Betrayal, loyalty, the Peronist People and the forgotten archives

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 For the concept of ‘political culture’, see Sirinelli (1997 Sirinelli, Jean-François. 1997. “Eloge de la complexité”. In Pour une histoire, Edited by: Rioux, Pierre and Sirinelli, Jean-François. 438–40. Paris: Editions du Seuil. [Google Scholar]). 2 See Sanchez (1992 Sanchez, Ana María Amar. 1992. El relato de los hechos. Rodolfo Walsh: testimonio y escritura, Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo. [Google Scholar]). 3 Bonasso himself recognizes that, in Diario de un clandestino, he added context to certain characters. However, he did not mention that he included ‘thoughts’ supposedly written in the late 1960s, even though the diary did not begin, as Bonasso acknowledges, until 1970. 4 After the 1955 coup d'état, Peronism was formally proscribed from the public arena. In the second half of the 1950s, trade unionists, rank-and-file workers and some second-rank militants outside the unions, through different strategies, carried out a process of resistance to both political proscription and socioeconomic reorganization. See James (1988 James, Daniel James. 1988. Resistance and integration: Peronism and the Argentine working class, 1946–1976, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]), especially Parts II and III. James points out that the movement of resistance was almost exhausted by the early 1960s. However, Left Peronist militants, like Bonasso, used to invoke the term ‘resistance”‘ to refer to the Peronist militancy throughout the years in which Peronism was proscribed (from 1955 to 1973). 5 For an analysis of Perón as an empty signifier, particularly during the proscription era, see Laclau (2002 Laclau, Ernesto. 2002. “Primera conferencia”. In Hegemonía y antagonismo: el imposible fin de lo politico, Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio. [Google Scholar]). 6 Tucho Valenzuela led the military to believe that he would help them find and imprison the Montoneros’ highest committee in Mexico. He was sent to Mexico to follow the military's plan. Instead, Valenzuela was able to inform the Montoneros about the plan that the military had developed and therefore save them from imprisonment and eventually death. 7 Idelber Avelar (1999 Avelar, Idelber. 1999. The untimely present: Postdictatorial Latin American fiction and the task of mourning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 66–7) briefly refers to the centrality of betrayal and, in his terms, faithfulness in Bonasso's Recuerdo de la muerte, as well as to the feminization of the traitor constructed in the novel. However, Avelar focuses on the Christian roots of the notions of betrayal and faithfulness without taking into consideration the reformulation of this pair by Peronist discourse. 8 Daniel James, in an interview he conducted with a former worker, asked what changes Peronism brought to his life, if compared with the 1930s. The worker's answer is short and clear: ‘With Peron we were all machos.’ See James (1988: 29). 9 In this vein, it is noteworthy that one of the crucial inter-textual references throughout Bonasso's narrative is Roberto Arlt, whose own narrative intertwined the theme of sexual ‘fall’ and betrayal. For an analysis of these topics in Arlt, see Masotta (1999 Masotta, Oscar. 1999. Sexo y traición en Roberto Arl, Buenos Aires: Corregidor. [Google Scholar]). 10 In an interview, which took place more than 10 years after the publication of Recuerdo de la muerte, Bonasso reinforces his interest in unravelling the cases of those women who effectively consented to having sexual and, more generally speaking, affective relationships with their repressors. See De Luca and García (1996 De Luca, María and García, Romina. 1996. Cabrón, sentáte y contá. Reportaje a Miguel Bonasso. Paredón y después, 7: 6–12. [Google Scholar]: 4). 11 The date 17 October 1945, the day on which thousands of people went to Plaza de Mayo to demand the release of Perón, is often viewed as the mythical day of the beginning of Peronism, which sealed the bond between Perón and the People. By contrast, on 16 September 1955, the military overthrew the Peronist government and Perón went into exile. 12 The reference to the Congreso de la Productividad is not random. In 1954, the government, the General Confederation of Labor, and the General Confederation of Economics (which agglomerated the alleged ‘national bourgeoisie’) called for a renewal of the ‘social pact’. Among the issues that the renewal had to address was the raising of the levels of the workers’ productivity at factories and workshops. For an analysis of the social and economic problematic in the early 1950s, see Ramos (1972 Ramos, Mónica Peralta. 1972. Etapas de acumulación y alianza de clases en Argentina, 1930–1970, Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. [Google Scholar]). For a revision of the socio-political impact of the Congress, see Bitrán (1994 Bitrán, Rafael. 1994. El Congreso de la Productividad, Buenos Aires: El Bloque. [Google Scholar]). 13 At the risk of extrapolating, the vivification of the past through reified images is a trait that, according to Fredric Jameson (1991 Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]: 29–35), is central to the postmodern sense of historicity. Even though I am not suggesting here that Bonasso's narrative might be read through the lens of postmodernism, it is noteworthy that his evocation of the Golden Age of Peronism is composed by similar kinds of images. 14 Interestingly enough, the other insistent reconstructor of Peronist Left sensibilities in the 1980s and 1990s, Fernando Solanas, also turned his attention towards the events of December, and the process that led to them. Indeed, Solanas's last movie, Memoria del saqueo (2003) was released in the Mar del Plata Festival in 2004, where the first lady and senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was in charge of honouring the filmmaker with an award. 15 The information can be found at http://www.mininterior.gov.ar/elecciones/estadistica/e_03_legis.asp 16 Mariano Grondona has been constructing this interpretation since 2003, in his weekly editorials in La Nación and his television programme, ‘Hora Clave’, both appearing on Sundays

Art · Betrayal · Context (archaeology · Humanities · Literature · Loyalty · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Latin American Literature Studies · Law

• Infidelities

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• The Untimely Present

  Open Access•Idelber Avelar•Untimely Present•1999

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• La memoria en donde ardía

  Open Access•Claudia Ferman, Miguel Bonasso•Chasqui•1991

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• Marxism, Ideology and Literature

  Open Access•Cliff Slaughter•Marxism, Ideology and Literature•1980

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• Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

  Fredric Jameson•Postmodernism, or, the Cultural…•2020

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