the personal commitment of the
authors, their personal attachment to the topic, its internalization,
and thus the place of their own story in it, leak from these works.
The way in which the subject of memory is creatively grasped is
undoubtedly determined by the chosen perspective of narration
about what was, “at least the perspective of the present tense,
[because] the narrative about the past contributes to shaping the
future" and shaping personal identity” (Görözdi, 2013, 32).
These narratives can be understood as a part of a larger historical
narrative, composed of the testimonies of others, and represent
“one form of oral history and humanitarian journalism” (Oviedo,
2005, 373).
The story of the family of Truebas from Allende's The House of
the Spirits is an allusion to the dictatorial regime in an unnamed
Hispanic country that can be easily identified through a
description of political and social history (so-called haciendas
controlled by the powerful hand of the oligarchy, the first
agricultural reforms, the victory of Salvador Allende, a military
coup supported by the opposition and foreign countries, but also
thanks to references to the “poet” (Pablo Neruda) or the
“president” (Salvador Allende). However, the reader perceives
the story primarily as an impressive narration about the family of
the landowner Esteban Trueba, into which - especially in
connection with female characters - magic, symbols, and also
that supernaturally and that irrationally enter in symbiosis with
everyday reality. As it is typical for Allende, the female
characters represent a hidden, unbridled force capable of
changing history. In The House of the Spirits, the belief in a
better future is also evoked by the semantic motivation of the
choice of female names - Nívea, Clara, Blanca, Alba. They come
from one synonymous series: whitishly pure, clear as the dawn
of a new day that gives hope to the individual and society. The
opening sentence of the novel The House of the Spirits is
emblematic, written by Clara as a child into her notebook, a
character with the ability to anticipate the future: “Barrabas [an
animal of mythological proportions] came to us by sea...”
(Allende, 1986, 11) This sentence is the point at which the
narrative begins and to which returns by Clara 's granddaughter
Alba. Narrative as the flow of life thus closes cyclically.
In the novel My name is Light, Elsa Osorio artistically
contemplates the tragic chapter of Argentine history, focusing
not only on the history of the nation, but also on the personal,
more precisely, individual history. The central theme of the
novel against the background of socio-political events in
Argentina is the trajectory of recognizing one's own identity,
which the main character Luz lost as a result of the cruel
practices of the dictatorship - shortly after her birth she was
kidnapped and placed in a regime supporter family.
During drafting the story, the author relied on real events: the
regime's violence had no regard for pregnant women and
children.
12
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The abductions of new-borns were closely linked to another phenomenon of
dictatorship - the disappearance of people. It was "a widespread phenomenon that is
perhaps the only one to stand out from the dictatorships of the European style: the
Argentine so called junta let uncomfortable people literally disappear (desaparecer)."
(Charvátová - Mizzau - Pokorný - Kazmar, 2017, 80) In this connection, Rey Tristán
formulates the statement that the dictatorship in Argentina was characterized by the
so-called triad by kidnapping - torture - disappearance (secuestro - tortura -
desaparición). (Rey Tristán, 2007, 39)
In the story about young woman Luz, who searches
for her biological mother, Osorio discusses - on a universal level
- the pain-broken but at the same time powerful voice of
relatives demanding information about lost family members, as
well as the role of human rights organizations that helped them.
Her novel includes The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Madres
de la Plaza de Mayo) as a collective protagonist, who began to
gather in protest every Thursday in front of the government
building, from which The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo
(Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo) emerged – one of them separated
from the women in the square and asked who would be looking
for her grandson. Then twelve women joined her. Osorio
emphasizes the importance of the organization's work in
reconstructing the memory of individuals and re-establishing
their personal identity, as its aim was to return kidnapped
children to their original families. After the birth of her son, Luz
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