Life under a dictatorship: Crash Course Latin American Literature #5

Key Concepts

• Postmemorial Literature: Texts that reflect on the memory of collective trauma.
• Literatura de los hijos (Literature of the Children): A specific genre within postmemorial literature in Latin America, written by those who grew up during periods of political turmoil and repression.
• Metafiction: A self-aware literary style that emphasizes its own creation and fictionality.
• Children of the Disappeared: Individuals whose parents were "disappeared" (kidnapped and presumed murdered) by authoritarian regimes.
• El tiempo del miedo (The Time of Fear): A period of intense political violence and repression in Peru during the 1980s.

The Experience of Growing Up Under Dictatorship and Conflict

The video explores the profound impact of growing up in environments marked by war, dictatorship, and political instability, particularly in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. Children in these situations often experience a pervasive sense of fear, silence, and secrets, even while engaging in typical childhood activities. This creates a disconnect between their lived childhood experiences and their later adult understanding of the historical events that shaped their lives. The core challenge for these individuals, and for the literature they produce, is how to reconcile these two perspectives and honor the memory of traumatic events that are not fully remembered.

The Rise of "Literatura de los Hijos"

The turbulent political landscape of 1970s and 1980s Latin America, characterized by power struggles between governments and rebel groups, brutal violence, and widespread human rights abuses, led to a generation of children growing up under dictatorships. Many of these children later became writers, contributing to a wave of literature known as postmemorial literature. In Latin America, this genre is specifically referred to as "literatura de los hijos" or "literature of the children." This literature often blurs the lines between fact and fiction as it grapples with the memory of collective trauma.

Alejandro Zambra and "Ways of Going Home"

Alejandro Zambra, a Chilean author, exemplifies this literary movement. Though not born during the 1973 military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, he grew up under the regime, which arrested and tortured approximately 130,000 people by the time he was a year old. The national soccer stadium, once a site of detention and torture, later became a place where children ate ice cream, illustrating the normalization of state violence.

Zambra's 2011 novel, "Formas de volver a casa" ("Ways of Going Home"), directly addresses the struggle of knowing and not knowing. The novel is structured in two parts:

• One half is narrated by a nine-year-old boy in 1985, during the height of Pinochet's power.
• The other half is told from the perspective of a nameless novelist in 2010, who is writing the story of that nine-year-old.

The novelist character, like Zambra, is haunted by unanswered questions from his past and the collective amnesia surrounding these events. This narrative structure makes the novel an example of metafiction, a literary style that draws attention to its own construction. Zambra uses this approach to suggest that writing fiction is a method of reconstructing the past. However, unlike traditional novels, the novelist character in "Ways of Going Home" never finds definitive answers, highlighting the inherent uncertainty of memory and historical truth. Zambra's translator, Megan McDowell, notes that Zambra challenges the "sure, declarative voice" of traditional novels, arguing that for his generation, experimental works that expose their own fictionality feel more truthful, especially when a false version of truth has been imposed.

Félix Bruzzone and the "Children of the Disappeared"

Félix Bruzzone, born in 1976, experienced the impact of Argentina's military dictatorship firsthand when his parents were detained and disappeared by the regime of Jorge Videla, nicknamed the "Hitler of the Pampas." Videla's regime murdered or disappeared tens of thousands of Argentinians. A particularly horrific aspect of this period was the forced birth of children in secret detention centers, with their babies being illegally adopted.

Bruzzone's fiction often features characters who are the "children of the disappeared."

• In his short story "Otras Fotos de Mamá" ("Other Photos of Mom"), the protagonist seeks to understand his deceased mother by speaking with her ex-boyfriend.
• In his novel "Los topos" ("The Moles"), the narrator is the son of disappeared parents. However, his journey is not a conventional search for the past but a surreal quest that may or may not be directly related to his parents.

Scholar Jordana Blejmar points out that Bruzzone "challenges the idea [...] that all children of disappeared parents are destined to go to the same places and ask the same questions." This emphasizes that even within collective trauma, individual experiences and interpretations of memory are unique.

Claudia Hernández and "Slash and Burn"

Claudia Hernández's 2017 novel "Roza, tumba, quema" ("Slash and Burn") is inspired by the Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992), a conflict that personally affected Hernández and her family. The war was fought between the authoritarian government and rebel groups, collectively known as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). International powers played significant roles, with Cuba and the Soviet Union supporting the FMLN and the U.S. providing billions to government militias. The conflict resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of displaced Salvadorans.

In "Slash and Burn," El Salvador is not explicitly named, and characters are unnamed, creating a sense of anonymity and pervasive fear. The novel follows an unnamed heroine through different stages of her life:

• As a young girl evading rebels.
• As a pregnant woman fighting alongside them.
• As her baby is sold to fund the rebellion, illustrating how even the mother-child bond is vulnerable.
• The threat of sexual violence is a constant presence, affecting not only the protagonist but all women identified as "sister," "daughter," or "mother."

The novel extends into the war's aftermath, where the narrator, now a mother of four daughters, experiences overlapping memories with their childhoods. For instance, she realizes her daughter's bright-pink backpack could have made her an easy target during the war. These echoes demonstrate how the past continues to resonate in the present.

Claudia Salazar Jiménez and "Blood of the Dawn"

Claudia Salazar Jiménez's novel "La sangre de la aurora" ("Blood of the Dawn") explores women's experiences during Peru's "el tiempo del miedo" ("the time of fear") in the 1980s. The conflict involved the Peruvian military, known for its brutality, and the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), a militant group committed to revolution through violence.

The novel is structured in fragments, weaving together the lives of three distinct female characters:

• Melanie: A photojournalist attempting to document the truth, despite her government escort.
• Modesta: An Indigenous farmer whose village is terrorized by the Shining Path. Her story is told in the second person, inviting reader identification.
• Marcela: A social worker who is drawn to the Shining Path's cause and renames herself "Comrade Marta."

Melanie, as the one with the camera, might be seen as the primary witness. However, she acknowledges the limitations of her perspective: "These are photos that push you to look outside the frame, that gesture at all that hasn’t been captured… How much is outside the frame? What stories will get away?" This highlights the struggle of memory, where not everything can be retained, and the full picture is often elusive. What lies "outside the frame" represents what has been disappeared by censorship, fear, and time.

Ultimately, the paths of these three women converge in the mountains, and they all experience violence, regardless of their differing levels of involvement in the conflict. Salazar Jiménez emphasizes the necessity of writing about such experiences, stating, "Writing about violence is not an easy process to endure, [...] it has to be done. We cannot relegate these stories to silence."

Conclusion: The Power of Literature in Reconstructing Memory and Healing

The video concludes by emphasizing that authors in Latin America, writing in the shadow of dictatorships and conflict, grapple not only with the memory of trauma but also with the very nature of memory itself. The challenge lies in remembering when truth is obscured by fear, silence, or lies, and when definitive answers are elusive. Literature, and the act of reading, are presented as powerful tools for healing. They offer a means of reconstructing history, naming what has been disappeared, and finding ways to live in the present by confronting and understanding the past. The video suggests that these literary works are not just about recounting events but about processing them, making them a vital part of individual and collective identity.