A couple of days ago marked 50 years since the military coup that overthrew the democratic government of Salvador Allende and gave way to the bloody and terrifying dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Both that coup and that dictatorship, as well as the exile to which thousands of men and women were forced and the democracy that little by little made its way – the latter is still seeking to establish itself, since the telluric movement of horror left the ground susceptible to the monsters continuing to long for the swamp—, gave rise to an impressive amount of great literary works.
From Cottage either The garden next doorfrom José Donoso to The Twilight Zone or Space Invadersby Nona Fernández, passing, in rigorous disorder, throughr The palace of laughterby Germán Marín, Fways to return homeby Alejandro Zambra, Lumperica either For my countryby Diamela Eltit, Green tiles. Diary of a concentration camp in Chileby Hernán Valdés, The big cityby Omar Saavedra Santis (published in German, several years before its publication in Spanish), Oxideby Carmen Ana María del Río, Chilean Night either distant starby Roberto Bolaño, Bunchby Diego Zúñiga, Quietly either once upon a time there was a birdby Alejandra Costamagna, Noiseby Álvaro Bisama, Premature memoriesby Rafael Gumucio and, recently, Signs of usby Lina Meruane and a lost storyby Juan Pablo Meneses.
Find a crack
I focus on the work of Meneses because in addition to being one of the last to join the literature that is based on the events of September 11, 1973, it is an example of the inexhaustibility of a theme, when it is an open wound both in the body collective as well as in each individual and, above all, when the author knows how to find a loophole that had remained unexplored. This is the case, precisely, of the protagonist of Meneses’s novel, who is none other than Meneses himself, who undertakes a personal search that wants, at the same time, to repair his memory – broken as a result of the bombs – and illuminate a dark area in the collective memory of their country. And the search for Pablo is that of a hidden story: that of that bomb that did not fall on Allende’s house, but a hundred meters from Pablo’s house, on a military hospital. A bomb about which, to make matters worse, both the winners and the losers seem to have accepted the same thesis: that it was due to an error. But what really happened to that bomb and that pilot who dropped it? Was it a mistake or was it a deliberate act?
And I stop, also, in Signs of us, because the book by Meruane—who was recently awarded the 2023 José Donoso Ibero-American Literature Prize—is another of those last books to join the vast and wonderful library that seeks to record all the violence that criminals, that is, that the military coup plotters and their descendants imposed on a country, for decades: from the enormous and obvious – the violence against the flesh of the bodies and the absolute transformation of the public – to the smallest and invisible – the violence against the interior of bodies and the complete transmutation of intimacies. Meruane’s book, in which a group of girls who study at a private school that seeks, like their families, to keep them isolated from reality, little by little realize what is happening beyond the bars that They separate them from the world, because, at the end of the day, everything has changed—even the silences, even the gestures of the people—, they bring to the smallest the largest mechanism of a dictatorship: “here only what happens that is said to happen.” happens”.
Beyond the narrative
If I were to list here, as I did before with the narrative books, the poetry books that were written in Chile after the coup, during the dictatorship or while democracy sought to make its way again, I would surely not have enough space for this. newsletter, nor doubling the number of words. Maybe that’s why – although I refuse to recommend that you look for, at the very least, Anteparadiseby Raúl Zurita, The flag of Chile, by Elvira Hernández and The city, by Gonzalo Millán—I would like to focus on a book that seems like a true event to me: “Remember that I once was and that I am no longer. / Remember the blows, the winters / crossed shouting and the horrors of summer / Remember the black blanket covering / your face and the atrocious number 509 / And above all, remember, you who listen / this song of the children alone / that nothing here “No one and no one is forgotten,” writes the poet Zurita in Canto de los niños solos.
Although perhaps the word write, in this case, is not the correct one, or is not exact, because what Zurita does in Song of children alone It is more than writing: becoming a medium, listen, feel and distill the words of the relatives and friends of some of the victims of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet – grouped by the project Memory beatsan organization that collects and disseminates testimonies, as well as microbiographies of detainees, disappeared and executed—, and then reflects poetically on them.
Song of the Lonely Children, as its cover says, in addition to being a book of poetry, it is an object of memory, that memory that seeks to turn around what disappearance has always wanted to do, that is, to bring back the human dimension of the one who is no longer here, so that he remains here through the power of the word.
And the word, as soon as it becomes testimony, is capable of returning a piece of the present to those whose existence was cut off in the past: that is why those who aspire to the impunity of silence are so afraid of testimony.
Song of children alone It is the most recent reminder that the written word gives us of the terrifying and criminal military coup of 1973, but also that we should not give up memories.
“Do you remember / the blows at / the dawn / and the fierce / clarity / of the new day?”
Coordinates
a lost story was published by Tusquets. Signs of us is in the Alchemy edition. Song of the lonely children, for its part, was edited by Cuneta.
Subscribe to the newsletter here.
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
Subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#Literatures #blow