against memory manipulation
Interview with Martin Caparros *
by Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
During the military dictatorships that suffered many South American countries were also attempts by guerrilla groups seeking to build, through popular insurrection, socialism. To repression and injustice sought to build, through violence, another social order.
However, many of these groups, which consisted mainly of young people, saw their hopes were dashed against the strong-and often-outrageous military response and poor response of the people. A lot of them it was life.
memory of those years of "dirty war" has been used to give historical legitimacy to some governments, such as Nestor Kirchner. As usual with the use of history by various regimes, this case is not free of manipulation.
Among other things, as a way to settle accounts with the reversal of memory, Martin Caparros, a historian of the revolutionary movements in Argentina in the sixties and seventies of last century, published a couple years his novel To whom correspond (Barcelona, \u200b\u200bAnagram, 2008), about one of those young fighters, many years later, seeking revenge on the criminals who changed her life.
With Caparrós we had a conversation about it and left in Argentina, whose situation has many similarities with other parts of the continent.
Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why write a book like yours?
Martin Caparros (MC): I never knew why write a book, in general, let alone a book like this. But in this case the writing was even more unintentional than usual, because I thought I had already written everything I wanted on the seventies and revolutionary movements. In fact, my first novel, not your dead candles, was about it, and I wrote when I was 21 or 22 years. Still in the nineties I wrote, with the collaboration of Eduardo Anguita, a play called Will, which is not fiction, but a history of revolutionary movements in Argentina between 1966 and 1978, consisting of five volumes and is the reference work on the period. So I thought I had written everything I had to write about it.
I do not know what happened, I guess I pissed a lot of a certain attitude of the Kirchner about the seventies that fueled the presence of that memory, and for my taste the left used to legitimize a government that, apart from that center is trivial. I wanted to legitimize with continual reference to those comrades who wanted to change society, as he and his government follow that society did exactly the same. But he was talking about them all the time.
is true that Kirchner and his revived itself on justice causes, but do not know to what extent is your responsibility, because it assumes that justice is an independent power. So should we believe that this occurred because the court has decided that happen but, well, the executive has influence on that. It is true then reoccupied much of the human rights of the seventies, but for my taste very little addressed basic human rights of 2008, as feed, educate, heal, and all this sort of thing.
But in any case it seems that the anger that gave me took me back to writing about an era on which he had thought would not write anymore. Although I want to clarify also that appropriate Who is not a novel about the seventies, but, if anything, about the effect that certain issues of those years produced now. It's about an ex-militants whose wife was kidnapped in that decade, and, pregnant, was spared by chance. He got to play dumb for almost 30 years, and tried to forget everything, build a new vidita, but eventually succumbed to remember, and since it launched a vengeance. In this regard, something that always surprised me was the fact that so many people and relatives, none has attempted retaliation against any military personnel or those responsible for killings and torture.
That surprised me a lot, and this book, in a sense, is a kind of counterpart: someone who decided to carry out that revenge, and from there the story goes.
AR: Does this book have any intention of contributing to the memory of those years? What I draw from what you say, and some very critical notes are spoken by a character, Carlos , about memory and how it has served to manipulate.
MC: I would say, rather than a contribution, is like a smooth stone in the memory pool, I mean: it has reinforced something called the report, with "M" capitalized, for which has even violated some Castilian. I think there are some new words in the dictionary, a memory: Argentine singular noun, a reminder of the atrocities committed by the military junta of 1976-1983. But memory is much more than that: it's all of what one remembers, that he forgot his handkerchief in the house and has to return, or when you take a cup of soup and he remembers that his mother gave him, for 40 years, or many other things. The memory is infinite. No culture without all the endless forms of memory.
In contrast, Argentina has shrunk so much that word means only that with which you can say terrible things such as a museum of memory (the whole museum is a place of memory, because what is displayed in a museum but what deserves to be remembered?). Well, there is a memorial museum, which is the atrocities committed by the military. But "Memory" is basically a way of neutralizing the lives of those who supposedly are remembered, is a way to take their political weight of pulling its decision as subjects that at some point thought that was worth the risk to change society . It's a decaffeinated form between memory and victimized, to say: "Oh, those poor guys who were so good, and these soldiers came they were so bad and took them unfairly." They took them because they were in a kind of war in which we poor boys wanted to change the world of the military and the military, who wished that they were not we change, and we fight, and they beat us and kill us and are sons of bitches. But they were fighting to defend their world, as we were fighting for change, and that's what usually does not say when you have these little stories from memory.
AR: In that sense, his book is a kind of anti-memoirs, and this is due to the political use that was given just a memory. I liked a quote from Juanjo , this character ex-guerrilla who becomes a minister in the government, and which says: "Our strength is to be victims. "This is very similar in Mexico with the movement of 68 and with both earlier and later guerrillas.
In the novel the main character denies that they are heroes. How was the conversion of the guerrillas into heroes and their use in politics?
MC: Well, first is that of "killing the best", which is a little Carlos denied: they were the best, were the same as many of us, but had some bad luck, stubbornness, certain circumstances where some were killed and others fortunately. But it has built a whole based on that idea: those who died were the best.
It's funny, because it is contradictory: on the one side were that: good guys who did her no harm to anyone when they came and took ill, but on the other hand, were the best of all and they were like heroes untainted.
Well, we wrote 's will, that are 4 thousand pages, telling the stories more or less real for many of them might know what we mean, not to speak of myths, which are always functional for one or another form of power.
But Will is a total disregard of the authors. We put that story on stage through a number of characters, but instead, appropriate Who is the opposite: there is a very strong opinion regarding the use of all that period, and also for the nostalgia a little brutal for those who spent several years thinking I could change the world, and discover now that he will die without that world has changed, and yet still believes that the world will change because history shows that nothing is forever. But has that sadness of knowing that it will not touch, which is living in a very sad, very little interest in that kind of stupid that market capitalism, which posits itself as a continuous present that will last forever and that is the culmination of 4000 years of history, is also a society where 80 percent of the world's population is excluded and millions starve. This is presented as best we can hope for, and makes many people believe it. In this case, Carlos and me that we are very depressed.
AR: The book seems to me a pessimistic view. Do not you think that is the story of personal frustration, in this case Carlos , or, perhaps, the failure to build a better country?
MC: No, I think it's the mixture of the two stories, which are inextricably linked, can not think of one without the other, but are actually three at the same time: one is failure Carlos staff in its intention, first, to change the world, and then lead a more or less comfortable vidita, which also came out. Second, the generational failure of the group he wanted, when Argentina was a country that functioned more or less well, making it work better and differently, and that 40 years later is with a country that works much worse than those who had wanted to change in time.
Third, the great failure of Argentina as a project: a country that seemed 80 years ago to a place of relative importance in the world, or at least be a more or less equal , educated, developed, and that he saw in the last 50 years all of that was falling apart bit by bit until he fell precipitously, and now we are something radically different and infinitely worse than what we always assumed we were going to be.
AR: In the novel there are two characters that I drew: Juan Villegas, Juan , the ex-guerrilla reaching government minister, who adopts a discourse of democracy, natural and typical politician, on the other hand the priest Corello , this Army chaplain service torture centers, and ends as a pious priest of a small town. Where did these characters, which are central to the novel? Are there examples of real life?
MC: Well, I do know Juanjo several that can serve as an example. In the case of cure, less. I have no religious training, and yes I have a great concern for the religious thought and religious evils are made to the world. Maybe that's why I was interested in the figures of evil and revenge were not directly a murderer and a classic villain, but are as reasonable people. I have met more than one of these, by chance sometimes, and sometimes because I went to interview a murderer exmilitar, and they are people like anyone else. There are monsters full time, but rather part time: work of monsters, but the rest of the time as anyone else.
This is also why I wanted that bad, the object of revenge, was someone more like what we usually consider good, I thought of a businessman, but finally decided to stay with the priest, who seems a more complex character. Also, I was interested in the idea that someone says there: it was like the clash of two beliefs: the belief in socialism, which also had strong religious components, against the traditional Christian belief in tradition, family, home and home.
AR: To continue the slope of the anti-memoirs, the novel is a long discussion about revenge, but justice in the novel does not appear, rather than on memory exercises always claimed. Why put the emphasis on vengeance and not justice? How have received this in Argentina?
MC: Well, although it seems that what Carlos undertaken is beyond justice is like a personal need that goes beyond what the state can offer, it's no big thing. But even if he had been offered would not matter much, because if you choose revenge is not a rational decision, but it is the acceptance that has no choice but to continue a drive, and there the issue of justice becomes irrelevant.
On the other hand, as to the reception in Argentina, did not understand, because I never understand the reception of a book, and I think it is almost futile to try to understand. In this case what happened was that he read a lot, went through several editions, and many people I know I commented on it, which in the case of other books of mine has not. But there was no public debate: I thought the book would sell less, and that would be discussed further.
AR: In the highly specific Juanjo, I think that exemplifies social activists, and even fighters, who experienced a shift from socialism to democracy, which I think was a phenomenon Latin America. How did this shift in Argentina?
MC: I do not know if it is a good example, because there are very few ex-guerrillas. Indeed, most of the guerrilla leaders are dead, those who did not took very strange ways that actually scared me retroactively, to think where they could have been if they had won, because the truth took positions quite shocking, but not now but 25 years ago.
So I find it very difficult to speak of former guerrillas as a whole, because there are many dead, others who stayed and who went to either side. Nor should we expect that have shared a project 35 years ago will now define what we think about things.
Basically you'd be happy with some democracy, very little ambitious in its transformation. This I believe has to do with that in the meantime completed projects collapsing socialist not because they were militarily defeated, but because in general they produce is not desirable for my country, not something that I look or the Soviet-style or the Castro regime, nor any of those regimes in which a man governs for 40 years, and so forth.
It seems to me that the fall socialist political model and not have emerged yet another model that really replace him, there are many people who want to find in this kind of democratic liberalism a way to stay in politics. But it gives me the impression that too resigned to continue in government.
AR: At this point you make a strong critique progressive currents. How do you describe yourself? He says of its members: they are divine, are sensitive, like to correct even the story, are moralists, they boast of their own integrity, are full of good intentions and great notions. Is there a way that left progress so openly criticized in the book, is transformed?
MC: I do not know. What I think is that the answer is something that is doing very little and in many places. I think this is one of those periods that are from time to time in history that has fallen a model of change, in this case the model of the modern revolution, and still has not made the model is going to happen, that is something that takes 20, 40, 50, is not known. I think that the good would be to be assembling from many experiences and many ideas, not a light to come out and say what needs to be done, because one of the major problems of the socialist model is just reliance on the enlightened who knew what they had to do, the famous avant-garde and all that.
So that's why I tell you I have no answer to that question. My provisional answer, unfortunately for a long time, would be: I think we should look for, which is the opposite of the liberal left, which is very convinced that you know what you need to know.
I believe exactly the opposite: what I want to know, do not know, but I do keep thinking, and I know there are many people who are in the same position, and well, I hope that once we find something .
AR: There is a phrase of a character that sums up the failure of the transformation sought by the rebels: "We gave everything to save millions of people who had no interest whatsoever in that save". But, with all that, what are the possibilities of carrying out a project to transform a society?
MC: Sure, it's what they said the vanguard: they assumed that they had knowledge that others were forbidden, but as soon as they knew it, they would adopt as their own, and often that did not happen.
is a extraordinary cultural struggle. It is obvious that at this time there is a hegemony, than in many other times in history, a cultural model in which the targets are raised that this culture wants arise. There are millions and millions of people who are living very difficult, but what they want not to change the structures that make living well, but a little better accommodated within them. There is an idea that small individual salvation, which consists of buying a color TV, to have a little more money to send their kids to a good school or perhaps to buy a better car is the only way out.
is a huge cultural battle that will eventually make enough people believe that not only does not work out well, but even if it worked would not be enough. These things take a long time, and unfortunately so. There is something very rare for my generation at least, believe that historical times coincided with our personal time, and we thought that in 10 years going to change everything. It was fantastic to believe that, but it was a mistake, because there is an extreme difference between the historical and individual time. Of course there are times when history accelerates: one thinks of 1789-1798, in which many things happened in France. But at the same time, in Papua, New Guinea, nothing happened.
But we as a live one of those times, we lacked the perspective to realize that it was only one of them, and then, often becomes the haven, river plain slow going slowly.
AR: It's in the book some games that show that large transformers slogans become marketing phrases: "Live the Change!" Used by an exchange, "Another country is possible, "launched by a bank that promotes foreign travel. How to take the cultural battle?
MC: It's hard because it is a time of great power of the hegemonic culture, which very quickly takes over everything. Not long ago the idea that the Internet would be a democratizing tool, it would be a form of diffusion and horizontal movement, which was not half coming up and down but we all communicate in a network and so on. And in recent months, the Internet has been an extraordinary weapon in the campaign of U.S. Democratic candidate. In other words, more establishment that is hard to imagine, and used it very well. But what I mean is that what supposedly recovered and would work as the cause of democratization and the degree of equality between the transmitter and receiver, and it became the largest emitter tool possible. Somewhat more vertical than that, is difficult.
When I see this sort of thing impresses me and gives me a little uneasy. But what I want, at least, is to maintain this attitude and know that it pays to seek, and you find something sometimes. We will find, but not easy.
AR: How is the relationship political novel in this book?
MC: I find it interesting but a little complicated to talk about this novel because in the end we always end up talking about politics. I would have done a novel, and I think it's a novel. But I guess the novel is ambiguous in that genre that fits almost everything, and in this case took a lot of politics.
But I want to believe it's a very political novel, not a political novel. The place of the noun and adjective are clear: the noun and the adjective is novel policy.
Because there is also, I believe, certain issues of structure, plot and language that are also worth more than the diatribes that appear.
* Interview published in Replicante , September 2010. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.
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