Suchergebnisse

El encuentro nos ayuda. Creo en mi visión ambiciosa, que al momento de congregar, instruir, medir, poder verificar y mostrar el manifiesto de la creatividad latinoamericana nos logra obtener como lo menciono Gui Boosiepe el de concretar en primera instancia el discurso concreto del diseño latinoamericano que al transcurrir, experimentar todos los procesos por los que pasa un pueblo, unas gentes con una cosmovisión traída del exterior y adaptada a nuestro entorno perduro el azote de dictaduras militares, persecuciones, hambre, subdesarrollo, impotencia y el lamento eterno de culparnos de ser subdesarrollados y llorar siempre por ese momento de serlo nos demos cuenta

This article explores the dystopian presence of Buenos Aires in Roberto Arlt's Los siete locos (The seven madmen) and its companion novel, Los lanzallamas (The flamethrowers). Both belong to a tradition of metropolitan narrative represented in Europe by authors such as Robert Musil, Alfred Döblin and James Joyce. Arlt's work, however, has a distinctive character, since it connects the expectations and anxieties unleashed by modernity with a dystopian imagination which has origins in nineteenth‐century Argentina with its raison d'être being profoundly linked to the formation of an Argentine national identity.

For two months they had maltreated me, tortured me, kept me handcuffed and blindfolded; I had eaten badly, slept on the floor covered with just a filthy blanket and had no news about my family, who in turn must have thought me dead-all this without being accused of any crime.' This is how Enrique Larreta sums up his terrifying ordeal at the hands of the Argentinian and Uruguayan security forces in the summer and autumn of last year. A 55-year-old journalist with an unblemished record and no political involvement of any kind, he went to Buenos Aires in July 1976 to search for his son, who had disappeared. The son, also a journalist, 26 years old and married with a five-year-old child, had been living in Argentina for the past three years. He had been a student leader in Uruguay and was arrested by the Army in 1972, held incommunicado for nine months, interrogated and tortured, before being released as there was no evidence against him. Until his disappearance he had worked for the Buenos Aires newspaper, El Cronista Comercial. Enrique Larreta joined his daughter-in-law in attempting to trace the missing journalist and to secure his release. On 2 July he presented a writ of habeas corpus, requesting the court that the police, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of the Interior, and the other security forces be asked about his whereabouts. A few days later he was told that the authorities had no record of his son and that he had not been detained. Enrique Larreta then contacted a number of organisations, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the Episcopal Council, and Dr Abelardo Rossi, a member of the Court of Justice. Everyone assured him of their sympathies but said they were unable to help. A member of the Supreme Court pointed out that on the same day over six thousand writs of habeas corpus had been received in cases similar to his. Undeterred, he wrote letters to various individuals and institutions, and he publicised his son's disappearance in Buenos Aires newspapers. What follows is an abbreviated version of Enrique Larreta's statement, which he made at the London offices of Amnesty International during his visit to England in March this year.