Acceso usuarios
Wojciech Tokarz
This article questions the so-called democratic aspect of the contemporary Latin American historical novel by analyzing three works published after the fall of the dictatorship in Argentina: El entenado (1983) by Juan José Saer, La tierra del fuego (1998) by Sylvia Iparraguirre, and El placer de la cautiva (2000) by Leopoldo Brizuela. Although all three novels examine and condemn exclusionary practices of history (and the national discourse), the democratic vision they project is nevertheless limited to those of European descent. The Amerindians in these novels, I argue, function merely as metaphors for ostracized sectors of society throughout the country’s history. Hence the authors fail to recognize the participation of Indigenous groups and their patrimony in the social fabric of contemporary Argentina. The democratic project extrapolated from these novels is limited, therefore, to a mere reorganization of traditional discourses that persistently exclude groups of non-European heritage from the national project
