AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
is unable to get rid of the idea that her family has concealed her
true origins and therefore she is driven by a desire to reveal
them. In this process of searching Luz is receiving help by
activist Delia, the real founder of The Grandmother of the Plaza
de Mayo. With this, and the atmosphere that accompanies the
search, the author enriches the narrative with a documentary
element. In this sense, the dialogues between Luz and Delia have
a strong expressive value, but the motif of friendship and co-
ownership, which reflects the relationship between the two
women, also has an equally important place in Osorio's literary
composition:
“We became very good friends around then. I was a little
ashamed the first time I went back to the Abuelas’ office after
the blood test, because they couldn’t find a match in the
database. But after Delia told me that they knew who my
grandfather was, I felt much more comfortable. I didn’t have to
be afraid of being found or treated as If I were crazy.” (2004,
330)
Elsa Osorio plastically captures the long, essential need-guided
path of healing the scars caused by the cruel methods of
dictatorship. It is difficult to predict the end of this journey, it
has its specific folds, composed of moments of hope, but also of
disappointment and feelings of helplessness.
“Ramiro told me that when he was fifteen, Marta took him to see
an exhibition on children who were disappeared or born in
captivity. There were photos of the missing parents and children,
and birth certificates and letters, souvenirs of those mutilated
lives. The thing that made the biggest impression on him, which
he could still remember quite clearly, were the unisex child-size
silhouettes in black cardboard with a question mark next to
them, which stood for the babies born in captivity. I asked the
Abuelas if they still had the photos from that exhibition and I
spent hours looking for family resemblances to me. They were
incredibly patient. I would point out a girl and they would say,
“No, it can’t be her, she disappeared in 78,” or, “We know she
had a boy.” (2004, 342)
This narrative is set in the documentary framework by passages
inspired by information about secret detention centres (so called
centros clandestinos de detención) and concentration camps
(campos de concentración), which Argentine society found out
with the pass of time.
13
The author reconstructs by the testimony
of Liliana, the biological mother of Luz, the experience of
repeated humiliation, for example the humiliation of human
dignity, ruthless and calculating torture, but mainly the
insecurity of survival in the detention centre, which was doubled
in the case of mothers.
“because in the centre they kill you little by little, they degrade
you, they wear you down, they make you feel dirty. They kill
you over and over again. And if you’re pregnant, well, if I hadn’t
been, I would be dead by now. Now I know why they only used
the prod on my legs – they were trying to make sure the
pregnancy went OK because they wanted my child to be healthy
to give to Dufau’s daughter. He chose me, the dirty bastard, the
murderer. [...] I’ve gone through some horrific things and I’ve
met a lot of Pilóns along the way. Like the one who shoved us to
the ground and kicked us. “Not this one,” he said to the other
bloke, and picked me up, but they left Sofi black and blue and
covered in burns from the electric prod. Or the other Pilón, the
one who brought us some cider and then while we were drinking
it knocked the glasses out of our hands and starting screaming at
us and beating us. They’re sadists and monsters. Miriam, you
can’t stoop that low.” (2004, 80 – 82)
13
In the Argentine detention centres, kidnapped people were held in the dark, they
were handcuffed, naked, with a hood on their heads and during an interrogation, in
which torturers tried to obtain information about other suspects, they practised various
types of violence, such as: “Suffocation, beatings, sexual violence (both men and
women were allegedly raped, according to Pilar Calveiro they were raped up to twenty
times in a row) and electroshocks (mainly to the genitals) were practiced.”(Charvátová
- Mizzau - Pokorný - Kazmar, 2017, 80)
Among the narrative mechanisms that the novel My name is
Light and literary works about dictatorships often use in
greneral, in addition to allusions to the repressive regime, it is
necessary to mention the retrospective on the time-space axis,
the interruption of the story and the change of the space in which
it takes place (in the case of Osorio’s novel Madrid - Buenos
Aires). The novel consists of three parts, which reflect three
important moments, more precisely stages in Luz's life: her birth
(corresponds to the year of the beginning of the dictatorship) and
the last days of Liliana's life; her life with her family (year
1983), family which adopted her and which in some way
represents Argentine society in the micro-space of the
narrative;
14
4 Conclusion
the period from 1995 to 1998, when the adult Luz
identified in herself the need to know her own roots. The
conclusion of the novel, which the reader follows in the epilogue
from 1998, is remarkable in terms of composition. The novel
ends the way it begins (the initial and final situation is the same,
or at least an
alogous; see Všetička, 1986, 55), and thus
represents a closed, unbroken circle of events, more precisely
circular type of framing, which is very similar to that used by
Allende in the novel The House of the Spirits. The story begins
with the arrival of Luz, her husband Ramiro and their son Juan at
Barajas Airport: they arrived in Madrid in order to find Carlos,
Luz's probable biological father. The conclusion brings Luz at
the same age as at the beginning of the novel, but her search is
already illuminated by new findings. At the same time, it is
possible to talk about the temporal framing of the story, as the
events at the beginning and end of the novel take place at
relatively the same time, in 1998. Those mentioned
compositional frameworks in a way reflect the process of
reviving memory against the background of historical, political
and social contexts of the time: “forgetting is followed by
awareness, awakening, remembrance and return” (Assmann,
2018, 57).
In the literary constitution of cultural memory, which
undoubtedly includes the depiction of the dictatorship theme in
all its breadth and depth, the connection between personal and
collective memories is confirmed. The hope is hidden in the
name of Luz (Light) but also in other female names marked by
the dictatorship. Further it captures a desire to find oneself, the
truth about own origin and stolen identity. The meaning can be
also interpreted as the light of painful knowledge that guides the
character on the path and despite everything it liberates her. It is
a symbolic path of rebirth, during which the told stories of
thousands of people meet and pass through, to whom the
dictatorship came into their life and the literature gave them the
voice and restored their memory.
Literature:
1. Aletta de Sylvas, G.: Género, violencia y dictadura en la
narrativa de escritoras argentinas de los 70. In: Amerika.
Mémoires, identités, territoires – Imaginaire et réalité dans les
Amériques: mémoire, identité et politique sexuelle 7, 2012
[online] [cit. 2020-11-18]. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/
10.4000/amerika.3567.
2.
3. Allende, I.: La casa de los espíritus. Barcelona: Random
House Mondadori, 2002. 455 p. ISBN 84-8450-388-7.
Allende, I.: De amor y de sombra. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés,
1992. 285 p. ISBN 84-01-38208-4.
4. Allende, I.: La magia de las palabras. In: Revista
Iberoamericana, 1985, no. 132/133, pp. 448-452.
5. Allende, I.: My invented country. Trans. by M. S. Peden. New
York: HarperVia, 2020. 224 p. ISBN
6. Allende, I.: The House of the Spirits. Trans. by M. Bogin.
London: Transworld Publishers
9780063049680.
14
In this context, María Eugenia Osorio Soto assigns the stepfather of Luz Eduardo to
a crowd of naive and simple citizens, the so-called unprepared citizens (from Spanish
ciudadano desprevenido) who could be easily manipulated by the dictatorship. She
also characterizes stepmother Mariana, a representative of the upper social class, as
restrained, representing conservative values and supporting the regime (2011, 164).
(Black Swan), 1986. 491 p.
ISBN 0-
552-99588-6.
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